A genome-wide survey and analysis of basic helix-loop-helix genes in the Asian citrus psyllid, Diaphorina citri (Hemiptera: Psyllidae)

Ying Peng,Yong Wang,Xia-Fang Tao,Zhen Zeng,Nana Adwoa Nkuma Johnson,Qin Yao,Ke Ping Chen 한국응용곤충학회 2017 Journal of Asia-Pacific Entomology Vol.20 No.3

The basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) proteins are important player in regulation of various eukaryotic developmental processes such as neurogenesis, myogenesis and heart morphogenesis. The Asian citrus psyllid (Diaphorina citri) is a sap-sucking pest which is widely distributed in southern Asia and causes greening disease in citrus orchard. In this study, Diaphorina citri genome is found to encode 52 bHLH genes. Through in-depth phylogenetic analyses, all 52 Diaphorina citri bHLH (DcbHLH) genes are classified into correspondent bHLH families according to their orthology with bHLHs from fruit fly and other insect species. Examination of GenBank annotations of these 52 DcbHLH members indicated that annotations of only 21 DcbHLH proteins are consistent with our analysis. Therefore, our data provide useful information for updating annotations to other 31 DcbHLH proteins. Among the 52 DcbHLH proteins, DcClk, DcSima, DcCyc and DcCwo have dual HLH motifs, which have not been found in any other bHLH proteins. Diaphorina citri has 2, 3 and 2 bHLH members respectively in Net, Hand and SRC families while other insect species have only one member in these families. The existence of more Net, Hand and SRC family members probably means that Asian citrus psyllid possesses more complex regulatory network in controlling intervein emergence, heart morphogenesis and larval metamorphosis than other insects. These results provide a solid basis and interesting aspects for further investigations into the evolution and functions of bHLH genes in Diaphorina citri.

PDBNet: Parallel Dual Branch Network for Real-time Semantic Segmentation

Yingpeng Dai,Junzheng Wang,Jiehao Li,Jing Li 제어·로봇·시스템학회 2022 International Journal of Control, Automation, and Vol.20 No.8

To make a trade-off between accuracy and inference speed in real-time applications on the unmanned mobile platform, a novel neural network, named Parallel Dual Branch Network (PDBNet), is proposed. Firstly, a multi-scale module, namely Parallel Dual Branch (PDB), is designed to extract complete information. PDB module consists of two parallel branches to remove detailed low-level information and high-level semantic information while maintaining few parameters. Then, based on the PDB module, PDBNet, a small-scale and shallow structure, is designed for semantic segmentation. A multi-scale module tends to extract abundant information and segment the object out from the image well. The small-scale and shallow structure tends to accelerate the inference speed. So PDBNet architecture is designed to be effective both in terms of accuracy and inference speed. PDBNet adopts three downsamplings to obtain feature maps with high spatial resolution and uses PDB modules with different dilation rates to extract multi-scale features and enlarge the receptive field in the last several layers. Finally, experiments on Camvid dataset and Cityscapes dataset, we respectively get 67.7% and 69.5% Mean Intersection over Union (MIoU) with only 1.82 million parameters and quicker speed on a single GTX 1070Ti card.

Hydrothermal synthesis, characterization, and luminescence of Ca2B2O5:RE (RE = Eu3+, Tb3+, Dy3+) nanofibers

Yang, Li,Wan, Yingpeng,Li, Yuze,Pu, Yinfu,Huang, Yanlin,Chen, Cuili,Seo, Hyo Jin Springer-Verlag 2016 JOURNAL OF NANOPARTICLE RESEARCH Vol.18 No.4

<P>Ca2B2O5:RE (RE = Eu3+, Tb3+, Dy3+) nanofibers were synthesized by the hydrothermal reaction method. The structural refinement was conducted on the base of the X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) measurements. The surface properties of the Ca2B2O5:RE (RE = Eu3+, Tb3+, Dy3+) nanofibers were investigated by the measurements such as the scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), and the energy dispersive spectrum (EDS). The nanofiber has a diameter of about 100 nm and a length of several micrometers. The luminescence properties such as photoluminescence excitation (PLE) and emission spectra (PL), decay lifetime, color coordinates, and the absolute internal quantum efficiency (QE) were reported. Ca2B2O5:Eu3+ nanofibers show the red luminescence with CIE coordinates of (x = 0.41, y = 0.51) and the luminescence lifetime of 0.63 ms. The luminescence of Ca2B2O5:Tb3+ nanofibers is green color (x = 0.29, y = 0.53) with the lifetime of 2.13 ms. However, Dy3+-doped Ca2B2O5 nanofibers present a singlephase white-color phosphor with the fluorescence decay of 3.05 ms. Upon near-UV excitation, the absolute quantum efficiency is measured to be 65, 35, and 37 % for Eu3+-, Tb3+-, Dy3+-doped Ca2B2O5 nanofibers, respectively. It is suggested that Ca2B2O5:RE (RE = Eu3+, Tb3+, Dy3+) nanofibers could be an efficient phosphor for lighting and display.</P>

A new approach to geometrically nonlinear analysis of double cable system with a movable guide pulley

Jinshuai Xu,Zhaohui Qi,Yingpeng Zhuo,Tianjiao Zhao,Rumin Teng,Lingchong Gao 대한기계학회 2023 JOURNAL OF MECHANICAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Vol.37 No.10

Double cable system (DCS) with a movable guide pulley (MGP) is a common component in many mechanical equipment. It is difficult to calculate the unstressed length of cable under a preload, and the form-finding analysis after obtaining the unstressed length. To solve this problem, a method of establishing double-layer nonlinear equations for calculating the unstressed length of cable under a given preload is proposed. For the inner single cable, a new cable element is presented based on Hermite interpolation. Later, initial cable form is obtained by approximating catenary as a three-point parabola, and the initial values for the nonlinear equations are derived. For the outer double cable, unstressed length is a descriptive variable of the DCS. In view of the constraints on a single cable posed by the guide pulleys, corresponding constraint equations are obtained by introducing the angle of rotation of the MGP, which is a process variable. Under a given preload at an end of single cable, equations for the DCS with a MGP are constructed. Moreover, the tangent stiffness matrixes are derived for quick solution, and unstressed length for the DCS is obtained. On this basis, by changing the partial constraint equations of the DCS, the form-finding analysis of the cable can be achieved. A few numerical examples and comparisons demonstrate the reliability of the proposed new approach for geometrically nonlinear analysis of cables.

Multiscale Feature Extraction Network for Real-time Semantic Segmentation of Road Scenes On the Autonomous Robot

Junrui Xue,Yutan Wang,Aili Qu,Yingpeng Dai 제어·로봇·시스템학회 2023 International Journal of Control, Automation, and Vol.21 No.6

Semantic segmentation is an effective means for autonomous robots to understand the surrounding scenes. For autonomous robot, it requires the balance of accuracy and speed. Moreover, it is necessary to correctly extract environmental information in complex environments such as occlusion, poor illumination, and shadows condition. To solve above problems, a novel image-based Multi-scale Feature Extraction Network (MFENet) is designed for real-time semantic segmentation task. This network preserves different level features in the encoder and fuses those features to accurately segment each object. In addition, to enhance the representation ability, fusion module is introduced for information exchange between feature maps with different spatial resolution. Moreover, standard convolution is replaced by Multiscale Feature Extraction (MFE) module in intermediate layers, which could strengthen the feature extraction ability. On the Cityscapes dataset, MFENet achieves 72.4% Mean Intersection over Union (MIoU) with 8.0 million parameters at the speed of 30.5 FPS on a single GTX 1070Ti card. Finally, MFENet is deployed on an autonomous robot and tested in the real world. It produces good semantic segmentation results at the speed of 65.5 FPS. The results reveals the proposed MFENet could work well in real-world applications.

Sol–gel preparation, band structure, and photochemical activities of double perovskite <i>A</i> ₂NiWO₆ (<i>A</i> =Ca, Sr) nanorods

Xu, Lei,Qin, Chuanxiang,Wan, Yingpeng,Xie, Hongde,Huang, Yanlin,Qin, Lin,Seo, Hyo Jin Elsevier 2017 JOURNAL- TAIWAN INSTITUTE OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERS Vol.71 No.-

<P><B>Abstract</B></P> <P> <I>A</I> <SUB>2</SUB>NiWO<SUB>6</SUB> (<I>A</I> =Ca, Sr) double perovskite semiconductors were prepared via the sol–gel method. The crystal phases were confirmed via X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) measurements together with Rietveld refinements. The morphological and chemical properties of the samples were investigated by the scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), and the specific surface area measurements. The optical absorptions and the band structures of the two double perovskites were discussed based on the on the experimental results and theoretical calculation. The d–d allowed transitions in Ni<SUP>2</SUP> <SUP>+</SUP>–O octahedra have great contributions to the narrow band-gap. The Ni<SUP>2+</SUP>-containing tungstate perovskites were potential photocatalysts, which are efficient for its photodegradation for methylene blue (MB) under the irradiation of visible light (λ<ce:italic/>> 420nm). The photocatalytic activities were attributed to the special structure properties and multivalent Ni and W ions in the perovskite lattices.</P> <P><B>Highlights</B></P> <P> <UL> <LI> <I>A</I> <SUB>2</SUB>NiWO<SUB>6</SUB> (<I>A</I> =Ca, Sr) nano-perovskite were prepared via the sol–gel method. </LI> <LI> The crystalline crystal structure was refined. </LI> <LI> The optical absorption and band structure were clarified. </LI> <LI> The photocatalysis activities were discussed on structural properties. </LI> </UL> </P> <P><B>Graphical abstract</B></P> <P>[DISPLAY OMISSION]</P>

Effects of Bread Yeast Cell Wall Beta-Glucans on Mice with Loperamide-Induced Constipation

Zhuoyi Chen,SuSu Lin,Yu Jiang,Ling Liu,Jinyan Jiang,Shuting Chen,Yingpeng Tong,Ping Wang 한국식품영양과학회 2019 Journal of medicinal food Vol.22 No.10

Constipation is a common gastrointestinal disorder characterized by changes in intestinal habits. Increasing evidence indicates that long-term use of irritant laxatives causes serious side effects. Meanwhile, more than 50% of patients are dissatisfied with sense of use of non-prescriptional laxatives. β-glucans are natural polysaccharides widely found in yeast, fungus, and plants, which have been reported to exhibit various pharmacological effects. The aim of this study was to characterize the effect of β-glucans extracted from the bread yeast cell wall on loperamide-induced constipation mice. Forty mice were fed with loperamide (10 mg/kg) to make the constipation model and a diet supplemented with 2.5, 5, and 10 mg/kg β-glucan. We assessed the defecation frequency, intestinal transit function of mice, as well as used high-throughput sequencing to analyze the intestinal microbiota composition and functional biological profiles data. Meanwhile, we detected expression of neurotransmitters including acetylcholinesterase, substance P, and serotonin (5-HT) and expression of tight junction protein (TJP) including zonula occludens-1 and mucin-2 in distal colon to characterize the possible molecular mechanisms. β-glucans significantly enhanced intestinal motility and provided a possibility to regulate the expression of neurotransmitters and TJP in mice. The intestinal microecological portion of the treatment group partially recovered and was closer to the normal group. This study showed that β-glucans can influence the intestinal microbiota and restore microecological balance to regulate the express of neurotransmitters and TJP to recover intestinal epithelial mechanical barrier. We suggested that β-glucans could be used as an active nutritional supplement to protect the damaged intestinal barrier and help patients who have constipation complications and dysbiosis.