233 research outputs found
Reactive Oxygen Species Production and Brugia Pahangi Survivorship in Aedes polynesiensis with Artificial Wolbachia Infection Types
Heterologous transinfection with the endosymbiotic bacterium Wolbachia has been shown previously to induce pathogen interference phenotypes in mosquito hosts. Here we examine an artificially infected strain of Aedes polynesiensis, the primary vector of Wuchereria bancrofti, which is the causative agent of Lymphatic filariasis (LF) throughout much of the South Pacific. Embryonic microinjection was used to transfer the wAlbB infection from Aedes albopictus into an aposymbiotic strain of Ae. polynesiensis. The resulting strain (designated MTB ) experiences a stable artificial infection with high maternal inheritance. Reciprocal crosses of MTB with naturally infected wild-type Ae. polynesiensis demonstrate strong bidirectional incompatibility. Levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the MTB strain differ significantly relative to that of the wild-type, indicating an impaired ability to regulate oxidative stress. Following a challenge with Brugia pahangi, the number of filarial worms achieving the infective stage is significantly reduced in MTB as compared to the naturally infected and aposymbiotic strains. Survivorship of MTB differed significantly from that of the wild-type, with an interactive effect between survivorship and blood feeding. The results demonstrate a direct correlation between decreased ROS levels and decreased survival of adult female Aedes polynesiensis. The results are discussed in relation to the interaction of Wolbachia with ROS production and antioxidant expression, iron homeostasis and the insect immune system. We discuss the potential applied use of the MTB strain for impacting Ae. polynesiensis populations and strategies for reducing LF incidence in the South Pacific
Nearly quantized conductance plateau of vortex zero mode in an iron-based superconductor
Majorana zero-modes (MZMs) are spatially-localized zero-energy fractional
quasiparticles with non-Abelian braiding statistics that hold a great promise
for topological quantum computing. Due to its particle-antiparticle
equivalence, an MZM exhibits robust resonant Andreev reflection and 2e2/h
quantized conductance at low temperature. By utilizing variable-tunnel-coupled
scanning tunneling spectroscopy, we study tunneling conductance of vortex bound
states on FeTe0.55Se0.45 superconductors. We report observations of conductance
plateaus as a function of tunnel coupling for zero-energy vortex bound states
with values close to or even reaching the 2e2/h quantum conductance. In
contrast, no such plateau behaviors were observed on either finite energy
Caroli-de Genne-Matricon bound states or in the continuum of electronic states
outside the superconducting gap. This unique behavior of the zero-mode
conductance reaching a plateau strongly supports the existence of MZMs in this
iron-based superconductor, which serves as a promising single-material platform
for Majorana braiding at a relatively high temperature
SPOC learner's final grade prediction based on a novel sampling batch normalization embedded neural network method
Recent years have witnessed the rapid growth of Small Private Online Courses
(SPOC) which is able to highly customized and personalized to adapt variable
educational requests, in which machine learning techniques are explored to
summarize and predict the learner's performance, mostly focus on the final
grade. However, the problem is that the final grade of learners on SPOC is
generally seriously imbalance which handicaps the training of prediction model.
To solve this problem, a sampling batch normalization embedded deep neural
network (SBNEDNN) method is developed in this paper. First, a combined
indicator is defined to measure the distribution of the data, then a rule is
established to guide the sampling process. Second, the batch normalization (BN)
modified layers are embedded into full connected neural network to solve the
data imbalanced problem. Experimental results with other three deep learning
methods demonstrates the superiority of the proposed method.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, ICAIS 202
Structural organization of the C1a-e-c supercomplex within the ciliary central apparatus
Nearly all motile cilia contain a central apparatus (CA) composed of two connected singlet microtubules with attached projections that play crucial roles in regulating ciliary motility. Defects in CA assembly usually result in motility-impaired or paralyzed cilia, which in humans causes disease. Despite their importance, the protein composition and functions of the CA projections are largely unknown. Here, we integrated biochemical and genetic approaches with cryo-electron tomography to compare the CA of wild-type Chlamydomonas with CA mutants. We identified a large ( \u3e 2 MD) complex, the C1a-e-c supercomplex, that requires the PF16 protein for assembly and contains the CA components FAP76, FAP81, FAP92, and FAP216. We localized these subunits within the supercomplex using nanogold labeling and show that loss of any one of them results in impaired ciliary motility. These data provide insight into the subunit organization and 3D structure of the CA, which is a prerequisite for understanding the molecular mechanisms by which the CA regulates ciliary beating
Asymmetric Trapdoor Pseudorandom Generators: Definitions, Constructions, and Applications to Homomorphic Signatures with Shorter Public Keys
We introduce a new primitive called the asymmetric trapdoor pseudorandom generator (ATPRG), which belongs to pseudorandom generators with two additional trapdoors (a public trapdoor and a secret trapdoor) or backdoor pseudorandom generators with an additional trapdoor (a secret trapdoor). Specifically, ATPRG can only generate public pseudorandom numbers for the users having no knowledge of the public trapdoor and the secret trapdoor; so this function is the same as pseudorandom generators. However, the users having the public trapdoor can use any public pseudorandom number to recover the whole sequence; so this function is the same as backdoor pseudorandom generators. Further, the users having the secret trapdoor can use sequence to generate a sequence of the secret pseudorandom numbers. ATPRG can help design more space-efficient protocols where data/input/message should respect a predefined (unchangeable) order to be correctly processed in a computation or malleable cryptographic system.
As for applications of ATPRG, we construct the first homomorphic signature scheme (in the standard model) whose public key size is only that is independent of the dataset size. As a comparison, the shortest size of the existing public key is , proposed by Catalano et al. (CRYPTO\u2715), where is the dataset size and is the dimension of the message. In other words, we provide the first homomorphic signature scheme with -sized public keys for the one-dimension messages
Artificial Intelligence for Science in Quantum, Atomistic, and Continuum Systems
Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are fueling a new paradigm of
discoveries in natural sciences. Today, AI has started to advance natural
sciences by improving, accelerating, and enabling our understanding of natural
phenomena at a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, giving rise to a new
area of research known as AI for science (AI4Science). Being an emerging
research paradigm, AI4Science is unique in that it is an enormous and highly
interdisciplinary area. Thus, a unified and technical treatment of this field
is needed yet challenging. This work aims to provide a technically thorough
account of a subarea of AI4Science; namely, AI for quantum, atomistic, and
continuum systems. These areas aim at understanding the physical world from the
subatomic (wavefunctions and electron density), atomic (molecules, proteins,
materials, and interactions), to macro (fluids, climate, and subsurface) scales
and form an important subarea of AI4Science. A unique advantage of focusing on
these areas is that they largely share a common set of challenges, thereby
allowing a unified and foundational treatment. A key common challenge is how to
capture physics first principles, especially symmetries, in natural systems by
deep learning methods. We provide an in-depth yet intuitive account of
techniques to achieve equivariance to symmetry transformations. We also discuss
other common technical challenges, including explainability,
out-of-distribution generalization, knowledge transfer with foundation and
large language models, and uncertainty quantification. To facilitate learning
and education, we provide categorized lists of resources that we found to be
useful. We strive to be thorough and unified and hope this initial effort may
trigger more community interests and efforts to further advance AI4Science
Construction of a cross-species cell landscape at single-cell level.
Individual cells are basic units of life. Despite extensive efforts to characterize the cellular heterogeneity of different organisms, cross-species comparisons of landscape dynamics have not been achieved. Here, we applied single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to map organism-level cell landscapes at multiple life stages for mice, zebrafish and Drosophila. By integrating the comprehensive dataset of > 2.6 million single cells, we constructed a cross-species cell landscape and identified signatures and common pathways that changed throughout the life span. We identified structural inflammation and mitochondrial dysfunction as the most common hallmarks of organism aging, and found that pharmacological activation of mitochondrial metabolism alleviated aging phenotypes in mice. The cross-species cell landscape with other published datasets were stored in an integrated online portal-Cell Landscape. Our work provides a valuable resource for studying lineage development, maturation and aging
Association analyses of the interaction between the ADSS and ATM genes with schizophrenia in a Chinese population
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The blood-derived RNA levels of the adenylosuccinate synthase (<it>ADSS</it>) and ataxia telangiectasia mutated (<it>ATM</it>) genes were found to be down- and up-regulated, respectively, in schizophrenics compared with controls, and <it>ADSS </it>and <it>ATM </it>were among eight biomarker genes to discriminate schizophrenics from normal controls. ADSS catalyzes the first committed step of AMP synthesis, while ATM kinase serves as a key signal transducer in the DNA double-strand breaks response pathway. It remains unclear whether these changes result from mutations or polymorphisms in the two genes.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Six SNPs in the <it>ADSS </it>gene and three SNPs in the <it>ATM </it>gene in a Chinese population of 488 schizophrenics and 516 controls were genotyped to examine their association with schizophrenia (SZ). Genotyping was performed using the Sequenom platform.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There was no significant difference in the genotype, allele, or haplotype distributions of the nine SNPs between cases and controls. Using the Multifactor Dimensionality Reduction (MDR) method, we found that the interactions among rs3102460 in the <it>ADSS </it>gene and rs227061 and rs664143 in the <it>ATM </it>gene revealed a significant association with SZ. This model held a maximum testing accuracy of 60.4% and a maximum cross-validation consistency of 10 out of 10.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These findings suggest that the combined effects of the polymorphisms in the <it>ADSS </it>and <it>ATM </it>genes may confer susceptibility to the development of SZ in a Chinese population.</p
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