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Effective utilization of structural information is important for high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image change detection. For comprehensively utilizing the local and global structures in SAR images, a hierarchical spatial-temporal graph kernel (STGK) method is proposed in this paper for high-resolution SAR image change detection. First, the bi-temporal hierarchical graph models are constructed for extracting the local-global structures in the bi-temporal SAR images. Then, a STGK function, which measures the spatial and temporal similarities between the local-global structures, is constructed for indicating the change levels between the bi-temporal images. Finally, a support vector machine (SVM) is implemented with the STGK function for producing the final change detection results. Experimental results on real GaoFen-3 SAR data sets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, and prove that the STGK method is capable of detecting changed areas with relatively complex structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phrenic nerve transfer has been a well-established procedure for restoring elbow flexion function in patients with brachial plexus avulsion injury. Concerning about probably detrimental respiratory effects brought by the operation, however, stirred up quite a bit of controversy. We present a case report of the successful application of phrenic nerve as donor to reinnervate the biceps in a septuagenarian with brachial plexus avulsion injury, not accompanied with significant clinical respiratory problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mycotoxins are potential food pollutants produced by fungi. Among them, aflatoxins (AFs) are the most toxic. Therefore, AFs were selected as models, and a sensitive, simple and green graphene oxide (GO)-based stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE) method was developed for extraction and determination of AFs with high performance liquid chromatography-laser-induced fluorescence detector (HPLC-LIF). This method improved the sensitivity of AFs detection and solved the deposition difficulty of the direct use of GO as adsorbent. Several parameters including a spiked amount of NaCl, stirring rate, extraction time and desorption time were investigated. Under optimal conditions, the quantitative method had low limits of detection of 2.4-8.0 pg/mL, which were better than some reported AFs analytical methods. The developed method has been applied to soy milk samples with good recoveries ranging from 80.5 to 102.3%. The prepared GO-based SBSE can be used as a sensitive screening technique for detecting AFs in soy milk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Liposomes have successfully been used for decades to encapsulate and protect drugs that are prone to deactivation in the body. The present study aimed to demonstrate the use of liposomes to encapsulate cordycepin, an adenosine analog that quickly loses its activityin vivo. The cordycepin-loaded liposomes were prepared by the ammonium sulfate gradient approach, and itsin vitroandin vivoantitumour activities were evaluated using BEL-7402 cells and hepatocellular carcinoma H22 transplanted tumors, respectively. An MTT assay was used to observe the cytotoxicity of cells treated with cordycepin and cordycepin-loaded liposomesin vitro. High-content screening (HSC) was carried out using Hoechst 33342 to detect apoptotic cells and the ratio of cells in different cell cycle stages. The data demonstrated that both the cordycepin and the cordycepin-loaded liposomes resulted in clear cytotoxicity with IC50 values of 18.97 and 29.39 μg/mL, respectively. The latter showed significantly strong inhibitory effects on H22 tumor growth in mice, while the former did not show any inhibitory effects on tumor growth. In addition, the HSC assay showed that the cordycepin-loaded liposomes resulted in a higher rate of apoptosis than the cordycepin alone in BEL-7402 cells. Further data analysis revealed that the cells treated with cordycepin-loaded liposomes were predominately arrested at the G2/M phase (p < 0.05), while those treated with cordycepin alone were arrested in the G0/G1 phase (p < 0.05). In conclusion, these results suggest that liposomes can enhance and maintain thein vivoanti-tumor activity of cordycepin. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Conclusion: This study described objective and subjective evaluations of the Nurotron® Venus™ Cochlear Implant System and indicated that this system produced a satisfactory performance.Objective: To observe the performance of the Nurotron® Venus™ cochlear implant (CI) system via electrophysiological and psychophysical evaluations.Methods: A 26-electrode CI system was specially designed. The performance of MRI in animal and cadaveric head experiments, EABR in cats experiment, the correlation between ESRT and C level, and psychophysics evaluations in clinical trials were observed.Results: In the animal and cadaveric head experiments, magnet dislocation could not be prevented in the 1.5 T MRI without removal of the internal magnet. The EABR was clearly elicited in cat experiment. In the clinical trial, the ESRT was strongly correlated with C level (p < 0.001). The human clinical trial involving 57 post-lingually deafened native Mandarin-speaking patients was performed. Residual hearing protection in the implanted ear at each audiometric frequency was observed in 27.5–46.3% patients post-operatively. A pitch ranking test revealed that place pitches were generally ordered from apical to basal electrodes. The recognitions of the perceptions of 301 disyllabic words, environment sounds, disyllabic words, and numerals were significantly better than the pre-operative performance and reached plateaus. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The study was aimed to observe the morphology of intraepidermal nerve fibre (IENF) and to explore the relationships between intraepidermal nerve fibre density (IENFD) and anatomic sites, age, genders and races. Intraepidermal nerve fibre was observed using immunohistochemistry. The relationships between IENFD and anatomic sites, ages, genders and races were analysed by quantitative analysis of IENFD. Five patterns of the IENFs were observed according to the morphological classification. A significant difference was observed in IENFD between different anatomic sites (P<0.05). A linear negative correlation was observed between IENFD and age (r=-0.2931, P<0.01). No significant difference was found between IENFD and genders. Intraepidermal nerve fibre density at distal leg of Chinese (395.54±166.92) was higher than that of Finnish (114.62±32.32, P<0.01). Skin biopsy may be an effective tool in quantitation of IENFD in healthy individuals. Intraepidermal nerve fibre density is independent of genders, and closely associated with anatomic sites, races and ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the role of China in Arctic affairs and governance with respect to global governance. Topics discussed include five marine scientific expeditions in the Arctic conducted by the country to carry out comprehensive observations on snow, ice and geology, China's participation in Arctic scientific research by joining the International Arctic Science Committee in 1996 and efforts of China to respect rights of indigenous peoples in the Arctic region.

This paper proposes a demand-side theory on the appropriate financial structure for an economy. As argued in the new structural economics, the factor endowment structure in an economy determines its optimal industrial structure. Firms operating in different industries and applying different technologies have different characteristics in firm size and risk. Since various financial institutions have their own strengths and weaknesses in providing financial services, there is an appropriate financial structure for the economy at its particular development level. As the economy develops, the appropriate financial structure for the economy evolves correspondingly. The basic patterns of actual financial structure in the real world are consistent with these predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cloning of plant disease resistant genes is greatly helpful for disease resistant breeding in plants and the insight of resistance mechanism. However, there are less relevant researches in peach [prunus persica (L.) Batch]. In this study, four NBS-LRR type resistance gene analogs (RGAs) were cloned from genomic DNA of peach. The PNBS2 fragment was also amplified from peach cDNA and the full-length cDNA of PNBS2 (PRPML GenBank accession no. AY599223) has been cloned. Sequence analysis indicated that the cDNA of PRPM1 is 3007 bp in length and that the contained ORF encodes for a polypeptide of 917 amino acids. Compared with known NBS-LRR genes, ii presented relatively high amino acid sequence identity. The polypeptide has typical structure of non-TIR-NBS-LRR genes, with NB-ARC, LZ, LRR and transmembrane domains. Southern analysis indicated that the PRPM1 gene might be a single copy in peach genome. Northern blot and RT-PCR analysis showed that the expression of PRPM1 was not induced by salicylic acid (SA) in peach young leaves. The isolation of putative resistance genes from peach provided useful bases for studying the structure and function of peach disease-resistance relating genes and disease resistant genetic breeding in peach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We newly sequenced the near complete mitochondrial genome ofPolypedates braueri. The total length of theP. braueripartial mitogenome is 13 144 bp, with GenBank accession no. KT921226. It consists of 11 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 2 ribosomal RNA genes (rRNA), and 18 transfer RNA genes (tRNA). Most of the genes are encoded on the H-strand, except for seven tRNA and ND6, which are encoded on the L-strand. Our mitogenomic phylogenetic tree shows that the relationships between the generaRhacophorusandPolypedateswere well supported. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The entire mitogenome ofTylototriton kweichowensisis 16 727 bp in length. It consists of 13 protein-coding genes (PCGS), 2 ribosomal RNA genes (rRNA), 22 transfer RNA genes (tRNA), and 1 control region (CR). Except for ND6 subunit and 8 tRNA genes are distributed on the L-strand, all the other PCGs and tRNA genes are located on the H-strand. “ATG” and “GTG” are the start codons of the PCGs, “TAA”, “AGA”, “TA–” and “T––” are the stop codons. Most of the tRNA genes can be folded into typical clover-leaf secondary structure. The genome ofT. kweichowensishas two repeat sequences in the cob-noncoding region. Mitogenomic phylogenetic analysis (NJ tree) robustly resolved the genus-level relationship among the three generaTylototriton, Echinotriton, andPleurodeles, and which is congruent with the previous molecular phylogeny results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We newly sequenced the mitochondrial genome ofTylototriton wenxianensis. The total length of theT. wenxianensismitogenome is 16 265 bp, with GenBank accession number KR733683. It consists of 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), two ribosomal RNA genes (rRNA), 22 transfer RNA genes (tRNA), and one control region (CR). Most of the genes are encoded on the H-strand, except for eight tRNA and ND6, which are encoded on the L-strand. Our mitogenomic phylogenetic tree showed that the relationships among the generaTylototriton, Echinotriton, andPleurodeleswere well supported, and which is consistent with the previous molecular phylogeny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complete mitogenome ofTylototriton shanjingis 16,661 bp in length with GenBank accession number KR154461, which contains 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNA genes (tRNA), 2 ribosomal RNA genes (rRNA), and 1 control region (CR). The overall base composition of this mitogenome is biased toward AT content at 59.45%. Most of the PCGs and tRNA genes are located on the H-strand, except for ND6 subunit gene and eight tRNA genes, which were distributed on the L-strand. The PCGs used “ATG” and “GTG” as the start codons, while “TAA”, “TAG”, “AGA”, and “T–” are used as stop codons. Almost all tRNA genes were folded into typical cloverleaf secondary structures. TheT. shanjinggenome had two tandem repeat sequences in the cob-noncoding region. The mitogenomic phylogenetic analyses shows that the generaEchinotriton and Tylototritonwere clustered into a strong supported monophyletic clade, which is a sister clade to the genusPleurodeles, this confirms the previous phylogenetic results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tylototriton taliangensiswas listed as a Near Threatened amphibian in IUCN red list. In this study, we sequenced the complete mitochondrial (mt) genome of this species (GenBank: KP979646) and found it contains 16,265 base pairs, which encode 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNA genes (tRNA), 2 ribosomal RNA genes (rRNA) and 1 control region (CR). We also found that almost all PCGs and tRNA genes are located on the H-strand, except for ND6 subunit gene and eight tRNA genes, which were distributed on the L-strand. The PCGs used “ATG” and “GTG” as the start codon, while used four types of stop codons. Almost all tRNA genes were folded into typical cloverleaf secondary structures. The L-strand replication origin (OL) and a non-coding region were also found. The new mitogenomic phylogenetic tree confirms the reciprocally monophyly of the genusTylototriton, EchinotritonandPleurodeleswith high bootstrap value. The present study will provide information for future studies on the conservation genetics and phylogeny of this species and its relatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]