Large Misalignment between Stellar Bar and Dust Pattern in NGC 3488 Revealed by Spitzer and SDSS

A large position angle misalignment between the stellar bar and the distribution of dust in the late-type barred spiral NGC 3488 was discovered, using mid-infrared images from the Spitzer Space Telescope and optical images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The angle between the bar and dust patterns was measured to be 25+-2deg, larger than most of the misalignments found previously in barred systems based on Ha or HI/CO observations. The stellar bar is bright at optical and 3.6um, while the dust pattern is more prominent in the 8um band but also shows up in the SDSS u and g-band images, suggesting a rich interstellar medium environment harboring ongoing star formation. This angular misalignment is unlikely to have been caused by spontaneous bar formation. We suggest that the stellar bar and the dust pattern may have different formation histories, and that the large misalignment was triggered by a tidal interaction with a small companion. A statistical analysis of a large sample of nearby galaxies with archival Spitzer data indicates that bar structure such as that seen in NGC 3488 is quite rare in the local Universe.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in New Astronom

Switch activation of PI-PLC downstream signals in activated macrophages with wortmannin

AbstractPhosphatidylinositol (4,5)-bisphosphate (PtdIns(4,5)P2) has been known to serve as a substrate for phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) and phosphoinositide-specific phospholipase C (PI-PLC), which can produce PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 and inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (Ins(1,4,5)P3) and diacylglycerol (DAG), respectively. In this study, we elucidated the role of PI-PLC during the LPS-activated mouse macrophages RAW264.7 treated with PI3K inhibitor wortmannin. First, wortmannin treatment enhanced Ins(1,4,5)P3 production and iNOS expression in LPS-activated macrophages. Inhibition of PI3K by p85 siRNA also showed an enhancement of iNOS expression. On the other hand, overexpression of PI3K by ras-p110 expression plasmid significantly decreased iNOS expression in LPS-activated macrophages. In addition, overexpression of wild-type or dominant-negative Akt expression plasmid did not affect the iNOS expression in LPS-activated macrophages. Second, treatment of PI-PLC inhibitor U73122 reversed the enhancement of iNOS expression, the increase of phosphorylation level of ERK, JNK and p38, and the increase of AP-1-dependent gene expression in wortmannin-treated and LPS-activated macrophages. However, NF-κB activity determined by EMSA assay and reporter plasmid assay did not change during LPS-activated macrophages with or without wortmannin. We propose that the inhibition of PI3K by wortmannin in mouse macrophages enhances the PI-PLC downstream signals, and subsequently increases the LPS induction of iNOS expression independently of Akt pathway

Clinical significance of vasculogenic mimicry in human gliomas

Vasculogenic mimicry (VM) is known as non-endothelial tumor cell-lined microvascular channels in aggressive tumors. We have previously found the presence of VM in high-grade gliomas. In this study, we aimed to identify VM patterns in gliomas and to explore their clinical significance. Tumor samples as well as their detailed clinical/prognostic data were collected from 101 patients. Vasculogenic mimicry in the glioma samples was determined by dual staining for endothelial marker CD34 and periodic acid–Schiff (PAS). Tumor samples were also immunohistochemically stained for Ki-67, VEGF, COX-2 and MMP-9. The association between VM and the clinical characteristics of the patients were analyzed. A Kaplan–Meier survival analysis and log-rank tests were performed to compare survival times of the patients. Vasculogenic mimicry was present in 13 out of 101 samples. The higher grade gliomas had a higher incidence of VM than that of lower grade gliomas (P = 0.006). Vasculogenic mimicry channels were associated with the expression of COX-2 and MMP-9 (P < 0.05). While there was no association between the existence of VM and the sex, age and preoperative epilepsy of the patients, or expression of Ki-67 and VEGF. However, patients with VM-positive gliomas survived a shorter period of time than those with VM negative gliomas (P = 0.027). Interestingly, in high-grade gliomas, the level of microvascular density was lower in VM positive tumors than those VM negative tumors (P = 0.039). Our results suggest that VM channels in gliomas correlate with increasing malignancy and higher aggressiveness, and may provide a complementation to the tumor’s blood supply, especially in less vascularized regions, which may aid in the identification of glioma patients with a poorer prognosis

Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Automated Knee Osteoarthritis Phenotype Classification

Purpose: The aim of this study was to demonstrate the utility of unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) in automated knee osteoarthritis (OA) phenotype classification using a small dataset (n=50). Materials and Methods: For this retrospective study, we collected 3,166 three-dimensional (3D) double-echo steady-state magnetic resonance (MR) images from the Osteoarthritis Initiative dataset and 50 3D turbo/fast spin-echo MR images from our institute (in 2020 and 2021) as the source and target datasets, respectively. For each patient, the degree of knee OA was initially graded according to the MRI Osteoarthritis Knee Score (MOAKS) before being converted to binary OA phenotype labels. The proposed UDA pipeline included (a) pre-processing, which involved automatic segmentation and region-of-interest cropping; (b) source classifier training, which involved pre-training phenotype classifiers on the source dataset; (c) target encoder adaptation, which involved unsupervised adaption of the source encoder to the target encoder and (d) target classifier validation, which involved statistical analysis of the target classification performance evaluated by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), sensitivity, specificity and accuracy. Additionally, a classifier was trained without UDA for comparison. Results: The target classifier trained with UDA achieved improved AUROC, sensitivity, specificity and accuracy for both knee OA phenotypes compared with the classifier trained without UDA. Conclusion: The proposed UDA approach improves the performance of automated knee OA phenotype classification for small target datasets by utilising a large, high-quality source dataset for training. The results successfully demonstrated the advantages of the UDA approach in classification on small datasets.Comment: Junru Zhong and Yongcheng Yao share the same contribution. 17 pages, 4 figures, 4 table

Effect of the incorporation of surfactants on the physical properties of corn starch films

[EN] The effect of surfactant addition on structural, mechanical, optical and barrier properties of corn starch-glycerol based films was studied. Sorbitan monopalmitate, monostearate or monooleate were incorporated into starch-glycerol (1:0.25) at a surfactant:starch ratio of 0.15:1. The film forming dispersions (FFD) were characterized as to rheology, &#950;-potential, particle size distribution and contact angle. Film characterization was carried out at 1 and 5 storage weeks (at 25ºC and 53 % relative humidity). Surfactants led to different particle size distribution, zeta potential and viscosity in FFD, and film extensibility, depending on their hydrophobicity and melting properties. Their incorporation to the corn starch-glycerol films produced a coarser film microstructure due to the appearance of free surfactant aggregates or V-amylose inclusion complexes which produce discontinuities in the amorphous continuous matrix. The size of these crystalline complexes was smaller for the surfactant with the lowest hydrophobicity with saturated fatty acid (span 40). This contributed to decrease the WVP values with respect to surfactant-free film. Films containing surfactants were less hard, resistant and extensible, and more permeable to oxygen, than surfactant-free films, but they did not notably affect the film gloss and transparency. Saturated fatty acid compounds with higher melting temperature are recommended to ensure a finer microstructure in the final film which favours water barrier efficiency.The authors acknowledge the financial support from Spanish Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia throughout the project AGL2010-20694. Rodrigo Ortega-Toro thanks Conselleria de Educacio de la Comunitat Valenciana for the Santiago Grisolia grant.Ortega Toro, R.; Jiménez Marco, A.; Talens Oliag, P.; Chiralt, A. (2014). Effect of the incorporation of surfactants on the physical properties of corn starch films. Food Hydrocolloids. 38:66-75. doi:10.1016/j.foodhyd.2013.11.011S66753

Observation of Complete Photonic Bandgap in Low Refractive Index Contrast Inverse Rod-Connected Diamond Structured Chalcogenides

Three-dimensional complete photonic bandgap materials or photonic crystals block light propagation in all directions. The rod-connected diamond structure exhibits the largest photonic bandgap known to date and supports a complete bandgap for the lowest refractive index contrast ratio down to nhigh/nlow ∼ 1.9. We confirm this threshold by measuring a complete photonic bandgap in the infrared region in Sn–S–O (n ∼ 1.9) and Ge–Sb–S–O (n ∼ 2) inverse rod-connected diamond structures. The structures were fabricated using a low-temperature chemical vapor deposition process via a single-inversion technique. This provides a reliable fabrication technique of complete photonic bandgap materials and expands the library of backfilling materials, leading to a wide range of future photonic applications

Overexpression of IL-7 enhances cisplatin resistance in glioma

Cisplatin is one of the most commonly used chemotherapeutic agents for glioma patients. In this study, array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) was used to identify genes associated with cisplatin resistance in a human glioma cell line. The cisplatin-resistant U251/CP2 cell line was derived by stepwise selection using cisplatin. The genetic aberrations of the U251 parental cell line and the U251/CP2 cells were analyzed using aCGH. RT-PCR was used to detect the expression of the altered genes revealed by aCGH. The sensitivity of glioma cells to cisplatin was determined by using the MTT assay. Apoptosis was detected using flow cytometry and western blot analysis. The IC50 value of cisplatin in U251/CP2 cells was five times higher than its IC50 in U251 cells. The U251 cells lost at least one copy each of the CFHR1 and CFHR3 genes, and both CFHR1 and CFHR3 were homozygously deleted in U251/CP2 cells. The U251/CP2 cells gained two to three copies of C8orf70 and IL-7 genes. IL-7 mRNA expression was studied in 12 glioma cell lines, and expression was positively correlated with the IC50 of cisplatin. Furthermore, IL-7 mRNA expression was also positively correlated with the IC50 of cisplatin in 91 clinical glioma specimens. Additionally, treatment with recombinant human IL-7 (rhIL-7) enhanced cisplatin resistance and increased the relative growth rate of the glioma cells. Moreover, the apoptosis induced by cisplatin could be inhibited by IL-7. In conclusion, our results suggest that IL-7 may play an important role in cisplatin resistance in glioma

Bioassay-Guided Evolution of Glycosylated Macrolide Antibiotics in Escherichia coli

Macrolide antibiotics such as erythromycin are clinically important polyketide natural products. We have engineered a recombinant strain of Escherichia coli that produces small but measurable quantities of the bioactive macrolide 6-deoxyerythromycin D. Bioassay-guided evolution of this strain led to the identification of an antibiotic-overproducing mutation in the mycarose biosynthesis and transfer pathway that was detectable via a colony-based screening assay. This high-throughput assay was then used to evolve second-generation mutants capable of enhanced precursor-directed biosynthesis of macrolide antibiotics. The availability of a screen for macrolide biosynthesis in E. coli offers a fundamentally new approach in dissecting modular megasynthase mechanisms as well as engineering antibiotics with novel pharmacological properties

The MALATANG Survey : The L GAS-L IR Correlation on Sub-kiloparsec Scale in Six Nearby Star-forming Galaxies as Traced by HCN J = 4 → 3 and HCO + J = 4 → 3

This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article published in The Astrophysical Journal. The Version of Record is available online at https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aac512.We present HCN J = 4→3 and HCO+ J = 4→3 maps of six nearby star-forming galaxies, NGC 253, NGC 1068, IC 342, M82, M83, and NGC 6946, obtained with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope as part of the MALATANG survey. All galaxies were mapped in the central 2×2 region at 14 (FWHM) resolution (corresponding to linear scales of ∼0.2-1.0 kpc). The LIR-Ldense relation, where the dense gas is traced by the HCN J = 4→3 and the HCO+ J = 4→3 emission, measured in our sample of spatially resolved galaxies is found to follow the linear correlation established globally in galaxies within the scatter. We find that the luminosity ratio, LIR/Ldense, shows systematic variations with LIR within individual spatially resolved galaxies, whereas the galaxy-integrated ratios vary little. A rising trend is also found between LIR/Ldense ratio and the warm-dust temperature gauged by the 70 μm/100 μm flux ratio. We find that the luminosity ratios of IR/HCN (4-3) and IR/HCO+ (4-3), which can be taken as a proxy for the star formation efficiency (SFE) in the dense molecular gas (SFE dense), appear to be nearly independent of the dense gas fraction ( f dense) for our sample of galaxies. The SFE of the total molecular gas (SFEmol) is found to increase substantially with f dense when combining our data with those on local (ultra)luminous infrared galaxies and high-z quasars. The mean LHCN(4-3) LHCO+(4-3) line ratio measured for the six targeted galaxies is 0.9±0.6. No significant correlation is found for the L'HCN(4-3) L'HCO+(4-3) ratio with the star formation rate as traced by L IR, nor with the warm-dust temperature, for the different populations of galaxies.Peer reviewe