Cheerleader effects, group attractiveness effects, and divisive normalization are all characterized by faces appearing more attractive when seen within a group. However, it is possible that your ...friends could have a detrimental effect upon your attractiveness too: if these group effects arose partly as a contrastive process between your face and your friends, then highly attractive friends may diminish your attractiveness. We confirm this hypothesis across two experiments by showing that the presence of highly attractive friends can indeed make you appear less attractive (i.e., a reverse cheerleader effect), suggesting friend effects are driven in part by a contrastive process against the group. However, these effects are also influenced by your own attractiveness in a fashion that appears consistent with hierarchical encoding, where less attractive targets benefit more from being viewed in an increasingly unattractive group than attractive targets. Our final experiment demonstrates that the company of others not only alters our attractiveness, but also induces shifts in how average or distinctive a target face appears too, with these averageness effects associated with the friend effects observed in our first experiment. We present a Friend Effects Framework within which ‘friend effects’ is an umbrella term for the positive (e.g., cheerleader effects, group attractiveness effects) and negative (i.e., the reverse cheerleader effect) ways in which hierarchical encoding, group contrastive effects, and other influences of friends can have on your attractiveness.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global pandemic epidemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which poses a serious threat to human health worldwide ...and results in significant economic losses. With the continuous emergence of new virus strains, small molecule drugs remain the most effective treatment for COVID-19. The traditional drug development process usually requires several years; however, the development of computer-aided drug design (CADD) offers the opportunity to develop innovative drugs quickly and efficiently. The literature review describes the general process of CADD, the viral proteins that play essential roles in the life cycle of SARS-CoV-2 and can serve as therapeutic targets, and examples of drug screening of viral target proteins by applying CADD methods. Finally, the potential of CADD in COVID-19 therapy, the deficiency, and the possible future development direction are discussed.
Display omitted
•Medication is the key therapeutic option for dealing with COVID-19.•The key structural proteins of SARS-CoV-2 can be used as drug targets.•CADD develops small molecule drugs that target key viral proteins.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
We propose a cost-effective and memory-aware end-to-end learning scheme utilizing bi-directional gated recurrent unit (bi-GRU) for geometric constellation shaping (GCS) under the first-order regular ...perturbation (FRP) auxiliary channel. The performance of the proposed system has been numerically verified at a 32 GBd 5-channel wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) 64 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) 800 km optical coherent communication system. Results show that the proposed bi-GRU based GCS scheme can achieve a performance gain over square 64QAM in mutual information (MI) with 0.12 bits/symbol and a Q-factor gain of 0.4 dB at optimal launched optical power. When transmission distance is extended to 1280 km, a generalized mutual information (GMI) gain of 0.136 bits/symbol is observed. Additionally, compared with the bi-directional long short-term memory (bi-LSTM) based GCS, the proposed bi-GRU scheme has lower computation complexity with similar system performance.
Sepsis is a syndrome that causes dysfunction of multiple organs due to the host's uncontrolled response to infection and is a significant contributor to morbidity and mortality in intensive care ...units worldwide. Surviving patients are often left with acute brain injury and long-term cognitive impairment, known as sepsis-associated encephalopathy (SAE). In recent years, researchers have directed their focus towards the pathogenesis of SAE. However, due to the complexity of its development, there remains a lack of effective treatment measures that arise as a serious issue affecting the prognosis of sepsis patients. Further research on the possible causes of SAE aims to provide clinicians with potential therapeutic targets and help develop targeted prevention strategies. This paper aims to review recent research on the pathogenesis of SAE, in order to enhance our understanding of this syndrome.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Acute liver failure is an uncommon presentation in the clinic. Common causes for acute liver failure include viral hepatitis and drug-related hepatotoxicity. However, acute liver failure due to ...Budd-Chiari syndrome is rare. This case highlights the importance of necessary constrast-enhanced imaging studies to rule out vascular etiologies of acute liver failure, in addition to common causes like viral or drug-induced hepatic failure. We present a case of a male Chinese patient who presented with nausea, vomiting, fatigue, and fever after eating a large amount of fatty food. Six days after hospitalization, the patient developed acute liver failure and hepatic encephalopathy. Contrast-enhanced computerized tomography and ultrasound examinations revealed thromboses in the hepatic veins and inferior vena cava. Further testing also showed decreased protein C activity. Therefore, a diagnosis of Budd-Chiari syndrome secondary to protein C deficiency was made. He received supportive care and a transjugular intrahepatic portal shunt. Hepatic function, coagulation panel results, and clinical presentations gradually returned to normal. Budd-Chiari syndrome from protein C deficiency could be a rare but valid cause of acute liver failure in Chinese patients.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Magnetic nanoparticles (Fe3O4) were synthesized by a chemical coprecipitation method. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscope (TEM) were used to confirm the crystallite structure ...and the particle's radius. The Fe3O4 nanoparticles and chitosan (CS) were mixed to form a matrix in which haemoglobin (Hb) can be immobilized for the fabrication of H2O2 biosensor. The Fe3O4–CS–Hb film exhibited a pair of well-defined and quasi-reversible cyclic voltammetric peaks due to the redox of Hb–heme Fe (III)/Fe (II) in a pH 7.0 phosphate buffer. The formal potential of Hb–heme Fe(III)/Fe(II) couple varied linearly with the increase of pH in the range of 4.0–10.0 with a slope of 46.5mVpH−1, indicating that electron transfer was accompanied with single proton transportation in the electrochemical reaction. The surface coverage of Hb immobilized on Fe3O4–CS film glassy carbon electrode was about 1.13×10−10molcm−2. The heterogeneous electron transfer rate constant (ks) was 1.04s−1, indicating great facilitation of the electron transfer between Hb and magnetic nanoparticles-chitosan modified electrode. The modified electrode showed excellent electrocatalytic activity toward oxygen and hydrogen peroxide reduction. The apparent Michaelis–Menten constant KMapp for H2O2 was estimated to be 38.1μmolL−1.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
Cobalt ferrite nanoparticles (Co
x
Fe
3−
x
O
4) and chitosan (CS) film were used to immobilize/adsorb hemoglobin (Hb) to create a protein electrode to study the direct electron transfer between the ...redox centers of the proteins and the electrode. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) revealed that the Co
x
Fe
3−
x
O
4 particles were nanoscale in size and formed an ordered layered structure. The native structure of the immobilized Hb was preserved as indicated by Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) and UV–visible (UV–vis) spectroscopy. The Hb-Co
x
Fe
3−
x
O
4–CS modified electrode showed a pair of well-defined and quasi-reversible cyclic voltammetric peaks at −0.373
V (vs. SCE) and exhibited appreciable electrocatalytic activity for the reduction of H
2O
2. The catalysis currents increased linearly with H
2O
2 concentration in a wide range of 5.0
×
10
−8 to 1.0
×
10
−3
mol
L
−1 with a detection limit of 1.0
×
10
−8
mol
L
−1 (S/N
=
3) and had long-term stability. Finally, the proposed method was applied to investigate the coexistence of hydrogen peroxide with the interfering substances. Experimental results showed that the ascorbic acid, glucose,
l-cysteine, uric acid, and dopamine at corresponding concentrations did not influence the detection of H
2O
2.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
The hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a leading cause of chronic liver disease. The moderate efficacy along with side effects of the current pegylated interferon and ribavirin combination therapy ...underscores the need for more effective and safer new treatment. In an effort to improve upon our current clinical candidate, Boceprevir (SCH 503034), extensive SAR studies were performed on the P3 capping moieties. This led to the discovery of tert-leucinol derived cyclic imides as a potent series of novel P3 capping groups. Thus, the introduction of these imide caps improved the cell-based replicon EC90 by more than 10-fold. A number of imides with various substitutions, ring sizes, bicyclic systems, and heterocyclic rings were explored. The 4,4-dimethyl substituted glutarimide emerged as the best cap as exemplified in compound 21 (K i* = 4 nM, EC90 = 40 nM). Systematic optimization of different positions (P′, P3, and P1) of the inhibitor resulted in the identification of the lead compound 46, which had an excellent potency (K i* = 4 nM, EC90 = 30 nM) and good pharmacokinetic profile (22% and 35% bioavailability in rats and dogs, respectively). X-ray structure of inhibitor 46 bound to the enzyme revealed that there was an additional hydrogen bonding interaction between one of the imide carbonyls and Cys159.
