Identification of rat lung-specific microRNAs by micoRNA microarray: valuable discoveries for the facilitation of lung research

BACKGROUND: An important mechanism for gene regulation utilizes small non-coding RNAs called microRNAs (miRNAs). These small RNAs play important roles in tissue development, cell differentiation and proliferation, lipid and fat metabolism, stem cells, exocytosis, diseases and cancers. To date, relatively little is known about functions of miRNAs in the lung except lung cancer. RESULTS: In this study, we utilized a rat miRNA microarray containing 216 miRNA probes, printed in-house, to detect the expression of miRNAs in the rat lung compared to the rat heart, brain, liver, kidney and spleen. Statistical analysis using Significant Analysis of Microarray (SAM) and Tukey Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) revealed 2 miRNAs (miR-195 and miR-200c) expressed specifically in the lung and 9 miRNAs co-expressed in the lung and another organ. 12 selected miRNAs were verified by Northern blot analysis. CONCLUSION: The identified lung-specific miRNAs from this work will facilitate functional studies of miRNAs during normal physiological and pathophysiological processes of the lung

Circadian rhythm of Liposcelis entomophila and Liposcelis paeta in paddy warehouse: Presentation

Booklice is a small but serious stored grain pest, and understanding the circadian rhythm of booklice help to control. In this study, circadian activity of booklice were monitored with sticky traps in the grain bulk surfaces of two warehouses stored paddy rice in two different provinces in China. The results showed that the species of booklice were different and were Liposcelis entomophila, and Liposcelisp paeta for Nanning’s and Zhanjiang’s warehouses respectively. In term of L.entomophila, its activity intensity gradually decreased from 0 am to 12 pm and reached the lowest level of daily activity at 12pm. After this, there was a steady and straight upward trend, and the peak of its activity intensity is reached at 8 pm. Its circadian activity trend can be represented as: y = - 0.971x3 + 21.88x2 - 139.5x + 353.4(x: time; y: quantity of booklice). Over the same period, the activity intensity of L.paeta varied greatly. It gradually increased, reached a peak at 8 am, dropped dramatically at 12 pm and then climbed the second peak at 6 pm.Booklice is a small but serious stored grain pest, and understanding the circadian rhythm of booklice help to control. In this study, circadian activity of booklice were monitored with sticky traps in the grain bulk surfaces of two warehouses stored paddy rice in two different provinces in China. The results showed that the species of booklice were different and were Liposcelis entomophila, and Liposcelisp paeta for Nanning’s and Zhanjiang’s warehouses respectively. In term of L.entomophila, its activity intensity gradually decreased from 0 am to 12 pm and reached the lowest level of daily activity at 12pm. After this, there was a steady and straight upward trend, and the peak of its activity intensity is reached at 8 pm. Its circadian activity trend can be represented as: y = - 0.971x3 + 21.88x2 - 139.5x + 353.4(x: time; y: quantity of booklice). Over the same period, the activity intensity of L.paeta varied greatly. It gradually increased, reached a peak at 8 am, dropped dramatically at 12 pm and then climbed the second peak at 6 pm

TorchSparse++: Efficient Training and Inference Framework for Sparse Convolution on GPUs

Sparse convolution plays a pivotal role in emerging workloads, including point cloud processing in AR/VR, autonomous driving, and graph understanding in recommendation systems. Since the computation pattern is sparse and irregular, specialized high-performance kernels are required. Existing GPU libraries offer two dataflow types for sparse convolution. The gather-GEMM-scatter dataflow is easy to implement but not optimal in performance, while the dataflows with overlapped computation and memory access (e.g.implicit GEMM) are highly performant but have very high engineering costs. In this paper, we introduce TorchSparse++, a new GPU library that achieves the best of both worlds. We create a highly efficient Sparse Kernel Generator that generates performant sparse convolution kernels at less than one-tenth of the engineering cost of the current state-of-the-art system. On top of this, we design the Sparse Autotuner, which extends the design space of existing sparse convolution libraries and searches for the best dataflow configurations for training and inference workloads. Consequently, TorchSparse++ achieves 2.9x, 3.3x, 2.2x and 1.7x measured end-to-end speedup on an NVIDIA A100 GPU over state-of-the-art MinkowskiEngine, SpConv 1.2, TorchSparse and SpConv v2 in inference; and is 1.2-1.3x faster than SpConv v2 in mixed precision training across seven representative autonomous driving benchmarks. It also seamlessly supports graph convolutions, achieving 2.6-7.6x faster inference speed compared with state-of-the-art graph deep learning libraries.Comment: MICRO 2023; Haotian Tang and Shang Yang contributed equally to this projec

The interface states in gate-all-around transistors (GAAFETs)

The atomic-level structural detail and the quantum effects are becoming crucial to device performance as the emerging advanced transistors, representatively GAAFETs, are scaling down towards sub-3nm nodes. However, a multiscale simulation framework based on atomistic models and ab initio quantum simulation is still absent. Here, we propose such a simulation framework by fulfilling three challenging tasks, i.e., building atomistic all-around interfaces between semiconductor and amorphous gate-oxide, conducting large-scale first-principles calculations on the interface models containing up to 2796 atoms, and finally bridging the state-of-the-art atomic level calculation to commercial TCAD. With this framework, two unnoticed origins of interface states are demonstrated, and their tunability by changing channel size, orientation and geometry is confirmed. The quantitative study of interface states and their effects on device performance explains why the nanosheet channel is preferred in industry. We believe such a bottom-up framework is necessary and promising for the accurate simulation of emerging advanced transistors

Contrasting patterns of community-weighted mean traits and functional diversity in driving grassland productivity changes under N and P addition

Fertilization could influence ecosystem structure and functioning through species turnover (ST) and intraspecific trait variation (ITV), especially in nutrient limited ecosystems. To quantify the relative importance of ITV and ST in driving community functional structure and productivity changes under nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P) addition in semiarid grasslands. In this regard, we conducted a four-year fertilizer addition experiment in a semiarid grassland on the Loess Plateau, China. We examined how fertilization affects species-level leaf and root trait plasticity to evaluate the ability of plants to manifest different levels of traits in response to different N and P addition. Also, we assessed how ITV or ST dominated community-weighted mean (CWM) traits and functional diversity variations and evaluated their effects on grassland productivity. The results showed that the patterns of plasticity varied greatly among different plant species, and leaf and root traits showed coordinated variations following fertilization. Increasing the level of N and P increased CWM_specific leaf area (CWM_SLA), CWM_leaf N concentration (CWM_LN) and CWM_maximum plant height (CWM_Hmax) and ITV predominate these CWM traits variations. As a results, increased CWM_Hmax, CWM_LN and CWM_SLA positively influenced grassland productivity. In contrast, functional divergence decreased with increasing N and P and showed negative relationships with grassland productivity. Our results emphasized that CWM traits and functional diversity contrastingly drive changes in grassland productivity under N and P addition

Oral administration of interferon-α2b-transformed Bifidobacterium longum protects BALB/c mice against coxsackievirus B3-induced myocarditis

Multiple reports have claimed that low-dose orally administered interferon (IFN)-α is beneficial in the treatment of many infectious diseases and provides a viable alternative to high-dose intramuscular treatment. However, research is needed on how to express IFN stably in the gut. Bifidobacterium may be a suitable carrier for human gene expression and secretion in the intestinal tract for the treatment of gastrointestinal diseases. We reported previously that Bifidobacterium longum can be used as a novel oral delivery of IFN-α. IFN-transformed B. longum can exert an immunostimulatory role in mice; however the answer to whether this recombinant B. longum can be used to treat virus infection still remains elusive. Here, we investigated the efficacy of IFN-transformed B. longum administered orally on coxsackie virus B3 (CVB3)-induced myocarditis in BALB/c mice. Our data indicated that oral administration of IFN-transformed B. longum for 2 weeks after virus infection reduced significantly the severity of virus-induced myocarditis, markedly down regulated virus titers in the heart, and induced a T helper 1 cell pattern in the spleen and heart compared with controls. Oral administration of the IFN-transformed B. longum, therefore, may play a potential role in the treatment of CVB3-induced myocarditis

Protect Effects of Ganoderma lucidum Spore Polysaccharide on Liver Injury Caused by Acetaminophen

Objective: To investigate the protective effects of Ganoderma lucidum spore polysaccharide (GLSP) on liver injury caused by acetaminophen (APAP). Methods: Fifty mice were randomly divided into five groups: Blank group, model group, positive drug group, GLSP low-dose group and GLSP high-dose group, with 10 mice in each group. After each group was pre-administered according to the corresponding dose for 14 consecutive days, the liver index, serum indexes (glutamic oxalacetic transaminase (AST), glutamic-pyruvic transaminase (ALT)) and liver tissue plasma indexes (glutathione (GSH), malonaldehyde (MDA), superoxide dismutase (SOD), Caspase-3, Bax and Bcl-xl) were determined. Results: Compared with the blank group, ALT, AST, MDA and proapoptotic genes Caspase-3 and Bax were very significantly increased in the model group (P<0.01). The contents of SOD and GSH decreased very significantly (P<0.01), and HE staining showed that APAP treated mice showed typical lobular central necrosis of liver. Compared with model group, ALT and AST were very significantly decreased in polysaccharide dose group (P<0.01), SOD and GSH were significantly increased (P<0.05) and MDA was significantly decreased in polysaccharide low-dose group (P<0.05), SOD and GSH were very significantly increased (P<0.01) and MDA was very significantly decreased in polysaccharide high-dose group (P<0.01), and pro-apoptotic genes Caspase-3 and Bax were very significantly decreased in polysaccharide group (P<0.01), and the liver histopathological observation showed that the necrotic area of liver tissue decreased. Conclusion: Ganoderma lucidum spore polysaccharide can preprotect APAP liver injury, and its mechanism may be related to improving the antioxidant capacity of liver and inhibiting the occurrence of apoptosis