Polymorphisms of two neuroendocrine–correlated genes associated with body weight and reproductive traits in Jinghai yellow chicken

In this study, insulin-like growth factor binding protein 2 (IGFBP-2) and signal transducers activators of transcription 5b (STAT5b) gene were studied as candidate gene associated with body weight and reproductive traits of the Jinghai Yellow chicken. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the IGFBP-2 and STAT5b genes were examined in both Jinghai Yellow chicken and three reference chicken populations by PCR-SSCP. Two SNPs (T3746TG and CC3753TT) were detected in the IGFBP-2 gene. One SNP (C8066T) was observed in the STAT5b gene. For primer 1, the general linear model analysis showed that Jinghai yellow chickens with FF genotypes had significant effect on hatch weight, egg weight at 300 days and body weight at 300 days than those of the EF genotype and had significant effect on body weight at 8 weeks of age than those of the EE genotype (P < 0.05). For primer 2, Jinghai yellow chickens with CT genotype had significant effect on hatch weight and age at first egg than CC genotype and TT genotype respectively (P < 0.05). SNPs in both IGFBP-2 and STAT5b genes had significant effect on body weight and reproductive traits of the Jinghai yellow chicken than those with either SNP alone. These SNPs may be served as a potential genetic marker for growth and reproduction traits evaluation of the Jinghai yellow chicken.Key words: Jinghai Yellow chicken, IGFBP-2 gene, STAT5b gene, economic traits, polymorphism

Salient Objects in Clutter: Bringing Salient Object Detection to the Foreground

We provide a comprehensive evaluation of salient object detection (SOD) models. Our analysis identifies a serious design bias of existing SOD datasets which assumes that each image contains at least one clearly outstanding salient object in low clutter. The design bias has led to a saturated high performance for state-of-the-art SOD models when evaluated on existing datasets. The models, however, still perform far from being satisfactory when applied to real-world daily scenes. Based on our analyses, we first identify 7 crucial aspects that a comprehensive and balanced dataset should fulfill. Then, we propose a new high quality dataset and update the previous saliency benchmark. Specifically, our SOC (Salient Objects in Clutter) dataset, includes images with salient and non-salient objects from daily object categories. Beyond object category annotations, each salient image is accompanied by attributes that reflect common challenges in real-world scenes. Finally, we report attribute-based performance assessment on our dataset.Comment: ECCV 201

Chinese Herbal Medicines for the Treatment of Type A H1N1 Influenza: A Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials

Chinese herbs are thought to be effective for type A H1N1 influenza. Series of Chinese herbs have been authorized recommended by the Chinese government, and until now a number of clinical trials of Chinese herbs for H1N1 influenza have been conducted. However, there is no critically appraised evidence such as systematic reviews or metaanalyses on potential benefits and harms of medicinal herbs for H1N1 influenza to justify their clinical use and their recommendation. CENTRAL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CBM, CNKI, VIP, China Important Conference Papers Database, China Dissertation Database, and online clinical trial registry websites were searched for published and unpublished randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of Chinese herbs for H1N1 influenza till 31 August, 2011. A total of 26 RCTs were identified and reviewed. Most of the RCTs were of high risk of bias with flawed study design and poor methodological quality. The combination of several Chinese herbal medicines with or without oseltamivir demonstrated positive effect on fever resolution, relief of symptoms, and global effectiveness rate compared to oseltamivir alone. However, only one herbal medicine showed positive effect on viral shedding. Most of the trials did not report adverse events, and the safety of herbal medicines is still uncertain. Some Chinese herbal medicines demonstrated potential positive effect for 2009 type A H1N1 influenza; however, due to the lack of placebo controlled trial and lack of repeated test of the intervention, we could not draw confirmative conclusions on the beneficial effect of Chinese herbs for H1N1 influenza. More rigorous trials are warranted to support their clinical use

Epidemiology of anti-tuberculosis drug resistance in a chinese population: current situation and challenges ahead

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Drug resistance has been a cause of concern for tuberculosis (TB) control in both developed and developing countries. Careful monitoring of the patterns and trends of drug resistance should remain a priority.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Strains were collected from 1824 diagnosed sputum smear positive pulmonary TB patients in Jiangsu province of China and then tested for drug susceptibility against rifampicin, isoniazid, ethambutol and streptomycin. The prevalence and patterns of drug resistance in mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) isolates were investigated. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to identify the risk factors for multidrug resistant (MDR) bacterial infection. The strength of association was estimated by odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The drug susceptibility tests showed that 1077(59.05%) MTB strains were sensitive to all the four antibiotics and the other 747(40.95%) strains were resistant to at least one drug. The proportions of mono-drug resistance were 28.73% for isoniazid, 19.41% for rifampicin, 29.33% for streptomycin, and 13.98% for ethambutol, respectively. The prevalence of MDR-TB was 16.61%, which was significantly different between new cases (7.63%) and those with previous treatment history (33.07%). Geographical variation of drug resistance was observed, where the proportion of MDR-TB among new cases was higher in the central (9.50%) or north part (9.57%) than that in the south area (4.91%) of Jiangsu province. The age of patients was significantly associated with the risk of drug resistance (P < 0.001) and the adjusted OR (95% CI) was 1.88(1.26-2.81) for patients aged 35-44 years when compared with those 65 years or older. Patients with previous treatment history had a more than 5-fold increased risk of MDR-TB (adjusted OR: 6.14, 95% CI: 4.61-8.17), compared with those previously not having been treated.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The high prevalence of drug resistance has been a major challenge for TB control. Prevention and control of drug-resistant TB should be emphasized by the revised DOTS (direct observed therapy, short course) program through prompt case detection, routine and quality-assured drug susceptibility test for patients at high risk of resistance, programmatic treatment with both first and second-line medicines, and systematic treatment observation, with priority for high MDR-TB settings.</p

Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Control in China: Progress and Challenge

Background: China has the second highest caseload of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in the world. In 2009, the Chinese government agreed to draw up a plan for MDR-TB prevention and control in the context of a comprehensive health system reform launched in the same year. Discussion: China is facing high prevalence rates of drug-resistant TB and MDR-TB. MDR-TB disproportionally affects the poor rural population and the highest rates are in less developed regions largely due to interrupted and/or inappropriate TB treatment. Most households with an affected member suffer a heavy financial burden because of a combination of treatment and other related costs. The influential Global Fund programme for MDR-TB control in China provides technical and financial support for MDR-TB diagnosis and treatment. However, this programme has a fixed timeline and cannot provide a long term solution. In 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in cooperation with the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China, started to develop innovative approaches to TB/MDR-TB management and case-based payment mechanisms for treatment, alongside increased health insurance benefits for patients, in order to contain medical costs and reduce financial barriers to treatment. Although these efforts appear to be in the right direction, they may not be sufficient unless (a) domestic sources are mobilized to raise funding for TB/MDR-TB prevention and control and (b) appropriate incentives are given to both health facilities and their care providers. Summary: Along with the on-going Chinese health system reform, sustained government financing and social health protection schemes will be critical to ensure universal access to appropriate TB treatment in order to reduce risk of developing MDR-TB and systematic MDR-TB treatment and management

Observation of a ppb mass threshoud enhancement in \psi^\prime\to\pi^+\pi^-J/\psi(J/\psi\to\gamma p\bar{p}) decay

The decay channel $\psi^\prime\to\pi^+\pi^-J/\psi(J/\psi\to\gamma p\bar{p})$ is studied using a sample of $1.06\times 10^8$ $\psi^\prime$ events collected by the BESIII experiment at BEPCII. A strong enhancement at threshold is observed in the $p\bar{p}$ invariant mass spectrum. The enhancement can be fit with an $S$-wave Breit-Wigner resonance function with a resulting peak mass of $M=1861^{+6}_{-13} {\rm (stat)}^{+7}_{-26} {\rm (syst)} {\rm MeV/}c^2$ and a narrow width that is $\Gamma<38 {\rm MeV/}c^2$ at the 90% confidence level. These results are consistent with published BESII results. These mass and width values do not match with those of any known meson resonance.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Chinese Physics

Facile synthesis of precious-metal single-site catalysts using organic solvents

Single-site catalysts can demonstrate high activity and selectivity in many catalytic reactions. The synthesis of these materials by impregnation from strongly oxidizing aqueous solutions or pH-controlled deposition often leads to low metal loadings or a range of metal species. Here, we demonstrate that simple impregnation of the metal precursors onto activated carbon from a low-boiling-point, low-polarity solvent, such as acetone, results in catalysts with an atomic dispersion of cationic metal species. We show the generality of this method by producing single-site Au, Pd, Ru and Pt catalysts supported on carbon in a facile manner. Single-site Au/C catalysts have previously been validated commercially to produce vinyl chloride, and here we show that this facile synthesis method can produce effective catalysts for acetylene hydrochlorination in the absence of the highly oxidizing acidic solvents previously used

An essential role for the Id1/PI3K/Akt/NFkB/survivin signalling pathway in promoting the proliferation of endothelial progenitor cells in vitro

The enhancement of re-endothelialisation is a critical therapeutic option for repairing injured blood vessels. Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) are the major source of cells that participate in endothelium repair and contribute to re-endothelialisation by reducing neointima formation after vascular injury. The over-expression of the inhibitor of differentiation or DNA binding 1 (Id1) significantly improved EPC proliferation. This study aimed to investigate the effects of Id1 on the phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt/nuclear factor kappa B (NFκB)/survivin signalling pathway and its significance in promoting EPC proliferation in vitro. Spleen-derived EPCs were cultured as previously described. Id1 was presented at low levels in EPCs, and was rapidly up-regulated by stimulation with vascular endothelial growth factor. We demonstrated that transient transfection of Id1 into EPCs activated the PI3K/Akt/NFκB/survivin signalling pathway and promoted EPC proliferation. The proliferation of EPCs was extensively inhibited by silencing of endogenous Id1, and knockdown of Id1 expression led to suppression of PI3K/Akt/NFκB/survivin signalling pathway in EPCs. In addition, blockade by the PI3K-specific inhibitor LY294002, Akt inhibitor, the NFκB inhibitor BAY 11-7082, the survivin inhibitor Curcumin, or the survivin inhibitor YM155 reduced the effects of Id1 transfection. These results suggest that the Id1/PI3K/Akt/NFκB/survivin signalling pathway plays a critical role in EPC proliferation. The Id1/PI3K/Akt/NFκB/survivin signalling pathway may represent a novel therapeutic target in the prevention of restenosis after vascular injury

Monitoring the Size and Lateral Dynamics of ErbB1 Enriched Membrane Domains through Live Cell Plasmon Coupling Microscopy

To illuminate the role of the spatial organization of the epidermal growth factor receptor (ErbB1) in signal transduction quantitative information about the receptor topography on the cell surface, ideally on living cells and in real time, are required. We demonstrate that plasmon coupling microscopy (PCM) enables to detect, size, and track individual membrane domains enriched in ErbB1 with high temporal resolution. We used a dendrimer enhanced labeling strategy to label ErbB1 receptors on epidermoid carcinoma cells (A431) with 60 nm Au nanoparticle (NP) immunolabels under physiological conditions at 37°C. The statistical analysis of the spatial NP distribution on the cell surface in the scanning electron microscope (SEM) confirmed a clustering of the NP labels consistent with a heterogeneous distribution of ErbB1 in the plasma membrane. Spectral shifts in the scattering response of clustered NPs facilitated the detection and sizing of individual NP clusters on living cells in solution in an optical microscope. We tracked the lateral diffusion of individual clusters at a frame rate of 200 frames/s while simultaneously monitoring the configurational dynamics of the clusters. Structural information about the NP clusters in their membrane confinements were obtained through analysis of the electromagnetic coupling of the co-confined NP labels through polarization resolved PCM. Our studies show that the ErbB1 receptor is enriched in membrane domains with typical diameters in the range between 60–250 nm. These membrane domains exhibit a slow lateral diffusion with a diffusion coefficient of  = |0.0054±0.0064| µm2/s, which is almost an order of magnitude slower than the mean diffusion coefficient of individual NP tagged ErbB1 receptors under identical conditions

Spatiotemporal cluster patterns of hand, foot, and mouth disease at the county level in Mainland China, 2008-2012

Background: Hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) is known to be a highly contagious childhood illness. In recent years, the number of reported cases of HFMD has significantly increased in mainland China. This study aims at the epidemiological features, spatiotemporal patterns of HMFD at the county/district level in mainland China. Methods: Data on reported HFMD cases for each county from 1 January 2008 to 31 December 2012 were obtained from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Cluster analysis, spatial autocorrelation, and retrospective scan methods were used to explore the spatiotemporal patterns of the disease. Results: The annual incidences varied greatly among the counties, ranging from 0 to 74.31‰with the median of 5.42‰ (interquartile range: 1.54‰–13.55‰) during 2008–2012 in mainland China. Counties close to provincial capital cities generally had higher incidences than rural counties. A seasonal distribution was observed between the northern and southern China, of which dual epidemic were shown in southern China and usually only one in northern China. Based on the global and local spatial autocorrelation analysis, we found that the spatial distribution of HFMD was presented a significant clustering pattern for each year (P \u3c 0.001), and hotspots of the disease were mostly distributed in coastal provinces of China. The retrospective scan statistic further identified the dynamics of spatiotemporal clustering areas of the disease, which were mainly distributed in the counties of eastern and southern China, as well as provincial capitals and their surrounding counties. Conclusions: The spatiotemporal clustering areas of the disease identified in this way were relatively stable, and imminent public health planning and resource allocation should be focused within those areas