ZMYND10 stabilizes intermediate chain proteins in the cytoplasmic pre-assembly of dynein arms

Zinc finger MYND-type-containing 10 (ZMYND10), a cytoplasmic protein expressed in ciliated cells, causes primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) when mutated; however, its function is poorly understood. Therefore, in this study, we examined the roles of ZMYND10 using Zmynd10–/–mice exhibiting typical PCD phenotypes, including hydrocephalus and laterality defects. In these mutants, morphology, the number of motile cilia, and the 9+2 axoneme structure were normal; however, inner and outer dynein arms (IDA and ODA, respectively) were absent. ZMYND10 interacted with ODA components and proteins, including LRRC6, DYX1C1, and C21ORF59, implicated in the cytoplasmic pre-assembly of DAs, whose levels were significantly reduced in Zmynd10–/–mice. LRRC6 and DNAI1 were more stable when co-expressed with ZYMND10 than when expressed alone. DNAI2, which did not interact with ZMYND10, was not stabilized by co-expression with ZMYND10 alone, but was stabilized by co-expression with DNAI1 and ZMYND10, suggesting that ZMYND10 stabilized DNAI1, which subsequently stabilized DNAI2. Together, these results demonstrated that ZMYND10 regulated the early stage of DA cytoplasmic pre-assembly by stabilizing DNAI1

Endothelial Dysfunction and Microvascular Complications in Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus

We examined whether alterations in vascular endothelial function and early structural changes in atherosclerosis are associated with microvascular complications in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM). Flow-mediated dilation (FMD) of the brachial artery and carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) measurement were performed in 70 young adults (aged 19 to 35 yr), 48 with type 1 DM, and 22 normal controls. Patients with diabetes had a lower peak FMD response (7.8±3.9 vs. 11.1±1.9%, p<0.001) and increased IMT (0.51±0.10 vs. 0.42±0.07 mm, p<0.001) compared with controls. Twenty (41.7%) of the patients had microvascular complications including neuropathy, nephropathy, or retinopathy. In these complicated diabetic patients, we found a lower FMD response (6.1±2.5 vs. 9.9±3.5%, p=0.001) compared with diabetics without microvascular complications. The presence of microvascular complications was also associated with older age and longer duration of the disease. However, no differences were observed in IMT, body size, blood pressure, HbA1c, C-reactive protein, low-density lipoprotein or high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels between complicated and non-complicated patients. Endothelial dysfunction and early structural atherosclerotic changes are common manifestations in type 1 DM, and endothelial dysfunction is thought to be an early event in the atherosclerotic process and important in the pathogenesis of microvascular complications

Adult Age Differences in Processing Narrative Text: Managing Character Representations

199 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009.Understanding a narrative situation depends on keeping track of multiple characters that enter and exit dynamically as the plot unfolds. Because there has been no systematic investigation of age differences in the ability to manage multiple characters during narrative comprehension, this project was designed to examine those differences in this facet of language processing. Experiment 1 used a probe recognition paradigm to examine the effect of age on the accessibility of a previous character when another character was subsequently introduced. In Experiment 2 reading time was measured to examine age differences in the encoding of a new character after another had already been introduced. The findings show that older readers have particular difficulty in (a) accessing the initial character after a new character is introduced, and (b) thoroughly encoding a new character while other characters inhabit the discourse world. These age differences were attributable to age differences in working memory that make it difficult to access a backgrounded character when a new character is in focus, and to distinctively encode a new character when maintenance of another character is already consuming attentional resources. Experiment 3 showed that when characters were referred to by common nouns, age differences in accessing the initial character after the introduction of a new character disappeared, suggesting that age deficits in proper name learning, in part, contributed to the age differences in character accessibility observed in Experiment 1. Notably, the results with older adults revealed that named characters were, in general, more accessible than noun-designated characters and that they had particular difficulty in retaining focus on a single character across intervening events when the character was referred to by a common noun. These findings were attributable to the pragmatic function of proper names in discourse, with named characters being viewed as central characters, making them more accessible than noun designated characters. Older adults appeared to take differential advantage of this pragmatic function of proper names when managing multiple characters. The eye-tracking data from Experiment 4 showed that older adults' online comprehension was especially disrupted by the need to process multiple characters. Older readers were more likely to launch a regression at the mention of the initial character at the end of the narrative when a new character was introduced and to spend longer rereading the previous text. However, older adults produced relatively simple story continuations after reading two-character stories, suggesting that they directed their allocation effort toward situation model at the expense of their lower level processing. Collectively, contrary to other results in aging and situation model processing, the findings from this project suggest that older readers may have difficulty managing character representations during narrative comprehension.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

Adult Age Differences in Processing Narrative Text: Managing Character Representations

199 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009.Understanding a narrative situation depends on keeping track of multiple characters that enter and exit dynamically as the plot unfolds. Because there has been no systematic investigation of age differences in the ability to manage multiple characters during narrative comprehension, this project was designed to examine those differences in this facet of language processing. Experiment 1 used a probe recognition paradigm to examine the effect of age on the accessibility of a previous character when another character was subsequently introduced. In Experiment 2 reading time was measured to examine age differences in the encoding of a new character after another had already been introduced. The findings show that older readers have particular difficulty in (a) accessing the initial character after a new character is introduced, and (b) thoroughly encoding a new character while other characters inhabit the discourse world. These age differences were attributable to age differences in working memory that make it difficult to access a backgrounded character when a new character is in focus, and to distinctively encode a new character when maintenance of another character is already consuming attentional resources. Experiment 3 showed that when characters were referred to by common nouns, age differences in accessing the initial character after the introduction of a new character disappeared, suggesting that age deficits in proper name learning, in part, contributed to the age differences in character accessibility observed in Experiment 1. Notably, the results with older adults revealed that named characters were, in general, more accessible than noun-designated characters and that they had particular difficulty in retaining focus on a single character across intervening events when the character was referred to by a common noun. These findings were attributable to the pragmatic function of proper names in discourse, with named characters being viewed as central characters, making them more accessible than noun designated characters. Older adults appeared to take differential advantage of this pragmatic function of proper names when managing multiple characters. The eye-tracking data from Experiment 4 showed that older adults' online comprehension was especially disrupted by the need to process multiple characters. Older readers were more likely to launch a regression at the mention of the initial character at the end of the narrative when a new character was introduced and to spend longer rereading the previous text. However, older adults produced relatively simple story continuations after reading two-character stories, suggesting that they directed their allocation effort toward situation model at the expense of their lower level processing. Collectively, contrary to other results in aging and situation model processing, the findings from this project suggest that older readers may have difficulty managing character representations during narrative comprehension.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

Visual noise disrupts conceptual integration in reading

The Effortfulness Hypothesis suggests that sensory impairment (either simulated or age-related) may decrease capacity for semantic integration in language comprehension. We directly tested this hypothesis by measuring resource allocation to different levels of processing during reading (i.e., word vs. semantic analysis). College students read three sets of passages word-by-word, one at each of three levels of dynamic visual noise. There was a reliable interaction between processing level and noise, such that visual noise increased resources allocated to word-level processing, at the cost of attention paid to semantic analysis. Recall of the most important ideas also decreased with increasing visual noise. Results suggest that sensory challenge can impair higher-level cognitive functions in learning from text, supporting the Effortfulness Hypothesis

The effects of print exposure on sentence processing and memory in older adults: Evidence for efficiency and reserve

The present study was an examination of how exposure to print affects sentence processing and memory in older readers. A sample of older adults (N = 139; Mean age = 72) completed a battery of cognitive and linguistic tests and read a series of sentences for recall. Word-by-word reading times were recorded and generalized linear mixed effects models were used to estimate components representing attentional allocation to word-level and textbase-level processes. Older adults with higher levels of print exposure showed greater efficiency in word-level processing and in the immediate instantiation of new concepts, but allocated more time to semantic integration at clause boundaries. While lower levels of working memory were associated with smaller wrap-up effects, individuals with higher levels of print exposure showed a reduced effect of working memory on sentence wrap-up. Importantly, print exposure was not only positively associated with sentence memory, but was also found to buffer the effects of working memory on sentence recall. These findings suggest that the increased efficiency of component reading processes that come with life-long habits of literacy buffer the effects of working memory decline on comprehension and contribute to maintaining skilled reading among older adults

Prognostic health management of the robotic strain wave gear reducer based on variable speed of operation: a data-driven via deep learning approach

The robotic reducer is prone to failure because of its unique characteristics. Data from vibration and acoustic emission sensors have been used for the prognostics of the reducer. However, various issues are associated with such traditional techniques. Hence, our research group proposes a novel approach to utilize the embedded setup of the electrical current to detect the mechanical fault of the robotic reducer in the actual industrial robot. Previously, a comprehensive approach of feature engineering was proposed to classify the mechanical fault for the robotic reducer. However, handcraft-based feature extraction is quite a tedious task, and computationally expensive. These features require a well-designed feature extractor, and the features need to be manually optimized before feeding into classifiers. In addition, the handcrafted features are problem-specific, and are complicated to generalize. To resolve these challenges, deep features are extracted to classify the fault and generalize for two different motion profiles under different working conditions. In the proposed research work, the fault characteristic is generalized for variable speed of operations considering various kinds of scenarios. In this research work, the generalization capability of the proposed approach is comprehensively evaluated. For that purpose, the data under different working conditions such as of lower speeds, higher speeds, and speed sequestration are used as unseen data to validate the model. The authenticity of the presented approach can be supported by the performance evaluation for fault classification of the different motion profiles and speed of operations.N