Anti-Asian Racism in Education from the Lens of AsianCrit: Tenets and Practices

The purpose of this Research Roundtable is to analyze racism in Education from the lens of AsianCrit and to discuss teaching practices in various Adult Education sections

Chaihu Guizhi Ganjiang Decoction Ameliorates Pancreatic Fibrosis via JNK/mTOR Signaling Pathway

Pancreatic fibrosis is a pathological characteristic of chronic pancreatitis (CP) and pancreatic cancer. Chaihu Guizhi Ganjiang Decoction (CGGD) is a traditional Chinese medicine, which is widely used in the clinical treatment of digestive diseases. However, the potential anti-fibrosis mechanism of CGGD in treating CP remains unclear. Here, we conducted a series of experiments to examine the effect of CGGD on the CP rat model and primary isolated pancreatic stellate cells (PSCs). The results revealed that CGGD attenuated pancreatic damage, decreased collagen deposition, and inhibited PSC activation in the pancreas of CP rats. However, compared with the CP group, CGGD had no effect on body weight and serum amylase and lipase. In addition, CGGD suppressed autophagy by downregulating Atg5, Beclin-1, and LC3B and facilitated phosphorylation of mTOR and JNK in pancreatic tissues and PSCs. Moreover, the CGGD-containing serum also decreased LC3B or collagen I expression after rapamycin (mTOR inhibitor) or SP600125 (JNK inhibitor) treatment in PSCs. In conclusion, CGGD attenuated pancreatic fibrosis and PSC activation, possibly by suppressing autophagy of PSCs through the JNK/mTOR signaling pathway

Boosting with an aerosolized Ad5-nCoV elicited robust immune responses in inactivated COVID-19 vaccines recipients

IntroductionThe SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant has become the dominant SARS-CoV-2 variant and exhibits immune escape to current COVID-19 vaccines, the further boosting strategies are required.MethodsWe have conducted a non-randomized, open-label and parallel-controlled phase 4 trial to evaluate the magnitude and longevity of immune responses to booster vaccination with intramuscular adenovirus vectored vaccine (Ad5-nCoV), aerosolized Ad5-nCoV, a recombinant protein subunit vaccine (ZF2001) or homologous inactivated vaccine (CoronaVac) in those who received two doses of inactivated COVID-19 vaccines. ResultsThe aerosolized Ad5-nCoV induced the most robust and long-lasting neutralizing activity against Omicron variant and IFNg T-cell response among all the boosters, with a distinct mucosal immune response. SARS-CoV-2-specific mucosal IgA response was substantially generated in subjects boosted with the aerosolized Ad5-nCoV at day 14 post-vaccination. At month 6, participants boosted with the aerosolized Ad5-nCoV had remarkably higher median titer and seroconversion of the Omicron BA.4/5-specific neutralizing antibody than those who received other boosters. DiscussionOur findings suggest that aerosolized Ad5-nCoV may provide an efficient alternative in response to the spread of the Omicron BA.4/5 variant.Clinical trial registrationhttps://www.chictr.org.cn/showproj.html?proj=152729, identifier ChiCTR2200057278

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts

Doubly Degenerate Parabolic Equation with Time-Dependent Gradient Source and Initial Data Measures

This paper is devoted to the Cauchy problem for a class of doubly degenerate parabolic equation with time-dependent gradient source, where the initial data are Radon measures. Using the delicate a priori estimates, we first establish two local existence results. Furthermore, we show that the existence of solutions is optimal in the class considered here

Motion Phase Compensation Methods for Azimuth Ambiguity Suppression in HRWS SAR

The azimuth multi-channel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is widely used in marine observation, because of its excellent imaging ability of high-resolution and wide-swath (HRWS) signals. Different from the static targets, the azimuth ambiguity of the ships on the open sea resulting from the radial motion seriously affects the SAR image quality and ship detection probability. As a result, two methods of azimuth ambiguity suppression for moving ships based on motion phase compensation are proposed to apply to different practical application conditions. The simulation and real measured data experiments verify the ability of image quality improvement by proposed methods