3,5-Diiodo-l-thyronine ameliorates diabetic nephropathy in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats

3, 5-Diiodothyronine (T2), a natural metabolite of triiodothyronine (T3) from deiodination pathway, can mimic biologic effects of T3 without inducing thyrotoxic effects. Recent studies revealed T3 acted as a protective factor against diabetic nephropathy (DN). Nevertheless, little is known about the effect of T2 on DN. This study was designed to investigate whether and how T2 affects experimental models of DN in vivo and in vitro. Administration of T2 was found to prevent significant decrease in SIRT1 protein expression and activity as well as increases in blood glucose, urine albumin excretion, matrix expansion, transforming growth factor-β1 expression, fibronectin and type IV collagen deposition in the diabetic kidney. Concordantly, similar effects of T2 were exhibited in the cultured rat mesangial cells (RMC) exposed to high glucose and that could be abolished by a known SIRT1 inhibitor, sirtinol. Moreover, enhanced NF-κB acetylation and JNK phosphorylation present in both diabetic rats and high glucose-treated RMC were distinctly dampened by T2. Collectively, these results suggested that T2 was a protective agent against renal damage in diabetic nephropathy, whose action involved regulation of SIRT1.     

Identification of sparse neural functional connectivity using penalized likelihood estimation and basis functions

One key problem in computational neuroscience and neural engineering is the identification and modeling of functional connectivity in the brain using spike train data. To reduce model complexity, alleviate overfitting, and thus facilitate model interpretation, sparse representation and estimation of functional connectivity is needed. Sparsities include global sparsity, which captures the sparse connectivities between neurons, and local sparsity, which reflects the active temporal ranges of the input-output dynamical interactions. In this paper, we formulate a generalized functional additive model (GFAM) and develop the associated penalized likelihood estimation methods for such a modeling problem. A GFAM consists of a set of basis functions convolving the input signals, and a link function generating the firing probability of the output neuron from the summation of the convolutions weighted by the sought model coefficients. Model sparsities are achieved by using various penalized likelihood estimations and basis functions. Specifically, we introduce two variations of the GFAM using a global basis (e.g., Laguerre basis) and group LASSO estimation, and a local basis (e.g., B-spline basis) and group bridge estimation, respectively. We further develop an optimization method based on quadratic approximation of the likelihood function for the estimation of these models. Simulation and experimental results show that both group-LASSO-Laguerre and group-bridge-B-spline can capture faithfully the global sparsities, while the latter can replicate accurately and simultaneously both global and local sparsities. The sparse models outperform the full models estimated with the standard maximum likelihood method in out-of-sample predictions.     

Neural Response Phase Tracks How Listeners Learn New Acoustic Representations

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双歧杆菌预防早产儿坏死性小肠结肠炎的疗效观察

目的 探讨双歧杆菌预防早产儿坏死性小肠结肠炎(NEC)的疗效.方法 随机分成试验组和对照组,对照组给予常规治疗,试验组在对照组基础上给予双歧杆菌治疗.观察两组不同胎龄和不同出生体重早产儿NEC患病率、治疗前后肠道各菌群变化的差异.结果 (1)试验组NEC总发生率显著低于对照组,差异有统计学意义(P＜0.01);(2)试验组出生体重＜1500g早产儿NEC发生率显著低于对照组,差异有统计学意义(P＜0.05);(3)治疗后试验组细菌总数、球菌总数及杆菌总数上升幅度显著大于对照组,差异均有统计学意义(P＜0.01);治疗后试验组杆球菌比值较对照组显著下降,差异有统计学意义(P＜0.01).结论 双歧杆菌可有效预防早产儿坏死性小肠结肠炎.     

MicroRNA Cluster miR-17-92 Regulates Neural Stem Cell Expansion and Transition to Intermediate Progenitors in the Developing Mouse Neocortex

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Systematics and Species Validity of the Dabieshan Pit Viper Protobothrops dabieshanensis Huang et al. 2012: Evidence from a Mitochondrial Gene Sequence Analysis

Aimed to evaluate the phylogenetic position of the recently described Protobothrops dabieshanensis Huang et al. （2012）, phylogenic relationships of 12 species within Protobothrops based on four mtDNA gene fragments （12S RNA, 16S RNA, ND4 and Cyt b） were reconstructed in our study. The result indicates a clade composed ofP dabiesha- nensis, P. jerdonii and P xiangchengsis with strong support. The genetic distance among P dabieshanensis, P jerdonii and P xiangchengsis was much lower than other congeners. Based on the data from the phylogenetic analysis and pre- viously described morphological differences, we conclude that P dabieshanensis is a valid species with close affinities to P jerdonii and P xiangchengsis.