Inflammation and Joint Tissue Interactions in OA: Implications for Potential Therapeutic Approaches

It is increasingly recognized that the pathogenesis of cartilage degradation in osteoarthritis (OA) is multifactorial and involves the interactions between cartilage and its surrounding tissues. These interactions regulate proinflammatory cytokine-mediated cartilage destruction, contributing to OA progression as well as cartilage repair. This review explores the pathogenesis of OA in the context of the multiple tissue types in the joint and discusses the implications of such complex tissue interaction in the development of anti-inflammatory therapeutics for the treatment of OA

Enhancement of EMAT’s efficiency by using silicon steel laminations back-plate

Silicon steel laminations are introduced as the back-plate to an electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT) to increase the efficiency of the EMAT by increasing the magnitude of the EMAT coil's dynamic magnetic field and the eddy current in the sample surface. A two-dimensional, non-linear finite element model is developed to quantify the effectiveness of the back-plate’s different maximum permeability and saturation flux density, on increasing the eddy current density and the dynamic magnetic flux density in the specimen. A three-dimensional FE model is also developed, and confirms the expected result that the laminated structure of silicon steel (SiFe) markedly reduces the eddy current induced in the back-plate, when compared to a continuous slab of the steel. Experimental results show that silicon steel lamination can increase the efficiency of the EMAT in the cases both with and without a biasing magnetic field

TIMME: Twitter Ideology-detection via Multi-task Multi-relational Embedding

We aim at solving the problem of predicting people's ideology, or political tendency. We estimate it by using Twitter data, and formalize it as a classification problem. Ideology-detection has long been a challenging yet important problem. Certain groups, such as the policy makers, rely on it to make wise decisions. Back in the old days when labor-intensive survey-studies were needed to collect public opinions, analyzing ordinary citizens' political tendencies was uneasy. The rise of social medias, such as Twitter, has enabled us to gather ordinary citizen's data easily. However, the incompleteness of the labels and the features in social network datasets is tricky, not to mention the enormous data size and the heterogeneousity. The data differ dramatically from many commonly-used datasets, thus brings unique challenges. In our work, first we built our own datasets from Twitter. Next, we proposed TIMME, a multi-task multi-relational embedding model, that works efficiently on sparsely-labeled heterogeneous real-world dataset. It could also handle the incompleteness of the input features. Experimental results showed that TIMME is overall better than the state-of-the-art models for ideology detection on Twitter. Our findings include: links can lead to good classification outcomes without text; conservative voice is under-represented on Twitter; follow is the most important relation to predict ideology; retweet and mention enhance a higher chance of like, etc. Last but not least, TIMME could be extended to other datasets and tasks in theory.Comment: In proceedings of KDD'20, Applied Data Science Track; 9 pages, 2 supplementary page

Quantitative and functional post-translational modification proteomics reveals that TREPH1 plays a role in plant thigmomorphogenesis

Plants can sense both intracellular and extracellular mechanical forces and can respond through morphological changes. The signaling components responsible for mechanotransduction of the touch response are largely unknown. Here, we performed a high-throughput SILIA (stable isotope labeling in Arabidopsis)-based quantitative phosphoproteomics analysis to profile changes in protein phosphorylation resulting from 40 seconds of force stimulation in Arabidopsis thaliana. Of the 24 touch-responsive phosphopeptides identified, many were derived from kinases, phosphatases, cytoskeleton proteins, membrane proteins and ion transporters. TOUCH-REGULATED PHOSPHOPROTEIN1 (TREPH1) and MAP KINASE KINASE 2 (MKK2) and/or MKK1 became rapidly phosphorylated in touch-stimulated plants. Both TREPH1 and MKK2 are required for touch-induced delayed flowering, a major component of thigmomorphogenesis. The treph1-1 and mkk2 mutants also exhibited defects in touch-inducible gene expression. A non-phosphorylatable site-specific isoform of TREPH1 (S625A) failed to restore touch-induced flowering delay of treph1-1, indicating the necessity of S625 for TREPH1 function and providing evidence consistent with the possible functional relevance of the touch-regulated TREPH1 phosphorylation. Bioinformatic analysis and biochemical subcellular fractionation of TREPH1 protein indicate that it is a soluble protein. Altogether, these findings identify new protein players in Arabidopsis thigmomorphogenesis regulation, suggesting that protein phosphorylation may play a critical role in plant force responses

Identification of CmACL genes in melon and analysis of their potential functions in fruit sugar and acid accumulation

Citric acid is the most important organic acid in melon and has a great influence on fruit flavor quality. ATP-citrate (pro-S) lyase (ACL) is a key regulator in the acetyl-CoA pathway and plays an important role in citric acid metabolism. In this study we analyzed the structure and phylogenetics of CmACL genes and their functions in sugar and acid accumulation in melon. A total of four CmACL genes were identified in the melon genome, and phylogenetic analysis assigned these genes into the α subfamily (CmACLα1 and CmACLα2) and the β subfamily (CmACLβ1 and CmACLβ2). Conserved motif and gene structure analyses showed that members of the same subfamily shared identical conserved motifs and gene structures, and probably have similar biological functions. Analysis of cis-acting elements revealed that CmACL promoter sequences contained regulatory elements related to light, stress, phytohormones, and growth and development, indicating that CmACL genes may be involved in melon growth and stress responses. The prediction of protein interaction network showed that CmACL proteins were closely related to the proteins belonging to tricarboxylic acid cycle, glyoxylic acid cycle and glycolytic pathway, suggesting that CmACL proteins may play an important role in sugar and acid metabolism. The expression of CmACLβ1 was significantly and positively correlated with sucrose content, and CmACLβ2 expression was significantly positively correlated with citric acid content, suggesting that CmACLβ1 and CmACLβ2 have important roles in sugar and acid accumulation in melon. Our results offer novel insights and avenues for the regulation of sugar and acid levels in melon and provide a theoretical foundation for breeding high-quality melon cultivars

Audiovisual n-Back Training Alters the Neural Processes of Working Memory and Audiovisual Integration: Evidence of Changes in ERPs

(1) Background: This study investigates whether audiovisual n-back training leads to training effects on working memory and transfer effects on perceptual processing. (2) Methods: Before and after training, the participants were tested using the audiovisual n-back task (1-, 2-, or 3-back), to detect training effects, and the audiovisual discrimination task, to detect transfer effects. (3) Results: For the training effect, the behavioral results show that training leads to greater accuracy and faster response times. Stronger training gains in accuracy and response time using 3- and 2-back tasks, compared to 1-back, were observed in the training group. Event-related potentials (ERPs) data revealed an enhancement of P300 in the frontal and central regions across all working memory levels after training. Training also led to the enhancement of N200 in the central region in the 3-back condition. For the transfer effect, greater audiovisual integration in the frontal and central regions during the post-test rather than pre-test was observed at an early stage (80-120 ms) in the training group. (4) Conclusion: Our findings provide evidence that audiovisual n-back training enhances neural processes underlying a working memory and demonstrate a positive influence of higher cognitive functions on lower cognitive functions