Numerical analysis of acoustic wave propagation in layered carbon nanofiber reinforced polymer composites

Polymer composites reinforced by carbon nanofibers (CNFs) in the form of paper sheet show significant vibration and acoustic damping improvement when compared to pure matrix materials. Without looking into the microscopic energy dissipation mechanisms, this paper analyzes the wave propagation in the composites from a macroscopic point of view. The CNF nanocomposites in this study were treated as stacking of alternating layers of pure polymer and CNF reinforced polymer. Analyses of acoustic wave propagation focused oil revealing the effects of acoustic impedance discontinuity at the interfaces of the layered structure. Plane wave transmission coefficient has been calculated as a function of the number of the layer repeats and thickness at different wave frequencies. Oscillations in the transmission coefficient have been observed when the acoustic wavelength is oil the same order of the bilayer thickness, indicating the possibility of designing the nanocomposite structure to optimize noise reduction characteristics. The numerical analysis converges with effective media theory when acoustic wavelength is much larger than the layer thickness

An RNN Model for Generating Sentences with a Desired Word at a Desired Position

Generating sentences with a desired word is useful in many natural language processing tasks. State-of-the-art recurrent neural network (RNN)-based models mainly generate sentences in a left-to-right manner, which does not allow explicit and direct constraints on the words at arbitrary positions in a sentence. To address this issue, we propose a generative model of sentences named Coupled-RNN. We employ two RNN\u27s to generate sentences backwards and forwards respectively starting from a desired word, and inject position embeddings into the model to solve the problem of position information loss. We explore two coupling mechanisms to optimize the reconstruction loss globally. Experimental results demonstrate that Coupled-RNN can generate high quality sentences that contain a desired word at a desired position

Red-Fleshed Apple Anthocyanin Extracts Attenuate Male Reproductive System Dysfunction Caused by Busulfan in Mice

In this research, we analyzed the effect of an intragastrical oral administration of red-fleshed apple anthocyanin extract (RAAE) on busulfan-treated mice. First, we showed that the most abundant component in RAAE was cyanidin 3-O-galactoside. To determine the effect of the RAAE, the mice were divided into control and four other different concentrations of RAAE feeding treatment groups (BA0, no RAAE; BA.1, 0.1 mg/kg; BA1, 1 mg/kg; and BA5, 5 mg/kg) following busulfan injection. We observed that RAAE treatments displayed ameliorative effects on male reproductive system dysfunction caused by busulfan, such as recovering the irregular arrangements of seminiferous tubules, increasing the number of spermatogonia and spermatocytes, improving sperm concentration by 3-fold in BA.1, and improving sperm motility by 2-fold in BA1. The liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) analysis showed significant up- or downregulation of certain metabolites, such as lysophosphatidylcholine (LysoPC), L-arginine, glycine, anandamide, and L-carnitine, which could contribute to the positive effects of RAAE, especially in PBA1 (plasma of BA1) and PBA5 (plasma of BA5). Taken together, the results indicate that 1 mg/kg of RAAE is a suitable concentration for rescuing spermatogenesis in mice. The research suggests that RAAE could be a potential nutraceutical for protecting spermatogenesis after busulfan therapy in cancer

Sequencing and de novo assembly of 150 genomes from Denmark as a population reference

Hundreds of thousands of human genomes are now being sequenced to characterize genetic variation and use this information to augment association mapping studies of complex disorders and other phenotypic traits. Genetic variation is identified mainly by mapping short reads to the reference genome or by performing local assembly. However, these approaches are biased against discovery of structural variants and variation in the more complex parts of the genome. Hence, large-scale de novo assembly is needed. Here we show that it is possible to construct excellent de novo assemblies from high-coverage sequencing with mate-pair libraries extending up to 20 kilobases. We report de novo assemblies of 150 individuals (50 trios) from the GenomeDenmark project. The quality of these assemblies is similar to those obtained using the more expensive long-read technology. We use the assemblies to identify a rich set of structural variants including many novel insertions and demonstrate how this variant catalogue enables further deciphering of known association mapping signals. We leverage the assemblies to provide 100 completely resolved major histocompatibility complex haplotypes and to resolve major parts of the Y chromosome. Our study provides a regional reference genome that we expect will improve the power of future association mapping studies and hence pave the way for precision medicine initiatives, which now are being launched in many countries including Denmark

Novel variation and <i>de novo </i>mutation rates in population-wide <i>de novo</i> assembled Danish trios

Building a population-specific catalogue of single nucleotide variants (SNVs), indels and structural variants (SVs) with frequencies, termed a national pan-genome, is critical for further advancing clinical and public health genetics in large cohorts. Here we report a Danish pan-genome obtained from sequencing 10 trios to high depth (50 × ). We report 536k novel SNVs and 283k novel short indels from mapping approaches and develop a population-wide de novo assembly approach to identify 132k novel indels larger than 10 nucleotides with low false discovery rates. We identify a higher proportion of indels and SVs than previous efforts showing the merits of high coverage and de novo assembly approaches. In addition, we use trio information to identify de novo mutations and use a probabilistic method to provide direct estimates of 1.27e−8 and 1.5e−9 per nucleotide per generation for SNVs and indels, respectively

Increased frequency of rare missense <i>PPP1R3B</i> variants among Danish patients with type 2 diabetes

<div><p>Background</p><p><i>PPP1R3B</i> has been suggested as a candidate gene for monogenic forms of diabetes as well as type 2 diabetes (T2D) due to its association with glycaemic trait and its biological role in glycogen synthesis.</p><p>Objectives</p><p>To study if rare missense variants in <i>PPP1R3B</i> increase the risk of maturity onset diabetes of the young (MODY), T2D or affect measures of glucose metabolism.</p><p>Method</p><p>Targeted resequencing of <i>PPP1R3B</i> was performed in 8,710 samples; MODY patients with unknown etiology (<i>n</i> = 54), newly diagnosed patients with T2D (<i>n</i> = 2,930) and population-based control individuals (<i>n</i> = 5,726, of whom <i>n</i> = 4,569 had normal glucose tolerance). All population-based sampled individuals were examined using an oral glucose tolerance test.</p><p>Results</p><p>Among <i>n</i> = 396 carriers, we identified twenty-three <i>PPP1R3B</i> missense mutations, none of which segregated with MODY. The burden of likely deleterious <i>PPP1R3B</i> variants was significantly increased with a total of 17 carriers among patients with T2D (0.58% (95% CI: 0.36–0.93)) compared to 18 carriers among non-diabetic individuals (0.31% (95% CI: 0.20–0.49)), resulting in an increased risk of T2D (OR (95% CI) = 2.57 (1.14–5.79), <i>p</i> = 0.02 (age and sex adjusted)). Furthermore, carriers with diabetes had less abdominal fat and a higher serum concentration of LDL-cholesterol compared to patients with T2D without rare missense <i>PPP1R3B</i> variants. In addition, non-diabetic carriers had a higher birth weight compared to non-carriers.</p><p>Conclusion</p><p>Rare missense <i>PPP1R3B</i> variants may predispose to T2D.</p></div