1,390 research outputs found
Apolipoprotein A1/C3/A5 haplotypes and serum lipid levels
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The association of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the apolipoprotein (Apo) A1/C3/A4/A5 gene cluster and serum lipid profiles is inconsistent. The present study was undertaken to detect the association between the ApoA1/C3/A5 gene polymorphisms and their haplotypes with serum lipid levels in the general Chinese population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A total of 1030 unrelated subjects (492 males and 538 females) aged 15-89 were randomly selected from our previous stratified randomized cluster samples. Genotyping of the ApoA1 -75 bp G>A, ApoC3 3238C>G, ApoA5 -1131T>C, ApoA5 c.553G>T and ApoA5 c.457G>A was performed by polymerse chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism combined with gel electrophoresis, and then confirmed by direct sequencing. Pair-wise linkage disequilibria and haplotype analysis among the five SNPs were estimated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and ApoA1 were lower in males than in femailes (<it>P </it>< 0.05 for each). The allelic and genotypic frequencies of the SNPs were no significant difference between males and females except ApoC3 3238C>G. There were 11 haplotypes with a frequency >1% identified in the cluster in our population. At the global level, the haplotypes comprised of all five SNPs were significantly associated with all seven lipid traits. In particular, haplotype G-G-C-C-A (6%; in the order of ApoA5 c.553G>T, ApoA5 c.457G>A, ApoA5 -1131T>C, ApoC3 3238C>G, and ApoA1 -75bp G>A) and G-A-T-C-G (4%) showed consistent association with total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), ApoA1, ApoB, and the ApoA1/ApoB ratio. In addition, carriers of haplotype G-G-T-C-G (26%) had increased serum concentration of HDL-C and ApoA1, whereas carriers of G-G-C-G-G (15%) had high concentrations of TC, triglyceride (TG) and ApoB. We also found that haplotypes with five SNPs explain much more serum lipid variation than any single SNP alone, especially for TG (4.4% for haplotype vs. 2.4% for -1131T>C max based on R-square) and HDL-C (5.1% for haplotype vs. 0.9% for c.553G>T based on R-square). Serum lipid parameters were also correlated with genotypes and several environment factors.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Several common SNPs and their haplotypes in the ApoA1/C3/A5 gene cluster are closely associated with modifications of serum lipid parameters in the general Chinese population.</p
Emotion Rendering for Conversational Speech Synthesis with Heterogeneous Graph-Based Context Modeling
Conversational Speech Synthesis (CSS) aims to accurately express an utterance
with the appropriate prosody and emotional inflection within a conversational
setting. While recognising the significance of CSS task, the prior studies have
not thoroughly investigated the emotional expressiveness problems due to the
scarcity of emotional conversational datasets and the difficulty of stateful
emotion modeling. In this paper, we propose a novel emotional CSS model, termed
ECSS, that includes two main components: 1) to enhance emotion understanding,
we introduce a heterogeneous graph-based emotional context modeling mechanism,
which takes the multi-source dialogue history as input to model the dialogue
context and learn the emotion cues from the context; 2) to achieve emotion
rendering, we employ a contrastive learning-based emotion renderer module to
infer the accurate emotion style for the target utterance. To address the issue
of data scarcity, we meticulously create emotional labels in terms of category
and intensity, and annotate additional emotional information on the existing
conversational dataset (DailyTalk). Both objective and subjective evaluations
suggest that our model outperforms the baseline models in understanding and
rendering emotions. These evaluations also underscore the importance of
comprehensive emotional annotations. Code and audio samples can be found at:
https://github.com/walker-hyf/ECSS.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, Accepted by AAAI'2024, Code and audio samples:
https://github.com/walker-hyf/ECS
100G PAM-4 PON with 34 dB Power Budget Using Joint Nonlinear Tomlinson-Harashima Precoding and Volterra Equalization
We experimentally demonstrate 100G PAM-4 passive optical network using DML-based intensity modulation and direct detection with 3-dB system bandwidth of 15 GHz in O-band. Combining nonlinear Tomlinson-Harashima precoding at the transmitter and 2nd-order Volterra at the receiver enables 34-dB power budget for PON downstream
A Robust Optimization Approach to Emergency Vehicle Scheduling
The emergency vehicle scheduling problem is studied under the objective function to minimize the total transportation time with uncertain road travel time. Firstly, we build a stochastic programming model considering the constrained chance. Then, we analyze the model based on robust optimization method and get its equivalent set of uncertainty constraint, which has good mathematical properties with consideration of the robustness of solutions. Finally, we implement a numerical example to compare the results of robust optimization method and that of the particle swarm optimization algorithm. The case study shows that the proposed method achieves better performance on computational complexity and stability
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Distributed fiber optic monitoring of a CFA pile with a central reinforcement bar bundle
Abstract: In this paper, we present an application of distributed fiber optic sensor (DFOS) technology to measure the strain of a continuous flight auger (CFA) test pile with a central reinforcement bar bundle, during a static load test carried out in London. Being distributed in nature, DFOS gives much more information about the pile performance as compared to traditional point sensors, such as identifying cross-sectional irregularities or other anomalies. The strain profiles recorded along the depth of the piles from the DFOS were used to calculate pile deformation (contraction), shaft friction, and tip resistance under various loads. Based on this pile load test, a finite element (FE) analysis was performed using a one-dimensional nonlinear load-transfer model. Calibrated by the shaft friction and tip resistance derived from the monitored data, the FE model was able to simulate the pile and soil performance during the load testing with good accuracy. The effect of the reinforcement cage and central reinforcement bar bundle were investigated, and it was found that the addition of a reinforcement cage would reduce the pile settlement by up to 20%
Alkaline earth metal ion coordination increases the radical scavenging efficiency of kaempferol
Flavonoids are used as natural additives and antioxidants in foods, and after coordination to metal ions, as drug candidates, depending on the flavonoid structure. The rate of radical scavenging of the ubiquitous plant flavonoid kaempferol (3,5,7,4′-tetrahydroxyflavone, Kaem) was found to be significantly enhanced by coordination of Mg(ii), Ca(ii), Sr(ii), and Ba(ii) ions, whereas the radical scavenging rate of apigenin (5,7,4′-trihydroxyflavone, Api) was almost unaffected by alkaline earth metal (AEM) ions, as studied for short-lived β-carotene radical cations (β-Car˙(+)) formed by laser flash photolysis in chloroform/ethanol (7 : 3) and for the semi-stable 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical, DPPH˙, in ethanol at 25 °C. A 1 : 1 Mg(ii)–Kaem complex was found to be in equilibrium with a 1 : 2 Mg(ii)–Kaem(2) complex, while for Ca(ii), Sr(ii) and Ba(ii), only 1 : 2 AEM(ii)–Kaem complexes were detected, where all complexes showed 3-hydroxyl and 4-carbonyl coordination and stability constants of higher than 10(9) L(2) mol(−2). The 1 : 2 Ca(ii)–Kaem(2) complex had the highest second order rate constant for both β-Car˙(+) (5 × 10(8) L mol(−1) s(−1)) and DPPH˙ radical (3 × 10(5) L mol(−1) s(−1)) scavenging, which can be attributed to the optimal combination of the stronger electron withdrawing capability of the (n − 1)d orbital in the heavier AEM ions and their spatially asymmetrical structures in 1 : 2 AEM–Kaem complexes with metal ion coordination of the least steric hindrance of two perpendicular flavone backbones as ligands in the Ca(ii) complex, as shown by density functional theory calculations
The influence of adatom diffusion on the formation of skyrmion lattice in sub-monolayer Fe on Ir(111)
Room temperature grown Fe monolayer (ML) on the Ir(111) single crystal
substrate has attracted great research interests as nano-skyrmion lattice can
form under proper growth conditions. The formation of the nanoscale skyrmion,
however, appears to be greatly affected by the diffusion length of the Fe
adatoms on the Ir(111) surface. We made this observation by employing
spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy to study skyrmion formation upon
systematically changing the impurity density on the substrate surface prior to
Fe deposition. Since the substrate surface impurities serve as pinning centers
for Fe adatoms, the eventual size and shape of the Fe islands exhibit a direct
correlation with the impurity density, which in turn determines whether
skyrmion can be formed. Our observation indicates that skyrmion only forms when
the impurity density is below 0.006/nm2, i.e., 12 nm averaged spacing between
the neighboring defects. We verify the significance of Fe diffusion length by
growing Fe on clean Ir(111) substrate at low temperature of 30 K, where no
skyrmion was observed to form. Our findings signify the importance of diffusion
of Fe atoms on the Ir(111) substrate, which affects the size, shape and lattice
perfection of the Fe islands and thus the formation of skyrmion lattice
Creation of nano-skyrmion lattice in Fe/Ir(111) system using voltage pulse
Magnetic ultrathin films grown on heavy metal substrates often exhibit rich
spin structures due to the competition between various magnetic interactions
such as Heisenberg exchange, Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and higher-order
spin interactions. Here we employ spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy
to study magnetic nano-skyrmion phase in Fe monolayer grown on Ir(111)
substrate. Our observations show that the formation of nano-skyrmion lattice in
the Fe/Ir(111) system depends sensitively on the growth conditions and various
non-skyrmion spin states can be formed. Remarkably, the application of voltage
pulses between the tip and the sample can trigger a non-skyrmion to skyrmion
phase transition. The fact that nano-skyrmions can be created using voltage
pulse indicates that the balance between the competing magnetic interactions
can be affected by an external electric field, which is highly useful to design
skyrmion-based spintronic devices with low energy consumption
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