Cephalopods, the group of animals including octopus, squid, and cuttlefish, have remarkable ability to instantly modulate body coloration and patterns so as to blend into surrounding environments [1, 2] or send warning signals to other animals [3]. Reflectin is expressed exclusively in cephalopods, filling the lamellae of intracellular Bragg reflectors that exhibit dynamic iridescence and structural color change [4]. Here, we trace the possible origin of the reflectin gene back to a transposon from the symbiotic bioluminescent bacterium Vibrio fischeri and report the hierarchical structural architecture of reflectin protein. Intrinsic self-assembly, and higher-order assembly tightly modulated by aromatic compounds, provide insights into the formation of multilayer reflectors in iridophores and spherical microparticles in leucophores and may form the basis of structural color change in cephalopods. Self-assembly and higher-order assembly in reflectin originated from a core repeating octapeptide (here named protopeptide), which may be from the same symbiotic bacteria. The origin of the reflectin gene and assembly features of reflectin protein are of considerable biological interest. The hierarchical structural architecture of reflectin and its domain and protopeptide not only provide insights for bioinspired photonic materials but also serve as unique "assembly tags" and feasible molecular platforms in biotechnology.

Nanobodies consist of a single domain variable fragment of a camelid heavy-chain antibody. Nanobodies have potential applications in biomedical fields because of their simple production procedures and low cost. Occasionally, nanobody clones of interest exhibit low affinities for their target antigens, which, together with their short half-life limit bioanalytical or therapeutic applications. Here, we developed a novel platform we named fenobody, in which a nanobody developed against H5N1 virus is displayed on the surface of ferritin in the form of a 24mer. We constructed a fenobody by substituting the fifth helix of ferritin with the nanobody. TEM analysis showed that nanobodies were displayed on the surface of ferritin in the form of 6 × 4 bundles, and that these clustered nanobodies are flexible for antigen binding in spatial structure. Comparing fenobodies with conventional nanobodies currently used revealed that the antigen binding apparent affinity of anti-H5N1 fenobody was dramatically increased (∼360-fold). Crucially, their half-life extension in a murine model was 10-fold longer than anti-H5N1 nanobody. In addition, we found that our fenobodies are highly expressed in Escherichia coli, and are both soluble and thermo-stable nanocages that self-assemble as 24-polymers. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that fenobodies have unique advantages over currently available systems for apparent affinity enhancement and half-life extension of nanobodies. Our fenobody system presents a suitable platform for various large-scale biotechnological processes and should greatly facilitate the application of nanobody technology in these areas.

Expandable cages had higher rates and risk of subsidence in comparison with static cages. When subsidence was present, expandable cages had greater magnitudes of subsidence. Other factors including footplate-to-vertebral body endplate ratio, prongs, extent of supplemental posterior fusion, spinal region, and diagnosis also impacted subsidence.

Automatic waveform classification and arrival picking methods are widely studied to reduce or replace the manual works. Machine learning based methods, especially neural networks, and clustering based methods have shown great potentials in previous studies. However, most of the existing methods are sensitive to noise. The convolution neural networks (CNNs), developed from the traditional neural networks, have been successfully applied in many different fields, but are rarely studied in seismic waveform classification. In this paper, we propose a novel antinoise CNN architecture for waveform classification and also propose to combine k‐means clustering (KC) with CNN classification to pick arrivals (CNN‐KC). Seismic data are sampled to 1‐D vectors using a specific time window. Using the trained CNN classifier, these 1‐D vectors are classified into two categories: waveform and nonwaveform. With the constraint of the first waveform, CNN‐KC can pick the arrival more accurately. We also apply the proposed methods to the synthetic microseismic data with different noise levels and the actual field microseismic data to test their robustness. CNNs perform much better than the traditional multilayer perceptron on the waveform classification of the noisy microseismic data. Based on the analysis of the CNN internal architecture, we also conclude that the main reason that CNN is insensitive to noise is the convolution and pooling layers which behave like smooth operation in some ways. The final results show that the CNN and CNN‐KC are effective and robust methods for waveform classification and arrival picking.

As the number of clinical trials conducted in China increases, understanding Chinese attitudes toward clinical research is critical for designing effective and ethical studies. Two survey studies were conducted in 2012 and 2013 to compare patient attitudes toward clinical research and factors affecting research participation in the United States and urban and rural China. We surveyed 525 patients in 2012 (186 US, 186 urban, 153 rural China) and 690 patients in 2013 (412 US, 206 urban, 72 rural China). US patients were more likely to have no concerns regarding research participation than Chinese patients. Most common concerns of US patients were safety, privacy and confidentiality, and time required. Safety was a top concern for many Chinese. Chinese patients, particularly rural Chinese, were more concerned about the likelihood of self-benefit, and receiving free medical care and financial incentive had greater influence on their participation. Being informed of the freedom to choose whether to participate or to leave a study was less important to Chinese patients. Our study provides important insights into Chinese patients' attitudes toward clinical research and the need to educate them about their rights. These findings help in designing cross-cultural clinical studies that maximize enrollment while upholding Western ethical standards. Clin Trans Sci 2015; Volume 8: 123-131