Language Development in Early Childhood : Quality of Teacher-Child Interaction and Children’s Receptive Vocabulary Competency

High-quality teacher-child interactions in early learning environments have been regarded as a key contributor to children’s early language and cognitive development in international scholarships. Little is known, however, about the longitudinal effects of children’s receptive vocabularies in the Chinese context. In this study, we addressed the question of such longitudinal effects by examining the predictive effect of preschool teacher-child interaction quality on children’s subsequent receptive vocabulary development in 42 kindergartens in Guangdong Province China. The results in a nested design showed that except for the factor of Emotional Support, the other two factors (Classroom Management and Instructional Support) were positive predictors to children’s vocabulary competency from K2 (T1) to K3 (T2) at preschools. Findings contribute to the growing international literature on the critical role teacher-child interaction quality plays in children’s language and literacy learning and development. Implications for enhancing communication channels between early childhood (EC) educators and decision-makers, and the strategies of the improvement of language and literacy teachers’ professional development are also discussed

Rethinking Alignment in Video Super-Resolution Transformers

The alignment of adjacent frames is considered an essential operation in video super-resolution (VSR). Advanced VSR models, including the latest VSR Transformers, are generally equipped with well-designed alignment modules. However, the progress of the self-attention mechanism may violate this common sense. In this paper, we rethink the role of alignment in VSR Transformers and make several counter-intuitive observations. Our experiments show that: (i) VSR Transformers can directly utilize multi-frame information from unaligned videos, and (ii) existing alignment methods are sometimes harmful to VSR Transformers. These observations indicate that we can further improve the performance of VSR Transformers simply by removing the alignment module and adopting a larger attention window. Nevertheless, such designs will dramatically increase the computational burden, and cannot deal with large motions. Therefore, we propose a new and efficient alignment method called patch alignment, which aligns image patches instead of pixels. VSR Transformers equipped with patch alignment could demonstrate state-of-the-art performance on multiple benchmarks. Our work provides valuable insights on how multi-frame information is used in VSR and how to select alignment methods for different networks/datasets. Codes and models will be released at https://github.com/XPixelGroup/RethinkVSRAlignment.Comment: This paper has been accepted for NeurIPS 202

Synergistic enhancement of cancer therapy using a combination of docetaxel and photothermal ablation induced by single-walled carbon nanotubes

Lei Wang1, Mingyue Zhang1, Nan Zhang1, Jinjin Shi1, Hongling Zhang1, Min Li1, Chao Lu2, Zhenzhong Zhang1 1School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, People’s Republic of China; 2University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA Background: Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT) are poorly soluble in water, so their applications are limited. Therefore, aqueous solutions of SWNT, designed by noncovalent functionalization and without toxicity, are required for biomedical applications. Methods: In this study, we conjugated docetaxel with SWNT via p-p accumulation and used a surfactant to functionalize SWNT noncovalently. The SWNT were then conjugated with docetaxel (DTX-SWNT) and linked with NGR (Asn-Gly-Arg) peptide, which targets tumor angiogenesis, to obtain a water-soluble and tumor-targeting SWNT-NGR-DTX drug delivery system. Results: SWNT-NGR-DTX showed higher efficacy than docetaxel in suppressing tumor growth in a cultured PC3 cell line in vitro and in a murine S180 cancer model. Tumor volumes in the S180 mouse model decreased considerably under near-infrared radiation compared with the control group. Conclusion: The SWNT-NGR-DTX drug delivery system may be promising for high treatment efficacy with minimal side effects in future cancer therapy. Keywords: single-walled carbon nanotubes, docetaxel, NGR peptide, tumor-targeting, near-infrared radiatio

Removal of Hsf4 leads to cataract development in mice through down-regulation of γS-crystallin and Bfsp expression

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Heat-shock transcription factor 4 (HSF4) mutations are associated with autosomal dominant lamellar cataract and Marner cataract. Disruptions of the <it>Hsf4 </it>gene cause lens defects in mice, indicating a requirement for HSF4 in fiber cell differentiation during lens development. However, neither the relationship between HSF4 and crystallins nor the detailed mechanism of maintenance of lens transparency by HSF4 is fully understood.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In an attempt to determine how the underlying biomedical and physiological mechanisms resulting from loss of HSF4 contribute to cataract formation, we generated an <it>Hsf4 </it>knockout mouse model. We showed that the <it>Hsf4 </it>knockout mouse (<it>Hsf4</it>^-/-) partially mimics the human cataract caused by HSF4 mutations. Q-PCR analysis revealed down-regulation of several cataract-relevant genes, including <it>γS-crystallin (Crygs) </it>and lens-specific beaded filament proteins 1 and 2 (<it>Bfsp1 </it>and <it>Bfsp2</it>), in the lens of the <it>Hsf4</it>^-/-mouse. Transcription activity analysis using the dual-luciferase system suggested that these cataract-relevant genes are the direct downstream targets of HSF4. The effect of HSF4 on <it>γS-crystallin </it>is exemplified by the cataractogenesis seen in the <it>Hsf4</it>^-/-,<it>rncat </it>intercross. The 2D electrophoretic analysis of whole-lens lysates revealed a different expression pattern in 8-week-old <it>Hsf4</it>^-/-mice compared with their wild-type counterparts, including the loss of some αA-crystallin modifications and reduced expression of γ-crystallin proteins.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our results indicate that HSF4 is sufficiently important to lens development and disruption of the <it>Hsf4 </it>gene leads to cataracts via at least three pathways: 1) down-regulation of <it>γ-crystallin</it>, particularly <it>γS-crystallin</it>; 2) decreased lens beaded filament expression; and 3) loss of post-translational modification of αA-crystallin.</p

Screening chemical modulators of benzoic acid derivatives to improve lipid accumulation in Schizochytrium limacinum SR21 with metabolomics analysis.

Background(#br) Schizochytrium sp. is a marine fungus with great potential as an alternative commercial source of lipids rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). To further increase lipid accumulation in Schizochytrium sp., the effect of exogenous additives has become one of the hotspots of current research. Although benzoic acid derivatives showed positive effects on lipid accumulation in Schizochytrium , the biochemical mechanism needs further investigation.(#br)Results(#br)Four benzoic acid derivatives (sodium benzoate, p -aminobenzoic acid, p -methyl benzoic acid and folic acid) were screened and evaluated for their effect on lipid accumulation in Schizochytrium limacinum SR21. The lipid yield was increased by 56.84% with p -aminobenzoic acid ( p -ABA) at a concentration of 200 mg/L among the four tested chemical modulators. The metabolomics analysis showed that 200 mg/L p -ABA was optimal for promoting glucose catabolism in glycolysis with an increase in the mevalonate pathway and a weakening of the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle. Moreover, p -ABA increased NADPH generation by enhancing the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP), ultimately redirecting the metabolic flux to lipid synthesis. Fed-batch fermentation further proved that p -ABA could significantly increase the yield of lipid by 30.01%, reaching 99.67 g/L, and the lipid content was increased by 35.03%, reaching 71.12%. More importantly, the yields of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) were increased by 33.28% and 42.0%, respectively.(#br)Conclusion(#br)The addition of p -ABA could promote the synthesis of tetrahydrofolate, enhancing NADPH, which ultimately promoted the flow of carbon flux to lipid synthesis. These findings provide a valuable strategy for improving the lipid accumulation in Schizochytrium by additives