370 research outputs found
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
cAMP/PKA/CREB/GLT1 signaling involved in the antidepressant-like effects of phosphodiesterase 4D inhibitor (GEBR-7b) in rats
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
Hexagonal Boron Nitride Thick Film Grown on a Sapphire Substrate via Low-Pressure Chemical Vapor Deposition
Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) with a certain thickness has wide applications in semiconductor electronic devices. In this study, the relationship between the amount of ammonia borane and the thickness of h-BN films was investigated via low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) on a noncatalytic c-plane Al2O3 substrate. Through various characterization methods, the grown film was confirmed to be h-BN. The effect of the precursor mass on the growth thickness of the h-BN film was studied, and it was found that the precursor mass significantly affected the growth rate of the h-BN film. The results from SEM show that the amount of ammonia borane is 2000 mg and a 1.295-μm h-BN film is obtained. It will provide an experimental reference for the growth of thicker h-BN materials to prepare high-efficiency neutron detectors for radiation detection
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