Developing Strategies for Anatomical Characterization of Locus Coeruleus - Cortical Projections

The locus coeruleus (LC) is a small noradrenergic nucleus located in the midbrain that releases the neurotransmitter norepinephrine to diverse brain regions. Through release of norepinephrine, the LC plays a central role in modulating numerous physiological functions including attention, arousal, and mood and behavior. Although the LC projects to many brain region, there is limited information about the organization and the afferent projections to the LC that modulates its activity. The goal of this study was to characterize the anatomical projections between LC and cortical areas using a variety of different experimental techniques, including survival brain surgery, stereotaxic injections of fluorescent dyes, trans-cardiac perfusion, and immunohistochemistry. To determine cortical projections from different brain region to the locus coeruleus, we injected the retrograde fluorescent tracer Fast Blue into the LC. Immunolabeling technique using dopamine-b-hydroxylase antibody allowed for detection of norepinephrine neurons and their extensive projections. The results from the experiment after microscopic imaging of the histology slices do not reveal a direct projection from the visual cortex to the locus coeruleus

Streamlined Data Fusion: Unleashing the Power of Linear Combination with Minimal Relevance Judgments

Linear combination is a potent data fusion method in information retrieval tasks, thanks to its ability to adjust weights for diverse scenarios. However, achieving optimal weight training has traditionally required manual relevance judgments on a large percentage of documents, a labor-intensive and expensive process. In this study, we investigate the feasibility of obtaining near-optimal weights using a mere 20\%-50\% of relevant documents. Through experiments on four TREC datasets, we find that weights trained with multiple linear regression using this reduced set closely rival those obtained with TREC's official "qrels." Our findings unlock the potential for more efficient and affordable data fusion, empowering researchers and practitioners to reap its full benefits with significantly less effort.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

Molecular Cloning and Expression Analysis of the Endogenous Cellulase Gene MaCel1 in Monochamus alternatus

The purpose of this study was to characterize the endogenous cellulase gene MaCel1 of Monochamus alternatus, which is an important vector of Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, a pine wood nematode, which causes pine wilt disease (PWD). In this study, MaCel1 was cloned by rapid amplification of cDNA end (RACE), and its expression analyzed by RT-qPCR (real-time quantitative PCR detecting). A total of 1778 bp of cDNA was obtained. The encoding region of this gene was 1509 bp in length, encoding a protein containing 502 amino acids with a molecular weight of 58.66 kDa, and the isoelectric point of 5.46. Sequence similarity analysis showed that the amino acids sequence of MaCel1 had high similarity with the beta-Glucosinolate of Anoplophora glabripennis and slightly lower similarity with other insect cellulase genes (GH1). The beta-D-Glucosidase activity of MaCel1 was 256.02 +/- 43.14 U/L with no beta-Glucosinolate activity. MaCel1 gene was widely expressed in the intestine of M. alternatus. The expression level of MaCel1 gene in male (3.46) and female (3.51) adults was significantly higher than that in other developmental stages, and the lowest was in pupal stage (0.15). The results will help reveal the digestive mechanism of M. alternatus and lay the foundation for controlling PWD by controlling M. alternatus

Gut Bacterial Communities of Lymantria xylina and Their Associations with Host Development and Diet

The gut microbiota of insects has a wide range of effects on host nutrition, physiology, and behavior. The structure of gut microbiota may also be shaped by their environment, causing them to adjust to their hosts; thus, the objective of this study was to examine variations in the morphological traits and gut microbiota of Lymantria xylina in response to natural and artificial diets using high-throughput sequencing. Regarding morphology, the head widths for larvae fed on a sterilized artificial diet were smaller than for larvae fed on a non-sterilized host-plant diet in the early instars. The gut microbiota diversity of L. xylina fed on different diets varied significantly, but did not change during different development periods. This seemed to indicate that vertical inheritance occurred in L. xylina mutualistic symbionts. Acinetobacter and Enterococcus were dominant in/on eggs. In the first instar larvae, Acinetobacter accounted for 33.52% of the sterilized artificial diet treatment, while Enterococcus (67.88%) was the predominant bacteria for the non-sterilized host-plant diet treatment. Gut microbe structures were adapted to both diets through vertical inheritance and self-regulation. This study clarified the impacts of microbial symbiosis on L. xylina and might provide new possibilities for improving the control of these bacteria

MicroRNA-275 and its target vitellogenin-2 are crucial in ovary development and blood digestion of Haemaphysalis longicornis

Background: The hard tick Haemaphysalis longicornis is widely distributed in eastern Asia, New Zealand and Australia and is considered the major vector of Theileria and Babesia, harmful parasites to humans and animals. Female ticks need successful blood meals to complete the life-cycle. Therefore, elucidation of the underlying molecular mechanisms of H. longicornis development and reproduction is considered important for developing control strategies against the tick and tick-borne pathogens. Methods: Luciferase assays were used to identify the targets of micro RNA miR-275 in vitro. RNAi of Vitellogenin (Vg) was used in phenotype rescue experiments of ticks with miR-275 inhibition, and these analyses were used to identify the authentic target of miR-275 in vivo. The expression of miR-275 in different tissues and developmental stages of ticks was assessed by real-time PCR. To elucidate the functions of miR-275 in female ticks, we injected a miR-275 antagomir into female ticks and observed the phenotypic changes. Statistical analyses were performed with GraphPad5 using Student’s t-test. Results: In this study, we identified Vg-2 as an authentic target of miR-275 both in vitro and in vivo by luciferase assays and phenotype rescue experiments. miR-275 plays the regulatory role in a tissue-specific manner and differentially in developmental stages. Silencing of miR-275 resulted in blood digestion problems, substantially impaired ovary development and significantly reduced egg mass (P < 0.0001). Furthermore, RNAi silencing of Vg-2 not only impacted the blood meal uptake (P < 0.05) but also the egg mass (P < 0.05). Significant rescue was observed in miR-275 knockout ticks when RNAi was applied to Vg-2. Conclusion: To our knowledge, this study is the first demonstration that miR-275 targets Vg-2 in H. longicornis and regulates the functions of blood digestion and ovary development. These findings improve the molecular understanding of tick development and reproduction

A 1,000 Frames/s Programmable Vision Chip with Variable Resolution and Row-Pixel-Mixed Parallel Image Processors

A programmable vision chip with variable resolution and row-pixel-mixed parallel image processors is presented. The chip consists of a CMOS sensor array, with row-parallel 6-bit Algorithmic ADCs, row-parallel gray-scale image processors, pixel-parallel SIMD Processing Element (PE) array, and instruction controller. The resolution of the image in the chip is variable: high resolution for a focused area and low resolution for general view. It implements gray-scale and binary mathematical morphology algorithms in series to carry out low-level and mid-level image processing and sends out features of the image for various applications. It can perform image processing at over 1,000 frames/s (fps). A prototype chip with 64 × 64 pixels resolution and 6-bit gray-scale image is fabricated in 0.18 μm Standard CMOS process. The area size of chip is 1.5 mm × 3.5 mm. Each pixel size is 9.5 μm × 9.5 μm and each processing element size is 23 μm × 29 μm. The experiment results demonstrate that the chip can perform low-level and mid-level image processing and it can be applied in the real-time vision applications, such as high speed target tracking