Surface Roughness Models and Their Experimental Validation in Micro Milling of 6061-T6 Al Alloy by Response Surface Methodology

Due to the widespread use of high-accuracy miniature and micro features or components, it is required to predict the machined surface performance of the micro milling processes. In this paper, a new predictive model of the surface roughness is established by response surface method (RSM) according to the micro milling experiment of 6061-T6 aluminum alloy which is carried out based on the central composite circumscribed (CCC) design. Then the model is used to analyze the effects of parameters on the surface roughness, and it can be concluded that the surface roughness increases with the increasing of the feed rate and the decreasing of the spindle speed. At last, based on the model the contour map of the surface roughness and material removal rate is established for optimizing the process parameters to improve the cutting efficiency with good surface roughness. The prediction results from the model have good agreement with the experimental results

Assessment of global health risk of antibiotic resistance genes

Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) have accelerated microbial threats to human health in the last decade. Many genes can confer resistance, but evaluating the relative health risks of ARGs is complex. Factors such as the abundance, propensity for lateral transmission and ability of ARGs to be expressed in pathogens are all important. Here, an analysis at the metagenomic level from various habitats (6 types of habitats, 4572 samples) detects 2561 ARGs that collectively conferred resistance to 24 classes of antibiotics. We quantitatively evaluate the health risk to humans, defined as the risk that ARGs will confound the clinical treatment for pathogens, of these 2561 ARGs by integrating human accessibility, mobility, pathogenicity and clinical availability. Our results demonstrate that 23.78% of the ARGs pose a health risk, especially those which confer multidrug resistance. We also calculate the antibiotic resistance risks of all samples in four main habitats, and with machine learning, successfully map the antibiotic resistance threats in global marine habitats with over 75% accuracy. Our novel method for quantitatively surveilling the health risk of ARGs will help to manage one of the most important threats to human and animal health

Loss-of-function mutations in Lysyl-tRNA synthetase cause various leukoencephalopathy phenotypes

Objective: To expand the clinical spectrum of lysyl-tRNA synthetase (KARS) gene–related diseases, which so far includes Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, congenital visual impairment and microcephaly, and nonsyndromic hearing impairment. Methods: Whole-exome sequencing was performed on index patients from 4 unrelated families with leukoencephalopathy. Candidate pathogenic variants and their cosegregation were confirmed by Sanger sequencing. Effects of mutations on KARS protein function were examined by aminoacylation assays and yeast complementation assays. Results: Common clinical features of the patients in this study included impaired cognitive ability, seizure, hypotonia, ataxia, and abnormal brain imaging, suggesting that the CNS involvement is the main clinical presentation. Six previously unreported and 1 known KARS mutations were identified and cosegregated in these families. Two patients are compound heterozygous for missense mutations, 1 patient is homozygous for a missense mutation, and 1 patient harbored an insertion mutation and a missense mutation. Functional and structural analyses revealed that these mutations impair aminoacylation activity of lysyl-tRNA synthetase, indicating that de- fective KARS function is responsible for the phenotypes in these individuals. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that patients with loss-of-function KARS mutations can manifest CNS disorders, thus broadening the phenotypic spectrum associated with KARS-related disease

Novel Blood Pressure Locus and Gene Discovery Using Genome-Wide Association Study and Expression Data Sets From Blood and the Kidney.

Elevated blood pressure is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease and has a substantial genetic contribution. Genetic variation influencing blood pressure has the potential to identify new pharmacological targets for the treatment of hypertension. To discover additional novel blood pressure loci, we used 1000 Genomes Project-based imputation in 150 134 European ancestry individuals and sought significant evidence for independent replication in a further 228 245 individuals. We report 6 new signals of association in or near HSPB7, TNXB, LRP12, LOC283335, SEPT9, and AKT2, and provide new replication evidence for a further 2 signals in EBF2 and NFKBIA Combining large whole-blood gene expression resources totaling 12 607 individuals, we investigated all novel and previously reported signals and identified 48 genes with evidence for involvement in blood pressure regulation that are significant in multiple resources. Three novel kidney-specific signals were also detected. These robustly implicated genes may provide new leads for therapeutic innovation

PDANet: Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation Using Perceptual and Data Augmentation Consistency

In recent studies, self-supervised learning methods have been explored for monocular depth estimation. They minimize the reconstruction loss of images instead of depth information as a supervised signal. However, existing methods usually assume that the corresponding points in different views should have the same color, which leads to unreliable unsupervised signals and ultimately damages the reconstruction loss during the training. Meanwhile, in the low texture region, it is unable to predict the disparity value of pixels correctly because of the small number of extracted features. To solve the above issues, we propose a network—PDANet—that integrates perceptual consistency and data augmentation consistency, which are more reliable unsupervised signals, into a regular unsupervised depth estimation model. Specifically, we apply a reliable data augmentation mechanism to minimize the loss of the disparity map generated by the original image and the augmented image, respectively, which will enhance the robustness of the image in the prediction of color fluctuation. At the same time, we aggregate the features of different layers extracted by a pre-trained VGG16 network to explore the higher-level perceptual differences between the input image and the generated one. Ablation studies demonstrate the effectiveness of each components, and PDANet shows high-quality depth estimation results on the KITTI benchmark, which optimizes the state-of-the-art method from 0.114 to 0.084, measured by absolute relative error for depth estimation

Characterization and Expression of KT/HAK/KUP Transporter Family Genes in Willow under Potassium Deficiency, Drought, and Salt Stresses

The K+ transporter/high-affinity K+/K+ uptake (KT/HAK/KUP) transporters dominate K+ uptake, transport, and allocation that play a pivotal role in mineral homeostasis and plant adaptation to adverse abiotic stresses. However, molecular mechanisms towards K+ nutrition in forest trees are extremely rare, especially in willow. In this study, we identified 22 KT/HAK/KUP transporter genes in purple osier willow (designated as SpuHAK1 to SpuHAK22) and examined their expression under K+ deficiency, drought, and salt stress conditions. Both transcriptomic and quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) analyses demonstrated that SpuHAKs were predominantly expressed in stems, and the expression levels of SpuHAK1, SpuHAK2, SpuHAK3, SpuHAK7, and SpuHAK8 were higher at the whole plant level, whereas SpuHAK9, SpuHAK11, SpuHAK20, and SpuHAK22 were hardly detected in tested tissues. In addition, both K+ deficiency and salt stress decreased the tissue K+ content, while drought increased the tissue K+ content in purple osier plant. Moreover, SpuHAK genes were differentially responsive to K+ deficiency, drought, and salt stresses in roots. K+ deficiency and salt stress mainly enhanced the expression level of responsive SpuHAK genes. Fifteen putative cis-acting regulatory elements, including the stress response, hormone response, circadian regulation, and nutrition and development, were identified in the promoter region of SpuHAK genes. Our findings provide a foundation for further functional characterization of KT/HAK/KUP transporters in forest trees and may be useful for breeding willow rootstocks that utilize potassium more efficiently