Haplotype Diversity and Population Genetic Structure of Antistrophus Gall Wasps Associated with Two Silphium Species and Implication for Host Mediated Speciation

Gall making insects form a special feeding guild of phytophagous animals, and by manipulating host plant tissue differentiation, are able to avoid plant chemical defenses and thus have no need for counter defense mechanisms. Host plant selection is crucial to the evolution of these insects because successful gall formation is largely dependent on host plant ability to respond to stimuli. In Illinois and neighboring states, Antistrophus gall wasps associated with the rosin weed (S. integrifolium) and the cup plant (S. perfoliatum) are morphologically indistinguishable and thus have been treated as belonging to single species. However, the wasps from the host plant species display strong host preference to the host plant species from which they are reared as well as other life history differences, suggesting that they may represent two distinct, although cryptic, species. In order to test the competing hypotheses regarding the identity of these wasps, I investigated whether there exists genetic discontinuity between wasp populations defined by host plant species based on molecular data. Wasps associated with either host plant species, mostly from sympatric populations, were collected from Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri and Iowa and extracted total DNA were PCR amplified and sequenced for three DNA loci, including two mitochondrial genes, (Cytb and COI) and one nuclear gene (28S D2). Phylogenetic reconstruction for all samples based on the Cytb and COI genes did not recover any monophyletic lineage consisting exclusively of wasps sampled from either of the two host-plant species but revealed a clear pattern of lineage bias toward host plant species in the tree resolved from Cytb gene. Examination of haplotype diversity revealed five haplotypes among our Cytb (n= 60) and COI (n= 59) sequences, respectively and three haplotypes for the 28S gene (N= 65). Further analyses of the genealogical relationship among the haplotypes using network method uncovered a distinct host affiliation pattern for Cytb, but not for the COI gene, similar to the results of the phylogenetic analyses. For the more conservative 28S gene, the wasps associated with the two host plant species can be readily separated based on a single indel event at position 181, except for one single sample (R28), which was associated with rosin weed, but without the extra T at 181 position found in other wasps associated with rosinweed. Except for this indel and an additional transitional mutation for R28, there was no variation throughout the entire 524 bp length of the 28S gene. These results do not provide unambiguous support for the cryptic species hypothesis, but revealed significant discontinuity between the gall wasp gene pools associated with the two host plant species, which may indicate incipient host plant mediated speciation

Haplotype Diversity and Population Genetic Structure of Antistrophus Gall Wasps Associated with Two Silphium Species and Implication for Host Mediated Speciation

Gall making insects form a special feeding guild of phytophagous animals, and by manipulating host plant tissue differentiation, are able to avoid plant chemical defenses and thus have no need for counter defense mechanisms. Host plant selection is crucial to the evolution of these insects because successful gall formation is largely dependent on host plant ability to respond to stimuli. In Illinois and neighboring states, Antistrophus gall wasps associated with the rosin weed (S. integrifolium) and the cup plant (S. perfoliatum) are morphologically indistinguishable and thus have been treated as belonging to single species. However, the wasps from the host plant species display strong host preference to the host plant species from which they are reared as well as other life history differences, suggesting that they may represent two distinct, although cryptic, species. In order to test the competing hypotheses regarding the identity of these wasps, I investigated whether there exists genetic discontinuity between wasp populations defined by host plant species based on molecular data. Wasps associated with either host plant species, mostly from sympatric populations, were collected from Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri and Iowa and extracted total DNA were PCR amplified and sequenced for three DNA loci, including two mitochondrial genes, (Cytb and COI) and one nuclear gene (28S D2). Phylogenetic reconstruction for all samples based on the Cytb and COI genes did not recover any monophyletic lineage consisting exclusively of wasps sampled from either of the two host-plant species but revealed a clear pattern of lineage bias toward host plant species in the tree resolved from Cytb gene. Examination of haplotype diversity revealed five haplotypes among our Cytb (n= 60) and COI (n= 59) sequences, respectively and three haplotypes for the 28S gene (N= 65). Further analyses of the genealogical relationship among the haplotypes using network method uncovered a distinct host affiliation pattern for Cytb, but not for the COI gene, similar to the results of the phylogenetic analyses. For the more conservative 28S gene, the wasps associated with the two host plant species can be readily separated based on a single indel event at position 181, except for one single sample (R28), which was associated with rosin weed, but without the extra T at 181 position found in other wasps associated with rosinweed. Except for this indel and an additional transitional mutation for R28, there was no variation throughout the entire 524 bp length of the 28S gene. These results do not provide unambiguous support for the cryptic species hypothesis, but revealed significant discontinuity between the gall wasp gene pools associated with the two host plant species, which may indicate incipient host plant mediated speciation

Dynamic Optimal Control of a CO2 Heat Pump Coupled with Hot and Cold Thermal Storages

This study presents a model-based dynamic optimization strategy for a dual-mode CO2 heat pump coupled with hot and cold thermal storages, which was proposed as a high-efficiency smart grid enabling option in heating and cooling services for buildings or industry. Dynamic optimal control for simultaneously charging of hot and cold thermal storages is very delicate. The optimal control of compressor discharge pressure were commonly used for optimal control of heat pump systems. In this study, the outlet water temperatures of hot and cold tanks are used as indicators in the dynamic optimal strategy for charging of hot and cold storages using a dual-mode heat pump. The Modelica based dynamic model of the coupled system was developed and validated. To optimize the overall coefficient of performance (COP) during energy process, the transient total COP is optimized by genetic algorithm based on Modelica-based modeling of dynamic system. A dynamic optimal control strategy was developed and implemented into an experimental system. Test results show that this developed model-based dynamic optimal control strategy is able to search the optimal transient total COP and optimize the overall COP of such coupled systems during energy charging; and the optimal results is better than those obtained using another two experiment-based methods

Assessing Impulsivity in Chinese: Elaborating Validity of BIS Among Male Prisoners

This study was carried out to test the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale–Version 11 (BIS-11), and its short versions (the eight-item and 15-item BIS) in a sample of 424 Chinese male prisoners (M = 31.26, SD = 7.43, age = 18-52 years). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFAs) indicated that the single-factor model of BIS with eight items (BIS-8) and the three-factor model of BIS with 15 items (BIS-15) fit the data well. In addition, the item response theory (IRT) approach confirmed the construct and items for the BIS-8 with good discrimination, threshold parameters, and test information curve. Correlations with psychopathic traits, antisocial personality disorder, and aggression suggested that the performance of the eight-item BIS was comparable with that of the original 30-item BIS in measuring general impulsivity.This research was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 31400904) and Guangzhou University’s 2017 training program for top-notch young people (Grant BJ201715)

Extreme Learning Machine-Assisted Solution of Biharmonic Equations via Its Coupled Schemes

Obtaining the solutions of partial differential equations based on various machine learning methods has drawn more and more attention in the fields of scientific computation and engineering applications. In this work, we first propose a coupled Extreme Learning Machine (called CELM) method incorporated with the physical laws to solve a class of fourth-order biharmonic equations by reformulating it into two well-posed Poisson problems. In addition, some activation functions including tangent, gauss, sine, and trigonometric (sin+cos) functions are introduced to assess our CELM method. Notably, the sine and trigonometric functions demonstrate a remarkable ability to effectively minimize the approximation error of the CELM model. In the end, several numerical experiments are performed to study the initializing approaches for both the weights and biases of the hidden units in our CELM model and explore the required number of hidden units. Numerical results show the proposed CELM algorithm is high-precision and efficient to address the biharmonic equation in both regular and irregular domains

A Unified Model for Video Understanding and Knowledge Embedding with Heterogeneous Knowledge Graph Dataset

Video understanding is an important task in short video business platforms and it has a wide application in video recommendation and classification. Most of the existing video understanding works only focus on the information that appeared within the video content, including the video frames, audio and text. However, introducing common sense knowledge from the external Knowledge Graph (KG) dataset is essential for video understanding when referring to the content which is less relevant to the video. Owing to the lack of video knowledge graph dataset, the work which integrates video understanding and KG is rare. In this paper, we propose a heterogeneous dataset that contains the multi-modal video entity and fruitful common sense relations. This dataset also provides multiple novel video inference tasks like the Video-Relation-Tag (VRT) and Video-Relation-Video (VRV) tasks. Furthermore, based on this dataset, we propose an end-to-end model that jointly optimizes the video understanding objective with knowledge graph embedding, which can not only better inject factual knowledge into video understanding but also generate effective multi-modal entity embedding for KG. Comprehensive experiments indicate that combining video understanding embedding with factual knowledge benefits the content-based video retrieval performance. Moreover, it also helps the model generate better knowledge graph embedding which outperforms traditional KGE-based methods on VRT and VRV tasks with at least 42.36% and 17.73% improvement in HITS@10

Intrathoracic Endotracheal Metastasis from Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: A First Case Report and Review of the Literature

Intrathoracic endotracheal metastasis from a very distant site is extremely rare. We report the first case of such a disease in a 68-year-old man with nasopharyngeal carcinoma who presented with a cough and hemoptysis 34 months after finishing radiotherapy. Prior to tracheal metastasis, he developed a solitary metastasis in the lung and underwent chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy. Computed tomography showed the presence of an enlarged lymph node in the para-aortic arch. Fiberoptic bronchoscopy revealed an endotracheal tumor 1 cm above the carina. Histological and immunohistochemical analyses confirmed its nasopharyngeal origin. He was treated with conventional radiotherapy and three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy; complete tumor remission was achieved. He died of nonmalignant disease with no signs of tumor recurrence 2 years after treatment completion. Radiotherapy may be an appropriate management approach to achieve long-term tumor control for this disease

The potential role of RNA N6-methyladenosine in primary Sjögren’s syndrome

ObjectiveThe pathogenesis of primary Sjögren’s syndrome (pSS) remains incompletely understood. The N6-methyladenosine (m6A) RNA modification, the most abundant internal transcript modification, has close associations with multiple diseases. This study aimed to investigate the role of m6A in patients with pSS.Materials and methodsThis study enrolled 44 patients with pSS, 50 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (HCs), and 11 age- and gender-matched patients with non-SS sicca. We detected the messenger RNA (mRNA) levels of m6A elements (including METTL3, WTAP, RBM15, ALKBH5, FTO, YTHDF1, YTHDF2, YTHDF3, YTHDC1, and YTHDC2), ISG15, and USP18 in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from patients with pSS, patients with non-SS sicca, and HCs. The clinical characteristics and laboratory findings of patients with pSS and patients with non-SS sicca were also collected. We used binary logistic regression to determine if m6A elements were risk factors for pSS.ResultsThe mRNA levels of m6A writers (METTL3 and RBM15), erasers (ALKBH5 and FTO), and readers (YTHDF1, YTHDF2, YTHDF3, YTHDC1, and YTHDC2) were all significantly higher in PBMCs from patients with pSS than in HCs. The mRNA levels of m6A writers (METTL3 and WTAP) and readers (YTHDF2, YTHDF3, and YTHDC2) were lower in PBMCs from patients with pSS compared to patients with non-SS sicca. The expression of METTL3, RBM15, FTO, YTHDF1, YTHDF2, YTHDC1, and YTHDC2 was positively correlated with the level of C-reactive protein (CRP) of patients with pSS. The mRNA level of YTHDF1 in PBMCs from patients with pSS was negatively correlated with the EULAR Sjögren’s syndrome disease activity index (ESSDAI) score. In patients with pSS, FTO, YTHDC1, and YTHDC2 were also related to white blood cells (WBCs), neutrophils, lymphocytes, and monocytes. Increased mRNA level of ALKBH5 in PBMCs was a risk factor for pSS, as determined by binary logistic regression analysis. The mRNA level of ISG15 was positively correlated with that of FTO, YTHDF2, YTHDF3, and YTHDC2 in patients with pSS.ConclusionCompared with HCs, the expression of METTL3, RBM15, ALKBH5, FTO, YTHDF1, YTHDF2, YTHDF3, YTHDC1, and YTHDC2 was considerably higher in PBMCs from patients with pSS. In comparison with patients with non-SS sicca, the expression of METTL3, WTAP, YTHDF2, YTHDF3, and YTHDC2 was reduced in PBMCs from patients with pSS. The m6A elements correlating with clinical variables may indicate the disease activity and inflammation status of pSS. Elevated expression of ALKBH5 was a risk factor for pSS. The dynamic process of m6A modification is active in pSS. m6A elements (FTO, YTHDF2, YTHDF3, or YTHDC2) might target ISG15, stimulate the expression of ISG15, and activate the type I IFN signaling pathway, playing an active role in initiating the autoimmunity in pSS

Longitudinal measurement invariance of the Child Problematic Trait Inventory in older Chinese children

The Child Problematic Traits Inventory (CPTI) is a newly developed informant-rated instrument to measure psychopathic traits during early childhood. The aim of this study was to examine the longitudinal measurement invariance of the CPTI in a group of Chinese schoolchildren. Mothers of 585 children aged 8 to 12 years (50% girls) completed the CPTI twice with one-year interval. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the CPTI had strict invariance (i.e., equality of factor patterns, loadings, intercepts, and item uniqueness) across time. Furthermore, the internal consistencies for the CPTI subscales were good at both time points and the stability coefficients over time were moderate. Findings suggest that, in children aged 8 to 12 years old, changes in CPTI scores across time can be attributed to actual changes in the child’s psychopathic personality