Feasibility Study of a Campus-Based Bikesharing Program at UNLV

Bikesharing systems have been deployed worldwide as a transportation demand management strategy to encourage active modes and reduce single-occupant vehicle travel. These systems have been deployed at universities, both as part of a city program or as a stand-alone system, to serve for trips to work, as well as trips on campus. The Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada (RTCSNV) has built a public bikesharing system in downtown Las Vegas, approximately five miles from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). This study analyzes the feasibility of a campus-based bikesharing program at UNLV. Through a review of the literature, survey of UNLV students and staff, and field observations and analysis of potential bikeshare station locations, the authors determined that a bikesharing program is feasible at UNLV

Effects of Liarozole Fumarate (R85246) in Combination with Tamoxifen on N-methyl-N-nitrosourea (MNU)-induced Mammary Carcinoma and Uterus in the Rat Model

Background: Liarozole fumarate (liarozole – R85246) is a novel compound with characteristics of both aromatase inhibitor (AI) and a retinoic acid metabolism blocking agent (RAMBA). Our objective was to determine the effects of liarozole alone or in combination with tamoxifen on the N-methyl-N-nitrosourea (MNU)-induced rat mammary carcinoma model, as well as on the uterus in ovariectomized immature rats. Methods: (1) Tumor burden experiments: Animals bearing one or more tumors greater than 10 mm in diameter were treated for 56 consecutive days with 20 mg/kg or 80 mg/kg of liarozole by oral gavage, tamoxifen 100 μg/kg by subcutaneous injection, or a combination of liarozole and tamoxifen. At the end of the treatment period, total cumulative tumor volume as well as retinoic acid levels were measured. (2) Uterotrophic assay and proliferation experiments: 21-day-old ovariectomized (OVX) Sprague-Dawley rats were treated with 20 mg/kg or 80 mg/kg of liarozole by oral gavage, tamoxifen 1 mg/kg by subcutaneous injection, and combination of both for 4 consecutive days. At the end of the treatment period, uterine weight, epithelial lining cell height and indices of proliferation cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) were measured. Results: The tumor burden experiments in rats bearing estrogen receptor (ER) positive mammary tumours showed that liarozole has a marked anti-tumour effect. In combination with tamoxifen, liarozole had neither an additive nor an antagonistic effect. However, liarozole markedly reduced the uterotrophic effects induced by tamoxifen. Conclusion: Liarozole's antitumor effects on ER positive mammary tumors and its protective effect on the uterus merit further studies to confirm its clinical value in combination with tamoxifen in ER positive postmenopausal breast cancer. Liarozole and other retinomimetics might also be suitable chemoprevention drugs in combination with tamoxifen because of their favorable toxicity profile

Arginyltransferase, Its Specificity, Putative Substrates, Bidirectional Promoter, and Splicing-derived Isoforms

Substrates of the N-end rule pathway include proteins with destabilizing N-terminal residues. Three of them, Asp, Glu, and (oxidized) Cys, function through their conjugation to Arg, one of destabilizing N-terminal residues that are recognized directly by the pathway's ubiquitin ligases. The conjugation of Arg is mediated by arginyltransferase, encoded by ATE1. Through its regulated degradation of specific proteins, the arginylation branch of the N-end rule pathway mediates, in particular, the cardiovascular development, the fidelity of chromosome segregation, and the control of signaling by nitric oxide. We show that mouse ATE1 specifies at least six mRNA isoforms, which are produced through alternative splicing, encode enzymatically active arginyltransferases, and are expressed at varying levels in mouse tissues. We also show that the ATE1 promoter is bidirectional, mediating the expression of both ATE1 and an oppositely oriented, previously uncharacterized gene. In addition, we identified GRP78 (glucose-regulated protein 78) and protein-disulfide isomerase as putative physiological substrates of arginyltransferase. Purified isoforms of arginyltransferase that contain the alternative first exons differentially arginylate these proteins in extract from ATE1-/- embryos, suggesting that specific isoforms may have distinct functions. Although the N-end rule pathway is apparently confined to the cytosol and the nucleus, and although GRP78 and protein-disulfide isomerase are located largely in the endoplasmic reticulum, recent evidence suggests that these proteins are also present in the cytosol and other compartments in vivo, where they may become N-end rule substrates

A Multi-Granularity Matching Attention Network for Query Intent Classification in E-commerce Retrieval

Query intent classification, which aims at assisting customers to find desired products, has become an essential component of the e-commerce search. Existing query intent classification models either design more exquisite models to enhance the representation learning of queries or explore label-graph and multi-task to facilitate models to learn external information. However, these models cannot capture multi-granularity matching features from queries and categories, which makes them hard to mitigate the gap in the expression between informal queries and categories. This paper proposes a Multi-granularity Matching Attention Network (MMAN), which contains three modules: a self-matching module, a char-level matching module, and a semantic-level matching module to comprehensively extract features from the query and a query-category interaction matrix. In this way, the model can eliminate the difference in expression between queries and categories for query intent classification. We conduct extensive offline and online A/B experiments, and the results show that the MMAN significantly outperforms the strong baselines, which shows the superiority and effectiveness of MMAN. MMAN has been deployed in production and brings great commercial value for our company.Comment: Accepted by WWW 202

Chondroprotective Activity of Murraya exotica

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative joint disease that affects millions of people. Currently, there is no effective drug treatment for it. The purpose of this study is to investigate the chondroprotective effects of Murraya exotica (L.) on OA. The rat OA models were duplicated to prepare for separating OA chondrocytes, synovial fluid (SF), and serum containing M. exotica (50 mg/kg, 100 mg/kg, and 200 mg/kg), M. exotica showed the activity of decreasing the contents of TNF-α and IL-1β in SF and the chondrocyte apoptosis in a dose-dependent manner. To investigate the probable mechanism, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) and western blotting were used to determine gene expression and protein profiles, respectively. The results reveal that M. exotica can downregulate mRNA and protein expressions of β-catenin and COX-2 and reporter activity significantly. Conclusively, M. exotica exhibits antiapoptotic chondroprotective activity probably through inhibiting β-catenin signaling