Estimate of halo ellipticity as a function of radius with flexions

The cold dark matter theory predicts triaxial dark matter haloes. The radial distribution of halo ellipticity depends on baryonic processes and the nature of dark matter particles (collisionless or collisional). Here we show that we can use lensing flexion ratios to measure the halo ellipticity as a function of radius. We introduce a weight function and study the relationship between the first and second order statistics of flexion ratios, both of which can be used to reduce the bias in the estimate of ellipticity. we perform numerical tests for our method, and demonstrate that it can reduce the bias and determine the halo ellipticity as a function of radius. We also point out that the minimum mean flexion ratio can be used to trace the centres of galaxy clusters.Comment: 9 pages,9 figures, MNRAS accepte

The Weight Distributions of Cyclic Codes and Elliptic Curves

Cyclic codes with two zeros and their dual codes as a practically and theoretically interesting class of linear codes, have been studied for many years. However, the weight distributions of cyclic codes are difficult to determine. From elliptic curves, this paper determines the weight distributions of dual codes of cyclic codes with two zeros for a few more cases

A fossil oceanic lithosphere preserved inside a continent

The recycling of oceanic lithosphere into the deep mantle at subduction zones is one of the most fundamental geodynamic processes on Earth. During the closure of an ocean, ancient oceanic slabs are thought to be consumed entirely in subduction zones due to their negative buoyancy. Yet, it is recently suggested that small pieces of oceanic slabs could be trapped along paleo-subduction zones. What remains far more enigmatic is whether significant portions of paleo-oceanic lithosphere could eventually avoid the fate of subduction and be accreted to continental lithosphere, thus contributing to continental growth through time. We present seismic evidence for a preserved paleo-oceanic lithosphere beneath the Junggar region in northwestern China. We show that unsubducted oceanic lithosphere in the West Junggar has been preserved beneath the Junggar Basin, becoming a piece of the Eurasian continent.</p

Nicorandil alleviates inflammation and oxidation in diabetic cardiomyopathy

Purpose: To examine the effect of nicorandil on high glucose-induced cardiomyocyte inflammation and oxidative stress.Methods: H9C2 cardiomyocytes were divided into control group, high glucose group and nicorandil group. The survival rate of cardiomyocytes was determined using the CCK-8 method. The contents of reactive oxygen species (ROS) of cardiomyocytes were determined by flow cytometry. The contents of MDA and LDH in cell supernatant were determined by kit. Western blot and real-time PCR were used to assess oxidative stress, inflammation and apoptosis related factors in each group of cardiomyocytes. The expression levels of IL-1β were determined by immunofluorescence. Tunnel staining was used to determine the apoptosis level of each group.Results: The expressions of SOD1 and SOD2 in the high glucose group were significantly decreased (p &lt; 0.05). Also, the contents of MDA and LDH were significantly increased (p &lt; 0.05). Furthermore, IL-1β, TNF-α, caspase 3 and Bax expressions were increased, while Bcl-2 expression was inhibited. IL-1β and Tunnel fluorescence also increased significantly. NF-κB and Ikkα were significantly increased, while IκB-α was inhibited. Furthermore, nicorandil inhibited oxidative stress and apoptosis, as well as NF-κB pathway and downstream factor Ikkα.Conclusion: Nicorandil ameliorates the inflammation and oxidative damage of cardiomyocytes induced by high glucose, by inhibiting NF-κB pathway, thereby lowering apoptosis. Thus, the findings provide new insight into the development of new agents for the treatment of diabetic cardiomyopathy

One Transformer Can Understand Both 2D & 3D Molecular Data

Unlike vision and language data which usually has a unique format, molecules can naturally be characterized using different chemical formulations. One can view a molecule as a 2D graph or define it as a collection of atoms located in a 3D space. For molecular representation learning, most previous works designed neural networks only for a particular data format, making the learned models likely to fail for other data formats. We believe a general-purpose neural network model for chemistry should be able to handle molecular tasks across data modalities. To achieve this goal, in this work, we develop a novel Transformer-based Molecular model called Transformer-M, which can take molecular data of 2D or 3D formats as input and generate meaningful semantic representations. Using the standard Transformer as the backbone architecture, Transformer-M develops two separated channels to encode 2D and 3D structural information and incorporate them with the atom features in the network modules. When the input data is in a particular format, the corresponding channel will be activated, and the other will be disabled. By training on 2D and 3D molecular data with properly designed supervised signals, Transformer-M automatically learns to leverage knowledge from different data modalities and correctly capture the representations. We conducted extensive experiments for Transformer-M. All empirical results show that Transformer-M can simultaneously achieve strong performance on 2D and 3D tasks, suggesting its broad applicability. The code and models will be made publicly available at https://github.com/lsj2408/Transformer-M.Comment: 20 pages; ICLR 2023, Camera Ready Version; Code: https://github.com/lsj2408/Transformer-

An Improved D-α-Tocopherol-Based Nanocarrier for Targeted Delivery of Doxorubicin with Reversal of Multidrug Resistance

Nanocarriers have recently emerged as an attractive platform for delivery of various types of therapeutics including anticancer agents. Previously, we developed an improved TPGS delivery system (PEG5K-VE2) which demonstrated improved colloidal stability and greater in vivo antitumor activity. Nevertheless, the application of this system is still limited by a relatively low drug loading capacity (DLC). In this study we report that incorporation of a fluorenylmethyloxycarbonyl (Fmoc) motif at the interfacial region of PEG5K-VE2 led to significant improvement of the system through the introduction of an additional mechanism of drug/carrier interaction. Doxorubicin (DOX) could be effectively loaded into PEG5K-Fmoc-VE2 micelles at a DLC of 39.9%, which compares favorably to most reported DOX nanoformulations. In addition, PEG5K-Fmoc-VE2/DOX mixed micelles showed more sustained release of DOX in comparison to the counterpart without Fmoc motif. MTT assay showed that PEG5K-Fmoc-VE2/DOX exerted significantly higher levels of cytotoxicity over DOX, Doxil as well as PEG5K-VE2/DOX in PC-3 and 4T1.2 cells. Cytotoxicity assay with NCI/ADR-RES, a drug resistant cell line, suggested that PEG5K-Fmoc-VE2 may have a potential to reverse the multidrug resistance, which was supported by its inhibition on P-gp ATPase. Pharmacokinetics (PK) and biodistribution studies showed an increased half-life in blood circulation and more effective tumor accumulation for DOX formulated in PEG5K-Fmoc-VE2 micelles. More importantly, DOX-loaded PEG5K-Fmoc-VE2 micelles showed an excellent safety profile with a MTD (~30 mg DOX/kg) that is about 3 times as much as that for free DOX. Finally, superior antitumor activity was demonstrated for PEG5K-Fmoc-VE2/DOX in both drug-sensitive (4T1.2 and PC-3) and drug-resistant (KB 8-5) tumor models compared to DOX, Doxil, and PEG5K-VE2/DOX

A PEG-Fmoc conjugate as a nanocarrier for paclitaxel

We report here that a simple, well-defined, and easy-to-scale up nanocarrier, PEG5000-lysyl-(α-Fmoc-ε-t-Boc-lysine)2 conjugate (PEG-Fmoc), provides high loading capacity, excellent formulation stability and low systemic toxicity for paclitaxel (PTX), a first-line chemotherapeutic agent for various types of cancers. 9-Fluorenylmethoxycarbonyl (Fmoc) was incorporated into the nanocarrier as a functional building block to interact with drug molecules. PEG-Fmoc was synthesized via a three-step synthetic route, and it readily interacted with PTX to form mixed nanomicelles of small particle size (25–30 nm). The PTX loading capacity was about 36%, which stands well among the reported micellar systems. PTX entrapment in this micellar system is achieved largely via an Fmoc/PTX π-π stacking interaction, which was demonstrated by fluorescence quenching studies and 13C-NMR. PTX formulated in PEG-Fmoc micelles demonstrated sustained release kinetics, and in vivo distribution study via near infrared fluorescence imaging demonstrated an effective delivery of Cy5.5-labled PTX to tumor sites. The maximal tolerated dose for PTX/PEG-Fmoc (MTD > 120 mg PTX/kg) is higher than those for most reported PTX formulations, and in vivo therapeutic study exhibited a significantly improved antitumor activity than Taxol, a clinically used formulation of PTX. Our system may hold promise as a simple, safe, and effective delivery system for PTX with a potential for rapid translation into clinical study