THE FUNCTIONAL ROLE OF RNA BINDING PROTEIN RBMS3 AS A TUMOR PROMOTER IN TRIPLE-NEGATIVE BREAST CANCER CELLS

RBMS3 belongs to the family of c-myc gene single-strand binding proteins (MSSPs) that play important roles in transcriptional regulation. Here, we show that RBMS3 functions as a tumor promoter in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), a highly aggressive BC subtype. Analysis of RBMS3 expression shows that RBMS3 is upregulated at both mRNA and protein levels in TNBC cells. Functionally, overexpression of RBMS3 increases cell migration, invasion and cancer stem cell (CSC) behaviors. Moreover, RBMS3 induces expression of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and CSC markers. Conversely, loss of RBMS3 in TNBC BT549 cells inhibits cell proliferation, migration and mesenchymal phenotype. Correlation analysis shows RBMS3 is associated with TGF-β signaling. Mechanistically, RBMS3 interacts with Smad2, Smad3 and Smad4 mRNA and regulates the stability of these transcripts. Importantly, RBMS3 prevents TGF-β-induced cytostasis and apoptosis in premalignant cancer cells. Moreover, RBMS3 inversely correlates with expression of ESRPs, epithelial-specific splicing regulatory proteins that regulate morphogenesis-associated alternative splicing events. ESRPs appear to suppress EMT through distinct mechanisms: ESRP1 restricted cell migration, whereas ESRP2 prevented cell growth. RBMS3 significantly facilitates the EMT process when ESRPs are lost. Collectively, the studies within this dissertation identify RBMS3 as a positive regulator of EMT and breast cancer progression by regulating the TGF-β signaling pathway

Effect of Noble Metal Nanomaterials on Endogenous and Dietary Antioxidants and their Combined Interaction with Reactive Oxygen Species

In the last decade, nanotechnology has been extensively exploited in a variety of areas because nanoscaled materials provide a wide range of benefits that bulk materials do not possess. In spite of its advent, when applied to consumer related products, the new technology inevitably brings about side effect especially to biological or environment systems. Many have already determined that the damaging effect of nanomaterials in cell lines is caused by oxidative stress as a result of overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS). The present study aims at evaluating the role of noble metal nanomaterials in the generation and scavenging of ROS. It is noteworthy that the behavior of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) in the presence of hydrogen peroxide, a continuously generated component in biological systems, is adjusted by the mimetic microenvironment. These Ag NPs were found to be capable of inducing production of ROS hydroxyl radicals and oxygen in acidic and alkaline environments, respectively. The Ag NPs were oxidized to ions at pH 4.6 while they have been found to participate in Ag0-Ag1-Ag0 cyclic reaction at pH 11. As a promising antimicrobial agent, Ag NPs alone barely scavenge free radicals, but they are found to moderate the scavenging capability of thiol-based antioxidants, essential endogenous antioxidants, due to their formation of Ag-S bond. In addition, Platinum nanoparticles (Pt NPs) have been mostly used as catalysts in many chemical reactions. While recent reports suggest antioxidant activity of Pt NPs due to their peroxidase-like activity, there are limitations in the use of Pt NPs as an antioxidant in scavenging hydroxyl radicals. Alternatively, owing to their ascorbate oxidase-like activity, Pt NPs reduce the antioxidant ability of ascorbic acid, an important antioxidant participating in many biological reactions. In addition, they exert tyrosinase-like activity in catalyzing the oxidation of (-)-Epicatechin, caffeic acid, and resveratrol to form pigment compounds. Therefore, Pt NPs vary in their effect on the antioxidant activity of phenolics against various radicals (DPPH radicals > hydroxyl radicals >superoxide radicals). Our study may provide insights for finding new applications for noble metal nanoparticles and for risk assessment

Learning to Generate Posters of Scientific Papers

Researchers often summarize their work in the form of posters. Posters provide a coherent and efficient way to convey core ideas from scientific papers. Generating a good scientific poster, however, is a complex and time consuming cognitive task, since such posters need to be readable, informative, and visually aesthetic. In this paper, for the first time, we study the challenging problem of learning to generate posters from scientific papers. To this end, a data-driven framework, that utilizes graphical models, is proposed. Specifically, given content to display, the key elements of a good poster, including panel layout and attributes of each panel, are learned and inferred from data. Then, given inferred layout and attributes, composition of graphical elements within each panel is synthesized. To learn and validate our model, we collect and make public a Poster-Paper dataset, which consists of scientific papers and corresponding posters with exhaustively labelled panels and attributes. Qualitative and quantitative results indicate the effectiveness of our approach.Comment: in Proceedings of the 30th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'16), Phoenix, AZ, 201

Research on Regional Imbalance of Cross-Border E-Commerce --Take Fujian Free Trade Zone as an Example

This article takes the information data era, world trade, and the deep integration of the “Belt and Road” policy as the background. Using questionnaires and compare to analyze the cross-border e-commerce regional issues in Fujian Free Trade Area, based on the analysis of cross-border e-commerce differences between Fujian, Shanghai and Zhengzhou and the comparative analysis of crossborder e-commerce platforms, it establishes a cross-border e-commerce service quality gap model to further identify problems. This article points out the current development trend of cross-border e-commerce zone in Fujian Free Trade Area, and the problems and the development shortcomings. Utilizing the advantages of cross-border e-commerce and its platform in Shanghai and Zhengzhou Free Trade Area to improve the imbalance of cross-border e-commerce in the Fujian Free Trade Zone, It has come up with actions and recommendations for building a multi-level network, an open credit platform, and a service quality evaluation system

THE USE OF REMOTE SENSING AND EDDY COVARIANCE TECHNOLOGIES TO CHARACTERIZE CROPLAND, DROUGHT AND LAND MANAGEMENTS AND THEIR IMPACTS ON ECOSYSTEM DYNAMICS

With the increasing population, human needs more food, fresh water, and other ecosystem services, which burdens the agricultural and natural ecosystems. Under the background of climate change, meeting these human needs becomes more challenging because of increasing temperature, climate extremes, etc. and their interaction with human activities. Thus, it is important to understand the impacts of climate change and human activities on ecosystem dynamics. The land-use and land-cover change, one of the most important human activities, greatly affects the function and dynamics of ecosystems. Drought is one of the most costly natural disasters and imposes wide-ranging impacts on the economy, environment, and society. This dissertation aimed to strengthen the usage of remote sensing and eddy covariance techniques in paddy rice mapping, agricultural drought monitoring, land management effects assessment, and evaluating the impacts of drought on cattle production. Chapter 2 identified the different flooding/transplanting periods of paddy rice and natural wetlands. The natural wetlands foods earlier and have a shorter duration than paddy rice in the Panjin Plain, a temperate region in China. Using this asynchronous flooding stages, this chapter extracted the paddy rice planting area from the rice-wetland coexistent area using MODIS and Landsat 8 imagery. The comparison and validation tests indicated high accuracy of our paddy rice map. Chapter 3 quantified the agricultural drought of tallgrass prairie in the SGP using a remotely sensed water-related vegetation index derived from MODIS. The results are comparable to other widely used drought products. The spatial pattern of drought duration was highly correlated with the decreasing precipitation gradient from east to west. LSWI-based drought depictions are sensitive to both precipitation anomalies from the historical mean and abnormal seasonal precipitation distributions. A comparison with other widely used drought products is made. Chapter 4 examined the impacts of burning, baling, and grazing on canopy and carbon fluxes in a pasture through integrating PhenoCam images, satellite remote sensing, and eddy covariance data. Landsat images were used to assess the baling area and the trajectory of vegetation recovery. MODIS vegetation indices (VIs) were used in the Vegetation Photosynthesis Model (VPM) to estimate gross primary production (GPPVPM) at a MODIS pixel for the flux tower (baled) site. Multiple datasets allowed studying intra-annual variations caused by various management practices. The larger increase of GPP after large rain in baled grassland (photosynthetically more active vegetation) compensated the reduction in GPP caused by baling. This result indicated that the interaction of management practices with climate is important when studying their impacts on GPP. Chapter 5 evaluated the impacts of drought on cattle production in the SGP during 2000-2015 use meteorological, remote sensing, and statistical data. The results showed that the consecutive years of drought and high temperatures in 2011 and 2012 dramatically decreased the cattle production in OK and TX. The decrease extent in KS was smaller probably because of the greater accessibility to the groundwater resource. 2011 was a whole year drought in the SGP which decreased the hay production and thus cattle production, while 2012 was a summer drought year in the Corn Belt which increased the corn price and thus cattle production. The Random Forest method performed well and shows the potential in predicting the dynamics of cattle production

Continuity of family of Calder\'on projections

We consider a continuous family of linear elliptic differential operators of arbitrary order over a smooth compact manifold with boundary. Assuming constant dimension of the spaces of inner solutions, we prove that the orthogonalized Calder\'on projections of the underlying family of elliptic operators form a continuous family of projections. Hence, its images (the Cauchy data spaces) form a continuous family of closed subspaces in the relevant Sobolev spaces. We use only elementary tools and classical results: basic manipulations of operator graphs and other closed subspaces in Banach spaces; elliptic regularity; Green's formula and trace theorems for Sobolev spaces; well-posed boundary conditions; duality of spaces and operators in Hilbert space; and the interpolation theorem for operators in Sobolev spaces. \keywords{Calder{\'o}n projection\and Cauchy data spaces \and Elliptic differential operators \and Green's formula\and Interpolation theorem\and Manifolds with boundary\and Parameter dependence \and Trace theorem \and Variational propertie

Experimental investigation of the isothermal section at 400 °C of the MgCeSr ternary system

AbstractThe objective of this study is to determine the isothermal section at 400 °C of the MgCeSr system. In this study, the constitution of the CeSr system and the MgCeSr system have been investigated over the entire composition range using X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). No any new binary compound has been found in the CeSr system and no ternary compound has been found in the MgCeSr system also. Nine three-phase regions have been experimentally observed. Six binary phases Mg2Sr, Mg23Sr6, Mg38Sr9, Mg17Sr2, Mg12Ce, Mg41Ce5 are detected dissolving about 3–7 at.% the third element. This study first detected the experimental data of the CeSr binary system and determined the isothermal section at 400 °C of the MgCeSr ternary system