PhOBF1, a petunia ocs element binding factor, plays an important role in antiviral RNA silencing.

Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) is a common reverse genetics strategy for characterizing the function of genes in plants. The detailed mechanism governing RNA silencing efficiency triggered by viruses is largely unclear. Here, we reveal that a petunia (Petunia hybrida) ocs element binding factor, PhOBF1, one of the basic leucine zipper (bZIP) transcription factors, was up-regulated by Tobacco rattle virus (TRV) infection. Simultaneous silencing of PhOBF1 and a reporter gene, phytoene desaturase (PDS) or chalcone synthase (CHS), by TRV-based VIGS led to a failure of the development of leaf photobleaching or the white-corollas phenotype. PhOBF1 silencing caused down-regulation of RNA silencing-related genes, including RNA-dependent RNA polymerases (RDRs), Dicer-like RNase III enzymes (DCLs), and Argonautes (AGOs). After inoculation with the TRV-PhPDS, PhOBF1-RNAi lines exhibited a substantially impaired PDS silencing efficiency, whereas overexpression of PhOBF1 resulted in a recovery of the silencing phenotype (photobleaching) in systemic leaves. A compromised resistance to TRV and Tobacco mosaic virus was found in PhOBF1-RNAi lines, while PhOBF1-overexpressing lines displayed an enhanced resistance to their infections. Compared with wild-type plants, PhOBF1-silenced plants accumulated lower levels of free salicylic acid (SA), salicylic acid glucoside, and phenylalanine, contrarily to higher levels of those in plants overexpressing PhOBF1. Furthermore, transcripts of a number of genes associated with the shikimate and phenylpropanoid pathways were decreased or increased in PhOBF1-RNAi or PhOBF1-overexpressing lines, respectively. Taken together, the data suggest that PhOBF1 regulates TRV-induced RNA silencing efficiency through modulation of RDRs, DCLs, and AGOs mediated by the SA biosynthesis pathway

Damping multi-model adaptive switching controller design for electronic air suspension system

This paper presents the design and verification of a damping multi-model adaptive switching controller for electronic air suspension (EAS) system. In order to improve the convergence rate of identification algorithm of conventional adaptive controller, multiple local linear full-car vehicle models of EAS system with fixed parameters are established according to the actual damping control process of EAS for different vehicle driving conditions and an adaptive model whose initial value of parameters can be re-assigned is introduced to enhance the system control precision. The model switching control strategy based on minimum error is used to select the best matching model online and the optimum damping force is regulated by adaptive control algorithm, thus constituting the damping multi-model adaptive control for EAS. Simulation results show that the control method proposed in this paper can improve the damping regulating performance of EAS effectively in wide range driving conditions, especially for the case of sudden change in driving conditions

Plasma Clusterin and the CLU Gene rs11136000 Variant Are Associated with Mild Cognitive Impairment in Type 2 Diabetic Patients

Objective: Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is related to an elevated risk of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Plasma clusterin is reported associated with the early pathology of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and longitudinal brain atrophy in subjects with MCI. The rs11136000 single nucleotide polymorphism within the clusterin (CLU) gene is also associated with the risk of AD. We aimed to investigate the associations among plasma clusterin, rs11136000 genotype and T2DM-associated MCI. Methods: A total of 231 T2DM patients, including 126 MCI and 105 cognitively healthy controls were enrolled in this study. Demographic parameters were collected and neuropsychological tests were conducted. Plasma clusterin and CLU rs11136000 genotype were examined.Results: Plasma clusterin was significantly higher in MCI patients than in control group (p=0.007). In subjects with MCI, plasma clusterin level was negatively correlated with Montreal cognitive assessment and auditory verbal learning test_delayed recall scores (p=0.027 and p=0.020, respectively). After adjustment for age, educational attainment, and gender, carriers of rs11136000 TT genotype demonstrated reduced risk for MCI compared with the CC genotype carriers (OR=0.158, χ2=4.113, p=0.043). Multivariable regression model showed that educational attainment, duration of diabetes, HDL-c, and plasma clusterin levels are associated with MCI in T2DM patients.Conclusions: Plasma clusterin was associated with MCI and may reflect a protective response in T2DM patients. TT genotype exhibited a reduced risk of MCI compared to CC genotype. Further investigations should be conducted to determine the role of clusterin in cognitive decline

Targeted aspect based multimodal sentiment analysis:an attention capsule extraction and multi-head fusion network

Multimodal sentiment analysis has currently identified its significance in a variety of domains. For the purpose of sentiment analysis, different aspects of distinguishing modalities, which correspond to one target, are processed and analyzed. In this work, we propose the targeted aspect-based multimodal sentiment analysis (TABMSA) for the first time. Furthermore, an attention capsule extraction and multi-head fusion network (EF-Net) on the task of TABMSA is devised. The multi-head attention (MHA) based network and the ResNet-152 are employed to deal with texts and images, respectively. The integration of MHA and capsule network aims to capture the interaction among the multimodal inputs. In addition to the targeted aspect, the information from the context and the image is also incorporated for sentiment delivered. We evaluate the proposed model on two manually annotated datasets. the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed model for this new task

Coarse-Super-Resolution-Fine Network (CoSF-Net): A Unified End-to-End Neural Network for 4D-MRI with Simultaneous Motion Estimation and Super-Resolution

Four-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging (4D-MRI) is an emerging technique for tumor motion management in image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT). However, current 4D-MRI suffers from low spatial resolution and strong motion artifacts owing to the long acquisition time and patients' respiratory variations; these limitations, if not managed properly, can adversely affect treatment planning and delivery in IGRT. Herein, we developed a novel deep learning framework called the coarse-super-resolution-fine network (CoSF-Net) to achieve simultaneous motion estimation and super-resolution in a unified model. We designed CoSF-Net by fully excavating the inherent properties of 4D-MRI, with consideration of limited and imperfectly matched training datasets. We conducted extensive experiments on multiple real patient datasets to verify the feasibility and robustness of the developed network. Compared with existing networks and three state-of-the-art conventional algorithms, CoSF-Net not only accurately estimated the deformable vector fields between the respiratory phases of 4D-MRI but also simultaneously improved the spatial resolution of 4D-MRI with enhanced anatomic features, yielding 4D-MR images with high spatiotemporal resolution

Pulsed laser-deposited n-Si/NiO_x photoanodes for stable and efficient photoelectrochemical water splitting

An electrocatalytic and stable nickel oxide (NiO_x) thin layer was successfully deposited on an n-Si (100) substrate by pulsed laser deposition (PLD), acting as a photoanode for efficient photo-oxidation of water under solar illumination. It was revealed that the formed n-Si/NiO_x heterojunction with good Schottky contact could improve photogenerated charge separation, and thus n-Si photoanodes deposited with a 105 nm-thick NiO_x electrocatalytic layer exhibited a photovoltage of ∼350 mV, leading to greatly improved photoelectrochemical performances for water oxidation. The stability of the photoanode was significantly enhanced with the increasing thickness of NiO_x protective layers. This study demonstrates a simple and effective method to enable the use of planar n-Si (100) substrates as efficient and durable photoanodes for practical solar water oxidation

Ethnicity-Specific Association Between Ghrelin Leu72Met Polymorphism and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Susceptibility: An Updated Meta-Analysis

Background: The Leu72Met polymorphism of ghrelin gene has been associated with genetic predisposition to type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), while conclusions remain conflicting. Hence, we performed this updated meta-analysis to clarify the association between Leu72Met polymorphism and T2DM susceptibility.Methods: Six electronic databases were consulted for articles published before 1 January, 2018. Pooled odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated under five genetic models to assess this association. We used I2-test and Q statistics to measure heterogeneity across the included studies. Subgroup analyses and publication bias were also performed.Results: Thirteen case-control studies involving 4720 T2DM patients and 4206 controls were included in this meta-analysis. The overall results using fixed-effects models showed that Leu72Met polymorphism was significantly associated with an increased risk of T2DM under homozygous model (OR = 1.307, 95%CI 1.001–1.705, p = 0.049). Further subgroup analyses stratified by ethnicity revealed that the risk for T2DM was only increased in Asians (homozygous model: OR = 1.335, 95%CI 1.014–1.758, p = 0.040), while decreased in Caucasians (dominant model: OR = 0.788, 95%CI 0.635–0.978, p = 0.030; heterozygous model: OR = 0.779, 95%CI 0.626–0.969, p = 0.025; allelic model: OR = 0.811, 95%CI 0.661–0.995, p = 0.045). Funnel plots were basically symmetrical, and all p-values of Egger's test under five genetic models were >0.050, which indicated no evidence of publication bias.Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that the Leu72Met polymorphism of ghrelin gene may be protective against T2DM in Caucasians, while predisposing to T2DM in Asians

High-performance Coherent Optical Modulators based on Thin-film Lithium Niobate Platform

The coherent transmission technology using digital signal processing and advanced modulation formats, is bringing networks closer to the theoretical capacity limit of optical fibres, the Shannon limit. The in-phase quadrature electro-optic modulator that encodes information on both the amplitude and the phase of light, is one of the underpinning devices for the coherent transmission technology. Ideally, such modulator should feature low loss, low drive voltage, large bandwidth, low chirp and compact footprint. However, these requirements have been only met on separate occasions. Here, we demonstrate integrated thin-film lithium niobate in-phase/quadrature modulators that fulfil these requirements simultaneously. The presented devices exhibit greatly improved overall performance (half-wave voltage, bandwidth and optical loss) over traditional lithium niobate counterparts, and support modulation data rate up to 320 Gbit s-1. Our devices pave new routes for future high-speed, energy-efficient, and cost-effective communication networks

Transcriptome Analysis in Chicken Cecal Epithelia upon Infection by Eimeria tenella In Vivo

Coccidiosis, caused by various Eimeria species, is a major parasitic disease in chickens. However, our understanding on how chickens respond to coccidian infection is highly limited at both molecular and cellular levels. The present study employed the Affymetrix chicken genome array and performed transcriptome analysis on chicken cecal epithelia in response to infection for 4.5 days in vivo by the cecal-specific species E. tenella. By Significance Analysis of Microarrays (SAM), we have identified 7,099 probe sets with q-values at <0.05, in which 4,033 and 3,066 genes were found to be up- or down-regulated in response to parasite infection. The reliability of the microarray data were validated by real-time qRT-PCR of 20 genes with varied fold changes in expression (i.e., correlation coefficient between microarray and qRT-PCR datasets: R (2) = 0.8773, p<0.0001). Gene ontology analysis, KEGG pathway mapping and manual annotations of regulated genes indicated that up-regulated genes were mainly involved in immunity/defense, responses to various stimuli, apoptosis/cell death and differentiation, signal transduction and extracellular matrix (ECM), whereas down-regulated genes were mainly encoding general metabolic enzymes, membrane components, and some transporters. Chickens mustered complex cecal eipthelia molecular and immunological responses in response to E. tenella infection, which included pathways involved in cytokine production and interactions, natural killer cell mediated cytotoxicity, and intestinal IgA production. In response to the pathogenesis and damage caused by infection, chicken cecal epithelia reduced general metabolism, DNA replication and repair, protein degradation, and mitochondrial functions