Expression of monocyte chemotactic protein-3 mRNA in rat vascular smooth muscle cells and in carotid artery after balloon angioplasty

AbstractMonocyte chemotactic protein-3 (MCP-3) is a CC chemokine that functions in chemoattraction and activation of monocytes, T lymphocytes, eosinophils, basophils, natural killer cells and dendritic cells. The activation of the target cells by MCP-3 is via specific chemokine receptors CCR2 and CCR3, of which CCR2 is shared with MCP-1. MCP-1 and CCR2 have been implicated in vascular diseases including atherosclerosis and restenosis, that are known to be involved in inflammation (accumulation of T lymphocytes and monocytes) and smooth muscle cell (SMC) activation (proliferation, migration and matrix deposition). To investigate a potential role of MCP-3 in vascular injury, the present work examined its mRNA expression in rat aortic SMCs stimulated with various inflammatory stimuli including LPS, TNF-α, IL-1β, IFN-γ and TGF-β. A time- and concentration-dependant induction of MCP-3 mRNA in SMCs was observed by means of Northern analysis. A strikingly similar expression profile was observed for MCP-3 and MCP-1 mRNA in SMCs. Furthermore, MCP-3 mRNA expression was induced in rat carotid artery after balloon angioplasty. A significant induction in MCP-3 mRNA was observed in the carotid artery at 6 h (41-fold increase over control, P<0.001), 1 day (13-fold increase, P<0.001) and 3 days (6-fold increase, P<0.01) after balloon angioplasty as quantitated by reverse transcription and polymerase chain reaction. These data provide evidence for the cytokine-induced expression of MCP-3 in SMCs and in carotid artery after balloon angioplasty, suggesting a potential role of MCP-3 in the pathogenesis of restenosis and atherosclerosis

LE-SSL-MOS: Self-Supervised Learning MOS Prediction with Listener Enhancement

Recently, researchers have shown an increasing interest in automatically predicting the subjective evaluation for speech synthesis systems. This prediction is a challenging task, especially on the out-of-domain test set. In this paper, we proposed a novel fusion model for MOS prediction that combines supervised and unsupervised approaches. In the supervised aspect, we developed an SSL-based predictor called LE-SSL-MOS. The LE-SSL-MOS utilizes pre-trained self-supervised learning models and further improves prediction accuracy by utilizing the opinion scores of each utterance in the listener enhancement branch. In the unsupervised aspect, two steps are contained: we fine-tuned the unit language model (ULM) using highly intelligible domain data to improve the correlation of an unsupervised metric - SpeechLMScore. Another is that we utilized ASR confidence as a new metric with the help of ensemble learning. To our knowledge, this is the first architecture that fuses supervised and unsupervised methods for MOS prediction. With these approaches, our experimental results on the VoiceMOS Challenge 2023 show that LE-SSL-MOS performs better than the baseline. Our fusion system achieved an absolute improvement of 13% over LE-SSL-MOS on the noisy and enhanced speech track. Our system ranked 1st and 2nd, respectively, in the French speech synthesis track and the challenge's noisy and enhanced speech track.Comment: accepted in IEEE-ASRU202

Prediction of ADMET Properties of Anti-Breast Cancer Compounds Using Three Machine Learning Algorithms

In recent years, machine learning methods have been applied successfully in many fields. In this paper, three machine learning algorithms, including partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), adaptive boosting (AdaBoost), and light gradient boosting machine (LGBM), were applied to establish models for predicting the Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, Excretion, and Toxicity (ADMET for short) properties, namely Caco-2, CYP3A4, hERG, HOB, MN of anti-breast cancer compounds. To the best of our knowledge, the LGBM algorithm was applied to classify the ADMET property of anti-breast cancer compounds for the first time. We evaluated the established models in the prediction set using accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. Compared with the performance of the models established using the three algorithms, the LGBM yielded most satisfactory results (accuracy &gt; 0.87, precision &gt; 0.72, recall &gt; 0.73, and F1-score &gt; 0.73). According to the obtained results, it can be inferred that LGBM can establish reliable models to predict the molecular ADMET properties and provide a useful tool for virtual screening and drug design researchers

Static and Free Vibration Analysis of Laminated Composite Plates Using Isogeometric Approach Based on the Third Order Shear Deformation Theory

Isogeometric analysis (IGA) based on nonuniform rational B-splines (NURBS) is applied for static and free vibration analysis of laminated composite plates by using the third order shear deformation theory (TSDT). TSDT requires C 1 -continuity of generalized displacements and NURBS basis functions are well-suited for this requirement. Due to the noninterpolatory nature of NURBS basis functions, a penalty method is applied to enforce the essential boundary conditions. The validity and accuracy of the present method are demonstrated through a series of numerical examples of isotropic and laminated composite plates with different shapes, boundary conditions, fiber orientations, lay-up numbers, and so forth. The obtained numerical results are compared with either the analytical solutions or other available numerical methods

High-throughput sequencing yields a complete mitochondrial genome of Emberiza godlewskii (aves, emberidae)

Emberiza godlewskii (Taczanowski, ) is a passerine bird of eastern Asia which belongs to the genus Emberiza in the bunting family Emberizidae. Obtaining the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of E. godlewskii is helpful to understand the species delimitation for further study of E. cia/godlewskii complex. The circular genome (16,839 bp in length) contains 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes, and 1 control region. The base composition shows that purine percentage (52.87%) is slightly higher than pyrimidine (47.13%). The phylogenetic analysis based on the published data of the mitochondrial genome showed that E. godlewskii is closely related to E. cioides. This new mitochondrial genome data will provide more essential molecular data for further study related to E. cia/godlewskii complex

NURBS-Based Isogeometric Analysis of Beams and Plates Using High Order Shear Deformation Theory

Isogeometric analysis (IGA) based on nonuniform rational B-splines (NURBS) is developed for static analysis of beams and plates using the third-order shear deformation theory (TSDT). TSDT requires C1-continuity of generalized displacements; quadratic, cubic, and quartic NURBS basis functions are utilized to satisfy this requirement. Due to the noninterpolatory nature of NURBS basis functions, a penalty method is presented to enforce the essential boundary conditions. A series of numerical examples of thick and thin beams and plates with different boundary conditions are presented. Results are compared with analytical solutions and other numerical methods. First-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) is also employed and compared with TSDT in the stress analysis. The effects of aspect ratios and boundary conditions are discussed as well

Average capacity analysis of FSO system with Airy beam as carrier over exponentiated Weibull channels

Based on scintillation index of Airy beam and exponentiated Weibull channel model, analytical expressions of average channel capacity for free-space optical (FSO) communication links with Airy beam as signal carrier under weak atmospheric turbulence and on-off keying modulation scheme are derived. The average capacity at various propagation distances, transverse scale factors and exponential decay factors has been evaluated. And we compared the average capacity of FSO links with Airy beam and Gaussian beam as signal carrier. The results show that the average capacity of FSO links with Airy beam as carrier increases with the increase of mean signal-to-noise ratio and decreases uniformly with the increase of propagation distance. When the transverse scale factor of Airy beam is about 2 cm, a higher average capacity can be obtained. And the smaller the exponential decay factor of Airy beam, the larger the average capacity. Under the same source power or source width, the average capacity of FSO links with Airy beam as carrier is significantly higher than that of FSO links with Gaussian beam as carrier. The results of this research have some reference significance for the application of Airy beam in FSO communication system

High-throughput sequencing yields a complete mitochondrial genome of <i>Emberiza godlewskii</i> (aves, emberidae)

Emberiza godlewskii (Taczanowski, 1874) is a passerine bird of eastern Asia which belongs to the genus Emberiza in the bunting family Emberizidae. Obtaining the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of E. godlewskii is helpful to understand the species delimitation for further study of E. cia/godlewskii complex. The circular genome (16,839 bp in length) contains 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes, and 1 control region. The base composition shows that purine percentage (52.87%) is slightly higher than pyrimidine (47.13%). The phylogenetic analysis based on the published data of the mitochondrial genome showed that E. godlewskii is closely related to E. cioides. This new mitochondrial genome data will provide more essential molecular data for further study related to E. cia/godlewskii complex.</p

New Constructed EEM Spectra Combined with N-PLS Analysis Approach as an Effective Way to Determine Multiple Target Compounds in Complex Samples

Excitation&ndash;emission matrix (EEM) fluorescence spectroscopy has been applied to many fields. In this study, a simple method was proposed to obtain the new constructed three-dimensional (3D) EEM spectra based on the original EEM spectra. Then, the application of the N-PLS method to the new constructed 3D EEM spectra was proposed to quantify target compounds in two complex data sets. The quantitative models were established on external sample sets and validated using statistical parameters. For validation purposes, the obtained results were compared with those obtained by applying the N-PLS method to the original EEM spectra and applying the PLS method to the extracted maximum spectra in the concatenated mode. The comparison of the results demonstrated that, given the advantages of less useless information and a high calculating speed of the new constructed 3D EEM spectra, N-PLS on the new constructed 3D EEM spectra obtained better quantitative analysis results with a correlation coefficient of prediction above 0.9906 and recovery values in the range of 85.6&ndash;95.6%. Therefore, one can conclude that the N-PLS method combined with the new constructed 3D EEM spectra is expected to be broadened as an alternative strategy for the simultaneous determination of multiple target compounds