Defining G protein-coupled receptor peptide ligand expressomes and signalomes in human and mouse islets

Introduction

Islets synthesise and secrete numerous peptides, some of which are known to be important regulators of islet function and glucose homeostasis. In this study, we quantified mRNAs encoding all peptide ligands of islet G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) in isolated human and mouse islets and carried out in vitro islet hormone secretion studies to provide functional confirmation for the species-specific role of peptide YY (PYY) in mouse islets.

Materials and methods

GPCR peptide ligand mRNAs in human and mouse islets were quantified by quantitative real-time PCR relative to the reference genes ACTB, GAPDH, PPIA, TBP and TFRC. The pathways connecting GPCR peptide ligands with their receptors were identified by manual searches in the PubMed, IUPHAR and Ingenuity databases. Distribution of PYY protein in mouse and human islets was determined by immunohistochemistry. Insulin, glucagon and somatostatin secretion from islets was measured by radioimmunoassay.

Results

We have quantified GPCR peptide ligand mRNA expression in human and mouse islets and created specific signalomes mapping the pathways by which islet peptide ligands regulate human and mouse GPCR signalling. We also identified species-specific islet expression of several GPCR ligands. In particular, PYY mRNA levels were ~ 40,000-fold higher in mouse than human islets, suggesting a more important role of locally secreted Pyy in mouse islets. This was confirmed by IHC and functional experiments measuring insulin, glucagon and somatostatin secretion.

Discussion

The detailed human and mouse islet GPCR peptide ligand atlases will allow accurate translation of mouse islet functional studies for the identification of GPCR/peptide signalling pathways relevant for human physiology, which may lead to novel treatment modalities of diabetes and metabolic disease.

     

An Economic Model-Based Matching Approach Between Buyers and Sellers Through a Broker in an Open E-Marketplace

A broker in an open e-marketplace enables buyers and sellers to do business with each other. Although a broker plays an important role in e-marketplaces, theory and guidelines for matching between buyers and sellers in multi-attribute exchanges are limited. Therefore, a challenge for a broker’s responsibility is how to maximize a buyer’s total satisfaction degree as its goals under the consideration of trade-off between a buyer’s buying quantity and price paid to a seller, and other attributes. To solve this challenge, this paper proposes an economic model-based matching approach between a buyer’s requirements and a seller’s offers. The major contributions of this paper are that (i) a broker can model a seller’s price policy as per a buyer’s buying quantity through communication between a broker and a seller; (ii) due to each buyer’s different quantity demand, a broker models a buyer’s satisfaction degree as per a buyer’s buying quantity based on communication between a broker and a buyer; and (iii) to carry out a broker’s matching processes, an objective function and a set of constraints are generated to help a broker to maximize a buyer’s total satisfaction degree. Experimental results demonstrate the good performance of the proposed approach.     

Study on the Centralization Strategy of the Blood Allocation Among Different Departments within a Hospital

By far, the researches on how to distribute blood products among different departments in hospital have not been further studied, though the problem of blood shortage and wastage that caused by improper blood allocation is severe, which may endanger patient’s lives and impose considerable costs on hospitals. In order to solve this problem, this paper mainly studies on how to distribute the blood items among different departments within a hospital and investigates the allocation approach with the novel management method by centralizing the inventory of several different departments. By integrating the blood inventory requirements of some departments, the hospital could reduce the rate of blood shortage and wastage effectively, release the pressure of the occupancy of resources and reduce the bullwhip effect of blood products. This paper illustrates the centralization principle in hospital and formulates the mixed integer programming model to work out the optimal allocation network scheme and the optimal inventory setting for every department. And the results of the numerical example demonstrate that this centralization method could considerably reduce blood shortage and wastage in hospital by about 72% and 90% respectively. Furthermore, it could decrease the total cost by about 108,540 RMB a month on blood supply chain management in the hospital and improve the effect of some certain surgeries by transfusing the fresh blood to patients.     

Effects of Strain Rate,Temperature and Grain Size on the Mechanical Properties and Microstructure Evolutions of Polycrystalline Nickel Nanowires: A Molecular Dynamics Simulation

Through molecular dynamics(MD)simulation,the dependencies of temperature,grain size and strain rate on the mechanical properties were studied.The simulation results demonstrated that the strain rate from 0.05 to 2 ns~(–1 )affected the Young’s modulus of nickel nanowires slightly,whereas the yield stress increased.The Young’s modulus decreased approximately linearly;however,the yield stress firstly increased and subsequently dropped as the temperature increased.The Young’s modulus and yield stress increased as the mean grain size increased from 2.66 to6.72 nm.Moreover,certain efforts have been made in the microstructure evolution with mechanical properties association under uniaxial tension.Certain phenomena such as the formation of twin structures,which were found in nanowires with larger grain size at higher strain rate and lower temperature,as well as the movement of grain boundaries and dislocation,were detected and discussed in detail.The results demonstrated that the plastic deformation was mainly accommodated by the motion of grain boundaries for smaller grain size.However,for larger grain size,the formations of stacking faults and twins were the main mechanisms of plastic deformation in the polycrystalline nickel nanowire.     

基于高斯字典原子稀疏表示的高精度宽角SAR成像方法

为了提高从宽角合成孔径雷达(synthetic aperture radar, SAR)图像中提取目标后向散射各向异性特性的性能,在宽角SAR字典稀疏表示模型的基础上,提出一种基于高斯字典原子的高精度宽角SAR成像方法。在字典构造上,采用不同中心位置、相同方差的高斯函数。在求解稀疏表示系数上,采用广义最小最大凹惩罚稀疏重构算法求解。最后，根据稀疏表示系数的重构结果以及构造的字典得到目标的后向散射各向异性特性。通过仿真实验和Backhoe数据对算法进行验证,结果表明,该方法能够高精度地提取目标的后向散射各向异性特性。     

Hierarchical Community Detection Based on Partial Matrix Convergence Using Random Walks

Random walks are a standard tool for modeling the spreading process in social and biological systems.But in the face of large-scale networks,to achieve convergence,iterative calculation of the transition matrix in random walk methods consumes a lot of time.In this paper,we propose a three-stage hierarchical community detection algorithm based on Partial Matrix Approximation Convergence(PMAC) using random walks.First,this algorithm identifies the initial core nodes in a network by classical measurement and then utilizes the error function of the partial transition matrix convergence of the core nodes to determine the number of random walks steps.As such,the PMAC of the core nodes replaces the final convergence of all the nodes in the whole matrix.Finally,based on the approximation convergence transition matrix,we cluster the communities around core nodes and use a closeness index to merge two communities.By recursively repeating the process,a dendrogram of the communities is eventually constructed.We validated the performance of the PMAC by comparing its results with those of two representative methods for three real-world networks with different scales.     

Fuzzy Views on Black-Litterman Portfolio Selection Model

In this paper, views of investor are described in fuzzy sets, and two fuzzy Black-Litterman models are constructed with fuzzy views and fuzzy random views respectively. In the models, expected returns and uncertainty matrix of views are redefined and the views are formulated by fuzzy approaches suitably. Then the models are tested with data from Chinese financial markets. Empirical results show that the fuzzy random views model performs the best, and both the fuzzy models are better than the traditional ones, demonstrating that the fuzzy approaches can contain more information in the views and measure the uncertainty more correctly.     

人类卫生健康共同体视域下的全球科技合作研究——以新冠肺炎疫情为背景

新冠疫情暴发以来,中国政府和人民秉持人类命运共同体理念,运用一系列先进技术,在较短时间内扭转了国内疫情的严峻形势.在此背景下,为了更好地发挥中国方案在全球抗疫中的作用,文章运用内容分析法和归纳分析法,首先梳理了从人类命运共同体到人类卫生健康共同体的理论逻辑,其次探究了人类卫生健康共同体、全球科技合作与疫情防控之间的结构关系,最后分析了中国疫情防控的有效举措,进而得出结论:中国疫情防控工作的成效离不开人类命运共同体理念的指引和全球科技合作的开展,而中国在平台建设、机制整合及合作网络等领域的方案共享将有助于遏制全球疫情的蔓延.