688 research outputs found
Genes Underlying Positive Influence Of Prenatal Environmental Enrichment And Negative Influence Of Prenatal Earthquake Simulation And Corrective Influence Of Chinese Herbalmedicine On Rat Offspring: Irf7 And Ninj2
Background: Prenatal environmental enrichment (EE) has been proven to positively affect but prenatal stress negatively influence the physiological and psychological processes in animals, whose trans-generational genetic mechanism remains unclearly defined. We aimed to investigate and find out key genes underlying the positive-negative effects derived from prenatal interventions.Materials and Methods: Pregnant rats were randomized into EE group (EEG), earthquake simulation group (ESG), herbal group (HG) received herbal supplements in feed after earthquake simulation, and control group (CG).Results: Light Box Defecation Test (LBDT) showed EEG offspring presented less fecal pellets than CG offspring, ESG’s more than CG’s, and HG’s less than ESG (p’s<0.05). Open-field Test (OFT) score of EEG was higher than CG offspring, of ESG’s was lower than CG’s, and HG’s higher than ESG’s. Irf7 and Ninj were screened, which were up-regulated in EEG, down-regulated in ESG (FC<0.5), and were neutralized in HG. Prenatal EE could positively promote the nervous system development, prenatal earthquake simulation could retard the nervous system development and Chinese herbal remedy (JKSQW) which could correct the retardation.Conclusion: The negative-positive prenatal effect could contribute to altered gene expression of Irf7 and Ninj2 which also could play a key role in the improving function of JKSQWfor the kidneys.Keywords: Prenatal stress; Earthquake simulation; Light Box Defecation Test; Open-field Test; Irf7; Ninj
Development and validation study of a non-alcoholic fatty liver disease risk scoring model among adults in China
Background: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the most common liver diseases in China. It is usually asymptomatic and transabdominal ultrasound (USS) is the usual means for diagnosis, but it may not be feasible to have USS screening of the whole population. Objective: To develop a risk scoring model for predicting the presence of NAFLD using parameters that can be easily obtain in clinical settings. Methods: A retrospective study on the data of 672 adults who had general health check including a transabdominal ultrasound. Fractional polynomial and multivariable logistic regressions of sociodemographic and biochemical variables on NAFLD were used to identify the predictors. A risk score was assigned to each predictor using the scaled standardized β-coefficient to create a risk prediction algorithm. The accuracy for NAFLD detection by each cut-off score in the risk algorithm was evaluated. Results: The prevalence of NAFLD in our study population was 33.0% (222/672). Six significant factors were selected in the final prediction model. The areas under the curve (AUC) was 0.82 (95% CI: 0.78–0.85). The optimal cut-off score, based on the ROC was 35, with a sensitivity of 76.58% (95% CI: 70.44–81.98%) and specificity of 74.89% (95% CI: 70.62–78.83%). Conclusion: A NAFLD risk scoring model can be used to identify asymptomatic Chinese people who are at risk of NAFLD for further USS investigation.published_or_final_versio
Coverage Analysis for Millimeter Wave Cellular Networks with Imperfect Beam Alignment
OAPA Millimeter wave (mmWave) communications is a promising approach to satisfy the increasing high data rate requirement of next generation mobile communications. This paper studies the downlink coverage performance of mmWave cellular networks with imperfect beam alignment. An enhanced antenna model is adopted to model the directional antenna beamforming pattern, in which the mainlobe beamwidth and directivity gain can be expressed as functions of the number of elements in the antenna array. After deriving the probability density function of the distance between mobile station (MS) and its serving base station (BS), the directivity gain with imperfect beam alignment is obtained as a discrete random variable. Then, a computationally tractable expression is obtained for the coverage probability of mmWave cellular networks.This generalized expression can be applied in different blockage regimes, e.g. general blockage regime (GBR), full-blockage regime (FBR) and non-blockage regime (NBR) with or without beam alignment errors. Numerical results show that small beam alignment errors will not deteriorate the coverage performance significantly, and the antenna array with the less number of elements provides higher robustness against the beam alignment errors. Moreover, when the beam alignment error is small enough, the coverage performance can be improved by increasing the BS intensity and the number of elements in the antenna array
Vacuum Alignment in SUSY A4 Models
In this note we discuss the vacuum alignment in supersymmetric models with
spontaneously broken flavour symmetries in the presence of soft supersymmetry
(SUSY) breaking terms. We show that the inclusion of soft SUSY breaking terms
can give rise to non-vanishing vacuum expectation values (VEVs) for the
auxiliary components of the flavon fields. These non-zero VEVs can have an
important impact on the phenomenology of this class of models, since they can
induce an additional flavour violating contribution to the sfermion soft mass
matrix of right-left (RL) type. We carry out an explicit computation in a class
of SUSY A4 models predicting tri-bimaximal mixing in the lepton sector. The
flavour symmetry breaking sector is described in terms of flavon and driving
supermultiplets. We find non-vanishing VEVs for the auxiliary components of the
flavon fields and for the scalar components of the driving fields which are of
order m_{SUSY} x and m_{SUSY}, respectively. Thereby, m_{SUSY} is the
generic soft SUSY breaking scale which is expected to be around 1 TeV and
is the VEV of scalar components of the flavon fields. Another effect of these
VEVs can be the generation of a mu term.Comment: 23 pages; added a new section on the relation to Supergravity;
version accepted for publication in JHE
Transcriptome profiling of Pinus radiata juvenile wood with contrasting stiffness identifies putative candidate genes involved in microfibril orientation and cell wall mechanics
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The mechanical properties of wood are largely determined by the orientation of cellulose microfibrils in secondary cell walls. Several genes and their allelic variants have previously been found to affect microfibril angle (MFA) and wood stiffness; however, the molecular mechanisms controlling microfibril orientation and mechanical strength are largely uncharacterised. In the present study, cDNA microarrays were used to compare gene expression in developing xylem with contrasting stiffness and MFA in juvenile <it>Pinus radiata </it>trees in order to gain further insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying microfibril orientation and cell wall mechanics.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Juvenile radiata pine trees with higher stiffness (HS) had lower MFA in the earlywood and latewood of each ring compared to low stiffness (LS) trees. Approximately 3.4 to 14.5% out of 3, 320 xylem unigenes on cDNA microarrays were differentially regulated in juvenile wood with contrasting stiffness and MFA. Greater variation in MFA and stiffness was observed in earlywood compared to latewood, suggesting earlywood contributes most to differences in stiffness; however, 3-4 times more genes were differentially regulated in latewood than in earlywood. A total of 108 xylem unigenes were differentially regulated in juvenile wood with HS and LS in at least two seasons, including 43 unigenes with unknown functions. Many genes involved in cytoskeleton development and secondary wall formation (cellulose and lignin biosynthesis) were preferentially transcribed in wood with HS and low MFA. In contrast, several genes involved in cell division and primary wall synthesis were more abundantly transcribed in LS wood with high MFA.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Microarray expression profiles in <it>Pinus radiata </it>juvenile wood with contrasting stiffness has shed more light on the transcriptional control of microfibril orientation and the mechanical properties of wood. The identified candidate genes provide an invaluable resource for further gene function and association genetics studies aimed at deepening our understanding of cell wall biomechanics with a view to improving the mechanical properties of wood.</p
Two loop electroweak corrections to and in the B-LSSM
The rare decays and are important to research new physics beyond standard model. In
this work, we investigate two loop electroweak corrections to and in the minimal
supersymmetric extension of the SM with local gauge symmetry (B-LSSM),
under a minimal flavor violating assumption for the soft breaking terms. In
this framework, new particles and new definition of squarks can affect the
theoretical predictions of these two processes, with respect to the MSSM.
Considering the constraints from updated experimental data, the numerical
results show that the B-LSSM can fit the experimental data for the branching
ratios of and . The
results of the rare decays also further constrain the parameter space of the
B-LSSM.Comment: 33 pages, 9 figures, Published in EPJ
Chromosomal-level assembly of the Asian Seabass genome using long sequence reads and multi-layered scaffolding
We report here the ~670 Mb genome assembly of the Asian seabass (Lates calcarifer), a tropical marine teleost. We used long-read sequencing augmented by transcriptomics, optical and genetic mapping along with shared synteny from closely related fish species to derive a chromosome-level assembly with a contig N50 size over 1 Mb and scaffold N50 size over 25 Mb that span ~90% of the genome. The population structure of L. calcarifer species complex was analyzed by re-sequencing 61 individuals representing various regions across the species' native range. SNP analyses identified high levels of genetic diversity and confirmed earlier indications of a population stratification comprising three clades with signs of admixture apparent in the South-East Asian population. The quality of the Asian seabass genome assembly far exceeds that of any other fish species, and will serve as a new standard for fish genomics
Identifying the structure of Zn-N-2 active sites and structural activation
Identification of active sites is one of the main obstacles to rational design of catalysts for diverse applications. Fundamental insight into the identification of the structure of active sites and structural contributions for catalytic performance are still lacking. Recently, X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and density functional theory (DFT) provide important tools to disclose the electronic, geometric and catalytic natures of active sites. Herein, we demonstrate the structural identification of Zn-N-2 active sites with both experimental/theoretical X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) and extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectra. Further DFT calculations reveal that the oxygen species activation on Zn-N-2 active sites is significantly enhanced, which can accelerate the reduction of oxygen with high selectivity, according well with the experimental results. This work highlights the identification and investigation of Zn-N-2 active sites, providing a regular principle to obtain deep insight into the nature of catalysts for various catalytic applications
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