Research on the Higher Education Ideas in Ancient Greece and its Modern Values

Higher education institutions of ancient Greece, represented by the philosophy schools which rose in 387 BC in classical Athens and its history ended in 529 AD, it played a significant role in higher education history. The ideas, systems and structures of higher education institutions had been completed in the form of philosophy schools during these 916 years’ development. Here, the core ideas of them have been reviewed and analyzed at two main aspects: The virtue cultivation, the practical ideas of liberal arts education, the free view reflected in this process worthies our attention too. The continuous research back on them will help us to deepen our understanding of the origin of the university ideas and the development of its systems, and also it will promote the modern value of its spiritual heritages. In practice, universities are the main forces of the modern higher education, while we focus on the system development of the universities, attention should still be drawn that it is the place for virtue cultivation and the truth and freedom pursuing, which are the core parts for the university ideas, they should be well maintained and carried on in the development of the modern universities

Metastable state of gas hydrate during decomposition: a novel phenomenon

Natural gas hydrates are solid compounds with cage-like structures formed by gas and water. An intriguing phenomenon that gas hydrates can dissociate at a low rate below the ice freezing point has been viewed as the metastability of hydrate. The mechanisms of hydrate metastability have been widely studied, and many mechanisms were proposed involving the self-preservation effect, supercooled water-gas-hydrate metastable equilibrium, and supersaturated liquid–gas-hydrate system etc. The metastable state of hydrate could be of crucial significance in the kinetics of hydrate formation and decomposition, heat and mass transfer during gas production processes, and the application of hydrate-based technique involving desalination, energy storage and transportation, and gas separation and sequestration. Few researches have systematically considered this phenomenon, and its mechanism remains unclear. In this work, various mechanisms and hypothesis explaining the metastable state of gas hydrates were introduced and discussed. Further studies are still required to reveal the intrinsic nature of this metastable state of gas hydrate, and this work could give some implications on the existing theory and current status of relevant efforts

Efficient Parallel Implementation of Active Appearance Model Fitting Algorithm on GPU

The active appearance model (AAM) is one of the most powerful model-based object detecting and tracking methods which has been widely used in various situations. However, the high-dimensional texture representation causes very time-consuming computations, which makes the AAM difficult to apply to real-time systems. The emergence of modern graphics processing units (GPUs) that feature a many-core, fine-grained parallel architecture provides new and promising solutions to overcome the computational challenge. In this paper, we propose an efficient parallel implementation of the AAM fitting algorithm on GPUs. Our design idea is fine grain parallelism in which we distribute the texture data of the AAM, in pixels, to thousands of parallel GPU threads for processing, which makes the algorithm fit better into the GPU architecture. We implement our algorithm using the compute unified device architecture (CUDA) on the Nvidia’s GTX 650 GPU, which has the latest Kepler architecture. To compare the performance of our algorithm with different data sizes, we built sixteen face AAM models of different dimensional textures. The experiment results show that our parallel AAM fitting algorithm can achieve real-time performance for videos even on very high-dimensional textures

Effect of growth interruption on optical properties of In-rich InGaN/GaN single quantum well structures

In-rich InGaN/GaN single quantum well (SQW) structures with and without growth interruption (GI) were successfully grown on sapphire substrates by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition. The optical properties were systematically investigated by photoluminescence (PL), selectively excited PL, PL excitation (PLE), and cathodoluminescence (CL) techniques. The integrated PL intensity of the main In-rich InGaN emissions for the sample grown without GI decreased only by a factor of 15.5 when the temperature increased from 11 to 300 K, while that of the sample with GI decreased by about 1040, showing very good quantum efficiency for the sample without GI. The In-rich InGaN SQW emissions have been verified by selectively excited PL spectra and by the different PLE absorption edges. CL observations showed that the epilayer of the sample without GI agglomerated together to form clusters due to the large lattice and thermal mismatches with GaN, which confine the carriers in the clusters and ensure the relatively high quantum efficiency of the sample. The sample with GI showed relatively smooth surface with cluster structures jointed together, which gives two-dimensional QW environment in its energy band structure, and its optical emission is more sensitive to temperatures than that of the sample grown without GI.open7

Hypoxia mitigation by manganese-doped carbon dots for synergistic photodynamic therapy of oral squamous cell carcinoma

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is widely used for cancer treatment due to its non-invasive and precise effectiveness, however, hypoxia in the tumor microenvironment greatly limits the efficacy of photodynamic therapy. Compared with conventional photosensitizers, carbon dots (CDs) have great potential. Therefore, developing a water-soluble, low-toxicity photosensitizer based on CDs is particularly important, especially one that can enhance the photodynamic efficacy using the tumor microenvironment to produce oxygen. Herein, manganese-doped carbon dot (Mn-CDs, ∼2.7 nm) nanoenzymes with excellent biocompatibility were prepared by a solvothermal method using ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid manganese disodium salt hydrate and o-phenylenediamine as precursors. TEM, AFM, HR-TEM, XRD, XPS, FT-IR, ζ potential, DLS, UV-Vis, and PL spectra were used to characterize the Mn-CDs. Cancer resistance was assessed using the CCK-8 kit, calcein AM versus propidium iodide (PI) kit, and the Annexin V-FITC/PI cell apoptosis assay kit. The obtained Mn-CDs have excellent near-infrared emission properties, stability, and efficient 1O2 generation. Notably, the manganese doping renders CDs with catalase (CAT)-like activity, which leads to the decomposition of acidic H2O2in situ to generate O2, enhancing the PDT efficacy against OSCC-9 cells under 635 nm (300 mW·cm−2) irradiation. Thus, this work provides a simple and feasible method for the development of water-soluble photosensitizers with oxygen production, presenting good biosafety for PDT in hypoxic tumors

Phage vB_PaeS-PAJD-1 Rescues Murine Mastitis Infected With Multidrug-Resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a Gram-negative pathogen that causes a variety of infections in humans and animals. Due to the inappropriate use of antibiotics, multi-drug resistant (MDR) P. aeruginosa strains have emerged and are prevailing. In recent years, cow mastitis caused by MDR P. aeruginosa has attracted attention. In this study, a microbial community analysis revealed that P. aeruginosa could be a cause of pathogen-induced cow mastitis. Five MDR P. aeruginosa strains were isolated from milk diagnosed as mastitis positive. To seek an alternative antibacterial agent against MDR, P. aeruginosa, a lytic phage, designated vB_PaeS_PAJD-1 (PAJD-1), was isolated from dairy farm sewage. PAJD-1 was morphologically classified as Siphoviridae and was estimated to be about 57.9 kb. Phage PAJD-1 showed broad host ranges and a strong lytic ability. A one-step growth curve analysis showed a relatively short latency period (20 min) and a relatively high burst size (223 PFU per infected cell). Phage PAJD-1 remained stable over wide temperature and pH ranges. Intramammary-administered PAJD-1 reduced bacterial concentrations and repaired mammary glands in mice with mastitis induced by MDR P. aeruginosa. Furthermore, the cell wall hydrolase (termed endolysin) from phage PAJD-1 exhibited a strong bacteriolytic and a wide antibacterial spectrum against MDR P. aeruginosa. These findings present phage PAJD-1 as a candidate for phagotherapy against MDR P. aeruginosa infection

Moderating effects of perceived social support on self-efficacy and psychological well-being of Chinese nurses: a cross-sectional study

IntroductionNurses experience significant physical and psychological stress that negatively influences their psychological well-being. The objective of this study was to explore the association between self-efficacy and psychological well-being among Chinese nurses and to assess the moderating effects of perceived social support (PSS).MethodsIn 2020, a hospital-based cross-sectional study using a multistage random sampling approach was performed in five regions of Liaoning, China. Of the 1,200 surveyed nurses, 1,010 completed questionnaires that evaluated the demographic information, 14-item Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, General Self-Efficacy Scale, and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. To examine the factors associated with mental health parameters, hierarchical multiple regression analysis was performed. The interactions were visualized using a simple slope analysis.ResultsThe mean depression and anxiety scores for Chinese nurses were 8.74 ± 3.50 and 6.18 ± 3.26, respectively. The association between self-efficacy and depression differed between the low perceived social support (PSS) group (1 SD below the mean, β = −0.169, p < 0.01) and high PSS group (1 SD above the mean, β = −0.077, p < 0.01). Similarly, the association between self-efficacy and anxiety differed between the low PSS group (1 SD below the mean, β = −0.155, p < 0.01) and high PSS group (1 SD above the mean, β = −0.044, p < 0.01).ConclusionWe found that Chinese nurses experienced high levels of anxiety and depression. Furthermore, PSS moderates the relationship between self-efficacy and psychological well-being. Therefore, interventions targeting self-efficacy and PSS should be implemented to improve the psychological well-being of nurses

A genetic study and meta-analysis of the genetic predisposition of prostate cancer in a Chinese population.

Prostate cancer predisposition has been extensively investigated in European populations, but there have been few studies of other ethnic groups. To investigate prostate cancer susceptibility in the under-investigated Chinese population, we performed single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array analysis on a cohort of Chinese cases and controls and then meta-analysis with data from the existing Chinese prostate cancer genome-wide association study (GWAS). Genotyping 211,155 SNPs in 495 cases and 640 controls of Chinese ancestry identified several new suggestive Chinese prostate cancer predisposition loci. However, none of them reached genome-wide significance level either by meta-analysis or replication study. The meta-analysis with the Chinese GWAS data revealed that four 8q24 loci are the main contributors to Chinese prostate cancer risk and the risk alleles from three of them exist at much higher frequencies in Chinese than European populations. We also found that several predisposition loci reported in Western populations have different effect on Chinese men. Therefore, this first extensive single-nucleotide polymorphism study of Chinese prostate cancer in comparison with European population indicates that four loci on 8q24 contribute to a great risk of prostate cancer in a considerable large proportion of Chinese men. Based on those four loci, the top 10% of the population have six- or two-fold prostate cancer risk compared with men of the bottom 10% or median risk respectively, which may facilitate the design of prostate cancer genetic risk screening and prevention in Chinese men. These findings also provide additional insights into the etiology and pathogenesis of prostate cancer.This work was conducted on behalf of the CHIPGECS and The PRACTICAL consortia (see Supplementary Consortia). We acknowledge the contribution of doctors, nurses and postgraduate research students at the CHIPGENCS sample collecting centers. We thank Orchid and Rosetrees for funding support. This work was also supported by National Natural Science foundation of China for funding support to H Zhang (Grant No: 30671793 and 81072377), N Feng (Grant No: 81272831), X Zhang (Grant No: 30572139, 30872924 and 81072095), S Zhao (Grant No: 81072092 and 81328017), Y Yu (Grant No: 81172448) and Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University from Department of Education of China (NCET-08-0223) and the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program 2012AA021101) to X Zhang.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Impact Journals via http://dx.doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.725

A high-quality human reference panel reveals the complexity and distribution of genomic structural variants

Structural variation (SV) represents a major source of differences between individual human genomes and has been linked to disease phenotypes. However, the majority of studies provide neither a global view of the full spectrum of these variants nor integrate them into reference panels of genetic variation. Here, we analyse whole genome sequencing data of 769 individuals from 250 Dutch families, and provide a haplotype-resolved map of 1.9 million genome variants across 9 different variant classes, including novel forms of complex indels, and retrotransposition-mediated insertions of mobile elements and processed RNAs. A large proportion are previously under reported variants sized between 21 and 100 bp. We detect 4 megabases of novel sequence, encoding 11 new transcripts. Finally, we show 191 known, trait-associated SNPs to be in strong linkage disequilibrium with SVs and demonstrate that our panel facilitates accurate imputation of SVs in unrelated individuals