Recognizing Conditional Causal Relationships about Emotions and Their Corresponding Conditions

The study of causal relationships between emotions and causes in texts has recently received much attention. Most works focus on extracting causally related clauses from documents. However, none of these works has considered that the causal relationships among the extracted emotion and cause clauses can only be valid under some specific context clauses. To highlight the context in such special causal relationships, we propose a new task to determine whether or not an input pair of emotion and cause has a valid causal relationship under different contexts and extract the specific context clauses that participate in the causal relationship. Since the task is new for which no existing dataset is available, we conduct manual annotation on a benchmark dataset to obtain the labels for our tasks and the annotations of each context clause's type that can also be used in some other applications. We adopt negative sampling to construct the final dataset to balance the number of documents with and without causal relationships. Based on the constructed dataset, we propose an end-to-end multi-task framework, where we design two novel and general modules to handle the two goals of our task. Specifically, we propose a context masking module to extract the context clauses participating in the causal relationships. We propose a prediction aggregation module to fine-tune the prediction results according to whether the input emotion and causes depend on specific context clauses. Results of extensive comparative experiments and ablation studies demonstrate the effectiveness and generality of our proposed framework

MiR-489 serves as a tumor inhibitor in pituitary prolactinoma targeting p21-activated kinase 3

Purpose: To evaluate the effect of microRNA-489 (miR-489) on pituitary prolactinoma and its mechanisms of action. Methods: MMQ and GH3 cells were transfected with miR-489, cell viability assessed with cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8), and clone spots was evaluated by colony formation assay. Transwell assay was applied to measure cell migration and invasion while TargetScan was employed to the presumed targets of miR-489, followed by luciferase reporter assays. was MiR-489 and p21-activated kinase 3 (PAK3) gene expression were determined by quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR. Protein levels of PAK3 were measured using western blots. Results: Transfection significantly increased miRNA-489 levels (p < 0.01). Cell viability, number of clone spots, as well as cell migration and invasion diminished in MMQ and GH3 cells following miR-489 transfection when compared to miR-NC mimic group (p < 0.01). The presumed binding site of miRNA- 489 was located in 3′-untranslated region (UTR) of PAK3, and miR-489 transfection repressed luciferase activity with the wild-type 3′-UTR (p < 0.05). In addition, miR-489 decreased PAK3 levels in MMQ and GH3 cells. Knockdown of PAK3 significantly suppressed cell viability, clone formation ability, as well as cell migration and invasion when compared to negative control (p < 0.01). Conclusion: MiR-489 overexpression suppresses pituitary prolactinoma by targeting PAK3, thus providing a potential therapeutic strategy for the management of pituitary prolactinoma

Design of a Narrow Bandwidth Bandpass Filter Using Compact Spiral Resonator with Chirality

In this article, a compact narrow-bandpass filter with high selectivity and improved rejection level is presented. For miniaturization, a pair of double negative (DNG) cells consisting of quasi-planar chiral resonators are cascaded and electrically loaded to a microstrip transmission line; short ended stubs are introduced to expand upper rejection band. The structure is analyzed using equivalent circuit models and simulated based on EM simulation software. For validation, the proposed filter is fabricated and measured. The measured results are in good agreement with the simulated ones. By comparing to other filters in the references, it is shown that the proposed filter has the advantage of skirt selectivity and compact size, so it can be integrated more conveniently in modern wireless communication systems and microwave planar circuits

Identification of a spliced gene from duck enteritis virus encoding a protein homologous to UL15 of herpes simplex virus 1

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In herpesviruses, UL15 homologue is a subunit of terminase complex responsible for cleavage and packaging of the viral genome into pre-assembled capsids. However, for duck enteritis virus (DEV), the causative agent of duck viral enteritis (DVE), the genomic sequence was not completely determined until most recently. There is limited information of this putative spliced gene and its encoding protein.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>DEV UL15 consists of two exons with a 3.5 kilobases (kb) inron and transcribes into two transcripts: the full-length UL15 and an N-terminally truncated UL15.5. The 2.9 kb UL15 transcript encodes a protein of 739 amino acids with an approximate molecular mass of 82 kiloDaltons (kDa), whereas the UL15.5 transcript is 1.3 kb in length, containing a putative 888 base pairs (bp) ORF that encodes a 32 kDa product. We also demonstrated that UL15 gene belonged to the late kinetic class as its expression was sensitive to cycloheximide and phosphonoacetic acid. UL15 is highly conserved within the <it>Herpesviridae</it>, and contains Walker A and B motifs homologous to the catalytic subunit of the bacteriophage terminase as revealed by sequence analysis. Phylogenetic tree constructed with the amino acid sequences of 23 herpesvirus UL15 homologues suggests a close relationship of DEV to the <it>Mardivirus </it>genus within the <it>Alphaherpesvirinae</it>. Further, the UL15 and UL15.5 proteins can be detected in the infected cell lysate but not in the sucrose density gradient-purified virion when reacting with the antiserum against UL15. Within the CEF cells, the UL15 and/or UL15.5 localize(s) in the cytoplasm at 6 h post infection (h p. i.) and mainly in the nucleus at 12 h p. i. and at 24 h p. i., while accumulate(s) in the cytoplasm in the absence of any other viral protein.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>DEV UL15 is a spliced gene that encodes two products encoded by 2.9 and 1.3 kb transcripts respectively. The UL15 is expressed late during infection. The coding sequences of DEV UL15 are very similar to those of alphaherpesviruses and most similar to the genus <it>Mardivirus</it>. The UL15 and/or UL15.5 accumulate(s) in the cytoplasm during early times post-infection and then are translocated to the nucleus at late times.</p

2013-2014 Master Class - Kenneth Thompkins (Trombone)

https://spiral.lynn.edu/conservatory_masterclasses/1041/thumbnail.jp

Identification of a novel linear B-cell epitope in the UL26 and UL26.5 proteins of Duck Enteritis Virus

BACKGROUND: The Unique Long 26 (UL26) and UL26.5 proteins of herpes simplex virus are known to function during the assembly of the viruses. However, for duck enteritis virus (DEV), which is an unassigned member of the family Herpesviridae, little information is available about the function of the two proteins. In this study, the C-terminus of DEV UL26 protein (designated UL26c), which contains the whole of UL26.5, was expressed, and the recombinant UL26c protein was used to immunize BALB/c mice to generate monoclonal antibodies (mAb). The mAb 1C8 was generated against DEV UL26 and UL26.5 proteins and used subsequently to map the epitope in this region. Both the mAb and its defined epitope will provide potential tools for further study of DEV. RESULTS: A mAb (designated 1C8) was generated against the DEV UL26c protein, and a series of 17 partially overlapping fragments that spanned the DEV UL26c were expressed with GST tags. These peptides were subjected to enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and western blotting analysis using mAb 1C8 to identify the epitope. A linear motif, (520)IYYPGE(525), which was located at the C-terminus of the DEV UL26 and UL26.5 proteins, was identified by mAb 1C8. The result of the ELISA showed that this epitope could be recognized by DEV-positive serum from mice. The (520)IYYPGE(525 )motif was the minimal requirement for reactivity, as demonstrated by analysis of the reactivity of 1C8 with several truncated peptides derived from the motif. Alignment and comparison of the 1C8-defined epitope sequence with those of other alphaherpesviruses indicated that the motif (521)YYPGE(525 )in the epitope sequence was conserved among the alphaherpesviruses. CONCLUSION: A mAb, 1C8, was generated against DEV UL26c and the epitope-defined minimal sequence obtained using mAb 1C8 was (520)IYYPGE(525). The mAb and the identified epitope may be useful for further study of the design of diagnostic reagents for DEV

2012-2013 Master Class - Massimo La Rosa (Trombone)

https://spiral.lynn.edu/conservatory_masterclasses/1055/thumbnail.jp