We propose how to achieve nonreciprocal quantum entanglement of light and motion and reveal its counterintuitive robustness against random losses. We find that by splitting the counterpropagating ...lights of a spinning resonator via the Sagnac effect, photons and phonons can be entangled strongly in a chosen direction but fully uncorrelated in the other. This makes it possible both to realize quantum nonreciprocity even in the absence of any classical nonreciprocity and also to achieve significant entanglement revival against backscattering losses in practical devices. Our work provides a way to protect and engineer quantum resources by utilizing diverse nonreciprocal devices, for building noise-tolerant quantum processors, realizing chiral networks, and backaction-immune quantum sensors.
To support multiple on-demand services over fixed communication networks, network operators must allow flexible customization and fast provision of their network resources. One effective approach to ...this end is network virtualization, whereby each service is mapped to a virtual subnetwork providing dedicated on-demand support to network users. In practice, each service consists of a prespecified sequence of functions, called a service function chain (SFC), while each service function in a SFC can only be provided by some given network nodes. Thus, to support a given service, we must select network function nodes according to the SFC and determine the routing strategy through the function nodes in a specified order. A crucial network slicing problem that needs to be addressed is how to optimally localize the service functions in a physical network as specified by the SFCs, subject to link and node capacity constraints. In this paper, we formulate the network slicing problem as a mixed binary linear program and establish its strong NP-hardness. Furthermore, we propose efficient penalty successive upper bound minimization (PSUM) and PSUM-R(ounding) algorithms, and two heuristic algorithms to solve the problem. Simulation results are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.
The discovery of reversible modifications in messenger RNA (mRNA) opens new research directions in RNA modification-mediated epigenetic regulation. Yeast is an extensively used model organism in ...molecular biology. Systematic investigation and profiling of modifications in yeast mRNA would promote our understanding of the physiological regulation mechanisms in yeast. However, due to the high abundance of ribosomal RNA (rRNA) and transfer RNA (tRNA) in total RNA, isolation of low abundance of mRNA frequently suffers from the contamination of rRNA and tRNA, which will lead to the false-positive determination and inaccurate quantification of modifications in mRNA. Therefore, obtaining high-purity mRNA is critical for precise determination and accurate quantification of modifications in mRNA, especially for studies that focus on discovering new ones. Herein, we proposed a successive orthogonal isolation method by combining polyT-based purification and agarose gel electrophoresis purification for extracting high-purity mRNA. With the extracted high-purity yeast mRNA, we systemically explored the modifications in yeast mRNA by liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-MS/MS) analysis. The results showed that in addition to the previously reported eight kinds of modifications, two novel modifications of inosine (Ino) and 2'-
-methylinosine (Im) were identified to be prevalent in yeast mRNA. It is worth noting that Im was reported for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, to exist in living organisms in the three domains of life. Moreover, we observed that the levels of 10 kinds of modifications including Ino and Im in yeast mRNA exhibited dynamic change at different growth stages of yeast cells. Furthermore, Im in mRNA showed a significant decrease while in response to H
O
treatment. These results indicated that the two newly identified modifications in yeast mRNA were involved in yeast cell growth and response to environmental stress. Taken together, we reported two new modifications of Ino and Im in yeast mRNA, which expends the diversity of RNA modifications in yeast and also suggests new regulators for modulating yeast physiological functions.
To improve traffic management ability, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are gradually upgrading legacy network devices to programmable devices that support Software-Defined Networking (SDN). The ...coexistence of legacy and SDN devices gives rise to a hybrid SDN. Existing hybrid SDNs do not consider the potential performance issues introduced by a centralized SDN controller: flow requests processed by a highly loaded controller may experience long-tail processing delay; inappropriate multi-controller deployment could increase the propagation delay of flow requests. In this paper, we propose to jointly consider the deployment of SDN switches and their controllers for hybrid SDNs. We formulate the joint problem as an optimization problem that maximizes the number of flows that can be controlled and managed by the SDN and minimizes the propagation delay of flow requests between SDN controllers and switches under a given upgrade budget constraint. We show this problem is NP-hard. To efficiently solve the problem, we propose some techniques (e.g., strengthening the constraints and adding additional valid inequalities) to accelerate the global optimization solver for solving the problem for small networks and an efficient heuristic algorithm for solving it for large networks. The simulation results from real network topologies illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques and show that our proposed heuristic algorithm uses a small number of controllers to manage a high amount of flows with good performance.
With the rapid development of mobile Internet, the demand for multicast is growing rapidly, such as content pushing and video streaming. The multicast service is usually offered to users without ...interrupting their on-going unicast transmission, and thus the multicast and unicast beamformers needs to be jointly designed, which generally requires perfect channel state information (CSI). However, perfect CSI is usually unavailable due to the channel estimation error. In this paper, we propose a learning based approach to jointly design the multicast and unicast beamformers with imperfect CSI. To learn the beamforming strategy, a new graph neural network (GNN) based architecture named unicast-multicast GNN (UMGNN) is proposed, which only requires the estimated channel. UMGNN can guarantee the permutation invariance/equivalence and model the special property in the multicast transmission, i.e., the multicast rate is determined by the worst user. Moreover, by sharing the parameters across different users, UMGNN exhibits a pretty good scalability to different number of users. Numerical results show that UMGNN outperforms a fully connected neural network and a widely used sampling-based algorithm. To highlight its performance in the multicast transmission, we also show that UMGNN can find the correct worst user that determines the multicast rate.
RNA editing modifies cytidines (C) to uridines (U) at specific sites in the transcripts of mitochondria and plastids, altering the amino acid specified by the DNA sequence. Here we report the ...identification of a critical editing factor of mitochondrial nad7 transcript via molecular characterization of a small kernel 1 (smk1) mutant in Zea mays (maize). Mutations in Smk1 arrest both the embryo and endosperm development. Cloning of Smk1 indicates that it encodes an E‐subclass pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) protein that is targeted to mitochondria. Loss of SMK1 function abolishes the C → U editing at the nad7‐836 site, leading to the retention of a proline codon that is edited to encode leucine in the wild type. The smk1 mutant showed dramatically reduced complex–I assembly and NADH dehydrogenase activity, and abnormal biogenesis of the mitochondria. Analysis of the ortholog in Oryza sativa (rice) reveals that rice SMK1 has a conserved function in C → U editing of the mitochondrial nad7‐836 site. T‐DNA knock‐out mutants showed abnormal embryo and endosperm development, resulting in embryo or seedling lethality. The leucine at NAD7‐279 is highly conserved from bacteria to flowering plants, and analysis of genome sequences from many plants revealed a molecular coevolution between the requirement for C → U editing at this site and the existence of an SMK1 homolog. These results demonstrate that Smk1 encodes a PPR‐E protein that is required for nad7‐836 editing, and this editing is critical to NAD7 function in complex‐I assembly in mitochondria, and hence to embryo and endosperm development in maize and rice.
Growing experimental and clinical evidence suggests that a chronic inflammatory response induced by gut microbiome critically contribute to the development of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Previous ...studies demonstrated the disturbance of lymphocyte subpopulations in RA patients. The purpose of this study was to explore the characteristics of gut microbiome and the associations between bacterium and lymphocyte subpopulations as well as cytokines in patients with RA. Fecal samples from 205 RA patients and 199 healthy controls (HCs) were collected for bacterial DNA extraction and 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequencing. The levels of peripheral lymphocyte subpopulation such as T, B, CD4+T, CD8+T, NK, T helper 1 (Th1), Th2, Th17, and regulatory T cells (Tregs) of these subjects were detected by flow cytometry combined with standard absolute counting beads. The serum levels of cytokines interleukin-2 (IL-2), IL-4, IL-6, IL-10, IL-17, tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), and interferon-γ (INF-γ) were tested by flow cytometric bead array (CBA). Alpha and beta diversity of gut microbiome were explored by bioinformatics analysis. Spearman rank correlation test was used to explore the relationships between gut microbiome and lymphocyte subsets as well as serum cytokines. The diversity and relative abundance of intestinal microbiota in patients with RA were significantly different from those in HCs. Detailly, the abundant of phylum Proteobacteria in RA patients was more than that in HCs, while Firmicutes was less than in HCs. There was increased relative abundance of genus Clostridium_XlVa as well as genus Blautia, more abundance of Ruminococcus2 in patients with lower levels of T, B, CD4+T, and Tregs. In addition, the relative abundances of Pelagibacterium, Oxalobacter, ClostridiumXlVb, and ClostridiumXVIII were correlated with cytokines. Gut microbiome of RA patients was clearly different from that of HCs. Abnormal bacteria communities are associated with the altered levels of lymphocyte subpopulation and cytokines, which might be one of the pathogenesis of RA.
Cultural creative industries (CCIs) have become an important driver in motivating the modern economy around the world, and the sustainable development of CCI is calling for a proper profit mechanism. ...Using China as the research context, this article investigates how copyright is used in the development of CCIs. The cities of Shenzhen and Hangzhou are selected as cases, and I identify 98 representative CCI enterprises from Shenzhen and 127 representative CCI enterprises from Hangzhou to conduct the analysis. It is found that the development of CCIs in different cities shows different models with regional characteristics, and shares some characteristics in common; most CCI enterprises have experience with copyright registration; copyright is highly correlated with other types of intellectual property (e.g., patent, trademark), and there is an obvious integration of copyright and technology; judicial lawsuits have become a major tool for enterprises to use copyright to protect their benefits, with plaintiffs winning the majority of the lawsuits. This research has both significant theoretical and practical implications, and contributes to theory about the use of copyright in the development of CCI at a regional level.
Cysteine (Cys), homocysteine (Hcy), and glutathione (GSH) are interconnected and play essential roles for regulating the redox balance of biological processes. However, finding a simple and effective ...method for the simultaneous determination for these three biothiols in biological systems is always a challenge. In this work, we report a method for the simultaneous quantitative determination of three biothiols in a mixture using a monochlorinated boron dipyrromethene (BODIPY)-based fluorometric sensor. At a specified period of time, after reacting with excess sensor, Hcy and GSH form predominantly sulfur-substituted BODIPY, while Cys generates sulfur-amino-diBODIPY due to a fast substitution–rearrangement–substitution reaction. A significant difference in polarities of these respective major products simplifies their separation by TLC, thus leading to the simultaneous determination of Cys, Hcy, and GSH readily. The sensor was successfully applied for the simultaneous quantitative detection of three biothiols in human serum, and the results were in good agreement with those obtained via high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).
•The NLRP3 inflammasome is closely associated with the pathogenesis of AD, such as the Aβ, tau pathology, and so on.•A series of therapeutic treatments targeting NLRP3 inflammasome could alleviate ...the dysfunctions following AD.•The NLRP3 inflammasome is a promising therapeutic molecular target for AD via regulating neuroinflammation.
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases, and it is characterised by progressive deterioration in cognitive and memory abilities, which can severely influence the elderly population’s daily living abilities. Although researchers have made great efforts in the field of AD, there are still no well-established strategies to prevent and treat this disease. Therefore, better clarification of the molecular mechanisms associated with the onset and progression of AD is critical to provide a theoretical basis for the establishment of novel preventive and therapeutic strategies. Currently, it is generally believed that neuroinflammation plays a key role in the pathogenesis of AD. Inflammasome, a multiprotein complex, is involved in the innate immune system, and it can mediate inflammatory responses and pyroptosis, which lead to neurodegeneration. Among the various types of inflammasomes, the NLRP3 inflammasome is the most characterised in neurodegenerative diseases, especially in AD. The activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome causes the generation of caspase-1-mediated interleukin (IL)-1β and IL-18 in microglia cells, where neuroinflammation is involved in the development and progression of AD. Thus, the NLRP3 inflammasome is likely to be a crucial therapeutic molecular target for AD via regulating neuroinflammation. In this review, we summarise the current knowledge on the role and regulatory mechanisms of the NLRP3 inflammasome in the pathogenic mechanisms of AD. We also focus on a series of potential therapeutic treatments targeting NLRP3 inflammasome for AD. Further clarification of the regulatory mechanisms of the NLRP3 inflammasome in AD may provide more useful clues to develop novel AD treatment strategies.
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