In today's education, student success still is one of the central objectives pursued by different higher education institutions, including the Application-oriented colleges or universities. Reports ...show that these schools make a great contribution to social and economic development and they are influenced by the forces driving change in the various sectors, including education, industries, and society. Literature shows that engagement has an essential role for students' achievement. Indeed, there is a consensus that student engagement is one of the key contributors to reinforcing learning and retention. To learners enrolled in these universities, creativity is of paramount importance, as well. More specifically, given that students are seen as the main contributors to societal development, universities have been seeking to foster creativity among individuals by establishing creativity-nurturing programs. As creativity is significant in education these days, the present study attempts to consider the conception of creativity and its role in how it can assist in cultivating student engagement and success in Application-oriented Colleges. Accordingly, some educational implications are offered for educators, learners, and syllabus designers.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Internet of Things (IoT) has gradually become one of the most important platforms across different disciplines, by enabling dedicated physical objects to communicate with other Internet-enabled ...things. With this trend, more devices in medical environments are capable of connecting with each other, named Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). It aims for improving efficiency and reducing communication delay, e.g., monitoring the status of patients and notifying abnormal events. However, due to the distributed nature, insider attacks are still one of the major threats to such IoT environment. How to improve the trust management in IoMT remains a challenge. Motivated by the popularity of blockchain technology, in this paper, our general goal is to investigate the performance of blockchain-based trust management. In particular, we focus on a particular type of IoMT, named medical smartphone networks (MSNs), because of the wide adoption of smartphones in the medical domain. Then, we apply blockchains for enhancing the effectiveness of Bayesian inference-based trust management to detect malicious nodes in MSNs. In the evaluation, we explore the performance of our approach in two different healthcare environments, and experimental results demonstrate that blockchain technology can help improve the detection efficiency of detecting malicious nodes with reasonable workload.
Mixed lineage kinase domain-like protein （MLKL） was identified to function downstream of receptor interacting protein 3 （RIP3） in tumor necrosis factor-α （TNF）-induced necrosis （also called ...necroptosis）. However, how MLKL functions to mediate necroptosis is unknown. By reconstitution of MLKL function in MLKL-knockout cells, we showed that the N-terminus of MLKL is required for its function in necroptosis. The oligomerization of MLKL in TNF-treated cells is essential for necroptosis, as artificially forcing MLKL together by using the hormone-binding domain （HBD＊） triggers necroptosis. Notably, forcing together the N-terminal domain （ND） but not the C-terminal kinase domain of MLKL causes necroptosis. Further deletion analysis showed that the four-α-helix bundle of MLKL （1-130 amino acids） is sufficient to trigger necroptosis. Both the HBD＊-mediated and TNF-induced complexes of MLKL（ND） or MLKL are tetramers, and translocation of these complexes to lipid rafts of the plasma membrane precedes cell death. The homo-oligomerization is required for MLKL translocation and the signal sequence for plas- ma membrane location is located in the junction of the first and second a-helices of MLKL. The plasma membrane translocation of MLKL or MLKL（ND） leads to sodium influx, and depletion of sodium from the cell culture medium inhibits necroptosis. All of the above phenomena were not seen in apoptosis. Thus, the MLKL oligomerization leads to translocation of MLKL to lipid rafts of plasma membrane, and the plasma membrane MLKL complex acts either by itself or via other proteins to increase the sodium influx, which increases osmotic pressure, eventually leading to membrane rupture.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Abstract
An easily accessible biomarker with good diagnostic power for patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) was needed to predict the short-term mortality. Studies have shown that ...platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) is a biomarker for patients with tumor. This study aimed to identify the relationship between PLR and short-term mortality in patients with moderate to severe TBI. This is a retrospective cohort study. We selected patients with moderate to severe TBI who were admitted to the emergency department of The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University. Biomarkers were collected within 24 h after admission. To investigate their relationship with short-term mortality, Cox proportional hazards regression and ROC curve analysis were performed. A total number of 170 patients was included. 47 (27.6%) patients had died and 123 (72.4%) patients were survived by the end of the study. Patients with different Rotterdam CT score (HR = 1.571, 95%CI 1.232–2.002,
p
< 0.001) or PLR levels (HR = 1.523, 95%CI 1.110–2.090,
p
= 0.009) had significant different mortality rates. The AUC curve analysis showed that the AUC of Rotterdam CT score and PLR groups were 0.729 (95%CI 0.638–0.821,
p
< 0.001) and 0.711 (95%CI 0.618–0.803
p
< 0.001), respectively. PLR level is an independent biomarker with great diagnostic power for short-term mortality in patients with moderate to severe brain injury.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has been proposed as an emerging network architecture, which consists of decoupling the control planes and data planes of a network. Due to its openness and ...standardization, SDN enables researchers to design and implement new innovative network functions and protocols in a much easier and flexible way. In particular, OpenFlow is currently the most deployed SDN concept, which provides communication between the controller and the switches. However, the dynamism of programmable networks also brings potential new security challenges relating to various attacks such as scanning, spoofing attacks, denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and so on. In this survey, we aim to give particular attention to OpenFlow-based SDN and present an up-to-date view to existing security challenges and countermeasures in the literature. This effort attempts to simulate more research attention to these issues in future OpenFlow and& SDN development.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
The polyaniline (PANI)/TiO2 nanocomposites have been successfully synthesized via a hydrothermal method and followed by a low-temperature calcination treatment process. We find that such a PANI/TiO2 ...nanocomposite exhibits higher photocatalytic activity and stability than bare TiO2 and TiO2‑x N x toward the liquid-phase degradation of methyl orange (MO) under both UV and visible light (420 nm < λ < 800 nm) irradiation. More noteworthy, the PANI/TiO2 photocatalyst still perform good activity toward MO and 4-chlorophenol (4-CP) under the longer wavelength of light (550 nm < λ < 800 nm). The total organic carbon (TOC) tests show that the mineralization rate of MO and 4-CP over PANI/TiO2 are apparently higher than bare TiO2 under the irradiation of both UV and visible light. The presence of synergic effect between PANI and TiO2 is believed to play an essential role in affecting the photoreactivity. At last, the roles of active species in the photocatalytic process are compared by using different types of active species scavengers. Meanwhile, the degradation mechanism of the photocatalysts is proposed. It is hoped that our work could provide valuable information on the design of polymer modified semiconductor with more excellent properties and set the foundation for the further industrial application.
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IJS, KILJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM
•We compared LAI-2200, DHP, AccuPAR, and destructive methods for rice LAI estimation.•Areas of green and yellow leaves, stems, and ears were measured separately.•PAIeff from LAI-2200 and DHP are ...consistent over the season (R2=0.76, RMSE=0.97).•CI decreases with plant growth and range from 0.63 to 0.74 during the peak season.•PAI and LAI from LAI-2200 and DHP agree with the destructive results (R2>0.75).
Continuous field leaf area index (LAI) measurement has become increasingly important for the validation of remote sensing LAI products. A seasonal field campaign was carried out to take continuous LAI measurements over paddy rice fields in NE China in 2012. Three indirect optical methods, LAI-2200, digital hemispherical photography (DHP), and AccuPAR, were compared with a destructive sampling method conducted concurrently. Corrections for the clumping effect were applied to the effective plant area indices (PAIeff) estimated from the indirect optical measurements.
Both LAI-2200 and DHP produce consistent PAIeff estimates over the season (R2=0.76, RMSE=0.97). The clumping index (CI) values obtained from DHP generally decrease with plant growth and range between 0.63 and 0.74 during the peak growing period from day of year (DOY) 191−230. The CI values retrieved from DHP photos generally decrease with increasing view angles. The optical PAI and LAI values estimated from LAI-2200 and DHP correspond very well with the destructive values before DOY 230 (R2=0.75, RMSE=1.15 for PAI and R2=0.78, RMSE=0.74 for LAI), and the relative errors are less than 10% and 5%, respectively, for the two instruments. Omitting ring 5 for LAI-2200 generates very accurate PAI and LAI estimations during the peak season. Nevertheless, AccuPAR underestimates the PAIeff, PAI, and LAI values obtained from other methods (up to 30%). After DOY 231, the capability to detect PAI decreases significantly for both destructive and optical methods due to the leaf senescence and the DHP classification difficulty. In general, rice PAI could be accurately estimated with LAI-2200 and DHP before senescence if the clumping effect could be properly taken into account. The seasonal continuous LAI measurements obtained from this study are valuable for the validation of remote sensing LAI products.
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GEOZS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) can undergo unlimited self-renewal and differentiate into all cell types in human body, and therefore hold great potential for cell therapy of currently incurable ...diseases including neural degenerative diseases, heart failure, and macular degeneration. This potential is further underscored by the promising safety and efficacy data from the ongoing clinical trials of hESC-based therapy of macular degeneration. However, one main challenge for the clinical application of hESC-based therapy is the allogeneic immune rejection of hESC-derived cells by the recipient. The breakthrough of the technology to generate autologous-induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) by nuclear reprogramming of patient's somatic cells raised the possibility that autologous iPSC-derived cells can be transplanted into the patients without the concern of immune rejection. However, accumulating data indicate that certain iPSC-derived cells can be immunogenic. In addition, the genomic instability associated with iPSCs raises additional safety concern to use iPSC-derived cells in human cell therapy. In this review, we will discuss the mechanism underlying the immunogenicity of the pluripotent stem cells and recent progress in developing immune tolerance strategies of human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC)-derived allografts. The successful development of safe and effective immune tolerance strategy will greatly facilitate the clinical development of hPSC-based cell therapy.
The long-term and excessive usage of pesticides is an enormous burden on the environment, which also increases pest resistance. To overcome this problem, research and application of entomopathogenic ...fungi, which are both environmentally friendly and cause lower resistance, have gained great momentum. Entomopathogenic fungi have a wide range of prospects. Apart from
Bacillus thuringiensis
,
Beauveria bassiana
is the most studied biopesticide. After invading insect hosts,
B. bassiana
produces a variety of toxins, which are secondary metabolites such as beauvericin, bassianin, bassianolide, beauverolides, tenellin, oosporein, and oxalic acid. These toxins help
B. bassiana
to parasitize and kill the hosts. This review unequivocally considers beauveria toxins highly promising and summarizes their attack mechanism(s) on the host insect immune system. Genetic engineering strategies to improve toxin principles, genes, or virulent molecules of
B. bassiana
have also been discussed. Lastly, we discuss the future perspective of
Beauveria
toxin research, including newly discovered toxins.
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