First mitogenome of subfamily Langiinae (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae) with its phylogenetic implications

To date, a relatively complete classification of Sphingidae (Lepidoptera) has been generated, but the phylogeny of the family remains need to be fully resolved. Some phylogenetic relationships within Sphingidae still remains uncertain, especially the taxonomic status of the subfamily Langiinae and its sole included genus and species, Langia zenzeroides. To begin to address this problem, we generated nine new complete mitochondrial genomes, including that of Langia, and together with that of Theretra oldenlandiae from our previous study and 25 other Sphingidae mitogenomes downloaded from GenBank, analyzed the phylogenetic relationships of Sphingidae and investigated the mitogenomic differences among members of the Langiinae, Sphinginae, Smerinthinae and Macroglossinae. The mitogenomes of Sphingidae varied from 14995 bp to 15669 bp in length. The gene order of all newly sequenced mitogenomes was identical, containing 13 protein-coding genes, two ribosomal RNA genes, 22 transfer RNA genes and the A + T-rich region. Nucleotide composition was A + T biased, and all the protein-coding genes exhibited a positive AT-skew, which was reflected in the nucleotide composition, codon, and amino acid usage. The A + T-rich region was comprised of nonrepetitive sequences, which contained regulatory elements related to the control of replication and transcription. We analyzed concatenated gene sequences, with third codon positions of protein coding genes and rRNAs excluded, using Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian Inference techniques. All four currently recognized subfamilies were recovered as monophyletic but in contrast to the most recent studies, our preferred tree placed Langiinae as the first subfamily to diverge within Sphingidae rather as sister to Smerinthinae + Sphinginae. Our results also support the removal of the genus Barbourion from the smerinthine tribe Ambulycini to an unresolved position in "Smerinthinae incertae sedis".Copyright © 2021, The Authors. This document is the author’s final accepted version of the journal article. You are advised to consult the published version if you wish to cite from it

Continuous Modeling for transient and steady cyclic hardening /softening behavior of metallic materials under amplitude change loading

This paper is concerned with the performance of the plastic strain amplitude measure, originally motivated and then abandoned by Haupt et al. [1]. Reasons for success and failure in modeling for the amplitude dependence are discussed. It is shown that if the memory parameter in the variable to indicate the center of the plastic strain region is determined suitably, the measure gives satisfactory performance in reflecting the amplitude behavior. By incorporating a hardening function dependent on the measure into the intrinsic time scale used in Valanis' endochronic plasticity, various transient and steady cyclic phenomena of hardening materials can be reproduced

An integral elasto-plastic constitutive theory

This paper proposes an integral elasto-plastic constitutive equation, in which it is considered that stress is a functional of plastic strain in a plastic strain space. It is indicated that, to completely describe a strain path, the arc-length and curvature of the trajectory, the turning angles at the corner points and other characteristic points on the path must be considered. In general, the plastic strain space is a non-Euclidean geometric, space hence its measure tensor is a function of not only properties of the material but also the plastic strain history. This recommended integral elasto-plastic constitutive equation is the generalization of Ilyushin, Pipkin, Rivlin and Valanis theories and is suited to research the responses of material under the complex loading path. The predictions of the proposed theory have a good agreement with the experimental results. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Peregrine and saker falcon genome sequences provide insights into evolution of a predatory lifestyle

As top predators, falcons possess unique morphological, physiological and behavioral adaptations that allow them to be successful hunters: for example, the peregrine is renowned as the world's fastest animal. To examine the evolutionary basis of predatory adaptations, we sequenced the genomes of both the peregrine (Falco peregrinus) and saker falcon (Falco cherrug), and we present parallel, genome-wide evidence for evolutionary innovation and selection for a predatory lifestyle. The genomes, assembled using Illumina deep sequencing with greater than 100-fold coverage, are both approximately 1.2 Gb in length, with transcriptome-assisted prediction of approximately 16,200 genes for both species. Analysis of 8,424 orthologs in both falcons, chicken, zebra finch and turkey identified consistent evidence for genome-wide rapid evolution in these raptors. SNP-based inference showed contrasting recent demographic trajectories for the two falcons, and gene-based analysis highlighted falcon-specific evolutionary novelties for beak development and olfaction and specifically for homeostasis-related genes in the arid environment–adapted saker

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Viscosity and density estimation of ternary solution based on recursive B-spline method

Conference Name:2013 2nd International Conference on Measurement, Instrumentation and Automation, ICMIA 2013. Conference Address: Guilin, China. Time:April 23, 2013 - April 24, 2013.Korea Maritime University; Hong Kong Industrial Technology Research Centre; Inha UniversityOnline viscosity and density estimation of ternary solution with sucrose and sodium chloride means a lot in osmotic dehydration of food. The authors proposed a novel B-spline method using recursive least squares to estimate viscosity and density using concentrations of the two solutes and temperature. A 4-D B-spline is established to estimate viscosity with the inputs of sucrose concentration, sodium chloride concentration and temperature. And a 3-D B-spline is also established to estimate density in a fixed temperature. The maximum relative errors of viscosity and density estimation are 0.0062% and 1.33×10-5% respectively which show that the method is of high accuracy and suitable for practical application. ? (2013) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland