The paper aims to return to the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure to examine the application of the structural linguistic terminologies in Lacanian psychoanalysis and the critique of ...ideology by Slavoj Žižek. First, the author examines Saussure’s structural linguistics terminologies in his book Course in General Linguistics. Then, the differences between its original definitions and their application in Lacanian psychoanalysis and the critique of the ideology of Slavoj Žižek are compared. The author found that although the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan used various linguistic terminologies that are initially from Saussure’s structural linguistics, he radically rewrote those concepts and perfectly “quilt” them into his theory of psychoanalysis. Besides, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek carefully examined the Lacanian linguistic view and applied it to the critique of ideology. Indeed, many correlations between Lacanian linguistic terminologies and Saussure’s terminologies in his structural linguistics have been fully concerned by scholars around the world. Nevertheless, from the author’s point of view, it is essential for people nowadays who would like to examine contemporary philosophy deeply, psychoanalysis as well as the critique of ideology to return to Saussure’s book and carefully examine the original forms of the linguistic terms. Thus, this paper mainly focuses on the idea of Sassure’s structural linguistics to give readers some new inspiration by tracing the origin of structural linguistic terms.
Drought is the most important environmental stress affecting agriculture worldwide. Exploiting yield potential and maintaining yield stability of crops in water-limited environments are urgent tasks ...that must be undertaken in order to guarantee food supply for the increasing world population. Tremendous efforts have been devoted to identifying key regulators in plant drought response through genetic, molecular, and biochemical studies using, in most cases, the model species Arabidopsis thaliana. However, only a small portion of these regulators have been explored as potential candidate genes for their application in the improvement of drought tolerance in crops. Based on biological functions, these genes can be classified into the following three categories: (1) stress-responsive transcriptional regulation (e.g. DREB1, AREB, NF-YB); (2) post-transcriptional RNA or protein modifications such as phosphorylation/dephosphorylation (e.g. SnRK2, ABI1) and farnesylation (e.g. ERA1); and (3) osomoprotectant metabolism or molecular chaperones (e.g. CspB). While continuing down the path to discovery of new target genes, serious efforts are also focused on fine-tuning the expression of the known candidate genes for stress tolerance in specific temporal and spatial patterns to avoid negative effects in plant growth and development. These efforts are starting to bear fruit by showing yield improvements in several crops under a variety of water-deprivation conditions. As most such evaluations have been performed under controlled growth environments, a gap still remains between early success in the laboratory and the application of these techniques to the elite cultivars of staple crops in the field. Nevertheless, significant progress has been made in the identification of signaling pathways and master regulators for drought tolerance. The knowledge acquired will facilitate the genetic engineering of single or multiple targets and quantitative trait loci in key crops to create commercial-grade cultivars with high-yielding potential under both optimal and suboptimal conditions.
For the study, we determine the potential biomarkers and uncover the regulatory mechanisms of lncRNA MALAT1 / miR-145 / SOX9 axis on the abilities of cell growth and cell metastasis of colorectal ...cancer.
Previously published dataset GSE18105 from GEO database was used for microarray analysis to identify differential-expressed lncRNAs and mRNAs. The miRNA which had targeted relationships with both lncRNA and mRNA was predicted using miRCode and Targetscan. The association between lncRNA and miRNA, miRNA and mRNA was verified using dual-luciferase reporter assay. Expression levels of lncRNA MALAT1, miR-145 and SOX9 were examined by quantitative RT-PCR analysis. The cell viability of two cancer cell lines was compared by CCK-8 assay. Colony formation was hired to detected cell proliferation. The cell cycle distribution and apoptotic cell rate were conducted by flow cytometry assay. Wound healing as well as transwell assay were compare the cell migration and cell invasion respectively among groups. The effect of MALAT1 on colorectal cancer in vivo was constructed by xenograft model.
Significantly dysregulated lncRNAs and mRNAs were identified by microarray analysis. By experimental verification, MALAT1 and SOX9 were expressed in a high percentage of colorectal cancer tumors and cells, while miR-145 was in a low expression. We also identified miR-145 as a target of MALAT1 and SOX9. MALAT1 played a role in regulating cancer process by functioning as a competing endogenous RNA. Silencing MALAT1 could effectively decrease the expression level of SOX9, thus suppress cell viability and metastasis. Down-regulated MALAT1 could induce resistance of G1 phase in cell cycle, and facilitation of colorectal cancer cell apoptosis. Nude mice injected with cells transfected with si-MALAT1 had smaller tumor on size and weight.
The regulatory function of lncRNA MALAT1 / miR-145 / SOX9 axis was revealed in colorectal cancer based on bioinformatics analysis. LncRNA MALAT1 could facilitate colorectal cancer cell proliferation, invasion and migration by down-regulating miR-145 and up-regulating SOX9. LncRNA MALAT1 could suppress cell cycle and apoptosis through MALAT1 / miR-145 / SOX9 axis.
A hub motor is an effective drive system for Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs). However, due to limitations on packaging and cost, there are few applications in which hub motors are taken as the only ...actuators for a brake vehicle. Most applications involve a Regenerative Braking System (RBS) combined with a Hydraulic Braking System (HBS). In this paper, a top hierarchy Advanced Emergency Braking System (AEBS) controller is designed in Matlab/Simulink and State-flow, including functionalities of basic emergency braking, brake force distribution between front and rear wheels, anti-lock braking and coordination between RBS and HBS based on Model Predictive Control (MPC); a Seven Degrees of Freedom (DOF) BEV chassis model is constructed and rear-end crash test scenarios are created in Carsim with a high and low road adhesion coefficient. A series of comparison tests show that not only are the stopping distances between the ego vehicle and target vehicle shorter, but also the braking torques, longitudinal slip ratio and rotation speed of each wheel are well controlled without wheel locking. To sum up, in addition to meeting the AEBS requirements of avoiding a rear-end collision, the control strategy developed in this paper also levels up braking performance and enhances vehicle stability on both high-mu and low-mu roads for BEVs driven by a hub motor independently.
Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations are the strongest response predictors to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) therapy, but knowledge of the EGFR mutation frequency on lung ...adenocarcinoma is still limited to retrospective studies. The PIONEER study (NCT01185314) is a prospective molecular epidemiology study in Asian patients with newly diagnosed advanced lung adenocarcinoma, aiming to prospectively analyze EGFR mutation status in IIIB/IV treatment-naïve lung adenocarcinomas in Asia. We report the mainland China subset results. Eligible patients (≥20 yrs old, IIIB/IV adenocarcinoma and treatment-naïve) were registered in 17 hospitals in mainland China. EGFR was tested for mutations by amplification refractory mutation system using biopsy samples. Demographic and clinical characteristics were collected for subgroup analyses. A total of 747 patients were registered. Successful EGFR mutation analysis was performed in 741, with an overall mutation rate of 50.2%. The EGFR active mutation rate is 48.0% (with 1.3% of combined active and resistance mutations). Tobacco use (>30 pack-year vs. 0-10 pack-year, OR 0.27, 95%CI: 0.17-0.42) and regional lymph nodes involvement (N3 vs. N0, OR 0.47, 95%CI: 0.29-0.76) were independent predictors of EGFR mutation in multivariate analysis. However, even in regular smokers, the EGFR mutation frequency was 35.3%. The EGFR mutation frequency was similar between diverse biopsy sites and techniques. The overall EGFR mutation frequency of the mainland China subset was 50.2%, independently associated with the intensity of tobacco use and regional lymph nodes involvement. The relatively high frequency of EGFR mutations in the mainland China subset suggest that any effort to obtain tissue sample for EGFR mutation testing should be encouraged.
Given the detrimental effect of spectral variations in a hyperspectral image (HSI), this article investigates to recover its discriminative representation to improve the classification performance. ...We propose a new method, namely local low-rank approximation with superpixel-guided locality preserving graph (LLRA-SLPG), which can reduce the spectral variations and preserve the local manifold structure of an HSI. Specifically, the LLRA-SLPG method first clusters pixels of an HSI into several groups (i.e., superpixels). By taking advantage of the local manifold structure, a Laplacian graph is constructed from the superpixels to ensure that a typical pixel should be similar to its neighbors within the same superpixel. The LLRA-SLPG model can increase the compactness of pixels belonging to the same class by reducing spectral variations while promoting local consistency via the Laplacian graph. The objective function of the LLRA-SLPG model can be solved efficiently in an iterative manner. Experimental results on four benchmark datasets validate the superiority of the LLRA-SLPG model over state-of-the-art methods, particularly in cases where only extremely few training pixels are available.
The role of angiotensin II (Ang II) in hypertension has been clarified, but recent studies show that aging-associated arterial changes and those with hypertension as well as atherosclerosis may have ...some common pathogenesis. This study aimed to clarify the effects of Ang II on endothelial senescence by establishing a replicative senescence model of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) in vitro. The population-doubling level (PDL) was calculated, PDL5 and PDL25 respectively referred to cells cultured for 2 days and 30 days. Compared with Ang II-treated young PDL5 cells, chronic stimulation of Ang II significantly promoted the senescence-associated β-galactosidase activity and expression of senescence-related genes p16 and p21, slowed down cell growth rate, and decreased expression of longevity-related genes sirtuin1 as well as telomerase activity in senescent PDL25 cells (all P < 0.05). Moreover, expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines and adhesion molecules were up-regulated in Ang II-treated PDL25 cells (all P < 0.05). Ang II-induced senescent progression and inflammation were attenuated by angiotensin receptor blocker valsartan. In young PDL5 cells, Ang II promoted the endothelial viability including cell proliferation, migration, angiogenesis and cell adhesion to monocytes; however, chronic stimulation of Ang II suppressed the cell viability, promoted cell adhesion and apoptosis in senescent PDL25 cells, which could be ameliorated by short-term valsartan, but long-term valsartan had no effects. In addition, Ang II-induced senescent features could be partly recovered if Ang II was stopped at PDL20. These findings suggested that chronic stimulation of Ang II can accelerate the endothelial senescence process which is implicated in aging-related atherosclerosis.
•Ang II accelerates cellular aging and inflammation in senescent endothelial cells.•Ang II inhibits cell viability and induces apoptosis in senescent endothelial cells.•Ang II-induced senescence status and inflammation can be attenuated by valsartan.•Senescent features of endothelial cells are partly recovered if Ang II withdrawal.
Summary Background Maintenance treatment of patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) without disease progression after first-line chemotherapy is a subject of ongoing research. The ...aim of the randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, INFORM study was to investigate the efficacy, safety, and tolerability of the EGFR–tyrosine-kinase inhibitor gefitinib in the maintenance setting. Methods Patients were aged 18 years or older, were of east Asian ethnic origin, had a life expectancy of more than 12 weeks, histologically or cytologically confirmed stage IIIb or IV NSCLC, a WHO performance status of 0–2, and had completed four cycles of first-line platinum-based doublet chemotherapy without disease progression or unacceptable toxic effects. Between Sept 28, 2008 and Aug 11, 2009, 296 patients were randomly assigned 1:1 to receive either gefitinib (250 mg per day orally) or placebo (orally) within 3–6 weeks after chemotherapy until progression or unacceptable toxic effects. Randomisation was done via an interactive web response system with computer-generated randomisation codes. Our primary endpoint was progression-free survival assessed in the intention-to-treat population. This completed study is registered with Clinicaltrials.gov , number NCT00770588. Findings Progression-free survival was significantly longer with gefitinib (n=148) than with placebo (148) (median progression-free survival 4·8 months 95% CI 3·2–8·5 vs 2·6 months 1·6–2·8; hazard ratio HR 0·42, 95% CI 0·33–0·55; p<0·0001). Adverse events occurred more frequently with gefitinib than with placebo; the most common adverse events of any grade were rash (73 50% of 147 in the gefitinib group vs 14 9% of 148 in the placebo group), diarrhoea (37 25% vs 13 9%), and alanine aminotransferase increase (31 21% vs 12 8%). The most commonly reported grade 3 or 4 adverse event was alanine aminotransferase increase (3 2% of 147 in the gefitinib group, none of 148 in the placebo group). Ten of 147 (7%) patients given gefitinib and five of 148 (3%) patients given placebo had serious adverse events. Three deaths were thought to be related to treatment with gefitinib: one from interstitial lung disease; one from lung infection; and one from pneumonia. Interpretation Maintenance treatment with gefitinib significantly prolonged progression-free survival compared with placebo in patients from east Asia with advanced NSCLC who achieved disease control after first-line chemotherapy. Clinicians should consider these data when making decisions about maintenance treatment in such patients. Funding AstraZeneca.
In intelligent warehouse, the problem of transporting goods in intelligent warehouse is becoming increasingly complex, and the traditional way of automatically guiding vehicles (AGVs) is inefficient, ...so automated robot systems are introduced into intelligent warehouses. In this paper, a task assignment model for robots is presented with the transportation problem of robots in intelligent warehouse as the research background. To solve the robot task assignment problem in intelligent warehouse, a novel Pareto-based multiobjective optimization algorithm (MOEA) is proposed, and the aggregation function is invoked to replace the crowding distance; the brain storm operator is used for crossover and mutation. Finally, the ability of the algorithm to solve the benchmark test problem suite and real-world problems is experimentally confirmed.
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