Molecular Genetics of Keratoconus: Clinical Implications

Occurrence of keratoconus is pan-ethnic with reported prevalence ranging widely from 1:400 to about 1:8000, higher in Asian than Western populations. Its genetics is complex with undefined pattern of inheritance. Familial traits are also known. More than 50 gene loci and 200 variants are associated with keratoconus, some through association studies with quantitative traits of cornea features including curvature and central thickness. Environmental, behavioral, and epigenetic factors are also involved in the etiology, likely interactively with genetic susceptibility. Regardless of sex and age of disease onset, clinical courses and responses to treatment vary. Keratoconus is a major cause of cornea transplantation and is potentially blinding. Currently collagen cross-linking provides effective treatment although responses from some patients can be unpredictable with complications. Early diagnosis is vital to obtain good treatment outcome, but in many patients early signs and symptoms are not obvious. While there are potential biomarkers, reliable pre-symptomatic detection and prediction of treatment response may require multitude of gene variants, cornea properties, and external risk factors

Structural results on convexity relative to cost functions

Mass transportation problems appear in various areas of mathematics, their solutions involving cost convex potentials. Fenchel duality also represents an important concept for a wide variety of optimization problems, both from the theoretical and the computational viewpoints. We drew a parallel to the classical theory of convex functions by investigating the cost convexity and its connections with the usual convexity. We give a generalization of Jensen's inequality for cost convex functions.Comment: 10 page

Chicken Farming in Grassland Increases Environmental Sustainability and Economic Efficiency

Background: Grassland degradation caused by overgrazing poses a threat to both animal husbandry and environmental sustainability in most semi-arid areas especially north China. Although the Chinese Government has made huge efforts to restore degraded grasslands, a considerable attempt has unfortunately failed due to an inadequate consideration of economic benefits to local communities. Methodology/Principal Findings: A controlled field experiment was conducted to test our hypothesis that utilizing natural grasslands as both habitat and feed resources for chickens and replacing the traditional husbandry system with chicken farming would increase environmental sustainability and raise income. Aboveground plant biomass elevated from 25 g m22 for grazing sheep to 84 g m22 for chicken farming. In contrast to the fenced (unstocked) grassland, chicken farming did not significantly decrease aboveground plant biomass, but did increase the root biomass by 60% (p,0.01). Compared with traditional sheep grazing, chicken farming significantly improved soil surface water content (0–10 cm), from 5% to 15%. Chicken farming did not affect the soil bulk density, while the traditional sheep grazing increased the soil bulk density in the 0–10 cm soil layer by 35% of the control (p,0.05). Most importantly, the economic income of local herdsmen has been raised about six times compared with the traditional practice of raising sheep. Ecologically, such an innovative solution allowed large degraded grasslands to naturally regenerate. Grasslands also provided a high quality organic poultry product which could be marketed in big cities. Conclusion/Significance: Chicken farming is an innovative alternative strategy for increasing environmental sustainability and economic income, rather than a challenge to the traditional nomadic pastoral system. Our approach might be technically applicable to other large degraded grasslands of the world, especially in China

Geometric texture indicators for safety on AC pavements with 1mm 3D laser texture data

AbstractSurface texture and friction are two primary characteristics for pavement safety evaluation. Understanding their relationship is critical to reduce potential traffic crashes especially at wet conditions. Texture data obtained from existing systems are restricted on either a small portion on pavement surface or one line-of-sight profile, and the currently used texture indicators, such as Mean Profile Depth (MPD), and Mean Texture Depth (MTD) only reveal partial aspects of texture property. With the emerging 3D laser imaging technology, acquiring full-lane 3D pavement surface data at sub-millimeter resolution and at highway speeds has been made possible via the newly developed PaveVision3D Ultra data collection system. In this study using 1mm 3D data collected from PaveVision3D Ultra, four types of texture indicators (amplitude, spacing, hybrid, and functional parameters) are calculated to represent various texture properties for pavement friction estimation. The relationships among those texture indicators and pavement friction are examined. MPD and Skewness – two height texture parameters, Texture Aspect Ratio (TAR) – a spatial parameter, and Surface Bearing Index (SBI) – a functional parameter are found to be the four most contributing parameters for pavement friction prediction. Finally a multivariate regression model is developed based on residual plot analysis methods to estimate pavement friction with the R-squared value of 0.95. This study would be beneficial in the continuous measurement and evaluation of pavement safety for project- and network-level pavement surveys

New examples of Willmore submanifolds in the unit sphere via isoparametric functions,II

This paper is a continuation of a paper with the same title of the last two authors. In the first part of the present paper, we give a unified geometric proof that both focal submanifolds of every isoparametric hypersurface in spheres with four distinct principal curvatures are Willmore. In the second part, we completely determine which focal submanifolds are Einstein except one case.Comment: 19 pages,to appear in Annals of Global Analysis and Geometr

Regular S-Brane Backgrounds

We construct time-dependent S-brane solutions to the supergravity field equations in various dimensions which (unlike most such geometries) do not contain curvature singularities. The configurations we consider are less symmetric than are earlier solutions, with our simplest solution being obtained by a simple analytical continuation of the Kerr geometry. We discuss in detail the global structure and properties of this background. We then generalize it to higher dimensions and to include more complicated field configurations - like non vanishing scalars and antisymmetric tensor gauge potentials - by the usual artifice of applying duality symmetries.Comment: 22 pages, 3 figures. Typos in eq.(2.6) correcte

Supergravity Solutions for Harmonic, Static and Flux S-Branes

We seek S-brane solutions in D=11 supergravity which can be characterized by a harmonic function H on the flat transverse space. It turns out that the Einstein's equations force H to be a linear function of the transverse coordinates. The codimension one H=0 hyperplane can be spacelike, timelike or null and the spacelike case reduces to the previously obtained SM2 or SM5 brane solutions. We then consider static S-brane configurations having smeared timelike directions where the transverse Lorentzian symmetry group is broken down to its maximal orthogonal subgroup. Assuming that the metric functions depend on a radial spatial coordinate, we construct explicit solutions in D=11 supergravity which are non-supersymmetric and asymptotically flat. Finally, we obtain spacelike fluxbrane backgrounds which have timelike electric or magnetic fluxlines extending from past to future infinity.Comment: 22 pages, v2: references adde

Impacts of Sample Size on Calculation of Pavement Texture Indicators with 1mm 3D Surface Data

The emerging 1mm resolution 3D data collection technology is capable of covering the entire pavement surface, and provides more data sets than traditional line-of-sight data collection systems. As a result, quantifying the impact of sample size including sample width and sample length on the calculation of pavement texture indicators is becoming possible. In this study, 1mm 3D texture data are collected and processed at seven test sites using the PaveVision3D Ultra system. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test and linear regression models are developed to investigate various sample length and width on the calculation of three widely used texture indicators: Mean Profile Depth (MPD), Mean Texture Depth (MTD) and Power Spectra Density (PSD). Since the current ASTM standards and other procedures cannot be directly applied to 3D surface for production due to a lack of definitions, the results from this research are beneficial in the process to standardize texture indicators’ computations with 1mm 3D surface data of pavements

Production Optimization,Molecular Characterization and Biological Activities of Exopolysaccharides from Xylaria nigripes

The optimal culture conditions of exopolysaccharides (EPS) production in submerged culture medium by Xylaria nigripes were determined using orthogonal matrix method. The optimal medium (per liter) EPS was 60.0 g L–1 maltose, 1.0 g L–1 peptone, 5 mmol L–1 KH2PO4, and initial pH 7.0 at 28 oC. In the optimal culture medium, the maximum EPS production was 11.967 g L–1 in shake flask. Two groups of EPSs (designated as Fr-I and Fr-II) were obtained from the culture filtrates by size exclusion chromatography (SEC), and their molecular characteristics were examined by a multiangle laser-light scattering (MALLS) and refractive index (RI) detector system. The weight-average molar masses of Fr-I and Fr-II of EPS were determined to be 6.327104 and 1.478104 g mol–1, respectively. The SEC/MALLS analysis revealed that the molecular formation of Fr-I is of nearly globular shape. Furthermore, the experiments in vitro indicated that X. nigripes EPS exhibited high antioxidative effects though its antitumour activity was limited