Investigation of LIN-28 Function in Somatic Gonadal Development and Fertility, and Characterization of the LIN-28 Isoforms in C. elegans Hermaphrodites

lin-28 was first characterized as a developmental timing regulator in Caenorhabditis elegans. Loss of lin-28 function (lin-28(lf)) mutants skip the hypodermal cell fates specific to the 2nd larval stage. Here, we studied two aspects of lin-28 which had not yet been investigated. First, we show that lin-28(lf) mutants exhibit reduced fertility associated with abnormal somatic gonadal morphology. In particular, the abnormal spermatheca-uterine valve morphology of lin-28(lf) hermaphrodites traps embryos in the spermatheca, which disrupts ovulation and causes embryonic lethality. The same genes downstream of lin-28 in the regulation of hypodermal developmental timing also act downstream of lin-28 in somatic gonadal morphogenesis and fertility. Importantly, we find that hypodermal expression, but not somatic gonadal expression, of lin-28 is sufficient for restoring normal somatic gonadal morphology in lin-28(lf) mutants. We propose that the abnormal somatic gonadal morphogenesis of lin-28(lf) hermaphrodites results from temporal discoordination between the accelerated hypodermal development and normally timed somatic gonadal development. Thus, our findings exemplify how a cell-intrinsic developmental timing program can also control proper development of other interacting tissues, cell non-autonomously. We also investigated the expression patterns and functions of two lin-28 isoforms in C. elegans. Our analysis of spatial expression patterns suggests that lin-28a and lin-28b are co-expressed in diverse tissues. Consistently, neither of isoform specific knock-out mutant, lin-28a(lf) or lin-28b(lf), exhibits defects in hypodermal development, somatic gonad, or fertility, indicating functional redundancy of two isoforms. Our study will contribute to further investigation of lin-28 isoforms by providing the mutants of each isoform as well as the primary analysis of their phenotypes

Mechanism of Heat Transfer through Porous Media of Inorganic Intumescent Coating in Cone Calorimeter Testing

This work discusses the heat transfer process through a particular form of porous media: an inorganic-based intumescent coating in full-expansion state. Although the thermal mechanism in porous media has been vigorously studied for polymeric/ceramic/metallic foams, less information is available on its application with intumescent-type polymers. This examination demonstrates the procedure of (1) the optimisation of the coating’s internal multicellular structure for numerical modelling, based on topological analyses; (2) the finite element simulation for the coating-sample tested with cone calorimetry; and (3) the quantitative evaluation of the thermal insulation performance of its porous structure by adopting effective thermal conductivity. The modelling technique was verified using measurable data from the cone calorimeter tests. Consistent agreement between the numerical predictions and experimental measurements was achieved over the whole steel-substrate temperature history, based on the clarified thermal boundaries of the specimen and modelling of the combined conduction-radiation transfer. This numerical approach exhibits the impacts of porosity, pore-size, and external thermal load on the medium’s performance, as well as the individual contributions of the component heat transfer modes to the overall process. The full understanding of this thermal mechanism can contribute to the enhancement and optimisation of the thermal insulation performance of a porous-type refractory polymer

ACC of plc thresholds

In this paper, we define potential log canonical threshold and prove that the set of those thresholds satisfies the ascending chain condition (ACC). We also consider collections of sequences of Fano type varieties and we study their basic properties including boundedness

FPGA-Based Low-Power Speech Recognition with Recurrent Neural Networks

In this paper, a neural network based real-time speech recognition (SR) system is developed using an FPGA for very low-power operation. The implemented system employs two recurrent neural networks (RNNs); one is a speech-to-character RNN for acoustic modeling (AM) and the other is for character-level language modeling (LM). The system also employs a statistical word-level LM to improve the recognition accuracy. The results of the AM, the character-level LM, and the word-level LM are combined using a fairly simple N-best search algorithm instead of the hidden Markov model (HMM) based network. The RNNs are implemented using massively parallel processing elements (PEs) for low latency and high throughput. The weights are quantized to 6 bits to store all of them in the on-chip memory of an FPGA. The proposed algorithm is implemented on a Xilinx XC7Z045, and the system can operate much faster than real-time.Comment: Accepted to SiPS 201

Adjoint asymptotic multiplier ideal sheaves

In this paper, we initiate the study of a triple $(X,\Delta,D)$ which consists of a pair $(X,\Delta)$ and a polarizing pseudoeffective divisor $D$. The adjoint asymptotic multiplier ideal sheaf $\mathcal{J}(X,\Delta;\lVert D \rVert)$ associated to the triple gives a simultaneous generalization of the multiplier ideal sheaf $\mathcal{J}(D)$ and asymptotic multiplier ideal sheaf $\mathcal{J}(\lVert D \rVert)$. We describe the closed set defined by the ideal sheaf $\mathcal{J}(X,\Delta;\lVert D \rVert)$ in terms of the minimal model program. We also characterize the case where $\mathcal{J}(X,\Delta;\lVert D \rVert)=\mathcal{O}_X$. Lastly, we also prove a Nadel type vanishing theorem of cohomology using $\mathcal{J}(X,\Delta;\lVert D \rVert)$

Engineering essential genes with a jump board strategy using CRISPR/Cas9

Here, we describe a platformed “jump board” strategy and its application in systematically engineering the essential microRNA let-7 (Fig. 1A-E) and protein coding gene lin-28 (Fig. 1F) in C. elegans. We chose the jump board protospacer sequence (INPP4A) which is (1) comprised of a PAM site and a protospacer antisense to a crRNA with experimentally confirmed high editing efficiency (INPP4A-crRNA), and (2) non-homologous to C. elegans genome, including the genetic balancer we used (mnDp1). Notably, the jump board protospacer contains an EcoRV restriction site, which can be utilized for rapid large-scale genotyping by which HDR events can be identified in the F1 generation (Fig. 1C). Using the jump board strategy, we have so far created 28 let-7 alleles for various experimental purposes, among which 15 alleles showed lethality and require rescue by mnDp1. Note that the let-7 jump board allele (ma393) itself is a new let-7 null allele in which the precursor-let-7 is completely removed