Hierarchical Structure with Highly Ordered Macroporous-Mesoporous Metal-Organic Frameworks as Dual Function for CO2 Fixation.

As a major greenhouse gas, the continuous increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has caused serious environmental problems, although CO2 is also an abundant, inexpensive, and nontoxic carbon source. Here, we use metal-organic framework (MOF) with highly ordered hierarchical structure as adsorbent and catalyst for chemical fixation of CO2 at atmospheric pressure, and the CO2 can be converted to the formate in excellent yields. Meanwhile, we have successfully integrated highly ordered macroporous and mesoporous structures into MOFs, and the macro-, meso-, and microporous structures have all been presented in one framework. Based on the unique hierarchical pores, high surface area (592 m2/g), and high CO2 adsorption capacity (49.51 cm3/g), the ordered macroporous-mesoporous MOFs possess high activity for chemical fixation of CO2 (yield of 77%). These results provide a promising route of chemical CO2 fixation through MOF materials

Identification of genes induced by salt stress from Medicago truncatula L. seedlings

In order to identify genes induced during the salt stress response in barrel medic (Medicago truncatula L) seedlings, a cDNA library by salt stress was constructed  by suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH). Total RNA from 15-day-old seedlings was used as a ‘driver’, and total RNA from seedlings induced by salt was used as a ‘tester’. One hundred and sixty nine clones identified as positive clones by reverse northern dot-blotting resulted in 75 uni-ESTs that comprised of 13 contigs  and 62 singletons. Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) analysis of deduced protein sequences revealed that 35 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) had identity similar to proteins with known function, while 27 could not be annotated at all. Most of the known function sequences were homologous to genes involved in abiotic stress in plants. Among these protein, citrate synthase, ribulose- 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase, chloroplast protein, phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase and  chloroplast outer envelope protein are related to photosynthesis; DNA binding/transcription factor, putative AP2/EREBP transcription factor, Cab9 gene, photosystem II polypeptide and calcium-dependent protein kinase play a significant role in signal transduction and transcription regulation; and aldolase and sucrose synthase are interrelated to osmolyte synthesis. Moreover, 5 of the ESTs, similar to genes from other plant species and closely involved in salt stress were isolated from M. truncatula L. They are superoxide dimutase (SOD)-1, gene for copper/zinc superoxide dismutase, cysteine protease, Na+/H+ antiporter and salt overly sensitive 2 (SOS2). To further assess the expression level of salt-induced ESTs, real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis was employed, and the result showed that these genes have significantly increased expression and probably play an important role in the response of plants to salt stress.Key words: Barrel medic (Medicago truncatula L.), suppression subtraction hybridization (SSH), reverse northern dot-blotting, salt stress, real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR)

Neural Operator Variational Inference based on Regularized Stein Discrepancy for Deep Gaussian Processes

Deep Gaussian Process (DGP) models offer a powerful nonparametric approach for Bayesian inference, but exact inference is typically intractable, motivating the use of various approximations. However, existing approaches, such as mean-field Gaussian assumptions, limit the expressiveness and efficacy of DGP models, while stochastic approximation can be computationally expensive. To tackle these challenges, we introduce Neural Operator Variational Inference (NOVI) for Deep Gaussian Processes. NOVI uses a neural generator to obtain a sampler and minimizes the Regularized Stein Discrepancy in L2 space between the generated distribution and true posterior. We solve the minimax problem using Monte Carlo estimation and subsampling stochastic optimization techniques. We demonstrate that the bias introduced by our method can be controlled by multiplying the Fisher divergence with a constant, which leads to robust error control and ensures the stability and precision of the algorithm. Our experiments on datasets ranging from hundreds to tens of thousands demonstrate the effectiveness and the faster convergence rate of the proposed method. We achieve a classification accuracy of 93.56 on the CIFAR10 dataset, outperforming SOTA Gaussian process methods. Furthermore, our method guarantees theoretically controlled prediction error for DGP models and demonstrates remarkable performance on various datasets. We are optimistic that NOVI has the potential to enhance the performance of deep Bayesian nonparametric models and could have significant implications for various practical application

Double Normalizing Flows: Flexible Bayesian Gaussian Process ODEs Learning

Recently, Gaussian processes have been utilized to model the vector field of continuous dynamical systems. Bayesian inference for such models \cite{hegde2022variational} has been extensively studied and has been applied in tasks such as time series prediction, providing uncertain estimates. However, previous Gaussian Process Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE) models may underperform on datasets with non-Gaussian process priors, as their constrained priors and mean-field posteriors may lack flexibility. To address this limitation, we incorporate normalizing flows to reparameterize the vector field of ODEs, resulting in a more flexible and expressive prior distribution. Additionally, due to the analytically tractable probability density functions of normalizing flows, we apply them to the posterior inference of GP ODEs, generating a non-Gaussian posterior. Through these dual applications of normalizing flows, our model improves accuracy and uncertainty estimates for Bayesian Gaussian Process ODEs. The effectiveness of our approach is demonstrated on simulated dynamical systems and real-world human motion data, including tasks such as time series prediction and missing data recovery. Experimental results indicate that our proposed method effectively captures model uncertainty while improving accuracy

Gene Deletion in Barley Mediated by LTR-retrotransposon BARE

A poly-row branched spike (prbs) barley mutant was obtained from soaking a two-rowed barley inflorescence in a solution of maize genomic DNA. Positional cloning and sequencing demonstrated that the prbs mutant resulted from a 28 kb deletion including the inflorescence architecture gene HvRA2. Sequence annotation revealed that the HvRA2 gene is flanked by two LTR (long terminal repeat) retrotransposons (BARE) sharing 89% sequence identity. A recombination between the integrase (IN) gene regions of the two BARE copies resulted in the formation of an intact BARE and loss of HvRA2. No maize DNA was detected in the recombination region although the flanking sequences of HvRA2 gene showed over 73% of sequence identity with repetitive sequences on 10 maize chromosomes. It is still unknown whether the interaction of retrotransposons between barley and maize has resulted in the recombination observed in the present study.Peer reviewe

AKT2 Blocks Nucleus Translocation of Apoptosis-Inducing Factor (AIF) and Endonuclease G (EndoG) While Promoting Caspase Activation during Cardiac Ischemia

The AKT (protein kinase B, PKB) family has been shown to participate in diverse cellular processes, including apoptosis. Previous studies demonstrated that protein kinase B2 (AKT2 − / − ) mice heart was sensitized to apoptosis in response to ischemic injury. However, little is known about the mechanism and apoptotic signaling pathway. Here, we show that AKT2 inhibition does not affect the development of cardiomyocytes but increases cell death during cardiomyocyte ischemia. Caspase-dependent apoptosis of both the extrinsic and intrinsic pathway was inactivated in cardiomyocytes with AKT2 inhibition during ischemia, while significant mitochondrial disruption was observed as well as intracytosolic translocation of cytochrome C (Cyto C) together with apoptosis-inducing factor (AIF) and endonuclease G (EndoG), both of which are proven to conduct DNA degradation in a range of cell death stimuli. Therefore, mitochondria-dependent cell death was investigated and the results suggested that AIF and EndoG nucleus translocation causes cardiomyocyte DNA degradation during ischemia when AKT2 is blocked. These data are the first to show a previous unrecognized function and mechanism of AKT2 in regulating cardiomyocyte survival during ischemia by inducing a unique mitochondrial-dependent DNA degradation pathway when it is inhibited.This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, (Grant No. 81500179); the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BK20150696); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 2015PY005); the National Found for Fostering Talents of Basic Science (NFFTBS) (Grant No. J1310032); the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD); the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program, No.2015AA020314); and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 81570696 and No. 31270985); this work is also sponsored by Qing Lan Project