Measures of Information for Information Acquisition Optimization

The objective of this study is to find suitable methods of information measurement and characterizations to facilitate research on information acquisition optimization. Specifically, this study is to support an approach, which has been acquired in past periods of the research, that can be interpreted as a theory of information exchange between the decision maker and information source(s). It can also be said that the developed approach complements the classical Information Theory. The classical Information Theory describes the transmission of information over some channel, regardless of its content. The proposed approach deals the first and last link of the full information chain: extracting information from a source and using it to obtain the best possible decision. In this approach, a quantitative framework describing information sources, the process of information exchange between the source(s) and the agent, and the relevance of the obtained information for the given problem is developed. The purpose of this thesis is to study and summarize the existing methods of measuring information and evaluate their suitability for the purposes of the proposed approach

Adaptive Prompt Learning with Distilled Connective Knowledge for Implicit Discourse Relation Recognition

Implicit discourse relation recognition (IDRR) aims at recognizing the discourse relation between two text segments without an explicit connective. Recently, the prompt learning has just been applied to the IDRR task with great performance improvements over various neural network-based approaches. However, the discrete nature of the state-art-of-art prompting approach requires manual design of templates and answers, a big hurdle for its practical applications. In this paper, we propose a continuous version of prompt learning together with connective knowledge distillation, called AdaptPrompt, to reduce manual design efforts via continuous prompting while further improving performance via knowledge transfer. In particular, we design and train a few virtual tokens to form continuous templates and automatically select the most suitable one by gradient search in the embedding space. We also design an answer-relation mapping rule to generate a few virtual answers as the answer space. Furthermore, we notice the importance of annotated connectives in the training dataset and design a teacher-student architecture for knowledge transfer. Experiments on the up-to-date PDTB Corpus V3.0 validate our design objectives in terms of the better relation recognition performance over the state-of-the-art competitors

BPTF promotes tumor growth and predicts poor prognosis in lung adenocarcinomas.

BPTF, a subunit of NURF, is well known to be involved in the development of eukaryotic cell, but little is known about its roles in cancers, especially in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Here we showed that BPTF was specifically overexpressed in NSCLC cell lines and lung adenocarcinoma tissues. Knockdown of BPTF by siRNA significantly inhibited cell proliferation, induced cell apoptosis and arrested cell cycle progress from G1 to S phase. We also found that BPTF knockdown downregulated the expression of the phosphorylated Erk1/2, PI3K and Akt proteins and induced the cleavage of caspase-8, caspase-7 and PARP proteins, thereby inhibiting the MAPK and PI3K/AKT signaling and activating apoptotic pathway. BPTF knockdown by siRNA also upregulated the cell cycle inhibitors such as p21 and p18 but inhibited the expression of cyclin D, phospho-Rb and phospho-cdc2 in lung cancer cells. Moreover, BPTF knockdown by its specific shRNA inhibited lung cancer growth in vivo in the xenografts of A549 cells accompanied by the suppression of VEGF, p-Erk and p-Akt expression. Immunohistochemical assay for tumor tissue microarrays of lung tumor tissues showed that BPTF overexpression predicted a poor prognosis in the patients with lung adenocarcinomas. Therefore, our data indicate that BPTF plays an essential role in cell growth and survival by targeting multiply signaling pathways in human lung cancers

Ku80 cooperates with CBP to promote COX-2 expression and tumor growth.

Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) plays an important role in lung cancer development and progression. Using streptavidin-agarose pulldown and proteomics assay, we identified and validated Ku80, a dimer of Ku participating in the repair of broken DNA double strands, as a new binding protein of the COX-2 gene promoter. Overexpression of Ku80 up-regulated COX-2 promoter activation and COX-2 expression in lung cancer cells. Silencing of Ku80 by siRNA down-regulated COX-2 expression and inhibited tumor cell growth in vitro and in a xenograft mouse model. Ku80 knockdown suppressed phosphorylation of ERK, resulting in an inactivation of the MAPK pathway. Moreover, CBP, a transcription co-activator, interacted with and acetylated Ku80 to co-regulate the activation of COX-2 promoter. Overexpression of CBP increased Ku80 acetylation, thereby promoting COX-2 expression and cell growth. Suppression of CBP by a CBP-specific inhibitor or siRNA inhibited COX-2 expression as well as tumor cell growth. Tissue microarray immunohistochemical analysis of lung adenocarcinomas revealed a strong positive correlation between levels of Ku80 and COX-2 and clinicopathologic variables. Overexpression of Ku80 was associated with poor prognosis in patients with lung cancers. We conclude that Ku80 promotes COX-2 expression and tumor growth and is a potential therapeutic target in lung cancer

De novo transcriptome analysis of Medicago falcata reveals novel insights about the mechanisms underlying abiotic stress-responsive pathway

BACKGROUND: The entire world is facing a deteriorating environment. Understanding the mechanisms underlying plant responses to external abiotic stresses is important for breeding stress-tolerant crops and herbages. Phytohormones play critical regulatory roles in plants in the response to external and internal cues to regulate growth and development. Medicago falcata is one of the stress-tolerant candidate leguminous species and is able to fix atmospheric nitrogen. This ability allows leguminous plants to grow in nitrogen deficient soils. METHODS: We performed Illumina sequencing of cDNA prepared from abiotic stress treated M. falcata. Sequencedreads were assembled to provide a transcriptome resource. Transcripts were annotated using BLASTsearches against the NCBI non-redundant database and gene ontology definitions were assigned. Acomparison among the three abiotic stress treated samples was carried out. The expression of transcriptswas confirmed with qRT-PCR. RESULTS: We present an abiotic stress-responsive M. falcata transcriptome using next-generation sequencing data from samples grown under standard, dehydration, high salinity, and cold conditions. We combined reads from all samples and de novo assembled 98,515 transcripts to build the M. falcata gene index. A comprehensive analysis of the transcriptome revealed abiotic stress-responsive mechanisms underlying the metabolism and core signalling components of major phytohormones. We identified nod factor signalling pathways during early symbiotic nodulation that are modified by abiotic stresses. Additionally, a global comparison of homology between the M. falcata and M. truncatula transcriptomes, along with five other leguminous species, revealed a high level of global sequence conservation within the family. CONCLUSIONS: M. falcata is shown to be a model candidate for studying abiotic stress-responsive mechanisms in legumes. This global gene expression analysis provides new insights into the biochemical and molecular mechanisms involved in the acclimation to abiotic stresses. Our data provides many gene candidates that might be used for herbage and crop breeding. Additionally, FalcataBase (http://bioinformatics.cau.edu.cn/falcata/) was built for storing these data. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-015-2019-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

The diploid genome sequence of an Asian individual

Here we present the first diploid genome sequence of an Asian individual. The genome was sequenced to 36-fold average coverage using massively parallel sequencing technology. We aligned the short reads onto the NCBI human reference genome to 99.97% coverage, and guided by the reference genome, we used uniquely mapped reads to assemble a high-quality consensus sequence for 92% of the Asian individual's genome. We identified approximately 3 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) inside this region, of which 13.6% were not in the dbSNP database. Genotyping analysis showed that SNP identification had high accuracy and consistency, indicating the high sequence quality of this assembly. We also carried out heterozygote phasing and haplotype prediction against HapMap CHB and JPT haplotypes (Chinese and Japanese, respectively), sequence comparison with the two available individual genomes (J. D. Watson and J. C. Venter), and structural variation identification. These variations were considered for their potential biological impact. Our sequence data and analyses demonstrate the potential usefulness of next-generation sequencing technologies for personal genomics

Study on flue gas denitration method based on multistage high gravity technology

According to the mechanism of wet denitration, H2O2 solution and KOH solution are used as absorbents, and the two-stage countercurrent high-gravity rotating packed bed is used as the reaction equipment. The rotating speed, gas-liquid ratio, temperature, H2O2 solution concentration and KOH solution concentration are changed respectively to explore the impact of various factors on the denitration efficiency, and finally determine the best experimental conditions for flue gas denitration. The experimental results show that when the rotating speed reaches 900 rpm, the gas-liquid ratio is 12:1, and the temperature reaches 36 °C, using 0.20 mol/l of H2O2 solution and 0.10 mol/l of KOH solution as absorbents, the denitration efficiency can reach the best, and the best denitration efficiency is 95.71%

Study on flue gas denitration method based on multistage high gravity technology

According to the mechanism of wet denitration, H2O2 solution and KOH solution are used as absorbents, and the two-stage countercurrent high-gravity rotating packed bed is used as the reaction equipment. The rotating speed, gas-liquid ratio, temperature, H2O2 solution concentration and KOH solution concentration are changed respectively to explore the impact of various factors on the denitration efficiency, and finally determine the best experimental conditions for flue gas denitration. The experimental results show that when the rotating speed reaches 900 rpm, the gas-liquid ratio is 12:1, and the temperature reaches 36 °C, using 0.20 mol/l of H2O2 solution and 0.10 mol/l of KOH solution as absorbents, the denitration efficiency can reach the best, and the best denitration efficiency is 95.71%

Study on Preparation and Physical Mechanical Properties of Si3N4 Composite Ceramics

In this paper, by using the hot-pressed sintered technology, pure Si3N4 ceramics and Si3N4 composite ceramics containing different volume fraction(hBN) are prepared with the sintered catalyst of Al2O3 and Y2O3(total 10vol%) by HIGH MULTI 5000 multi-functional high temperature sintering furnace. And the phase compositions, microstructure and mechanical properties of specimen were studied. The results show that, based on the hot pressing sintering process, the α-Si3N4 is all changed into β-Si3N4. Addition of hBN into Si3N4 inhibits the growth of the crystal grain and makes the ceramic materials generate hBN segregation zone in internal materials, which causes the addition of hBN that cannot improve the physical mechanical properties effectively just because the serious stress concentrates and fatigue break down. In addition, compared with other sintering process, the physical and mechanical properties of Si3N4 prepared by hot-pressing sintering are better than other methods. Improvement of sintering temperature and time can refine the crystal grain and be a helpful densification. The changed β-Si3N4 grain completely forms an intertwined structure and increases the physical and mechanical properties of Si3N4. Meanwhile, Y2O3 and Al2O3 additives are melted and filled into Si3N4 particles at the high temperature, leading to a significant drop of the porosity and the increase of density

Study on Preparation and Physical Mechanical Properties of Si

In this paper, by using the hot-pressed sintered technology, pure Si3N4 ceramics and Si3N4 composite ceramics containing different volume fraction(hBN) are prepared with the sintered catalyst of Al2O3 and Y2O3(total 10vol%) by HIGH MULTI 5000 multi-functional high temperature sintering furnace. And the phase compositions, microstructure and mechanical properties of specimen were studied. The results show that, based on the hot pressing sintering process, the α-Si3N4 is all changed into β-Si3N4. Addition of hBN into Si3N4 inhibits the growth of the crystal grain and makes the ceramic materials generate hBN segregation zone in internal materials, which causes the addition of hBN that cannot improve the physical mechanical properties effectively just because the serious stress concentrates and fatigue break down. In addition, compared with other sintering process, the physical and mechanical properties of Si3N4 prepared by hot-pressing sintering are better than other methods. Improvement of sintering temperature and time can refine the crystal grain and be a helpful densification. The changed β-Si3N4 grain completely forms an intertwined structure and increases the physical and mechanical properties of Si3N4. Meanwhile, Y2O3 and Al2O3 additives are melted and filled into Si3N4 particles at the high temperature, leading to a significant drop of the porosity and the increase of density