The Microvasculature of Human Infant Oral Mucosa Using Vascular Corrosion Casts and India Ink Injection II. Palate and Lip

The microvasculature of human hard and soft palate and lip originating from four infant males and six females, aged 6 months to 2 years was studied by scanning electron microscopy of vascular corrosion casts and light microscopy of India ink injected specimens. The capillary loops of the hard palate mucosa and vermilion border of the lips were found to be tall, numerous and consisted of primary, secondary and tertiary loops. Those of the soft palatal and labial mucosa were short, few in number and demonstrated a simple hair-pin shape originating directly from the subpapillary vascular network. It was concluded that the configuration of capillary loops is not only determined by the shape of the connective tissue papillae in the lamina propria but also influenced by the functional demands characteristic of the different areas of the oral mucosa

Hawking radiation of Dirac particles via tunneling from Kerr black hole

We investigated Dirac Particles' Hawking radiation from event horizon of Kerr black hole in terms of the tunneling formalism. Applying WKB approximation to the general covariant Dirac equation in Kerr spacetime background, we obtain the tunneling probability for fermions and Hawking temperature of Kerr black hole. The result obtained by taking the fermion tunneling into account is consistent with the previous literatures.Comment: 7 pages, no figures, to appear in CQ

The Microvasculature of Human Oral Mucosa Using Vascular Corrosion Casts and India Ink Injection I. Tongue Papillae

The microvasculature of human tongue papillae originating from 9 males and 6 females, aged 0.5 to 2 years was studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of vascular corrosion casts and by light microscopy (LM) of India ink injected specimens. All papillae showed a microvasculature characterized by primary, secondary and tertiary capillary loops. In the filiform papillae the loops were generally arranged in a corolla-like pattern with the tertiary loops demonstrating a hair-pin shape. The fungiform papillae showed basically a similar architectural pattern although the loops were somewhat more compact and complex in structure. A small, shallow depression of the tertiary loops at the top of these papillae was found to be occupied by a prominent rete ridge of the surface epithelium. There was a gradual transition from filiform to foliate papillae, the latter appearing as rows of coalesced filiform papillae. The circumvallate papillae easily identified by the surrounding furrow showed a rather complex and compact pattern of capillary loops of which typical hair-pin shaped tertiary loops dominated the periphery of the papilla. Small grooves or depressions in the vascular network were found to be occupied by rete ridges of the overlying mucosal epithelium

An association study between polymorphism of alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH1B), aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2), cytochrome (CYP4502E1), Catechol-OMethyltransferase (COMT) and 5-hydroxytryptamine transporter (5-HTT)...

Full Title: An association study between polymorphism of alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH1B), aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2), cytochrome (CYP4502E1), Catechol-OMethyltransferase (COMT) and 5-hydroxytryptamine transporter (5-HTT) genes in Yunnan Han population with alcohol dependenceAbstact: Alcohol dependence (AD) is a complex disease resulting from the inheritance of several susceptible genes and multiple environmental determinants. The aim of this study was to identify the genetic risk factors which include alcohol metabolizing genes and neurotransmitter related genes for alcoholism in Yunnan Han population. Eight allelic variants of five genes were genotyped from 332 Yunnan Han individuals (including 118 alcohol-dependent patients (DSM-IV criteria) and 214 controls) using PCRRFLP method. Those polymorphic sites included alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH1B), aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2), cytochrome P-4502E1 (CYP2E1) PstI, Catechol-O-Methyltransferase (COMT) rs2075507 (5’region), rs737865 (intron1), rs4680 (Val158Met), rs165599 (3’region) and serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR). Both genotype and allele frequencies of ALDH2 and CYP4502E1 as well as the allele frequency of ADH1B gene differed significantly between AD group and control group. The proportion of ALDH2 *1/*2 genotype and *2 allele was significantly smaller in patients than that in controls (X2 = 6.554, p = 0.038; X2 = 4.906, p = 0.027), while the proportion of c2 allele of CYP4502E1 was significantly higher (X2 = 4.410, p = 0.036). Compared with the controls, the frequencies of the 5-HTTLPR L/L genotype and COMT rs737865 C/C genotype were significantly lower in AD group. Twelve COMT haplotypes (rs2075507, rs737865, rs4680 and rs165599) defined as H1 to H12 were obtained in this major minority population. The prevalence of the haplotype H1 ‘‘A-C-A-A’’ was significantly greater in alcoholics than the prevalence in their respective control group. There were no significant differences in the genotype frequencies of the COMT rs2075507, rs4680 and rs165599 polymorphisms between alcoholics and controls. COMT rs2075507 and rs737865 polymorphisms were in complete linkage disequilibrium in Han population of Yunnan Province. This study indicates that polymorphisms of ADH1B, ALDH2, CYP4502E1, COMT and 5-HTT were significantly associated with AD in Han majority. The ADH1B *2, ALDH2 *2 alleles, 5-HTTLPR L/L genotype and C/C genotype of the COMT rs737865 polymorphism had an important role in reducing the risk of AD while the c2 allele of CYP4502E1 increased the risk of AD. Therefore, the A-C-A-A haplotype may be a dangerous factor leading to AD.Key words: Yunnan Han population, polymorphism, alcohol dependence, genetic risk factor

Ozone production in summer in the megacities of Tianjin and Shanghai, China: a comparative study

Rapid economic growth has given rise to a significant increase in ozone precursor emissions in many regions of China, especially in the densely populated North China Plain (NCP) and Yangtze River Delta (YRD). Improved understanding of ozone formation in response to different precursor emissions is imperative to address the highly nonlinear ozone problem and to provide a solid scientific basis for efficient ozone abatement in these regions. A comparative study on ozone photochemical production in summer has thus been carried out in the megacities of Tianjin (NCP) and Shanghai (YRD). Two intensive field campaigns were carried out respectively at an urban and a suburban site of Tianjin, in addition to routine monitoring of trace gases in Shanghai, providing data sets of surface ozone and its precursors including nitrogen oxides (NO<sub>x</sub>) and various non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHCs). Ozone pollution in summer was found to be more severe in the Tianjin region than in the Shanghai region, based on either the frequency or the duration of high ozone events. Such differences might be attributed to the large amount of highly reactive NMHCs in Tianjin. Industry related species like light alkenes were of particular importance in both urban and suburban Tianjin, while in Shanghai aromatics dominated. In general, the ozone problem in Shanghai is on an urban scale. Stringent control policies on local emissions would help reduce the occurrence of high ozone concentrations. By contrast, ozone pollution in Tianjin is probably a regional problem. Combined efforts to reduce ozone precursor emissions on a regional scale must be undertaken to bring the ozone problem under control

Robust Transcoding Sensory Information With Neural Spikes

Neural coding, including encoding and decoding, is one of the key problems in neuroscience for understanding how the brain uses neural signals to relate sensory perception and motor behaviors with neural systems. However, most of the existed studies only aim at dealing with the continuous signal of neural systems, while lacking a unique feature of biological neurons, termed spike, which is the fundamental information unit for neural computation as well as a building block for brain-machine interface. Aiming at these limitations, we propose a transcoding framework to encode multi-modal sensory information into neural spikes and then reconstruct stimuli from spikes. Sensory information can be compressed into 10% in terms of neural spikes, yet re-extract 100% of information by reconstruction. Our framework can not only feasibly and accurately reconstruct dynamical visual and auditory scenes, but also rebuild the stimulus patterns from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain activities. More importantly, it has a superb ability of noise immunity for various types of artificial noises and background signals. The proposed framework provides efficient ways to perform multimodal feature representation and reconstruction in a high-throughput fashion, with potential usage for efficient neuromorphic computing in a noisy environment

Emergent stationarity in Yellow River sediment transport and the underlying shift of dominance: from streamflow to vegetation

Soil erosion and sediment transport play important roles in terrestrial landscape evolution and biogeochemical cycles of nutrients and contaminants. Although discharge is considered to be a controlling factor in sediment transport, its correlation with sediment concentration varies across the Yellow River basin (YRB) and is not fully understood. This paper provides analysis from gauges across the YRB covering a range of climates, topographic characteristics, and degrees of human intervention. Our results show that discharge control on sediment transport is dampened at gauges with large mean annual discharge, where sediment concentration becomes more and more stable. This emergent stationarity can be attributed to vegetation resistance. Our analysis shows that sediment concentration follows a bell shape with vegetation index (normalized difference vegetation index, NDVI) at an annual scale despite heterogeneity in climate and landscape. We obtain the counterintuitive result that, as mean annual discharge increases, the dominant control on sediment transport shifts from streamflow erosion to vegetation retardation in the YRB.</p

Thermal and mechanical properties of BaWO4 crystal

A large single crystal of barium tungstate BaWO4 with dimensions of 22- mm diameter 80-mm length was grown by the Czochralski method using an iridium crucible. The melting point, molar enthalpy of fusion, and molar entropy of fusion of the crystal were determined to be 1775.10 K, 96 913.80 J mol−1, and 54.60 J K−1 mol−1, respectively. The average linear thermal-expansion coefficients are a=10.9526 10−6/K, b=10.8069 10−6 /K, and c =35.1063 10−6 /K in the temperature range from 303.15 to 1423.15 K along the three respective crystallographic axes. The density of the crystal follows an almost linear decrease from 6.393 103 to 6.000 103 kg m−3 when the temperature is increased from 303.15 to 1423.15 K. The measured specific heat are 115.56–130.96 J K−1 mol−1 in the temperature range of 323.15–1173.15 K. The thermal diffusion coefficient of the crystal was measured in the temperature range of 297.15–563.15 K. The calculated thermal conductivity is 2.256 W m−1 K−1 along the 001 direction and 2.324 W m−1 K−1 along the 100 direction at 323.15 K. The microhardness of the BaWO4 single crystal in the 001 and 100 planes is 1393 and 1814 MPa under a load of 0.050 kg

Competitions of magnetism and superconductivity in FeAs-based materials

Using the numerical unrestricted Hartree-Fock approach, we study the ground state of a two-orbital model describing newly discovered FeAs-based superconductors. We observe the competition of a $(0, \pi)$ mode spin-density wave and the superconductivity as the doping concentration changes. There might be a small region in the electron-doping side where the magnetism and superconductivity coexist. The superconducting pairing is found to be spin singlet, orbital even, and mixed s$_{xy}$ + d$_{x^{2}-y^{2}}$ wave (even parity).Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Development of HTS Current Leads for the ITER Project

The HTS current leads for the ITER project will be the largest ever operated, with unprecedented currents, up to 68 kA and voltages, up to 14 kV. According to the ITER agreement they will be provided in-kind by China. After an extensive development program at the Hefei Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP), the ITER current leads were designed and qualified. The following discusses the main highlights of this development, with particular emphasis on the description of the design of the different types of ITER current leads and their final qualification in dedicated cold tests in nominal conditions