Lysine residues of interferon regulatory factor 7 affect the replication and transcription activatormediated lytic replication of Kaposi’s sarcomaassociated herpesvirus/human herpesvirus 8

Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) infection goes through latent and lytic phases, which are controlled by the viral replication and transcription activator (RTA). Upon KSHV infection, the host responds by suppressing RTA-activated lytic gene expression through interferon regulatory factor 7 (IRF-7), a key regulator of host innate immune response. Lysine residues are potential sites for post-translational modification of IRF-7, and were suggested to be critical for its activity. In this study, we analysed the 15 lysine residues for their effects on IRF-7 function by site-directed mutagenesis. We found that some mutations affect the ability of IRF-7 to activate interferon (IFN)-a1 and IFN-b promoters, to suppress RTA-mediated lytic gene expression and to repress KSHV reactivation and lytic replication. However, other mutations affect only a subset of these four functions. These findings demonstrate that the lysine residues of IRF-7 play important roles in mediating IFN synthesis and modulating viral lytic replication

Will Good Service Quality Promote Real Estate Value? Evidence from Beijing, China

In the field of land use and urban management, real estate value-added issues have attracted much attention. Previous studies mainly focused on the premium of basic public services (such as infrastructure) in real estate value. As an important part of urban management, the contribution of property service is often underestimated. Few empirical studies mentioned the potential contribution of property service quality. Based on this, this paper aims to confirm and quantitatively evaluate the premium of good service quality in real estate value utilizing 155,845 samples of housing resale transactions in Beijing from 2012 to 2019. Furthermore, we also explore the dynamics and heterogeneity of the above premium. Our results show the following: Firstly, good service quality does show premium in real estate value, and the higher the service quality, the greater the premium in housing price. Secondly, this premium keeps increasing during our study period. With urbanization and rising incomes of residents, property service is increasingly important. Thirdly, the contribution of service quality to real estate value is greater when serviced houses have a higher price or larger area, are relatively newer, or further away from the city center. The findings of this current research not only deepen our understanding of service quality’s premium in real estate value, but also provide implications for urban management

How Does Urban Green Space Impact Residents’ Mental Health: A Literature Review of Mediators

In recent years, the interest in the relationship between urban green space and residents’ mental health has gradually risen. A number of researchers have investigated the causal relationship and possible mediators between the two, although few have summarized these mediators. For this reason, we searched for relevant studies and filtered them by criteria and quality score, and analyzed the mediators and paths of the impact of urban green space on residents’ mental health. The mediators can be divided into environmental factors, outdoor activity, and social cohesion. From the perspective of heterogeneity, both individual characteristics (e.g., age and gender) and group characteristics (e.g., level of urban development and urban density) of residents are considered to be the cause of various mediating effects. Types of urban green space tend to affect residents’ mental health through different paths. Furthermore, this review discusses the details of each part under the influence paths. Finally, the policy implications for urban green space planning from three mediator levels are put forward based on an analysis of the situation in different countries

Ultrasonic welding of CFRTP based on structured surfaces

Ultrasonic plastic welding is an efficient and green welding method, which has been widely used in the joining of carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic composites (CFRTP) in recent years. An important step in the ultrasonic welding of CFRTP is the design of the welding joint, which largely determines the weld quality. An ultrasonic CFRTP welding method based on structured surfaces was proposed, that is, the surface of the workpiece is structured by ultrasonic embossing before welding, and energy director are processed. Taking carbon fiber reinforced nylon 66 (CF/PA66) as the research object, the effect of structured surface and welding energy on the weld formation was studied. Microstructure, tensile-shear performance and fracture characteristics of welded joint were analyzed. The results show that compared with the unstructured surface, the structured surface acting as energy director that can effectively concentrate welding energy and greatly reduce the randomness and dispersion of weld distribution, thereby improve the weld quality. Moreover, fewer defects in the weld joint can be obtained by pre-structuring two contacting surfaces

Are Updatable Learned Indexes Ready?

Recently, numerous promising results have shown that updatable learned indexes can perform better than traditional indexes with much lower memory space consumption. But it is unknown how these learned indexes compare against each other and against the traditional ones under realistic workloads with changing data distributions and concurrency levels. This makes practitioners still wary about how these new indexes would actually behave in practice. To fill this gap, this paper conducts the first comprehensive evaluation on updatable learned indexes. Our evaluation uses ten real datasets and various workloads to challenge learned indexes in three aspects: performance, memory space efficiency and robustness. Based on the results, we give a series of takeaways that can guide the future development and deployment of learned indexes.Comment: PVLDB Vol. 15 Issue 1

Effect of ultrasonic embossing and welding time on the joint performance of ultrasonically welded short carbon fiber reinforced PEEK

Ultrasonic plastic welding (UPW) is a highly efficient and environmental friendly method that has gained gradually increased attention in joining carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic (CFRTP). A crucial aspect in UPW of CFRTP is the design of the energy director (ED). This paper employs ultrasonic embossing, a cost-effective way to manufacture ED on the surface of CFRTP sheets. The effect of ultrasonic embossing time and welding time on the joint performance is investigated in terms of microstructure, tensile-shear property, and fracture surface morphology. The results show that the structured surface made by ultrasonic embossing can be used as ED to concentrate welding energy. This process reduces the randomness and dispersion of weld distribution, improves the failure load of welded joints by 30 % compared with the joints made without using ED. The ultrasonic embossing time has a limited influence on the joint failure load. Sound welded joints can be obtained when welding with one structured surface and welding time of 1.5 s

Extracellular matrix-derived peptide stimulates the generation of endocrine progenitors and islet organoids from iPSCs

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have enormous potential in producing human tissues endlessly. We previously reported that type V collagen (COL5), a pancreatic extracellular matrix protein, promotes islet development and maturation from iPSCs. In this study, we identified a bioactive peptide domain of COL5, WWASKS, through bioinformatic analysis of decellularized pancreatic ECM (dpECM)-derived collagens. RNA-sequencing suggests that WWASKS induces the formation of pancreatic endocrine progenitors while suppressing the development of other types of organs. The expressions of hypoxic genes were significantly downregulated in the endocrine progenitors formed under peptide stimulation. Furthermore, we unveiled an enhancement of iPSC-derived islets’ (i-islets) glucose sensitivity under peptide stimulation. These i-islets secrete insulin in a glucose responsive manner. They were comprised of α, β, δ, and γ cells and were assembled into a tissue architecture similar to that of human islets. Mechanistically, the peptide is able to activate the canonical Wnt signaling pathway, permitting the translocation of β-catenin from the cytoplasm to the nucleus for pancreatic progenitor development. Collectively, for the first time, we demonstrated that an ECM-derived peptide dictates iPSC fate toward the generation of endocrine progenitors and subsequent islet organoids