Variants in KCNQ1 are associated with susceptibility to type 2 diabetes mellitus

We carried out a multistage genome-wide association study of type 2 diabetes mellitus in Japanese individuals, with a total of 1,612 cases and 1,424 controls and 100,000 SNPs. The most significant association was obtained with SNPs in KCNQ1, and dense mapping within the gene revealed that rs2237892 in intron 15 showed the lowest Pvalue (6.7 x 10(-13), odds ratio (OR) = 1.49). The association of KCNQ1 with type 2 diabetes was replicated in populations of Korean, Chinese and European ancestry as well as in two independent Japanese populations, and meta-analysis with a total of 19,930 individuals (9,569 cases and 10,361 controls) yielded a P value of 1.7 x 10(-42) (OR = 1.40; 95% CI = 1.34-1.47) for rs2237892. Among control subjects, the risk allele of this polymorphism was associated with impairment of insulin secretion according to the homeostasis model assessment of beta-cell function or the corrected insulin response. Our data thus implicate KCNQ1 as a diabetes susceptibility gene in groups of different ancestries.     

Large-scale vortex lattice emerging from collectively moving microtubules

Spontaneous collective motion, as in some flocks of bird and schools of fish, is an example of an emergent phenomenon. Such phenomena are at present of great interest and physicists have put forward a number of theoretical results that so far lack experimental verification. In animal behaviour studies, large-scale data collection is now technologically possible, but data are still scarce and arise from observations rather than controlled experiments. Multicellular biological systems, such as bacterial colonies or tissues, allow more control, but may have many hidden variables and interactions, hindering proper tests of theoretical ideas. However, in systems on the subcellular scale such tests may be possible, particularly in in vitro experiments with only few purified components. Motility assays, in which protein filaments are driven by molecular motors grafted to a substrate in the presence of ATP, can show collective motion for high densities of motors and attached filaments. This was demonstrated recently for the actomyosin system, but a complete understanding of the mechanisms at work is still lacking. Here we report experiments in which microtubules are propelled by surface-bound dyneins. In this system it is possible to study the local interaction: we find that colliding microtubules align with each other with high probability. At high densities, this alignment results in self-organization of the microtubules, which are on average 15?μm long, into vortices with diameters of around 400?μm. Inside the vortices, the microtubules circulate both clockwise and anticlockwise. On longer timescales, the vortices form a lattice structure. The emergence of these structures, as verified by a mathematical model, is the result of the smooth, reptation-like motion of single microtubules in combination with local interactions (the nematic alignment due to collisions)--there is no need for long-range interactions. Apart from its potential relevance to cortical arrays in plant cells and other biological situations, our study provides evidence for the existence of previously unsuspected universality classes of collective motion phenomena.     

根据中国标本对山地异伊螨，波兹南原革罗螨和卡拉阳厉螨的再描述（蜱螨亚纲：中气门目：犹伊螨科，胭螨科，厉螨科）

根据采集的标本，对山地异伊螨All,his montanus Koroleva, 1968，波兹南原革罗螨Protogamasdlopsis pos-naniensis Wisniewski et Hirschmann，1991和卡拉阳厉螨Androlaelaps karawaiewi Berlese，1903作了再描述。     

矮肛厉螨雄螨和成螨前各螨态描述（蜱螨亚纲：中气门目：裂胸螨科）

本文描述矮肛厉螨Proctolaelaps pygrnaeus（Muller，1860）的雄螨及成螨前各螨态。     

A fast construction method for spatial index GBD tree 

This paper proposes a fast initial construction method of the GBDtree. The GDB tree has proper characteristics for management of large amount of 2 or 3 dimensional data. However, the GBDtree needs long initial construction time by originally proposed onebyone insertion method. A fast insertion method has been proposed, but it needs large size of buffer capable to hold index information of all entries. The paper proposes another fast initial construction method. The method requires only limited size of work space (buffer). The experimental results show the initial construction time reduces into a third or a quarter of the onebyone insertion method. The memory efficiency and retrieval efficiency are also improved than the onebyone insertion method.     

Shadow free texture acquisition of a large scale scene for city modeling

Texture acquisition of a large scale scene is one of the critical research areas in computer vision and can be used in other application areas such as computer graphics (CG),the intelligent transportation system (ITS) and the 3D geographic information system (GIS). Moreover,to acquire texture without noise (e. g.,a shadow,an obstacle body) is vital for such work. Although obstacles can be removed by using 3D geometric data,shadow elimination is still a difficult problem and strongly required for the CG and ITS community,especially for city modeling and simulation purposes. In this paper,we propose an automatic multiple image fusion technique and an efficient and simple shadow removing technique to retrieve high quality texture images of an urban area. The image fusion can be efficiently achieved by epipolar plane image (EPI) analysis,and the shadow elimination can be successfully carried out by an illumination-independent color clustering technique. The strength of this algorithm is that we can successfully fuse multiple images and eliminate shadows from the fused single image, especially in low dynamic range images,which have proven difficult using previous techniques.     

Stacking of conical molecules with a fullerene apex into polar columns in crystals and liquid crystals

Polar liquid crystalline materials can be used in optical and electronic applications, and recent interest has turned to formation strategies that exploit the shape of polar molecules and their interactions to direct molecular alignment. For example, banana-shaped molecules align their molecular bent within smectic layers, whereas conical molecules should form polar columnar assemblies. However, the flatness of the conical molecules used until now and their ability to flip have limited the success of this approach to making polar liquid crystalline materials. Here we show that the attachment of five aromatic groups to one pentagon of a C(60) fullerene molecule yields deeply conical molecules that stack into polar columnar assemblies. The stacking is driven by attractive interactions between the spherical fullerene moiety and the hollow cone formed by the five aromatic side groups of a neighbouring molecule in the same column. This packing pattern is maintained when we extend the aromatic groups by attaching flexible aliphatic chains, which yields compounds with thermotropic and lyotropic liquid crystalline properties. In contrast, the previously reported fullerene-containing liquid crystals all exhibit thermotropic properties only, and none of them contains the fullerene moiety as a functional part of its mesogen units. Our design strategy should be applicable to other molecules and yield a range of new polar liquid crystalline materials.     

中国自由生活革螨调查报告（Ⅵ）（蜱螨亚纲：中气门目）

本文报道革螨14科38属90种,其中省区新记录59种。