Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) caused a global panic due to its high morbidity and mortality during 2002 and 2003. Soon after the deadly disease outbreak, the ...angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) was identified as a functional cellular receptor in vitro and in vivo for SARS-CoV spike protein. However, ACE2 solely is not sufficient to allow host cells to become susceptible to SARS-CoV infection, and other host factors may be involved in SARS-CoV spike protein-ACE2 complex.
A host intracellular filamentous cytoskeletal protein vimentin was identified by immunoprecipitation and LC-MS/MS analysis following chemical cross-linking on Vero E6 cells that were pre-incubated with the SARS-CoV spike protein. Moreover, flow cytometry data demonstrated an increase of the cell surface vimentin level by 16.5 % after SARS-CoV permissive Vero E6 cells were treated with SARS-CoV virus-like particles (VLPs). A direct interaction between SARS-CoV spike protein and host surface vimentin was further confirmed by far-Western blotting. In addition, antibody neutralization assay and shRNA knockdown experiments indicated a vital role of vimentin in cell binding and uptake of SARS-CoV VLPs and the viral spike protein.
A direct interaction between vimentin and SARS-CoV spike protein during viral entry was observed. Vimentin is a putative anti-viral drug target for preventing/reducing the susceptibility to SARS-CoV infection.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Equilibrium unfolding behaviors of cytochrome c and lysozyme induced by the presence of urea (0–10M) as well as changes in temperature (295–363K) or pH (1.8–7) are examined via small-angle x-ray ...scattering and spectroscopic techniques, including circular dichroism and optical absorption. Denaturant and temperature effects are incorporated into the free energy expression for a general multigroup unfolding process. Results indicate that there are at least four unfolding groups in the temperature-, urea-, or pH-induced unfolding of cytochrome c: two of these are related to the prosthetic heme group, and the other two correspond, respectively, to the unfolding of α-helices and global changes in protein morphology that are largely unaccounted for by the first two groups. In contrast, the unfolding of lysozyme approximately follows a simple one-group process. A modified mean-field Ising model is adopted for a coherent description of the unfolding behaviors observed. Thermodynamic parameters extracted from simple denaturing processes, on the basis of the Ising model, can closely predict unfolding behaviors of the proteins in compounded denaturing environments.
碩士
淡江大學
教育科技學系碩士在職專班
102
With the push of Taipei City government policies and the high social expectation of English learning effectiveness, English village has credited for its largest increasing ...number for five years. Starting from cognitive learning theory, based on situated learning theory, English village proceeds situated topic planning and implements experiential programs via Direct Method(DM), Notional-Functional Approach(NFA) and Task-Based Language Instruction(TBLI). Current domestic related research primarily focused on curriculum design or teachers’ feedback and students’ learning interest inquiries, while analysis of learning effectiveness was scarcely emphasized.
The study adopts quasi-experimental method. Its subjects are 6th Grade students of two classes at a public elementary school in South Taipei City. In the beginning, both two classes are having English village programs in Taipei City. Next, one is chosen for participating in experiential learning activities in English village, while the
Objectives
The study aimed to develop a combined model that integrates deep learning (DL), radiomics, and clinical data to classify lung nodules into benign or malignant categories, and to further ...classify lung nodules into different pathological subtypes and Lung Imaging Reporting and Data System (Lung-RADS) scores.
Materials and methods
The proposed model was trained, validated, and tested using three datasets: one public dataset, the Lung Nodule Analysis 2016 (LUNA16) Grand challenge dataset (
n
= 1004), and two private datasets, the Lung Nodule Received Operation (LNOP) dataset (
n
= 1027) and the Lung Nodule in Health Examination (LNHE) dataset (
n
= 1525). The proposed model used a stacked ensemble model by employing a machine learning (ML) approach with an AutoGluon-Tabular classifier. The input variables were modified 3D convolutional neural network (CNN) features, radiomics features, and clinical features. Three classification tasks were performed: Task 1: Classification of lung nodules into benign or malignant in the LUNA16 dataset; Task 2: Classification of lung nodules into different pathological subtypes; and Task 3: Classification of Lung-RADS score. Classification performance was determined based on accuracy, recall, precision, and F1-score. Ten-fold cross-validation was applied to each task.
Results
The proposed model achieved high accuracy in classifying lung nodules into benign or malignant categories in LUNA 16 with an accuracy of 92.8%, as well as in classifying lung nodules into different pathological subtypes with an F1-score of 75.5% and Lung-RADS scores with an F1-score of 80.4%.
Conclusion
Our proposed model provides an accurate classification of lung nodules based on the benign/malignant, different pathological subtypes, and Lung-RADS system.
To address the inefficiency resulting from data movement in Von Neumann architecture, computing-in-memory (CIM) is a promising solution due to its in-situ analog computation. Among the various types ...of CIMs, time-domain CIM stands out as a promising solution for achieving high energy efficiency and high readout resolution by employing time-to-digital converters (TDC) instead of analog-to-digital converters (ADC) to convert time-domain delays into digital values. However, the performance of the accelerator may be constrained by the maximum operating frequency of time-domain CIM, which is significantly lower than that of digital circuits.This paper proposes an architecture for a time-domain CIM-based neural network accelerator that leverages the varying output time of the TDC. The key contributions of this work are as follows: 1) We introduce an early-termination scheme for time-domain CIM, which dynamically determines the length of the CIM clock period by deriving the maximum possible multiply-accumulate (MAC) value based on the current input. This approach reduces computation time for low-MAC results. 2) We propose an input-inversion scheme to decrease the computation time for high-MAC results. By employing linear combination, we perform bit-inversion on large inputs and compensate for the results using a low-cost digital circuit. 3) We propose a hardware optimization on the compensation circuit by combining it with shift-adders in traditional neural network accelerators.Experiments show that our schemes could gain 2× ∼ 2.9× speedup under different clock period specifications with 5.82% area overhead compared to the CIM macro.
Staphylococcus aureus is one of the major bacterial species that may cause clinical infection and food-poisoning cases. Strains of this bacterial species may produce a series of superantigens (SAgs) ...(i.e., staphylococcal enterotoxins SEs, staphylococcal enterotoxin-like toxins, and toxic shock syndrome toxin). In this study, S. aureus strains from clinical samples and food-poisoning cases in Taiwan were collected; their SAg profiles, and SmaI digestion patterns determined by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), were then analyzed. Results showed that their SAg gene profiles and SmaI digestion patterns of chromosomal DNA were highly diverse. Although PFGE has been used as a criterion standard for typing of S. aureus strains, and the SAg profiles have been used in combination with PFGE for typing of S. aureus strains, we found that strains grouped in these combined patterns could be further discriminated by the random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) method. Thus, the combined use of SAg profiles, PFGE, and RAPD patterns permits high discrimination for typing of S. aureus strains from not only the clinical samples but also the food-poisoning cases. Such a combined method may be used as a highly accurate approach for epidemiological study and tracing of the contamination origin of staphylococcal infections either in hospitals or food-poisoning cases.
A general three-port S-parameter de-embedding method using shield-based test structures for microwave on-wafer characterization is presented in this paper. This method does not require any physical ...equivalent-circuit assumption for the surrounding parasitics of a device-under-test. We use one open and three thru dummy devices to remove the parasitic components connected to the gate, drain, and source terminals of a MOSFET. By shielding the lossy silicon substrate, the cross-coupling from port to port can be significantly mitigated, and thus, the parasitics of probe pads and interconnects at each port can be separately subtracted. The MOS transistor and its corresponding dummy structures fabricated in a 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS process were characterized up to 20 GHz. Compared with the two-port cascade-based de-embedding method, the proposed three-port de-embedding procedure can further eliminate the parasitics associated with the dangling leg in the source terminal. The impacts of the accuracy of the de-embedding technique on device modeling and simulation are also discussed.
Chemostats supplied with limited lactose were used to ask whether it was possible to generate and isolate any mutant of Escherichia coli lactose permease which allowed cells to grow faster. The ...permease and beta-galactosidase activities of the chemostat culture initially rose together to reach a plateau. After 30 days, the former underwent a second increase alone. From this culture, a faster-growing mutant was isolated. Its permease gene was cloned, sequenced, and found to have a single base pair changed. Thymine at position 199 was changed to guanine, resulting in serine 67 being substituted by alanine. Cells bearing this mutant in the plasmid could grow faster than parents in 10 microM lactose. The Km of the mutant permease toward lactose was 1.4 mM, about half of the wild-type value. Thus, a mutant with higher affinity for substrate could be selected from the chemostat.
Patient self-management is necessary for care and management of chronic diseases. It can help patients to have a better understanding of their own lifestyle and health behavior and thus improve the ...disease condition and health status. Traditionally, in self-management, patients and physicians manually note down vital signs, medication record, healthcare visits, and activity logs on paper or onto a computer. These methods of recording may yield data, but it is difficult to maintain or manage. This study is aimed for developing a system to build a personal health record (PHR) for diabetes care automatically, generate continuity of care document (CCD) files for sharing of health information and set up clinical guidelines (CGs). Important advantages of clinical guidelines for medical care including improvement in clinical practice, support for medical decision making, and reduced hospital delays. In addition, our approach follows the principle of American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) in designing a platform. The results reveal that the decrease rate of HbA1C of patients for intervention group (66.6%) is better than control group (40%) after three months. The platform not only assists patients in being actively involved in their own personal health records, but improves their health status as well.
Chemostats supplied with limited lactose were used to ask whether it was possible to generate and isolate any mutant ofEscherichia colilactose permease which allowed cells to grow faster. The ...permease and β-galactosidase activities of the chemostat culture initially rose together to reach a plateau. After 30 days, the former underwent a second increase alone. From this culture, a faster-growing mutant was isolated. Its permease gene was cloned, sequenced, and found to have a single base pair changed. Thymine at position 199 was changed to guanine, resulting in serine 67 being substituted by alanine. Cells bearing this mutant in the plasmid could grow faster than parents in 10 μM lactose. The Kmof the mutant permease toward lactose was 1.4 mM, about half of the wild-type value. Thus, a mutant with higher affinity for substrate could be selected from the chemostat.
PDF
