在线学习行为与认知水平间的关联分析

在线学习评价对保障在线学习质量意义重大。相较于常见的观看视频时长、发帖次数、测验成绩等简单量化指标,文章更关注学习过程中所达到的认知水平。基于平台细粒度数据,构建在线学习行为分析模型,量化指标体系,采用相关分析与聚类研究法,探究在线学习行为与认知水平间的关系。研究表明,章节测验完成度、视频观看反刍比、作业完成度、发布帖子、回复别人帖子、同伴回帖等六个行为指标能表征在线学习认知水平。量化六个行为指标,既利于教师合理地对学习者实施过程性评价,又便于学习者更好地参与学习过程,促进认知水平的提升。

The Arabidopsis Spontaneous Cell Death1 gene, encoding a ζ-carotene desaturase essential for carotenoid biosynthesis, is involved in chloroplast development, photoprotection and retrograde signalling

Carotenoids, a class of natural pigments found in all photosynthetic organisms, are involved in a variety of physiological processes, including coloration, photoprotection, biosynthesis of abscisic acid （ABA） and chloroplast biogenesis. Although carotenoid biosynthesis has been well studied biochemically, the genetic basis of the pathway is not well understood. Here, we report the characterization of two allelic Arabidopsis mutants, spontaneous cell death1-1 （spcl-1） and spc1-2. The weak allele spc1-1 mutant showed characteristics of bleached leaves, accumulation of superoxide and mosaic cell death. The strong mutant allele spc1-2 caused a complete arrest of plant growth and development shortly after germination, leading to a seedling-lethal phenotype. Genetic and molecular analyses indicated that SPC1 encodes a putative ζ-carotene desaturase （ZDS） in the carotenoid biosynthesis pathway. Analysis of carotenoids revealed that several major carotenoid compounds downstream of SPC 1/ZDS were substantially reduced in spc1-1, suggesting that SPC 1 is a functional ZDS. Consistent with the downregulated expression of CAO and PORB, the chlorophyll content was decreased in spc1-1 plants. In addition, expression of Lhcb1. 1, Lhcbl. 4 and RbcS was absent in spc1-2, suggesting the possible involvement of carotenoids in the plastid-to-nucleus retrograde signaling. The spc1-1 mutant also displays an ABA-deficient phenotype that can be partially rescued by the externally supplied phytohormone. These results suggest that SPC1/ZDS is essential for biosynthesis of carotenoids and plays a crucial role in plant growth and development.

PHF8 is a histone H3K9me2 demethylase regulating rRNA synthesis

Dimethylation of histone H3 lysine 9 （H3K9me2） is an important epigenetic mark associated with transcription repression. Here, we identified PHF8, a JmjC-domain-containing protein, as a histone demethylase specific for this repressing mark. Recombinant full-length wild type protein could remove methylation from H3K9me2, but mutation of a conserved histidine to alanine H247A abolished the demethylase activity. Overexpressed exogenous PHF8 was colocalized with B23 staining. Endogenous PHF8 was also colocalized with B23 and fibrillarin, two well-established nucleolus proteins, suggesting that PHF8 is localized in the nucleolus and may regulate rRNA transcription. Indeed, PHF8 bound to the promoter region of the rDNA gene. Knockdown of PHF8 reduced the expression of rRNA, and overexpression of the gene resulted in upregulation of rRNA transcript. Concomitantly, H3K9me2 level was elevated in the promoter region of the rDNA gene in PHF8 knockdown cells and reduced significantly when the wild type but not the catalytically inactive H247A mutant PHF8 was overexpressed. Thus, our study identified a histone demethylase for H3K9me2 that regulates rRNA transcription.

Structural insights into a dual-specificity histone demethylase ceKDM7A from Caenorhabditis elegans

Histone lysine methylation can be removed by JmjC domain-containing proteins in a sequence- and methylationstate-specific manner. However, how substrate specificity is determined and how the enzymes are regulated were largely unknown. We recently found that ceKDM7A, a PHD- and JmjC domain-containing protein, is a histone demethylase specific for H3K9me2 and H3K27me2, and the PHD finger binding to H3K4me3 guides the demethylation activity in vivo. To provide structural insight into the molecular mechanisms for the enzymatic activity and the function of the PHD finger, we solved six crystal structures of the enzyme in apo form and in complex with single or two peptides containing various combinations of H3K4me3, H3K9me2, and H3K27me2 modifications. The structures indicate that H3Kgme2 and H3K27me2 interact with ceKDMTA in a similar fashion, and that the peptide-binding specificity is determined by a network of specific interactions. The geometrical measurement of the structures also revealed that H3K4me3 associated with the PHD finger and H3K9me2 bound to the JmjC domain are from two separate molecules, suggesting a trans-histone peptide-binding mechanism. Thus, our systemic structural studies reveal not only the substrate recognition by the catalytic domain but also more importantly, the molecular mechanism of dual specifieity of ceDKM7A for both H3K9me2 and H3K27me2.

Coordinated regulation of active and repressive histone methylations by a dual-specificity histone demethylase ceKDM7A from Caenorhabditis elegans

H3K9me2 and H3K27me2 are important epigenetic marks associated with transcription repression, while H3K4me3 is associated with transcription activation. It has been shown that active and repressive histone methylations distribute in a mutually exclusive manner, but the underlying mechanism was poorly understood. Here we identified ceKDM7A, a PHD （plant homeodomain）- and JmjC domain-containing protein, as a histone demethylase specific for H3K9me2 and H3K27me2. We further demonstrated that the PHD domain of ceKDM7A bound H3K4me3 and H3K4me3 co-localized with ceKDM7A at the genome-wide level. Disruption of the PHD domain binding to H3K4me3 reduced the demethylase activity in vivo, and loss of ceKDM7A reduced the expression of its associated target genes. These results indicate that ceKDM7A is recruited to the promoter to demethylate H3K9me2 and H3K27me2 and activate gene expression through the binding of the PHD domain to H3K4me3. Thus, our study identifies a dual-specificity histone demethylase and provides novel insights into the regulation of histone methylation.

Unsupervised Graph-Based Tibetan Multi-Document Summarization

Text summarization creates subset that represents the most important or relevant information in the original content,which effectively reduce information redundancy.Recently neural network method has achieved good results in the task of text summarization both in Chinese and English,but the research of text summarization in low-resource languages is still in the exploratory stage,especially in Tibetan.What’s more,there is no large-scale annotated corpus for text summarization.The lack of dataset severely limits the development of low-resource text summarization.In this case,unsupervised learning approaches are more appealing in low-resource languages as they do not require labeled data.In this paper,we propose an unsupervised graph-based Tibetan multi-document summarization method,which divides a large number of Tibetan news documents into topics and extracts the summarization of each topic.Summarization obtained by using traditional graph-based methods have high redundancy and the division of documents topics are not detailed enough.In terms of topic division,we adopt two level clustering methods converting original document into document-level and sentence-level graph,next we take both linguistic and deep representation into account and integrate external corpus into graph to obtain the sentence semantic clustering.Improve the shortcomings of the traditional K-Means clustering method and perform more detailed clustering of documents.Then model sentence clusters into graphs,finally remeasure sentence nodes based on the topic semantic information and the impact of topic features on sentences,higher topic relevance summary is extracted.In order to promote the development of Tibetan text summarization,and to meet the needs of relevant researchers for high-quality Tibetan text summarization datasets,this paper manually constructs a Tibetan summarization dataset and carries out relevant experiments.The experiment results show that our method can effectively improve the quality of summarization and our method is competitive to previous unsupervised methods.

Multi-VMs Intrusion Detection for Cloud Security Using Dempster-shafer Theory

Cloud computing provides easy and on-demand access to computing resources in a configurable pool.The flexibility of the cloud environment attracts more and more network services to be deployed on the cloud using groups of virtual machines(VMs),instead of being restricted on a single physical server.When more and more network services are deployed on the cloud,the detection of the intrusion likes Distributed Denialof-Service(DDoS)attack becomes much more challenging than that on the traditional servers because even a single network service now is possibly provided by groups of VMs across the cloud system.In this paper,we propose a cloud-based intrusion detection system(IDS)which inspects the features of data flow between neighboring VMs,analyzes the probability of being attacked on each pair of VMs and then regards it as independent evidence using Dempster-Shafer theory,and eventually combines the evidence among all pairs of VMs using the method of evidence fusion.Unlike the traditional IDS that focus on analyzing the entire network service externally,our proposed algorithm makes full use of the internal interactions between VMs,and the experiment proved that it can provide more accurate results than the traditional algorithm.

论精准扶贫中的行政监督

精准扶贫是新时代打赢脱贫攻坚战的重要法宝,基于行政法视角是政府主导的行政行为。本文从我国行政监督的概念及在精准扶贫中的运用类型入手,阐明在精准扶贫过程中进行行政监督的必要性,深入分析当前我国精准扶贫过程中出现的行政监督法治困境,并就如何破除这一系列难题提出相应建议。

Inhibition of xanthine oxidase alleviated pancreatic necrosis via HIF-1α-regulated LDHA and NLRP3 signaling pathway in acute pancreatitis

Acute pancreatitis(AP)is a potentially fatal condition with no targeted treatment options.Although inhibiting xanthine oxidase(XO)in the treatment of AP has been studied in several experimental models and clinical trials,whether XO is a target of AP and what its the main mechanism of action is remains unclear.Here,we aimed to re-evaluate whether XO is a target aggravating AP other than merely generating reactive oxygen species that trigger AP.We first revealed that XO expression and enzyme activity were significantly elevated in the serum and pancreas of necrotizing AP models.We also found that allopurinol and febuxostat,as purine-like and non-purine XO inhibitors,respectively,exhibited protective effects against pancreatic acinar cell death in vitro and pancreatic damage in vivo at different doses and treatment time points.Moreover,we observed that conditional Xdh overexpression aggravated pancreatic necrosis and severity.Further mechanism analysis showed that XO inhibition restored the hypoxia-inducible factor 1-alpha(HIF-1α)-regulated lactate dehydrogenase A(LDHA)and NOD-like receptor family pyrin domain containing 3(NLRP3)signaling pathways and reduced the enrichment of^(13)C_(6)-glucose to^(13)C_(3)-lactate.Lastly,we observed that clinical circulatory XO activity was significantly elevated in severe cases and correlated with C-reactive protein levels,while pancreatic XO and urate were also increased in severe AP patients.These results together indicated that proper inhibition of XO might be a promising therapeutic strategy for alleviating pancreatic necrosis and preventing progression of severe AP by downregulating HIF-1α-mediated LDHA and NLRP3 signaling pathways.

Rationality of the FIGO2023 staging for early-stage endometrial cancer,compared with the FIGO2009 staging

Objective The International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics(FIGO)released a new stagingfor endometrial cancer(EC),which revised the FIG02009 staging to include histopathological andmolecular features.The purpose of this study was to validate the prognostic accuracy of the new staging and discuss its clinical applicability.Methods In this single-centre retrospective study,540 patients with primary surgically treated early-stage EC were enrolled and staged according to FIG02009/2023.Kaplan-Meier survival analysis was used to compare for prognostic differentiation.Cox regression was used to identify potential prognostic indicators.Results A total of 81 patients underwent staging shifts,allstage elevation.The prognosis difference between new stages I and Il was more significant.The new staging was more predictive of death postoperatively.Lesion maximum diameter(LMD)was one of the independent risk factors associated with prognosis.Taking LMD=5.70 cm as the cut-off value could further differentiate patients with divergent prognoseswithin FIG02023stage IIC.Conclusion FIG02023 stagingdemonstrated greater prognostic accuracy.In addition,LMD may be another critical factor affecting prognosis.

An activated form of NB-ARC protein RLS1 functions with cysteine-rich receptor-like protein RMC to trigger cell death in rice

A key event that follows pathogen recognition by a resistance(R)protein containing an NB-ARC(nucleotide-binding adaptor shared by Apaf-1,R proteins,and Ced-4)domain is hypersensitive response(HR)-type cell death accompanied by accumulation of reactive oxygen species and nitric oxide.However,the integral mechanisms that underlie this process remain relatively opaque.Here,we show that a gain-offunction mutation in the NB-ARC protein RLS1(Rapid Leaf Senescence 1)triggers high-light-dependent HR-like cell death in rice.The RLS1-mediated defense response is largely independent of salicylic acid accumulation,NPR1(Nonexpressor of Pathogenesis-Related Gene 1)activity,and RAR1(Required for Mla12 Resistance 1)function.A screen for suppressors of RLS1 activation identified RMC(Root Meander Curling)as essential for the RLS1-activated defense response.RMC encodes a cysteine-rich receptor-like secreted protein(CRRSP)and functions as an RLS1-binding partner.Intriguingly,their co-expression resulted in a change in the pattern of subcellular localization and was sufficient to trigger cell death accompanied by a decrease in the activity of the antioxidant enzyme APX1.Collectively,our findings reveal an NBARC-CRRSP signaling module that modulates oxidative state,the cell death process,and associated immunity responses in rice.

Characteristics of molecular classification in 52 endometrial cancer and atypical hyperplasia patients receiving fertility-sparing treatment

Objective To investigate the molecular classification of endometrial cancer(EC)and atypical endometrial hyperplasia(AEH)patients treated with fertility-sparing treatment(FST),and its relationship with clinicopathological factors and treatment efficacy.Methods:A total of 52​EC and AEH patients who received FST and molecular classification tested by next generation sequencing in Peking University People's Hospital from June 2020 to December 2022,were retrospectively collected.We analyzed the relationship between molecular classification and clinicopathological factors and treatment outcomes.Results(1)Of the 52 patients,including 46​EC and 6 AEH patients,42(80.8%)achieved complete remission(CR)after FST,with a median time to achieve CR of 9 months.Ten cases(23.8%)had recurrence.(2)Patients were distributed into 4 molecular subgroups as 39 cases(75%)of copy number low(CNL),7 cases(13.5%)of microsatellite instability-high(MSI-H),4 cases(7.7%)of POLE mutations(POLEmut),and 2 cases(3.8%)of copy number high(CNH).Patients with MSI-H subgroup had more family history of tumor(6/7),more with loss of expression of mismatch repair(MMR)protein(7/7),and higher expression level of Ki-67(3/3).(3)Patients with MSI-H subgroup had the lowest CR rate at 6 months(0/7,P​=​0.014),and survival analysis showed that such patients were less likely to achieve CR than those with CNL(P​=​0.022).For CNL patients,median 6-month CR rate was 40.6%.In addition,CR was obtained in 3(3/4)POLEmut patients and 2(2/2)CNH patients,respectively.Conclusions Molecular classification relates with the treatment response in patients with EC and AEH receiving FST.Patients with MSI-H subgroup have poor treatment efficacy,and patients with CNL need to be further divided to predict treatment benefit.There are also a few successful cases in POLEmut and CNH subtgroups,which needs further research.

Tongue diagnosis based on hue-saturation value color space: controlled study of tongue appearance in patients treated with percutaneous coronary intervention for coronary heart disease

Objective To analyze the characteristics of tongue imaging color parameters in patients treated with percutaneous coronary intervention(PCI)and non-PCI for coronary atherosclerotic heart disease(CHD),and to observethe effects of PCI on the tongue images of patients as a basis for the clinical diagnosis and treatment of patientswith CHD.Methods This study used a retrospective cross-sectional survey to analyze tongue photographs and medicalhistory information from 204 patients with CHD between November 2018 and July 2020.Tongue images ofeach subject were obtained using the Z-BOX Series traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)intelligent diagnosisinstruments,the SMX System 2.0 was used to transform the image data into parameters in the HSV color space,and finally the parameters of the tongue image between patients in the PCI-treated and non-PCI-treated groupsfor CHD were analyzed.Results Among the 204 patients,112 were in the non-PCI treatment group(38 men and 74 women;average age of(68.76±9.49)years),92 were in the PCI treatment group(66 men and 26 women;average age of(66.02±10.22)years).In the PCI treatment group,the H values of the middle and tip of the tongue and the overall coating of thetongue were lower(P<0.05),while the V values of the middle,tip,both sides of the tongue,the whole tongueand the overall coating of the tongue were higher(P<0.05).Conclusion The color parameters of the tongue image could reflect the physical state of patients treated withPCI,which may provide a basis for the clinical diagnosis and treatment of patients with CHD.

An early screening model of pulse detection technology for hepatic steatosis

Background The increasing prevalence of hepatic steatosis presents a considerable challenge to public health.There is a critical need for the development of novel preventive and screening strategies for this condition.Thisstudy evaluated the potential applications of wrist pulse detection technology for the early detection of liverdiseases.The pulse time-domain features of a medical exam population with and without hepatic steatosis wereassessed to develop a screening model for this disease.Methods Participants were consecutively recruited from March 2021 to March 2022 in the medical examinationcenters of the Yueyang Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine and the Shanghai Municipal Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine.Clinical data from 255 participants,including general information(sex,age,and body mass index),and data related to glucose and blood lipids(fasting plasma glucose,triglyceride,total cholesterol,high-density lipoprotein,and low-density lipoprotein levels)were collected.Wrist pulse signalswere acquired using a pulse detection device,and the pulse time-domain features,including t_(1),t_(4),t_(5),T,w_(1),w_(2),h_(2)/h_(1),h_(3)/h_(1),and h5/h_(1) were extracted.Participants were assigned to hepatic steatosis and non-hepatic steatosisgroups according to their abdominal ultrasound examination results.Their clinical data and pulse time-domainfeatures were compared using chi-square and parametric or non-parametric statistical methods.Three datasetswere used to construct screening models for hepatic steatosis based on the random forest algorithm.The datasetsfor modeling were defined as Dataset 1,containing blood glucose and lipid data and general information;Dataset2,containing time-domain features and general information;Dataset 3,containing time-domain features,bloodglucose and lipid data,and general information.The evaluation metrics,accuracy,precision,recall,F1-score,andareas under the receiver operating characteristic curve(AUC)were compared for each model.Results The time-domain features of the two groups differed significantly.The t_(1),t_(4),t_(5),T,h_(2)/h_(1),h_(3)/h_(1),w_(1),and w_(2) features were higher in the hepatic steatosis group than in the non-hepatic steatosis group(P<0.05),while the h5/h_(1) features were lower in the hepatic steatosis group than in the non-hepatic steatosis group(P<0.05).The screening models for hepatic steatosis based on both time-domain features and blood glucose andlipid data outperformed those based on time-domain features or blood markers alone.The accuracy,precision,recall,F1-score,and AUC of the combined model were 81.18%,80.56%,76.32%,79%,and 87.79%,respectively.These proportions were 1.57%,1.86%,1.76%,2%,and 3.54%higher,respectively,than those of the model basedon time-domain features alone and 3.14%,4.2%,2.64%,4%,and 6.47%higher,respectively,than those of themodel based on blood glucose and lipid alone.Conclusion The early screening model for hepatic steatosis using datasets that included pulse time-domainfeatures achieved better performance.The findings suggest that pulse detection technology could be used toinform the development of a mobile medical device or remote home monitoring system to test for hepatitissteatosis.

ζ-Carotene Isomerase Suppresses Tillering in Rice through the Coordinated Biosynthesis of Strigolactone and Abscisic Acid

Rice tillering is an important agronomic trait affecting grain yield.Here,we identified a high-tillering mutant tillering20(t20),which could be restored to the wild type by treatment with the strigolactone(SL)analog rac-GR24.T20 encodes a chloroplast ζ-carotene isomerase(Z-ISO),which is involved in the biosynthesis of ca-rotenoids and their metabolites,SL and abscisic acid(ABA).The t20 mutant has reduced SL and ABA,raising the question of how SL and ABA biosynthesis is coordinated,and whether they have overlapping functions in tillering.We discovered that rac-GR24 stimulated T20 expression and enhanced all-trans-p-carotene biosynthesis.Importantly,rac-GR24 also stimulated expression of Oryza sativa 9-CIS-EPOXY-CAROTENOID DIOXYGENASE 1(OsNCED1)through induction of Oryza sativa HOMEOBOX12(0sHOX12),promoting ABA biosynthesis in shoot base.On the other hand,ABA treatment significantly repressed SL biosynthesis and the ABA biosynthetic mutants displayed elevated SL biosynthesis.ABA treatment reduced the number of basal tillers in both t20 and wild-type plants.Furthermore,while ABA-deficient mu-tants aba1 and aba2 had the same number of basal tillers as wild type,they had more unproductive upper tillers at maturity.This work demonstrates complex interactions in the biosynthesis of carotenoid,SLs and ABA,and reveals a role for ABA in the regulation of rice tillering.

Big Grain3, encoding a purine permease, regulates grain size via modulating cytokinin transport in rice

Grain size is an important agronomic trait affecting grain yield,but the underlying molecular mechanisms remain to be elucidated.Here,we isolated a dominant mutant,big grainy(bg3-D),which exhibits a remarkable increase of grain size caused by activation of the PURINE PERMEASE gene,OsPUP4.BC3/OSPUP4 is predominantly expressed in vascular tissues and is specifically suppressed by exogenous cytokinin application.Hormone profiling revealed that the distribution of different cytokinin forms,in roots and shoots of the bg3-D mutant,is altered.Quantitative reverse transcription-PCR(qRT-PCR)analysis indicated that expression of rice cytokinin type-A RESPONSE REGULATOR(OsRR)genes is enhanced in the roots of the bgj-D mutant.These results suggest that OSPUP4 might contribute to the long-distance transport of cytokinin,by reinforcing cytokinin loading into vascular bundle cells.Furthermore,plants overexpressing OsPUP7,the closest homolog of OsPUP4,also exhibited a similar phenotype to the bg3-D mutant.Interestingly,subcellular localization demonstrated that OSPUP4 was localized on the plasma membrane,whereas OSPUP7 was localized to the endoplasmic reticulum.Based on these findings,we propose that OSPUP4 and OSPUP7 function in a linear pathway to direct cytokinin cell-to-cell transport,affecting both its long-distance movement and local allocation.

Therapeutic effect in patients with coronary heart disease based on information analysis from Traditional Chinese Medicine four diagnostic methods

OBJECTIVE:To study information gained by Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM)four diagnostic methods and characteristics of syndrome development before and after treatment in patients with coronary heart disease,and to probe into assessment indexes of therapeutic effects with distinctive TCM features.METHODS:Information from the four diagnostic methods before and after treatment in 100 patients with coronary heart disease was collected using the TCM interrogation scale,a pulse condition instrument,a tongue-face diagnosis instrument,anda voice diagnosis information collection system.Changes in the four diagnostic method results from before and after treatment were analyzed with frequency analysis and t-test methods.RESULTS:Before treatment,deficiency syndrome complicated with hyperactivity of pathogenic factors was most common.After treatment,deficiency syndrome was most common.This change from complex syndromes to single syndromes indicates disease and syndrome alleviation.Frequencies of symptoms gained by interrogation after treatment for syndrome of deficiency of heart-Qi,syndrome of deficiency of heart-Yin,and turbid phlegm syndrome were all less severe than those before treatment.Parameters of face color,color on all sub-regions of tongue,color of tongue fur,septic and greasy fur,and lip color after treatment all had significant changes.After treatment,part of the voice diagnosis parameters in the deficiency of heart-Yin and turbid phlegm syndromes had significant changes,but no significant changes were found in the deficiency of heart-Qi syndrome.CONCLUSION:Use of the TCM four diagnostic methods can provide an effective basis forTCM syndrome diagnosis,observation of development of state of illness,and evaluation of clinical therapeutic effects.

H_2O_2-induced Leaf Cell Death and the Crosstalk of Reactive Nitric/Oxygen Species

In plants, the chloroplast is the main reactive oxygen species （ROS） producing site under high light stress. Catalase （CAT）, which decomposes hydrogen peroxide （H2O2）, is one of the controlling enzymes that maintains leaf redox homeostasis. The catalase mutants with reduced leaf catalase activity from different plant species exhibit an H2O2-induced leaf cell death phenotype. This phenotype was differently affected by light intensity or photoperiod, which may be caused by plant species, leaf redox status or growth conditions. In the rice CAT mutant nitric oxide excess 1 （noe1）, higher H2O2 levels induced the generation of nitric oxide （NO） and higher S-nitrosothiol （SNO） levels, suggesting that NO acts as an important endogenous mediator in H2O2-induced leaf cell death. As a free radical, NO could also react with other intracellular and extracellular targets and form a series of related molecules, collectively called reactive nitrogen species （RNS）. Recent studies have revealed that both RNS and ROS are important partners in plant leaf cell death. Here, we summarize the recent progress on H2O2-induced leaf cell death and the crosstalk of RNS and ROS signals in the plant hypersensitive response （HR）, leaf senescence, and other forms of leaf cell death triggered by diverse environmental conditions.

MIT1, encoding a 15-cis-ζ-carotene isomerase, regulates tiller number and stature in rice

Lateral branching is an important determinant of shoot architecture and crop yield. The plant hormone strigolactone (SL) inhibits lateral bud outgrowth in various plant species. Deficiencies in SL biosynthesis and signal transduction result in excessive outgrowth of lateral buds (Stirnberg et al., 2002;Sorefan et al., 2003).

Recurrence quantification analysis on pulse morphological changes in patients with coronary heart disease

OBJECTIVE： To show that the pulse diagnosis used in Traditional Chinese Medicine, combined with nonlinear dynamic analysis, can help identify car- diovascular diseases. METHODS： Recurrence quantification analysis （RQA） was used to study pulse morphological changes in 37 inpatients with coronary heart dis- ease （CHD） and 37 normal subjects （controls）. An in- dependent sample t-test detected significant differ- ences in RQA measures of their pulses. A support vector machine （SVM） classified the groups accord- ing to their RQA measures. Classic time-domain pa- rameters were used for comparison. RESULTS： RQA measures can be divided into two groups. One group of measures [ecurrence rate（RR）, determinism （DEL）, average diagonal line length （L）, maximum length of diagonal structures （Lmax）, Shannon entropy of the frequency distribu- tion of diagonal line lengths （ENTR）, laminarity （LAM）, average length of vertical structures （TT）, maximum length of vertical structures （Vmax）] showed significantly higher values for patients with CHD than for normal subjects （P〈0.0S）. The other measures （RR_std, L_std, Lmaxstd, TT_std, Vmax_std） showed significantly lower values for the CHD group than for normal subjects （P〈0.05）. SVM classification accuracy was higher with RQA measures： With RQA （16 parameters） accuracy was at 88.21%, and with RQA（12 parameters） accuracy was at 84.11%. In contrast, with classic time-do- main （15 parameters） accuracy was 75.73%, and with time-domain （7 parameters） accuracy was 74.7O%. CONCLUSION： Nonlinear dynamic methods such as RQA can be used to study functional and struc- tural changes in the pulse noninvasively. Pulse sig- nals of individuals with CHD have greater regulari- ty, determinism, and stability than normal subjects, and their pulse morphology displays less variabili- ty. RQA can distinguish the CHD pulse from the healthy pulse with an accuracy of 88.21%, thereby providing an early diagnosis of cardiovascular dis- eases such as CHD.