Abstract The plant genes encoding ABCGs that have been identified to date play a role in suberin formation in response to abiotic and biotic stress. In the present study, 80 ABCG genes were identified in ‘Dangshansuli’ Chinese white pear and designated as PbABCGs. Based on the structural characteristics and phylogenetic analysis, the PbABCG family genes could be classified into seven main groups: classes A-G. Segmental and dispersed duplications were the primary forces underlying the PbABCG gene family expansion in ‘Dangshansuli’ pear. Most of the PbABCG duplicated gene pairs date to the recent whole-genome duplication that occurred 30~45 million years ago. Purifying selection has also played a critical role in the evolution of the ABCG genes. Ten PbABCG genes screened in the transcriptome of ‘Dangshansuli’ pear and its russet mutant ‘Xiusu’ were validated, and the expression levels of the PbABCG genes exhibited significant differences at different stages. The results presented here will undoubtedly be useful for better understanding of the complexity of the PbABCG gene family and will facilitate the functional characterization of suberin formation in the russet mutant.

ABSTRACT Shark-skin surfaces show the non-smoothness characteristics due to the presence of riblet structures. In this work, biomimetic shark-skins were prepared by means of different bio-replicated forming techniques. These techniques include the PDMS elastomeric stamping method (e.g., PES method) and the PDMS embedded-elastomeric stamping method (e.g., PEES method). The study characterized the fabricated biomimetic surfaces through the use of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) as well as 3D microscope. The accuracy of the two replication routes were compared, which included measuring the surface integrity and dimensional parameters ( s, h ) of the riblet-groove structure. The results show that fresh shark-skin without chemical treatments should be used as a replication template whenever possible to attain a satisfactory replication accuracy of the riblet structure. The PES and PEES methods proposed here are effective bio-replicated forming routes in simulating the microstructures of a shark-skin surface. Compared with the PES method, the PEES method has greater precision in simulating the microstructures of a shark-skin surface.

BACKGROUND: In China, mesangial proliferative glomerulonephritis (MsPGN) is one of the most common kidney diseases. In this study, we treated a rat model of chronic anti-Thy-1 MsPGN with Shenhua Tablet and evaluated whether the tablet was able to protect the kidney function. Thirty-six Wistar rats were randomly divided into six groups: (1) Sham surgery (Sham); (2) anti-Thy-1 nephritis model (Thy-1); (3) anti-Thy-1 nephritis model + irbesartan-treated (Irb); (4) anti-Thy-1 nephritis model + low-dose of Shenhua Tablet (SHL); (5) anti-Thy-1 nephritis model + medium-dose of Shenhua Tablet (SHM); (6) anti-Thy-1 nephritis model + high-dose of Shenhua Tablet (SHH RESULTS: Thirteen weeks after drug treatment, urinary proteins were quantified and renal pathological changes were thoroughly examined at the time point of 24 h. Meanwhile, the expression levels of p-Erk1/2, cyclin D1 and p21 at the renal cortex were also tested. The levels of urinary proteins and total cholesterol in the blood were significantly reduced in rats treated with any drug tested in this study. The level of triglyceride was significantly reduced in all three Shenhua Tablet-treated groups. Renal pathomorphological scores were significantly improved in groups of Irb, SHM and SHH. Mesangial cell proliferation was significantly inhibited in any drug-treated group. p-Erk1/2 and cyclin D1 were downregulated whereas p21 was upregulated in the renal cortex CONCLUSIONS: Our study indicated that Shenhua Tablet is able to inhibit the abnormal proliferation of mesangial cells and to prevent kidney damage, which is likely associated with downregulation of p-Erk1/2 and reduced activity of its downstream target-cyclin D1.

Fake review detection has been studied by researchers for several years. However, so far all reported studies are based on English reviews. This paper reports a study of detecting fake reviews in Chinese. Our review dataset is from the Chinese review hosting site Dianping, which has built a fake review detection system. They are confident that their algorithm has a very high precision, but they don't know the recall. This means that all fake reviews detected by the system are almost certainly fake but the remaining reviews may not be all genuine. This paper first reports a supervised learning study of two classes, fake and unknown. However, since the unknown set may contain many fake reviews, it is more appropriate to treat it as an unlabeled set. This calls for the model of learning from positive and unlabeled examples (or PU-learning). Experimental results show that PU learning not only outperforms supervised learning significantly, but also detects a large number of potentially fake reviews hidden in the unlabeled set that Dianping fails to detect.

This paper addresses the problem of detection of randomly arriving or departing primary user (PU) signals in cognitive radio systems. The detection problem of the dynamic PU signal is modeled as a binary hypothesis testing problem where the PU signal might randomly depart or arrive during the sensing period. Then, we detect the cyclostationarity of the PU signal using a test statistic derived from the spectral autocoherence function in dynamic PU signal environments. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme offers an improved spectrum sensing performance than the conventional energy detector for dynamic PU environments.