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Ovarian clear cell carcinoma (OCCC) is an infrequent histological subtype of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). The present study aimed to investigate whether chemotherapy is indispensable for patients with stage IA OCCC.Data were collected from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database between 2004 and 2015. All subjects were diagnosed with stage IA OCCC, according to their postoperative pathological reports. In the present study, 1038 patients were retrospectively investigated, among whom 692 patients received chemotherapy. Propensity score matching (PSM) was performed to prevent selection bias. The multivariate Cox proportional hazards model was used to analyze the correlation between variables and 5-year overall survival.An equal number of patients (n = 346) who did or did not undergo chemotherapy after PSM were further enrolled in the study. The results showed that the mortality of OCCC increased for the patients aged ≥50 years. In addition, older age was associated with lower 5-year overall survival (p 0.05). However, chemotherapy did not extend the 5-year overall survival (p = 0.524) of patients with stage IA OCCC, according to the multivariate Cox regression analysis.Chemotherapy did not affect the overall survival of patients with stage IA OCCC following surgery.

The exponential growth of social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook has revolutionized textual communication and textual content publication in human society. However, they have been increasingly exploited to propagate toxic content, such as hate speech, malicious advertisement, and pornography, which can lead to highly negative impacts (e.g., harmful effects on teen mental health). Researchers and practitioners have been enthusiastically developing and extensively deploying textual content moderation software to address this problem. However, we find that malicious users can evade moderation by changing only a few words in the toxic content. Moreover, modern content moderation software performance against malicious inputs remains underexplored. To this end, we propose MTTM, a Metamorphic Testing framework for Textual content Moderation software. Specifically, we conduct a pilot study on 2,000 text messages collected from real users and summarize eleven metamorphic relations across three perturbation levels: character, word, and sentence. MTTM employs these metamorphic relations on toxic textual contents to generate test cases, which are still toxic yet likely to evade moderation. In our evaluation, we employ MTTM to test three commercial textual content moderation software and two state-of-the-art moderation algorithms against three kinds of toxic content. The results show that MTTM achieves up to 83.9%, 51%, and 82.5% error finding rates (EFR) when testing commercial moderation software provided by Google, Baidu, and Huawei, respectively, and it obtains up to 91.2% EFR when testing the state-of-the-art algorithms from the academy. In addition, we leverage the test cases generated by MTTM to retrain the model we explored, which largely improves model robustness (0% to 5.9% EFR) while maintaining the accuracy on the original test set., Comment: Accepted by ICSE 2023

This research aims to demonstrate the application of Task-based Language Teaching activities in EFL oral class in a public university in China. As an international language, English plays a vital role in not only international communications but also in culture exchanges. College students are asked to equipped with English communication skills to do real-life communication nowadays. Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) is a non-traditional approach in teaching language whereby learners learn language incidentally though performance of meaningful tasks. It has generated great interest among EFL researchers and practitioners. This research scoped in a public university in North China and the teaching materials were chosen from 4 units of College English Course Book-1. The purpose of this research also lies in broadening the strategies of using activities in EFL classes which aims to develop the communicative competence within pronunciation, accuracy, fluency, discourse management and complexity. Keywords: ask-based Language Teaching, teaching activities, oral communicative competence. Title: Task-based Language Teaching Activities in College English Course in a Public University in China Author: Wang Xinran, Li Jinghan, Li En, Li Shuqing International Journal of Novel Research in Education and Learning ISSN 2394-9686 Vol. 9, Issue 6, November 2022 - December 2022 Page No: 40-47 Novelty Journals Website: www.noveltyjournals.com Published Date: 20-December-2022 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7462966 Paper Download Link (Source) https://www.noveltyjournals.com/upload/paper/Task-based%20Language%20Teaching%20Activities-20122022-4.pdf, International Journal of Novel Research in Education and Learning, ISSN 2394-9686, Novelty Journals, Website: www.noveltyjournals.com

A series of novel zinc-polyurethane copolymers, which contained zinc cations in the form of polymeric salt and can be exchanged with the sodium ions in sea water, was prepared. As the ion exchange reaction proceeded, the zinc-polyurethane copolymers became soluble and leached out by the flow of sea water. The self-polishing rates of marine antifouling coatings formulated with the polymers proved to be easily controlled by the amount of 2,2-bis(hydroxymethyl) propionic acid. Marine field test revealed that zinc-polyurethane antifouling coatings had excellent efficiency in preventing marine biofouling for more than 12 months. These results proved that the zinc-polyurethane copolymers were a good candidate for the preparation of long-efficiency and controllable marine antifouling coatings.

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) systems, also called laser radars, have a wide range of applications. This article considers two problems in LiDAR data. The first problem is occlusion. A LiDAR acquires point clouds by scanning the surrounding environment with laser beams emitting from its center, and therefore an object behind another cannot be scanned. The second problem is sample sparsity. LiDAR scanning is usually taken with a fixed angular step; consequently, the sample points on an object surface at a long distance are sparse and thus accurate boundary and detailed surface of the object cannot be obtained. To address the occlusion problem, we design and implement a novel 3-D LiDAR with a long arm, which is able to scan occluded objects from their flanks. To address the sample-sparsity problem, we propose an adaptive resolution scanning method that detects the object and adjusts the angular step in real time according to the density of points on the object being scanned. Experiments on our prototype system and scanning method verify their effectiveness in antiocclusion and antisparsity as well as accuracy in measuring. The data and the codes are shared on the web site of https://github.com/SCVision/LongarmLiDAR .

BackgroundCirculating tumor DNA (ctDNA) sequence analysis shows great potential in the management of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and the prediction of drug sensitivity or resistance in many cancers. Here, we drew and compared the somatic mutational profile using ctDNA and tumor tissue sequence analysis in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) and squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC), and assess its potential clinical value.MethodsIn this study, 221 tumor tissues and 174 plasma samples from NSCLC patients were analyzed by hybridization capture-based next-generation sequencing (NGS) panel including 95 cancer-associated genes. Tumor response assessments were applied to 137 patients with advanced-stage (III and IV) NSCLC who first received targeted agents.ResultsTwenty significantly mutated genes were identified such as TP53, EGFR, RB1, KRAS, PIK3CA, CD3EAP, CTNNB1, ERBB2, APC, BRAF, TERT, FBXW7, and HRAS. Among them, TP53 was the most frequently mutated gene and had a higher mutation probability in male (p = 0.00124) and smoking (p < 0.0001) patients. A total of 48.35% (191/395) of NSCLC patients possessed at least one actionable alteration according to the OncoKB database. Although the sensitivity of genomic profiling from ctDNA was lower than that from tumor tissue DNA, the mutational landscape of target genes from ctDNA is similar to that from tumor tissue DNA, which led to 61.22% (30/49) of mutational concordance in NSCLC. Additionally, the mutational concordance between tissue DNA and ctDNA in LUAD differs from that in LUSC, which is 63.83% versus 46.67%, indicating that NSCLC subtypes influence the specificity of mutation detection in plasma-derived ctDNA. Lastly, patients with EGFR and TP53 co-alterations showed similar responses to Gefitinib and Icotinib, and the co-occurring TP53 mutation was most likely to be a poor prognostic factor for patients receiving Gefitinib, indicating that the distributions and types of TP53 mutations may contribute to the efficacy and prognosis of molecular targeted therapy.ConclusionsAs a promising alternative for tumor genomic profiling, ctDNA analysis is more credible in LUAD than in LUSC. Genomic subtyping has strong potential in prognostication and therapeutic decision-making for NSCLC patients, which indicated the necessity for the utility of target NGS in guiding clinical management.

Additional file 2. Heat-sensitized sensation self-evaluation scale

Additional file 1. Hypertensive symptoms scale

Additional file 3. Informed consent form (translated)

In the wireless communication system, different channels often have different QoS attributes such as bandwidth, delay and countless others. Aiming at the problem that the traditional channel selection algorithm cannot efficiently and flexibly select the most suitable channel and cannot dynamically aggregate channel bandwidth, this paper proposes a multi-attribute selection model and channel aggregation algorithm based on TOPSIS in the electric power communication network scenario. According to the service demand for channel QoS, the TOPSIS algorithm is adopted to select the channel. First of all, determining the weight of each QoS indicator, and selecting the channel closest to the ideal channel and the farthest channel from the worst channel. When there is no ideal channel, the channel aggregation algorithm selects the two most suitable channels to implement bandwidth superposition to meet the service requirements of the terminal. The final experiment shows that the proposed channel selection mechanism based on TOPSIS multi-attribute selection and channel aggregation is feasible and effective compared with the traditional multi-attribute channel selection algorithm.

Background. Yiqi Fumai injection (YQFM) is a traditional Chinese medicine widely used for cardiovascular diseases in China. This systematic review aimed to evaluate whether YQFM could be an effective and safe complementary therapy for chronic heart failure (CHF). Methods. Eight electronic literature databases were searched up to March 31, 2020. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing YQFM + conventional treatment with conventional treatment alone for CHF were included. The primary outcome was response to treatment, which was graded by improvements in heart function based on the New York Heart Association (NYHA) criteria, while the secondary outcomes included the left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), cardiac output, left ventricular end-systolic diameter (LVESD), amino-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), 6-minute walk test performance (6MWT), quality of life (QoL) as assessed by the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure questionnaire, and adverse reactions. Data from individual RCTs were pooled by a random-effects meta-analysis with effect measures of proportional odds ratios (pORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) for the ordinal outcomes and the mean difference (MD) and 95% CI for the continuous outcomes. Results. In total, 33 RCTs involving 3070 patients with an overall moderate-to-high risk of bias were selected. The meta-analysis showed that compared with conventional treatment alone, YQFM plus conventional treatment had a significantly higher likelihood of improving the response to treatment (pOR 1.88, 95% CI 1.47 to 2.42, I2 = 0%). YQFM also significantly improved the LVEF (MD 5.53%, 95% CI 4.73 to 6.33, I2 = 82%), cardiac output (MD 0.32 L/min, 95% CI 0.19 to 0.45, I2 = 47%), and LVESD (MD −3.73 mm, 95% CI −5.51 to −1.95, I2 = 22%), reduced the NT-proBNP levels (MD −341.83 pg/mL, 95% CI −417.89 to −265.77, I2 = 88%), and improved the 6MWT (MD 61.86 m, 95% CI 45.05 to 78.67, I2 = 64%) and QoL (MD −9.82, 95% CI −14.17 to −5.46, I2 = 81%). No serious adverse events related to YQFM were reported. Conclusion. Although limited by a moderate-to-high risk of bias, the current evidence suggests that YQFM as a complementary treatment significantly improves heart function and related indicators in patients with CHF. The clinical use of YQFM needs careful safety monitoring. Well-designed studies are still required to further evaluate the efficacy and safety of YQFM for CHF.

The collaborative ranking problem has been an important open research question as most recommendation problems can be naturally formulated as ranking problems. While much of collaborative ranking methodology assumes static ranking data, the importance of temporal information to improving ranking performance is increasingly apparent. Recent advances in deep learning, especially the discovery of various attention mechanisms and newer architectures in addition to widely used RNN and CNN in natural language processing, have allowed us to make better use of the temporal ordering of items that each user has engaged with. In particular, the SASRec model, inspired by the popular Transformer model in natural languages processing, has achieved state-of-art results in the temporal collaborative ranking problem and enjoyed more than 10x speed-up when compared to earlier CNN/RNN-based methods. However, SASRec is inherently an un-personalized model and does not include personalized user embeddings. To overcome this limitation, we propose a Personalized Transformer (SSE-PT) model, outperforming SASRec by almost 5% in terms of NDCG@10 on 5 real-world datasets. Furthermore, after examining some random users' engagement history and corresponding attention heat maps used during the inference stage, we find our model is not only more interpretable but also able to focus on recent engagement patterns for each user. Moreover, our SSE-PT model with a slight modification, which we call SSE-PT++, can handle extremely long sequences and outperform SASRec in ranking results with comparable training speed, striking a balance between performance and speed requirements. Code and data are open sourced at https://github.com/wuliwei9278/SSE-PT., plan to submit for review

In deep neural nets, lower level embedding layers account for a large portion of the total number of parameters. Tikhonov regularization, graph-based regularization, and hard parameter sharing are approaches that introduce explicit biases into training in a hope to reduce statistical complexity. Alternatively, we propose stochastically shared embeddings (SSE), a data-driven approach to regularizing embedding layers, which stochastically transitions between embeddings during stochastic gradient descent (SGD). Because SSE integrates seamlessly with existing SGD algorithms, it can be used with only minor modifications when training large scale neural networks. We develop two versions of SSE: SSE-Graph using knowledge graphs of embeddings; SSE-SE using no prior information. We provide theoretical guarantees for our method and show its empirical effectiveness on 6 distinct tasks, from simple neural networks with one hidden layer in recommender systems, to the transformer and BERT in natural languages. We find that when used along with widely-used regularization methods such as weight decay and dropout, our proposed SSE can further reduce overfitting, which often leads to more favorable generalization results., Accepted to 2019 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems

Yuqi Yang,1 Sheng Yin,2 Shuqing Li,3 Yaping Chen,1 Lina Yang11Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The Fifth People’s Hospital of Shanghai, Fudan University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 3Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital of Fudan University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of ChinaBackground: Tumor metastasis is the major challenge for ovarian cancer treatment. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), a major component existing in tumor microenvironment, can secrete several cytokines to interact with cancer epithelial cells, and promote cancer metastasis. Stanniocalcin 1 (STC1), a secretory glycoprotein hormone, has been proven to be an important factor in ovarian tumorigenesis.Methods: In this study, we focused on the functional role of STC1 in ovarian cancer microenvironment, investigated STC1’s effects on the proliferation and metastasis of ovarian cancer cells, and explored the molecular mechanism underlying STC1-mediated cancer metastasis.Results: By analyzing the GEO dataset and examined STC1 expression in CAFs isolated from ovarian cancer patients, we found that expression of STC1 was higher in ovarian cancer stroma and CAFs than in the normal ovarian stroma and normal fibroblasts (NFs). Addition of recombinant human STC1 (rhSTC1) promoted cell proliferation and metastasis in ovarian cancer, while adoption of STC1 neutralizing antibody (STC1 Ab) abolished the effects. Furthermore, our results revealed that STC1 promoted the phosphorylation of Akt (Ser473), and upregulated several epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) markers including fibronectin，vimentin and slug. In addition, we demonstrated that STC1 in tumor microenvironment could mediate the conversion of NFs to CAFs.Conclusion: Taken together, the study results suggested the crucial role of STC1 in tumor environment on the metastasis of ovarian cancer.Keywords: STC1, tumor microenvironment, CAFs, EMT, metastasis

The Bloch-Bloembergen equation is extended to study the magnetization precession in a spin-valve structure by taking into account the short-wavelength magnon excitation and spin-transfer torque. A stable magnetization precession is achieved when the transverse relaxation time ${T}_{2}$ is longer than the longitudinal relaxation time ${T}_{1}$. A wide current-density window of stable magnetization precession is found for large ${T}_{2}$ and it broadens with increasing ${T}_{2}$ for fixed ${T}_{1}$. Our simulation results also reveal that short-wavelength magnon excitation can reduce the amplitude of the magnetization precession, which is different from the prediction of the macro-spin Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert-Slonczewski equation.

Short-term traffic flow prediction is important to realize real-time traffic instruction. However, due to the existing strong nonlinearity and non-stationarity in short-term traffic volume data, it is hard to obtain a satisfactory result through the traditional method. To this end, this paper develops an innovative hybrid method based on the time varying filtering based empirical mode decomposition (TVF-EMD) and least square support vector machine (LSSVM). Specifically, TVF-EMD is firstly used to deal with the implied non-stationarity in the original data by decomposing them into several different subseries. Then, the LSSVM models are established for each subseries to capture the linear and nonlinear characteristics embedded in the original data, and the corresponding prediction results are superimposed to obtain the final one. Finally, case studies based on two groups of data measured from an arterial road intersection are employed to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The experimental results indicate it outperforms the other involved models. For example, compared with the LSSVM model, the average improvements by the proposed method in terms of the indexes of mean absolute error, mean relative percentage error, root mean square error and root mean square relative error are 7.397, 15.832%, 10.707 and 24.471%, respectively.

A series of novel isoxazolyl chalcones were synthesized and evaluated for their activities in vitro against four types of human non-small cell lung cancer cells, including H1792, H157, A549 and Calu-1 cells. The preliminary biological screening showed that compounds 5d and 5f – i exhibited significant cytotoxicity, particularly, compounds 5f and 5h were identified as the most potent anticancer agents with IC 50 values 1.35–2.07 μM and 7.27–11.07 μM against H175, A549 and Calu-1 cell lines, respectively. Compounds 5f–i could induce apoptosis in A549 cells by death receptor 5 (DR5) mediated extrinsic pathways. The preliminary structure–activity relationship study showed that compounds bearing electron withdrawing groups (EWG) at the 2-position of the phenyl ring in Ar group were more effective than those with EWG at 4-position. These results further demonstrated that the scaffolds designed in this work might lead to the discovery of novel anti-lung cancer agents.

To suppress the increasingly terrible electromagnetic pollution, microwave absorption coatings based on polyvinyl chloride (PVC) sheet have been fabricated, employing polyurethane varnish (PU) as matrix and carbonyl–iron particle (CIP) as absorbent. The morphology, static magnetic and microwave absorption properties of CIP were characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM), vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) and vector network analyzer (VNA), respectively. Bruggeman's equation was introduced to calculate the electromagnetic parameters of materials in the frequency range of 2–18 GHz and the loss mechanisms were discussed. Furthermore, the microwave absorption properties of composite coatings with different component content and thickness were investigated. The results show that the electromagnetic properties of the composite heavily depended on the particle loadings. The minimum reflection peaks of the coatings shift towards the lower frequency region with the increase of CIP content or coating thickness. PVC-based coatings with a component content of 1:7 (PU:CIP mass ratio) in CIP/PU layer, exhibit a minimum reflection loss value of −29 dB at 4 GHz and a permissible reflection loss (RL ≤ −10 dB) frequency band of 2–6 GHz, which is much better than the performance of the common metal-based coatings in the lower frequency.

MnO2 with a sea urchin-like ball chain shape was first synthesized in a high magnetic field via a simple chemical process, and a mechanism for the formation of this grain shape was discussed. The as-synthesized samples were characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, and vector network analysis. The dielectric constant and the loss tangent clearly decreased under a magnetic field. The magnetic loss tangent and the imaginary part of the magnetic permeability increased substantially. Furthermore, the theoretically calculated values of reflection loss showed that the absorption peaks shifted to a higher frequency with increases in the magnetic field strength.

Scandia, gadolinia, and ytterbia co-doped zirconia (SGYZ) ceramic powder was synthesized by chemical co-precipitation and calcination processes for application in thermal barrier coatings to promote the durability of gas turbines. The ceramic powder was agglomerated and sintered at 1150 °C for 2 h, and the powder exhibited good flowability and apparent density to be suitable for plasma spraying process. The microstructure, morphology and phase stability of the powder and plasma-sprayed SGYZ coatings were analyzed by means of scanning electron microscope and x-ray diffraction. Thermal conductivity of plasma-sprayed SGYZ coatings was measured. The results indicated that the SGYZ ceramic powder and the coating exhibit excellent stability to retain single non-transformable tetragonal zirconia even after high temperature (1400 °C) exposure for 500 h and do not undergo a tetragonal-to-monoclinic phase transition upon cooling. Furthermore, the plasma-sprayed SGYZ coating also exhibits lower thermal conductivity than yttria stabilized zirconia coating currently used in gas turbine engine industry. SGYZ can be explored as a candidate material of ultra-high temperature thermal barrier coating for advanced gas turbine engines.

To obtain the weak signal light detection from the high background noise, we present a theoretical study on the ultra-narrow bandwidth tunable atomic filter with electromagnetically induced transparency. In a three-level -type atomic system in the rubidium D1 line, the bandwidth of the EIT atomic filter is narrowed to ~. And the single peak transmission of the filter can be up to . Moreover, the transmission wavelength can be tuned by changing the coupling light frequency. This theoretical scheme can also be applied to other alkali atomic systems.

An approximate solution of dark soliton on a parabolic background has been given. The parabolic beam can self-similarly evolve through the nonlinear barrier. The fundamental dark soliton strips can propagate stably, but the 2-order dark soliton strips divide into a pair of gray solitons along the propagate distance. In addition, the interaction of two parallel and cross dark soliton are considered.

The results of an extensive program to investigate radioactivity in the coastal waters of the Bohai and Yellow Seas during 1981–1982 and to monitor routinely the concentrations of 90 Sr and 137 Cs in both seawater and marine organisms between 1970 and 1981 are presented here. The samples collected included seawater, marine organisms and sediments and the radionuclides determined were 90 Sr, 137 Cs, 106 Co, 144 Ce, 238 U, 232 Th and 226 Ra. The concentrations of the radionuclides in seawater, marine organisms and sediments did not differ substantially between the Bohai and Yellow Seas. The mean concentrations of 90 Sr and 137 Cs in seawater were 8·7 Bq m −3 and 10·7 Bq m −3 respectively in 1982; the corresonding means for 90 Sr and 137 Cs in the flesh of fish, shellfish, and shrimp and crab were 0·031, 0·44 and 0·33 Bq kg −1 9fresh wt_and 0·41, 0·41 and 0·59 Bq kg −1 fresh wt) respectively, in 1981, while the mean sediment concentrations for 90 Sr and 137 Cs in the Bohai Sea were 0·011 and 0·014 Bq g −1 (dry wt) respectively in 1981. The results show that the levels of radioactivity in the Bohai and Yellow Seas were very low; artificial radionuclides such as 90 Sr, 137 Cs, 144 Ce, 60 Co, 106 Ru being mainly from weapons test fallout in the 1960s and early 1970s, and natural radionuclides such as 238 U, 232 Th and 226 Ra reflecting the natural radiation background levels of this marine environment.

Fourty-three cases of globoid displasia and signet ring cell carcinoma were stained by mucin and CEA (ABC method). It was found that there were three kinds of mucin (neutral, sialo and sulphomucin in both globoid displastic cells and signet ring cells. The percentages of the three kinds of mucins seen in the two kinds of cells were not much different. It was indicated that the altered mucins in the gastric epithelial cells must be a sign of dedifferentiation of the cells and the results of malfunction. The globoid dysplasia type I mainly contained neutral mucin, whereas type II, the acid mucin was predominant, especially the sulphomucin. The CEA positive reaction became stronger as the atypia being remarkable, and the characteristics of distribution of CEA positive particles were similar in the two kinds of cells namely, randomly or disorderly in the cells. Based on the analysis of the results, a conclusion can be made that the variety of mucins in globoid dysplastic cells can be used as a reference point in classification and is not much significant in grading, but the amount of CEA positive matter can be a reference point in grading. The globoid dysplasia is such a lesion with special features in morphology and function manifested in the process of dedifferentiation towards signet ring cell carcinoma following the successive action of carcinogens upon the cells of gastric epithelium.

The data acquisition system before is usually based on single chip, whose working frequency is low so that the data sampled is easy missing. And the data analysis system normal is based on electronic subdivision circuit, which is complex and unsteady. To improve the measuring precision and resolution of grating geophone, a data acquisition and analysis system based on FPGA is designed. The data acquisition unit, asynchronous FIFO memory which is used for storing moire fringe signal sampled, data analysis unit and so on contained in this system are designed based on hardware description language Verilog. And two software analysis principles are introduced in this system. Amplitude-periods combined principle is used for picking out the shift point accurately and then the software subdivision principle is used for getting the exact information at the shift point in data analysis unit. In this way, the size of circuit board is reduced effectively and high speed acquisition system and high precision grating geophone can be realized.

Anaplasma marginale is a tick-borne pathogen of cattle that causes the disease bovine anaplasmosis worldwide. Major surface proteins (MSPs) are involved in host–pathogen and tick–pathogen interactions and have been used as markers for the genetic characterization of A. marginale strains and phylogenetic studies. MSP1a is involved in the adhesion and transmission of A. marginale by ticks and varies among geographic strains in the number and sequence of amino-terminal tandem repeats. The aim of this study was to characterize the genetic diversity of A. marginale strains collected from countries in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, inclusive of all continents. In this study, we characterized 131 strains of A. marginale using 79 MSP1a repeat sequences. These results corroborated the genetic heterogeneity of A. marginale strains in endemic regions worldwide. The phylogenetic analyses of MSP1a repeat sequences did not result in clusters according to the geographic origin of A. marginale strains but provided phylogeographic information. Seventy-eight percent of the MSP1a repeat sequences were present in strains from a single geographic region. Strong (≥80%) support was found for clusters containing sequences from Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Argentinean and South American strains. The phylogenetic analyses of MSP1a repeat sequences suggested tick–pathogen co-evolution and provided evidence of multiple introductions of A. marginale strains from various geographic locations worldwide. These results contribute to the understanding of the genetic diversity and evolution of A. marginale and tick–pathogen interactions., This research was supported by the project No. 1669 of the Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station, the Endowed Chair for Food Animal Research (K.M. Kocan) and the Instituto de Ciencias de la Salud, Spain (ICS-JCCM) (project 03052-00). P. Ruybal was supported by the INCO Project FP6-003713 “Epidemiology and new generation vaccines for Ehrlichia and Anaplasma infections of ruminants” and the Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (FONCYT-PICTO#08-12920), Argentina. M.S. Mtshali was funded by the National Research Foundation, South Africa (GUN 2070102), CDR Grant No. TA-MOU-01-C21-027 and the University of the Free State, QwaQwa Campus, South Africa. V. Naranjo was funded by Junta de Comunidades de Castilla–La Mancha (JCCM), Spain. This work has been facilitated through The Integrated Consortium on Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases (ICTTD-3), financed by the International Cooperation Programme of the European Union through Coordination Action Project No. 510561.

Objective This study was designed to investigate the immunoregulatory role of α-galactosylceramide (α-GalCer), a ligand for invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells, on experimental autoimmune myocarditis (EAM) induced in Balb/c mice, and to explore the underlying mechanisms of its action. Methods Balb/c mice were immunised on day 0 with porcine cardiac myosin to establish the EAM model. All the immunised mice were divided into two groups, the α-GalCer treated group and the EAM group. A dose of α-GalCer (2 μg/mouse/injection) or vehicle (1% phosphate-buffered saline, PBS) was given intraperitoneally at the time of immunisation, and then α-GalCer or PBS was injected on alternate days for 6 weeks. Untreated Balb/c mice (n=10) served as normal controls. Results All animals were euthanised 1 day after the last injection. Myocardial inflammation was evaluated by H & E staining and the expression levels of C/EBPβ and α-SMA were determined by immunohistochemistry. CD4 CD25 Foxp3 + Tregs and iNKT cells were analysed and sorted by flow cytometry. Western blot analysis was performed to detect MMP-2 and MMP-9 protein expression. Following α-GalCer treatment for 6 weeks, myocardial inflammation improved significantly in the α-GalCer treated group compared to the EAM group. The proportions of CD4 CD25 Foxp3 + regulatory T cells and NK1.1 + iNKT cells were statistically increased in the α-GalCer treated group compared to the EAM and normal control groups. In contrast to the EAM group, α-GalCer treatment significantly increased myocardial MMP-2 and MMP-9 expression. Expression of C/EBPβ increased significantly in the EAM group compared to the α-GalCer treated group and the normal control group. In contrast, the expression of α-SMA in the myocardium did not differ significantly among the three groups. Conclusion This study demonstrated that α-GalCer alleviates experimental autoimmune myocarditis in Balb/c mice. Thus, α-GalCer represents a potential therapeutic target for autoimmune-inflammation mediated cardiac damage. This study revealed that α-GalCer protects experimental autoimmune myocarditis through upregulation of the proportion of iNKT and Tregs and increased expression of myocardial MMP-2 and MMP-9.

The thermal stability and the mechanism and kinetics of decomposition of the ladderlike polymer polyphenylsilsesquioxane (PPS) and some related polyorganosiloxanes were studied by means of thermal analysis, pyrolysis GC, GC-MS, and other methods. The experimental results show that ladderlike PPS is thermally more stable than the analogous single chain polymer PDPS. Above 505°C, PPS decomposes by mechanisms of phenyl group elimination and carbonization. The apparent activation energy of the decomposition of PPS is about 270 kJ/mol, which is much higher than those of other polyorganosiloxanes studied. Copolymers of PPS with PDPS and PDMS have intermediate thermal properties. MW and MWD have a negligible effect on the stability of PPS while chlorination lowers the heat-resistant properties significantly.

Hierarchical badges system is often used to encourage user contribution in many user‐generated content (UGC) platforms. But little is known whether this mechanism is effective in inducing users to provide more substantial and useful contents. In this research, we aim to study how the badge levels impact users’ contribution behavior such as their efforts and opinions, using data from a large online review platform. Our preliminary results show that users increase their efforts such as review frequency and review length as their badge levels upgrade. In terms of opinions they express, users with higher badges are less likely to post extreme ratings. Our finding has important implications for business modes that rely on UGC, such as social question‐and‐answering, social media, and crowdsourcing. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Refereed/Peer-reviewed Employing a hierarchical badges system to sustain users' participation and content contribution has been a common practice in online review platforms. However, it is still unclear whether this incentive mechanism is effective in inducing users to provide more substantial and useful reviews. In this paper, we draw on the goal-setting theory and status hierarchies theory to study how the hierarchical badges system impacts users’ behavior such as their effort levels and expressed opinions, using the data of 234,220 reviews from a large online review platform. Our results show that users significantly increase their efforts as their status are promoted, manifesting as review frequency, length, and readability. In terms of expressed opinions, users with higher badges are less likely to post extremely negative ratings and use negative emotional words. Our results have important implications for business modes that rely on user-generated content, such as online review platforms, social question and answer sites, social media, and crowdsourcing systems.