Attention-Based Deep Learning Model for Predicting Collaborations Between Different Research Affiliations

It is challenging but important to predict the collaborations between different entities which in academia, for example, would enable finding evaluating trends of scientific research collaboration and the provision of decision support for policy formulation and incentive measures. In this paper, we propose an attention-based Long Short-Term Memory Convolutional Neural Network (LSTM-CNN) model to predict the collaborations between different research affiliations, which takes both the influence of research articles and time (year) relationships into consideration. The experimental results show that the proposed model outperforms the competitive Support Vector Machine (SVM), CNN and LSTM methods. It significantly improves the prediction precision by a minimum of 3.23 percent points and up to 10.80 percent points when compared with the mentioned competitive methods, while in terms of the F1-score, the performance is improved by 13.48, 4.85 and 4.24 percent points, respectively.This work was supported in part by the Humanities and Social Science Research Project of the Ministry of Education in China under Grant 17YJCZH262 and Grant 18YJAZH136, in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61303167, Grant 61702306, Grant 61433012, Grant U1435215, and Grant 71772107, in part by the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province under Grant ZR2018BF013 and Grant ZR2017BF015, in part by the Innovative Research Foundation of Qingdao under Grant 18-2-2-41-jch, in part by the Key Project of Industrial Transformation and Upgrading in China under Grant TC170A5SW, and in part by the Scientific Research Foundation of SDUST for Innovative Team under Grant 2015TDJH102

Growth performance, digestive capacity and intestinal health of juvenile spotted seabass (Lateolabrax maculatus) fed dietary laminarin supplement

Laminarin has antioxidant and immunomodulatory properties and favorably impacts gut microbial composition, providing a potential solution for the treatment of intestinal diseases in fish. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of laminarin on the growth and intestinal health of juvenile spotted seabass, Lateolabrax maculatus. A total of 450 juveniles (initial body weight: 7.14 ± 0.10 g) were randomly divided into 6 groups with 3 replicates per group and 25 fish per replicate. Six diets were prepared with laminarin supplementation at doses of 0% (Control), 0.4% (P0.4), 0.8% (P0.8), 1.2% (P1.2), 1.6% (P1.6), and 2% (P2). Each group was fed the corresponding diet for 8 weeks. The results indicated that dietary laminarin supplementation of 0.4-1.6% enhanced the specific growth rate (SGR), weight gain rate (WGR), and feed conversion ratio (FCR) of juvenile spotted seabass, and the difference was significant in the P0.8 group (P<0.05). Significantly higher intestinal amylase activity was measured in P0.8 compared with the control group. Trypsin activity was significantly increased in P0.4 and P0.8 groups in contrast to the control (P<0.05). Lipase activity was significantly increased in P0.4, P0.8, P1.6, and P2 groups in contrast to the control (P<0.05). Total antioxidant capacity was significantly increased in the P0.8, P1.2, and P1.6 groups compared to the control group (P<0.05). The P0.8 group exhibited significant increases in reduced glutathione, alkaline phosphatase, and lysozyme levels (P<0.05), whereas the concentrations of diamine oxidase and D-lactate were significantly decreased (P<0.05). Furthermore, intestinal villus height, villus width, and crypt depth were significantly increased in P0.8 and P2 groups (P<0.05), and muscular thickness was significantly increased in the P1.2 group (P<0.05). Intestinal microbial analysis revealed that the alpha diversity of the laminarin supplemented groups was significantly higher than that of the control group. Moreover, the abundance of intestinal beneficial bacteria Lactobacillus and Klebsiella in P0.4 and P0.8 groups was significantly increased (P<0.05), indicating that laminarin altered the composition of intestinal flora and the abundance of dominant bacteria, with a low dose being more conducive to the formation of beneficial bacteria. In conclusion, dietary laminarin supplementation can improve the growth performance and intestinal function of juvenile spotted seabass. Based on the regression analyses of weight gain rate and specific growth rate, the optimal supplemental level of laminarin was estimated to be 0.97% and 0.98%, respectively

Aberrant GlyRS-HDAC6 interaction linked to axonal transport deficits in Charcot-Marie-Tooth neuropathy.

Dominant mutations in glycyl-tRNA synthetase (GlyRS) cause a subtype of Charcot-Marie-Tooth neuropathy (CMT2D). Although previous studies have shown that GlyRS mutants aberrantly interact with Nrp1, giving insight into the disease\u27s specific effects on motor neurons, these cannot explain length-dependent axonal degeneration. Here, we report that GlyRS mutants interact aberrantly with HDAC6 and stimulate its deacetylase activity on α-tubulin. A decrease in α-tubulin acetylation and deficits in axonal transport are observed in mice peripheral nerves prior to disease onset. An HDAC6 inhibitor used to restore α-tubulin acetylation rescues axonal transport deficits and improves motor functions of CMT2D mice. These results link the aberrant GlyRS-HDAC6 interaction to CMT2D pathology and suggest HDAC6 as an effective therapeutic target. Moreover, the HDAC6 interaction differs from Nrp1 interaction among GlyRS mutants and correlates with divergent clinical presentations, indicating the existence of multiple and different mechanisms in CMT2D. Nat Commun 2018 Mar 8; 9(1):1007

Molecular Evolution and Stress and Phytohormone Responsiveness of SUT Genes in Gossypium hirsutum

Sucrose transporters (SUTs) play key roles in allocating the translocation of assimilates from source to sink tissues. Although the characteristics and biological roles of SUTs have been intensively investigated in higher plants, this gene family has not been functionally characterized in cotton. In this study, we performed a comprehensive analysis of SUT genes in the tetraploid cotton Gossypium hirsutum. A total of 18 G. hirsutum SUT genes were identified and classified into three groups based on their evolutionary relationships. Up to eight SUT genes in G. hirsutum were placed in the dicot-specific SUT1 group, while four and six SUT genes were, respectively, clustered into SUT4 and SUT2 groups together with members from both dicot and monocot species. The G. hirsutum SUT genes within the same group displayed similar exon/intron characteristics, and homologous genes in G. hirsutum At and Dt subgenomes, G. arboreum, and G. raimondii exhibited one-to-one relationships. Additionally, the duplicated genes in the diploid and polyploid cotton species have evolved through purifying selection, suggesting the strong conservation of SUT loci in these species. Expression analysis in different tissues indicated that SUT genes might play significant roles in cotton fiber elongation. Moreover, analyses of cis-acting regulatory elements in promoter regions and expression profiling under different abiotic stress and exogenous phytohormone treatments implied that SUT genes, especially GhSUT6A/D, might participate in plant responses to diverse abiotic stresses and phytohormones. Our findings provide valuable information for future studies on the evolution and function of SUT genes in cotton

Prevalence of the Cryptosporidium Pig Genotype II in Pigs from the Yangtze River Delta, China

Background: Cryptosporidium spp. is prevalent globally, pigs are an important Cryptosporidium reservoir. In China, little data regarding rates of Cryptosporidium infections in pigs are available. The present study was therefore aimed at characterizing the distribution of Cryptosporidium species in pigs from two different cities, Shaoxing and Shanghai, from the Yangtze River delta. Methodology/Principal Findings: Nested PCR to amplify the 18S rRNA locus on DNA extracted from fecal samples (n = 94) revealed the positive rate of Cryptosporidium in pigs from two cities was approximately 17.0%. The positive rates in Shanghai and Shaoxing were 14.3 % and 25.0 % respectively. Amplified sequences were verified by sequencing. The identified strain belonged to the C. pig genotype II using BLAST analysis in the NCBI database. Conclusion/Significance: Our finding of Cryptosporidium pig genotype II in pigs in the Yangtze River delta area suggests that pig farms in this region must be considered a public health threat and proper control measures be introduced

Comparison of prevalence, viral load, physical status and expression of human papillomavirus-16, -18 and -58 in esophageal and cervical cancer: a case-control study

Background: Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is a major risk factor for the development of nearly all cases of cervical cancer worldwide. The presence of HPV DNA in cases of esophageal squamous-cell carcinoma (ESCC) has been reported repeatedly from Shantou, China, and other regions with a high incidence of esophageal carcinoma (EC). However, unlike in cervical squamous-cell carcinoma (CSCC), in ESCC, the characteristics of HPV are unclear. Thus, the role of high-risk HPV types in the carcinogenesis of ESCC remains uncertain. Methods: Seventy cases of ESCC with 60 controls and 39 cases of CSCC with 54 controls collected from patients in Shantou region in China were compared for the distributions of HPV-16, -18 and -58; viral load; and viral integration using real-time PCR assay and HPV-16 expression using immunostaining. Results: The detection rates and viral loads of HR-HPV infection were significantly lower in ESCC than in CSCC (50.0% vs. 79.48%, P = 0.005; 2.55 +/- 3.19 vs. 361.29 +/- 441.75, P = 0.002, respectively). The combined integration level of HPV-16, -18 and -58 was slightly lower in ESCC than in CSCC (P = 0.022). HPV-16 expression was detected in 59.26% of ESCC tissue and significantly associated with tumour grade (P = 0.027). Conclusions: High levels of HR-HPV expression and integration may be an indicator of the risk of ESCC, at least for patients in the Shantou region of China. However, a relatively low HPV copy number and infection rate in ESCC is unlikely to play an essential a role in the carcinogenesis of ESCC as in cervical cancer. Factors other than HR-HPV infection may contribute to the carcinogenesis of ESCC.http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000285251600001&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=8e1609b174ce4e31116a60747a720701OncologySCI(E)26ARTICLEnull1

The United States COVID-19 Forecast Hub dataset

Academic researchers, government agencies, industry groups, and individuals have produced forecasts at an unprecedented scale during the COVID-19 pandemic. To leverage these forecasts, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partnered with an academic research lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to create the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub. Launched in April 2020, the Forecast Hub is a dataset with point and probabilistic forecasts of incident cases, incident hospitalizations, incident deaths, and cumulative deaths due to COVID-19 at county, state, and national, levels in the United States. Included forecasts represent a variety of modeling approaches, data sources, and assumptions regarding the spread of COVID-19. The goal of this dataset is to establish a standardized and comparable set of short-term forecasts from modeling teams. These data can be used to develop ensemble models, communicate forecasts to the public, create visualizations, compare models, and inform policies regarding COVID-19 mitigation. These open-source data are available via download from GitHub, through an online API, and through R packages

IDEAS: An Identity-based Security Architecture for Large-scale and High-performance Storage Systems

We develop IDEAS, an identity-based security architecture for large-scale and high-performance storage systems, designed to improve security, convenience and total cost of access control by merging identity management with access control in these systems. IDEAS authenticates users at each I/O node by using a single-identity certificate without the service of a centralized security server and enforces access control mechanism by using an object-based access control (OBAC) model, which is designed to address the complexity and scalability issue of security administration in large-scale storage systems. We also discuss the issue of how to identify and authenticate a large number of users with the state-of-the-art cryptographic solutions and suggest the potential alternative technologies to the well-known PKI mechanism. In particular, we present a generic definition and formal description of the OBAC model. The access control rules for OBAC, namely, the PIPS (Proximity, Inheritance, Priority, Sharing) rules, proposed in this paper can be used as the basis for establishing a testing and evaluation criteria for securing general large-scale storage systems. Experiments on the IDEAS prototype in the HUST OSD project show that IDEAS significantly outperforms the conventional capability-based security scheme (CapSec) in terms of latency for key security-related operations, by a speedup factor of 1.81 and 2.22 for the frequent read and write operations respectively and by a factor of 1.65, 1.22, and 0.52 for the infrequent create, delete and chmod operations respectively. Furthermore, in addition to achieving higher security, IDEAS drastically improves scalability by completely removing the performance bottleneck caused by security overhead through avoiding capability requests for both read and write operations, as evidenced by the zero read and write latency of IDEAS on the metedata server while CapSec quickly saturates its metadata server with a moderate number of read or write requests