The association between GAD1 gene polymorphisms and cerebral palsy in Chinese infants

Studies suggest that GAD1 gene was a functional candidate susceptibility gene for cerebral palsy (CP). In order to investigate the contribution of GAD1 gene to the etiology of CP in Chinese infants, we carried out a case-control association study between GAD1 gene and CP. In this study, 374 health controls and 392 infants with CP were recruited. Genomic DNA was extracted from venous blood and all three single nucleotide polymorphisms in GAD1 (rs3791874, rs3791862 and rs16858977) were genotyped by Sequenom’s MassARRAY system. There were no significant differences in allele or genotype frequencies between CP or mixed CP patients and controls at any of the three genetic polymorphisms. Through haplotype analysis we found that haplotype GG (rs3791862, rs16858977) frequency demonstrated significantly statistical difference between mixed CP patients and controls (p= 0.0371). Our positive findings of haplotype GG suggested that variation of GAD1 gene was an important risk factor for mixed CP.Предполагается, что ген GAD1 является функциональным кандидатом на роль гена подверженности церебральному параличу (ЦП). Для исследования вклада гена GAD1 в этиологию ЦП у китайских детей методом случай – контроль проведено исследование ассоциации между наличием гена GAD1 и ЦП. В исследовании были задействованы 374 здоровых ребенка (контроль) и 392 ребенка с ЦП. Геномную ДНК выделяли из венозной крови, и все три единичных нуклеотидных полиморфизма гена GAD1 (rs3791874, rs3791862 и rs16858977) были генотипированы в системе Sequenom MassARRAY. Ни для одного из трех генетических полиморфизмов не обнаружено существенных различий в частотах аллелей или генотипов между больными ЦП или смешанными больными ЦП и контролем. Анализ гаплотипов показал существенные статистические различия в частоте гаплотипа GG (rs3791862, rs16858977) у смешанных больных ЦП и контрольной группы (p = 0.0371). Позитивный результат по гаплотипу GG свидетельствует о том, что вариация гена GAD1 является важным фактором риска для смешанного ЦП

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Effects of Earthworm Cast Application on Water Evaporation and Storage in Loess Soil Column Experiments

Earthworm cast is a common bio-organic fertiliser, which can effectively improve soil fertility and structure. However, only a few studies have focused on the effect of earthworm cast on soil water movement. In this study, loess soil was used to determine the effects of earthworm cast application on soil evaporation. The effects on water storage capacity and capillary upward movement were also investigated. A laboratory-based soil column experiment using earthworm cast with different particle sizes (1–3 × 1–2 cm and 3–5 × 2–4 cm) and three application doses (5%, 7.5%, and 10%) was carried out. The daily evaporation and volume of capillary ascension were monitored. The addition of earthworm cast clearly affected the soil evaporation by changing soil water storage capacity and capillary water upward movement. Compared with control soil, the application of 5% small-particle cast reduced the soil cumulative evaporation by 5.13%, while the cumulative evaporation was higher in all large-particle cast treatments. The upward capillary water movement increased with increasing dose of earthworm cast, but decreased with increasing particle size. Overall, the addition of earthworm cast clearly enhanced the water storage capacity of the soil, with the small-particle cast having greater effects than the large-particle cast. We concluded that the application of 5% small-particle earthworm cast can enhance soil water retention and reduce soil evaporation

脉宽调制变量控制喷头雾化性能及风洞环境雾滴沉积特性

Pulse width modulation (PWM) technology is an important means to achieve variable spray, and is attracting more and more researchers' attention due to its short reaction time, fast response, large flow adjustment range and good spray characteristics using conventional nozzles. But during the actual spraying process, its working parameters and environmental conditions could influence the spray accuracy seriously. In order to investigate the atomization and deposition characteristics of the PWM variable-rate nozzle, a pulse width modulation variable spraying system was designed to study the spraying atomization and deposition characteristics of TR80-005C hollow cone spray nozzle commonly used in agricultural application. In order to maintain a stable environmental condition to produce setting wind speed, the experiments were carried out in the type IEA-II wind tunnel designed by Agricultural Intelligent Equipment Technology Research Center. A dot matrix placement capacitive droplet deposition monitoring sensor was used to detect spray deposition in real time. To effectively evaluate the ground deposition properties of the wind tunnel environment, deposition evaluation index (DEIX) was deduced based on drift potional index (DIX). DEIX is inversely proportional to DIX, the smaller the DEIX value, the smaller the potential of droplet deposition, which means that the possibility of drift loss is greater. The Spraytec droplet size meter was sued to test the droplet volume median diameter (VMD) and the relative span of the droplets (RS) to determine the relationship between duty cycle and spraying atomization performance. The experiment was carried out at the Xiaotangshan National Precision Agriculture Research Station in Changping district of Beijing city. The test devices were mainly composed of PWM variable-rate spraying system, IEA-II conventional-speed wind tunnel, laser particle size analyzer and deposition measurement sensor network system. Before tests, all systems were powered on and warm up for 30 minutes. In the droplet size tests, the nozzle was placed 0.5 m directly above the droplet size analyzer, the test pressure was set to 0.4 MPa, the PWM frequency was set to 1 Hz, and the duty cycle was set to 10%-60% at the interval of 10%. Tap water was used as the spraying solution, and each setting repeated 5 times. For the droplet deposition characteristic tests, droplet deposition sensor was arranged at the bottom of the wind tunnel, the sensors were arranged in 5 rows (1 m spacing) and 3 columns (0.55 m spacing) on the vertical wind direction, and were numbered 1 to 15 starting from the upper side to the bottom of the upper side. The nozzle was fixed at the top of the wind tunnel, and the height of the relative deposition sensor was set to 1and 1.5 m respectively, and the horizontal distance between the nozzle and the first column deposition sensor was 1.3 m, the wind speed was set to 1-5 m/s, PWM frequency was set to 1 Hz and duty cycle was 10%-60%, spraying time was set as 10 s, the spraying pressure was set as 0.4 MPa. At the beginning of the test, the sensors saved datas in real time and transmitted it back to the computer. The test results showed that when the duty cycle was between 10%-40%, the VMD decreased with the increases of duty cycle, VMD was 122.3 μm at 60% duty cycle, which increased by 1.8 μm compared with that of at 40% duty cycle. When the PWM duty cycle was 60%, the RS was the smallest, compared with that of duty cycle at 20%, the RS decreased by 9.52%, that means that the droplet spectrum was the narrowest, and droplet size distribution was the most concentrated. In the deposition test, under the condition of wind speed at 1 m/s, droplets were mainly deposited within 3.3 m from the nozzle, which accounted for 95.7% of the total deposition. When the wind speed exceeded 3 m/s, the droplet settling distance increased under the action of the airflow, which may increase the possibility of spray drift. With increase of the duty cycle, DEIX value decreased and the drift rate of the droplets increased. Under the same working conditions, the larger the wind speed and the nozzle height, the smaller the DEIX and the easier spray drift. This study provides a basis for the practical application of pulse width modulation variable application techniques and PWM working condition parameters selection in agricultural field production, and provides a theoretical basis for further optimization of PWM variable adjustment devices

Modeling and Experimental Validation of the Atomization Efficiency of a Rotary Atomizer for Aerial Spraying

Rotary atomizers are mainly used in agricultural manned aircrafts. Atomization characteristics at high speeds have been studied, but methods to measure the atomization efficiency have not been elucidated. The atomization efficiency of rotary atomizers under high-speed airflow was investigated using an IEA-I high-speed wind tunnel experimental installation, AU5000 rotary atomizer, and a laser diffraction particle size analyzer. Accordingly, a model equation for atomization efficiency measurements was innovatively obtained. When the flow rate, fan blade angle of the atomizer, and wind speed were used as variables, the experimental results showed that the atomization efficiency mainly depended on the fan blade angle. When the fan blade angle was 35°, the atomization efficiency was optimal, regardless of wind speed. In contrast, when the fan blade angle of the atomizer was 65°, it exhibited the worst atomization efficiency, regardless of the wind speed. The experimental data from this study can provide guidance for aerial application in fixed-wing manned aircraft, such as the flow rate, and operating speed

Development of an Electrochemical Biosensor for Rapid and Effective Detection of Pathogenic Escherichia coli in Licorice Extract

An aptamer-based electrochemical biosensor was successfully developed and applied in the rapid detection of pathogenic Escherichia coli (E. coli) in licorice extract. The thiolated capture probes were firstly immobilized on a gold electrode, and then the biotinylated aptamer probes for E. coli were introduced by hybridization with the capture probes. Due to the stronger interaction between the aptamer and the E. coli, a part of the biotinylated aptamers will dissociate from the capture probes in the presence of E. coli. The residual biotinylated aptamer probes can quantitatively bind with streptavidin-alkaline phosphatase. Subsequently, α-naphthyl phosphate substrate was catalytically hydrolyzed to generate electrochemical response, which could be recorded by a differential pulse voltammetry. The dependence of the peak current on the logarithm of E. coli concentration in the range from 5.0 × 102 colony forming units (CFU)/mL to 5.0 × 107 CFU/mL exhibited a linear trend with a detection limit of 80 CFU/mL. The relative standard deviation of 5 successive scans was 5.3%, 4.5% and 1.1% for 5.0 × 102, 5.0 × 105 and 5.0 × 107 CFU/mL E. coli, respectively. In the detection of the licorice extract samples, the results obtained from the proposed strategy and traditional culture counting method were close to each other, but the time consumption was only ~1/30 compared with the traditional method. These results demonstrate that the designed biosensor can be potentially utilized for rapid microbial examination in traditional Chinese medicine and relevant fields