Comparison of the expression of cytokine genes in the bursal tissues of the chickens following challenge with infectious bursal disease viruses of varying virulence

BACKGROUND: Cytokines are important mediators and regulators of host responses against foreign antigen, with their main function to orchestrate the functional activities of the cells of the immune system. However little is known about the role of cytokines in pathogenesis and immune responses caused by infectious bursa disease virus (IBDV). The aim of this study was to examine the transcripts of cell-mediated immune response-related cytokine genes in the bursal tissues of chickens infected with IBDVs of varying virulence to gain an understanding of pathological changes and mechanisms of immunosuppression caused by IBDV infection and the immune responses evoked. RESULTS: Real-time quantitative PCR analysis revealed that the expression levels of both Th1 [interferon (IFN)-γ, interleukins (IL)-2 and IL-12p40] and Th2 (IL-4, IL-5, IL-13 and IL-10) cytokines were significantly up-regulated following challenge with the H strain (vvIBDV) and up to 2- and 30-fold, respectively (P < 0.05). Following infection with the Ts strain (cell-adapted virus) these cytokine transcripts were up-regulated at 5 days post-infection (dpi), 2- and 13-fold respectively (P < 0.05), while the expression levels of IL-2 and IL-4 were not significantly different (P > 0.05). A higher degree of cytokine expression was induced by the H strain compared with the Ts strain. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that the expression of cell-mediated immune-related cytokine genes is strongly induced by IBDV, especially by the vvIBDV, H strain and reveal that these cytokines could play a crucial role in driving cellular immune responses during the acute phase of IBDV infection, and the cellular immune responses caused by IBDV of varying virulence are through different signaling pathways

Corpus-based Development of Syntactic Complexity in EFL Writing

Syntactic complexity has long been taken as a significant factor in determining writing quality by EFL learners. And researchers in recent years have made a lot of efforts to devise and verify a wide range of factors or indicators for the purpose of measuring syntactic complexity or predicting EFL writing quality. The present study discussed bases itself on a self-built learner corpus with data collected over three years, with the aim of determining the applicable indices for predicting beginner writing quality. Based on previous research, the present study takes into account such factors as unit length, verb-VAC complexity, and clausal complexity. The results of pairwise comparisons by year indicate that there are significant differences for some indices but not for others. In terms of unit length, the three indicators of mean length of sentence, mean length of Tuni, and mean length of clause can serve as the main descriptive variables for the development of the language of beginners; for clausal complexity, seven indices: coordinate phrases per T-unit, verb phrases per T-unit, clauses per T-unit, coordinate phrases per clause, complex nominals per Tunit, complex nominals per clause and T-units per sentence, are the reliable indicators for beginner writing development. But indices for noun phrase complexity and verb-VAC complexity show no significant difference in the Kruskal-Wallis tests. The findings provide proof for the conclusion that knowledge and skills of modification, coordination, and subordination form the real difficulties for EFL beginners. It provides implications for coursebook design and classroom teaching where beginners are supposed to focus more on breeding awareness and skills in these aspects

A corpus-based study of the translation of modal verbs in the three versions of Shih chi

Modality plays an important part in verbal communication, as it can reveal the speaker’s views and perspectives. The modal verb, as an essential component of the modality system, has been a hot research topic and a challenge in academic circles in recent years. Analyzing the modal verbs in a text may indicate the context produced by the translator in the translation and the identity difference between the translator and the reader. In this study, three representative English translations of Shih chi are selected for comparative analysis with the original text. With the help of corpus techniques, the paper investigates the differences in the use of modal verbs by various translators, the distribution of quantitative changes and their influence on translations, as well as the historical and cultural backgrounds and identities of the translators that led to these differences. It is found that owing to the different professional identities of the translators and historical and cultural contexts in which they live, the choice of modal verbs and the shifts of modality values in the three translations are distinct, leading to different translation styles

Corpus-based Development of Syntactic Complexity in EFL Writing

Syntactic complexity has long been taken as a significant factor in determining writing quality by EFL learners. And researchers in recent years have made a lot of efforts to devise and verify a wide range of factors or indicators for the purpose of measuring syntactic complexity or predicting EFL writing quality. The present study discussed bases itself on a self-built learner corpus with data collected over three years, with the aim of determining the applicable indices for predicting beginner writing quality. Based on previous research, the present study takes into account such factors as unit length, verb-VAC complexity, and clausal complexity. The results of pairwise comparisons by year indicate that there are significant differences for some indices but not for others. In terms of unit length, the three indicators of mean length of sentence, mean length of Tuni, and mean length of clause can serve as the main descriptive variables for the development of the language of beginners; for clausal complexity, seven indices: coordinate phrases per T-unit, verb phrases per T-unit, clauses per T-unit, coordinate phrases per clause, complex nominals per Tunit, complex nominals per clause and T-units per sentence, are the reliable indicators for beginner writing development. But indices for noun phrase complexity and verb-VAC complexity show no significant difference in the Kruskal-Wallis tests. The findings provide proof for the conclusion that knowledge and skills of modification, coordination, and subordination form the real difficulties for EFL beginners. It provides implications for coursebook design and classroom teaching where beginners are supposed to focus more on breeding awareness and skills in these aspects

Design of a Parallel Quadruped Robot Based on a Novel Intelligent Control System

In order to make a robot track a desired trajectory with high precision and steady gait, a novel intelligent controller was designed based on a new mechanical structure and optimized foot trajectory. Kinematics models in terms of the D-H method were established to analyze the relationship between the angle of the driving joint and the foot position. Inspired by a dog’s diagonal trot on a flat terrain, foot trajectory planning in the swing and support phases without impact were fulfilled based on the compound cycloid improved by the Bézier curve. Both the optimized cascade proportional–integral–derivative (PID) control system and improved fuzzy adaptive PID control system were applied to realize the stable operation of a quadruped robot, and their parameters were optimized by the sparrow search algorithm. The convergence speed and accuracy of the sparrow search algorithm were verified by comparing with the moth flame optimization algorithm and particle swarm optimization algorithm. Finally, a co-simulation with MATLAB and ADAMS was utilized to compare the effects of the two control systems. The results of both displacement and velocity exhibit that the movement of a quadruped bionic robot with fuzzy adaptive PID control systems optimized by the sparrow search algorithm possessed better accuracy and stability than cascade PID control systems. The motion process of the quadruped robot in the co-simulation process also demonstrates the effectiveness of the designed mechanical structure and control system

Comparison of the expression of cytokine genes in the bursal tissues of the chickens following challenge with infectious bursal disease viruses of varying virulence

Abstract Background Cytokines are important mediators and regulators of host responses against foreign antigen, with their main function to orchestrate the functional activities of the cells of the immune system. However little is known about the role of cytokines in pathogenesis and immune responses caused by infectious bursa disease virus (IBDV). The aim of this study was to examine the transcripts of cell-mediated immune response-related cytokine genes in the bursal tissues of chickens infected with IBDVs of varying virulence to gain an understanding of pathological changes and mechanisms of immunosuppression caused by IBDV infection and the immune responses evoked. Results Real-time quantitative PCR analysis revealed that the expression levels of both Th1 [interferon (IFN)-γ, interleukins (IL)-2 and IL-12p40] and Th2 (IL-4, IL-5, IL-13 and IL-10) cytokines were significantly up-regulated following challenge with the H strain (vvIBDV) and up to 2- and 30-fold, respectively (P P P > 0.05). A higher degree of cytokine expression was induced by the H strain compared with the Ts strain. Conclusion The results indicate that the expression of cell-mediated immune-related cytokine genes is strongly induced by IBDV, especially by the vvIBDV, H strain and reveal that these cytokines could play a crucial role in driving cellular immune responses during the acute phase of IBDV infection, and the cellular immune responses caused by IBDV of varying virulence are through different signaling pathways.</p

Scatter-GNN: A Scatter Graph Neural Network for Prediction of High-Speed Railway Station—A Case Study of Yinchuan–Chongqing HSR

The Yinchuan–Chongqing high-speed railway (HSR) is one of the “ten vertical and ten horizontal” comprehensive transportation channels in the National 13th Five-Year Plan for Mid- and Long-Term Railway Network. However, the choice of node stations on this line is controversial. In this paper, the problem of high-speed railway station selection is transformed into a classification problem under the edge graph structure in complex networks, and a Scatter-GNN model is proposed to predict stations. The article first uses the Node2vec algorithm to perform a biased random walk on the railway network to generate the vector representation of each station. Secondly, an adaptive method is proposed, which derives the critical value of edge stations through the pinching rule, and then effectively identifies the edge stations in the high-speed railway network. Next, the calculation method of Hadamard product is used to represent the potential neighbors of edge sites, and then the attention mechanism is used to predict the link between all potential neighbors and their corresponding edge sites. After the link prediction, the final high-speed railway network is obtained, and it is input into the GNN classifier together with the line label to complete the station prediction. Experiments show that: Baoji and Hanzhong are more likely to become node stations in this north–south railway trunk line. The Scatter-GNN classifier optimizes the site selection strategy by calculating the connection probabilities between two or more candidate routes and comparing their results. This may reduce manual selection costs and ease geographic evaluation burdens. The model proposed in this paper can be used as an auxiliary strategy for the traditional route planning scheme, which may become a new way of thinking to study such problems in the future

Design of a Parallel Quadruped Robot Based on a Novel Intelligent Control System

In order to make a robot track a desired trajectory with high precision and steady gait, a novel intelligent controller was designed based on a new mechanical structure and optimized foot trajectory. Kinematics models in terms of the D-H method were established to analyze the relationship between the angle of the driving joint and the foot position. Inspired by a dog&rsquo;s diagonal trot on a flat terrain, foot trajectory planning in the swing and support phases without impact were fulfilled based on the compound cycloid improved by the B&eacute;zier curve. Both the optimized cascade proportional&ndash;integral&ndash;derivative (PID) control system and improved fuzzy adaptive PID control system were applied to realize the stable operation of a quadruped robot, and their parameters were optimized by the sparrow search algorithm. The convergence speed and accuracy of the sparrow search algorithm were verified by comparing with the moth flame optimization algorithm and particle swarm optimization algorithm. Finally, a co-simulation with MATLAB and ADAMS was utilized to compare the effects of the two control systems. The results of both displacement and velocity exhibit that the movement of a quadruped bionic robot with fuzzy adaptive PID control systems optimized by the sparrow search algorithm possessed better accuracy and stability than cascade PID control systems. The motion process of the quadruped robot in the co-simulation process also demonstrates the effectiveness of the designed mechanical structure and control system