Correlation between receptor-interacting protein 140 expression and directed differentiation of human embryonic stem cells into neural stem cells

Overexpression of receptor-interacting protein 140（RIP140） promotes neuronal differentiation of N2 a cells via extracellular regulated kinase 1/2（ERK1/2） signaling.However,involvement of RIP140 in human neural differentiation remains unclear.We found both RIP140 and ERK1/2 expression increased during neural differentiation of H1 human embryonic stem cells.Moreover,RIP140 negatively correlated with stem cell markers Oct4 and Sox2 during early stages of neural differentiation,and positively correlated with the neural stem cell marker Nestin during later stages.Thus,ERK1/2 signaling may provide the molecular mechanism by which RIP140 takes part in neural differentiation to eventually affect the number of neurons produced.

Systematic Review on Social Engineering: Hacking by Manipulating Humans

Despite the availability of advanced security software and hardware mechanisms available, still, there has been a breach in the defence system of an organization or individual. Social engineering mostly targets the weakest link in the security system i.e. “Humans” for gaining access to sensitive information by manipulating human psychology. Social engineering attacks are arduous to defend as such attacks are not easily detected by available security software or hardware. This article surveys recent studies on social engineering attacks with discussion on the social engineering phases and categorizing the various attacks into two groups. The main aim of this survey is to examine the various social engineering attacks on individuals and countermeasures against social engineering attacks are also discussed.

Quantification of human and climate contributions to multi-dimensional hydrological alterations:A case study in the Upper Minjiang River,China

Dual factors of climate and human on the hydrological process are reflected not only in changes in the spatiotemporal distribution of water resource amounts but also in the various characteristics of river flow regimes. Isolating and quantifying their contributions to these hydrological alterations helps us to comprehensively understand the response mechanism and patterns of hydrological process to the two kinds of factors. Here we develop a general framework using hydrological model and 33 indicators to describe hydrological process and quantify the impact from climate and human. And we select the Upper Minjiang River(UMR) as a case to explore its feasibility. The results indicate that our approach successfully recognizes the characteristics of river flow regimes in different scenarios and quantitatively separates the climate and human contributions to multi-dimensional hydrological alterations. Among these indicators, 26 of 33 indicators decrease over the past half-century(1961–2012) in the UMR, with change rates ranging from 1.3% to 33.2%, and the human impacts are the dominant factor affecting hydrological processes, with an average relative contribution rate of 58.6%. Climate change causes an increase in most indicators, with an average relative contribution rate of 41.4%. Specifically, changes in precipitation and reservoir operation may play a considerable role in inducing these alterations. The findings in this study help us better understand the response mechanism of hydrological process under changing environment and is conducive to climate change adaptation, water resource planning and ecological construction.

DIRECT PREPARATION AND MEIOTIC ANALYSIS OF HUMAN SEMEN

A meiotic study of human semen specimens was carried out in 60 cases. Among them, 20 were normal controls, 20 suffered from infertility, and 20 had a history of recurrent spontaneous abortions. Of the cases of infertility and abortion, 50% were found to hare numerical and / or structural chromosomal aberrations in spite of the normal blood karyotype. It is suggested that chromosomal aberrations may be the cause of sterility and abortion. The success rate of semen chromosome G-banding in the infertility, abortion and control groups was 70%, 55% and 25% respectively. The semen samples of three cases of heterozygous carriers with reciprocal chromosomal translocation were also studied. The ring quadrivalents were identified in all cases. The results may explain the recurrent abortions in these patients.