Contemporary Religious Education Model on the Challenge of Indonesian Multiculturalism

This paper discusses the issue of religious education in relation to the challenge of religious multiculturalism in Indonesia. The focus of this paper is to find out the kind of religious education that is compatible with the challenge of religious multiculturalism. By employing the concept of religious multiculturalism and theory of religious education, this paper argues that to face the challenge of religious multiculturalism it is necessary to change the model of religious education from within, at and beyond the wall. Religious education “in” the wall contributes to shape an exclusive model of religiosity; while religious education “at” and “beyond” the wall contributes to shape an inclusive multiculturalistic model of religiosity. The last two models are applicable in Indonesia in order to face the challenge of multiculturalism, because both of them help students to accept, respect, and value religious differences. Religious education should show that the common enemy of religion is not people of different faiths, but poverty, corruption, violence, ignorance, and the like, and they have to stand together to fight against these true enemies

Optically levitated gyroscopes with a MHz rotating micro-rotor

The optically levitated particles have been driven to rotate at an ultra-high speed of GHz, and the gyroscopic application of these levitated particles to measure angular motion have long been explored. However, this gyroscope has not been proven either theoretically or experimentally. Here, a rotor gyroscope based on optically levitated high-speed rotating particles is proposed. In vacuum, an ellipsoidal vaterite particle with 3.58 $\mu$m average diameter is driven to rotate at MHz, and the optical axis orientation of the particle is measured by the particle rotational signal. The external inputted angular velocity makes the optical axis deviate from the initial position, which changes the frequency and amplitude of the rotational signal. The inputted angular velocity is hence detected by the rotational signal, and the angular rate bias instability of the prototype is measured to be $0.08^o/s$. It is the smallest rotor gyroscope in the world, and the bias instability can be further improved up to $10^{-9o}/h$ theoretically by cooling the motion and increasing the angular moment of the levitated particle. Our work opens a new application paradigm of the levitated optomechanical systems and possibly bring the rotor gyroscope to the quantum realm

Increased gene copy number of DEFA1/DEFA3 worsens sepsis by inducing endothelial pyroptosis.

Sepsis claims an estimated 30 million episodes and 6 million deaths per year, and treatment options are rather limited. Human neutrophil peptides 1-3 (HNP1-3) are the most abundant neutrophil granule proteins but their neutrophil content varies because of unusually extensive gene copy number polymorphism. A genetic association study found that increased copy number of the HNP-encoding gene DEFA1/DEFA3 is a risk factor for organ dysfunction during sepsis development. However, direct experimental evidence demonstrating that these risk alleles are pathogenic for sepsis is lacking because the genes are present only in some primates and humans. Here, we generate DEFA1/DEFA3 transgenic mice with neutrophil-specific expression of the peptides. We show that mice with high copy number of DEFA1/DEFA3 genes have more severe sepsis-related vital organ damage and mortality than mice with low copy number of DEFA1/DEFA3 or wild-type mice, resulting from more severe endothelial barrier dysfunction and endothelial cell pyroptosis after sepsis challenge. Mechanistically, HNP-1 induces endothelial cell pyroptosis via P2X7 receptor-mediating canonical caspase-1 activation in a NLRP3 inflammasome-dependent manner. Based on these findings, we engineered a monoclonal antibody against HNP-1 to block the interaction with P2X7 and found that the blocking antibody protected mice carrying high copy number of DEFA1/DEFA3 from lethal sepsis. We thus demonstrate that DEFA1/DEFA3 copy number variation strongly modulates sepsis development in vivo and explore a paradigm for the precision treatment of sepsis tailored by individual genetic information

Joint insolation and ice sheet/CO2 forcing on northern china precipitation during pliocene warmth

We demonstrate that the precipitation record on the Chinese Loess Plateau during the middle Piacenzian (3.264–3.025 Ma) has strong 20-kyr precessional cycles, challenging past knowledge about East Asian monsoon variations at the orbital timescales

Mining document, concept, and term associations for effective biomedical retrieval - Introducing MeSH-enhanced retrieval models

Manually assigned subject terms, such as Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) in the health domain, describe the concepts or topics of a document. Existing information retrieval models do not take full advantage of such information. In this paper, we propose two MeSH-enhanced (ME) retrieval models that integrate the concept layer (i.e. MeSH) into the language modeling framework to improve retrieval performance. The new models quantify associations between documents and their assigned concepts to construct conceptual representations for the documents, and mine associations between concepts and terms to construct generative concept models. The two ME models reconstruct two essential estimation processes of the relevance model (Lavrenko and Croft 2001) by incorporating the document-concept and the concept-term associations. More specifically, in Model 1, language models of the pseudo-feedback documents are enriched by their assigned concepts. In Model 2, concepts that are related to users’ queries are first identified, and then used to reweight the pseudo-feedback documents according to the document-concept associations. Experiments carried out on two standard test collections show that the ME models outperformed the query likelihood model, the relevance model (RM3), and an earlier ME model. A detailed case analysis provides insight into how and why the new models improve/worsen retrieval performance. Implications and limitations of the study are discussed. This study provides new ways to formally incorporate semantic annotations, such as subject terms, into retrieval models. The findings of this study suggest that integrating the concept layer into retrieval models can further improve the performance over the current state-of-the-art models.Ye

Alteration and clinical potential in gut microbiota in patients with cerebral small vessel disease

BackgroundCerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) is a cluster of microvascular disorders with unclear pathological mechanisms. The microbiota-gut-brain axis is an essential regulatory mechanism between gut microbes and their host. Therefore, the compositional and functional gut microbiota alterations lead to cerebrovascular disease pathogenesis. The current study aims to determine the alteration and clinical value of the gut microbiota in CSVD patients.MethodsSixty-four CSVD patients and 18 matched healthy controls (HCs) were included in our study. All the participants underwent neuropsychological tests, and the multi-modal magnetic resonance imaging depicted the changes in brain structure and function. Plasma samples were collected, and the fecal samples were analyzed with 16S rRNA gene sequencing.ResultsBased on the alpha diversity analysis, the CSVD group had significantly decreased Shannon and enhanced Simpson compared to the HC group. At the genus level, there was a significant increase in the relative abundances of Parasutterella, Anaeroglobus, Megasphaera, Akkermansia, Collinsella, and Veillonella in the CSVD group. Moreover, these genera with significant differences in CSVD patients revealed significant correlations with cognitive assessments, plasma levels of the blood-brain barrier-/inflammation-related indexes, and structural/functional magnetic resonance imaging changes. Functional prediction demonstrated that lipoic acid metabolism was significantly higher in CSVD patients than HCs. Additionally, a composite biomarker depending on six gut microbiota at the genus level displayed an area under the curve of 0.834 to distinguish CSVD patients from HCs using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) algorithm.ConclusionThe evident changes in gut microbiota composition in CSVD patients were correlated with clinical features and pathological changes of CSVD. Combining these gut microbiota using the LASSO algorithm helped identify CSVD accurately

A Survey of Chinese Pig Farms and Human Healthcare Isolates Reveals Separate Human and Animal Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Populations.

There has been increasing concern that the overuse of antibiotics in livestock farming is contributing to the burden of antimicrobial resistance in people. Farmed animals in Europe and North America, particularly pigs, provide a reservoir for livestock-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (LA-MRSA ST398 lineage) found in people. This study is designed to investigate the contribution of MRSA from Chinese pig farms to human infection. A collection of 483 MRSA are isolated from 55 farms and 4 hospitals in central China, a high pig farming density area. CC9 MRSA accounts for 97.2% of all farm isolates, but is not present in hospital isolates. ST398 isolates are found on farms and hospitals, but none of them formed part of the "LA-MRSA ST398 lineage" present in Europe and North America. The hospital ST398 MRSA isolate form a clade that is clearly separate from the farm ST398 isolates. Despite the presence of high levels of MRSA found on Chinese pig farms, the authors find no evidence of them spilling over to the human population. Nevertheless, the ST398 MRSA obtained from hospitals appear to be part of a widely distributed lineage in China. The new animal-adapted ST398 lineage that has emerged in China is of concern

miR-27b inhibits fibroblast activation via targeting TGFB signaling pathway

Background: MicroRNAs are a group of small RNAs that regulate gene expression at the posttranscriptional level. They regulate almost every aspect of cellular processes. In this study, we investigated whether miR-27b regulates pulmonary fibroblast activation.Results: We found that miR-27b was down-regulated in fibrotic lungs and fibroblasts from an experimental mouse model of pulmonary fibrosis. The overexpression of miR-27b with a lentiviral vector inhibited TGFB1-stimulated mRNA expression of collagens (COL1A1, COL3A1, and COL4A1) and alpha-smooth muscle actin, and protein expression of Col3A1 and alpha-smooth muscle actin in LL29 human pulmonary fibroblasts. miR-27b also reduced contractile activity of LL29. TGFB receptor 1 and SMAD2 were identified as the targets of miR-27b by 3'-untranslated region luciferase reporter and western blotting assays.Conclusions: Our results suggest that miR-27b is an anti-fibrotic microRNA that inhibits fibroblast activation by targeting TGFB receptor 1 and SMAD2. This discovery may provide new targets for therapeutic interventions of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.Peer reviewedPhysiological SciencesOklahoma Center for Respiratory and Infectious Disease

Burden of child maltreatment in China:A systematic review

Objective To estimate the health and economic burdens of child maltreatment in China. Methods We did a systematic review for studies on child maltreatment in China using PubMed, Embase, PsycInfo, CINAHL-EBSCO, ERIC and the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure databases. We did meta-analyses of studies that met inclusion criteria to estimate the prevalence of child neglect and child physical, emotional and sexual abuse. We used data from the 2010 global burden of disease estimates to calculate disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) lost as a result of child maltreatment. Findings From 68 studies we estimated that 26.6% of children under 18 years of age have suffered physical abuse, 19.6% emotional abuse, 8.7% sexual abuse and 26.0% neglect. We estimate that emotional abuse in childhood accounts for 26.3% of the DALYs lost because of mental disorders and 18.0% of those lost because of self-harm. Physical abuse in childhood accounts for 12.2% of DALYs lost because of depression, 17.0% of those lost to anxiety, 20.7% of those lost to problem drinking, 18.8% of those lost to illicit drug use and 18.3% of those lost to self-harm. The consequences of physical abuse of children costs China an estimated 0.84% of its gross domestic product – i.e. 50 billion United States dollars – in 2010. The corresponding losses attributable to emotional and sexual abuse in childhood were 0.47% and 0.39% of the gross domestic product, respectively. Conclusion In China, child maltreatment is common and associated with large economic losses because many maltreated children suffer substantial psychological distress and might adopt behaviours that increase their risk of chronic disease