67 research outputs found
Chinese aid and corruption in African local governments
No full textDoes foreign aid reshape citizen views on governments? How does Chinese aid relate to corruption perception in African local governments? Studying 33 African countries from 2000 to 2014 (175 590 respondents), Chinese aid heightens perceived corruption in local councillors and officials. Corruption scandals likely contribute to negative views of both China and local governance. Control variables like World Bank aid and Confucius Institutes disprove alternate theories. Heterogeneous effects demonstrate that China’s aid is unwelcome among low-skilled individuals who feel threatened by its expansion, magnifying corruption perception. This suggests that Chinese aid’s unfavourable image fosters scepticism among African citizens and undermines collaborating local governments.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/192207/1/jid3829-sup-0001-Chineseaid_Appendix_Cha.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/192207/2/jid3829.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/192207/3/jid3829_am.pd
Similarity in functional connectome architecture predicts teenage grit
No full textGrit is a personality trait that encapsulates the tendency to persevere and maintain consistent interest for long-term goals. While prior studies found that grit predicts positive behavioral outcomes, there is a paucity of work providing explanatory evidence from a neurodevelopmental perspective. Based on previous research suggesting the utility of the functional connectome (FC) as a developmental measure, we tested the idea that individual differences in grit might be, in part, rooted in brain development in adolescence and emerging adulthood (N = 64, 11-19 years of age). Our analysis showed that grit was associated with connectome stability across conditions and connectome similarity across individuals. Notably, inter-subject representational similarity analysis revealed that teenagers who were grittier shared similar FC architecture with each other, more so than those with lower grit. Our findings suggest that individuals with high levels of grit are more likely to exhibit a converging pattern of whole-brain functional connectivity, which may underpin subsequent beneficial behavioral outcomes. © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press.11Nsciessciscopu
Fluoroethylene Carbonate-Based Electrolyte with 1 M Sodium Bis(fluorosulfonyl)imide Enables High-Performance Sodium Metal Electrodes
No full textSodium (Na) metal
anodes with stable electrochemical cycling have
attracted widespread attention because of their highest specific capacity
and lowest potential among anode materials for Na batteries. The main
challenges associated with Na metal anodes are dendritic formation
and the low density of deposited Na during electrochemical plating.
Here, we demonstrate a fluoroethylene carbonate (FEC)-based electrolyte
with 1 M sodium bis(fluorosulfonyl)imide (NaFSI) salt for the stable
and dense deposition of the Na metal during electrochemical cycling.
The novel electrolyte combination developed here circumvents the dendritic
Na deposition that is one of the primary concerns for battery safety
and constructs the uniform ionic interlayer achieving highly reversible
Na plating/stripping reactions. The FEC–NaFSI constructs the
mechanically strong and ion-permeable interlayer containing NaF and
ionic compounds such as Na2CO3 and sodium alkylcarbonates
Design and characterization of colorimetric plasmonic nanostructures for imaging and sensing
No full textIncreasing demand for early disease diagnostic techniques has attracted huge interest in plasmon-based optical sensors, which can detect small concentrations of chemical and bio-analytes that are not detectable by the conventional analytic optical tools. Advances in nanofabrication techniques have driven in-depth understanding of plasmons, which result from the interactions between nano-materials and the electromagnetic fields. Precisely designing and controlling unique optical properties of plasmons have shown better sensing limits than the conventional ones by amplifying optical signals as well as detecting sensitive plasmon resonance shift upon dielectric property change on the sensing surface.
In this dissertation, a series of experiments are undertaken using a colorimetric plasmonic nanocup array substrate with a single extraordinary optical transmission peak in the visible light range. Sensitive colorimetric sensing is demonstrated by detecting transmission peak shift upon the molecular adsorption or the dielectric property change on the surface. The surface modification of the plasmonic substrate using plasmonic metallic NPs is attempted in order to maximize the plasmonic sensitivity to the refractive index change through heterogeneous plasmon coupling. The plasmon coupling between the plasmons of NPs and nanostructure results in strong localized electric field and denser hot-spot formation; hence, the sensitivity is enhanced. Sensitive detections of specific bioanalytes that undergo antigen-antibody binding as well as bulk refractive index change are detected through a plasmonic dark mode shift, resulted from the heterogeneous plasmon coupling.
Optical near-field interactions among plasmons, fluorophores, chromophores, and molecules are studied in order to amplify weak fluorescence, absorbance, and Raman signals from a small number of target molecules. Strong scattering field and large scattering cross-section at the plasmon resonance wavelength are the main factors for amplifying fluorescence, absorbance, and Raman scattering. Tuning plasmon resonance to target molecular optical characteristic wavelengths is critical in each application. The amplification of fluorescence is achieved by matching the plasmon resonance with the fluorescence emission band. The absorbance from chromophores, which are involved in conventional immunoassays, is enhanced by matching the chromophores’ absorbance peak with the plasmon resonance wavelength. The improved surface enhanced Raman scattering is accomplished by tuning the plasmon resonance to be close to the laser excitation wavelength. Understanding the signal amplification mechanisms from these results achieves two orders of magnitude lower limit-of-detection as well as improved sensitivity and signal-to-noise ratio. The colorimetric sensor, which is capable of enhancing fluorescence, absorbance and Raman signals from the nearby molecules, provides a versatile multifunctional sensing platform for chemical, biomedical, and environmental monitoring.Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2018-05-01The student, Sujin Seo, accepted the attached license on 2016-04-21 at 01:58.The student, Sujin Seo, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2016-04-21 at 02:25.This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2016-04-21 at 13:21.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #9374 on 2016-07-07 at 14:17:32Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-07T21:17:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 3
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Skeletal muscle mitochondrial dysfunction mediated by Pseudomonas aeruginosa quorum-sensing transcription factor MvfR: reversing effects with anti-MvfR and mitochondrial-targeted compounds
No full textABSTRACT Sepsis and chronic infections with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a leading “ESKAPE” bacterial pathogen, are associated with increased morbidity and mortality and skeletal muscle atrophy. The actions of this pathogen on skeletal muscle remain poorly understood. In skeletal muscle, mitochondria serve as a crucial energy source, which may be perturbed by infection. Here, using the well-established backburn and infection model of murine P. aeruginosa infection, we deciphered the systemic impact of the quorum-sensing transcription factor MvfR (multiple virulence factor regulator) by interrogating, 5 days post-infection, its effect on mitochondrial-related functions in the gastrocnemius skeletal muscle and the outcome of the pharmacological inhibition of MvfR function and that of the mitochondrial-targeted peptide, Szeto-Schiller 31 (SS-31). Our findings show that the MvfR perturbs adenosine triphosphate generation, oxidative phosphorylation, and antioxidant response, elevates the production of reactive oxygen species, and promotes oxidative damage of mitochondrial DNA in the gastrocnemius muscle of infected mice. These impairments in mitochondrial-related functions were corroborated by the alteration of key mitochondrial proteins involved in electron transport, mitochondrial biogenesis, dynamics and quality control, and mitochondrial uncoupling. Pharmacological inhibition of MvfR using the potent anti-MvfR lead, D88, we developed, or the mitochondrial-targeted peptide SS-31 rescued the MvfR-mediated alterations observed in mice infected with the wild-type strain PA14. Our study provides insights into the actions of MvfR in orchestrating mitochondrial dysfunction in the skeletal murine muscle, and it presents novel therapeutic approaches for optimizing clinical outcomes in affected patients.IMPORTANCESkeletal muscle, pivotal for many functions in the human body, including breathing and protecting internal organs, contains abundant mitochondria essential for maintaining cellular homeostasis during infection. The effect of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) infections on skeletal muscle remains poorly understood. Our study delves into the role of a central quorum-sensing transcription factor, multiple virulence factor regulator (MvfR), that controls the expression of multiple acute and chronic virulence functions that contribute to the pathogenicity of PA. The significance of our study lies in the role of MvfR in the metabolic perturbances linked to mitochondrial functions in skeletal muscle and the effectiveness of the novel MvfR inhibitor and the mitochondrial-targeted peptide SS-31 in alleviating the mitochondrial disturbances caused by PA in skeletal muscle. Inhibiting MvfR or interfering with its effects can be a potential therapeutic strategy to curb PA virulence
Domain Word Extension Using Curriculum Learning
No full textSelf-supervised learning models, such as BERT, have improved the performance of various tasks in natural language processing. Although the effect is reduced in the out-of-domain field and not the the trained domain thus representing a limitation, it is difficult to train a new language model for a specific domain since it is both time-consuming and requires large amounts of data. We propose a method to quickly and effectively apply the pre-trained language models trained in the general domain to a specific domain’s vocabulary without re-training. An extended vocabulary list is obtained by extracting a meaningful wordpiece from the training data of the downstream task. We introduce curriculum learning, training the models with two successive updates, to adapt the embedding value of the new vocabulary. It is convenient to apply because all training of the models for downstream tasks are performed in one run. To confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method, we conducted experiments on AIDA-SC, AIDA-FC, and KLUE-TC, which are Korean classification tasks, and subsequently achieved stable performance improvement
Targeting mitochondrial double-stranded RNAs ameliorates autoimmune characteristics of Sjogren’s syndrome
No full textSjӧgren’s syndrome (SS) is a systemic autoimmune disease that targets the exocrine glands, resulting in impaired saliva and tear secretion. To date, type I interferons (IFNs) are increasingly recognized as pivotal mediators in SS, but their endogenous drivers have not been elucidated. Here, we investigate the role of mitochondrial double-stranded RNAs (mt-dsRNAs) in regulating type I IFN response in SS. We find that mt-dsRNAs are elevated in the saliva and tear of SS patients as well as in salivary glands of non-obese diabetic mice with salivary dysfunction. In line with this, elevated expressions of mt-dsRNAs are associated with exocrine dysfunction and glandular lymphocytic infiltration from SS patients. Using the in-house-developed 3D culture, we show that dsRNA stimulation increases mt-dsRNAs expression via JAK1/STAT pathway and facilitates their cytosolic export, which is accompanied by autoimmune signatures observed in SS. We further show that muscarinic receptor ligand acetylcholine ameliorates autoimmune characteristics by preventing mt-dsRNA-mediated antiviral signaling. Lastly, we find that hindering mt-dsRNA induction or direct suppression of mt-dsRNA expression via treatment of 2-C′-methyladenosine (2-CM), an inhibitor of mitochondrial RNA polymerase (POLRMT), reverses the autoimmune signatures of SS. Altogether, our study underscores the significance of mt-dsRNA upregulation in exacerbating aberrant immune activation driving autoimmune diseases such as SS
Fabrication of Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):Poly(styrenesulfonate)/Poly(vinylidene fluoride) Nanofiber-Web-Based Transparent Conducting Electrodes for Dye-Sensitized Photovoltaic Textiles
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The research and application of electricity economic boom model under the constraint of energy conservation and emission reduction
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