Rice blast disease, caused by Magnaporthe oryzae, threatens global food security. The rice blast pathosystem is a longstanding model system for understanding plant-microbe interactions. In order to ...elucidate the coevolution of the host and pathogen, and provide the appropriate methods for preventing or controlling rice blast disease, researchers have focused on the evolution of virulence factors and resistance genes. Thus far, more than 30 rice blast resistance（R） genes and 12 avirulence（Avr） genes have been cloned. This review summarizes the cloned rice blast R genes, cloned Avr genes of M. oryzae and the interaction between them. This discussion also considers some of the major unanswered questions concerning this pathosystem and the opportunities for future investigations.
Background Deterioration of sleep quality has been reported to contribute to the incidence of diabetes and may be responsible for glycemic status in diabetes. The present study explored the ...relationship between sleep quality and glycemic variability in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D). Methods We recruited 111 patients with T2D for this cross-sectional study. Each patient underwent flash glucose monitoring for 14 days to obtain glycemic variability parameters, such as standard deviation of glucose (SD), coefficient of variation of glucose (CV), mean amplitude of glycemic excursions (MAGE), mean of daily differences (MODD), and time in glucose range of 3.9-10 mmol/L (TIR.sub.3.9-10). After 14 days of flash glucose monitoring, each patient received a questionnaire on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) to evaluate subjective sleep quality. HbA1c was also collected to assess average glucose. Results HbA1c was comparable among the subgroups of PSQI score tertiles. Across ascending tertiles of PSQI scores, SD, CV and MAGE were increased, while TIR.sub.3.9-10 was decreased (p for trend < 0.05), but not MODD (p for trend = 0.090). Moreover, PSQI scores were positively correlated with SD, CV, MODD and MAGE (r = 0.322, 0.361, 0.308 and 0.354, respectively, p < 0.001) and were inversely correlated with TIR.sub.3.9-10 (r = - 0.386, p < 0.001). After adjusting for other relevant data by multivariate linear regression analyses, PSQI scores were independently responsible for SD (beta = 0.251, t = 2.112, p = 0.041), CV (beta = 0.286, t = 2.207, p = 0.033), MAGE (beta = 0.323, t = 2.489, p = 0.018), and TIR.sub.3.9-10 (beta = - 0.401, t = - 3.930, p < 0.001) but not for MODD (beta = 0.188, t = 1.374, p = 0.177). Conclusions Increased glycemic variability assessed by flash glucose monitoring was closely associated with poor subjective sleep quality evaluated by the PSQI in patients with T2D. Keywords: Glycemic variability, Sleep quality, Type 2 diabetes
COVID‐19 pneumonia started in December 2019 and caused large casualties and huge economic losses. In this study, we intended to develop a computer‐aided diagnosis system based on artificial ...intelligence to automatically identify the COVID‐19 in chest computed tomography images. We utilized transfer learning to obtain the image‐level representation (ILR) based on the backbone deep convolutional neural network. Then, a novel neighboring aware representation (NAR) was proposed to exploit the neighboring relationships between the ILR vectors. To obtain the neighboring information in the feature space of the ILRs, an ILR graph was generated based on the k‐nearest neighbors algorithm, in which the ILRs were linked with their k‐nearest neighboring ILRs. Afterward, the NARs were computed by the fusion of the ILRs and the graph. On the basis of this representation, a novel end‐to‐end COVID‐19 classification architecture called neighboring aware graph neural network (NAGNN) was proposed. The private and public data sets were used for evaluation in the experiments. Results revealed that our NAGNN outperformed all the 10 state‐of‐the‐art methods in terms of generalization ability. Therefore, the proposed NAGNN is effective in detecting COVID‐19, which can be used in clinical diagnosis.
China is one of the countries with the highest incidence of gastric cancer. There are differences in epidemiological characteristics, clinicopathological features, tumor biological characteristics, ...treatment patterns, and drug selection between gastric cancer patients from the Eastern and Western countries. Non‐Chinese guidelines cannot specifically reflect the diagnosis and treatment characteristics for the Chinese gastric cancer patients. The Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology (CSCO) arranged for a panel of senior experts specializing in all sub‐specialties of gastric cancer to compile, discuss, and revise the guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer based on the findings of evidence‐based medicine in China and abroad. By referring to the opinions of industry experts, taking into account of regional differences, giving full consideration to the accessibility of diagnosis and treatment resources, these experts have conducted experts’ consensus judgement on relevant evidence and made various grades of recommendations for the clinical diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer to reflect the value of cancer treatment and meeting health economic indexes. This guideline uses tables and is complemented by explanatory and descriptive notes covering the diagnosis, comprehensive treatment, and follow‐up visits for gastric cancer.
Computer-aided diagnosis system is becoming a more and more important tool in clinical treatment, which can provide a verification of the doctors’ decisions. In this paper, we proposed a novel ...abnormal brain detection method for magnetic resonance image. Firstly, a pre-trained AlexNet was modified with batch normalization layers and trained on our brain images. Then, the last several layers were replaced with an extreme learning machine. A searching method was proposed to find the best number of layers to be replaced. Finally, the extreme learning machine was optimized by chaotic bat algorithm to obtain better classification performance. Experiment results based on 5 × hold-out validation revealed that our method achieved state-of-the-art performance.
Chlorine disinfection to drinking water plays an important role in preventing and controlling waterborne disease outbreaks globally. Nevertheless, little is known about why it enriches the antibiotic ...resistance genes (ARGs) in bacteria after chlorination. Here, ARGs released from killed antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB), and culturable chlorine-injured bacteria produced in the chlorination process as the recipient, were investigated to determine their contribution to the horizontal transfer of ARGs during disinfection treatment. We discovered Escherichia coli, Salmonella aberdeen, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterococcus faecalis showed diverse resistance to sodium hypochlorite, and transferable RP4 could be released from killed sensitive donor consistently. Meanwhile, the survival of chlorine-tolerant injured bacteria with enhanced cell membrane permeabilisation and a strong oxidative stress-response demonstrated that a physiologically competent cell could be transferred by RP4 with an improved transformation frequency of up to 550 times compared with the corresponding untreated bacteria. Furthermore, the water quality factors involving chemical oxygen demand (COD
), ammonium nitrogen and metal ions (Ca
and K
) could significantly promote above transformation frequency of released RP4 into injured E. faecalis. Our findings demonstrated that the chlorination process promoted the horizontal transfer of plasmids by natural transformation, which resulted in the exchange of ARGs across bacterial genera and the emergence of new ARB, as well as the transfer of chlorine-injured opportunistic pathogen from non-ARB to ARB. Considering that the transfer elements were quite resistant to degradation through disinfection, this situation poses a potential risk to public health.
Dynamic relaxation is an intrinsic and universal feature of glasses and enables fluctuation and dissipation to occur, which induces plentiful behaviour, maintains equilibrium, and achieves evolution ...in glass systems. Relaxation covers a broad time, frequency, and temperature ranges and determines the functions, behaviour, properties and applications of glassy system. Investigations of dynamic relaxation are significant for understanding the nature of glasses, liquids, and the critical issues of glass formation and transition, dynamic and structural heterogeneities, flow behaviour and flow units, various crossover temperatures, deformations, aging and rejuvenation, stability, crystallization, and the mechanical and physical properties of glasses. Metallic glasses (MGs) with unique microstructure and mechanical and functional properties, offer a simple but effective system for study of relaxation and related issues in glass science. In this review, a panoramic view of the state of the art of various aspects of dynamic relaxation in metallic glassy system, as well as a comparison with other glassy systems, is presented. The features and mechanisms of each known relaxation mode including primary α-relaxation, slow and fast 7 -relaxations, nearly constant loss, and boson peak, as well as their coupling in MGs, are reviewed and summarized. Emphasis is presented to the microstructural origin of these dynamic relaxation modes and their connection with the dynamic and structural heterogeneities in MGs. The factors which determine and affect the relaxation modes and behaviour in low-dimensional MGs are also introduced. It is shown that the relaxation in MGs is connected with their structural characteristics, heterogeneity, formation, glass transition, flow behaviour, physical and mechanical properties, crystallization, stability, and the localized atomic diffusion. The roles and the importance of dynamic relaxation in understanding many crucial issues in glassy physics are demonstrated. The correlations between dynamic relaxation and various properties of MGs are established and summarized. With this review on dynamic relaxation in metallic glasses, relaxation in MG can provide an effective perspective for understanding nearly all issues in metallic glasses. It is demonstrated that the relationship of relaxation to various properties, similar to the relationship of structure–property of crystalline materials, can be applied to control and design of new glassy materials with multiple functionalities, superior mechanical performance, and other extraordinary physical and chemical properties. Finally, the key unsolved questions regarding dynamic relaxation in metallic glasses are listed, and several emerging research directions in this still-evolving field are highlighted for future investigations.
Nonlinear optical properties of materials such as second and higher order harmonic generation and electro-optic effect play pivotal roles in lasers, frequency conversion, electro-optic modulators, ...switches, and so forth. The strength of nonlinear optical responses highly depends on intrinsic crystal symmetry, transition dipole moments, specific optical excitation, and local environment. Using first-principles electronic structure theory, here we predict giant second harmonic generation (SHG) in recently discovered two-dimensional (2D) ferroelectric–ferroelastic multiferroics–group IV monochalcogenides (i.e., GeSe, GeS, SnSe, and SnS). Remarkably, the strength of SHG susceptibility in GeSe and SnSe monolayers is more than 1 order of magnitude higher than that in monolayer MoS2, and 2 orders of magnitude higher than that in monolayer hexagonal BN. Their extraordinary SHG is dominated by the large residual of two opposite intraband contributions in the SHG susceptibility. More importantly, the SHG polarization anisotropy is strongly correlated with the intrinsic ferroelastic and ferroelectric orders in group IV monochalcogenide monolayers. Our present findings provide a microscopic understanding of the large SHG susceptibility in 2D group IV monochalcogenide multiferroics from first-principles theory and open up a variety of new avenues for 2D ferroelectrics, multiferroics, and nonlinear optoelectronics, for example, realizing active electrical/optical/mechanical switching of ferroic orders in 2D multiferroics and in situ ultrafast optical characterization of local atomistic and electronic structures using noncontact noninvasive optical SHG techniques.
This research develops a web‐based model, entitled the “intuitive claim, peer‐assessment, discussion, and elaborate claim argumentation training” (IPadE) model, and embeds with a Web‐based ...Interactive Argumentation System to enhance undergraduate students' socioscientific argumentation abilities. This research adopts a quasi‐experimental research design; the sample comprised 131 undergraduate students from two classes (69 in the experimental group and 62 in the control group). The socioscientific issue discussed were related to global health. This study collected and analysed quantitative and qualitative data, including the pretest and posttest of students' knowledge test scores and argumentation abilities questionnaire. The results generally confirmed the effectiveness of the IPadE model. First, in a comparison of the content knowledge and argumentation skills, the experimental group have statistically significantly improved than the control group. Second, regarding the number of reasoning modes proposed, the experimental group could propose multiple reasoning modes and reasoning levels on rebuttals increased after training.
Lay Description
What is already known about this topic:
In the traditional classroom setting, it is difficult to obtain a fair expression of opinions because dominant students lead the debate. With internet and communication technology (ICT) rapid development, that has been emerging as a useful supplement to traditional methods. Web‐based interactive learning environments have recently become a popular and effective tool in the education field worldwide.
Argumentation skills are the critical reasoning abilities that a modern citizen should possess. Regrettably, the researchers have consistently demonstrated that adolescents' and young adults' insufficient competencies regarding argumentation, constructing weaknesses of two‐sided arguments, and difficulty justifying evidence in support of their claims (Brem & Rips, 2000; Driver, Newton, & Osborne, 2000; Kuhn, 1991, 2003; Naylor, Keogh, & Downing, 2007; Voss & Means, 1991). Students' inadequate knowledge of science and judgment capacity can cripple their competency to make satisfactory decisions and be responsible citizens in society (Fowler, Zeidler, & Sadler, 2009).
The integration of argumentation activities into science‐related curriculum is currently upheld as a core factor for a successful science program. In addition, HIV/AIDS is a prominent global health problem in Taiwan. Research based on global health‐related content knowledge and argumentation is rarely.
Most of the literature has focused on the learning of elementary and middle school students (Fowler et al., 2009; Jimènez‐Aleixandre, Rodriguez, & Duschl, 2000; Keselman, Kaufman, Kramer, & Patel, 2007; Lin & Mintzes, 2010; Wu & Tsai, 2007; Zohar & Nemet, 2002) and has rarely investigated pre‐service and in‐service teachers and undergraduate students. (Osborne, Erduran, & Simon, 2004; Chang & Chiu, 2008).
What this paper adds:
Research based on global health‐related content knowledge and argumentation is rarely. We develop the IPadE argumentation model with Web‐based Interactive Argumentation System to enhance argumentation abilities of undergraduate students toward globe health problem.
We develop three research instruments, including HIV/AIDS knowledge test (HKT), Open‐ended SSI argumentation ability questionnaire (SAAQ), and Argumentation ability checklist (AAC).
We added the metacognitive supports interface designs “context viewer” function of WIAS; on the left is the initial argumentation context of the user, in the middle is the Lakatos' argumentation model, and on the right is the peer assessment score. Students can view their own initial argumentation context and reflect upon it after interacting with their peers and group discussion to obtain a sounder argumentation in the argumentation stage (Figure 5).
Implications for practice:
Development of HIV/AIDS knowledge: The results confirm that experimental group students in the semester program using the IPadE model with WIAS performed better and significantly improved HIV/AIDS knowledge.
Development of argumentation skills: The results confirm that undergraduate students using the IPadE model with WIAS performed significantly better than those in the control group.
Changes in students' use of arguments modes: The majority of the reasons proposed by participants were science‐and‐technology‐oriented arguments, followed by law‐oriented and social‐oriented arguments in the PH. Additionally, the students' use of the major argument modes were proposed as law‐oriented in the NH and rebuttal; however, the number of students in the experimental group that could propose multiple argument modes in the PH, NH, and rebuttal increased after training.
Design of online discussion boards: The students used the discussions to assess peer learning by looking at peers' viewpoints and ideas. Comparison of face‐to‐face classroom, the WIAS can provided students with opportunities at anytime and anywhere through asynchronous discussions board to record their thoughts then make peer learning. This study suggest that a well‐designed web‐based argumentation system is a critical part of the higher education experience when the goal is to improve students' argumentation ability.
By integrating social network theory and leader–member exchange (LMX) theory, we explore the effects of three types of social relationships on employee innovative behavior: weak ties outside the ...group, LMX, and strong ties within the group. The results from a sample in a high-tech firm showed that LMX fully mediated the positive relationship between out-group weak ties and innovative behavior. Furthermore, within-group strong ties negatively moderated the second stage of this indirect relationship, such that LMX was positively and significantly related to innovative behavior only when the number of within-group strong ties was low. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
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