The steroid hormone 20-hydroxyecdysone promotes switching from autophagy to apoptosis by increasing intracellular calcium levels.

Autophagy regulates cell survival (or cell death in several cases), whereas apoptosis regulates cell death. However, the relationship between autophagy and apoptosis and the regulative mechanism is unclear. We report that steroid hormone 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) promotes switching from autophagy to apoptosis by increasing intracellular calcium levels in the midgut of the lepidopteran insect Helicoverpa armigera. Autophagy and apoptosis sequentially occurred during midgut programmed cell death under 20E regulation, in which lower concentrations of 20E induced microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3-phosphatidylethanolamine (LC3-II, also known as autophagy-related gene 8, ATG8) expression and autophagy. High concentrations of 20E induced cleavage of ATG5 to NtATG5 and pro-caspase-3 to active caspase-3, which led to a switch from autophagy to apoptosis. Blocking autophagy by knockdown of ATG5, ATG7, or ATG12, or with the autophagy inhibitor 3-methyladenine, inhibited 20E-induced autophagy and apoptosis. Blocking apoptosis by using the apoptosis inhibitor Ac-DEVD-CHO did not prevent 20E-induced autophagy, suggesting that apoptosis relies on autophagy. ATG5 knockdown resulted in abnormal pupation and delayed pupation time. High concentrations of 20E induced high levels of intracellular Ca2+, NtATG5, and active caspase-3, which mediated the switch from autophagy to apoptosis. Blocking 20E-mediated increase of cellular Ca2+ caused a decrease of NtATG5 and active caspase-3 and repressed the transformation from autophagy to apoptosis, thereby promoting cell survival. 20E induces an increase in the concentration of intracellular Ca2+, thereby switching autophagic cell survival to apoptotic cell death.

The Steroid Hormone 20-Hydroxyecdysone Promotes the Cytoplasmic Localization of Yorkie to Suppress Cell Proliferation and Induce Apoptosis.

The transcriptional co-activator Yki (Yorkie), a member of the Hippo pathway, regulates cell proliferation or apoptosis, depending on its nuclear or cytoplasmic location. However, the upstream factors regulating the subcellular localization of Yki are unclear. We found that the steroid hormone 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) induces phosphorylation of Yki, causing it to remain in the cytoplasm, where it promotes apoptosis in the midgut of the lepidopteran insect Helicoverpa armigera Yki is expressed in various tissues, with an increase in the epidermis and midgut during early metamorphic molting. Yki is localized mainly in the nucleus of feeding larval midgut cells but is mainly localized in the cytoplasm of metamorphic molting larval midgut cells. The knockdown of Yki in the feeding larvae promotes larval-pupal transition, midgut programmed cell death, and repressed IAP1 (inhibitor of apoptosis 1) expression. Knockdown of Yki in the epidermal cell line (HaEpi) induced increased activation of Caspase3/7. Overexpressed Yki in HaEpi cells was mainly localized in the nucleus and induced cell proliferation. 20E promotes the cytoplasmic localization of Yki, reducing the expression of the IAP1, resulting in apoptosis. 20E promotes cytoplasmic retention of Yki by increasing Yki phosphorylation levels and promoting the interaction between Yki and the adaptor protein 14-3-3-ϵ. This regulation of Yki suppresses cell proliferation and induces cell apoptosis.

[A Method to Estimate Metal Abundance from Stellar Spectra Using Ca Line Index].

This paper presents a method to estimate stellar metallicity based on BP neural network and Ca line index. This method trains a BP ANN model from SDSS/SEGUE stellar spectra and parameters provided by SSPP. The values of Teff and the line index of Ca lines are the input of network while the [Fe/H] values are the oputput of the network. A set of samples are resampled from the set of all and then a network model is trained. The network can be used to predict the stellar metallicity from low-resolution spsectra. The experiment shows that the proposed method can accurately and effectively measure the [Fe/H] from the stellar spectra.

[The expression and changes of apoptosis protein Bcl-2 and Bax in oral lichen planus].

PURPOSE: To analyze the changes in epithelial cells, and observe the expression of Bcl-2, Bax and apoptosis in oral lichen planus. METHODS: Thirty five OLP patients and 10 healthy volunteers were enrolled in this study. Immunohistochemical S-ABC was used to detect Bcl-2 and Bax expression in OLP group and control group. TUNEL and flow cytometry were used to study the apoptosis of the epithelial cells. Transmission electron microscope (TEM) was used to observe the changes of ultra-microstructure of oral membrane of OLP. The data was analyzed with SPSS 17.0 software package. RESULTS: The expression of Bcl-2 in OLP group was not significantly different from control group (P>0.05), but the expression was remarkably elevated in lymphocyte infiltration zone. Bax positive expression rate and intensity in OLP group significantly increased compared with the control group (P<0.01). The apoptosis index was remarkably increased in the epithelial cells in OLP group compared with the control group (P<0.01), which was consistent with the result of flow cytometry(the apoptotic percentage of the epithelial cells in OLP group was significantly higher than the control group). TEM showed that the apoptotic cells of mucous membrane of OLP increased, with chromatin margination, and apoptotic body. CONCLUSIONS: The ultra-microstructure change in the lesional tissue, increased apoptotic cells, elevated Bcl-2 in lymphocyte infiltration zone and elevated Bax in epithelial basement keratin suggest that apoptosis may be related to the carcinogenesis and development of OLP.

ß-Arrestin1 interacts with G protein-coupled receptor to desensitize signaling of the steroid hormone 20-hydroxyecdysone in the lepidopteran insect Helicoverpa armigera.

The steroid hormone 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) plays a critical role in insect development, particularly in larval molting and larval-pupal transition. Studies have indicated that 20E transmits its signal via a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR)-mediated non-genomic pathway before a genomic pathway is initiated. However, the mechanism by which a 20E signal is desensitized remains unclear. We proposed that ß-arrestin1 interacts with ecdysone-responsible GPCR (ErGPCR1) to desensitize a 20E signal in the lepidopteran insect Helicoverpa armigera. Results showed that ß-arrestin1 was highly expressed in various tissues during metamorphosis. ß-Arrestin1 knockdown by RNA interference in larvae caused advanced pupation and a larval-pupal chimera. The mRNA levels of 20E-response genes were increased after ß-arrestin1 was knocked down but were decreased after ß-arrestin1 was overexpressed. 20E induced the migration of ß-arrestin1 from the cytosol to the cytoplasmic membrane to interact with ErGPCR1. The inhibitors suramin and chelerythrine chloride repressed 20E-induced ß-arrestin1 phosphorylation and membrane migration. With ErGPCR1, 20E regulated ß-arrestin1 phosphorylation on serines at positions 170 and 234. The double mutation of the amino acids Ser170 and Ser234 to asparagine inhibited phosphorylation and membrane migration of ß-arrestin1 in 20E induction. Therefore, 20E via ErGPCR1 and PKC signaling induces ß-arrestin1 phosphorylation; phosphorylated ß-arrestin1 migrates to the cytoplasmic membrane to interact with ErGPCR1 to block 20E signaling via a feedback mechanism.

[A new method of sparse feature extraction for stellar spectra].

The authors propose a novel method of feature extraction for stellar spectra parameterization. The basic procedures are: First, stellar spectra are decomposed by multi-scale Harr wavelet and the coefficients with high-frequency are rejected. Secondly, the optimal features are detected by the lasso algorithm. Finally, we input the optimal feature vector to non-parametric regression model to estimate the atmospheric parameters. Haar wavelet can remove the high-frequency noise from the stellar spectrum. Lasso algorithm can further compress data by analyzing their significance on parameterization and removing redundancy. Experiments show that the proposed Haar+lasso method improves the accuracy and efficiency of the estimation. The authors used this scheme to estimate the atmospheric parameters from a subsample of some 40,000 stellar spectra from SDSS. The accuracies of our predictions (mean absolute errors) for each parameter are 0.0071 dex for log Teff, 0.2252 dex for log g, and 0.1996 dex for [Fe/H]. Compared with the results of the existing literature, this scheme can derive more accurate atmospheric parameters.

Juvenile hormone prevents 20-hydroxyecdysone-induced metamorphosis by regulating the phosphorylation of a newly identified broad protein.

The steroid hormone 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) initiates insect molting and metamorphosis. By contrast, juvenile hormone (JH) prevents metamorphosis. However, the mechanism by which JH inhibits metamorphosis remains unclear. In this study, we propose that JH induces the phosphorylation of Broad isoform Z7 (BrZ7), a newly identified protein, to inhibit 20E-mediated metamorphosis in the lepidopteran insect Helicoverpa armigera. The knockdown of BrZ7 in larvae inhibited metamorphosis by repressing the expression of the 20E response gene. BrZ7 was weakly expressed and phosphorylated during larval growth but highly expressed and non-phosphorylated during metamorphosis. JH regulated the rapid phosphorylation of BrZ7 via a G-protein-coupled receptor-, phospholipase C-, and protein kinase C-triggered pathway. The phosphorylated BrZ7 bound to the 5'-regulatory region of calponin to regulate its expression in the JH pathway. Exogenous JH induced BrZ7 phosphorylation to prevent metamorphosis by suppressing 20E-related gene transcription. JH promoted non-phosphorylated calponin interacting with ultraspiracle protein to activate the JH pathway and antagonize the 20E pathway. This study reveals one of the possible mechanisms by which JH counteracts 20E-regulated metamorphosis by inducing the phosphorylation of BrZ7.

G-protein αq participates in the steroid hormone 20-hydroxyecdysone nongenomic signal transduction.

The nuclear receptor-mediated genomic pathways of the animal steroid hormones are well known. However, the cell membrane receptor-mediated nongenomic pathways of the animal steroid hormones are little understood. In this study, we report the participation of a G-protein alpha q (Gαq)(1) subunit in the 20E nongenomic pathway in the cell membrane and regulating gene expression during molting and metamorphosis in a lepidopteran insect, Helicoverpa armigera. 20E-induced phosphorylation of Gαq was detected using two-dimensional electrophoresis techniques. Knockdown of Gαq by injecting double-stranded RNA suppressed the development of larvae, delayed metamorphosis, and inhibited 20E-induced gene expression. Gαq was distributed throughout the cell, and migrated toward the plasma membrane upon 20E induction. Gαq was necessary in the 20E-induced intracellular Ca(2+) release and extracellular Ca(2+) influx. The protein kinase C (PKC) inhibitor could repress 20E-induced phosphorylation of cyclin-dependent kinase 10 (CDK10) and transcription factor ultraspiracle (USP1). PKC inhibitor could repress the Gαq phosphorylation and membrane trafficking. These results suggest that Gαq participates in 20E signaling in the cell membrane at the pre-genomic stage by modulating the increase of the intracellular Ca(2+) and phosphorylation of CDK10 and USP1 in 20E transcription complex to regulate gene transcription.

[Atmospheric parameter estimation for LAMOST/GUOSHOUJING spectra].

It is a key task to estimate the atmospheric parameters from the observed stellar spectra in exploring the nature of stars and universe. With our Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopy Telescope (LAMOST) which begun its formal Sky Survey in September 2012, we are obtaining a mass of stellar spectra in an unprecedented speed. It has brought a new opportunity and a challenge for the research of galaxies. Due to the complexity of the observing system, the noise in the spectrum is relatively large. At the same time, the preprocessing procedures of spectrum are also not ideal, such as the wavelength calibration and the flow calibration. Therefore, there is a slight distortion of the spectrum. They result in the high difficulty of estimating the atmospheric parameters for the measured stellar spectra. It is one of the important issues to estimate the atmospheric parameters for the massive stellar spectra of LAMOST. The key of this study is how to eliminate noise and improve the accuracy and robustness of estimating the atmospheric parameters for the measured stellar spectra. We propose a regression model for estimating the atmospheric parameters of LAMOST stellar(SVM(lasso)). The basic idea of this model is: First, we use the Haar wavelet to filter spectrum, suppress the adverse effects of the spectral noise and retain the most discrimination information of spectrum. Secondly, We use the lasso algorithm for feature selection and extract the features of strongly correlating with the atmospheric parameters. Finally, the features are input to the support vector regression model for estimating the parameters. Because the model has better tolerance to the slight distortion and the noise of the spectrum, the accuracy of the measurement is improved. To evaluate the feasibility of the above scheme, we conduct experiments extensively on the 33 963 pilot surveys spectrums by LAMOST. The accuracy of three atmospheric parameters is log Teff: 0.006 8 dex, log g: 0.155 1 dex, [Fe/H]: 0.104 0 dex.

[A novel scheme SVR(HAAR) for automatically estimating stellar atmospheric parameters from spectrum].

A novel scheme SVR(Haar) is proposed in the present work for automatically estimating the physical parameters of stellar spectra. The observed spectrum is disturbed usually by noise which is caused by the universe radiation, the atmosphere and observation equipment. Furthermore, the noise usually is the component of the spectrum with higher frequency. Therefore, we propose to extract features with Haar wavelet by removing higher frequency components. Researches show that this procedure can improve the accuracy of the estimation. Secondly, the support vector regression model is employed for estimating physical parameters of the stellar spectra. In this method, the epsilon insensitive domain techniques can further improve the probability to the slight distortion of the spectrum from imperfect calibration, and enhance the robustness of the proposed scheme. To check the effectiveness of the proposed scheme SVR(Haar), we did experiments extensively on authoritative simulated stellar spectra and real spectra observed by SLOAN, and compared it with the typical methods in the literature. The results show that the SVR (Haar) is better than the principal component analysis and non-parametric regression model in the literature.

The hormone-dependent function of Hsp90 in the crosstalk between 20-hydroxyecdysone and juvenile hormone signaling pathways in insects is determined by differential phosphorylation and protein interactions.

BACKGROUND: Heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) interacts with steroid hormone receptors, signaling kinases, and various transcription factors. However, the mechanism by which Hsp90 interacts with different proteins in various pathways remains unclear. METHODS: Western blot was used to study Hsp90 expression profile in Helicoverpa armigera (Lepidoptera). RNA interference was performed to investigate the function of Hsp90 in 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) and juvenile hormone (JH) signal pathways. The binding of Hsp90 to the transcription factor ultraspiracle protein (USP1) and JH candidate receptor methoprene-tolerant (Met1) was analyzed by co-immunoprecipitation. Phospho-(Ser) PKC substrate antibody was used to detect Hsp90 phosphorylation. RESULTS: Hsp90 participated in 20E- or JH-induced gene expression. 20E induced the interaction between Hsp90 and USP1, whereas JH III and methoprene induced the interaction between Hsp90 and Met1, respectively. 20E and JH counteracted each other for these protein interactions. Both JH III and methoprene induced protein kinase C (PKC) phosphorylation of Hsp90. This process could be inhibited by phospholipase C (PLC) and PKC inhibitors. 20E suppressed JH III- or methoprene-induced PKC phosphorylation of Hsp90. CONCLUSION: 20E maintained the non-PKC-phosphorylation status of Hsp90. Hsp90 interacted with USP1 to induce gene expression in the 20E pathway. JH regulated the PKC-phosphorylation status of Hsp90. Hsp90 also interacted with Met1 to induce gene expression in the JH pathway. GENERAL SIGNIFICANCE: Our study describes a novel mechanism of Hsp90 action by altering phosphorylation and protein interaction in various hormonal signaling pathways.

[Automatic measurement of physical parameters of stellar spectra based on the Haar wavelet features].

The present paper researches the automatic measurement of the physical parameters ofthe stellar spectra. It is an important problem of the automatic processing of mass spectral data in the large-scale survey plan. The basic steps of the program in this article are: at first, the stellar spectra are decomposed by multi-scale Harr wavelet. Secondly, wavelet coefficients are chosen as the feature vectors of the spectrum. Finally, Non-parameter estimation is employed for estimating physical parameters of the stellar spectra. Studies show that the original spectrumonly needs to be decomposed by four-level Harr wavelet. If the wavelet coefficient at the fourth level is chosen as the wavelet feature of the spectrum, the surface gravity and effective temperature is estimated better. If the wavelet coefficient at the first level is chosen as the wavelet feature of the spectrum, the metallic abundance is estimated better. The authors use the spectral data in the literature ELODIE library to test the effectiveness of the method. When the wavelet coefficient is chosen as the feature vector of the spectrum, the experiment results show that the proposed method is robust and features high accuracy for the automatic measurement of the surface gravity, the effective temperature and the metallic abundance.

[Finite element contact stress analysis of simulating teeth with wedge-shaped defects in the cervical region].

PURPOSE: To study the distribution of stress of simulating teeth with wedge-shaped defects in the cervical region. METHODS: The models of anisotropic enamel of the mandibular first premolar and the opposite maxillary first premolar crown were created. A defect was introduced into the model of mandibular premolar in the buccal cervical region along the enamelo-dentinal junction. The stress distribution in the cervical region of the mandibular premolar was investigated with regard to different loading conditions simulating working, nonworking and vertical micromotions. In each case, the stroke was applied to the mandibular premolars in a stepping procedure using nonlinear contact analysis. RESULTS: The stresses were concentrated in the defect of the enamel and dentin at the enamelo-dentinal junction(EDJ) in the condition of different loading, especially in the condition of simulating lateral excursion on one contact. CONCLUSION: Undermined cervical EDJ had a significant effect on the stress distribution in the buccal cervical region.

[Expression of substance P and vascular endothelial growth factor in human normal and inflammatory dental pulps].

PURPOSE: To investigate the expression and relationship of substance P(SP) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in human dental pulp under the normal and pathological conditions, so as to study their role in pulp microcirculation. METHONDS: Ten teeth extracted for orthodontic or impacted reason were chosen as normal group. Twenty-nine traumatic teeth from the same age group needing root canal therapy were divided to initial-stage trauma group, early-stage inflammation group, later-stage inflammation group. Immunohistochemical technique was applied to determine the expression and distribution of SP and VEGF in each group. The data was analyzed by one-way ANOVA and correlation analysis with SPSS13.0 software package. RESULTS: Compared with normal group,SP expression in other groups was significantly down-regulated(P<0.05). The VEGF expression in early-stage inflammation group was significantly up-regulated compared with the other groups (P<0.05), but down-regulated in later-stage inflammation group (P<0.05). The expression of SP and VEGF had negative correlation in different groups(r=-0.378,P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: SP may induce the pulp microcirculation change by regulating VEGF, and participate in pulp neurogenic inflammation.

[Efficient computation of spectral flux normalization].

Flux normalization is a key procedure in spectral data mining, and is important for the efficiency and accuracy of automatic processing of massive astronomical spectral data, information extraction and sharing. Since the usual implementation of flux normalizing methods is inefficient, the present work focuses on the algorithm designing of spectral flux normalization. Firstly, the authors investigated the limit efficiency characteristics of the available flux normalization methods, introduced four efficient flux normalizing algorithms, and studied their time complexity and space complexity. Secondly, the authors evaluated the efficiency of the proposed algorithms experimentally and horizontally based on the SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) released spectral data. In the theoretical research, the main consideration is the computational complexity characteristics of the flux normalization methods when the data size increases unlimitedly. The experimental research focuses on the difference in the computational burden between the basic operations in different flux normalization methods. It is shown that, although the four flux normalization methods S(max), S(median), S(mean) and S(unit) belong to the same limit efficiency type, on the spectra with usual observing scale, S(max) and S(median) are much more efficient than S(mean) and S(unit), and S(unit) is the most inefficient one. This work is helpful for choosing the appropriate flux normalization method based on the size of spectra database and the scientific needs in automatic spectra analysis.

[Galaxy/quasar classification based on nearest neighbor method].

With the wide application of high-quality CCD in celestial spectrum imagery and the implementation of many large sky survey programs (e. g., Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), Two-degree-Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dF), Spectroscopic Survey Telescope (SST), Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) program and Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) program, etc.), celestial observational data are coming into the world like torrential rain. Therefore, to utilize them effectively and fully, research on automated processing methods for celestial data is imperative. In the present work, we investigated how to recognizing galaxies and quasars from spectra based on nearest neighbor method. Galaxies and quasars are extragalactic objects, they are far away from earth, and their spectra are usually contaminated by various noise. Therefore, it is a typical problem to recognize these two types of spectra in automatic spectra classification. Furthermore, the utilized method, nearest neighbor, is one of the most typical, classic, mature algorithms in pattern recognition and data mining, and often is used as a benchmark in developing novel algorithm. For applicability in practice, it is shown that the recognition ratio of nearest neighbor method (NN) is comparable to the best results reported in the literature based on more complicated methods, and the superiority of NN is that this method does not need to be trained, which is useful in incremental learning and parallel computation in mass spectral data processing. In conclusion, the results in this work are helpful for studying galaxies and quasars spectra classification.

[Clinical evaluation of flowable composites in treatment of wedge-shaped defects as a liner].

PURPOSE: To evaluate the clinical effects of flowable composite as a liner in treatment of wedge-shaped defects. METHODS: Three hundred and sixty teeth from 85 patients with wedge-shaped defects were studied. The self-control design was used in this study. Teeth were randomly divided into experimental group which were restored with composite resin after using flowable composite as a liner in one side, and the control group which were filled with composite resin directly in the other side. The modified USPHS/Ryge criteria were used to evaluate the treatment effects after 1 year and 3 years. SPSS12.0 software package was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS: There was significant difference between the 2 groups in postoperative sensitivity. The experimental group had higher successful rate than the control group. In marginal integrity, the successful rate of the experimental group was 100% after 1 year, higher than 95.65% in the control group (P<0.01). The successful rate of the experimental group was 98.56% after 3 year, higher than 92.42% in the control group (P<0.01). In postoperative sensitivity: the experimental group had no sensitive cases after 1 year, while the control group had 6 teeth with moderate sensitivity which needed to change the restoration. The experimental group was better than the control group, the difference was statistically significant (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: It can be concluded that flowable composites as a liner in restoration of wedge-shaped defects may improve the marginal integrity and reduce the postoperative sensitivity.

[A novel spectrum feature extraction method].

The present focuses on the celestial spectra feature extraction problem, which is a key procedure in automatic spectra classification. By extracting features, the authors can reduce redundancy, alleviate noise influence, and improve accuracy and efficiency in spectra classification. The authors introduced a novel feature analysis framework STP (space transformation and partition), which focuses on four essential components in feature extraction: decompose and reorganize spectrum components, reorganize, alleviate noise influence and eliminate redundancy. Based on STP, we can analyze most of the available feature extraction methods, for example, the unsupervised methods principal component analysis (PCA), wavelet transform, the supervised methods support vector machine (SVM), relevance vector machine (RVM), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), etc. We introduced a novel feature analysis framework and proposed a novel feature extraction method. The outstanding characteristics of the proposed method are its simplicity and efficiency. Researches show that it is sufficient to extract features by the proposed method in some cases, and it is not necessary to use the sophisticated methods, which is usually more complex in computation. The proposed method is evaluated in classifying Galaxy and QSO spectra, which is disturbed by red shift and is representative in automatic spectra classification research. The results are practical and helpful to gain novel insight into the traditional feature extraction methods and design more efficient spectrum classification method.

[RVM supervised feature extraction and Seyfert spectra classification].

With recent technological advances in wide field survey astronomy and implementation of several large-scale astronomical survey proposals (e. g. SDSS, 2dF and LAMOST), celestial spectra are becoming very abundant and rich. Therefore, research on automated classification methods based on celestial spectra has been attracting more and more attention in recent years. Feature extraction is a fundamental problem in automated spectral classification, which not only influences the difficulty and complexity of the problem, but also determines the performance of the designed classifying system. The available methods of feature extraction for spectra classification are usually unsupervised, e. g. principal components analysis (PCA), wavelet transform (WT), artificial neural networks (ANN) and Rough Set theory. These methods extract features not by their capability to classify spectra, but by some kind of power to approximate the original celestial spectra. Therefore, the extracted features by these methods usually are not the best ones for classification. In the present work, the authors pointed out the necessary to investigate supervised feature extraction by analyzing the characteristics of the spectra classification research in available literature and the limitations of unsupervised feature extracting methods. And the authors also studied supervised feature extracting based on relevance vector machine (RVM) and its application in Seyfert spectra classification. RVM is a recently introduced method based on Bayesian methodology, automatic relevance determination (ARD), regularization technique and hierarchical priors structure. By this method, the authors can easily fuse the information in training data, the authors' prior knowledge and belief in the problem, etc. And RVM could effectively extract the features and reduce the data based on classifying capability. Extensive experiments show its superior performance in dimensional reduction and feature extraction for Seyfert classification.

[Qianlie Beixi capsule for unliquefiable semen: a clinical study of 180 cases].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the efficacy and possible action mechanism of Qianlie Beixi Capsule in the treatment of unliquefiable semen. METHODS: A total of 240 patients with unliquefiable semen were randomly divided into a treatment group (n = 180), treated with Qianlie Beixi Capsule, and a control group (n = 60), given compound tablets of zinc and protein. The treatment lasted two courses of 45 days each, and the seminal changes were observed and recorded. RESULTS: Of the patients in the treatment group, 144 were cured, 12 responded and 24 failed to respond to the medication after the first course; and 158 were cured, 7 responded and 15 failed to after the second course, with the effectiveness rate of 91.67%. Meanwhile, sperm motility was obviously improved, with statistically significant difference from that of the controls (P < 0.01). CONCLUSION: Qianlie Beixi Capsule is effective for unliquefiable semen by improving the function of the prostate and shortening the time of seminal liquefaction.