An Overview of Researches on Biolinguistics

In 1997 in memory of the 40th anniversary of transformational-generative grammar, Jenkins wrote the article “Biolinguistics: structure development and evolution of language”, which helped produce large number of scholarly monographs and papers with respect to biolinguistics. Simultaneously, a series of relevant international academic seminars were successfully held. This paper, based on the summarization of research status quo on biolinguistics, looks forward to the future development of biolinguistics so as to help predict the tendency of biolinguistic researches

Chloride Diffusivity and Life Prediction of Cracked RC Beams Exposed to Different Wet-Dry Ratios and Exposure Duration

Effects of crack width, wet-dry ratio, and exposure duration of wet-dry cycles on chloride ingress of RC beams were experimentally studied. Crack widths of 40, 70, 90, and 120 microns were, respectively, induced by three-point flexural loading and four wet-dry ratios (seawater spraying 1 d in one wet-dry cycle) of 1 : 3, 1 : 7, 1 : 11, and 1 : 15 were selected. Chloride contents of RC beams were tested every 32 d (or 16 d) of wet-dry cycles. Results show that chloride content increased significantly when crack width was larger than 90 microns and wet-dry ratio was 1 : 3, and it increased slightly when crack width was 120 microns and wet-dry ratio was 1 : 7, 1 : 11, and 1 : 15. The chloride content on steel bar surface became the largest when crack width was less than 90 microns and wet-dry ratio was 1 : 7, and while crack width was equal to or greater than 90 microns and wet-dry ratio was 1 : 3, it was the largest. Based on the testing results, chloride diffusion model and prediction model of residual service life of RC beams were suggested considering combined effects of crack width and exposure duration. The predicted residual service lives were corresponding well with experimental results and they decreased as crack width increased

Graphene-directed two-dimensional porous carbon frameworks for high-performance lithium–sulfur battery cathodes

Graphene-directed two-dimensional (2D) nitrogen-doped porous carbon frameworks (GPF) as the hosts for sulfur were constructed via the ionothermal polymerization of 1,4-dicyanobenzene directed by the polyacrylonitrile functionalized graphene nanosheets. As cathodes for lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries, the prepared GPF/sulfur nanocomposites exhibited a high capacity up to 962 mA h g⁻¹ after 120 cycles at 2 A g⁻¹. A high reversible capacity of 591 mA h g⁻¹ was still retained even at an extremely large current density of 20 A g⁻¹. Such impressive electrochemical performance of GPF should benefit from the 2D hierarchical porous architecture with an extremely high specific surface area, which could facilitate the efficient entrapment of sulfur and polysulfides and afford rapid charge transfer, fast electronic conduction as well as intimate contact between active materials and the electrolyte during cycling

ChemRL-GEM: Geometry Enhanced Molecular Representation Learning for Property Prediction

Effective molecular representation learning is of great importance to facilitate molecular property prediction, which is a fundamental task for the drug and material industry. Recent advances in graph neural networks (GNNs) have shown great promise in applying GNNs for molecular representation learning. Moreover, a few recent studies have also demonstrated successful applications of self-supervised learning methods to pre-train the GNNs to overcome the problem of insufficient labeled molecules. However, existing GNNs and pre-training strategies usually treat molecules as topological graph data without fully utilizing the molecular geometry information. Whereas, the three-dimensional (3D) spatial structure of a molecule, a.k.a molecular geometry, is one of the most critical factors for determining molecular physical, chemical, and biological properties. To this end, we propose a novel Geometry Enhanced Molecular representation learning method (GEM) for Chemical Representation Learning (ChemRL). At first, we design a geometry-based GNN architecture that simultaneously models atoms, bonds, and bond angles in a molecule. To be specific, we devised double graphs for a molecule: The first one encodes the atom-bond relations; The second one encodes bond-angle relations. Moreover, on top of the devised GNN architecture, we propose several novel geometry-level self-supervised learning strategies to learn spatial knowledge by utilizing the local and global molecular 3D structures. We compare ChemRL-GEM with various state-of-the-art (SOTA) baselines on different molecular benchmarks and exhibit that ChemRL-GEM can significantly outperform all baselines in both regression and classification tasks. For example, the experimental results show an overall improvement of 8.8% on average compared to SOTA baselines on the regression tasks, demonstrating the superiority of the proposed method

Integrated saccade latency as a measure of fatigue

INTRODUCTION: High workload, long working hours and inadequate sleep patterns can have deleterious effects on an individual’s performance. Fatigue is often linked with compromised cognitive and motor function. Our information processing system becomes overloaded and unable to monitor and suppress irrelevant information. Subsequent changes in oculomotor parameters and cortical processing times may therefore provide useful biomarkers to assess one’s state of fatigue. We propose a new non-invasive method to quantify fatigue by measuring Eye Movement And Intrinsic Latencies (EMAIL) without the use of any eye-tracking equipment. METHODS: The test is easy to perform and employs a Landolt C flanked by ring distractors. The test is presented at an eccentricity of 8°, randomly on either side of fixation point within ±5° elevation. The measurement variable is the time of presentation, δT. The subject’s task is to saccade to the peripheral target, register the orientation of the gap and respond by pressing one of four buttons. The EMAIL test measures the presentation time, δT, the subject needs to detect the peripheral target, generate an appropriate eye-movement and register the orientation of the gap. RESULTS: The EMAIL test was used to measure the stimulus presentation times needed to achieve 73% correct responses (using a one up, two down staircase). These times were subject specific and ranged from 165 to 200ms in the absence of fatigue. We investigated how, δT, is affected by exposure to other visually demanding tasks and levels of controlled fatigue. Measured integrated oculomotor responses such as latencies and visual processing times were found to increase significantly following demanding visual tasks by as much as 20ms, but only when fatigued. Preliminary findings using the EMAIL test also show that this technique can be used to investigate the effect of stimulants such as caffeine and depressants, such as alcohol. CONCLUSIONS: The EMAIL test provides a simple method to measure oculomotor parameters and to investigate how these are affected by fatigue. This method can be incorporated in the overall safety management system that is often needed in a number of work areas that involve visually-demanding and safety-critical tasks. The measured parameters provide information about an individual’s level of alertness and may also be of relevance in other industries in order to evaluate drugs developed to control fatigue

Anger Emotional Stress Influences VEGF/VEGFR2 and Its Induced PI3K/AKT/mTOR Signaling Pathway

Objective. We discuss the influence of anger emotional stress upon VEGF/VEGFR2 and its induced PI3K/AKT/mTOR signal pathway. Methods. We created a rat model of induced anger (anger-out and anger-in) emotional response using social isolation and resident-intruder paradigms and assessed changes in hippocampus’ VEGF content, neuroplasticity, and the PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway. Results. The resident-intruder method successfully generated anger-out and anger-in models that differed significantly in composite aggression score, aggression incubation, open field behavior, sucrose preference, and weight gain. Anger emotional stress decreased synaptic connections and VEGFR2 expression. Anger emotional stress led to abnormal expression of VEGF/VEGFR2 mRNA and protein and disorderly expression of key factors in the PI3K/AKT/mTOR signal pathway. Fluoxetine administration ameliorated behavioral abnormalities and damage to hippocampal neurons caused by anger emotional stress, as well as abnormal expression of some proteins in VEGF/VEGFR2 and its induced PI3K/AKT/mTOR signal pathway. Conclusion. This research provides a detailed classification of anger emotion and verifies its influence upon VEGF and the VEGF-induced signaling pathway, thus providing circumstantial evidence of mechanisms by which anger emotion damages neurogenesis. As VEGFR2 can promote neurogenesis and vasculogenesis in the hippocampus and frontal lobe, these results suggest that anger emotional stress can result in decreased neurogenesis

An L1 box binding protein, GbML1, interacts with GbMYB25 to control cotton fibre development

Transcription factors play key roles in plant development through their interaction with cis-elements and/or other transcription factors. A HD-Zip IV family transcription factor, Gossypium barbadense Meristem Layer 1 (GbML1) has been identified and characterized here. GbML1 specifically bound to the L1 box and the promoters of GbML1 and GbRDL1. GbML1 physically interacted with a key regulator of cotton fibre development, GbMYB25. Truncated and point mutation assays indicated the START–SAD domain was required for the binding to the C terminal domain (CTD) of GbMYB25. GbML1 overexpression in Arabidopsis increased the number of trichomes on stems and leaves and increased the accumulation of anthocyanin in leaves. Taken together, the L1 box binding protein, GbML1 was identified as the first partner for GbMYB25 and the role of START domain was discovered to be a protein binding domain in plants. Our findings will help the improvement of cotton fibre production and the understanding of the key role of HD-Zip family and MYB family in plants

Selectivity control in photocatalytic valorization of biomass-derived platform compounds by surface engineering of titanium oxide

化学化工学院王野教授课题组与程俊教授课题组合作，在生物质光催化选择转化方面取得重要突破。研究团队发展了一种调控TiO2表面结构以控制生物质转化途径的新方法，率先实现多种木质纤维素平台分子的光催化还原选择性调控，获得高产率的加氢产物(精细化学品)或偶联产物(燃料前驱体)。该论文第一作者为化学化工学院2015级博士毕业生吴雪娇、2015级博士毕业生李洁琼和固体表面物理化学国家重点实验室谢顺吉博士。【Abstract】Photocatalysis has offered a promising opportunity for selective transformation of biomass to high-value chemicals or fuels under mild conditions. Whereas titanium oxide has been widely used for photocatalytic pollutant degradation, H2 evolution, and CO2 reduction, few studies have been devoted to TiO2-based photocatalytic valorization of biomass or biomass-derived platform compounds. Here, we report on surface-controlled photocatalysis of TiO2 for selective valorization of furfurals and vanillin that are lignocellulose-derived key platform compounds. The reaction can be switched from hydrogenation of aldehyde group to C–C coupling by manipulating exposed facets; furanic and aromatic alcohols or coupling products, which are fine chemicals or jet-fuel precursors, could be produced with high selectivity. Our studies elucidate that the facet-dependent density of oxygen vacancies governs the charge distribution and adsorption strength of surface species and thus controls product selectivity. The present work offers an example of selectivity control by engineering TiO2 surfaces for valorization of biomass-derived feedstocks.This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 21690082 and 21972115). 论文中相关研究工作得到国家自然科学基金(21690082、21972115)等项目的资助