6 research outputs found
Chaozhou gong and drum music through the study of the rhythm and drumming technique of She Qing ( Celebration of the Community ) by Chen Zuohui from a percussionist\u27s point of view.
No full textThis paper is an analysis of both the rhythm and the drumming technique of a contemporary composition She Quing (Celebration of the Community) by Chen Zuohui. Through the detailed study of the work, one will start to understand and appreciate the uniqueness of this folk drumming in south China. The tuning of the gongs and cymbals to specific pitches, as well as the spectacular conducting hand movements of the master drummer are the two major characteristics of this type of folk drumming. Various hand movements of shaking, swinging, pointing, chopping, drawing, knocking, and even sword drawing and poking from the Chinese martial arts, are incorporated in the drumming. This study also introduces the different types of gong and drum music of Chaozhou, their instrumentation, repertoire, as well as the percussion, wind and string instruments used. As a Western trained percussionist, the author also discusses both the advantages and the difficulties in learning the She Quing in terms of the grip and the stick control, the instruments, the hand movements and the posture, the notation of the hand movements, the rhythm, learning be sight and reciting with the mnemonics, learning as a Chinese person, and also improvising
Review of roles of RNA-binding proteins on NAFLD and the related pharmaceutical measures
No full textNonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common chronic liver disease worldwide and poses a serious threat to public health. NAFLD is considered a risk factor for metabolic syndrome (MS) and is closely associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), obesity, dyslipidemia, and cardiovascular disease. Recently, increasing attention has been paid to the role of RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) in the pathogenesis of NAFLD. A growing body of research has linked RBPs—such as human antigen R (HuR), sequestosome 1 (p62), polypyrimidine tract-binding protein 1 (PTBP1), and heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoproteins (hnRNPs)—to lipogenesis and inflammation, both of which contribute to NAFLD through mechanisms involving transcriptional regulation, alternative splicing, RNA stability, polyadenylation, and subcellular localization. However, these findings are often fragmented and lack a comprehensive synthesis. The interactions and mechanisms between RBPs and NAFLD have not yet been thoroughly reviewed. This article provides an overview of the roles and mechanisms of various RBPs in NAFLD, summarizing current knowledge with the aid of figures and tables. In particular, it highlights the influence of HuR on NAFLD through multiple pathways, categorizing its effects based on increased or decreased expression. Furthermore, it reviews drugs that alleviate NAFLD by modulating RBPs, aiming to offer valuable insights for drug-targeted therapies based on RBP regulatory networks
Analysis of Risk Factors for Cerebral Microbleeds and the Relationship between Cerebral Microbleeds and Cognitive Impairment
No full text(1) Background: Cerebral microbleeds (CMBs) are attracting increasing attention. Nevertheless, the risk factors for CMBs remain poorly identified, and the relationship between CMBs and cognitive impairment is still up for debate; (2) Objective: The present study analyzed the risk factors for CMBs and probed into the potential correlations between the presence, number, and location of CMBs and cognition; (3) Methods: This study enrolled 406 subjects who underwent both brain 3.0-T magnetic resonance imaging scans and cognitive testing. Spearman correlation was used to assess the relationship between the number of CMBs and cognition. Multiple linear regression was utilized to analyze the relationship between the regions of CMBs and each cognitive domain; (4) Results: Multivariate logistic regression analysis results showed that age (odds ratio (OR) = 1.045, 95% confidence interval (95%CI; 1.009, 1.082)), smoking (OR = 3.604, 95%CI (1.995, 6.509)), hypertension (OR = 3.607, 95%CI (2.204, 5.901)), total cholesterol (OR = 0.611, 95%CI (0.467, 0.799)), and Amyloid-β1-42 (Aβ1-42) (OR = 1.028, 95%CI (1.018, 1.037)) were the influencing factors of CMBs. Education years (OR = 0.959, 95%CI (0.930, 0.988)), white matter lesions (OR = 2.687, 95%CI (1.782, 4.051)), and CMBs (OR = 21.246, 95%CI (5.728, 21.576)) were the risk factors for cognitive impairment. Hypertension increased the probability of deep CMBs (OR = 12.54, 95%CI (2.21, 71.28)), while Aβ1-42 elevated the probability of lobar CMBs (OR = 1.02, 95%CI (1.00, 1.03)). There was a linear correlation between the number of CMBs and Montreal Cognitive Assessment scores (r = −0.756, p < 0.001). However, CMBs in each region were not related to specific cognitive domains (p > 0.05), except CMBs in the mixed group that were negatively correlated with attention (OR = −0.669, 95%CI (−0.034, −5.270)); (5) Conclusions: Taken together, serum Aβ1-42 levels are related to the presence of CMBs. Cognitive impairment is correlated with the number of CMBs rather than their region. These findings suggest that CMBs play a role in cognitive impairment and that CMBs mark the presence of diffuse vascular injury and neurodegenerative brain damage
Towards human-centered recommender systems
No full textRecently, there has been extensive interest in developing intelligent human-centered AI (artificial intelligence) systems that support human participation so as to facilitate cooperation between humans and machines. As one of the typical decision making paradigm in AI, recommender systems which have become an integral part of our lives, are a particularly pervasive form of AI system that can aid in decision-making in the face of ever-growing amounts of information. It now becomes imaginable and achievable with the help of advanced artificial intelligence, especially the modern deep learning based recommender systems that is known for its superior representation and predictive power, have made great strides in accuracy and effectiveness. Meanwhile, it also raises a number of important challenges: 1) How can we actively incorporate human participation into the decision-making procedure of recommender systems? It aims to integrate human participation as guidance to keep the decision-making process consistent with human feedback to maintain the trustworthiness to human beings. 2) How can we ensure that explanations are provided such that users can better understand why particular items are being recommended? In this aspect, explainable recommendation can be leveraged to not only assist the agent to provide high-quality recommendation results but also offering personalized and intuitive explanations with better user engagement, which are important for several modern recommender systems such as e-commerce and social media platforms etc. 3) How can we alleviate biases in recommender systems? Seldom progress has been explored to mitigate the biases that arise in human-centered recommender systems so as to hurt user satisfaction and trust towards the recommendation service. In this thesis, we proposes several novel methods to fill these gaps. In particular, for improved human understanding, we introduce an adversarial semantic learning framework for cross-lingual settings understanding. For human integration, a human-in-the-loop conversational recommender system with external graph structure is introduced. To ensure fair explanations, we mitigate the unfairness within graph-based explainable reasoning in the recommender system. Finally, for human-system cooperation, we present a popularity debiasing framework to integrate user interaction and debiased dialogue stat management in a conversational recommender system. We not only extensively evaluate our proposed approaches on multiple real-world recommendation datasets, but also contribute open public datasets to the community. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods in achieving satisfying prediction accuracy, mitigating bias, and providing users with understandable explanations.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference
Melatonin alleviates diarrhea and visceral hypersensitivity in rats with diarrhea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome by modulating of the TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB pathway
No full textAbstract Background This study aimed to investigate the effects of melatonin on diarrhea and visceral hypersensitivity in rats with diarrhea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome (IBS-D) and to explore its potential mechanisms through modulation of the TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB pathway. Methods Adult male Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were used to establish an IBS-D model through a combination of chronic and acute stress. The rats were randomly divided into four groups: healthy control (HC), IBS-D, IBS-D + melatonin 5 mg/kg (M-L), and IBS-D + melatonin 10 mg/kg (M-H), with six rats in each group. Visceral sensitivity was assessed using the abdominal withdrawal reflex (AWR). The expression levels of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) in colon tissue were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Western blotting and immunohistochemistry were employed to detect the expression of TLR4, MyD88, and NF-κB proteins in colon tissue. Additionally, 16 S rRNA sequencing was used to analyze the composition of the intestinal microbiota. Results Compared to the HC group, the IBS-D group exhibited colonic inflammatory injury, increased AWR scores, elevated levels of TNF-α, IL-6, TLR4, MyD88, and NF-κB in the colon, and altered intestinal microbiota composition. Melatonin treatment reduced colonic inflammatory injury, decreased AWR scores, and lowered the levels of TNF-α, IL-6, TLR4, MyD88, and NF-κB in a dose-dependent manner. The intestinal microbiota composition in melatonin-treated groups showed a trend towards that of the HC group. Conclusion Melatonin improved diarrhea and visceral hypersensitivity in IBS-D rats, potentially through the modulation of the TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB pathway and partial restoration of the intestinal microbiota
The lost tradition : changing interpretations of music in the three Chinese Confucian ritual classics from the Han to the Qing dynasty.
No full textSIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DX185476 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo
