Object-oriented Neural Programming (OONP) for Document Understanding

We propose Object-oriented Neural Programming (OONP), a framework for semantically parsing documents in specific domains. Basically, OONP reads a document and parses it into a predesigned object-oriented data structure (referred to as ontology in this paper) that reflects the domain-specific semantics of the document. An OONP parser models semantic parsing as a decision process: a neural net-based Reader sequentially goes through the document, and during the process it builds and updates an intermediate ontology to summarize its partial understanding of the text it covers. OONP supports a rich family of operations (both symbolic and differentiable) for composing the ontology, and a big variety of forms (both symbolic and differentiable) for representing the state and the document. An OONP parser can be trained with supervision of different forms and strength, including supervised learning (SL) , reinforcement learning (RL) and hybrid of the two. Our experiments on both synthetic and real-world document parsing tasks have shown that OONP can learn to handle fairly complicated ontology with training data of modest sizes.Comment: accepted by ACL 201

Syntenin-1 is a promoter and prognostic marker of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma invasion and metastasis.

Metastasis represents a key factor associated with poor prognosis of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSC). However, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain largely unknown. In this study, our liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry analysis revealed a number of significantly differentially expressed membrane/membrane-associated proteins between high invasive UM1 and low invasive UM2 cells. One of the identified membrane proteins, Syntenin-1, was remarkably up-regulated in HNSC tissues and cell lines when compared to the controls, and also over-expressed in recurrent HNSC and high invasive UM1 cells. Syntenin-1 over-expression was found to be significantly associated with lymph node metastasis and disease recurrence. HNSC patients with higher syntenin-1 expression had significantly poorer long term overall survival and similar results were found in many other types of cancers based on analysis of The Cancer Genome Atlas data. Finally, knockdown of syntenin-1 inhibited the proliferation, migration and invasion of HNSC cells, and opposite findings were observed when syntenin-1 was over-expressed. Collectively, our studies indicate that syntenin-1 promotes invasion and progression of HNSC. It may serve as a valuable biomarker for lymph node metastasis or a potential target for therapeutic intervention in HNSC

The effect and molecular mechanism of hypoxia on proliferation and apoptosis of CD133+ renal stem cells

Congenital hydronephrosis caused by ureteropelvic junction obstruction (UPJO) eventually leads to renal interstitial fibrosis and atrophy, after a series of pathophysiological problems. Renal repair after injury depends on renal stem cells. This study aimed to determine the expression of renal stem cell marker CD133 in children of different ages and the regulatory effect of stem cell microenvironment. Renal stem cells from children of different ages were identified and screened out by flow cytometry in the study. Children with hydronephrosis were divided into neonates, infants, preschool age, school age, and adolescents groups. A hypoxic cell model prepared with CoCl2 was developed to detect the effect of hypoxia on the proliferation and apoptosis of renal stem cells. The effect and molecular mechanism of hypoxia-inducible factor 1-alpha (HIF-1α) on the proliferation and apoptosis of renal stem cells were also explored. Both hypoxia and HIF-1α significantly promoted the proliferation of renal stem cells and inhibited cell apoptosis. HIF-1α could bind to the promoter region of proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) and PROM1 (CD133) to mediate their transcription and expression. The content of CD133+ renal stem cells was the highest in the neonatal group and it decreased with the increase of age. Taken together, this study clarified the effect of age on the content of human renal stem cells and determined the regulatory mechanism of hypoxia on renal stem cells. We expect our results to provide a research basis for the treatment and clinical application of renal stem cells

Effect and safety of combined Gegen Qinlian decoction/metformin in the treatment of diabetes mellitus in patients, and its influence on serum C peptide and glycosylated hemoglobin

Purpose: To investigate the clinical efficacy and safety of combined Gegen Qinlian decoction /metformin in the treatment of diabetes mellitus (DM), and its influence on serum C peptide and glycosylated hemoglobin (HbAlc).Methods: One hundred and eighty-six DM patients who received treatment in Tangshan Gongren Hospital, Tangshan City, China from July 2018 to November 2019 were randomly assigned to group X (n = 93) and group Y (n = 93). Group Y was given metformin, while X received a combination of Gegen Qinlian decoction and metformin. Total effectiveness, incidence of adverse reactions, blood glucose, TCM syndrome scores, as well as serum C peptide and HbAlc were determined and compared between the two groups.Results: Compared with group Y, group X had significantly higher treatment effectiveness (p < 0.05), lower incidence of adverse reactions (p < 0.05), significantly lower levels of blood glucose and TCM syndrome score after treatment (p < 0.001), but significantly higher serum C-peptide levels (p < 0.001) and lower levels of HbAlc.Conclusion: the combination of Gegen Qinlian decoction and metformin produces a good anti-diabetic efficacy, with a lower incidence of adverse reactions in patients. Therefore, the combined therapy has potentials for application in clinical practice, but further clinical trials are required

Combined administration of Gegen Yinlian decoctio n and metformin ameliorates liver metabolic disorder in rats by regulating miR 195 5p/IRS1/PI3K/AKT axis

Purpose: To investigate the effect of Gegen Yinlian decoction (GYD), made from lobed kudzuvine root, baicalensis, huanglian and liquorice, and metformin on liver metabolism dysfunction in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) rats. Methods: Wistar rats were treated with high-fat diet and a single intraperitoneal streptozotocin (STZ) injection to establish T2DM model. Thereafter, the T2DM-rats were treated with GYD and metformin (GYD/metformin). Serum triglyceride (TG), TC, LDL, and HDL levels, as well as glucose and insulin tolerance of the rats were evaluated. Furthermore, the effects of GYD/metformin treatment on the expressions of the related genes were determined by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) and immunoblot assay. Results: After GYD-metformin treatment, the metabolic indicators in T2DM rats significantly improved (p < 0.05). However, there was decrease in t liver miR-1955p expressions. Silencing miR-195-5p improved glucose consumption and triglyceride levels of palmitate (PA)-induced pathological state in ALM12 cells (p < 0.05). Furthermore, miR-195-5p targeted insulin receptor substrate 1 (IRS1). Suppression of IRS1 partly annulled the impact of miR-195-5p silencing on ALM12 cell model. Moreover, IRS1 downregulation significantly mitigated the impact of the silencing on PI3K/AKT pathway activity (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Combination of GYD with metformin ameliorated dysfunctional liver metabolism via control of miR-195-5p/IRS1/PI3K/AKT axis

Polymer-stabilized blue phase liquid crystal with a negative Kerr constant

A polymer-stabilized blue-phase liquid crystal (BPLC) with a negative Kerr constant is reported. In a voltage-on state, the double-twist BPLC molecules within the lattice cylinders are reoriented perpendicular to the applied electric field because of their negative dielectric anisotropy. As a result, the induced birefringence has a negative value, which leads to a negative Kerr constant. The negative sign of Kerr constant is experimentally validated by using a quarter-wave plate and a vertical field switching cell. Such a BPLC shows a negligible (similar to 1%) hysteresis and fast response time (similar to 1ms) at the room temperature, although its Kerr constant is relatively small because the employed host has a small Delta epsilon

Adaptive Dynamic Surface Control for Generator Excitation Control System

For the generator excitation control system which is equipped with static var compensator (SVC) and unknown parameters, a novel adaptive dynamic surface control scheme is proposed based on neural network and tracking error transformed function with the following features: (1) the transformation of the excitation generator model to the linear systems is omitted; (2) the prespecified performance of the tracking error can be guaranteed by combining with the tracking error transformed function; (3) the computational burden is greatly reduced by estimating the norm of the weighted vector of neural network instead of the weighted vector itself; therefore, it is more suitable for the real time control; and (4) the explosion of complicity problem inherent in the backstepping control can be eliminated. It is proved that the new scheme can make the system semiglobally uniformly ultimately bounded. Simulation results show the effectiveness of this control scheme