Relationship between single-nucleotide polymorphisms in un-translated region of human leukocyte antigen-G and preeclampsia

Purpose: The aim of this study was to unravel the link between human leukocyte antigen-G untranslated region (HLA-G 3-UTR) single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and preeclampsia by examining polymorphisms in HLA-G 3-UTR in preeclampsia patients and their newborns, as well as those of women with normal pregnancy and their newborns.Methods: Single pregnant mothers and their newborns at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, China, were divided into preeclampsia group (144 cases), and normal pregnancy group (122 cases). Blood samples from the two groups were collected for DNA extraction, and the DNA samples were analyzed for HLA-G 3'-UTR SNP by polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and direct sequencing method.Results: The frequency of CG genotype in HLA-G 3-UTR 3127 gene in the preeclampsia group was significantly lower, while the frequency of AA genotype in HLA-G 3-UTR 3172 gene in the preeclampsia group was significantly higher (p < 0.05) when compared with the normal pregnancy group. Furthermore, frequencies of the compatible genotype AA/AA (mothers/newborns) in HLA-G 3-UTR 3172 gene in the preeclampsia group were significantly higher relative to the normal pregnancy group (p< 0.05).Conclusion: These results suggest that when CC/GG is the compatible genotype in HLA-G 3-UTR 3127 gene of mothers/newborns, preeclampsia risk may decrease, but it may increase if the compatible genotype is AA/AA. Thus, SNP in HLA-G 3-UTR 3127 gene may be a protective factor against preeclampsia in Chinese Han pregnant women, while SNP in 3172 gene may be associated with susceptibility to preeclampsia.Keywords: Single-nucleotide polymorphisms, Human leukocyte antigen-G, Un-translated Region, Preeclampsi

Rural Credit Cooperatives RCCs Financial System and Role in Economic Development of China

This paper reviews and study of RCCs financial system and role in economic development of China. RRCs are important reforms of china. It improves the performance consistently every year and constituted about 12.3 % all financial loans in China. Rural Credit Cooperatives Development in China constituted an integral and important part of rural reforms in China. Keywords: Rural Credit Cooperatives, Financial system, Economic development, Reform

Monitoring of Tsunami/Earthquake Damages by Polarimetric Microwave Remote Sensing Technique

Polarization characterizes the vector state of EM wave. When interacting with polarized wave, rough natural surface often induces dominant surface scattering; building also presents dominant double-bounce scattering. Tsunami/earthquake causes serious destruction just by inundating the land surface and destroying the building. By analyzing the change of surface and double-bounce scattering before and after disaster, we can achieve a monitoring of damages. This constitutes one basic principle of polarimetric microwave remote sensing of tsunami/earthquake. The extraction of surface and double-bounce scattering from coherency matrix is achieved by model-based decomposition. The general four-component scattering power decomposition with unitary transformation (G4U) has been widely used in the remote sensing of tsunami/earthquake to identify surface and double-bounce scattering because it can adaptively enhance surface or double-bounce scattering. Nonetheless, the strict derivation in this chapter conveys that G4U cannot always strengthen the double-bounce scattering in urban area nor strengthen the surface scattering in water or land area unless we adaptively combine G4U and its duality for an extended G4U (EG4U). Experiment on the ALOS-PALSAR datasets of 2011 great Tohoku tsunami/earthquake demonstrates not only the outperformance of EG4U but also the effectiveness of polarimetric remote sensing in the qualitative monitoring and quantitative evaluation of tsunami/earthquake damages

Optogenetic Control of Molecular Motors and Organelle Distributions in Cells

SummaryIntracellular transport and distribution of organelles play important roles in diverse cellular functions, including cell polarization, intracellular signaling, cell survival, and apoptosis. Here, we report an optogenetic strategy to control the transport and distribution of organelles by light. This is achieved by optically recruiting molecular motors onto organelles through the heterodimerization of Arabidopsis thaliana cryptochrome 2 (CRY2) and its interacting partner CIB1. CRY2 and CIB1 dimerize within subseconds upon exposure to blue light, which requires no exogenous ligands and low intensity of light. We demonstrate that mitochondria, peroxisomes, and lysosomes can be driven toward the cell periphery upon light-induced recruitment of kinesin, or toward the cell nucleus upon recruitment of dynein. Light-induced motor recruitment and organelle movements are repeatable, reversible, and can be achieved at subcellular regions. This light-controlled organelle redistribution provides a new strategy for studying the causal roles of organelle transport and distribution in cellular functions in living cells

Conservative State Value Estimation for Offline Reinforcement Learning

Offline reinforcement learning faces a significant challenge of value over-estimation due to the distributional drift between the dataset and the current learned policy, leading to learning failure in practice. The common approach is to incorporate a penalty term to reward or value estimation in the Bellman iterations. Meanwhile, to avoid extrapolation on out-of-distribution (OOD) states and actions, existing methods focus on conservative Q-function estimation. In this paper, we propose Conservative State Value Estimation (CSVE), a new approach that learns conservative V-function via directly imposing penalty on OOD states. Compared to prior work, CSVE allows more effective in-data policy optimization with conservative value guarantees. Further, we apply CSVE and develop a practical actor-critic algorithm in which the critic does the conservative value estimation by additionally sampling and penalizing the states \emph{around} the dataset, and the actor applies advantage weighted updates extended with state exploration to improve the policy. We evaluate in classic continual control tasks of D4RL, showing that our method performs better than the conservative Q-function learning methods and is strongly competitive among recent SOTA methods

Association between genetically predicted rheumatoid arthritis and alopecia areata: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study

BackgroundAlthough numerous observational studies have indicated a potential association between autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and alopecia areata (AA), the research reports lack a clear causal relationship. In this study, our objective is to utilize the Mendelian randomization (MR) design to examine the potential causal association between RA and AA.MethodsTo investigate the causal relationship between RA and AA, we utilized large-scale gene aggregation data from genome-wide association studies (GWAS), including RA (n=58,284) and AA (n=361,822) based on previous observational studies. In our analysis, we mainly employed the inverse variance-weighted (IVW) method of the random effects model, supplemented by the weighted median (WM) method and the MR Egger method.ResultsThe findings from the IVW methods revealed a significant association between genetically predicted RA and an increased likelihood of AA, as evidenced by an odds ratio of 1.21 (95%CI = 1.11-1.32; P < 0.001. Both the WM method and MR-Egger regression consistently showed significant directional outcomes (Both P < 0.05), indicating a robust association between RA and AA. Additionally, both the funnel plot and the MR-Egger intercepts provided evidence of the absence of directional pleiotropy, suggesting that the observed association is not influenced by other common genetic factors.ConclusionsThe results of the study suggest a possible link between genetically predicted RA and AA. This finding highlights the importance for individuals diagnosed with RA to remain vigilant and aware of the potential development of AA. Regular monitoring and early detection can be crucial in managing and addressing this potential complication

Low-Cost Efficient Magnetic Adsorbent for Phosphorus Removal from Water

Adsorption using magnetic adsorbents makes the phosphorus removal from water simple and efficient. However, most of the reported magnetic adsorbents use chemically synthesized nanoparticles as magnetic cores, which are expensive and environmentally unfriendly. Replacing the nanomagnetic cores by cheap and green magnetic materials is essential for the wide application of this technique. In this paper, coal-fly-ash magnetic spheres (MSs) were processed to produce a cheap and eco-friendly magnetic core. A magnetic adsorbent, ZrO2 coated ball-milled MS (BMS@ZrO2), was prepared through a simple chemical precipitation method. Careful structural investigations indicate that a multipore structural amorphous ZrO2 layer has grown on the MS core. The specific surface area of BMS@ZrO2 is 48 times larger than that of the MS core. The highest phosphorus adsorption is tested as 16.47 mg g-1 at pH = 2. The BMS@ZrO2 adsorbent has a saturation magnetization as high as 33.56 emu g-1, enabling efficient magnetic separation. Zeta potential measurements and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis reveal that the phosphorus adsorption of BMS@ZrO2 is triggered by the electrostatic attraction and the ligand exchange mechanism. The BMS@ZrO2 adsorbent could be reused several times after proper chemical treatment