Browse Articles

Deep quanvolutional neural networks with enhanced trainability and gradient propagation

The influence of attachments on the adaptability and quality of life of patients using Invisalign

Circulating amino acids and cardiometabolic risk profile in offspring of women with type 1 diabetes: cross-sectional case-control study

Abstract Branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) are known to be associated with cardiovascular disease risk in adults. The aim of this study is to investigate whether an increased cardiometabolic risk profile can be observed in the amino acid profile of young adult offspring of women with type 1 diabetes. This cross-sectional case-control study included 73 offspring born to women with type 1 diabetes (cases) and 82 control participants (controls). At the age of 18–23 years, they participated in a clinical assessment including laboratory tests and questionnaires. Amino acid levels were analyzed from venous serum samples after 10 h of fasting using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. No differences in cardiovascular disease or cardiometabolic risk factors were observed between the cases and the controls. Circulating amino acid levels were similar in both groups. The glucogenic score (combined alanine, glycine) was higher in overweight case men (case versus controls adjusted p = 0.015 (mean ratio 1.25 [95% CI 1.11 to 1.49]). The present findings do not support our hypothesis that serum amino acid profiles, determined in early adulthood, are associated with a more adverse cardiometabolic risk profile in offspring of women with type 1 diabetes. Further studies are warranted to clarify the potential role of amino acids in the development of cardiovascular disease in offspring of women with type 1 diabetes.

Moral judgments influence emotional responses and comment lengths through the moderating role of linguistic style matching

Experimental investigation on addition of furfuryl alcohol to diesel plastic fuel blends and optimization using Kissing Numbers

An ensemble-based enhanced short and medium term load forecasting using optimized missing value imputation

Abstract Electricity load forecasting is integral to planning, energy management, and the energy market. Utility companies serve a massive number of customers by supplying electricity. These utility companies require a precise forecast of electricity usage. This paper presents a forecasting model for energy load based on the ensemble voting regressor method. In addition, to enhance the accuracy of forecasting, develop an imputation method for handling missing values in the user’s energy consumption data. A real-time data set is used for performance comparison with multiple imputation techniques to validate the imputation approach by generating random missing data for different missing rates of 10–30%. The proposed forecasting model is compared with other state-of-the-art methods to show its effectiveness in terms of MAPE, MAE, and RMSE. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed methodology significantly improves the accuracy of the predicted load for a day and week ahead of energy consumption.

Keeping the immuno-oncology flame burning

Cryo-EM structures reveal the PP2A–B55α and Eya3 interaction that can be disrupted by a peptide inhibitor

Structural impact of synonymous mutations in six SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern

SARS-CoV-2 continues to spread and infect people worldwide. While most effort into characterizing variants of this virus have focused on non-synonymous changes, accumulation of synonymous mutations in different viral variants has also occurred. Here we characterize six Variants of Concern in terms of their mutational content, and make predictions regarding the impact of those mutations on potential genomic RNA secondary structure and stability. Our hypothesis is that if non-protein changing, yet RNA structure-changing mutations impact viral fitness by imposing deleterious change to predicted RNA structure, we would expect to those mutations to be less abundant, while if those synonymous mutations do not impact viral fitness through influence of RNA structure, we would see them more frequently than non-synonymous mutations. We find that synonymous mutations typically have no or modest impact to RNA secondary structure. As synonymous mutations are free from the selective pressure imposed on protein-altering mutations, the impact of synonymous mutations is largely limited to RNA secondary structure considerations. The absence of major, structure-altering synonymous mutations emphasize the importance of RNA structure, including within coding regions, to viral fitness. Synonymous mutations should be included in the characterization of emerging RNA viruses as these mutations may confer effects to viral fitness via RNA secondary structural modifications.

Optimization of lipase activity in Aspergillus niger C2J6 whole cells using choline chloride ethylene glycol deep eutectic solvent

A study of extracorporeal cardiac shock wave therapy combined with exercise rehabilitation in postoperative patients with PCI for CHD

Modeling of armature melting and erosion process in high speed electrical sliding contact with rough surface

Geoenvironmental use of CaCo3 sludge in subgrade soil for a greener sugar industry

Active spiralling of microtubules driven by kinesin motors

Attention mechanism based CNN-LSTM hybrid deep learning model for atmospheric ozone concentration prediction

Spatiotemporal evolution and driving forces of landscape ecological risk in the lower reaches of the Yellow River from 2000 to 2020

Novel control strategies for electric vehicle charging stations using stochastic modeling and queueing analysis

The human autophagy-initiating complexes ULK1C and PI3KC3-C1

Methane-powered sea spiders: Diverse, epibiotic methanotrophs serve as a source of nutrition for deep-sea methane seep <i>Sericosura</i>

Methane seeps harbor uncharacterized animal–microbe symbioses with unique nutritional strategies. Three undescribed sea spider species (family Ammotheidae; genus Sericosura ) endemic to methane seeps were found along the eastern Pacific margin, from California to Alaska, hosting diverse methane- and methanol-oxidizing bacteria on their exoskeleton. δ 13 C tissue isotope values of in situ specimens corroborated methane assimilation (−45‰, on average). Live animal incubations with 13 C-labeled methane and methanol, followed by nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry, confirmed that carbon derived from both compounds was actively incorporated into the tissues within five days. Methano- and methylotrophs of the bacterial families Methylomonadaceae, Methylophagaceae and Methylophilaceae were abundant, based on environmental metagenomics and 16S rRNA sequencing, and fluorescence and electron microscopy confirmed dense epibiont aggregations on the sea spider exoskeleton. Egg sacs carried by the males hosted identical microbes suggesting vertical transmission. We propose that these sea spiders farm and feed on methanotrophic and methylotrophic bacteria, expanding the realm of animals known to harness C1 compounds as a carbon source. These findings advance our understanding of the biology of an understudied animal lineage, unlocking some of the unique nutritional links between the microbial and faunal food webs in the oceans.

The familiarity effect of Chinese stroke stimulus and imagery on contextual integration: Evidence from ERP correlates

The neural process of contextual integration has been examined through the phenomenology of semantic incongruence of words. The present study investigated whether the effort of contextual integration would be heightened by the increased demand of selective attention and attention orientation to unfamiliar Chinese stroke style and sequence. It also examined whether visual imagery of unfamiliar stroke style and sequence would mitigate the effort of contextual integration of unfamiliar Chinese stroke. Nineteen participants take part in two cognitive tasks: (a) imagery of Chinese strokes and (b) detection of Chinese familiar and unfamiliar stroke style. An electroencephalogram was concurrently recorded for the analysis of event-related potential (ERP). Results revealed significant differences in attention orientation and effort of contextual integration between familiar and unfamiliar Chinese strokes, as indicated by larger amplitudes of N160 (100–200 ms) &amp; P200 (260–380 ms) components. Furthermore, a larger amplitude of N400 (300–500 ms) component, signifying the neural process of integrating external from the context, was obtained when individuals viewed unfamiliar Chinese strokes. These findings suggest a cognitive effort was needed to process unfamiliar Chinese stimuli, followed by a greater mental effort required for contextual integration of the unfamiliar stimuli. Furthermore, top-down control of visual imagery would facilitate the process of contextual integration via generating internal representation. This finding provides a new insight that the effort expended in contextual integration may be associated with both attentional control and the generation of internal representation from long-term storage across visual stimuli with varying levels of stimulus familiarity. In summary, our study provided insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying attentional control, contextual integration, and the role of visual imagery in the processing of stimuli with different levels of familiarity. Furthermore, it suggested the potential utility of the N400 component as a biomarker for assessing attention control and memory retrieval functions.