Inactivated whole avian influenza virus (AIV) vaccine provides protection against homologous haemagglutinin (HA) subtype virus, but poor protection against a heterologous HA virus. Moreover, it ...induces chickens to produce antibodies to cross-reactive antigens, especially nucleoprotein, which is limits AIV serological surveillance. In this study, a recombinant fowlpox virus co-expressing HA (H5 subtype) and NA (N1 subtype) genes of AIV was evaluated for its ability to protect chickens against intramuscular challenge with a lethal dose of highly pathogenic (HP) AIV. Susceptible chickens were also vaccinated by wing-web puncture with the parent fowlpox vaccine virus. Following challenge 4 weeks later with HPAIV, all chickens vaccinated with recombinant virus were protected, while the chickens vaccinated with either the unaltered parent fowlpox vaccine virus or unvaccinated controls experienced 100% mortality following challenge. This protection was accompanied by the high levels of specific antibody to the respective components of the recombinant vaccine. The above results showed that rFPV-HA-NA could be a potential vaccine to replace current inactivated vaccines for preventing AI.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Sorption of humic acid （HA） on mineral surfaces has a profound interest regarding the fate of hydrophobic organic contaminants （HOCs） and carbon sequestration in soils. The objective of our study is ...to determine the fractionation behavior of HA upon sorption on mineral surfaces with varying surface properties. HA was coated sequentially on kaolinite （1：1 clay）, montmorillonite （2：1 clay）, and goethite （iron oxide） for four times. The unadsorbed HA fractions were characterized by elemental analysis, diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy （DRIFT）, and solid state 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy （NMR）. The mineral-HA complexes were characterized by DRIFT. Polarity index （N＋O）/C revealed higher polarity of the unadsorbed HA fractions after coating on kaolinite, reflecting that relatively higher polarity fractions of HA remain unadsorbed. Sorption of aiiphatic alcohol fraction along with carbohydrate was prominent on kaolinite surface. DRIFT results of the unadsorbed HA fractions indicated more sorption of aiiphatic moieties on both kaolinite and montmorillonite. DRIFT results of the unadsorbed HA fractions after sorption on kaolinite and goethite showed the sorption of the proteinaceons fractions of HA. The HA fractions obtained after coating on goethite showed significant sorption of carboxylic moieties. The results mentioned above comply reasonably well with the DRIFT spectra of the minerai-HA complexes. ^13C NMR results showed higher sorption of anomeric C on kaolinite surface. Higher sorption of paraffinic fraction waS observed on montmorillonite. NMR data inferred the sorption of carboxylic moieties on goethite surface. Overall, this study showed that aliphatic moieties of HA preferentially sorbed on kaolinite and montmorillonite, while carboxylic functional groups play a significant role in sorption of HA on goethite. The sorbed fractions of HA may modify the mineral surface properties, and thus, the interaction with organic contaminants.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Flood events and their impact on crops are extremely significant scientific research issues; however, flood monitoring is an exceedingly complicated process. Flood damages on crops are directly ...related to yield change, which requires accurate assessment to quantify the damages. Various remote sensing products and indices have been used in the past for this purpose. This paper utilizes the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer （MODIS） weekly normalized difference vegetation index （NDVI） product to detect and further quantify flood damages on corn within the major corn producing states in the Midwest region of the US. County-level analyses were performed by taking weighted average of all pure corn pixels （〉90%） masked by the United States Department of Agriculture （USDA） Cropland Data Layer （CDL）. The NDVI-based time-series difference between flood years and normal year （median of years 2000-2014） was used to detect flood occur- rences. To further measure the impact of the flood on corn yield, regression analysis between change in NDVI and change in corn yield as independent and dependent variables respectively was performed for 30 different flooding events within growing seasons of the corn. With the R2 value of 0.85, the model indicates statistically significant linear relation between the NDVI and corn yield. Testing the predictability of the model with 10 new cases, the average relative error of the model was only 4.47%. Furthermore, small error （4.8%） of leave-one-out cross validation （LOOCV） along with smaller statistical error indicators （root mean square error （RMSE）, mean absolute error （MAE）, and mean bias error （MBE））, further validated the accuracy of the model. Utilizing the linear regression approach, change in NDVI during the growing season of corn appeared to be a good indicator to quantify the yield loss due to flood. Additionally, with the 250 m MODIS-based NDVI, these yield losses can be estimated up to field level.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Trace Na sources, extraction dynamics of trace Na, and influences of calcination temperature on quartz lattice, fluid inclusions, and muscovite were studied in detail herein for trace Na extraction ...from the quartz ore with water leaching at 90℃. Experimental results suggested that the trace Na sources included quartz lattice, fluid inclusions, and muscovite. The extraction rate of the trace Na in quartz ores can reach 31.0wt% after calcination at 900℃ for 5 h and water leaching at 90℃ for 24 h. The extraction process consisting of the dissolution of unfree Na and diffusion of free Na was dominated by calcination temperature. Calcination at 900℃ for 5 h was effective for extraction of the trace Na in fluid inclusions and muscovite. The extraction of the trace Na was mainly affected by the decrepitation of fluid inclusions when the calcination temperature ranged from 400 to 600℃ and by the damage of muscovite when the calcination temperature ranged from 600 to 900℃. Based on the extraction rates at different calcination temperatures, approximately 20.1wt% of the trace Na occurred in fluid inclusions, approximately 10.9wt% existed in muscovite, and 69.0wt% mainly occurred in quartz lattice.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Background The major difficulty in the research of DNA microarray data is the large number of genes compared with the relatively small number of samples as well as the complex data structure. Random ...forest has received much attention recently; its primary characteristic is that it can form a classification model from the data with high dimensionality. However, optimal results can not be obtained for gene selection since it is still affected by undifferentiated genes. We proposed recursive random forest analysis and applied it to gene selection. Methods Recursive random forest, which is an improvement of random forest, obtains optimal differentiated genes after step by step dropping of genes which, according to a certain algorithm, have no effects on classification. The method has the advantage of random forest and provides a gene importance scale as well. The value of the area under the curve （AUC） of the receiver operating characteristic （ROC） curve, which synthesizes the information of sensitivity and specificity, is adopted as the key standard for evaluating the performance of this method. The focus of the paper is to validate the effectiveness of gene selection using recursive random forest through the analysis of five microarray datasets; colon, prostate, leukemia, breast and skin data. Results Five microarray datasets were analyzed and better classification results have been attained using only a few genes after gene selection. The biological information of the selected genes from breast and skin data was confirmed according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information （NCBI）. The results prove that the genes associated with diseases can be effectively retained by recursive random forest. Conclusions Recursive random forest can be effectively applied to microarray data analysis and gene selection. The retained genes in the optimal model provide important information for clinical diagnoses and research of the biological mechanism of diseases.
During clinical work, some side-effects may occur to patients, part of which are caused by the specific pharrnacological effects of drugs and some of which are non-specific. Although these phenomena ...happen from time to time, burdening the anguish and expenditure of patients, their nature is still less understood. Recently, as the research of the placebo effect become deeper and deeper, clinicians and researchers have gradually realized that mind plays an important role in the occurrence of non-specific side-effects, which is called ＂nocebo effect＂ professionally, the evil side of placebo effect. This article would expatiate on nocebo effect in detail from several aspects, such as its mechanism, effect, influencing factors and discuss how to make it known and treated in clinical practice and clinical trials.
Abstract Caffarelli and Silvestre Comm. Part. Diff. Eqs., 32, 1245-1260 （2007） characterized the fractional Laplacian （-△）s as an operator maps Dirichlet boundary condition to Neumann condition via ...the harmonic extension problem to the upper half space for 0 〈 s 〈 1. In this paper, we extend this result to all s 〉 0. We also give a new proof to the dissipative a priori estimate of quasi-geostrophic equations in the framework of Lp norm using the Caffarelli-Silvestre＇s extension technique.
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CEKLJ, DOBA, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Surgical simulators need to simulate deformation and cutting of deformable objects. Adaptive octree mesh based cutting methods embed the deformable objects into octree meshes that are recursively ...refined near the cutting tool trajectory. Deformation is only applied to the octree meshes; thus the deformation instability problem caused by degenerated elements is avoided. Biological tissues and organs usually contain complex internal structures that are ignored by previous work. In this paper the deformable objects are modeled as voxels connected by links and embedded inside adaptive octree meshes. Links swept by the cutting tool are disconnected and object surface meshes are reconstructed from disconnected links. Two novel methods for embedding triangular meshes as internal structures are proposed. The surface mesh embedding method is applicable to arbitrary triangular meshes, but these meshes have no physical properties. The material sub-region embedding method associates the interiors enclosed by the triangular meshes with physical properties, but requires that these meshes are watertight, and have no self-intersections, and their smallest features are larger than a voxel. Some local features are constructed in a pre-calculation stage to increase simulation performance. Simulation tests show that our methods can cut embedded structures in a way consistent with the cutting of the deformable objects. Cut fragments can also deform correctly along with the deformable objects.
Surgical simulators need to simulate deformation and cutting of deformable objects. Adaptive octree mesh based cutting methods embed the deformable objects into octree meshes that are recursively ...refined near the cutting tool trajectory. Deformation is only applied to the octree meshes;thus the deformation instability problem caused by degenerated elements is avoided. Biological tissues and organs usually contain complex internal structures that are ignored by previous work. In this paper the deformable objects are modeled as voxels connected by links and embedded inside adaptive octree meshes. Links swept by the cutting tool are disconnected and object surface meshes are reconstructed from disconnected links. Two novel methods for embedding triangular meshes as internal structures are proposed. The surface mesh embedding method is applicable to arbitrary triangular meshes, but these meshes have no physical properties. The material sub-region embedding method associates the interiors enclosed by the triangular meshes with physical properties, but requires that these meshes are watertight, and have no self-intersections, and their smallest features are larger than a voxel. Some local features are constructed in a pre-calculation stage to increase simulation performance. Simulation tests show that our methods can cut embedded structures in a way consistent with the cutting of the deformable objects. Cut fragments can also deform correctly along with the deformable objects.
Pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ) plays a significant role as a redox cofactor in combination with dehydrogenases in bacteria. These dehydrogenases play key roles in the oxidation of important ...substrates for the biotechnology industry, such as vitamin C production. While biosynthesis of PQQ genes has been widely studied, PQQ-transport mechanisms remain unclear. Herein, we used both two-dimensional fluorescence-difference gel electrophoresis tandem mass spectrometry and RNA sequencing to investigate the effects of
pqqB
overexpression in an industrial strain of
Gluconobacter oxydans
WSH-003. We have identified 73 differentially expressed proteins and 99 differentially expressed genes, a majority of which are related to oxidation-reduction and transport processes by gene ontology analysis. We also described several putative candidate effectors that responded to increased PQQ levels resulting from
pqqB
overexpression. Furthermore, quantitative PCR was used to verify five putative PQQ-transport genes among different PQQ producing strains, and the results showed that
ompW
,
B932_1930
and
B932_2186
were upregulated in all conditions. Then the three genes were over-expressed in
G. oxydans
WSH-003 and PQQ production were detected. The results showed that extracellular PQQ of B932_1930 (a transporter) and B932_2186 (an ABC transporter permease) overexpression strains were enhanced by 1.77-fold and 1.67-fold, respectively. The results suggest that the proteins encoded by PqqB, B932_1930 and B932_2186 might enhance the PQQ secretion process.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
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