174 research outputs found
Identification and QTL mapping of important agronomic traits based on rice short-wide grain CSSL-Z752 with restorer line Xihui 18 as background
No full textRice restorer line is one of the important parents for the utilization of rice heterosis. An excellent restorer line is the basis for breeding super hybrid rice. Rice chromosome segment substitution line (CSSL) based on excellent restorer lines is an ideal material for both genetic research and breeding practice due to its consistent genetic backgrounds besides few substitution segments from donor. Here, a short-wide grain rice CSSL-Z752 was developed using the excellent line Xihui 18 as the recipient parent and Huhan 3 as the donor parent by advanced backcrossing and self-polling combined with simple sequence repeat (SSR) marker-assisted selection. Z752 contained 13 substitution segments from Huhan 3 with 3.69 Mb of average substitution length. Compared with the recipient Xihui 18, the number of effective panicles per plant, grain width, 100-grain weight and yield per plant in Z752 increased significantly, and grain length of Z752 was decreased significantly than that of Xihui 18. The other traits showed no significant difference. Then, the secondary F2 population crossed by Xihui 18 and Z752 was used to map 10 QTLs for the important agronomic traits, which were distributed on the chromosome 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, and 12. Among them, there were two QTLs for effective panicle number per plant, plant height and grain width, respectively, including QPN3, QPN5 and QPH2, QPH6, QGW2, QGW5, and one QTL for grain number per panicle, seed-setting rate, grain length, ratio of grain length to width, respectively, including QGP2, QSSR2, QGL3 and QRLW5. The results will be of great significance for development of single-segment substitution lines carrying target QTL sand breeding of hybrid rice
Isoflurane Preserves Viability of Highly Metabolic Renal Epithelial Cells Exposed to Anoxia
No full textThe general metadata -- e.g., title, author, abstract, subject headings, etc. -- is publicly available, but access to the submitted files is restricted to UT Southwestern campus access and/or authorized UT Southwestern users.BACKGROUND: Cells subjected to ischemia, whether in the context of hypoxia, hypovolemia, or circulatory collapse, undergo damage and death as a result of oxygen deprivation. Previous studies have shown that general anesthetics can protect cells from ischemic injury by lowering their aerobic metabolism and decreasing production of toxic metabolites, among other mechanisms (1, 2, 3). This very preliminary study investigated the potential protective effect of isoflurane on the survival of cells that have a fairly high baseline metabolic rate, human renal proximal tubular epithelial cells (HK-2) and human microvascular endothelial cells (HMEC), in an anoxic environment.
METHODS: Cultured HK-2 and HMEC cells were incubated in a Forma Scientific Anaerobic System at 37C either in the absence (control) or presence (experimental) of 5% isoflurane for 0, 24, 48, 72, and 96 hours. Cell viability and metabolic activity were then assessed using live/dead fluorescence imaging and an MTT cell metabolism assay, respectively.
RESULTS: In vitro exposure of cells to anoxia without isoflurane over a period of 96 hours, resulted in a reduction of viability of HK-2 cells from a baseline of 98%, to approximately 8-9%. Over the same period of time, viability of cells exposed to isoflurane and anoxia decreased to 35%. This represented a fourfold increase in survival of HK-2 cells exposed to isoflurane at 96 hours. At earlier time points, both cell death in anoxia, and the protective effect of isoflurane were less dramatic. HMECs did not undergo significant cell death upon exposure to either anoxia or anoxia with isoflurane, with 98% of the cells surviving the exposure to anoxia in both cases. The net metabolic activity, as assessed by absorbance using the MTT assay, decreased in HK-2 cells over increasing periods of anoxia, a trend that did not change with the addition of isoflurane. Metabolic activity of HMECs remained intact and relatively stable throughout the course of anoxic exposure.
CONCLUSION: In this preliminary study, continuous exposure of HK-2 cells to 5% isoflurane during anoxic incubation had a protective effect on cell viability over a period of 96 hours. Whether this effect was also present in the less metabolically active HMECs, was not determined, as anoxia over the time period of the study had little effect on cell viability in either the experimental group or in the control group. The protective effect observed for HK-2 cells will likely vary with differences in metabolic requirements of different cell types, types and concentrations of anesthetic agents, and duration of anesthetic exposure. Anesthetic treatment may need to be tailored specifically to a cell type to confer the protective effects desired
Optical coherence tomography retinal nerve fiber layer analysis in eyes with long axial lengths
No full textSagar B Patel,1,2 Nisha Reddy,2 Xihui Lin,1,2 Jess T Whitson1,2 1Department of Ophthalmology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA; 2Department of Ophthalmology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, TX, USA Purpose: To evaluate the relationship between axial length (AL) and retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) profile and to characterize differences in optical coherence tomography RNFL of myopic glaucomatous eyes compared to nonglaucomatous eyes. Methods: Retrospective chart review of 170 eyes of 89 subjects with optical biometry and optical coherence tomography RNFL assessment was conducted. Results: Temporal RNFL thickness showed no association with AL in either glaucomatous or nonglaucomatous eyes. Nasal thinning was most strongly associated with glaucoma in myopic eyes. Both myopic glaucomatous and nonglaucomatous eyes had a mean RNFL thickness of 16–22 µm thinner than mean RNFL thickness of normal AL eyes. Conclusion: An average of 16–22 µm thinning of RNFL compared to nomogram can be tolerated in patients with long AL. Prominent nasal thinning likely represents changes from axial elongation. Temporal RNFL thinning in those with long AL tends to be mild, and significant thinning should raise suspicion for glaucoma. Keywords: myopia, axial length, ocular coherence tomography retinal nerve fiber layer (OCT RNFL), glaucom
Ocular manifestations of graft-versus-host disease: 10 years’ experience
No full textXihui Lin, Harrison Dwight Cavanagh Department of Ophthalmology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA Purpose: To evaluate the ocular presentation, treatment, and clinical course of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Design: Retrospective case series. Participants: Two hundred and forty-nine patients with systemic GVHD were included in the study. Methods: Ocular and systemic data were collected from 2003 to 2013. Main outcome measures: Mortality, visual acuity, and response of ocular symptoms. Results: Sixty-four patients had ocular manifestations (25.7%). At presentation, the mean age was 44.5 years and mean latency was 16.4 months. The most common presentations were keratoconjunctivitis sicca, cataract, blepharitis, ocular hypertension, and filamentary keratitis. Visual acuity at presentation was 20/49; at the worst point in the disease was 20/115; and at most recent visit was 20/63. When topical anti-inflammatory drops were used in addition to tears, 54.3% of patients’ ocular symptoms stabilized. When autologous serum was used in addition, 80% stabilized. The overall 10-year mortality of GVHD was 29.7%. For those with ocular involvement, it was 21.9%. Conclusion: Systemic GVHD has a high mortality rate, but ocular involvement does not suggest a worse prognosis. The main ocular presentations were keratoconjunctivitis sicca, cataracts, and ocular hypertension. Dry eyes in this population were very severe with overall worsening in visual acuity. However, with a step-wise approach involving topical anti-inflammatory medications and autologous serum tears, ocular symptoms do improve. It is important to monitor these patients closely, as they are prone to serious ocular complications such as corneal perforation and endophthalmitis. Keywords: dry eye, keratitis, corneal ulceratio
The Impact of Disney Princess Animation on Contemporary Girls
No full textThe image of Disney princesses has changed in people’s minds over the years, with more female characters becoming confident and courageous rather than relying on the sidekicks as they once did. Therefore, this article will conduct interviews to examine whether Disney Princess movies have subtly changed the thoughts and behaviours of contemporary Chinese girls. Interviews will be conducted with five girls between the ages of 16 and 24 via both online and offline platforms and concluded that young girls were influenced by recent Disney movies the most rather than previous ones with respect to romantic relationships, values, and thoughts on patriarchy. The author also discusses the impact on them, suggesting that there are innate as well as acquired social factors involved. With education and exposure to cultural diversity, women reflecting on the Disney movies they have watched in the past have gained a new understanding of the above topics
Research on Bearing Fault Diagnosis Method Based on Filter Features of MOMLMEDA and LSTM
No full textAs the supporting unit of rotating machinery, bearing can ensure efficient operation of the equipment. Therefore, it is very important to monitor the status of bearings accurately. A bearing fault diagnosis mothed based on Multipoint Optimal Minimum Local Mean Entropy Deconvolution Adjusted (MOMLMEDA) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) is proposed. MOMLMEDA is an improved algorithm based on Multipoint Optimal Minimum Entropy Deconvolution Adjusted (MOMEDA). By setting the local kurtosis mean as a new selection criterion, it can effectively avoid the interference of false kurtosis caused by noise and improve the accuracy of optimal kurtosis position. The optimal filter designed by optimal kurtosis position has periodic and amplitude characteristics, which are used as the fault feature in this paper. However, this feature has temporal characteristics and cannot be used as input of general neural network directly. LSTM is selected as the classification network in this paper. It can effectively avoid the influence of the temporal problem existing in feature vectors. Accurate diagnosis of bearing faults is realized by training classification neural network with samples. The overall recognition rate is up to 93.50%.Transport Engineering and Logistic
Planetary Gears Feature Extraction and Fault Diagnosis Method Based on VMD and CNN
No full textGiven local weak feature information, a novel feature extraction and fault diagnosis method for planetary gears based on variational mode decomposition (VMD), singular value decomposition (SVD), and convolutional neural network (CNN) is proposed. VMD was used to decompose the original vibration signal to mode components. The mode matrix was partitioned into a number of submatrices and local feature information contained in each submatrix was extracted as a singular value vector using SVD. The singular value vector matrix corresponding to the current fault state was constructed according to the location of each submatrix. Finally, by training a CNN using singular value vector matrices as inputs, planetary gear fault state identification and classification was achieved. The experimental results confirm that the proposed method can successfully extract local weak feature information and accurately identify different faults. The singular value vector matrices of different fault states have a distinct difference in element size and waveform. The VMD-based partition extraction method is better than ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD), resulting in a higher CNN total recognition rate of 100% with fewer training times (14 times). Further analysis demonstrated that the method can also be applied to the degradation recognition of planetary gears. Thus, the proposed method is an effective feature extraction and fault diagnosis technique for planetary gears
Fast Nonnegative Matrix Factorization and Applications to Pattern Extraction, Deconvolution and Imputation
No full textAbstractNonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) is a technique widely used in various fields, including artificial intelligence (AI), signal processing and bioinformatics. However existing algorithms and R packages cannot be applied to large matrices due to their slow convergence, and cannot handle missing values. In addition, most NMF research focuses only on blind decompositions: decomposition without utilizing prior knowledge. We adapt the idea of sequential coordinate-wise descent to NMF to increase the convergence rate. Our NMF algorithm thus handles missing values naturally and integrates prior knowledge to guide NMF towards a more meaningful decomposition. To support its use, we describe a novel imputation-based method to determine the rank of decomposition. All our algorithms are implemented in the R package NNLM, which is freely available on CRAN.</jats:p
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Optimization and expansion of non-negative matrix factorization
No full textBACKGROUND:Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) is a technique widely used in various fields, including artificial intelligence (AI), signal processing and bioinformatics. However existing algorithms and R packages cannot be applied to large matrices due to their slow convergence or to matrices with missing entries. Besides, most NMF research focuses only on blind decompositions: decomposition without utilizing prior knowledge. Finally, the lack of well-validated methodology for choosing the rank hyperparameters also raises concern on derived results. RESULTS:We adopt the idea of sequential coordinate-wise descent to NMF to increase the convergence rate. We demonstrate that NMF can handle missing values naturally and this property leads to a novel method to determine the rank hyperparameter. Further, we demonstrate some novel applications of NMF and show how to use masking to inject prior knowledge and desirable properties to achieve a more meaningful decomposition. CONCLUSIONS:We show through complexity analysis and experiments that our implementation converges faster than well-known methods. We also show that using NMF for tumour content deconvolution can achieve results similar to existing methods like ISOpure. Our proposed missing value imputation is more accurate than conventional methods like multiple imputation and comparable to missForest while achieving significantly better computational efficiency. Finally, we argue that the suggested rank tuning method based on missing value imputation is theoretically superior to existing methods. All algorithms are implemented in the R package NNLM, which is freely available on CRAN and Github
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