Can Centralized Sanctioning Promote Trust in Social Dilemmas? A Two-level Trust Game with Incomplete Information

The problem of trust is a paradigmatic social dilemma. Previous literature has paid much academic attention on effects of peer punishment and altruistic third-party punishment on trust and human cooperation in dyadic interactions. However, the effects of centralized sanctioning institutions on decentralized reciprocity in hierarchical interactions remain to be further explored. This paper presents a formal two-level trust game with incomplete information which adds an authority as a strategic purposive actor into the traditional trust game. This model allows scholars to examine the problem of trust in more complex game theoretic configurations. The analysis demonstrates how the centralized institutions might change the dynamics of reciprocity between the trustor and the trustee. Findings suggest that the sequential equilibria of the newly proposed two-level model simultaneously include the risk of placing trust for the trustor and the temptation of short-term defection for the trustee. Moreover, they have shown that even a slight uncertainty about the type of the newly introduced authority might facilitate the establishment of trust and reciprocity in social dilemmas.published_or_final_versio

Effect of sunlight shielding on leaf structure and amino acids concentration of light sensitive albino tea plant

Light sensitive albino tea cultivar ‘Jinguang’ (Camellia sinensis) which grows albinism leaf in yellow colour, results to high level of amino acids but low levels of photosynthetic pigments including chlorophylls, neoxanthin, violaxanthin, phytoxanthin and β-carotene when it is exposed to high sunlight illumination in the summer season. In this case, the chloroplasts showed partially lysed, with few thylakoids. The leaf albinism was reverted when the leaf was shielded from direct illumination of strong sunlight. It is considered that the blocked development of chloroplast and photosynthetic pigments in the albinism leaf inhibited the biosynthesis of leaf proteins, resulting in an accumulation of free amino acids.Keywords: Camellia sinensis, leaf albinism, light intensity, photosynthetic pigments, amino acids, chloroplastAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(36), pp. 5535-553

Content Based Image Retrieval by Convolutional Neural Networks

Hamreras S., Benítez-Rochel R., Boucheham B., Molina-Cabello M.A., López-Rubio E. (2019) Content Based Image Retrieval by Convolutional Neural Networks. In: Ferrández Vicente J., Álvarez-Sánchez J., de la Paz López F., Toledo Moreo J., Adeli H. (eds) From Bioinspired Systems and Biomedical Applications to Machine Learning. IWINAC 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11487. Springer.In this paper, we present a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for feature extraction in Content based Image Retrieval (CBIR). The proposed CNN aims at reducing the semantic gap between low level and high-level features. Thus, improving retrieval results. Our CNN is the result of a transfer learning technique using Alexnet pretrained network. It learns how to extract representative features from a learning database and then uses this knowledge in query feature extraction. Experimentations performed on Wang (Corel 1K) database show a significant improvement in terms of precision over the state of the art classic approaches.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Protective effect of WY14643 in hepatic ischemia/reperfusion injury via suppressing the activation of TLR4/NF-KB P65 signal pathway.

Background: Hepatic ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury is a disaster common critical event which frequently occurs in a variety of clinical scenarios. To investigate the protective effect of Wy14643 (WY) precondition against hepatic ischemia/ reperfusion (I/R) injury in rats and its potential mechanism.Methods: Thirty Sprague–Dawley male rats weighing 220-250 g were randomly divided into three groups (n=10) including the sham-operated +saline group (Sham), the ischemic-reperfusion+ vehicle (IRI), and the WY14643 preconditioning group (WY). The three groups were pretreated with saline, ethanol and WY, at 1 h before ischemia with a concentration of 10 mg/kg , respectively. Hepatic ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) was induced by clamping blood supply to the left lateral and median lobes of the liver for 90 min. Blood samples and liver tissues were obtained at the end of 4h reperfusion. The serum levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) were measured. The histological changes of hepatic tissues were examanied by HE staining. The expression of interleukin-1β (IL-1β), interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) were detected by ELISA and RT-PCR. Moreover, the expression of TLR-4 , IκΒ-α, Myd88, p65 and PPAR-α were detected by western blotting.Result: After 4 h reperfusion, compared with the IRI group, the liver dysfunction (ALT, AST and LDH), damage score, the expression of TNF-α , IL-6, and IL-1β, the protein expression level of TLR4, Myd88, the phosphorylation level of IκB-α and p65 in the WY group was significantly decreased (all P<0.05); while the protein expression of IκB-α was increased (P<0.05) with no difference in the expression of p65 (P>0.05) .Conclusion: Wy14643 precondition could protect liver againest I/R injury and the protective effect is associated with suppressing inflammation by reducing the activation of TLR-4/NF-κB signaling.Key words: hepatic ischemia reperfusion injury; inflammation; Wy14643; TLR-4/NF-κ

PPI-IRO: A two-stage method for protein-protein interaction extraction based on interaction relation ontology

Mining Protein-Protein Interactions (PPIs) from the fast-growing biomedical literature resources has been proven as an effective approach for the identifi cation of biological regulatory networks. This paper presents a novel method based on the idea of Interaction Relation Ontology (IRO), which specifi es and organises words of various proteins interaction relationships. Our method is a two-stage PPI extraction method. At fi rst, IRO is applied in a binary classifi er to determine whether sentences contain a relation or not. Then, IRO is taken to guide PPI extraction by building sentence dependency parse tree. Comprehensive and quantitative evaluations and detailed analyses are used to demonstrate the signifi cant performance of IRO on relation sentences classifi cation and PPI extraction. Our PPI extraction method yielded a recall of around 80% and 90% and an F1 of around 54% and 66% on corpora of AIMed and Bioinfer, respectively, which are superior to most existing extraction methods. Copyright © 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd

Treatment of Linear and Nonlinear Dielectric Property of Molecular Monolayer and Submonolayer with Microscopic Dipole Lattice Model: I. Second Harmonic Generation and Sum-Frequency Generation

In the currently accepted models of the nonlinear optics, the nonlinear radiation was treated as the result of an infinitesimally thin polarization sheet layer, and a three layer model was generally employed. The direct consequence of this approach is that an apriori dielectric constant, which still does not have a clear definition, has to be assigned to this polarization layer. Because the Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) and the Sum-Frequency Generation vibrational Spectroscopy (SFG-VS) have been proven as the sensitive probes for interfaces with the submonolayer coverage, the treatment based on the more realistic discrete induced dipole model needs to be developed. Here we show that following the molecular optics theory approach the SHG, as well as the SFG-VS, radiation from the monolayer or submonolayer at an interface can be rigorously treated as the radiation from an induced dipole lattice at the interface. In this approach, the introduction of the polarization sheet is no longer necessary. Therefore, the ambiguity of the unaccounted dielectric constant of the polarization layer is no longer an issue. Moreover, the anisotropic two dimensional microscopic local field factors can be explicitly expressed with the linear polarizability tensors of the interfacial molecules. Based on the planewise dipole sum rule in the molecular monolayer, crucial experimental tests of this microscopic treatment with SHG and SFG-VS are discussed. Many puzzles in the literature of surface SHG and SFG spectroscopy studies can also be understood or resolved in this framework. This new treatment may provide a solid basis for the quantitative analysis in the surface SHG and SFG studies.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figure

Characterization of implementation limits and identification of optimization strategies for sustainable water resource recovery through life cycle impact analysis

This is the final version. Available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.How we manage alternative freshwater resources to close the gap between water supply and demand is pivotal to the future of the environment and human well-being. Increased scarcity of water for agricultural irrigation in semi-arid and arid regions has resulted in a growing interest in water reuse practices. However, insight into the life cycle impacts and potential trade-offs of these emerging practices are still limited by the paucity of systematic evaluations of different water reuse implementations. In this study, a host of environmental and human health impacts at three implementation levels of allowing water reclamation for crop irrigation was comparatively evaluated across the operational landscape via a combination of scenario modelling, life-cycle impact analyses and Monte Carlo simulations. Net harvesting of reclaimed water for irrigation was found to be dependent upon the sophistication of the treatment processes, since multistage and complex configurations can cause greater direct water consumption during processing. Further, the direct benefits of water resource recovery can be essentially offset by indirect adverse impacts, such as mineral depletion, global warming, ozone depletion, ecotoxicity, and human health risks, which are associated with increased usage of energy and chemicals for rigorous removal of contaminants, such as heavy metals and contaminants of emerging concern. Nonetheless, expanded simulations suggest the significance of concurrently implementing energy recovery, nutrient recycling, and/or nature-based, chemical-free water technologies to reduce the magnitude of negative impacts from engineered water reclamation processes.Royal Society (Charity)Beijing Talents FoundationBeijing Nova Program, ChinaNational Natural Science Foundation of ChinaYouth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Science

Immunomodulatory Effects of Bone Marrow-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells in a Swine Hemi-Facial Allotransplantation Model

BACKGROUND: In this study, we investigated whether the infusion of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), combined with transient immunosuppressant treatment, could suppress allograft rejection and modulate T-cell regulation in a swine orthotopic hemi-facial composite tissue allotransplantation (CTA) model. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Outbred miniature swine underwent hemi-facial allotransplantation (day 0). Group-I (n = 5) consisted of untreated control animals. Group-II (n = 3) animals received MSCs alone (given on days -1, +1, +3, +7, +14, and +21). Group-III (n = 3) animals received CsA (days 0 to +28). Group-IV (n = 5) animals received CsA (days 0 to +28) and MSCs (days -1, +1, +3, +7, +14, and +21). The transplanted face tissue was observed daily for signs of rejection. Biopsies of donor tissues and recipient blood sample were obtained at specified predetermined times (per 2 weeks post-transplant) or at the time of clinically evident rejection. Our results indicated that the MSC-CsA group had significantly prolonged allograft survival compared to the other groups (P<0.001). Histological examination of the MSC-CsA group displayed the lowest degree of rejection in alloskin and lymphoid gland tissues. TNF-α expression in circulating blood revealed significant suppression in the MSC and MSC-CsA treatment groups, as compared to that in controls. IHC staining showed CD45 and IL-6 expression were significantly decreased in MSC-CsA treatment groups compared to controls. The number of CD4+/CD25+ regulatory T-cells and IL-10 expressions in the circulating blood significantly increased in the MSC-CsA group compared to the other groups. IHC staining of alloskin tissue biopsies revealed a significant increase in the numbers of foxp3(+)T-cells and TGF-β1 positive cells in the MSC-CsA group compared to the other groups. CONCLUSIONS: These results demonstrate that MSCs significantly prolong hemifacial CTA survival. Our data indicate the MSCs did not only suppress inflammation and acute rejection of CTA, but also modulate T-cell regulation and related cytokines expression

Fractional Anisotropy in Corpus Callosum Is Associated with Facilitation of Motor Representation during Ipsilateral Hand Movements

BACKGROUND: Coactivation of primary motor cortex ipsilateral to a unilateral movement (M1(ipsilateral)) has been observed, and the magnitude of activation is influenced by the contracting muscles. It has been suggested that the microstructural integrity of the callosal motor fibers (CMFs) connecting M1 regions may reflect the observed response. However, the association between the structural connectivity of CMFs and functional changes in M1(ipsilateral) remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between functional changes within M1(ipsilateral) during unilateral arm or leg movements and the microstructure of the CMFs connecting both homotopic representations (arm or leg). METHODS: Transcranial magnetic stimulation was used to assess changes in motor evoked potentials (MEP) in an arm muscle during unilateral movements compared to rest in fifteen healthy adults. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was then used to identify regions of M1 associated with either arm or leg movements. Diffusion-weighted imaging data was acquired to generate CMFs for arm and leg areas using the areas of activation from the functional imaging as seed masks. Individual values of regional fractional anisotropy (FA) of arm and leg CMFs was then calculated by examining the overlap between CMFs and a standard atlas of corpus callosum. RESULTS: The change in the MEP was significantly larger in the arm movement compared to the leg movement. Additionally, regression analysis revealed that FA in the arm CMFs was positively correlated with the change in MEP during arm movement, whereas a negative correlation was observed during the leg movement. However, there was no significant relationship between FA in the leg CMF and the change in MEP during the movements. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that individual differences in interhemispheric structural connectivity may be used to explain a homologous muscle-dominant effect within M1(ipsilateral) hand representation during unilateral movement with topographical specificity