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We report on a psycholinguistic database of Chinese character handwriting based on a large-scale study that involved 203 participants, each handwriting 200 characters randomly sampled from a cohort of 1,600 characters. Apart from collecting writing latencies, durations, and accuracy, we also compiled 14 lexical variables for each character. Regressions showed that frequency, age of acquisition, and the word context (in which a character appears) are all-around and influential predictors of orthographic access (as reflected in writing latency), motor execution of handwriting (as reflected in writing duration), and accuracy. In addition, phonological factors (phonogram status, spelling regularity, and homophone density) impacted orthographic access but not handwriting execution. Semantic factors (imageability and concreteness) only affected accuracy. These results suggest, among other things, that phonology is consulted in orthographic access while handwriting. As the first of its kind, this database can be used as a source of secondary data analyses and a tool for stimulus construction in handwriting research.

Karyopherin alpha 2 (KPNA2) is a nuclear transport protein upregulated in many cancers. Our previous study has identified KPNA2 overexpression in epithelial ovarian carcinoma (EOC) tissues, which predicts poor prognosis. However, the mechanism of KPNA2 overexpression in EOC remains unclear. This study aimed to examine the role of miRNA in KPNA2 dysregulation. Our results showed that miR-26b was downregulated in EOC samples, and correlated inversely with KPNA2 expression. Low expression of miR-26b was associated with advanced FIGO stage, poor differentiation, higher risk of distant metastasis and recurrence. Downregulation of miR-26b predicted poor disease-free survival and overall survival in EOC patients. KPNA2 was validated as a direct target of miR-26b. Knockdown of KPNA2 or ectopic expression of miR-26b could downregulate OCT4, vimentin and upregulate E-cadherin. Reintroduction of KPNA2 partially abrogated the suppression effect induced by miR-26b. We further verified that miR-26b/KPNA2/OCT4 axis inhibited EOC cell viability, migratory ability and sphere-forming capacity in vitro and in vivo. In conclusion, our results reveal that miR-26b is downregulated in EOC, and directly targets KPNA2. miR-26b/KPNA2 axis suppresses tumor proliferation and metastasis through decreasing OCT4 expression, which is indicative of the important role of miR-26b/KPNA2/OCT4 axis in EOC carcinogenesis and progression.

Treatment of tendon injuries is challenging. To develop means to augment tendon regeneration, we have previously prepared a soluble, low immunogenic (DNA‐free), tendon extracellular matrix fraction (tECM) by urea extraction of juvenile bovine tendons, which is capable of enhancing transforming growth factor‐β (TGF‐β) mediated tenogenesis in human adipose‐derived stem cells (hASCs). Here, we aimed to elucidate the mechanism of tECM‐driven hASC tenogenic differentiation in vitro, focusing on the integrin and TGF‐β/SMAD pathways. Our results showed that tECM promoted hASC proliferation and tenogenic differentiation in vitro based on tenogenesis‐associated markers. tECM also induced higher expression of several integrin subunits and TGF‐β receptors, and nuclear translocation of p‐SMAD2 in hASCs. Pharmacological inhibition of integrin‐ECM binding, focal adhesion kinase (FAK) signaling, or TGF‐β signaling independently led to compromised pro‐tenogenic effects of tECM and actin fiber polymerization. Additionally, integrin blockade inhibited tECM‐driven TGFBR2 expression, while inhibiting TGF‐β signaling decreased tECM‐mediated expression of integrin α1, α2, and β1 in hASCs. Together, these findings suggest that the strong pro‐tenogenic bioactivity of tECM is regulated via integrin/TGF‐β signaling crosstalk. Understanding how integrins interact with signaling by TGF‐β and/or other growth factors (GFs) within the tendon ECM microenvironment will provide a rational basis for an ECM‐based approach for tendon repair.

We report the construction of two age-of-acquisition (AoA) norms for 3300+ characters in simplified Chinese, which make up about 99% of the texts used in daily life. We determined a character's AoA according to the time in which the character is formally learned in two sets of leading textbooks of Chinese in compulsory education, published respectively on the basis of the 2001 and 2011 national curriculum. Apart from having a significantly larger coverage of characters than previous norms, the current norms also outperformed them in explaining accuracy and reaction times in four large-scale databases for character decision, character naming, or character handwriting, even after controlling for the effects of frequency, number of meanings, and number of strokes. The explanatory advantage of the current norms suggests that, compared to earlier norms, the current norms capture more up-to-date character AoAs; these findings also highlight the diachronic nature of some lexical variables such as AoA and frequency. The developed objective AoA norms can be used for subsequent research on Chinese character recognition or production.