Anatomical changes in the East Asian midface skeleton with aging

Background: Understanding the aging process of the midface skeleton is considered crucial for correct facial rejuvenation. However, the canine fossa, an important morphological feature of the midface skeleton, has not yet been observed in connection with aging, despite the fact that it is the most main part of the maxillary bone. Here, the authors focus on the depression of the canine fossa to evaluate the Asian midface skeleton. Materials and methods: Computed tomography (CT) scans of the facial skeleton of 114 Koreans (59 males and 55 females) were reconstructed to three-dimensional (3D) images using a 3D analysis software programme. The study subjects included 27 young males, 32 old males, 28 young females and 27 old females. The angular measurements of three bony regions were measured for each 3D model: the canine fossa angle (assessing depth of the canine fossa), the maxillary angle (assessing orientation of the lateral maxilla) and the piriform angle (assessing orientation of the medial maxilla). Results: The canine fossa angle showed a statistically significant decrease with aging in both sexes, indicating the canine fossa actually becomes more concave with age. In contrast, the maxillary and piriform angle showed statistically insignificant changes with aging in female subjects. Conclusions: These results suggest that the canine fossa may be one of the effective markers to evaluate the anatomical changes to the facial skeleton with midface aging. (

Stalking influenza by vaccination with pre-fusion headless HA mini-stem.

Inaccuracies in prediction of circulating viral strain genotypes and the possibility of novel reassortants causing a pandemic outbreak necessitate the development of an anti-influenza vaccine with increased breadth of protection and potential for rapid production and deployment. The hemagglutinin (HA) stem is a promising target for universal influenza vaccine as stem-specific antibodies have the potential to be broadly cross-reactive towards different HA subtypes. Here, we report the design of a bacterially expressed polypeptide that mimics a H5 HA stem by protein minimization to focus the antibody response towards the HA stem. The HA mini-stem folds as a trimer mimicking the HA prefusion conformation. It is resistant to thermal/chemical stress, and it binds to conformation-specific, HA stem-directed broadly neutralizing antibodies with high affinity. Mice vaccinated with the group 1 HA mini-stems are protected from morbidity and mortality against lethal challenge by both group 1 (H5 and H1) and group 2 (H3) influenza viruses, the first report of cross-group protection. Passive transfer of immune serum demonstrates the protection is mediated by stem-specific antibodies. Furthermore, antibodies indudced by these HA stems have broad HA reactivity, yet they do not have antibody-dependent enhancement activity

IFNβ Protects Neurons from Damage in a Murine Model of HIV-1 Associated Brain Injury.

Infection with human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) causes brain injury. Type I interferons (IFNα/β) are critical mediators of any anti-viral immune response and IFNβ has been implicated in the temporary control of lentiviral infection in the brain. Here we show that transgenic mice expressing HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein 120 in their central nervous system (HIVgp120tg) mount a transient IFNβ response and provide evidence that IFNβ confers neuronal protection against HIVgp120 toxicity. In cerebrocortical cell cultures, neuroprotection by IFNβ against gp120 toxicity is dependent on IFNα receptor 1 (IFNAR1) and the β-chemokine CCL4, as IFNAR1 deficiency and neutralizing antibodies against CCL4, respectively, abolish the neuroprotective effects. We find in vivo that IFNβ mRNA is significantly increased in HIVgp120tg brains at 1.5, but not 3 or 6 months of age. However, a four-week intranasal IFNβ treatment of HIVgp120tg mice starting at 3.5 months of age increases expression of CCL4 and concomitantly protects neuronal dendrites and pre-synaptic terminals in cortex and hippocampus from gp120-induced damage. Moreover, in vivo and in vitro data suggests astrocytes are a major source of IFNβ-induced CCL4. Altogether, our results suggest exogenous IFNβ as a neuroprotective factor that has potential to ameliorate in vivo HIVgp120-induced brain injury

Wide-Scale Analysis of Human Functional Transcription Factor Binding Reveals a Strong Bias towards the Transcription Start Site

We introduce a novel method to screen the promoters of a set of genes with shared biological function, against a precompiled library of motifs, and find those motifs which are statistically over-represented in the gene set. The gene sets were obtained from the functional Gene Ontology (GO) classification; for each set and motif we optimized the sequence similarity score threshold, independently for every location window (measured with respect to the TSS), taking into account the location dependent nucleotide heterogeneity along the promoters of the target genes. We performed a high throughput analysis, searching the promoters (from 200bp downstream to 1000bp upstream the TSS), of more than 8000 human and 23,000 mouse genes, for 134 functional Gene Ontology classes and for 412 known DNA motifs. When combined with binding site and location conservation between human and mouse, the method identifies with high probability functional binding sites that regulate groups of biologically related genes. We found many location-sensitive functional binding events and showed that they clustered close to the TSS. Our method and findings were put to several experimental tests. By allowing a "flexible" threshold and combining our functional class and location specific search method with conservation between human and mouse, we are able to identify reliably functional TF binding sites. This is an essential step towards constructing regulatory networks and elucidating the design principles that govern transcriptional regulation of expression. The promoter region proximal to the TSS appears to be of central importance for regulation of transcription in human and mouse, just as it is in bacteria and yeast.Comment: 31 pages, including Supplementary Information and figure

Towards a Proof Theory of G\"odel Modal Logics

Analytic proof calculi are introduced for box and diamond fragments of basic modal fuzzy logics that combine the Kripke semantics of modal logic K with the many-valued semantics of G\"odel logic. The calculi are used to establish completeness and complexity results for these fragments

Dynamics of Fluid Vesicles in Oscillatory Shear Flow

The dynamics of fluid vesicles in oscillatory shear flow was studied using differential equations of two variables: the Taylor deformation parameter and inclination angle $\theta$. In a steady shear flow with a low viscosity $\eta_{\rm {in}}$ of internal fluid, the vesicles exhibit steady tank-treading motion with a constant inclination angle $\theta_0$. In the oscillatory flow with a low shear frequency, $\theta$ oscillates between $\pm \theta_0$ or around $\theta_0$ for zero or finite mean shear rate $\dot\gamma_{\rm m}$, respectively. As shear frequency $f_{\gamma}$ increases, the vesicle oscillation becomes delayed with respect to the shear oscillation, and the oscillation amplitude decreases. At high $f_{\gamma}$ with $\dot\gamma_{\rm m}=0$, another limit-cycle oscillation between $\theta_0-\pi$ and $-\theta_0$ is found to appear. In the steady flow, $\theta$ periodically rotates (tumbling) at high $\eta_{\rm {in}}$, and $\theta$ and the vesicle shape oscillate (swinging) at middle $\eta_{\rm {in}}$ and high shear rate. In the oscillatory flow, the coexistence of two or more limit-cycle oscillations can occur for low $f_{\gamma}$ in these phases. For the vesicle with a fixed shape, the angle $\theta$ rotates back to the original position after an oscillation period. However, it is found that a preferred angle can be induced by small thermal fluctuations.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figure

Measurement of proton electromagnetic form factors in e+e−→ppˉe^+e^- \to p\bar{p} in the energy region 2.00-3.08 GeV

The process of $e^+e^- \rightarrow p\bar{p}$ is studied at 22 center-of-mass energy points ($\sqrt{s}$) from 2.00 to 3.08 GeV, exploiting 688.5~pb$^{-1}$ of data collected with the BESIII detector operating at the BEPCII collider. The Born cross section~($\sigma_{p\bar{p}}$) of $e^+e^- \rightarrow p\bar{p}$ is measured with the energy-scan technique and it is found to be consistent with previously published data, but with much improved accuracy. In addition, the electromagnetic form-factor ratio ($|G_{E}/G_{M}|$) and the value of the effective ($|G_{\rm{eff}}|$), electric ($|G_E|$) and magnetic ($|G_M|$) form factors are measured by studying the helicity angle of the proton at 16 center-of-mass energy points. $|G_{E}/G_{M}|$ and $|G_M|$ are determined with high accuracy, providing uncertainties comparable to data in the space-like region, and $|G_E|$ is measured for the first time. We reach unprecedented accuracy, and precision results in the time-like region provide information to improve our understanding of the proton inner structure and to test theoretical models which depend on non-perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics

Search for the decay J/ψ→γ+invisibleJ/\psi\to\gamma + \rm {invisible}

We search for $J/\psi$ radiative decays into a weakly interacting neutral particle, namely an invisible particle, using the $J/\psi$ produced through the process $\psi(3686)\to\pi^+\pi^-J/\psi$ in a data sample of $(448.1\pm2.9)\times 10^6$ $\psi(3686)$ decays collected by the BESIII detector at BEPCII. No significant signal is observed. Using a modified frequentist method, upper limits on the branching fractions are set under different assumptions of invisible particle masses up to 1.2 $\mathrm{\ Ge\kern -0.1em V}/c^2$. The upper limit corresponding to an invisible particle with zero mass is 7.0$\times 10^{-7}$ at the 90\% confidence level

Observation of ηc→ωω\eta_c\to\omega\omega in J/ψ→γωωJ/\psi\to\gamma\omega\omega

Using a sample of $(1310.6\pm7.0)\times10^6$ $J/\psi$ events recorded with the BESIII detector at the symmetric electron positron collider BEPCII, we report the observation of the decay of the $(1^1 S_0)$ charmonium state $\eta_c$ into a pair of $\omega$ mesons in the process $J/\psi\to\gamma\omega\omega$. The branching fraction is measured for the first time to be $\mathcal{B}(\eta_c\to\omega\omega)= (2.88\pm0.10\pm0.46\pm0.68)\times10^{-3}$, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second systematic and the third is from the uncertainty of $\mathcal{B}(J/\psi\to\gamma\eta_c)$. The mass and width of the $\eta_c$ are determined as $M=(2985.9\pm0.7\pm2.1)\,$MeV/$c^2$ and $\Gamma=(33.8\pm1.6\pm4.1)\,$MeV.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure

First observations of hc→h_c \to hadrons

Based on $(4.48 \pm 0.03) \times 10^{8}$ $\psi(3686)$ events collected with the BESIII detector, five $h_c$ hadronic decays are searched for via process $\psi(3686) \to \pi^0 h_c$. Three of them, $h_c \to p \bar{p} \pi^+ \pi^-$, $\pi^+ \pi^- \pi^0$, and $2(\pi^+ \pi^-) \pi^0$ are observed for the first time, with statistical significances of 7.4$\sigma$, $4.9\sigma$, and 9.1$\sigma$, and branching fractions of $(2.89\pm0.32\pm0.55)\times10^{-3}$, $(1.60\pm0.40\pm0.32)\times10^{-3}$, and $(7.44\pm0.94\pm1.56)\times10^{-3}$, respectively, where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second systematic. No significant signal is observed for the other two decay modes, and the corresponding upper limits of the branching fractions are determined to be $B(h_c \to 3(\pi^+ \pi^-) \pi^0)<8.7\times10^{-3}$ and $B(h_c \to K^+ K^- \pi^+ \pi^-)<5.8\times10^{-4}$ at 90% confidence level.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figure