The phosphotyrosine-independent interaction of DLC-1 and the SH2 domain of cten regulates focal adhesion localization and growth suppression activity of DLC-1

The tensin family member cten (C-terminal tensin like) is an Src homology 2 (SH2) and phosphotyrosine binding domain–containing focal adhesion molecule that may function as a tumor suppressor. However, the mechanism has not been well established. We report that cten binds to another tumor suppressor, deleted in liver cancer 1 (DLC-1), and the SH2 domain of cten is responsible for the interaction. Unexpectedly, the interaction between DLC-1 and the cten SH2 domain is independent of tyrosine phosphorylation of DLC-1. By site-directed mutagenesis, we have identified several amino acid residues on cten and DLC-1 that are essential for this interaction. Mutations on DLC-1 perturb the interaction with cten and disrupt the focal adhesion localization of DLC-1. Furthermore, these DLC-1 mutants have lost their tumor suppression activities. When these DLC-1 mutants were fused to a focal adhesion targeting sequence, their tumor suppression activities were significantly restored. These results provide a novel mechanism whereby the SH2 domain of cten-mediated focal adhesion localization of DLC-1 plays an essential role in its tumor suppression activity

KINETIC ANALYSIS OF THE UPPER EXTREMITY BETWEEN DIFFERENT STANCES IN TENNIS TWO-HANDED BACKHAND

INTRODUCTION: Now the tennis players could explore more racket capabilities through the change of racket materials and design. The open stance comes out in modern tennis relative to the traditional square stance. This study was conducted to analyze the upper extremity joint forces and moments between the different stances in advanced and intermediate athletes, who separated from ITN rating system, during two-handed stroke

Local Implicit Normalizing Flow for Arbitrary-Scale Image Super-Resolution

Flow-based methods have demonstrated promising results in addressing the ill-posed nature of super-resolution (SR) by learning the distribution of high-resolution (HR) images with the normalizing flow. However, these methods can only perform a predefined fixed-scale SR, limiting their potential in real-world applications. Meanwhile, arbitrary-scale SR has gained more attention and achieved great progress. Nonetheless, previous arbitrary-scale SR methods ignore the ill-posed problem and train the model with per-pixel L1 loss, leading to blurry SR outputs. In this work, we propose "Local Implicit Normalizing Flow" (LINF) as a unified solution to the above problems. LINF models the distribution of texture details under different scaling factors with normalizing flow. Thus, LINF can generate photo-realistic HR images with rich texture details in arbitrary scale factors. We evaluate LINF with extensive experiments and show that LINF achieves the state-of-the-art perceptual quality compared with prior arbitrary-scale SR methods.Comment: CVPR 2023 camera-ready versio

Surface-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Mass Spectrometry on Titania Nanotube Arrays

Titania nanotube arrays (NTA) generated from anodizing processes are tested as the substrate for surface-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (SALDI MS). The background generated from titania NTA is very low, making the approach suitable for the analysis of small molecules. The upper detectable mass is ∼29 kDa. Homogeneous sample deposition leads to good shot-to-shot reproducibility and suitability for quantitative analysis. Additionally, phosphopeptides can be selectively trapped on the titania NTA substrate, as illustrated by simply depositing a tryptic digest of β-casein followed by titania NTA SALDI MS analysis. The detection limit for small organics and peptides is in low fmol

De-wetting of evaporating drops on regular patterns of triangular posts

Directional wicking and spreading of liquids can be achieved by regular micro-patterns of specifically designed topographic features that break the reflection symmetry of the underlying pattern. The present study aims to understand the formation and stability of wetting films during the evaporation of volatile liquid drops on surfaces with a micro-pattern of triangular posts arranged in a rectangular lattice. Depending on the density and aspect ratio of the posts, we observe either spherical-cap shaped drops with a mobile three-phase contact line or the formation of circular or angular drops with a pinned three-phase contact line. Drops of the latter class eventually evolve into a liquid film extending to the initial footprint of the drop and a shrinking cap-shaped drop sitting on the film. The drop evolution is controlled by the density and aspect ratio of the posts, while no influence of the orientation of the triangular posts on the contact line mobility becomes evident. Our experiments corroborate previous results of systematic numerical energy minimization, predicting that conditions for a spontaneous retraction of a wicking liquid film depend weakly on the orientation of the film edge relative to the micro-pattern

Development of a deep learning-based tool to assist wound classification

This paper presents a deep learning-based wound classification tool that can assist medical personnel in non-wound care specialization to classify five key wound conditions, namely deep wound, infected wound, arterial wound, venous wound, and pressure wound, given color images captured using readily available cameras. The accuracy of the classification is vital for appropriate wound management. The proposed wound classification method adopts a multi-task deep learning framework that leverages the relationships among the five key wound conditions for a unified wound classification architecture. With differences in Cohen's kappa coefficients as the metrics to compare our proposed model with humans, the performance of our model was better or non-inferior to those of all human medical personnel. Our convolutional neural network-based model is the first to classify five tasks of deep, infected, arterial, venous, and pressure wounds simultaneously with good accuracy. The proposed model is compact and matches or exceeds the performance of human doctors and nurses. Medical personnel who do not specialize in wound care can potentially benefit from an app equipped with the proposed deep learning model

Expression and immunogenicity of secreted forms of bovine ephemeral fever virus glycoproteins applied to subunit vaccine development

This study was support by grants from the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST-106-2911-I-020-501; MOST-107-2313-B-020-011-MY3) and the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/P025080/1).Aims  Vaccines for bovine ephemeral fever virus (BEFV) are available but are difficult to produce, expensive, or suffer from genetic instability. Therefore, we designed constructs encoding C-terminally truncated forms (transmembrane anchoring region deleted) of glycoproteins G and GNS such that they were secreted from the cell into the media to achieve high-level antigen expression, correct glycosylation pattern, and enable further simple purification with the V5 epitope tag. Methods and Results  In this study, synthetic biology was employed to create membrane-bound and secreted forms of G and GNS glycoprotein. Mammalian cell culture was employed as an antigen expression platform, and the secreted forms of G and GNS protein were easily purified from media by using a highly effective, single-step method. The V5 epitope tag was genetically fused to the C-termini of the proteins, enabling detection of the antigen through immunoblotting and immunomicroscopy. Our data demonstrated that the C-terminally truncated form of the G glycoprotein was efficiently secreted from cells into the cell media. Moreover, the immunogenicity was confirmed in mice test. Conclusions  The immuno-dot blots showed that the truncated G glycoprotein was present in the total cell extract, and was clearly secreted into the media, consistent with the western blotting data and live-cell images. Our strategy presented the expression of secreted, epitope-tagged, forms of the BEFV glycoproteins such that appropriately glycosylated forms of BEFV G protein was secreted from the BHK-21 cells. This indicates that high-level expression of secreted G glycoprotein is a feasible strategy for large-scale production of vaccines and improving vaccine efficacy. Significance and Impact of the Study The antigen expression strategy designed in this study can produce high-quality recombinant protein and reduce the amount of antigen used in the vaccine.PostprintPeer reviewe

Risk of pneumocystosis after early discontinuation of prophylaxis among HIV-infected patients receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Risk of pneumocystosis after discontinuation of primary or secondary prophylaxis among HIV-infected patients before CD4 counts increase to ≧200 cells/μL (early discontinuation) after receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) is rarely investigated.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Medical records of 660 HIV-infected patients with baseline CD4 counts <200 cells/μL who sought HIV care and received HAART at a university hospital in Taiwan between 1 April, 1997 and 30 September, 2007 were reviewed to assess the incidence rate of pneumocystosis after discontinuation of prophylaxis for pneumocystosis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The incidence rate of pneumocystosis after HAART was 2.81 per 100 person-years among 521 patients who did not initiate prophylaxis or had early discontinuation of prophylaxis, which was significantly higher than the incidence rate of 0.45 per 100 person-years among 139 patients who continued prophylaxis until CD4 counts increased to ≧200 cells/μL (adjusted risk ratio, 5.32; 95% confidence interval, 1.18, 23.94). Among the 215 patients who had early discontinuation of prophylaxis after achievement of undetectable plasma HIV RNA load, the incidence rate of pneumocystosis was reduced to 0.31 per 100 person-years, which was similar to that of the patients who continued prophylaxis until CD4 counts increased to ≧200 cells/μL (adjusted risk ratio, 0.63; 95% confidence interval, 0.03, 14.89).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Compared with the risk of pneumocystosis among patients who continued prophylaxis until CD4 counts increased to ≧200 cells/μL after HAART, the risk was significantly higher among patients who discontinued prophylaxis when CD4 counts remained <200 cells/μL, while the risk could be reduced among patients who achieved undetectable plasma HIV RNA load after HAART.</p

Study of behavior of plastic modified bitumen by incorporating carbon black

In recent years, the performance of polymer modified bitumen has been widely studied. This study reports a research carried out to investigate the properties of polymer modified bitumen (PMB) by using polypropylene as modifier, carbon black as additives, to examine the optimum ratio of polypropylene to carbon black. With this objective, sample preparation using wet mixing method combining high shear mix was firstly performed. Subsequently, 18 samples were developed for the study, of which the polypropylene (PP) contents 10%, 12%, 14%, 16%, 18% and 20% with 2%, 3%, 4% of carbon black content. Afterwards, samples were characterized by standard tests (Dynamic Shear Rheometer and Viscosity), and all the test results showed improved performance. Finally, the results concluded that the optimum binder-PP ratio PMB for applying is 14% PP with 3% carbon black