Tunable magnetic and half-metallic properties of the two-dimensional electron gas in LaAlO3/SrTiO3(111) heterostructures.

Half-metallic materials have gained a lot of attention because of their unique properties and applications in spintronic devices. Despite the fact that these materials have been studied by several research groups there are very limited studies on their heterostructure (HS) systems. In the current study we have investigated the electronic and magnetic properties of (LaAlO3)6.5/(SrTiO3)2.5(111) HS using density functional theory (DFT) calculations. We demonstrate that the system exhibits a 100% spin-polarized two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) which is extremely confined to the Ti 3d orbitals of the SrTiO3 layers. In particular, this system can keep its half-metallic properties under different in-plane strains from -3 to 2%. This property proves that this material has relatively stable half-metallic properties. In addition, the conducting and magnetic ground states of the system can also be tailored by changing in-plane strain and interfacial cation intermixing of La and Sr (Sr ⇔ La intermixing). By increasing the in-plane lattice parameters, this system has the ability to evolve from a nonmagnetic to a ferromagnetic metal and then to a half-metal and by further increasing the in-plane lattice parameter it becomes a ferromagnetic insulator. Sr ⇔ La intermixing can destroy the original half-metallic properties and the system exhibits an AFM Mott-type insulator phase. Our results demonstrate that the system has high potential for application in the field of spintronics, and opens the prospect of using LaAlO3/SrTiO3(111) HSs to explore quantum phase transitions.

Prominent Structures for Video Analysis and Editing.

We present prominent structures in video, a representation of visually strong, spatially sparse and temporally stable structural units, for use in video analysis and editing. With a novel quality measurement of prominent structures in video, we develop a general framework for prominent structure computation, and an efficient hierarchical structure alignment algorithm between a pair of videos. The prominent structural unit map is proposed to encode both binary prominence guidance and numerical strength and geometry details for each video frame. Even though the detailed appearance of videos could be visually different, the proposed alignment algorithm can find matched prominent structure sub-volumes. Prominent structures in video support a wide range of video analysis and editing applications including graphic match-cut between successive videos, instant cut editing, finding transition portals from a video collection, structure-aware video re-ranking, visualizing human action differences, etc.

[Var gene family and antigen variation in Plasmodium falciparum].

An immunovariant adhesion protein family in Plasmodium falciparum named erythrocyte membrane protein 1 (PfEMP1), encoded by var genes, is responsible for both antigenic variation and cytoadhesion of infected erythrocytes at microvasculature sites throughout the body. The article summarizes antigen variation and pathogenicity, variation molecules expressed on infected erythrocytes, structure of var gene family, PfEMP1 adhesion properties, and regulation of variation in Plasmodium falciparum var gene family.

Comprehensive analysis of competitive endogenous RNAs network associated with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) can regulate gene expression directly or indirectly through interacting with microRNAs (miRNAs). However, the role of differentially expressed mRNAs, lncRNAs and miRNAs, and especially their related competitive endogenous RNAs (ceRNA) network in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), is not fully comprehended. In this paper, the lncRNA, miRNA, and mRNA expression profiles of 546 HNSCC patients, including 502 tumor and 44 adjacent non-tumor tissues, from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) were analyzed. 82 miRNAs, 1197 mRNAs and 1041 lncRNAs were found to be differentially expressed in HNSCC samples (fold change ≥ 2; P < 0.01). Further bioinformatics analysis was performed to construct a lncRNA-miRNA-mRNA ceRNA network of HNSCC, which includes 8 miRNAs, 71 lncRNAs and 16 mRNAs. Through survival analysis based on the expression profiles of RNAs in the ceRNA network, we detected 1 mRNA, 1 miRNA and 13 lncRNA to have a significant impact on the overall survival of HNSCC patients (P < 0.05). Finally, some lncRNAs, which are more important for survival, were also predicted. Our research provides data to further understand the molecular mechanisms implicated in HNSCC.