Distributed Representation of Protein Sequence Based on Multi-Alignment Results

Protein sequence representation is a key problem for protein studies, especially for those sequence-based models. In this paper, a distributed representation model of protein sequence is proposed, which involves evolutionary information by introducing multi-alignment results. Firstly, we construct a non-redundancy protein dataset and perform multi-alignment for each protein. Then k-mer amino acids "biology corpus" was abstracted from the alignment results which are "evolutionary information" enriched. Using the "biology corpus", k-mer amino acids distributed embedding vectors could be trained according to word2vec method. We compared the amino acid pair distance derived from our produced 1-mer amino acids distributed embedding vectors with that derived from BLOSUM62; it was found that their Pearson coefficient is 0.937, showing they have strong correlation. Then we applied the obtained amino acids distributed embedding representation to protein secondary structure recognition and solubility prediction. For both of the experiments, our proposed alignment results based amino acid distributed representation outperforms that derived directly from protein sequences. Moreover, compared to those existing up-to-date algorithms, our method could get better or comparative results, on condition of only using the feature of our produced amino acid distributed vectors

Establishment of China Information Technology Outsourcing Early Warning Index Based on SVR

AbstractInformation technology outsourcing in China has developed fast, it plays a more and more important role in economic development of China. Economic analysis and early warning system of information technology outsourcing, which reflect the status of ITO, can promote the healthy development of the industry. This paper constructed the indicator system by the method of time difference relevance and peak-valley. The weight vector of each indicator is attained by using support vector regression. It also calculated the comprehensive early warning index and established the early warning index system. At last, we used a group of signal lamps to reflect the status at every time. Based on the reality of ITO in China, this paper found that the development speed of ITO is slowing in recent months, the government should take out some positive measures

Spatial-temporal dynamics of land surface phenology over Africa for the period of 1982–2015

Knowledge of the dynamics of vegetation phenology is essential for the understanding of vegetation-climate interactions. Although the interest in phenology study is growing, vegetation phenology in Africa received far less attention compared to the Northern Hemisphere. Africa straddles the northern and southern hemispheres, and the climate has a clear latitudinal gradient, which facilitates the study of the interaction between phenology and climate. In this study, the latitudinal and longitudinal gradients and temporal trends of start of growing season (SOS), peak of growing season (POS), and end of growing season (EOS) were examined using long-term satellite dataset during 1982–2015. The latitudinal variations in these phenology metrics were larger in the northern than those in the southern Africa, especially from 6°N northwards to 16°N. The latitudinal variations in southern Africa had no clear patterns due to the more complex climate systems. For the longitudinal variation, the temporal trends in POS and EOS exhibited a gradient-decreasing rate in northern Africa. Over the period from 1982 to 2015, the overall trends of the phenology in Africa were ‘later SOS’, ‘later POS’, and ‘later EOS’. The faster rate of delay in EOS than in SOS resulted in a prolonged length of growing season (LOS) with 0.50 days/year on average in northern Africa, while a slower rate of delay in EOS than in SOS resulted in a shorter LOS with −0.12 days/year in southern Africa. The prolonged LOS in northern Africa contributes to the increase in the yearly-averaged Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from 1982 to 2000. Nevertheless, the NDVI appeared to have reached saturation around the 2000s, although the LOS was still extending after 2000s. Overall, the findings of this study provide an overall view of the spatial and temporal patterns of land surface phenology in the African continent, and a necessary component for future studies on the response of phenology to climate.</p

Magnetism of chromia

The electronic structure and magnetism of chromia (corundum-type Cr2O3) are studied using full-potential first-principles calculations. The electronic correlations are included within the LSDA+U method. The energies of different magnetic configurations are very well fitted by the Heisenberg Hamiltonian with strong exchange interaction with two nearest neighbors and additional weak interaction up to the fifth neighbor shell. These energies are insensitive to the position of the oxygen states, indicating that magnetism in Cr2O3 is dominated by direct exchange. The Neel temperature is calculated using the pair-cluster approximation for localized quantum spins of magnitude 3/2. Very good agreement with experiment is found for all properties including the equilibrium volume, spectral density, local magnetic moment, band gap, and the Neel temperature for the values of U and J that are close to those obtained within the constrained occupation method. The band gap is of the Mott-Hubbard type.Comment: 6 pages, 2 eps figure

A snoRNA modulates mRNA 3' end processing and regulates the expression of a subset of mRNAs.

mRNA 3' end processing is an essential step in gene expression. It is well established that canonical eukaryotic pre-mRNA 3' processing is carried out within a macromolecular machinery consisting of dozens of trans-acting proteins. However, it is unknown whether RNAs play any role in this process. Unexpectedly, we found that a subset of small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) are associated with the mammalian mRNA 3' processing complex. These snoRNAs primarily interact with Fip1, a component of cleavage and polyadenylation specificity factor (CPSF). We have functionally characterized one of these snoRNAs and our results demonstrated that the U/A-rich SNORD50A inhibits mRNA 3' processing by blocking the Fip1-poly(A) site (PAS) interaction. Consistently, SNORD50A depletion altered the Fip1-RNA interaction landscape and changed the alternative polyadenylation (APA) profiles and/or transcript levels of a subset of genes. Taken together, our data revealed a novel function for snoRNAs and provided the first evidence that non-coding RNAs may play an important role in regulating mRNA 3' processing

Association Between Social Integration and Health Among Internal Migrants in ZhongShan, China

Internal migrants are the individuals who migrate between regions in one country. The number of internal migrants were estimated at 245 million in China in 2013. Results were inconsistent in the literature about the relationship between their health statuses and social integration. The main difference exists on how to measure the social integration and whether health statuses of internal migrants improve with years of residence. To complement the existing literature, this study measured social integration more comprehensively and estimated the internal migrants\u27 health statuses with varying years of residence, and explored the associations between the migrants\u27 social integration and health. We used the data from 2014 Internal Migrant Dynamic Monitoring Survey of Health and Family Planning in ZhongShan, China. Health status was measured from four aspects: self-reported health, subjective well-being, perception of stress, mental health. We measured social integration through four dimensions: economy, social communication, acculturation, and self-identity. The analyses used multiple linear regressions to examine the associations between selfreported health, subjective well-being, and perception of stress, mental health and social integration. The analytical sample included 1,999 households of the internal migrants and 1,997 local registered households, who were permanent residents in ZhongShan. Among the internal migrants, Adults in the labor force, who were aged 25 to 44 years old, accounted for 91.2% of the internal migrant population, while 74.6% of the registered population were in that age group. Median residential time among migrants was 2.8 (1.3-6.2) years, and 20.2% of them were migrating in the same Guangdong province. Except for mental health, other health statuses among migrants had significant differences compared with local registered population, e. g. self-reported health was better, but subjective well-being was worse. However, these health measurements were improved with more years of residence. Moreover, our results show that two aspects of social integration, economic integration and selfidentity, were significantly associated with health status. Subjective feeling of relative social status levels were more associated with health, which prompted the attention to social fairness and the creation of a fair and respectful culture. More interventions could be experimented, such as encouraging internal migrants to participate in community activities more actively, educating local registered residents to treat internal migrants more equally, and developing self-identity among internal migrants. Better social, economic, and cultural environment can benefit internal migrants\u27 health statuses

Sharp kinetic acceleration potentials during mediated redox catalysis of insulators

Redox mediators could catalyse otherwise slow and energy-inefficient cycling of Li-S and Li-O 2 batteries by shuttling electrons/holes between the electrode and the solid insulating storage materials. For mediators to work efficiently they need to oxidize the solid with fast kinetics yet the lowest possible overpotential. Here, we found that when the redox potentials of mediators are tuned via, e.g., Li + concentration in the electrolyte, they exhibit distinct threshold potentials, where the kinetics accelerate several-fold within a range as small as 10 mV. This phenomenon is independent of types of mediators and electrolyte. The acceleration originates from the overpotentials required to activate fast Li + /e – extraction and the following chemical step at specific abundant surface facets. Efficient redox catalysis at insulating solids requires therefore carefully considering the surface conditions of the storage materials and electrolyte-dependent redox potentials, which may be tuned by salt concentrations or solvents