Surface-wave solitons on the interface between a linear medium and a nonlocal nonlinear medium

We address the properties of surface-wave solitons on the interface between a semi-infinite homogeneous linear medium and a semi-infinite homogeneous nonlinear nonlocal medium. The stability, energy flow and FWHM of the surface wave solitons can be affected by the degree of nonlocality of the nonlinear medium. We find that the refractive index difference affects the power distribution of the surface solitons in two media. We show that the different boundary values at the interface can lead to the different peak position of the surface solitons, but it can not influence the solitons stability with a certain degree of nonlocality.Comment: 8 pages, 14 figures, 15 references, and so o

5, 7-Dihalo-8-quinolinol complex inhibits growth of ovarian cancer cells via the downregulation of expression of Wip1

Purpose: To assess the cytotoxic effect of 5, 7-dihalo-8-quinolinol complex (DHQ) on ovarian cancer cells, and the mechanism of action involved.Methods: DHQ-mediated changes in cell viability were determined using MTT assay, while apoptosis was analyzed with flow cytometry. The effect of DHQ on cell migration was determined using inverted microscopy, while its effect on invasiveness was assessed with Giemsa dyeing. FACS Caliburinstrumentation was employed for analyzing the effect of DHQ on the cell cycle. The protein expressions of Wip1 and P53 were assayed by western blotting.Results: DHQ induced cytotoxicity against A2780 and OVCAR 3 cells in the concentration range of 0.25 - 12 μM (p < 0.05). In A2780 and OVCAR 3 cells, treatment with 12 μMDHQ resulted in 69.34 and 65.46 % apoptosis, respectively. The migratory potential and invasiveness of A2780 and OVCAR3 cells were significantly decreased by 12 μMDHQ, relative to untreated cells (p < 0.05). Moreover, treatment with 12 μMDHQ arrested cell cycle at G1/G0 phase in A2780 and OVCAR3 cells, but downregulated the protein expressions of Wip1 expression in A2780 and OVCAR3 cells.Conclusion: DHQ exerts cytotoxic effect on ovarian cancer cell growth via arrest of cell cycle and activation of apoptosis. Moreover, DHQ inhibits the migratory and invasive abilities of the cells. Thus, DHQ is a potential drug candidate for the management of ovarian cancer. Keywords: 5,7-Dihalo-8-quinolinol complex, Ovarian cancer, Cytotoxicity, Apoptosis, Invasiveness, Migration, Cell cycl

Domain Adaptive Synapse Detection with Weak Point Annotations

The development of learning-based methods has greatly improved the detection of synapses from electron microscopy (EM) images. However, training a model for each dataset is time-consuming and requires extensive annotations. Additionally, it is difficult to apply a learned model to data from different brain regions due to variations in data distributions. In this paper, we present AdaSyn, a two-stage segmentation-based framework for domain adaptive synapse detection with weak point annotations. In the first stage, we address the detection problem by utilizing a segmentation-based pipeline to obtain synaptic instance masks. In the second stage, we improve model generalizability on target data by regenerating square masks to get high-quality pseudo labels. Benefiting from our high-accuracy detection results, we introduce the distance nearest principle to match paired pre-synapses and post-synapses. In the WASPSYN challenge at ISBI 2023, our method ranks the 1st place

One-Bit-Aided Modulo Sampling for DOA Estimation

Modulo sampling or unlimited sampling has recently drawn a great deal of attention for cutting-edge applications, due to overcoming the barrier of information loss through sensor saturation and clipping. This is a significant problem, especially when the range of signal amplitudes is unknown or in the near-far case. To overcome this fundamental bottleneck, we propose a one-bit-aided (1bit-aided) modulo sampling scheme for direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation. On the one hand, one-bit quantization involving a simple comparator offers the advantages of low-cost and low-complexity implementation. On the other hand, one-bit quantization provides an estimate of the normalized covariance matrix of the unquantized measurements via the arcsin law. The estimate of the normalized covariance matrix is used to implement blind integer-forcing (BIF) decoder to unwrap the modulo samples to construct the covariance matrix, and subspace methods can be used to perform the DOA estimation. Our approach named as 1bit-aided-BIF addresses the near-far problem well and overcomes the intrinsic low dynamic range of one-bit quantization. Numerical experiments validate the excellent performance of the proposed algorithm compared to using a high-precision ADC directly in the given set up

Cognitive flexibility as a protective factor for empathy

Although cognitive flexibility has always been considered essential to empathy, the relevant findings have been inconsistent. Inconsistent results may be because cognitive flexibility is a multi-level structure, while empathy is also a multilayer structure, and there are differences in how researchers define and measure cognitive flexibility. Therefore, the study explores the relationship between cognitive flexibility and empathy from a multi-dimensional perspective. This study involved 105 China students aged between 18 and 22 (M age = 20.26, SD = 2.00) who completed the Cognitive Flexibility Scale (cognitive flexibility trait, cognitive flexibility at the individual level), perspective-switching flexibility task (perspective-switching flexibility, cognitive flexibility at the cognitive level), the Interpersonal Reactivity Index scale (IRI, traits empathy), Multi-dimensional Empathy Test (state empathy), 2-back task (inhibitory control), and Stroop task (working memory). After controlling for additional variables, the results showed that: (1) Cognitive flexibility traits negatively predicted trait cognitive (IRI-PT) and affective empathy (IRI-EC). (2) The Other/Self perspective-switching flexibility negatively predicted the affective component of state empathy. (3) Cognitive flexibility traits and Other/Self perspective-switching flexibility negatively predicted empathy even after controlling for one of these. The study’s results suggested that cognitive flexibility negatively predicts empathy and is a protective factor for reducing the cost of empathy and promoting emotion regulation

A new protein-ligand binding sites prediction method based on the integration of protein sequence conservation information

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Prediction of protein-ligand binding sites is an important issue for protein function annotation and structure-based drug design. Nowadays, although many computational methods for ligand-binding prediction have been developed, there is still a demanding to improve the prediction accuracy and efficiency. In addition, most of these methods are purely geometry-based, if the prediction methods improvement could be succeeded by integrating physicochemical or sequence properties of protein-ligand binding, it may also be more helpful to address the biological question in such studies.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In our study, in order to investigate the contribution of sequence conservation in binding sites prediction and to make up the insufficiencies in purely geometry based methods, a simple yet efficient protein-binding sites prediction algorithm is presented, based on the geometry-based cavity identification integrated with sequence conservation information. Our method was compared with the other three classical tools: PocketPicker, SURFNET, and PASS, and evaluated on an existing comprehensive dataset of 210 non-redundant protein-ligand complexes. The results demonstrate that our approach correctly predicted the binding sites in 59% and 75% of cases among the TOP1 candidates and TOP3 candidates in the ranking list, respectively, which performs better than those of SURFNET and PASS, and achieves generally a slight better performance with PocketPicker.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our work has successfully indicated the importance of the sequence conservation information in binding sites prediction as well as provided a more accurate way for binding sites identification.</p