Effects of thermal and hydrodynamic characteristics of heavy-duty rotary table on the hydrostatic circular pads

The lubricant film of hydrostatic circular pad in the heavy-duty rotary table is affected by the roughness, thermal and hydrodynamic effect, which can cut down the load-carrying capacity and machining accuracy of the heavy-duty machine tool. In this paper, a coupled energy equation with mean Reynolds equation based on the Christensen’s stochastic model of rough surfaces is presented to analyze the temperature rising, pressure distribution and load-carrying capacity of the hydrostatic circular pad. The mean Reynolds equation, momentum equation, continuity equation, and energy equation are coupled and solved using the finite difference method to obtain the characteristics of lubricant film. It is found that the uneven pressure distribution and the temperature rising of lubricant film in resistive oil edge of hydrostatic circular pad are related to the increase of dimensionless hydrodynamic parameter S due to the thermal and hydrodynamic coupling effect. The load-carrying capacity and stability of heavy-duty rotary table is weakened due to the thermal and hydrodynamic effects

Potential effects of specific gut microbiota on periodontal disease: a two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization study

IntroductionPeriodontal disease (PD) presents a substantial global health challenge, encompassing conditions from reversible gingivitis to irreversible periodontitis, often culminating in tooth loss. The gut-oral axis has recently emerged as a focal point, with potential gut microbiota dysbiosis exacerbating PD.MethodsIn this study, we employed a double-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomized (MR) approach to investigate the causal relationship between specific gut microbiota and periodontal disease (PD) and bleeding gum (BG) development, while exploring the interplay between periodontal health and the gut microenvironment. We performed genome-wide association studies (GWAS) with two cohorts, totalling 346,731 (PD and control) and 461,113 (BG and control) participants, along with data from 14,306 participants’ intestinal flora GWAS, encompassing 148 traits (31 families and 117 genera). Three MR methods were used to assess causality, with the in-verse-variance-weighted (IVW) measure as the primary outcome. Cochrane’s Q test, MR-Egger, and MR-PRESSO global tests were used to detect heterogeneity and pleiotropy. The leave-one-out method was used to test the stability of the MR results. An F-statistic greater than 10 was accepted for instrument exposure association.Results and conclusionSpecifically, Eubacterium xylanophilum and Lachnoclostridium were associated with reduced gum bleeding risk, whereas Anaerotruncus, Eisenbergiella, and Phascolarctobacterium were linked to reduced PD risk. Conversely, Fusicatenibacter was associated with an elevated risk of PD. No significant heterogeneity or pleiotropy was detected. In conclusion, our MR analysis pinpointed specific gut flora with causal connections to PD, offering potential avenues for oral health interventions

MiR-574-5p Activates Human TLR8 to Promote Autoimmune Signaling and Lupus

Endosomal single-stranded RNA-sensing Toll-like receptor-7/8 (TLR7/8) plays a pivotal role in inflammation and immune responses and autoimmune diseases. However, the mechanisms underlying the initiation of the TLR7/8-mediated autoimmune signaling remain to be fully elucidated. Here, we demonstrate that miR-574-5p is aberrantly upregulated in tissues of lupus prone mice and in the plasma of lupus patients, with its expression levels correlating with the disease activity. miR-574-5p binds to and activates human hTLR8 or its murine ortholog mTlr7 to elicit a series of MyD88-dependent immune and inflammatory responses. These responses include the overproduction of cytokines and interferons, the activation of STAT1 signaling and B lymphocytes, and the production of autoantigens. In a transgenic mouse model, the induction of miR-574-5p overexpression is associated with increased secretion of antinuclear and anti-dsDNA antibodies, increased IgG and C3 deposit in the kidney, elevated expression of inflammatory genes in the spleen. In lupus-prone mice, lentivirus-mediated silencing of miR-574-5p significantly ameliorates major symptoms associated with lupus and lupus nephritis. Collectively, these results suggest that the miR-574-5p-hTLR8/mTlr7 signaling is an important axis of immune and inflammatory responses, contributing significantly to the development of lupus and lupus nephritis

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Secretion of bacteriocins in Leuconostoc carnosum 4010

Bacteriocins are ribosomally synthesized antimicrobial proteins. They can be applied as biopreservatives in food processing for extending the shelf-life of food. Lactic acid bacterium Leuconostoc carnosum 4010 is Generally Recognized As Safe strain, which can be used as a protective culture in meat products. The strain 4010 produces three bacteriocins: leucocins A (LcnA), B (LebB) and C (LecC). For the secretion of bacteriocin out from the cell, bacteria usually use an ABC transporter, which is often dedicated to secrete only one bacteriocin. The leucocin operons in Ln. carnosum 4010 plasmids include genes for only one ABC transporter, namely LecXTS. The fact that Ln. carnosum 4010 produces three bacteriocins but only carries one bacteriocin transporter, raises a question, which leucocin(s) is/are translocated via LecXTS transporter. Therefore, the first aim of this study was to determine which bacteriocin(s) is/are secreted by LecXTS in Ln. carnosum 4010. Ln. carnosum 4010 carries at least two plasmids. Leucocin A gene lcnA is located on the plasmid pLC4010-2, and leucocin B and C with transporter genes (lebB, lecC, lecXTS) are located on the plasmid pLC4010-1. In a previous work, two plasmid cured derivatives of Ln. carnosum 4010 have been made: the plasmid-free strain PCS-10, and the strain PCS-11 carrying only pLC4010-2. Neither of the derivatives secrete bacteriocins. In this study, the idea was to construct five recombinant plasmids containing the pLC4010-1 replication gene repB and a gene for erythromycin resistance ErmR. They were ligated with different sets of leucocin and transporter genes (repB-lebB-lecXTS-lecC-ErmR, repB-lebB-lecXTS-ErmR, repB-lebB-ErmR, repB-lecC-ErmR, and a vector control with only repB-ErmR). The constructs were aimed to be introduced into the two Ln. carnosum 4010 mutant strains PCS-10 and PCS-11. However, after several attempts of electroporation, no colonies were obtained. To acquire a testing plasmid for optimization of transformation, the ligation mixture for the smallest plasmid repB-ErmR was electroporated into another strain, Lactococcus lactis N8. The plasmid repB-ErmR was successfully obtained from Lc. lactis N8. For improving the efficiency of transformation, the plasmid repB-ErmR was isolated from Lc. lactis N8, and the plasmid was used in optimization of electroporation. The copy number of the plasmid was shown to be very low, as only a little amount of plasmid could be isolated from large culture volume. Even with optimized electroporation method, the repB-ErmR could not be electroporated into Ln. carnosum 4010. This indicates that the larger constructions are nearly impossible to be transferred into the strain Ln. carnosum 4010. In conclusion, it was confirmed that the plasmid replication gene repB of Ln. carnosum 4010 is functional in Lc. lactis. Due to the low copy number of the plasmid repB-ErmR, the amount of plasmid was definitely a problem in electroporation. Therefore, for studying the efficiency of electroporation, the plasmid amount needs to be increased. Although the electroporation of repB-ErmR into Lc. lactis was successful, the results from Ln. carnosum electroporation after optimization indicate that the strain Ln. carnosum 4010 is difficult to be transformed

Knowledge-Graph Augmented Word Representations for Named Entity Recognition

By modeling the context information, ELMo and BERT have successfully improved the state-of-the-art of word representation, and demonstrated their effectiveness on the Named Entity Recognition task. In this paper, in addition to such context modeling, we propose to encode the prior knowledge of entities from an external knowledge base into the representation, and introduce a Knowledge-Graph Augmented Word Representation or KAWR for named entity recognition. Basically, KAWR provides a kind of knowledge-aware representation for words by 1) encoding entity information from a pre-trained KG embedding model with a new recurrent unit (GERU), and 2) strengthening context modeling from knowledge wise by providing a relation attention scheme based on the entity relations defined in KG. We demonstrate that KAWR, as an augmented version of the existing linguistic word representations, promotes F1 scores on 5 datasets in various domains by +0.46∼+2.07. Better generalization is also observed for KAWR on new entities that cannot be found in the training sets

Investigation of factors that affect perceptions towards the life insurance industry in Singapore

This study aims to find out the factors that affects the general public’s perception towards the life insurance industry in Singapore, and in turn explore how this perception may affect the ownership of life insurance policies