AN EIGENVALUE CHARACTERISATION OF THE DUAL EDM CONE

We show that the elements of the dual of the Euclidean distance matrix cone can be described via an inequality on a certain weighted sum of its eigenvalues.

Assessment of Genetic Diversity of Niger Plant (Guizotia abyssinica L.) in Moiben Sub County, Kenya, Using Inter Simple Sequence Repeat Markers

Niger plant (Guizotia abyssinica), exhibits phenotypic plasticity in different environments. There is need to assess its genetic diversity since guizotia species has a high number of species which may be confused amongst themselves. To achieve this, inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers were used to estimate genetic diversity among 12 wild populations of Niger plant from Moiben sub-county. Total genomic DNA was extracted as per the cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (Ctab) method and subjected to ISSR analysis using 20 primers. None of the primers produced unique banding patterns. ISSR data were used to calculate a squared-euclidean distance matrix. All the twenty primers (100%) gave polymorphic bands thus they were all considered for further analysis. The allele frequency of all the primers was below 0.95 indicating that they were all polymorphic in character. Gene diversity was high ranging from 0.3550 to 0.7337 with a mean value of 0.6302. The ISSR based upgma clustering produced four clusters. Niger plant within Moiben sub-county was found to be genetically diverse though heterozygosity was not noticed. The study recommends further analysis of Niger plant so as to form a basis for further development of the plant.

Pattern recognition-based decoding method for the negative pulsed downlink signal with a narrow pulse width

The negative pulsed downlink communication system is used to send surface control commands to the downhole rotary steering tool at thousands of meters, which is a significant part of the current rotary steering technology. At present, the transmission efficiency of negative pulsed downlink communication is very low, and only simple control commands can be transmitted in a few minutes, which limits the development of rotary steering technology with complex control functions. To improve the transmission rate of the downlink system, the downlink pulse width needs to be shortened. However, due to the influence of signal transmission characteristics, the waveform of a narrow pulse width signal will be severely distorted, which increases the difficulty of decoding the downlink signal. Therefore, a decoding method based on pattern recognition for negative pulsed downlink signal with narrow pulse width is proposed in this paper, which establishes a Euclidean distance matrix model between similar characteristic signal segments on the rising or falling edge of the downlink signal, the pulse coding timing of among the signal segment with each rising or falling edge is analyzed, the decoding and recognition of the downlink instruction are achieved, which solves the problem of large timing deviation in decoding the downlink signal with a current threshold method. The experimental results show that the method proposed in this paper can achieve accurate decoding of the 6 s pulse width downlink signal. Compared with the threshold method, it can be seen that the decoding accuracy of the method proposed in this paper can be greatly improved, and the smaller the signal pulse width, the more significant the advantage.

The Lipid Metabolites Profile in Patients with Pancreatic Cancer: A Controlled Study of Cancer Tissue Versus Matched Para-Cancer Tissue

Background and objectives: Most patients with pancreatic cancer were diagnosed at a late stage because identifying pancreatic cancer early was difficult. Therefore, it was of great significance to screen specific biomarkers in early stage of pancreatic cancer. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the profile and characteristics of lipid metabolites in patients with pancreatic cancer and to correlate the expression level of these metabolites with the tumor.Methods: A total of 9 tissue samples from patients with pancreatic cancer were collected and divided into cancer group and para-cancer group according to different sites. All patients’ samples were performed a metabolomics analysis based on Liquid Tandem Chromatography Quadrupole Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry.Results: PCA based on lipidomics analysis could clearly distribute in different regions. OPLS-DA analysis could filter out the irrelevant variables in metabolites and obtain more reliable information about the intergroup differences of metabolites. The volcano plot was used to visualize all variables with VIP>1 and presented the important variables with P<0.05 and |FC|>2. Euclidean distance matrix was calculated for the quantitative values of the differential metabolites, and the differential metabolites were clustered by using the full linkage method and heat map was used to demonstrate. The different metabolites of each group were compared and analyzed by radar map, the corresponding ratio of the quantitative value of differential metabolites were calculated. Heatmap of correlation analysis showed the correlation coefficient between different metabolites. Bar plot visualized the variation degree and classification information of metabolites. Bubble plot showed the variation degree, difference significance degree and classification information of metabolites.Conclusion: The tissue samples of pancreatic cancer had the characteristics of lipidomics, and the difference of lipid metabolites could be used as potential tumor markers of pancreatic cancer.

Parents of Children With Nonsyndromic Orofacial Clefting Show Altered Palate Shape

Objective: The unaffected relatives of individuals with nonsyndromic orofacial clefts have been shown to exhibit subtle craniofacial differences compared with the general population. Here, we investigate whether these morphological differences extend to the shape of the palate. Design: We conducted a geometric morphometric analysis to compare palate shape in the clinically unaffected parents of children with nonsyndromic cleft lip with or without cleft palate and adult controls of European, Asian, and African ancestry. We conducted pairwise group comparisons using canonical variates analysis, and then confirmed and characterized findings of shape differences using Euclidean distance matrix analysis. Results: Significant differences in palate shape were detected in unaffected mothers (but not fathers) compared to demographically matched controls. The differences in shape were ancestry-specific; mothers of Asian-derived and African-derived ancestry showed wider and shorter palates with higher posterior palatal vaults, while mothers of European-derived ancestry showed narrower palates with higher anterior palatal vaults. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that altered palate shape is a subclinical phenotypic feature, which may be indicative of elevated orofacial cleft risk. The risk phenotype varied by sex and ancestry, suggesting possible etiologic heterogeneity among demographic groups. Understanding the genetic basis of these informative palate shape traits may reveal new genes and pathways relevant to nonsyndromic orofacial clefting.