Genome-Wide Expression Analysis Reveals Diverse Effects of Acute Nicotine Exposure on Neuronal Function-Related Genes and Pathways

Previous human and animal studies demonstrate that acute nicotine exposure has complicated influences on the function of the nervous system, which may lead to long-lasting effects on the behavior and physiology of the subject. To determine the genes and pathways that might account for long-term changes after acute nicotine exposure, a pathway-focused oligoarray specifically designed for drug addiction research was used to assess acute nicotine effect on gene expression in the neuron-like SH-SY5Y cells. Our results showed that 295 genes involved in various biological functions were differentially regulated by 1 h of nicotine treatment. Among these genes, the expression changes of 221 were blocked by mecamylamine, indicating that the majority of nicotine-modulated genes were altered through the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs)-mediated signaling process. We further identified 14 biochemical pathways enriched among the nicotine-modulated genes, among which were those involved in neural development/synaptic plasticity, neuronal survival/death, immune response, or cellular metabolism. In the genes significantly regulated by nicotine but blocked by mecamylamine, 13 enriched pathways were detected. Nine of these pathways were shared with those enriched in the genes regulated by nicotine, including neuronal function-related pathways such as glucocorticoid receptor signaling, p38 MAPK signaling, PI3K/AKT signaling, and PTEN signaling, implying that nAChRs play important roles in the regulation of these biological processes. Together, our results not only provide insights into the mechanism underlying the acute response of neuronal cells to nicotine but also provide clues to how acute nicotine exposure exerts long-term effects on the nervous system

Quark energy loss and shadowing in nuclear Drell-Yan process

The energy loss effect in nuclear matter is another nuclear effect apart from the nuclear effects on the parton distribution as in deep inelastic scattering process. The quark energy loss can be measured best by the nuclear dependence of the high energy nuclear Drell-Yan process. By means of three kinds of quark energy loss parameterizations given in literature and the nuclear parton distribution extracted only with lepton-nucleus deep inelastic scattering experimental data, measured Drell-Yan production cross sections are analyzed for 800GeV proton incident on a variety of nuclear targets from FNAL E866. It is shown that our results with considering the energy loss effect are much different from these of the FNAL E866 who analysis the experimental data with the nuclear parton distribution functions obtained by using the deep inelastic lA collisions and pA nuclear Drell-Yan data . Considering the existence of energy loss effect in Drell-Yan lepton pairs production,we suggest that the extraction of nuclear parton distribution functions should not include Drell-Yan experimental data.Comment: 12 page

Bridging Data-Driven and Knowledge-Driven Approaches for Safety-Critical Scenario Generation in Automated Vehicle Validation

Automated driving vehicles~(ADV) promise to enhance driving efficiency and safety, yet they face intricate challenges in safety-critical scenarios. As a result, validating ADV within generated safety-critical scenarios is essential for both development and performance evaluations. This paper investigates the complexities of employing two major scenario-generation solutions: data-driven and knowledge-driven methods. Data-driven methods derive scenarios from recorded datasets, efficiently generating scenarios by altering the existing behavior or trajectories of traffic participants but often falling short in considering ADV perception; knowledge-driven methods provide effective coverage through expert-designed rules, but they may lead to inefficiency in generating safety-critical scenarios within that coverage. To overcome these challenges, we introduce BridgeGen, a safety-critical scenario generation framework, designed to bridge the benefits of both methodologies. Specifically, by utilizing ontology-based techniques, BridgeGen models the five scenario layers in the operational design domain (ODD) from knowledge-driven methods, ensuring broad coverage, and incorporating data-driven strategies to efficiently generate safety-critical scenarios. An optimized scenario generation toolkit is developed within BridgeGen. This expedites the crafting of safety-critical scenarios through a combination of traditional optimization and reinforcement learning schemes. Extensive experiments conducted using Carla simulator demonstrate the effectiveness of BridgeGen in generating diverse safety-critical scenarios

Anti-proliferation and radiosensitization effects of chitooligosaccharides on human lung cancer line HepG2

AbstractObjectiveTo observe the anti-proliferation and radiosensitization effect of chitooligosaccharides (COS) on human lung cancer cell line HepG2.MethodsCCK-8 assay was employed to obtain the inhibition ratio of COS on HepG2 cells at 24 h after treatment. The clonogenic assay was used to analyze the cell viability of RAY group and RAY + COS group with X-ray of 0, 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8 Gy, and the cell survival curve was used to analyze the sensitization ratio of COS. Flow cytometry was employed to detect cell cycle and apoptosis rate in control group, RAY group and RAY + COS group after 24 h treatment.ResultsCOS inhibited the proliferation of HepG2 cells, and the inhibition rate positively correlated with the concentration of COS. The cell viability decreased with increasing exposure dose in RAY group and RAY + COS group. The cell viabilities of RAY + COS group were lower than those of RAY group at the dose of 4, 6 and 8 Gy (P < 0.05), and the sensitization ratio of COS was 1.19. There were higher percentage at G2/M phase and apoptosis rate, and lower percentage at S phase in RAY + COS group versus the other two groups (P < 0.01).ConclusionsCOS can inhibit the proliferation of HepG2 cells, and enhance the radiosensitization of HepG2 cells, induce apoptosis and G2/M phase arrest

SyreaNet: A Physically Guided Underwater Image Enhancement Framework Integrating Synthetic and Real Images

Underwater image enhancement (UIE) is vital for high-level vision-related underwater tasks. Although learning-based UIE methods have made remarkable achievements in recent years, it's still challenging for them to consistently deal with various underwater conditions, which could be caused by: 1) the use of the simplified atmospheric image formation model in UIE may result in severe errors; 2) the network trained solely with synthetic images might have difficulty in generalizing well to real underwater images. In this work, we, for the first time, propose a framework \textit{SyreaNet} for UIE that integrates both synthetic and real data under the guidance of the revised underwater image formation model and novel domain adaptation (DA) strategies. First, an underwater image synthesis module based on the revised model is proposed. Then, a physically guided disentangled network is designed to predict the clear images by combining both synthetic and real underwater images. The intra- and inter-domain gaps are abridged by fully exchanging the domain knowledge. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of our framework over other state-of-the-art (SOTA) learning-based UIE methods qualitatively and quantitatively. The code and dataset are publicly available at https://github.com/RockWenJJ/SyreaNet.git.Comment: 7 pages; 10 figure

Cloning and expression profiling of the VLDLR gene associated with egg performance in duck (Anas platyrhynchos)

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The very low density lipoprotein receptor gene (<it>VLDLR</it>), a member of the low density lipoprotein receptor (<it>LDLR</it>) gene family, plays a crucial role in the synthesis of yolk protein precursors in oviparous species. Differential splicing of this gene has been reported in human, rabbit and rat. In chicken, studies showed that the VLDLR protein on the oocyte surface mediates the uptake of yolk protein precursors into growing oocytes. However, information on the <it>VLDLR </it>gene in duck is still scarce.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Full-length duck <it>VLDLR </it>cDNA was obtained by comparative cloning and rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE). Tissue expression patterns were analysed by semi-quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Association between the different genotypes and egg performance traits was investigated with the general linear model (GLM) procedure of the SAS^®software package.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In duck, two <it>VLDLR </it>transcripts were identified, one transcript (variant-a) containing an O-linked sugar domain and the other (variant-b) not containing this sugar domain. These transcripts share ~70 to 90% identity with their counterparts in other species. A phylogenetic tree based on amino acid sequences showed that duck VLDLR proteins were closely related with those of chicken and zebra finch. The two duck <it>VLDLR </it>transcripts are differentially expressed i.e. <it>VLDLR-a </it>is mainly expressed in muscle tissue and <it>VLDLR-b </it>in reproductive organs. We have localized the duck <it>VLDLR </it>gene on chromosome Z. An association analysis using two completely linked SNP sites (T/C at position 2025 bp of the ORF and G/A in intron 13) and records from two generations demonstrated that the duck <it>VLDLR </it>gene was significantly associated with egg production (P < 0.01), age of first egg (P < 0.01) and body weight of first egg (P < 0.05).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Duck and chicken <it>VLDLR </it>genes probably perform similar function in the development of growing oocytes and deposition of yolk lipoprotein. Therefore, <it>VLDLR </it>could be a candidate gene for duck egg performance and be used as a genetic marker to improve egg performance in ducks.</p