Subsecond total-body imaging using ultrasensitive positron emission tomography.

A 194-cm-long total-body positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) scanner (uEXPLORER), has been constructed to offer a transformative platform for human radiotracer imaging in clinical research and healthcare. Its total-body coverage and exceptional sensitivity provide opportunities for innovative studies of physiology, biochemistry, and pharmacology. The objective of this study is to develop a method to perform ultrahigh (100 ms) temporal resolution dynamic PET imaging by combining advanced dynamic image reconstruction paradigms with the uEXPLORER scanner. We aim to capture the fast dynamics of initial radiotracer distribution, as well as cardiac motion, in the human body. The results show that we can visualize radiotracer transport in the body on timescales of 100 ms and obtain motion-frozen images with superior image quality compared to conventional methods. The proposed method has applications in studying fast tracer dynamics, such as blood flow and the dynamic response to neural modulation, as well as performing real-time motion tracking (e.g., cardiac and respiratory motion, and gross body motion) without any external monitoring device (e.g., electrocardiogram, breathing belt, or optical trackers)

Reinterpreting Chinese Cultural Imperatives Within the Contemporary Urban Context Through the Integration of Natural Elements

As Chinese contemporary architecture is entering into a new era along with rapid economic development, this is an opportunity for young Chinese designers to start to translate their own Chinese cultural perspectives into contemporary architecture. This thesis uses an iconic Chinese architectural symbol, the ‘Chinese Garden’, as a vehicle to explore this opportunity to re-interpret the traditional Chinese garden in relation to contemporary Chinese urban culture. The challenge is to investigate how a contemporary garden could be inspired by the philosophy and principles of traditional Chinese gardens within a contemporary Western contextual environment. This thesis explores four major Chinese garden types and their architectural characteristics, how their imperative cultural reflections of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Fengshui Principles, Chinese landscape Painting and legend of ‘Round Heaven and Square Earth’ influence the traditional Chinese garden making. This thesis analyzes the qualities of the existing site, Frank Kitts Park, and it discusses the important ‘positives’ and potential ‘negatives’ that exists on the site. This design thesis will take the ‘negatives’ and translate them into positives through Chinese garden making theories and philosophies. While the Dunedin Chinese garden decided to hide the western urban context with a surrounding wall, this design thesis seeks to embrace the surrounding western urban context and incorporate it into the garden as a means of demonstrating how traditional gardens can flourish within contemporary times. This thesis challenges how a contemporary and western context can be incorporated with the principles of a traditional Chinese garden and how existing urban elements can be interpreted as landscape elements by translating traditionally soft plant elements into architectural elements. Just as solid walls are used to enclose the perimeter of traditional style gardens (both imperial gardens and private gardens), the contemporary garden should also consider the application of physical walls in order to divide space (both exterior and interior) and thus create multiple discreet spaces which may be considered as an inner and outer world with a garden boundary at ground level; a spiritual inner world is found within the garden and a literal outer world remains outside of the garden walls

Mechanisms Driving the Interannual Variability of the Bering Strait Throughflow

The Bering Strait throughflow has important implications for the Arctic freshwater, heat, and nutrients. By keeping the interannual variabilities of the atmospheric forcing only inside or outside the Arctic Ocean in numerical simulations, we can quantify their relative contributions to the interannual variability of the throughflow. We found that winds play a much more important role for the throughflow interannual variability than buoyancy forcing. Winds over the western Arctic Ocean and North Pacific determine the direction of Ekman transport, thus changing the sea surface height gradient between the two basins, and consequently influencing the volume transport strength. Although winds over the two basins are similarly important for the variance of ocean volume transport, the North Pacific winds cause stronger variability in freshwater and heat transports through modifying the inflow temperature and salinity. After 1994, winds over the western Arctic Ocean explain a larger part of the variability of Bering Strait volume transport than the winds outside the Arctic Ocean

HSF-1 attenuates isoflurane-induced cognitive dysfunction by inhibiting TLR2 expression

Purpose: To investigate the regulatory effects of heat shock factor 1 (HSF-1) in the progression of postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD). Methods: Isoflurane (ISO)-induced POCD model in rats was established to determine the role of HSF-1 in POCD. Morris water maze test was used to evaluate the learning and memory abilities of the POCD rats while mRNA and protein levels of HSF-1 were determined by RNA extraction/quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) and western blot analysis, respectively. Results: The mRNA and protein levels of HSF-1 were significantly reduced in ISO model, but OE-HSF-1 treatment significantly elevated HSF-1 level (p < 0.05). ISO treatment also significantly decreased escape latency but increased the decreased target quadrant of the rats, while HSF-1 upregulation reversed these effects (p < 0.05). Additionally, HSF-1 alleviated ISO-induced hippocampal injury, improved ISO-induced hippocampal inflammation, and inhibited ISO-induced hippocampal apoptosis. Furthermore, HSF-1 was modulated by POCD via TLR2/NF-κB pathway (p < 0.05). Conclusion: HSF-1 attenuates ISO-induced cognitive dysfunction by suppressing TLR2 expression. This activity provides a potential strategy to prevent POCD via HSF-1

Impacts of strong wind events on sea ice and water mass properties in Antarctic coastal polynyas

Strong offshore wind events (SOWEs) occur frequently near the Antarctic coast during austral winter. These wind events are typically associated with passage of synoptic- or meso-scale cyclones, which interact with the katabatic wind field and affect sea ice and oceanic processes in coastal polynyas. Based on numerical simulations from the coupled Finite Element Sea-ice Ocean Model (FESOM) driven by the CORE-II forcing, two coastal polynyas along the East Antarctica coast––the Prydz Bay Polynya and the Shackleton Polynya are selected to examine the response of sea ice and oceanic properties to SOWEs. In these polynyas, the southern or western flanks of cyclones play a crucial role in increasing the offshore winds depending on the local topography. Case studies for both polynyas show that during SOWEs, when the wind speed is 2–3 times higher than normal values, the offshore component of sea ice velocity can increase by 3–4 times. Sea ice concentration can decrease by 20–40%, and sea ice production can increase up to two to four folds. SOWEs increase surface salinity variability and mixed layer depth, and such effects may persist for 5–10 days. Formation of high salinity shelf water (HSSW) is detected in the coastal regions from surface to 800 m after 10–15 days of the SOWEs, while the HSSW features in deep layers exhibit weak response on the synoptic time scale. HSSW formation averaged over winter is notably greater in years with longer duration of SOWEs

An association study of ADSS gene polymorphisms with schizophrenia

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Adenylosuccinate synthase (ADSS) catalyzes the first committed step of AMP synthesis. It was suggested that the blood-derived RNA of ADSS was down-regulated in schizophrenia (SZ) and one of the eight putative biomarker genes to discriminate SZ from normal controls. However, it remains unclear whether the reduction of ADSS RNA is due to the polymorphisms of the gene or not.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We attempted to examine the association of ADSS gene with schizophrenia in a Chinese population of 480 schizophrenics and 502 normal controls. Genotyping was performed by the Sequenom platform.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The 6 marker SNPs (rs3102460, rs3127459, rs3127460, rs3127465, rs3006001, and rs3003211) were genotyped. The frequencies of alleles, genotypes, and haplotypes were tested between cases and controls. There was no significant difference of genotypic, allelic, or haplotypic distributions of the 6 SNPs between the two groups.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our data did not support ADSS gene as a susceptibility gene for SZ in Chinese Han population. Large sample size study is needed to validate or replicate our association study, especially from other ethnic populations.</p

Phylogenetic and Molecular Characterization of H9N2 Influenza Isolates from Chickens in Northern China from 2007–2009

The repeated transmission to pigs and humans, and the long-term endemicity in terrestrial poultry of H9N2 viruses in China lend urgency to the study of their ecology and pathogenicity. In the present paper, we reported an H9N2 virus sublineage isolated from chickens in northern China from 2007 to 2009 has high lethality for mice. Phylogenetic analysis of the full genome indicated that six representative H9N2 isolates shared high homology to each other, and they clustered in the same sublineage with other H9N2 viruses isolated recently in northern China. The isolates were double-reassortant viruses containing M genes similar to A/Quail/Hong Kong/G1/97 (H9N2) and the other seven gene segments from A/Chicken/Shanghai/F/98 (H9N2). These six isolates were capable of replicating in the lungs of infected chickens without producing observable clinical signs of disease or death. However, they were highly lethal to mice with mortality rates as high as 100% (14/14) without prior adaptation. The affected mice exhibited severe respiratory syndromes and diffuse lung injury. The H9N2 viruses could be detected in multiple organs of the infected mice, including hearts, livers, spleens, lungs and kidneys. Our findings demonstrated that H9N2 viruses isolated from the chickens in northern China have established a stable sublineage with enhanced pathogenicity to mice, suggesting that urgent attention will need to be paid to the transmission of H9N2 viruses from chickens to mammals

Chloroplast Genomes in Populus (Salicaceae): Comparisons From an Intensively Sampled Genus Reveal Dynamic Patterns of Evolution

The chloroplast is one of two organelles containing a separate genome that codes for essential and distinct cellular functions such as photosynthesis. Given the importance of chloroplasts in plant metabolism, the genomic architecture and gene content have been strongly conserved through long periods of time and as such are useful molecular tools for evolutionary inferences. At present, complete chloroplast genomes from over 4000 species have been deposited into publicly accessible databases. Despite the large number of complete chloroplast genomes, comprehensive analyses regarding genome architecture and gene content have not been conducted for many lineages with complete species sampling. In this study, we employed the genus Populus to assess how more comprehensively sampled chloroplast genome analyses can be used in understanding chloroplast evolution in a broadly studied lineage of angiosperms. We conducted comparative analyses across Populus in order to elucidate variation in key genome features such as genome size, gene number, gene content, repeat type and number, SSR (Simple Sequence Repeat) abundance, and boundary positioning between the four main units of the genome. We found that some genome annotations were variable across the genus owing in part from errors in assembly or data checking and from this provided corrected annotations. We also employed complete chloroplast genomes for phylogenetic analyses including the dating of divergence times throughout the genus. Lastly, we utilized re-sequencing data to describe the variations of pan-chloroplast genomes at the population level for P. euphratica. The analyses used in this paper provide a blueprint for the types of analyses that can be conducted with publicly available chloroplast genomes as well as methods for building upon existing datasets to improve evolutionary inference

The genomic and bulked segregant analysis of \u3ci\u3eCurcuma alismatifolia\u3c/i\u3e revealed its diverse bract pigmentation

Compared with most flowers where the showy part comprises specialized leaves (petals) directly subtending the reproductive structures, most Zingiberaceae species produce showy ‘‘flowers’’ through modifications of leaves (bracts) subtending the true flowers throughout an inflorescence. Curcuma alismatifolia, belonging to the Zingiberaceae family, a plant species originating from Southeast Asia, has become increasingly popular in the flower market worldwide because of its varied and esthetically pleasing bracts produced in different cultivars. Here, we present the chromosome-scale genome assembly of C. alismatifolia ‘‘Chiang Mai Pink’’ and explore the underlying mechanisms of bract pigmentation. Comparative genomic analysis revealed C. alismatifolia contains a residual signal of wholegenome duplication. Duplicated genes, including pigment-related genes, exhibit functional and structural differentiation resulting in diverse bract colors among C. alismatifolia cultivars. In addition, we identified the key genes that produce different colored bracts in C. alismatifolia, such as F3\u275’H, DFR, ANS and several transcription factors for anthocyanin synthesis, as well as chlH and CAO in the chlorophyll synthesis pathway by conducting transcriptomic analysis, bulked segregant analysis using both DNA and RNA data, and population genomic analysis. This work provides data for understanding the mechanism of bract pigmentation and will accelerate breeding in developing novel cultivars with richly colored bracts in C. alismatifolia and related species. It is also important to understand the variation in the evolution of the Zingiberaceae family