Shear-solvo defect annihilation of diblock copolymer thin films over a large area

Achieving defect-free block copolymer (BCP) nanopatterns with a long-ranged orientation over a large area remains a persistent challenge, impeding the successful and widespread application of BCP self-assembly. Here, we demonstrate a new experimental strategy for defect annihilation while conserving structural order and enhancing uniformity of nanopatterns. Sequential shear alignment and solvent vapor annealing generate perfectly aligned nanopatterns with a low defect density over centimeter-scale areas, outperforming previous single or sequential combinations of annealing. The enhanced order quality and pattern uniformity were characterized in unprecedented detail via scattering analysis and incorporating new mathematical indices using elaborate image processing algorithms. In addition, using an advanced sampling method combined with a coarse-grained molecular simulation, we found that domain swelling is the driving force for enhanced defect annihilation. The superior quality of large-scale nanopatterns was further confirmed with diffraction and optical properties after metallized patterns, suggesting strong potential for application in optoelectrical devices

Epigenetic regulation of Dlg1, via Kaiso, alters mitotic spindle polarity and promotes intestinal tumourigenesis

Both alterations to the epigenome and loss of polarity have been linked to cancer initiation, progression and metastasis. It has previously been demonstrated that loss of the epigenetic reader protein Kaiso suppresses intestinal tumourigenesis in the Apc+/min mouse model, in which altered polarity plays a key role. Thus, we investigated the link between Kaiso deficiency, polarity and suppression of intestinal tumourigenesis. We used Kaiso deficient mice to conditionally delete Apc within the intestinal epithelia and demonstrated up-regulation of the spindle polarity genes Dlg1 and Dlgap1. To understand the role of Dlg1 we generated Villin-creApc+/minDlg1flx/flx Kaiso-/y mice to analyse gene expression, survival, tumour burden and spindle orientation. In vivo analysis of the Dlg1 deficient intestine revealed improper orientation of mitotic spindles and a decreased rate of cellular migration. Loss of Dlg1 decreased survival in Apc+/min mice, validating its role as a tumour suppressor in the intestine. Significantly the increased survival of Apc+/minKaisoy/- mice was shown to be dependent on Dlg1 expression. Taken together this data indicates that maintenance of spindle polarity in the intestinal crypt requires appropriate regulation of Dlg1 expression. As Dlg1 loss leads to incorrect spindle orientation and a delay in cells transiting the intestinal crypt. We propose that the delayed exit from the crypt increases the window in which spontaneous mutations can become fixed, producing a 'tumour-permissive' environment, without an increase in mutation rate. Implications: Loss of mitotic spindle polarity delays the exit of cells from the intestinal crypt and promotes a tumourigenic environment

Bucillamine prevents cisplatin-induced ototoxicity through induction of glutathione and antioxidant genes.

Bucillamine is used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. This study investigated the protective effects of bucillamine against cisplatin-induced damage in auditory cells, the organ of Corti from postnatal rats (P2) and adult Balb/C mice. Cisplatin increases the catalytic activity of caspase-3 and caspase-8 proteases and the production of free radicals, which were significantly suppressed by pretreatment with bucillamine. Bucillamine induces the intranuclear translocation of Nrf2 and thereby increases the expression of γ-glutamylcysteine synthetase (γ-GCS) and glutathione synthetase (GSS), which further induces intracellular antioxidant glutathione (GSH), heme oxygenase 1 (HO-1) and superoxide dismutase 2 (SOD2). However, knockdown studies of HO-1 and SOD2 suggest that the protective effect of bucillamine against cisplatin is independent of the enzymatic activity of HO-1 and SOD. Furthermore, pretreatment with bucillamine protects sensory hair cells on organ of Corti explants from cisplatin-induced cytotoxicity concomitantly with inhibition of caspase-3 activation. The auditory-brainstem-evoked response of cisplatin-injected mice shows marked increases in hearing threshold shifts, which was markedly suppressed by pretreatment with bucillamine in vivo. Taken together, bucillamine protects sensory hair cells from cisplatin through a scavenging effect on itself, as well as the induction of intracellular GSH

Evaluating indoor positioning systems in a shopping mall : the lessons learned from the IPIN 2018 competition

The Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN) conference holds an annual competition in which indoor localization systems from different research groups worldwide are evaluated empirically. The objective of this competition is to establish a systematic evaluation methodology with rigorous metrics both for real-time (on-site) and post-processing (off-site) situations, in a realistic environment unfamiliar to the prototype developers. For the IPIN 2018 conference, this competition was held on September 22nd, 2018, in Atlantis, a large shopping mall in Nantes (France). Four competition tracks (two on-site and two off-site) were designed. They consisted of several 1 km routes traversing several floors of the mall. Along these paths, 180 points were topographically surveyed with a 10 cm accuracy, to serve as ground truth landmarks, combining theodolite measurements, differential global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and 3D scanner systems. 34 teams effectively competed. The accuracy score corresponds to the third quartile (75th percentile) of an error metric that combines the horizontal positioning error and the floor detection. The best results for the on-site tracks showed an accuracy score of 11.70 m (Track 1) and 5.50 m (Track 2), while the best results for the off-site tracks showed an accuracy score of 0.90 m (Track 3) and 1.30 m (Track 4). These results showed that it is possible to obtain high accuracy indoor positioning solutions in large, realistic environments using wearable light-weight sensors without deploying any beacon. This paper describes the organization work of the tracks, analyzes the methodology used to quantify the results, reviews the lessons learned from the competition and discusses its future

ML-BPM: Multi-teacher Learning with Bidirectional Photometric Mixing for Open Compound Domain Adaptation in Semantic Segmentation

Open compound domain adaptation (OCDA) considers the target domain as the compound of multiple unknown homogeneous subdomains. The goal of OCDA is to minimize the domain gap between the labeled source domain and the unlabeled compound target domain, which benefits the model generalization to the unseen domains. Current OCDA for semantic segmentation methods adopt manual domain separation and employ a single model to simultaneously adapt to all the target subdomains. However, adapting to a target subdomain might hinder the model from adapting to other dissimilar target subdomains, which leads to limited performance. In this work, we introduce a multi-teacher framework with bidirectional photometric mixing to separately adapt to every target subdomain. First, we present an automatic domain separation to find the optimal number of subdomains. On this basis, we propose a multi-teacher framework in which each teacher model uses bidirectional photometric mixing to adapt to one target subdomain. Furthermore, we conduct an adaptive distillation to learn a student model and apply consistency regularization to improve the student generalization. Experimental results on benchmark datasets show the efficacy of the proposed approach for both the compound domain and the open domains against existing state-of-the-art approaches.Comment: Accepted to ECCV 202

Allosteric Modulators of Steroid Hormone Receptors : Structural Dynamics and Gene Regulation

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Effect of the Ratio of Raw Material Components on the Physico-chemical Characteristics of Emulsion-type Pork Sausages

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of raw material ratio on the physicochemical characteristics of emulsion-type pork sausages. Experiment design was divided into 12 treatments, based on protein level (P), fat level (3P, 3.5P, and 4P), and water level (4P+10, 4P+15, 4P+20, and 4P+25). The pH and shear force values were significantly higher in T7 (3.5P fat and 4P+20 water) than those of other treatments. The lightness and redness were greatly reduced by increasing the quantity of water. The treatments containing 3P fat and 4P+20 water had the highest values of cohesiveness, springiness, gumminess, and chewiness. On the whole, when the protein (P) and fat (3P, 3.5P, 4P) levels were fixed, an increase over the appropriate moisture level deteriorated many physicochemical characteristics

Replicative genetic association study between functional polymorphisms in AVPR1A and social behavior scales of autism spectrum disorder in the Korean population

Abbreviations ADI-A1: Failure to use nonverbal behaviors to regulate social interaction; ADIA2: Failure to develop peer relationship; ADI-A3: Lack of shared enjoyment; ADI-A4: Lack of socioemotional reciprocity; ANOVA: Analysis of variance; ASD: Autism spectrum disorder; ASDS: Asperger Syndrome Diagnostic Scale; AVP: Arginine vasopressin; AVPR1A: Arginine vasopressin receptor 1A; Df: Degree of freedom; EMSA: Electrophoretic mobility-shift assay; FBAT: Family-based association test; HBAT: Haplotype family-based association test; IRB: Institutional Review Board; K-ADI-R: Korean version of the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised; K-ADOS: Korean version of the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule; K-CBCL: Korean Child Behavior Checklist; KEDI-WISC-R: Korean Educational Development Institute-Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised; K-SMS: Korean version of the Social Maturity Scale; MAF: Minor allele frequency; PDD-NOS: Pervasive developmental disorder that were not otherwise specified; RLUs: Relative luciferase units; SCQ: Social Communication Questionnaires; SNPs: Single nucleotide polymorphisms; SRS: Social Responsiveness Scale; TDT: Transmission disequilibrium test; VABS: Vineland Adaptive BehaviorAbstract Background Arginine vasopressin has been shown to affect social and emotional behaviors, which is mediated by the arginine vasopressin receptor (AVPR1A). Genetic polymorphisms in the AVPR1A promoter region have been identified to be associated with susceptibility to social deficits in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We hypothesize that alleles of polymorphisms in the promoter region of AVPR1A may differentially interact with certain transcriptional factors, which in turn affect quantitative traits, such as sociality, in children with autism. Methods We performed an association study between ASD and polymorphisms in the AVPR1A promoter region in the Korean population using a family-based association test (FBAT). We evaluated the correlation between genotypes and the quantitative traits that are related to sociality in children with autism. We also performed a promoter assay in T98G cells and evaluated the binding affinities of transcription factors to alleles of rs7294536. Results The polymorphisms—RS1, RS3, rs7294536, and rs10877969—were analyzed. Under the dominant model, RS1–310, the shorter allele, was preferentially transmitted. The FBAT showed that the rs7294536 A allele was also preferentially transmitted in an additive and dominant model under the bi-allelic mode. When quantitative traits were used in the FBAT, rs7294536 and rs10877969 were statistically significant in all genotype models and modes. Luciferase and electrophoretic mobility-shift assays suggest that the rs7294536 A/G allele results in a Nf-κB binding site that exhibits differential binding affinities depending on the allele. Conclusion These results demonstrate that polymorphisms in the AVPR1A promoter region might be involved in pathophysiology of ASD and in functional regulation of the expression of AVPR1A.This work has been supported by the Healthcare Technology R&D project (no. HI12C0021) by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Republic of Korea; the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (NRF-2014R1A2A1A110 53289 and NRF-2017M3C7A1027467

Screening for Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection Using Beijing/K Strain-Specific Peptides in a School Outbreak Cohort.

Background: The Beijing strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb) has been most frequently isolated from TB patients in South Korea, and the hyper-virulent Beijing/K genotype is associated with TB outbreaks. To examine the diagnostic potential of Beijing/K-specific peptides, we performed IFN-γ release assays (IGRA) using a MTBK antigen tube containing Beijing/K MTBK_24800, ESAT-6, and CFP-10 peptides in a cohort studied during a school TB outbreak. Methods: A total of 758 contacts were investigated for M. tb infection, and 43 contacts with latent TB infection (LTBI) and 25 active TB patients were enrolled based on serial screening with QuantiFERON-TB Gold In-Tube tests followed by clinical examinations. Blood collected in MTBK antigen tubes was utilized for IGRA and multiplex cytokine bead arrays. Immune responses were retested in 24 patients after TB treatment, and disease progression was investigated in subjects with LTBI. Results: Total proportions of active disease and LTBI during the outbreak were 3.7% (28/758) and 9.2% (70/758), respectively. All clinical isolates had a Beijing/K M. tb genotype. IFN-γ responses to the MTBK antigen identified M. tb infection and distinguished between active disease and LTBI. After anti-TB treatment, IFN-γ responses to the MTBK antigen were significantly reduced, and strong TNF-α responses at diagnosis were dramatically decreased. Conclusions: MTBK antigen-specific IFN-γ has diagnostic potential for differentiating M. tb infection from healthy controls, and between active TB and LTBI as well. In addition, TNF-α is a promising marker for monitoring therapeutic responses. These data provide informative readouts for TB diagnostics and vaccine studies in regions where the Beijing/K strain is endemic