Value-adding partnerships in proprietary value-enhanced specialty grain: A case study of High Oil Corn

This dissertation examines the value-adding partnerships in commercializing a proprietary value-enhanced specialty grain---DuPont\u27s High Oil Corn, analyzes the decision-makings along the value chain, and explains the governance structure of the value-adding partnership from the perspective of the theory of firm. It argues that private investment efforts play an important role in determining the governance structure, and the governance structure evolves with the evolution of the importance of those efforts

Soil Moisture but Not Warming Dominates Nitrous Oxide Emissions During Freeze–Thaw Cycles in a Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau Alpine Meadow With Discontinuous Permafrost

Large quantities of organic matter are stored in frozen soils (permafrost) within the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau (QTP). The most of QTP regions in particular have experienced significant warming and wetting over the past 50 years, and this warming trend is projected to intensify in the future. Such climate change will likely alter the soil freeze–thaw pattern in permafrost active layer and toward significant greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) release. However, the interaction effect of warming and altered soil moisture on N2O emission during freezing and thawing is unclear. Here, we used simulation experiments to test how changes in N2O flux relate to different thawing temperatures (T5–5°C, T10–10°C, and T20–20°C) and soil volumetric water contents (VWCs, W15–15%, W30–30%, and W45–45%) under 165 F–T cycles in topsoil (0–20 cm) of an alpine meadow with discontinuous permafrost in the QTP. First, in contrast to the prevailing view, soil moisture but not thawing temperature dominated the large N2O pulses during F–T events. The maximum emissions, 1,123.16–5,849.54 μg m–2 h–1, appeared in the range of soil VWC from 17% to 38%. However, the mean N2O fluxes had no significant difference between different thawing temperatures when soil was dry or waterlogged. Second, in medium soil moisture, low thawing temperature is more able to promote soil N2O emission than high temperature. For example, the peak value (5,849.54 μg m–2 h–1) and cumulative emissions (366.6 mg m–2) of W30T5 treatment were five times and two to four times higher than W30T10 and W30T20, respectively. Third, during long-term freeze–thaw cycles, the patterns of cumulative N2O emissions were related to soil moisture. treatments; on the contrary, the cumulative emissions of W45 treatments slowly increased until more than 80 cycles. Finally, long-term freeze–thaw cycles could improve nitrogen availability, prolong N2O release time, and increase N2O cumulative emission in permafrost active layer. Particularly, the high emission was concentrated in the first 27 and 48 cycles in W15 and W30, respectively. Overall, our study highlighted that large emissions of N2O in F–T events tend to occur in medium moisture soil at lower thawing temperature; the increased number of F–T cycles may enhance N2O emission and nitrogen mineralization in permafrost active layer

An integrated neuroimaging-omics approach for the gut-brain communication pathways in Alzheimer’s disease

A key role of the gut microbiota in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), has been identified over the past decades. Increasing clinical and preclinical evidence implicates that there is bidirectional communication between the gut microbiota and the central nervous system (CNS), which is also known as the microbiota-gut-brain axis. Nevertheless, current knowledge on the interplay between gut microbiota and the brain remains largely unclear. One of the primary mediating factors by which the gut microbiota interacts with the host is peripheral metabolites, including blood or gut-derived metabolites. However, mechanistic knowledge about the effect of the microbiome and metabolome signaling on the brain is limited. Neuroimaging techniques, such as multi-modal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET), have the potential to directly elucidate brain structural and functional changes corresponding with alterations of the gut microbiota and peripheral metabolites in vivo. Employing a combination of gut microbiota, metabolome, and advanced neuroimaging techniques provides a future perspective in illustrating the microbiota-gut-brain pathway and further unveiling potential therapeutic targets for AD treatments

Transcriptome Phase Distribution Analysis Reveals Diurnal Regulated Biological Processes and Key Pathways in Rice Flag Leaves and Seedling Leaves

Plant diurnal oscillation is a 24-hour period based variation. The correlation between diurnal genes and biological pathways was widely revealed by microarray analysis in different species. Rice (Oryza sativa) is the major food staple for about half of the world's population. The rice flag leaf is essential in providing photosynthates to the grain filling. However, there is still no comprehensive view about the diurnal transcriptome for rice leaves. In this study, we applied rice microarray to monitor the rhythmically expressed genes in rice seedling and flag leaves. We developed a new computational analysis approach and identified 6,266 (10.96%) diurnal probe sets in seedling leaves, 13,773 (24.08%) diurnal probe sets in flag leaves. About 65% of overall transcription factors were identified as flag leaf preferred. In seedling leaves, the peak of phase distribution was from 2:00am to 4:00am, whereas in flag leaves, the peak was from 8:00pm to 2:00am. The diurnal phase distribution analysis of gene ontology (GO) and cis-element enrichment indicated that, some important processes were waken by the light, such as photosynthesis and abiotic stimulus, while some genes related to the nuclear and ribosome involved processes were active mostly during the switch time of light to dark. The starch and sucrose metabolism pathway genes also showed diurnal phase. We conducted comparison analysis between Arabidopsis and rice leaf transcriptome throughout the diurnal cycle. In summary, our analysis approach is feasible for relatively unbiased identification of diurnal transcripts, efficiently detecting some special periodic patterns with non-sinusoidal periodic patterns. Compared to the rice flag leaves, the gene transcription levels of seedling leaves were relatively limited to the diurnal rhythm. Our comprehensive microarray analysis of seedling and flag leaves of rice provided an overview of the rice diurnal transcriptome and indicated some diurnal regulated biological processes and key functional pathways in rice

Postoperative high-density lipoprotein cholesterol level: an independent prognostic factor for gastric cancer

ObjectiveThe relationship between serum lipids and prognosis of gastric cancer has not been confirmed. Our purpose in the study was to investigate the associations between preoperative and postoperative serum lipids level and prognosis in patients with gastric cancer.MethodsA retrospective study was performed on 431 patients who received radical (R0) gastrectomy from 2011 to 2013. Preoperative and postoperative serum lipids level were recorded. Clinical-pathological characteristics, oncologic outcomes, disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) were collected. The prognostic significance was determined by Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox proportional hazards regression model.ResultsThere was no significant difference in DFS and OS according to preoperative serum lipids level. Regarding postoperative serum lipids level, compared to normal high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low postoperative HDL-C level indicated a shorter OS (hazard ratio: 1.76, 99% confidence interval: 1.31–2.38; P=0.000) and a shorter DFS (hazard ratio: 2.06, 99% confidence interval: 1.55–2.73; P=0.000). However, other postoperative serum lipid molecules were not associated with DFS and OS.ConclusionPostoperative HDL-C might be an independent prognostic factor of gastric cancer

Loss of Parietal Memory Network Integrity in Alzheimer’s Disease

A functional brain network, termed the parietal memory network (PMN), has been shown to reflect the familiarity of stimuli in both memory encoding and retrieval. The function of this network has been separated from the commonly investigated default mode network (DMN) in both resting-state fMRI and task-activations. This study examined the deficit of the PMN in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients using resting-state fMRI and independent component analysis (ICA) and investigated its diagnostic value in identifying AD patients. The DMN was also examined as a reference network. In addition, the robustness of the findings was examined using different types of analysis methods and parameters. Our results showed that the integrity as an intrinsic connectivity network for the PMN was significantly decreased in AD and this feature showed at least equivalent predictive ability to that for the DMN. These findings were robust to varied methods and parameters. Our findings suggest that the intrinsic connectivity of the PMN is disrupted in AD and further call for considering the PMN and the DMN separately in clinical neuroimaging studies

MCP-1 levels in astrocyte-derived exosomes are changed in preclinical stage of Alzheimer's disease

BackgroundAlzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia in older adults. There is accumulating evidence that inflammatory processes play a critical role in AD pathogenesis. In this study, we investigated whether inflammatory factors in plasma and astrocyte-derived exosomes (ADEs) from plasma are differentially expressed in the early stages of AD and their potential role in pathological processes in the AD continuum.MethodWe included 39 normal controls (NCs), 43 participants with subjective cognitive decline (SCD), and 43 participants with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI)/AD. IL-6, IL-8, and MCP-1 in plasma and ADEs from plasma were evaluated using a commercial multiplex Luminex-based kit.ResultsPairwise comparisons between the groups showed no significant differences in plasma levels of IL-6, IL-8, or MCP-1. However, ADEs in the SCD group showed an increase in MCP-1 levels compared to the NC group. To differentiate the preclinical group, discriminant analysis was performed using sex, age, years of education, and genotype. This revealed a difference between the SCD and NC groups (area under the curve: 0.664). A Spearman correlation analysis of MCP-1 in plasma and ADEs showed no or weak correlation in the SCD (R = 0.150, p = 0.350) and aMCI/AD (R = 0.310, p = 0.041) groups, while a positive correlation in the NC group (R = 0.360, p = 0.026).ConclusionPlasma IL-6, IL-8, and MCP-1 levels were not significantly different. However, the concentration of MCP-1 in ADEs is slightly altered during the preclinical phase of AD, which could be a potential role of the central neuron system (CNS) immune response in the AD continuum.Clinical trial registrationwww.ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier: NCT03370744

Topology Adaptive Water Boundary Extraction Based on a Modified Balloon Snake: Using GF-1 Satellite Images as an Example

Topology adaptive water boundary extraction from satellite images using parametric snakes remains challenging in the domain of image segmentation. This paper proposed a modified balloon snake (MB-Snake) method based on the balloon snake (B-Snake) method, overcoming the B-Snake’s drawbacks of inaccurate positioning, topology inflexibility, and non-automatic contour evolution termination. Six satellite images, acquired by the GF-1 wide field of view sensor and with water bodies of different types, inner land numbers, areas, boundary and background complexities, and digital number value contrasts, were used as experimental images, in which the MB-Snake method, and two comparison methods, the B-Snake and the orthogonal topology adaptive snake (OT-Snake) methods, were applied for water boundary extraction. All the extracted results were first qualitatively assessed and further quantitatively evaluated via three indexes, including correctness, completeness, and area overlap measure. Both of the qualitative and quantitative evaluation results consistently demonstrated that the MB-Snake method can efficiently improve the positioning accuracy, detect and dispose of topology collisions, and perform automatic contour evolution termination, successfully meeting its design objectives, and exhibiting great superiority to the existing topology-flexible parametric snakes. The sensitivity to initial contours, the effects of model parameters, and spatial resolutions of satellite images, and image demands of the MB-Snake method was also analyzed

Value-adding partnerships in proprietary value-enhanced specialty grain: A case study of High Oil Corn

This dissertation examines the value-adding partnerships in commercializing a proprietary value-enhanced specialty grain---DuPont's High Oil Corn, analyzes the decision-makings along the value chain, and explains the governance structure of the value-adding partnership from the perspective of the theory of firm. It argues that private investment efforts play an important role in determining the governance structure, and the governance structure evolves with the evolution of the importance of those efforts.</p

Existence of Positive Solutions for a Class of Nonlinear Algebraic Systems

Based on Guo-Krasnoselskii’s fixed point theorem, the existence of positive solutions for a class of nonlinear algebraic systems of the form x=GFx is studied firstly, where G is a positive n×n square matrix, x=col⁡(x1,x2,…,xn), and F(x)=col⁡(f(x1),f(x2),…,f(xn)), where, F(x) is not required to be satisfied sublinear or superlinear at zero point and infinite point. In addition, a new cone is constructed in Rn. Secondly, the obtained results can be extended to some more general nonlinear algebraic systems, where the coefficient matrix G and the nonlinear term are depended on the variable x. Corresponding examples are given to illustrate these results