1,732 research outputs found
First Abundance Measurement of Organic Molecules in the Atmosphere of HH 212 Protostellar Disk
HH 212 is one of the well-studied protostellar systems, showing the first
vertically resolved disk with a warm atmosphere around the central protostar.
Here we report a detection of 9 organic molecules (including newly detected
ketene, formic acid, deuterated acetonitrile, methyl formate, and ethanol) in
the disk atmosphere, confirming that the disk atmosphere is, for HH 212, the
chemically rich component, identified before at a lower resolution as a
"hot-corino". More importantly, we report the first systematic survey and
abundance measurement of organic molecules in the disk atmosphere within
40 au of the central protostar. The relative abundances of these molecules are
similar to those in the hot corinos around other protostars and in Comet
Lovejoy. These molecules can be either (i) originally formed on icy grains and
then desorbed into gas phase or (ii) quickly formed in the gas phase using
simpler species ejected from the dust mantles. The abundances and spatial
distributions of the molecules provide strong constraints on models of their
formation and transport in star formation. These molecules are expected to form
even more complex organic molecules needed for life and deeper observations are
needed to find them.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure
Molecular and In Silico Characterization of Tomato LBD Transcription Factor
Lateral Organ Boundaries Domain (LBD) is a family of plant specific transcription factors. LBD plays regulatory roles in various biological process including organ development, regeneration, pollen development, biotic and abiotic stress response, anthocyanin, and nitrogen metabolisms in various plant species. Lateral root growth and development is controlled by two important LBD genes, namely LBD
Containing Protein 16 (LBD16) and LBD18 in Arabidopsis thaliana. The expression of LBD16 and LBD18 could be upregulated or downregulated by environmental stress which affect the growth of root in plant. LBD16 and LBD18 were reported as the key LBD genes in A. thaliana which involved in lateral root formation. However, there are no comprehensive studies were found yet to discuss the LBD16 and LBD18 genes in tomato, scientifically known as Solanum lycopersicum. In this study, the retrieval data for LBD
genes in A. thaliana and S. lycopersicum had been carried out and phylogenetic tree was constructed by using MEGA 11 software to find the corresponding homolog group of S. lycopersicum that contain LBD16 and LBD18. The identified group of SlLBD genes that might contain LBD16 and LBD18 were analyzed for its sequence similarity with BLAST tool by comparing with the model plant A. thaliana sequence. Further
analysis, namely collinearity and expression analysis had been carried out on the selected SlLBD genes by TBtools to analyze its evolutionary relationship with model plant and its gene expression pattern under various conditions on heat map. The selected SlLBD genes were confirmed to be the candidate genes that contain the LBD16 and LBD18. Further analysis of these genes needs to be carried out in future work by laboratory work with various treatments to test its expression level on tomato root
Comorbid Mental Disorders in Anxiety Disorders: Genetic Aspects of Bipolar Disorders and of Ethnicity
Anxiety disorder (AD) is commonly comorbid with other mental illness. It could be a state or trait, controversially. Evidence for an association between alcoholism and anxiety has emerged from clinical studies of patients with alcoholism, and those of patients with anxiety disorders. Alcohol dependence (or abuse) as well as bipolar disorder (BP) is usually comorbid with anxiety disorder and/or depressive disorder, which often coexist and are difficult to distinguish from one another. However, in Han Chinese population, the comorbidity rate either with alcoholism or bipolar disorder was not reported as much high as reported in Caucasians, this finding of comorbidity between anxiety/depressive disorders and alcohol dependence (or abuse) or/and bipolar disorders, possibly at the genetic level, makes the differentiation of their categorical diagnoses in the association study vitally important
Formation mechanism of SiGe nanorod arrays by combining nanosphere lithography and Au-assisted chemical etching
The formation mechanism of SiGe nanorod (NR) arrays fabricated by combining nanosphere lithography and Au-assisted chemical etching has been investigated. By precisely controlling the etching rate and time, the lengths of SiGe NRs can be tuned from 300 nm to 1
μm. The morphologies of SiGe NRs were found to change dramatically by varying the etching temperatures. We propose a mechanism involving a locally temperature-sensitive redox reaction to explain this strong temperature dependence of the morphologies of SiGe NRs. At a lower etching temperature, both corrosion reaction and Au-assisted etching process were kinetically impeded, whereas at a higher temperature, Au-assisted anisotropic etching dominated the formation of SiGe NRs. With transmission electron microscopy and scanning electron microscopy analyses, this study provides a beneficial scheme to design and fabricate low-dimensional SiGe-based nanostructures for possible applications
Photoacoustic signal enhancement in dual-contrast gastrin-releasing peptide receptor-targeted nanobubbles
Translatable imaging agents are a crucial element of successful molecular imaging. Photoacoustic molecular imaging relies on optical absorbing materials to generate a sufficient signal. However, few materials approved for human use can generate adequate photoacoustic responses. Here we report a new nanoengineering approach to further improve photoacoustic response from biocompatible materials. Our study shows that when optical absorbers are incorporated into the shell of a gaseous nanobubble, their photoacoustic signal can be significantly enhanced compared to the original form. As an example, we constructed nanobubbles using biocompatible indocyanine green (ICG) and biodegradable poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA). We demonstrated that these ICG nanobubbles generate a strong ultrasound signal and almost four-fold photoacoustic signal compared to the same concentration of ICG solution; our theoretical calculations corroborate this effect and elucidate the origin of the photoacoustic enhancement. To demonstrate their molecular imaging performance, we conjugated gastrin-releasing peptide receptor (GRPR) targeting ligands with the ICG nanobubbles. Our dual photoacoustic/ultrasound molecular imaging shows a more than three-fold enhancement in targeting specificity of the GRPR-targeted ICG nanobubbles, compared to untargeted nanobubbles or prostate cancer cells not expressing GRPR, in a prostate cancer xenograft mouse model in vivo
Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Nasal Colonization among Adult Patients Visiting Emergency Department in a Medical Center in Taiwan
Within the past 10 years, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has not only been a hospital pathogen but also a community pathogen. To understand the carriage rate of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) among the adult patients visiting emergency department (ED), we conducted this study.From May 21 to August 12, 2009, a total of 502 adult patients visiting emergency department (ED) of a tertiary care hospital in northern Taiwan were recruited in this study and surveyed for nasal carriage of MRSA. A questionnaire regarding the risk factors for MRSA acquisition was also obtained. The overall prevalence of MRSA nasal carriage among the patients was 3.8%. The carriage rate was significantly higher in patients with risk factors for MRSA acquisition (5.94%) than those without risk factors (2.12%). Patients with urinary complaints, diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease and current percutaneous tube usage were significantly associated with MRSA colonization. By multiple logistic regression analysis, only current usage of catheters or tubes was the independent predictor for MRSA nasal colonization. Of the 19 MRSA, most isolates belonged to one of two linages, characterized as sequence type (ST) 239 (32%) and ST 59 (58%). The latter linage, accounting for 83% of 6 isolates from patients without risk factors, is a community-associated (CA) clone in Taiwan, while the former linage is among healthcare-associated clones.A substantial proportion of patients visiting ED, particularly with current usage of percutaneous catheter or tubes, in northern Taiwan carried MRSA, mostly community strains, in nares
JCMT POL-2 and ALMA polarimetric observations of 6000-100 au scales in the protostar B335: linking magnetic field and gas kinematics in observations and MHD simulations
We present our analysis of the magnetic field structures from 6000 au to 100
au scales in the Class 0 protostar B335 inferred from our JCMT POL-2
observations and the ALMA archival polarimetric data. To interpret the
observational results, we perform a series of (non-)ideal MHD simulations of
the collapse of a rotating non-turbulent dense core, whose initial conditions
are adopted to be the same as observed in B335, and generate synthetic
polarization maps. The comparison of our JCMT and simulation results suggests
that the magnetic field on a 6000 au scale in B335 is pinched and well aligned
with the bipolar outflow along the east-west direction. Among all our
simulations, the ALMA polarimetric results are best explained with weak
magnetic field models having an initial mass-to-flux ratio of 9.6. However, we
find that with the weak magnetic field, the rotational velocity on a 100 au
scale and the disk size in our simulations are larger than the observational
estimates by a factor of several. An independent comparison of our simulations
and the gas kinematics in B335 observed with the SMA and ALMA favors strong
magnetic field models with an initial mass-to-flux ratio smaller than 4.8. We
discuss two possibilities resulting in the different magnetic field strengths
inferred from the polarimetric and molecular-line observations, (1)
overestimated rotational-to-gravitational energy in B335 and (2) additional
contributions in the polarized intensity due to scattering on a 100 au scale.Comment: Accepted by Ap
Multilocus variable-number tandem repeat analysis for molecular typing and phylogenetic analysis of Shigella flexneri
Image Collage on Arbitrary Shape via Shape-Aware Slicing and Optimization
Image collage is a very useful tool for visualizing an image collection. Most
of the existing methods and commercial applications for generating image
collages are designed on simple shapes, such as rectangular and circular
layouts. This greatly limits the use of image collages in some artistic and
creative settings. Although there are some methods that can generate
irregularly-shaped image collages, they often suffer from severe image
overlapping and excessive blank space. This prevents such methods from being
effective information communication tools. In this paper, we present a shape
slicing algorithm and an optimization scheme that can create image collages of
arbitrary shapes in an informative and visually pleasing manner given an input
shape and an image collection. To overcome the challenge of irregular shapes,
we propose a novel algorithm, called Shape-Aware Slicing, which partitions the
input shape into cells based on medial axis and binary slicing tree.
Shape-Aware Slicing, which is designed specifically for irregular shapes, takes
human perception and shape structure into account to generate visually pleasing
partitions. Then, the layout is optimized by analyzing input images with the
goal of maximizing the total salient regions of the images. To evaluate our
method, we conduct extensive experiments and compare our results against
previous work. The evaluations show that our proposed algorithm can efficiently
arrange image collections on irregular shapes and create visually superior
results than prior work and existing commercial tools.Comment: This paper has been accepted for publication on IEEE Transactions on
Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), March 2023. Project website
http://graphics.csie.ncku.edu.tw/shapedimagecollag
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