A study on the classification of the sciaenoid fishes of China, with description of new genera and species

This book was a thesis selected by The Collective Papers of Science and Technology Research of Shanghai City, 1960 . The article reviews the literature of past hundred years on sciaenid fishes, examines sciaenid specimens collected along our coastal areas, and contains a detailed description of the taxonomy of Chinese sciaenids. This book is for the use of the teachers and students of the biology departments in colleges and scientists of related specialties

The Effects Of Direction Of Electronic Word-Of-Mouth And Tie Strength On Purchase Decisions: Self-Construal As The Moderator

Electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM) has become an important communication method and has received considerable interest. This study examined how direction of eWOM (positive vs. negative) and tie strength influence consumers’ online purchase decision making and how the relationships are moderated by self-construal of online consumers. The empirical results showed that the effects of eWOM direction on intention to click, attitude toward the product ad, product attitude, and purchase intention were stronger for consumers with interdependent self-construal than for those with independent self-construal. Besides, the results also showed that the effects of tie strength between reviewer and consumer on intention to click, attitude toward the product ad, product attitude and purchase intention were stronger for interdependent consumers than for independent consumers when receiving eWOM from their strong ties; whereas, the effects were stronger for independent consumers than for interdependent consumers when receiving eWOM from their weak ties. The findings of this study offer insights for advertiser to develop effective online marketing strategy on social networking sites

Electroneutrality Breakdown and Specific Ion Effects in Nanoconfined Aqueous Electrolytes Observed by NMR

Ion distribution in aqueous electrolytes near the interface plays critical roles in electrochemical, biological and colloidal systems and is expected to be particularly significant inside nanoconfined regions. Electroneutrality of the total charge inside nanoconfined regions is commonly assumed a priori in solving ion distribution of aqueous electrolytes nanoconfined by uncharged hydrophobic surfaces with no direct experimental validation. Here, we use a quantitative nuclear magnetic resonance approach to investigate the properties of aqueous electrolytes nanoconfined in graphitic-like nanoporous carbon. Substantial electroneutrality breakdown in nanoconfined regions and very asymmetric responses of cations and anions to the charging of nanoconfining surfaces are observed. The electroneutrality breakdown is shown to depend strongly on the propensity of anions toward the water-carbon interface and such ion-specific response follows generally the anion ranking of the Hofmeister series. The experimental observations are further supported by numerical evaluation using the generalized Poisson-Boltzmann equationComment: 26 pages, 3 figure

Structure and dynamics of core-periphery networks

Recent studies uncovered important core/periphery network structures characterizing complex sets of cooperative and competitive interactions between network nodes, be they proteins, cells, species or humans. Better characterization of the structure, dynamics and function of core/periphery networks is a key step of our understanding cellular functions, species adaptation, social and market changes. Here we summarize the current knowledge of the structure and dynamics of "traditional" core/periphery networks, rich-clubs, nested, bow-tie and onion networks. Comparing core/periphery structures with network modules, we discriminate between global and local cores. The core/periphery network organization lies in the middle of several extreme properties, such as random/condensed structures, clique/star configurations, network symmetry/asymmetry, network assortativity/disassortativity, as well as network hierarchy/anti-hierarchy. These properties of high complexity together with the large degeneracy of core pathways ensuring cooperation and providing multiple options of network flow re-channelling greatly contribute to the high robustness of complex systems. Core processes enable a coordinated response to various stimuli, decrease noise, and evolve slowly. The integrative function of network cores is an important step in the development of a large variety of complex organisms and organizations. In addition to these important features and several decades of research interest, studies on core/periphery networks still have a number of unexplored areas.Comment: a comprehensive review of 41 pages, 2 figures, 1 table and 182 reference

An information-flow-based model with dissipation, saturation and direction for active pathway inference

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Biological systems process the genetic information and environmental signals through pathways. How to map the pathways systematically and efficiently from high-throughput genomic and proteomic data is a challenging open problem. Previous methods design different heuristics but do not describe explicitly the behaviours of the information flow.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this study, we propose new concepts of dissipation, saturation and direction to decipher the information flow behaviours in the pathways and thereby infer the biological pathways from a given source to its target. This model takes into account explicitly the common features of the information transmission and provides a general framework to model the biological pathways. It can incorporate different types of bio-molecular interactions to infer the signal transduction pathways and interpret the expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) associations. The model is formulated as a linear programming problem and thus is solved efficiently. Experiments on the real data of yeast indicate that the reproduced pathways are highly consistent with the current knowledge.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our model explicitly treats the biological pathways as information flows with dissipation, saturation and direction. The effective applications suggest that the three new concepts may be valid to describe the organization rules of biological pathways. The deduced linear programming should be a promising tool to infer the various biological pathways from the high-throughput data.</p

Semi-supervised drug-protein interaction prediction from heterogeneous biological spaces

biological space

Possible Role of PHD Inhibitors as Hypoxia-Mimicking Agents in the Maintenance of Neural Stem Cells’ Self-Renewal Properties

Hypoxia is the most critical factor for maintaining stemness. During embryonic development, neural stem cells (NSCs) reside in hypoxic niches, and different levels of oxygen pressure and time of hypoxia exposure play important roles in the development of NSCs. Such hypoxic niches exist in adult brain tissue, where the neural precursors originate. Hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) are key transcription heterodimers consisting of regulatory α-subunits (HIF-1α, HIF-2α, HIF-3α) and a constitutive β-subunit (HIF-β). Regulation of downstream targets determines the fate of NSCs. In turn, the stability of HIFs-α is regulated by prolyl hydroxylases (PHDs), whose activity is principally modulated by PHD substrates like oxygen (O2), α-ketoglutarate (α-KG), and the co-factors ascorbate (ASC) and ferrous iron (Fe2+). It follows that the transcriptional activity of HIFs is actually determined by the contents of O2, α-KG, ASC, and Fe2+. In normoxia, HIFs-α are rapidly degraded via the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway, in which PHDs, activated by O2, lead to hydroxylation of HIFs-α at residues 402 and 564, followed by recognition by the tumor suppressor protein von Hippel–Lindau (pVHL) as an E3 ligase and ubiquitin labeling. Conversely, in hypoxia, the activity of PHDs is inhibited by low O2 levels and HIFs-α can thus be stabilized. Hence, suppression of PHD activity in normoxic conditions, mimicking the effect of hypoxia, might be beneficial for preserving the stemness of NSCs, and it is clinically relevant as a therapeutic approach for enhancing the number of NSCs in vitro and for cerebral ischemia injury in vivo. This study will review the putative role of PHD inhibitors on the self-renewal of NSCs