Structural conservation in the template/pseudoknot domain of vertebrate telomerase RNA from teleost fish to human

Telomerase synthesizes the telomeric DNA at the 3′ ends of chromosomes and maintains genome integrity. Telomerase RNA (TR) provides the template for telomere-repeat synthesis within a template/pseudoknot (t/PK) domain that is essential for activity. We investigated the structure and dynamics of the t/PK from medaka fish, which contain the smallest vertebrate TR, using NMR and modeling. Despite differences in length, sequence, and predicted secondary structure with human TR, the remarkable similarities between subdomains, including one newly identified in medaka, reveal a conserved architecture for vertebrate t/PK. Combining our model of the full-length pseudoknot and information from the 9-Å structure of Tetrahymena telomerase, we propose models for the interaction of medaka and human t/PK with telomerase reverse transcriptase, providing insight into function

Elevated monocyte-to-HDL cholesterol ratio predicts post-stroke depression

ObjectivesInflammation plays an important role in the development of depression after stroke. Monocyte-to-HDL Cholesterol Ratio (MHR) recently emerged as a novel comprehensive inflammatory indicator in recent years. This study aimed to investigate whether there is a relationship between MHR levels and post-stroke depression (PSD).MethodsFrom February 2019 to September 2021, patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) were recruited within 7 days post-stroke from the two centers and blood samples were collected after admission. The 17-item Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD-17) was used to measure depressive symptoms at 3 months after stroke. Patients were given the DSM-V criteria for diagnosis of PSD.ResultsOf the 411 enrolled patients, 92 (22.38%) patients were diagnosed with PSD at 3-months follow-up. The results also showed significantly higher level of MHR in patients with depression [0.81 (IQR 0.67–0.87) vs. 0.61 (IQR 0.44–0.82), P < 0.001] at admission than patients without depression. Multivariate logistic regression revealed that MHR (OR 6.568, 95% CI: 2.123–14.565, P = 0.015) was an independent risk factor for the depression at 3 months after stroke. After adjustment for potential confounding factors, the odds ratio of PSD was 5.018 (95% CI: 1.694–14.867, P = 0.004) for the highest tertile of MHR compared with the lowest tertile. Based on the ROC curve, the optimal cut-off value of MHR as an indicator for prediction of PSD was projected to be 0.55, which yielded a sensitivity of 87% and a specificity of 68.3%, with the area under the curve at 0.660 (95% CI: 0.683–0.781; P = 0.003).ConclusionElevated level of MHR was associated with PSD at 3 months, suggesting that MHR might be a useful Inflammatory markers to predict depression after stroke

Continuous Beam Steering Through Broadside Using Asymmetrically Modulated Goubau Line Leaky-Wave Antennas

Goubau line is a single-conductor transmission line, featuring easy integration and low-loss transmission properties. Here, we propose a periodic leaky-wave antenna (LWA) based on planar Goubau transmission line on a thin dielectric substrate. The leaky-wave radiations are generated by introducing periodic modulations along the Goubau line. In this way, the surface wave, which is slow-wave mode supported by the Goubau line, achieves an additional momentum and hence enters the fast-wave region for radiations. By employing the periodic modulations, the proposed Goubau line LWAs are able to continuously steer the main beam from backward to forward within the operational frequency range. However, the LWAs usually suffer from a low radiation efficiency at the broadside direction. To overcome this drawback, we explore both transversally and longitudinally asymmetrical modulations to the Goubau line. Theoretical analysis, numerical simulations and experimental results are given in comparison with the symmetrical LWAs. It is demonstrated that the asymmetrical modulations significantly improve the radiation efficiency of LWAs at the broadside. Furthermore, the measurement results agree well with the numerical ones, which experimentally validates the proposed LWA structures. These novel Goubau line LWAs, experimentally demonstrated and validated at microwave frequencies, show also great potential for millimeter-wave and terahertz systems

Characteristics of visibility and particulate matter (PM) in an urban area of Northeast China

AbstractThe visibility data from 2010 to 2012 were obtained at Shenyang in Northeast China and the relations between visibility, PM mass concentration and meteorological variables were statistically analyzed. These results demonstrate that the monthly–averaged visibility over Shenyang was higher in March and September with values of approximately 19.0±4.3 km and 17.1±4.3 km, respectively. Low visibility over Shenyang occurred in January at approximately 11.0±4.7 km. Among the meteorological variables considered, wind speed was the main meteorological factor that influenced visibility and PM mass concentrations. The relation between visibility and PM indicates that fine particles are already a main source of pollutants, the existence of which is the most important factor in the deterioration of visibility in an urban area of Northeast China. The study also shows an obvious diurnal variation and weekend effects of visibility and PM, which are mainly caused by human activities. Results of this study highlight the significant impact of fine particles on air pollution and visibility in an urban area of Northeast China

Molecular Mechanism of GTPase Activation at the Signal Recognition Particle (SRP) RNA Distal End

The signal recognition particle (SRP) RNA is a universally conserved and essential component of the SRP that mediates the co-translational targeting of proteins to the correct cellular membrane. During the targeting reaction, two functional ends in the SRP RNA mediate distinct functions. Whereas the RNA tetraloop facilitates initial assembly of two GTPases between the SRP and SRP receptor, this GTPase complex subsequently relocalizes ∼100 Å to the 5′,3′-distal end of the RNA, a conformation crucial for GTPase activation and cargo handover. Here we combined biochemical, single molecule, and NMR studies to investigate the molecular mechanism of this large scale conformational change. We show that two independent sites contribute to the interaction of the GTPase complex with the SRP RNA distal end. Loop E plays a crucial role in the precise positioning of the GTPase complex on these two sites by inducing a defined bend in the RNA helix and thus generating a preorganized recognition surface. GTPase docking can be uncoupled from its subsequent activation, which is mediated by conserved bases in the next internal loop. These results, combined with recent structural work, elucidate how the SRP RNA induces GTPase relocalization and activation at the end of the protein targeting reaction

Towards Robust Visual Information Extraction in Real World: New Dataset and Novel Solution

Visual information extraction (VIE) has attracted considerable attention recently owing to its various advanced applications such as document understanding, automatic marking and intelligent education. Most existing works decoupled this problem into several independent sub-tasks of text spotting (text detection and recognition) and information extraction, which completely ignored the high correlation among them during optimization. In this paper, we propose a robust visual information extraction system (VIES) towards real-world scenarios, which is a unified end-to-end trainable framework for simultaneous text detection, recognition and information extraction by taking a single document image as input and outputting the structured information. Specifically, the information extraction branch collects abundant visual and semantic representations from text spotting for multimodal feature fusion and conversely, provides higher-level semantic clues to contribute to the optimization of text spotting. Moreover, regarding the shortage of public benchmarks, we construct a fully-annotated dataset called EPHOIE (https://github.com/HCIILAB/EPHOIE), which is the first Chinese benchmark for both text spotting and visual information extraction. EPHOIE consists of 1,494 images of examination paper head with complex layouts and background, including a total of 15,771 Chinese handwritten or printed text instances. Compared with the state-of-the-art methods, our VIES shows significant superior performance on the EPHOIE dataset and achieves a 9.01% F-score gain on the widely used SROIE dataset under the end-to-end scenario.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, to be published in AAAI 202

EFFECT OF QIANLIE XIAOZHENG TANG, A CHINESE HERBAL DECOCTION, ON CASTRATION RESISTANT PROSTATE CANCER: A PILOT STUDY

Background: To examine the effect of Qianlie Xiaozheng Tang (QLXZT), a Chinese herbal decoction, on treating castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). Materials and Methods: A total of 70 men with CRPC were recruited and randomly allocated into treatment groups (treated with QLXZT and conventional therapy) or control group (treated with conventional therapy) for 12 weeks treatment. Primary endpoint was serum prostate specific antigen (PSA) concentration. Secondary endpoints included patients' quality of life measured by Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Prostate questionnaire, and prostate cancer-specific anxiety assessed by Memorial Anxiety Scale for Prostate Cancer. Results: After a 12-week treatment, the PSA level in control group rose remarkably from 45.3 ± 17.0 to 76.0 ± 56.7 ng/ml (P=0.0015). By contrast, the PSA level in treatment group did not increase significantly (P>0.05). The scores of Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Prostate in each domain changed significantly (