Persistent pollution of genetic materials in a typical laboratory environment.

From the onset of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, there are concerns regarding the disease spread and environmental pollution of biohazard since studies on genetic engineering flourish and numerous genetic materials were used such as the nucleic acid test of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). In this work, we studied genetic material pollution in an institute during a development cycle of plasmid, one of typical genetic materials, with typical laboratory settings. The pollution source, transmission routes, and pollution levels in laboratory environment were examined.

Variations in the morphological and chemical composition of the rhizomes of species based on a common garden experiment.

species have great potential in fighting chronic and hidden hunger. In this study, five species collected from different populations were cultivated in a common garden for 4 years. The species mainly differed in yield, saponin and polysaccharide contents, stem diameter, leaf width, inflorescence length, and floret inflorescence length.

Integrative Analysis of miRNAs Involved in Fat Deposition in Different Pig Breeds.

Background: miRNAs are a set of small, noncoding RNAs that bind to partially complementary sequences on target mRNAs. This leads to the post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. Many studies have shown that microRNAs play critical roles in adipose cell differentiation and fat metabolism.

Grating-like DBD plasma for air disinfection: Dose and dose-response characteristics.

Atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma is an emerging technique for effective bioaerosol decontamination and is promising to be used in indoor environments to reduce infections. However, fundamental knowledge of the dose and dose-response characteristics of plasma-based disinfection technology is very limited. By examining the single-pass removal efficiency of S.

Determinants and the Moderating Effects of Individual Characteristics on Autonomous Vehicle Adoption in China.

Along with the increasing popularity of autonomous vehicles (AVs), urban livability and public health will be enhanced due to ecofriendly issues: alleviated traffic congestion, lower car ownership, and reduced transport emissions. However, some emerging issues, including public safety, trust, privacy, reliability, underdeveloped legislation, and liability, may deter user intentions to adopt an AV. This study introduces an extensive factor, playfulness, into the technology acceptance model (TAM) to quantify the impacts of psychological factors (perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived playfulness) on AV adoption intention.

Integrated System for On-Site Rapid and Safe Screening of COVID-19.

Since the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the epidemic has been spreading around the world for more than 2 years. Rapid, safe, and on-site detection methods of COVID-19 are in urgent demand for the control of the epidemic. Here, we established an integrated system, which incorporates a machine-learning-based Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy technique for rapid COVID-19 screening and air-plasma-based disinfection modules to prevent potential secondary infections.

Disinfection of in ice by surface dielectric barrier discharge plasma.

A variety of pathogens can cause people to suffer from serious diseases, and the transmission of COVID-19 through the cold chain has once again attracted people's attention to cold chain disinfection. Unfortunately, there is no mature cold chain disinfection technique yet. In this study, a low-temperature plasma disinfection technique for a cold chain is proposed.

Safety and health perceptions of location-based augmented reality gaming app and their implications.

This study seeks to understand the potential safety and health implications of location-based augmented reality gaming apps ("LAR apps") through studying people perception of Pokémon GO, a popular LAR gaming app. These perceptions can affect app usage behavior, app retention rate, and market share which can be critical to policymakers and app developers. An online survey is conducted to capture the impacts of Pokémon GO regarding: (i) perceived risk of using the app and opinion of prohibiting its usage while driving and cycling, (ii) frequency of app-related distracted driving and cycling, (iii) frequency of app-induced driving and potentially unsafe driving behavior, (iv) average daily steps before and after using the app, and (v) perceived physical and mental health benefits.

Identification of Key Genes Mutations Associated With the Radiosensitivity by Whole Exome Sequencing in Pancreatic Cancer.

Background: Pancreatic cancer (PC) is one of the most lethal human cancers, and radiation therapy (RT) is an important treating option. Many patients diagnosed with PC do not achieve objective responses because of the existence of intrinsic and acquired radioresistance. Therefore, biomarkers, which predict radiotherapy benefit in PC, are eagerly needed to be identified.

A Bayesian Method for Dynamic Origin-Destination Demand Estimation Synthesizing Multiple Sources of Data.

In this paper a Bayesian method is proposed to estimate dynamic origin-destination (O-D) demand. The proposed method can synthesize multiple sources of data collected by various sensors, including link counts, turning movements at intersections, flows, and travel times on partial paths. Time-dependent demand for each O-D pair at each departure time is assumed to satisfy the normal distribution.

Exploring the impacts of travel-implied policy factors on COVID-19 spread within communities based on multi-source data interpretations.

The global Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to the implementation of social distancing measures such as work-from-home orders that have drastically changed people's travel-related behavior. As countries are easing up these measures and people are resuming their pre-pandemic activities, the second wave of COVID-19 is observed in many countries. This study proposes a Community Activity Score (CAS) based on inter-community traffic characteristics (in and out of community traffic volume and travel distance) to capture the current travel-related activity level compared to the pre-pandemic baseline and study its relationship with confirmed COVID-19 cases.

Impacts of Pokémon GO on route and mode choice decisions: exploring the potential for integrating augmented reality, gamification, and social components in mobile apps to influence travel decisions.

This study aims to understand the impacts of Pokémon GO, a popular location-based augmented reality (AR) mobile gaming app, on route and mode choices. Pokémon GO leverages AR to introduce virtual objects at fixed and dynamic locations that translate through the app interface to incentives in the real world that potentially influence users' route and mode choices. Its gaming nature and social components can possibly enhance long-term user engagement through applying the characteristics of game elements and providing opportunities for competition, collaboration, companionship, and social reinforcement.

Fast Screening and Primary Diagnosis of COVID-19 by ATR-FT-IR.

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has led to substantial infections and mortality around the world. Fast screening and diagnosis are thus crucial for quick isolation and clinical intervention. In this work, we showed that attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FT-IR) can be a primary diagnostic tool for COVID-19 as a supplement to in-use techniques.

Understanding the Interaction between Cyclists' Traffic Violations and Enforcement Strategies: An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Analysis.

An evolutionary game-theoretic analysis method is developed in this study to understand the interactions between cyclists' traffic violations and the enforcement strategies. The evolutionary equilibrium stabilities were analysed under a fixed (FPS) and a dynamic penalty strategy (DPS). The simulation-based numerical experiments show that: (i) the proposed method can be used to study the interactions between traffic violations and the enforcement strategies; (ii) FPS and DPS can reduce cyclists' probability of committing traffic violations when the perceived traffic violations' relative benefit is less than the traffic violation penalty and the enforcement cost is less than the enforcement benefit, and using DPS can yield a stable enforcement outcome for law enforcement compared to using FPS; and (iii) strategy-related (penalty amount, enforcement effectiveness, and enforcement cost) and attitudinal factors (perceived relative benefit, relative public image cost, and cyclists' attitude towards risk) can affect the enforcement strategy's impacts on reducing cyclists' traffic violations.

Evaluating the Safety Risk of Rural Roadsides Using a Bayesian Network Method.

Evaluating the safety risk of rural roadsides is critical for achieving reasonable allocation of a limited budget and avoiding excessive installation of safety facilities. To assess the safety risk of rural roadsides when the crash data are unavailable or missing, this study proposed a Bayesian Network (BN) method that uses the experts' judgments on the conditional probability of different safety risk factors to evaluate the safety risk of rural roadsides. Eight factors were considered, including seven factors identified in the literature and a new factor named access point density.

Oncogenic TRIM31 confers gemcitabine resistance in pancreatic cancer via activating the NF-κB signaling pathway.

Drug resistance is well known as a major obstacle for cancer recurrence and treatment failure, leading to poor survival in pancreatic cancer, which is a highly aggressive tumor. Identifying effective strategies to overcome drug resistance would have a significant clinical impact for patients with pancreatic cancer. The protein and mRNA expression of TRIM31 in pancreatic cancer cell lines and patient tissues were determined using Real-time PCR and Western blot, respectively.

Combination of gemcitabine and erlotinib inhibits recurrent pancreatic cancer growth in mice via the JAK-STAT pathway.

Compared to single gemcitabine treatment, the combination of gemcitabine and erlotinib has shown effective response in patients with locally advanced or metastatic pancreatic cancer. However, the combination therapy has not proven effective in patients with pancreatic cancer after R0 or R1 resection. In the present study, a nude mice model of orthotopic xenotransplantation after tumor resection was established using pancreatic cancer cell lines, BxPC-3 and PANC‑1.

Integrating Optimal Heterogeneous Sensor Deployment and Operation Strategies for Dynamic Origin-Destination Demand Estimation.

Most existing network sensor location problem (NSLP) models are designed to identify the number of sensors with fixed costs and installation locations, and sensors are assumed to be installed permanently. However, sometimes sensors are carried by individuals to collect traffic data measurements manually at fixed locations. Hence, their duration of operation for which traffic data measurements are collected is limited, and their costs are not fixed as they are correlated with the duration of operation.

Global transcriptome analysis identifies differentially expressed genes related to lipid metabolism in Wagyu and Holstein cattle.

Fat deposition of beef cattle varies between breeds. However, the regulation mechanism is still not elucidated completely at molecular level. In the present study, we comparatively analyzed transcriptome of subcutaneous adipose tissue between Wagyu and Holstein cattle with a significant difference in fat deposition to identify key genes associated with fat metabolism and adipogenesis by high-throughput RNA-seq technology.

MicroRNA-500a promotes migration and invasion in hepatocellular carcinoma by activating the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway.

Increased expression of microRNA-500a (miR-500a) has been reported in the serum of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients. However, the biological effects and mechanisms of miR-500a in hepatoma cells remain unclear. In this study, we found that miR-500a expression was up-regulated in HCC cell lines and tissues, and that high levels of miR-500a was associated with poor prognosis.

Identification and characterization of differentially expressed miRNAs in subcutaneous adipose between Wagyu and Holstein cattle.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are important post-transcriptional regulators involved in animal adipogenesis, however, their roles in bovine fat deposition remain poorly understood. In the present study, we conducted a comparative RNA sequencing to identify the key miRNAs involved in beef lipid accumulation by comparing the backfat small RNA samples between Wagyu (high intramuscular fat) and Holstein (moderate intramuscular fat) cattle. Fifteen miRNAs such as bta-miR-142-3p, bta-miR-379, bta-miR-196a, bta-miR-196b, bta-miR-30f and bta-miR-2887 were identified to have a higher expression level in Wagyu cattle compared with Holstein, whereas bta-miR-320a, bta-miR-874 and bta-miR-1247-3p had a lower expression level in Wagyu.