Impact of pEGFP mediated ING4 gene on growth of glioma U251 cells and its potential molecular mechanism

To investigate the impact of the inhibitor of growth family 4 (ING4) on growth of glioma cells (U251 cells) and its potential molecular mechanism, total RNA was extracted from the embryonic tissues and ING4 was amplified by RT-PCR and cloned into pEGFP-C2 vector. U251 cells were transfected with eukaryotic expression vector pEGFP-ING4 mediated by cationic polymers polyethylenimine (PEI). Flow cytometry and G418 were used to screen the cells successfully transfected with pEGFP-ING4. PEGFP-ING4 group, pEGFP group and blank control group (without transfection) were included in this study. Morphological examination, MTT assay and Hochest staining were employed to detect the proliferation and apoptosis of U251 cells. RT-PCR, immunohistochemitry and western blot were recruited to determine the mRNA and protein expression of ING4, respectively. ELISA was performed to measure the VEGF level in the supernatant of U251 cells. Sequencing of pEGFP-ING4 showed sequence correctness and the tranfection efficiency was 84% for pEGFP-ING4 and 82% for pEGFP. Results from RT-PCR, immunohistochemistry and western blot revealed significantly increased ING4 expression. When compared with the pEGFP group and blank group, the growth inhibition rate and apoptotic rate 72 h after transfection in the pEGFPING4 group were significantly higher (P < 0.05), but the VEGF content was not significantly changed (P > 0.05). ING4 can be highly expressed in the pEGFP-ING4 group and remarkably suppress the growth of U251 cells through inducing apoptosis but not suppressing VEGF expression.Key words: Inhibitor of growth family member 4, glioma, angiogenesis, vascular endothelial growth factor

Evaluating the Usability of Automatically Generated Captions for People who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

The accuracy of Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) technology has improved, but it is still imperfect in many settings. Researchers who evaluate ASR performance often focus on improving the Word Error Rate (WER) metric, but WER has been found to have little correlation with human-subject performance on many applications. We propose a new captioning-focused evaluation metric that better predicts the impact of ASR recognition errors on the usability of automatically generated captions for people who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing (DHH). Through a user study with 30 DHH users, we compared our new metric with the traditional WER metric on a caption usability evaluation task. In a side-by-side comparison of pairs of ASR text output (with identical WER), the texts preferred by our new metric were preferred by DHH participants. Further, our metric had significantly higher correlation with DHH participants' subjective scores on the usability of a caption, as compared to the correlation between WER metric and participant subjective scores. This new metric could be used to select ASR systems for captioning applications, and it may be a better metric for ASR researchers to consider when optimizing ASR systems.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, published in ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '17

Systematic study of proton-neutron pairing correlations in the nuclear shell model

A shell-model study of proton-neutron pairing in $2p1f$ shell nuclei using a parametrized hamiltonian that includes deformation and spin-orbit effects as well as isoscalar and isovector pairing is reported. By working in a shell-model framework we are able to assess the role of the various modes of proton-neutron pairing in the presence of nuclear deformation without violating symmetries. Results are presented for $^{44}$Ti, $^{45}$Ti, $^{46}$Ti, $^{46}$V and $^{48}$Cr to assess how proton-neutron pair correlations emerge under different scenarios. We also study how the presence of a one-body spin-obit interaction affects the contribution of the various pairing modes.Comment: 12 pages, 16 figure

Optimization Of The Seating Position In A Human-Powered Vehicle

An aerobic and an anaerobic designs for a human-powered vehicle (HPV) are considered. In both cases the rider's seating position is an important design factor for either maximizing the vehicle's speed or minimizing the rider's energy requirement. The rider's seating position affects not only the aerodynamic performance of the vehicle, but more importantly the rider's physical performance. The goal of this study is to use optimization methods to improve the HPV design. The paper starts by deriving equation for torque produced by the hip and knee joints during pedaling. These equations include inertial and gravity effects. In the aerobic design the objective function is to reduce both the average and maximum variation of the torques on the hip and knee joints. In the anaerobic design, the objective function is to maximize the average of the torques on the hip and knee joints. Hip and joint torques are function of the vehicle's speed and the aerodynamic coefficient as well as the road conditions. The design variables are: 1. the seat inclination angle 2. the seat to pedal angle 3. the seat to pedal distance 4. the crank length. The search for optimal solution in both cases is constrained by: 1. the motion limits of hip and knee joints 2. conditions to ensure that the seat to crank position results in full rotation of the crank. 3. visibility of the road that limits how far the seat can be inclined for safe driving. The results have been verified by comparing it to the experimental data of Too [ 1991] for maximum anaerobic performance of a stationary bike. Both experimental and analytical techniques produced close values of the seat to pedal angles

Enhancement of shot noise due to the fluctuation of Coulomb interaction

We have developed a theoretical formalism to investigate the contribution of fluctuation of Coulomb interaction to the shot noise based on Keldysh non-equilibrium Green's function method. We have applied our theory to study the behavior of dc shot noise of atomic junctions using the method of nonequilibrium Green's function combined with the density functional theory (NEGF-DFT). In particular, for atomic carbon wire consisting 4 carbon atoms in contact with two Al(100) electrodes, first principles calculation within NEGF-DFT formalism shows a negative differential resistance (NDR) region in I-V curve at finite bias due to the effective band bottom of the Al lead. We have calculated the shot noise spectrum using the conventional gauge invariant transport theory with Coulomb interaction considered explicitly on the Hartree level along with exchange and correlation effect. Although the Fano factor is enhanced from 0.6 to 0.8 in the NDR region, the expected super-Poissonian behavior in the NDR regionis not observed. When the fluctuation of Coulomb interaction is included in the shot noise, our numerical results show that the Fano factor is greater than one in the NDR region indicating a super-Poissonian behavior