Combined contribution of biochar and introduced AM fungi on lead stability and microbial community in polluted agricultural soil.

Introduction: Lead (Pb) pollution in agricultural soil has been accelerated by industrial development and human activities, and poses a major threat to agricultural ecosystems. Both biochar and arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) fungi are considered to play an important role in remediation of Pb contaminated soil.

Methods: The combined remediation effects of introduced AM fungi and biochar on soil properties, Pb availability, microbial community and functional profiles were systematically investigated in unsterilized Pb-polluted agricultural soil.

Defective neurite elongation and branching in Nibp/Trappc9 deficient zebrafish and mice.

Loss of function in transport protein particles (TRAPP) links a new set of emerging genetic disorders called "TRAPPopathies". One such disorder is NIBP syndrome, characterized by microcephaly and intellectual disability, and caused by mutations of , a crucial and unique member of TRAPPII. To investigate the neural cellular/molecular mechanisms underlying microcephaly, we developed Nibp/Trappc9-deficient animal models using different techniques, including morpholino knockdown and CRISPR/Cas mutation in zebrafish and Cre/LoxP-mediated gene targeting in mice.

Exploring the Role of Visual Design in Digital Public Health Safety Education.

In this research, the positive role of interface visual design in digital safety education was verified taking COVID-19 prevention and control knowledge as the content of public health safety education, where interface emotion (positive, negative, and neutral) and interface layout (waterfall typed and juxtaposition typed) were regarded as independent variables, and readers' understanding, course evaluation and system usability score were dependent variables. As revealed in the results of a 3 × 2 two-factor experiment in which 252 college students participated: first, different interface emotion can cause significantly different understanding, where negative emotion has the best learning transfer effect; second, due to the difference in interface emotion, participants may give certain courses significantly different evaluation scores, while positive emotional interface contributes to the obviously high scores of three course-evaluation items, "appeal of the lesson", "enjoyment of the lesson" and "interface quality"; third, significantly different system usability can be caused by different interface layout, where waterfall-type layout enjoys higher appraisal from users; fourth, interface emotion and interface layout have a similar interactive effects in terms of "effort of the lesson" and "interface quality", where waterfall-type layout is favored in terms of positive emotional interface, and juxtaposition-type layout is more advantageous in terms of negative emotional interface. These results are of vital significance for interface design and safety education.

Health-Related Quality of Life With Ulipristal Acetate for Treatment of Uterine Leiomyomas: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Objective: To investigate effects of ulipristal acetate on health-related quality of life (QOL) and symptom severity in women with symptomatic uterine leiomyomas and abnormal uterine bleeding.

Methods: Women were randomized to ulipristal (5 mg, 10 mg) or placebo in two phase 3, multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials (VENUS I and II). Health-related QOL and symptom severity were assessed at baseline, and over one (VENUS I and II) and two (VENUS II) 12-week treatment courses using the Uterine Fibroid Symptom Health-Related Quality of Life questionnaire.

SCT Promoter Methylation is a Highly Discriminative Biomarker for Lung and Many Other Cancers.

Aberrant DNA methylation has long been implicated in cancers. In this work we present a highly discriminative DNA methylation biomarker for non-small cell lung cancers and fourteen other cancers. Based on 69 NSCLC cell lines and 257 cancer-free lung tissues we identified a CpG island in SCT gene promoter which was verified by qMSP experiment in 15 NSCLC cell lines and 3 immortalized human respiratory epithelium cells.

A novel Bayesian change-point algorithm for genome-wide analysis of diverse ChIPseq data types.

ChIPseq is a widely used technique for investigating protein-DNA interactions. Read density profiles are generated by using next-sequencing of protein-bound DNA and aligning the short reads to a reference genome. Enriched regions are revealed as peaks, which often differ dramatically in shape, depending on the target protein(1).

Novel Foxo1-dependent transcriptional programs control T(reg) cell function.

Regulatory T (T(reg)) cells, characterized by expression of the transcription factor forkhead box P3 (Foxp3), maintain immune homeostasis by suppressing self-destructive immune responses. Foxp3 operates as a late-acting differentiation factor controlling T(reg) cell homeostasis and function, whereas the early T(reg)-cell-lineage commitment is regulated by the Akt kinase and the forkhead box O (Foxo) family of transcription factors. However, whether Foxo proteins act beyond the T(reg)-cell-commitment stage to control T(reg) cell homeostasis and function remains largely unexplored.

Genome-wide localization of protein-DNA binding and histone modification by a Bayesian change-point method with ChIP-seq data.

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have matured considerably since their introduction and a focus has been placed on developing sophisticated analytical tools to deal with the amassing volumes of data. Chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq), a major application of NGS, is a widely adopted technique for examining protein-DNA interactions and is commonly used to investigate epigenetic signatures of diffuse histone marks. These datasets have notoriously high variance and subtle levels of enrichment across large expanses, making them exceedingly difficult to define.