Network biomarkers, interaction networks and dynamical network biomarkers in respiratory diseases

Identification and validation of interaction networks and network biomarkers have become more critical and important in the development of disease-specific biomarkers, which are functionally changed during disease development, progression or treatment. The present review headlined the definition, significance, research and potential application for network biomarkers, interaction networks and dynamical network biomarkers (DNB). Disease-specific interaction networks, network biomarkers, or DNB have great significance in the understanding of molecular pathogenesis, risk assessment, disease classification and monitoring, or evaluations of therapeutic responses and toxicities. Protein-based DNB will provide more information to define the differences between the normal and pre-disease stages, which might point to early diagnosis for patients. Clinical bioinformatics should be a key approach to the identification and validation of disease-specific biomarkers

Use of the “ba” construction in Heritage Chinese speakers and L2 speakers of Chinese

ABSTRACT This thesis analyses the differences in using the ba construction in heritage Chinese speak-ers and L2 speakers of Chinese. The study compares the use and knowledge of the ba con-struction by L1 native speakers, heritage speakers (HL), and L2 learners of Mandarin Chi-nese. Heritage language speakers are exposed to minority languages from birth, and they are exposed to a majority language later in life (Polinsky & Kagan, 2007), which then causes the L2 to become the dominant language. Other L2 learners tend to retain their L1 as a dom-inant language. The ba construction is an active sentence in which the particle ba is used before the predicate verb to introduce the subject and dispose of the object. The focus is on the result or change to the object instead of the event in a regular active sentence. These meaning changes are accompanied by a change in word order from the regular SVO to SOV. Language transfer, linguistic environment, age, and age of language acquisition were con-sidered factors influencing the use and judgment of the ba construction. In this study, 88 participants were included: 25 in the HL group, 24 in the L2 group, and 39 in the CN group. Support for this proposal comes from an online experiment that investigat-ed three groups and the usage of ba sentences. The participants of the three speaker groups were evaluated based on a grammatical judgment task, a multiple-choice test, and a con-trolled production task in the GORILLA Experiment Builder. The results show that HL and L2 speakers differ from L1 speakers in the use of ba sentences, while HL and L1 speakers differ from L2 speakers in the judgement of ba sentences. Com-pared to L1 speakers, HL and L2 speakers used simple complements in ba sentences more frequently. The results also demonstrated that the age of second language acquisition had the most significant influence on the usage of HL and L2 in ba sentences, followed by the dominant language, dominant language environment and lastly the age of the participants. These results support the importance of language dominance and age of acquisition in the usage patterns for heritage and L2 speakers

High-Temperature Corrosion Behavior of Alloys in Gaseous Environments with Low-Oxygen and High-Sulfur Potentials

To seek a better understanding of the compositional and environmental factors affecting the corrosion behavior of alloys in sulfur-rich atmospheres at temperatures above 600oC, relevant to advanced combustion systems for power generation, eight chromia-scale-forming commercial alloys were tested at 750oC in gases with a base composition of N2-15%CO-3%H2-0.12%H2S. This base composition was made more oxidizing by introducing two different levels of water vapor, 0.6% and 3%, into the reaction gas. Five model alloys were also prepared to study and verify the effects of major alloying elements, Cr, Co and Ni, on sulfidation resistance. The additional three model alloys were prepared to systematically study the effects of minor alloying elements Ti, Al and Mo. Finally, another group of three model alloys was made to study the individual effect of titanium on sulfidation resistance. All alloys eventually exhibited breakaway behavior. A protective Cr2O3 scale formed initially and then broke down. The mechanistic process of the breakaway corrosion was assessed. As for the effects of major alloying elements, it was found that the alloys with a Ni/Co mass ratio near to unity had less weight gain and hence, superior sulfidation resistance. This is because when the Ni/Co ratio is near unity, Ni and Co availability are both sufficiently low to suppress their external sulfidation and consequently extend the incubation period. In the range of the alloys studied, 10-40wt.%Co, weight gain decreased with an increase in the alloy cobalt content. Similarly, weight gain decreased with an increase in alloy chromium content in the range of 19-28wt.%. Nickel was found to have a detrimental effect by increasing the tendency to form a liquid reaction product. This tendency increased with increasing nickel content in the alloy. Besides major alloying elements, the judicious addition of minor alloying elements, Al, Ti and Mo, was found to have a significant effect to improve sulfidation resistance. This is because the minor additions promoted the formation of an oxide-enriched scale layer-comprised of Al2O3 and oxides containing Cr and Ti. This oxide-enriched scale layer was inferred to have inhibited the outward diffusion of base-metal elements, thus mitigating external sulfidation and consequently internal corrosion. It was found, based on the model alloys study, that remarkable sufidation resistance could be conferred to an alloy by maintaining an Ni/Co mass ratio near unity, and adding minor amounts of Al, Ti and Mo. A particularly sulfidation-resistant model alloy had the compostion of 33.1Ni-22Cr-34.9Co-2.5Al-2.5Ti-5Mo (in wt.%). The individual effect of titanium was found to promote oxide-scale formation by shifting the kinetic boundary to a lower oxygen partial pressure. Titanium was observed to exist with Cr as complex oxides, which nevertheless acted as an effective barrier inhibiting the outward migration and subsequent external sulfidation of the base-metal elements. In addition to the effects of major and minor alloying elements on sulfidation resistance, the mechanisms associated with the sometimes observed formation of whiskers, voids and nodules were assessed. In the second part of this thesis, alloys Fe-30wt.%Mo-5wt.%Al and Fe-30wt.%Mo-10wt.%Al were studied in a simulated syngas atmosphere. It was found that alloy Fe-30Mo-10Al had better sulfidation resistance than conventional Ni-Cr-Co high-temperature alloys. The good corrosion resistance was attributed to the formation of a very thin Al2O3 layer on the surface of the alloy, identified by XPS analysis. The effect of Al level on sulfidation resistance was also studied and explained

Two Novel Tyrosinase Inhibitory Sesquiterpenes Induced by CuCl2 from a Marine-Derived Fungus Pestalotiopsis sp. Z233

Two new sesquiterpenes, 1β,5α,6α,14-tetraacetoxy-9α-benzoyloxy-7β H-eudesman-2β,11-diol (1) and 4α,5α-diacetoxy-9α-benzoyloxy-7βH-eudesman-1β,2β,11, 14-tetraol (2), were produced as stress metabolites in the cultured mycelia of Pestalotiopsis sp. Z233 isolated from the algae Sargassum horneri in response to abiotic stress elicitation by CuCl2. Their structures were established by spectroscopic means. New compounds 1 and 2 showed tyrosinase inhibitory activities with IC50 value of 14.8 µM and 22.3 µ

Use of the “ba” construction in Heritage Chinese speakers and L2 speakers of Chinese

ABSTRACT This thesis analyses the differences in using the ba construction in heritage Chinese speak-ers and L2 speakers of Chinese. The study compares the use and knowledge of the ba con-struction by L1 native speakers, heritage speakers (HL), and L2 learners of Mandarin Chi-nese. Heritage language speakers are exposed to minority languages from birth, and they are exposed to a majority language later in life (Polinsky & Kagan, 2007), which then causes the L2 to become the dominant language. Other L2 learners tend to retain their L1 as a dom-inant language. The ba construction is an active sentence in which the particle ba is used before the predicate verb to introduce the subject and dispose of the object. The focus is on the result or change to the object instead of the event in a regular active sentence. These meaning changes are accompanied by a change in word order from the regular SVO to SOV. Language transfer, linguistic environment, age, and age of language acquisition were con-sidered factors influencing the use and judgment of the ba construction. In this study, 88 participants were included: 25 in the HL group, 24 in the L2 group, and 39 in the CN group. Support for this proposal comes from an online experiment that investigat-ed three groups and the usage of ba sentences. The participants of the three speaker groups were evaluated based on a grammatical judgment task, a multiple-choice test, and a con-trolled production task in the GORILLA Experiment Builder. The results show that HL and L2 speakers differ from L1 speakers in the use of ba sentences, while HL and L1 speakers differ from L2 speakers in the judgement of ba sentences. Com-pared to L1 speakers, HL and L2 speakers used simple complements in ba sentences more frequently. The results also demonstrated that the age of second language acquisition had the most significant influence on the usage of HL and L2 in ba sentences, followed by the dominant language, dominant language environment and lastly the age of the participants. These results support the importance of language dominance and age of acquisition in the usage patterns for heritage and L2 speakers

Research on Shear Lag Effect of T-shaped Short-leg Shear Wall

Longitudinal displacement of cross section of T-shaped shortlegshear wall was simplified to three parts: shear lag warpingdisplacement, plane section bending displacement and axialdisplacement. Shear lag warping deformation was assumed ascubic parabola distribution along flange, and based on minimumpotential energy principle, differential equations were deduced;with boundary conditions, a calculation theory for shear lageffect was established. With two T-shaped short-leg shear wallmodels, vertical stresses of flanges were obtained by calculationtheory and finite element calculation respectively, and comparisonbetween theoretical analysis results and numerical calculationresults was made. At last, parameter analysis was carriedout, and the influence of shear force, shear span ratio andheight-thickness ratio on shear lag coefficient was obtained.Research shows that numerical calculation results are in goodagreement with theoretical analysis results, and each parameterhas different influence on shear lag coefficient

RIO: A Benchmark for Reasoning Intention-Oriented Objects in Open Environments

Intention-oriented object detection aims to detect desired objects based on specific intentions or requirements. For instance, when we desire to "lie down and rest", we instinctively seek out a suitable option such as a "bed" or a "sofa" that can fulfill our needs. Previous work in this area is limited either by the number of intention descriptions or by the affordance vocabulary available for intention objects. These limitations make it challenging to handle intentions in open environments effectively. To facilitate this research, we construct a comprehensive dataset called Reasoning Intention-Oriented Objects (RIO). In particular, RIO is specifically designed to incorporate diverse real-world scenarios and a wide range of object categories. It offers the following key features: 1) intention descriptions in RIO are represented as natural sentences rather than a mere word or verb phrase, making them more practical and meaningful; 2) the intention descriptions are contextually relevant to the scene, enabling a broader range of potential functionalities associated with the objects; 3) the dataset comprises a total of 40,214 images and 130,585 intention-object pairs. With the proposed RIO, we evaluate the ability of some existing models to reason intention-oriented objects in open environments.Comment: NeurIPS 2023 D&B accepted. See our project page for more details: https://reasonio.github.io

Breeding response of transcript profiling in developing seeds of Brassica napus

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The upgrading of rapeseed cultivars has resulted in a substantial improvement in yield and quality in China over the past 30 years. With the selective pressure against fatty acid composition and oil content, high erucic acid- and low oil-content cultivars have been replaced by low erucic acid- and high oil-content cultivars. The high erucic acid cultivar Zhongyou 821 and its descendent, low erucic acid cultivar Zhongshuang 9, are representatives of two generations of the most outstanding Chinese rapeseed cultivars (<it>B. napus</it>) developed the past 2 decades. This paper compares the transcriptional profiles of Zhongshuang 9 and Zhongyou 821 for 32 genes that are principally involved in lipid biosynthesis during seed development in order to elucidate how the transcriptional profiles of these genes responded to quality improvement over the past 20 years.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Comparison of the cultivar Zhongyou 821 with its descendent, Zhongshuang 9, shows that the transcriptional levels of seven of the 32 genes were upregulated by 30% to 109%, including <it>FAD3</it>, <it>ACCase, FAE1</it>, <it>GKTP</it>, <it>Caleosin</it>, <it>GAPDH</it>, and <it>PEPC</it>. Of the 32 genes, 10 (<it>KAS3, β-CT, BcRK6, P450, FatA, Oleosin, FAD6, FatB, α-CT </it>and <it>SUC1</it>) were downregulated by at least 20% and most by 50%. The <it>Napin </it>gene alone accounted for over 75% of total transcription from all 32 genes assessed in both cultivars. Most of the genes showed significant correlation with fatty acid accumulation, but the correlation in ZS9 was significantly different from that in ZY821. Higher <it>KCR2 </it>activity is associated with higher C16:0, C18:0, and C18:2 in both cultivars, lower C22:1 and total fatty acid content in ZY821, and lower 18:1 in ZS9.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This paper illustrates the response of the transcription levels of 32 genes to breeding in developing rapeseed seeds. Both cultivars showed similar transcription profiles, with the <it>Napin </it>gene predominantly transcribed. Selective pressure for zero erucic acid, low glucosinolate, high oleic acid and high oil content, as well as high yield, resulted in higher <it>FAD3</it>, <it>ACCase, FAE1</it>, <it>GKTP</it>, <it>Caleosin</it>, <it>GAPDH</it>, and <it>PEPC </it>expression levels and lower <it>KAS3, β-CT, BcRK6, P450, FatA, Oleosin, FAD6, FatB, α-CT </it>and <it>SUC1 </it>expression levels. It also resulted in altered relationships between these genes during storage accumulation in seed development.</p