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Root phenotypic parameters are the important basis for studying the growth state of plants, and root researchers obtain root phenotypic parameters mainly by analyzing root images. With the development of image processing technology, automatic analysis of root phenotypic parameters has become possible. And the automatic segmentation of roots in images is the basis for the automatic analysis of root phenotypic parameters. We collected highresolution images of cotton roots in a real soil environment using minirhizotrons. The background noise of the minirhizotron images is extremely complex and affects the accuracy of the automatic segmentation of the roots. In order to reduce the influence of the background noise, we improved OCRNet by adding a Global Attention Mechanism (GAM) module to OCRNet to enhance the focus of the model on the root targets. The improved OCRNet model in this paper achieved automatic segmentation of roots in the soil and performed well in the root segmentation of the high-resolution minirhizotron images, achieving an accuracy of 0.9866, a recall of 0.9419, a precision of 0.8887, an F1 score of 0.9146 and an Intersection over Union (IoU) of 0.8426. The method provided a new approach to automatic and accurate root segmentation of high-resolution minirhizotron images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plant leaf segmentation, especially leaf edge accurate recognition, is the data support for automatically measuring plant phenotypic parameters. However, adjusting the backbone in the current cutting-edge segmentation model for cotton leaf segmentation applications requires various trial and error costs (e.g., expert experience and computing costs). Thus, a simple and effective semantic segmentation architecture (our model) based on the composite backbone was proposed, considering the computational requirements of the mainstream Transformer backbone integrating attention mechanism. The composite backbone was composed of CoAtNet and Xception. CoAtNet integrated the attention mechanism of the Transformers into the convolution operation. The experimental results showed that our model outperformed the benchmark segmentation models PSPNet, DANet, CPNet, and DeepLab v3+ on the cotton leaf dataset, especially on the leaf edge segmentation (MIoU: 0.940, BIoU: 0.608). The composite backbone of our model integrated the convolution of the convolutional neural networks and the attention of the Transformers, which alleviated the computing power requirements of the Transformers under excellent performance. Our model reduces the trial and error cost of adjusting the segmentation model architecture for specific agricultural applications and provides a potential scheme for high-throughput phenotypic feature detection of plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uroporphyrinogen III synthetase (UROS) is an important enzyme involved in the structural formation of porphyrin, which is responsible for color intensity. A UROS homolog was isolated and characterized from the pearl mussel, Hyriopsis cumingii (HcUros). The HcUros cDNA was 858 bp in length with an open reading frame that encoded a 285 amino acid protein, which contained a conserved HemD domain. HcUros exhibited wide-spread tissue distribution, displaying particular enrichment in the mantle and haemolymph of purple mussels, compared to white mussels. In situ hybridization of HcUros in mantle tissue demonstrated that it was specifically expressed in the dorsal epithelial cells of the mantle pallia. Additionally, HcUros expression was upregulated following implantation of the pearl sac to produce pearls. The data suggest that HcUros contributes to shell pigmentation, and nacre formation and coloring in H. cumingii. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Levels of thyroid hormones (T,T) in serum and cyclic adenosine 3′, 5′-monophosphate (cAMP) and cyclic guanosine 3′, 5′-monophosphate (cGMP) in plasma were successively determined in 77 patients with hyperthyroidism before and 1, 2, 3, 6 months afteriodine (I) treatment. Before treatment, the levels of total serum T, T and plasma cAMP of all of the patients were higher than normal, while the level of plasma cGMP was lower than normal (P<0.0l). The patients were divided into 3 groups: A, B, C, according to the clinical features and serum levels of T, T 3-6 months after treatment. Group A (18 patients) clinically showed no improvement, T, T still remained higher than normal and cAMP, cGMP revealed no significant change in comparison with the pretreatment state. Group B (45 patients) clinically showed marked improvement, their thyroid toxic symptoms practically subsided, T, T gradually turned to normal and concentration of cAMP and cGMP subsequently reached normal level. Group C (14 patients) presented temporary hypothyroidic features; their level of T, T fell below the normal range, while the concentration of plasma cAMP and cGMP approached the level contrary to the state before treatment. Since the change of T and T occurred synchronously, the question of whether T or T exerted an influence on plasma cyclic nucleotides concentration and the interrelationship between thyroid hormones and cyclic nucleotides as well as the significance of plasma cAMP and cGMP in pathogenesis and therapy of hyperthyroidism remains to be further elucidated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was designed to investigate the levels of testis tissue cyclic nucleotides and plasma testosterone in testis-irradiated rats with saturation analysis 1-52 days after 676 rad and 7 days after 290-1930 rad. It was found that ionizing radiation of a given dose scale did not affect significantly the excretion of testosterone. An initial rise of cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) was probably associated with an increase of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH) excretion and a decrease of cAMP in the later stage was possibly due to the depletion of the germ cells, following irradiation less than 965 rad. The reduction of cAMP after 1930 rad was probably related to direct inhibition of the larger dose of cAMP production. These results suggest that the levels of cAMP after irradiation can reflect the degree of testis radiation injury. In addition, it was also found that ionizing radiation failed to change the testis cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) levels, suggesting the presence in testis of only a 'one-way' regulation carried out by cAMP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]