The association between GAD1 gene polymorphisms and cerebral palsy in Chinese infants

Studies suggest that GAD1 gene was a functional candidate susceptibility gene for cerebral palsy (CP). In order to investigate the contribution of GAD1 gene to the etiology of CP in Chinese infants, we carried out a case-control association study between GAD1 gene and CP. In this study, 374 health controls and 392 infants with CP were recruited. Genomic DNA was extracted from venous blood and all three single nucleotide polymorphisms in GAD1 (rs3791874, rs3791862 and rs16858977) were genotyped by Sequenom’s MassARRAY system. There were no significant differences in allele or genotype frequencies between CP or mixed CP patients and controls at any of the three genetic polymorphisms. Through haplotype analysis we found that haplotype GG (rs3791862, rs16858977) frequency demonstrated significantly statistical difference between mixed CP patients and controls (p= 0.0371). Our positive findings of haplotype GG suggested that variation of GAD1 gene was an important risk factor for mixed CP.Предполагается, что ген GAD1 является функциональным кандидатом на роль гена подверженности церебральному параличу (ЦП). Для исследования вклада гена GAD1 в этиологию ЦП у китайских детей методом случай – контроль проведено исследование ассоциации между наличием гена GAD1 и ЦП. В исследовании были задействованы 374 здоровых ребенка (контроль) и 392 ребенка с ЦП. Геномную ДНК выделяли из венозной крови, и все три единичных нуклеотидных полиморфизма гена GAD1 (rs3791874, rs3791862 и rs16858977) были генотипированы в системе Sequenom MassARRAY. Ни для одного из трех генетических полиморфизмов не обнаружено существенных различий в частотах аллелей или генотипов между больными ЦП или смешанными больными ЦП и контролем. Анализ гаплотипов показал существенные статистические различия в частоте гаплотипа GG (rs3791862, rs16858977) у смешанных больных ЦП и контрольной группы (p = 0.0371). Позитивный результат по гаплотипу GG свидетельствует о том, что вариация гена GAD1 является важным фактором риска для смешанного ЦП

Identification and modulation of electronic band structures of single-phase B-(AlxGa1-x)2O3 alloys grown by laser molecular beam epitaxy

Understanding the band structure evolution of (AlxGa1x)2O3 alloys is of fundamental importance for developing Ga2O3-based power electronic devices and vacuum ultraviolet super-radiation hard detectors. Here, we report on the bandgap engineering of b-(AlxGa1x)2O3 thin films and the identification of compositionally dependent electronic band structures by a combination of absorption spectra analyses and density functional theory calculations. Single-monoclinic b-phase (AlxGa1x)2O3 (0 x 0.54) films with a preferred (201) orientation were grown by laser molecular beam epitaxy with tunable bandgap ranging from 4.5 to 5.5 eV. The excellent fitting of absorption spectra by the relation of (ah) 1/2 / (h-E) unambiguously identifies that b-(AlxGa1x)2O3 alloys are indirect bandgap semiconductors. Theoretical calculations predict that the indirect nature of b-(AlxGa1x)2O3 becomes more pronounced with increased Al composition due to the increased eigenvalue energy gap between M and U points in the valence band. The experimentally determined indirect bandgap exhibits almost a linear relationship with Al composition, which is consistent with the theoretical calculation and indicates a small bowing effect and a good miscibility. The identification and modulation of (AlxGa1x)2O3 band structures allows rational design of ultra-wide bandgap oxide heterostructures for the applications in power electronics and solar-blind or X-ray detection.This research was supported by the National Key Research and Development Project (Grant No. 2017YFB0403003), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61774081, 61322403, and 11227904), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant Nos. BK20130013 and BK20161401), the Six Talent Peaks Project in Jiangsu Province (2014XXRJ001), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (021014380093 and 021014380085) and the Australian Research Council. The computational part of this research was undertaken with the assistance of resources from the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), which is supported by the Australian Government under the NCRIS program

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Characteristics of Soil Moisture and Evaporation under the Activities of Earthworms in Typical Anthrosols in China

Earthworms have an important influence on the terrestrial ecological environment. This study assesses the effect of different earthworm densities on soil water content (SWC) and evaporation in a laboratory experiment. Four earthworm densities (0 no-earthworm, control [C]; 207 earthworms m−2, low density [LDE]; 345 earthworms m−2, medium density [MDE]; and 690 earthworms m−2, high density [HDE]) are tested in soil columns. Results show that cumulative evaporation occurs in the decreasing order of densities: C (98.6 mm) > LDE (115.8 mm) > MDE (118.4 mm) > HDE (124.6 mm). Compared with the control, earthworm activity decreases cumulative soil evaporation by 5.0–20.9%, increases soil temperature to 0.46 °C–0.63 °C at 8:00, and decreases soil temperature to 0.21 °C–0.52 °C at 14:00 on the soil surface. Temperature fluctuations reduce with increasing earthworm densities. A negative correlation is found between cumulative soil evaporation and earthworm density (R2 = 0.969, p < 0.001). Earthworms significantly (p < 0.05) decrease the surface SWC loss (0–20 cm) soil layer but increase the subsoil SWC loss (60–100 cm) by adjusting the soil temperature and reducing soil water evaporation. Earthworm activities (burrows, casts…) improve the soil water holding ability by adjusting soil temperature and reducing soil water evaporation. Thus, the population quantity of earthworms may provide valuable ecosystem services in soil water and heat cycles to save water resources and realize sustainable agricultural development

On the origin of dislocation generation and annihilation in α -Ga2O3 epilayers on sapphire

Epitaxial film quality is critical to the success of high-performance α-Ga2O3 vertical power devices. In this work, the origins of threading dislocation generation and annihilation in thick α-Ga2O3 films heteroepitaxially grown on sapphire by the mist-CVD technique have been examined by means of high-resolution X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopies. By increasing the nominal thickness, screw dislocations exhibit an independent characteristic with a low density of about 1.8 - 106 cm-2, while edge dislocations propagating along the c-axis are dominant, which decrease down to 2.1 - 109 cm-2 in density for an 8 μm-thick α-Ga2O3 layer and exhibit an inverse dependence on the thickness. In the framework of the glide analytical model, parallel edge dislocations are generated at the interface due to the misfit-induced strain relaxation, while the dislocation glide and coalescence result in the annihilation and fusion behaviors. The optimal thick α-Ga2O3 with low dislocation densities may provide a prospective alternative to fully realize α-Ga2O3 power devices.This work was supported by the National Key R&D Project (No. 2018YFB0406502), the State Key R&D project of Jiangsu (No. BE2018115), the National Nature Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61774081 and 91850112), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. BK20161401), the Shenzhen Fundamental Research Project (Nos. 201773239, 201888588, and JCYJ20180307163240991), the State Key Laboratory of Wide-Bandgap Semiconductor Power Electric Devices (No. 2017KF001), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Nos. 021014380135, 021014380112 and 021014380110). This work was also partially supported by ANFF ACT Node and CAM at Australian National Universit

Effects of activities of ants (Camponotus japonicus) on soil moisture cannot be neglected in the northern Loess Plateau

Ants can create abundant and continuous soil macropores by burrowing their nests. The hydrological processes in ant nests for different soil types and the effects of ant activities on soil water evaporation are unclear. In this study, we assessed the effects of ant (Camponotus japonicus) nests on preferential flow in the loam and sand soils and on soil water evaporation. First, 12 plots in the sand and loam soils with and without ants were selected for the preferential flow measurements in the field. Second, 200 worker ants and the queen ant were introduced to abandoned cropland plots, and the comprehensive effects of ants on soil moisture down to 340 cm were measured using neutron probes. Third, at the Shenmu Erosion and Environment Research Station, 18 iron buckets (20 cm in diameter, 20 cm high) were filled with disturbed loam soil, and a different number of ants was used to assess the effects of ant activities on soil evaporation. The infiltration rate in areas with a nest was approximately 20 times higher than that in no nest areas. Moreover, the dyeing depths in loam and sand soil with a nest were 47 +/- 4.6 and 34 +/- 1.5 cm, which were significantly greater than those without a nest (13 +/- 2.7 and 23 +/- 2.3 cm). Ant nests reached a depth of 60 cm in the field. The effects of a nest on soil moisture existed between 0 and 120 cm deep. Moreover, by moving a high number of "homemade soil aggregates" (1.6 +/- 0.18 mm in diameter) onto the soil surface, ants reduced soil evaporation. Ant activities improved soil moisture around the nest by increasing rainfall infiltration and reducing soil water evaporation, which increased the variation in soil water distribution in the soil profile and may benefit the general restoration of vegetation on the Loess Plateau. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Phase tailoring and wafer-scale uniform hetero-epitaxy of metastable-phased corundum α-Ga<inf>2</inf>O<inf>3</inf> on sapphire

Heteroepitaxy of corundum-structured α-Ga2O3 is proven as an alternative strategy to solve current challenges in heat dissipation and large scale productivity for Ga2O3-based power electronic devices. In this work, we demonstrate low thermal budget and highly uniform epitaxy of α-Ga2O3 single-crystalline films on 2-inch sapphire substrate by mist-chemical vapor deposition technique. Phase tailoring is performed by tuning the growth temperature and pure phase α-Ga2O3 single-crystalline epilayers are achieved with atomically smooth surface and a reduced dislocation density. High-resolution transmission electron microscopic results indicate α-Ga2O3 growth on sapphire is semi-coherent without any impurity phases, dominated by the multiple domain matching epitaxial mode. Relaxation of strain induced by lattice misfits result in the propagation of edge dislocations along the c-axis. The wafer-scaled epilayers exhibit high crystallographic and thickness uniformity with deviations less than 3%, which stems from the formation of laminar flow on the growing front surface. The herein developed wafer-scale epitaxy in a designed vertical reactor configuration is a straightforward and economic productive scale-up approach to deliver high-quality low-cost wide-bandgap oxide semiconductors towards practical applications in power devices and solar-blind optoelectronics.This work is supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFB0406502), the National Nature Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61774081, 61322403 and 91850112), the State Key R&D project of Jiangsu (BE2018115 and BE2019103), Shenzhen Fundamental Research Project of China (Nos. JCYJ20170818110619334, JCYJ20180307154632609 and JCYJ20180307163240991), State Key Laboratory of Wide–Bandgap Semiconductor Power Electric Devices (No. 2017KF001)

Distribution of soil nutrients under and outside tree and shrub canopies on a revegetated loessial slope

Studies of soil nutrients in revegetated land have often not provided the sampling positions on a scale of individual trees and shrubs, suggesting that nutrients were assumed to not vary substantially at fine scales. This assumption, however, conflicts with the "fertile island" theory for arid and semi-arid areas. We assessed the importance of sampling position on nutrient contents in 0-100 cm soil profiles by examining differences between soils under and outside the canopies of Armeniaca sibirica and Caragana korshinskii on a slope on the Loess Plateau, China. Soil organic carbon, total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus, ammonium N, and extractable P did not differ significantly under and outside the canopies, except for nitrate N (NO3--N). The differences between these two canopy positions were significantly larger for C. korshinskii than A. sibirica for TP, significantly larger on upper than middle and lower slope sections for TN and NO3--N. The NO3--N content varied with sampling position around individual trees and shrubs, and trail tests about sampling position can be conducted around individual leguminous plants, in flatter areas, and in topsoil