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In an era characterized by rapid economic growth and evolving lifestyles, college students encounter numerous challenges, encompassing academic pressures and professional competition. The respiratory muscle endurance capability is important for college students during prolonged aerobic exercise. Therefore, it is of great significance to explore an effective intervention to enhance the endurance level of college students. This study explores the transformative potential of inspiratory muscle training (IMT) to improve the physical functions of college students. This research comprised a group of 20 participants who underwent IMT integrated into their daily physical education classes or regular training sessions over an 8-week period, with 18 participants forming the control group. The IMT group adhered to the manufacturer's instructions for utilizing the PowerBreathe device. The findings indicated a significant positive effect on inspiratory muscle strength ( p < 0.001), showing improvements in pulmonary function, exercise tolerance, cardiac function, and overall athletic performance. These results revealed the substantial benefits of IMT in enhancing physical fitness and promoting health maintenance among college students.

The Drosophila tracheal system is a favorable model for investigating the program of tubular morphogenesis. This system is established in the embryo by post-mitotic cells, but also undergoes remodeling by adult stem cells. Here, we provide a comprehensive cell atlas of Drosophila trachea using the single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) technique. The atlas documents transcriptional profiles of tracheoblasts within the Drosophila airway, delineating 9 major subtypes. Further evidence gained from in silico as well as genetic investigations highlight a set of transcription factors characterized by their capacity to switch cell fate. Notably, the transcription factors Pebbled, Blistered, Knirps, Spalt and Cut are influenced by Notch signaling and determine tracheal cell identity. Moreover, Notch signaling orchestrates transcriptional activities essential for tracheoblast differentiation and responds to protein glycosylation that is induced by high sugar diet. Therefore, our study yields a single-cell transcriptomic atlas of tracheal development and regeneration, and suggests a glycosylation-responsive Notch signaling in cell fate determination., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Objective: This longitudinal study aimed to investigate the effects of Qigong on the anxiety state, heart rate variability (HRV), and breathing of anxious college students., Methods: A total of 37 individuals (18-25 years old) were randomly allocated to the control (n = 19) and intervention (n = 18) groups. Qigong interventions were conducted five times weekly for 12 weeks, with each session lasting 60 min. Hamilton Anxiety Scale, Fatigue Scale 14, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and 36-item Short Form Survey, HRV, and respiration data were collected before and after the 3-month intervention., Results: Individuals who participated in the three-month Qigong exercise intervention showed a significant reduction in anxiety, particularly mental anxiety (p < 0.05). Subjects in the intervention group presented a decrease in skin temperature (p < 0.05) and an increase in blood volume pulsation (p < 0.05). Meanwhile, HRV exhibited a significant increase in the standard deviation of interbeat interval before and after comparisons (p < 0.05) and between the two groups (p = 0.039) and a reduction in the normalized low-frequency power after the intervention. Moreover, the intervention group experienced increased abdominal breathing depth and abdominal breathing per minute (p < 0.05)., Conclusion: These findings indicate that Qigong is an effective mind-body exercise strategy for relieving anxiety. HRV and breathing were improved accordingly among college students after the completion of the 3-month Qigong program., (© 2023 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Shot is one of the fundamental unit in the content structure of a film, which can provide insights into the film-director's ideas. By analyzing the properties and types of shots, we can gain a better understanding of a film's visual language. In this paper, we delve deeply into the task of shot type classification, proposing that utilizing multimodal video inputs can effectively improve the accuracy of the task, and that shot type classification is closely related to low-level spatiotemporal semantic features. To this end, we propose a Lightweight Weak Semantic Relevance Framework (LWSRNet) for classifying cinematographic shot types. Our framework comprises two modules: a Linear Modalities Fusion module (LMF Module) capable of fusing an arbitrary number of video modalities, and a Weak Semantic 3D-CNN based Feature Extraction Backbone (WSFE Module) for classifying shot movement and scale, respectively. Moreover, to support practical cinematographic analysis, we collect FullShots, a large film shot dataset containing 27K shots from 19 movies with professionally annotations for movement and scale information. Following experimental results validate the correctness of our proposed hypotheses, while our framework also outperforms previous methods in terms of accuracy with fewer parameters and computations, on both FullShots and MovieShots datasets. Our code is available at ( https://github.com/litchiar/ShotClassification )., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

The possible role of fatty acid translocase (CD36) in the treatment of obesity has gained increasing research interest since researchers recognized its coordinated function in fatty acid uptake and oxidation. However, the effect of CD36 deficiency on intracellular insulin signaling is complex and its impact may depend on different nutritional stresses. Therefore, we investigated the various effects of CD36 deletion on insulin signaling in C2C12 myotubes with or without palmitic acid (PA) overload. In the present work, we reported the upregulated expression levels of CD36 in the skeletal muscle tissues of obese humans and mice as well as in C2C12 myotubes with PA stimulation. CD36 knockdown using RNA interference showed that insulin signaling was impaired in CD36-deficient C2C12 cells in the absence of PA loading, suggesting that CD36 is essential for the maintenance of insulin action, possibly resulting from increased mitochondrial dysfunction and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress; however, CD36 deletion improved insulin signaling in the presence of PA overload due to a reduction in lipid overaccumulation. In conclusion, we identified differential roles of CD36 in regulating muscle insulin response under conditions with and without PA overload, which provides supportive evidence for further research into therapeutic approaches to diabetes.

Resveratrol (Res) is a plant extract with strong anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and anti-aging biological activities. However, Res is limited by its disadvantages, such as poor solubility, rapid metabolism and low bioavailability. In this study, the Resveratrol-loaded TEMPO-oxidized cellulose aerogel (RLTA) drug delivery system was prepared by the method of "dissolution-freeze-drying" and characterized by a series of analysis. Then the blood biochemical indexes and HE staining were measured and analyzed in animal experiments. The in vivo results showed that RLTA can decrease the levels of TNF-α and IL-6 inflammatory factors in the synovial fluid. Furthermore, the molecular mechanism was investigated through the analysis of silent information regulator 2 homolog 1 (Sirt1) protein expression, which suggested that RLTA could upregulate the expression of Sirt1 and mediate the P38 signaling pathway, thereby inhibiting the expression of COX-2 and MMP13 which can suppress the levels of IL-6 and TNF-α inflammatory factor. These results reveal that cellulose aerogel is a promising candidate for drug delivery and RLTA has great potential application for the treatment of sports osteoarthritis.

Adult progenitor cells in the trachea of Drosophila larvae are activated and migrate out of niches when metamorphosis induces tracheal remodeling. Here we show that in response to metabolic deficiency in decaying tracheal branches, signaling by the insulin pathway controls the progenitor cells by regulating Yorkie (Yki)-dependent proliferation and migration. Yki, a transcription coactivator that is regulated by Hippo signaling, promotes transcriptional activation of cell cycle regulators and components of the extracellular matrix in tracheal progenitor cells. These findings reveal that regulation of Yki signaling by the insulin pathway governs proliferation and migration of tracheal progenitor cells, thereby identifying the regulatory mechanism by which metabolic depression drives progenitor cell activation and cell division that underlies tracheal remodeling., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

The 30-second all-out sprint cycling exercise is a classical sport capacity evaluation method, which may cause severe lower limb muscle fatigue. However, the relationship between lower limb muscle fatigue and the decline in exercise performance during 30-second sprint cycling remains unclear. In this study, ten cyclists volunteered to participate in a 30-second all-out sprint cycling while power, cadence, and surface electromyographic (EMG) signals of eight lower limb muscles were recorded during the exercise. EMG mean frequency (MNF) of each lower limb muscle group was computed for every 3-second epoch based on wavelet packet transformation. Grey relational grades between pedalling performance and the EMG MNF of each lower limb muscle group during the whole process were calculated. The results demonstrated that EMG MNF of the rectus femoris (RF), vastus (VAS), gastrocnemius (GAS), and tibialis anterior (TA) progressively tired during a 30-second all-out sprint cycling exercise. Of the muscles evaluated, the degree of fatigue of TA showed the greatest association with exercise performance decline, whereas the muscle fatigue of RF, VAS, and GAS also significantly impacted exercise performance during a 30-second all-out sprint cycling exercise., Competing Interests: The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this study., (Copyright © 2021 Lejun Wang et al.)

Nitrogen oxide emissions control is a technology that meets the air pollutant reduction criteria in the energy production field, and it becomes more stringent yearly. Thus, this study experimentally compares the effects of direct-water and -steam injections at different tilting angles on NOx emission reduction. Using the experimental study conducted in the Combustion Laboratory of the Mechanical Power Department at the Faculty of Engineering, Minia University, Egypt, the exhaust gas temperature was found to be the main parameter affecting NOx emission. An experimental test rig was designed and simulated as a gaseous fuel combustion chamber. The results show that water and steam injections can effectively reduce NOx emissions by 70% and 57%, respectively. Besides, direct-water injection is more effective than steam injection owing to the 13% extra reduction in the NOx emission. Moreover, the best inclination angle into the primary combustion zone for both water and steam injection is 45°. The experimental results agree well with the results obtained in previous studies in this field., Competing Interests: There are no conflicts to declare., (This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.)

Resveratrol (RSV) is a natural flavonoid polyphenol compound extracted from the plants which shows various biological activities. However, the clinical application of RSV is limited by its poor aqueous solubility, rapid metabolism and poor bioavailability. In this study, resveratrol-loaded solid lipid nanoparticles (RSV- SLNs) was design as a nano-antioxidant against the physical fatigue. The resultant RSV-SLNs were characterized by photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS), transmission electron micrographs (TEM), zeta potential, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and Raman spectroscopy pattern. Furthermore, the in vivo anti-fatigue effect assays showed that RSV-SLNs prolonged the mice exhausted time and running distance. The biochemical parameters of blood related to fatigue suggested that RSV-SLNs have potential applications to improve the antioxidant defense of the mice after extensive exercise and confer anti-fatigue capability. Furthermore, the molecular mechanisms of antioxidant by RSV-SLNs supplementation was investigated through the analysis of silent information regulator 2 homolog 1 (SIRT1) protein expression, which demonstrated that it could downregulate the expression of SIRT1 and increase autophagy markers, microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3-II (LC3-II) and sequestosome-1 (SQSTM1/p62). These results reveal that the RSV-SLNs may have great potential used as a novel anti-fatigue sports nutritional supplement.

A novel bandwidth-enhanced bidirectional phase chaotic secure communication system with time-delay signature (TDS) concealment is proposed and analyzed by numerical simulation. This bidirectional system based on two mutually coupled electro-optic (MCEO) phase feedback loops is driven by a common all-optical (AO) chaotic source. The AO driving source makes the amplitude and phase terms in the Ikeda-based MCEO equation chaotic. Two mutually coupled optoelectronic delayed feedback loops also greatly increase the complexity of the chaotic carrier. By replacing the semiconductor laser in the existing bidirectional communication scheme with an electro-optic feedback loop, the problems of narrow carrier bandwidth and poor synchronization performance can be compensated. Compared to the single MCEO system, the permutation entropy of the AO-MCEO cascaded system with a bit rate of 10 Gbit/s is improved by 0.13 to 0.98. The TDS of the AO-MCEO system is suppressed 35 times to less than 0.01 to be completely hidden when the EO gain is reduced by half to 2.75. The chaos effective bandwidth is increased by 5 GHz to 32.05 GHz, and the spectrum flatness is reduced by 0.33 dB/Hz to 0.82 dB/Hz. Meanwhile, the security is further enhanced by reducing the cross-correlation coefficient to 0.001 between the AO driving source and the electro-optical chaotic carrier. The results show that the proposed model has potential applications in bandwidth-enhanced bidirectional secure chaotic systems.

In this paper, a novel chaotic secure communication system based on vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL) with a common phase-modulated electro-optic (CPMEO) feedback is proposed. The security of the CPMEO system is guaranteed by suppressing the time-delay signature (TDS) with a low-gain electro-optic (EO) feedback loop. Furthermore, the key space is enhanced through a unique secondary encryption method. The first-level encrypted keys are the TDS in the EO feedback loop, and the second-level keys are the physical parameters of the VCSEL under variable-polarization optical feedback. Numerical results show that, compared to the dual-optical feedback system, the TDS of the CPMEO system is suppressed 8 times to less than 0.05 such that they can be completely concealed when the EO gain is 3, and the bandwidth is doubled to over 22 GHz. The error-free 10 Gb/s secure optical transmission can be realized when the time-delay mismatch is controlled within 3 ps. It is shown that the proposed scheme can significantly improve the system performance in TDS concealment, as well as bandwidth and key space enhancement, which has great potential applications in secure dual-channel chaos communication.

Objective: During muscle fatigue, acute changes in the interaction between the sensorimotor cortex and peripheral neurons have been widely studied. However, it is still unclear about the effect of antagonist muscle prefatigue on corticomuscular coupling and central modulation. The purpose of this study was to investigate the changes in the magnitude of electroencephalogram-electromyography (EEG-EMG) coherence and phase synchronization index (PSI) induced by antagonistic muscle prefatigue., Methods: Twelve young male volunteers conducted a 30-s long, nonfatiguing isometric elbow extension with a target force level of 20% maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) before and after a fatiguing sustained elbow flexion contraction at 20% MVC until task failure. Coherence and PSI between the EEG recorded over the sensorimotor cortex and the surface EMG of the triceps brachii (TB) muscle were quantified for the pre- and post-fatigue elbow extension contractions., Results: Coherence and PSI in the gamma frequency band (35-60 Hz) were found significantly decreased in the postfatigue elbow extension contraction than the prefatigue contraction. The power of the EEG in the beta and gamma band were significantly increased, while the EMG power showed no significant changes when the antagonistic muscle was prefatigued. PSI in the gamma frequency band between the EMG of the TB muscle and the EEG were found significantly decreased during postfatigue elbow extension contraction compared with prefatigue contraction., Conclusion: Antagonistic muscle prefatigue led to significantly lower gamma band corticomuscular coherence and phase coupling during an isometric elbow extension position task. The lower corticomuscular coupling may indicate a central modulation mechanism of antagonist muscle prefatigue that related to decreased descending common drive or joint instability compensation modulation mechanism.

Previous studies have suggested that skilled athletes may show a specific muscle activation pattern with a lower antagonist coactivation level. Based on the point, we hypothesize that the coupling of antagonistic muscles may be different between badminton players and non-skilled individuals during exercises. The current work was designed to verify the hypothesis. Ten male college students and eight male badminton players performed three maximal voluntary isometric contractions (MVC) and a set of three maximal concentric ankle dorsiflexion and plantar flexions at an angular velocity of 30°, 60°, 120°, and 180°/s. Surface electromyography (EMG) was recorded from the tibialis anterior (TA) and lateral gastrocnemius (LG) muscles during the test. Normalized average EMG amplitude and phase synchronization index (PSI) between surface EMG of TA and LG were calculated. Antagonist muscle coactivation was significantly lower (from 22.1% ± 9.4 and 10.7% ± 3.7 at 30°/s to 22.4% ± 9.7 and 10.6% ± 2.5 at 180°/s for non-players and badminton players group, respectively), and PSI in beta frequency band was significantly higher (from 0.42 ± 0.06 and 0.47 ± 0.15 at 30°/s to 0.35 ± 0.12 and 0.49 ± 0.14 at 180°/s) in the badminton player group compared with the non-player group during isokinetic ankle dorsiflexion contraction. No significant difference was found in antagonist muscle coactivation and PSI between two group subjects during ankle plantar flexion. The decrease of antagonist coactivation may indicate an optimal motor control style to increase the contraction efficiency, while the increase coupling of antagonistic muscles may help to ensure joint stability to compensate for the decrease of antagonist coactivation. Graphical abstract Significant difference of observed indexes between non-players and badminton players.

The increased popularization of cycling has brought an increase in cycling-related injuries, which has been suggested to be associated with muscle fatigue. However, it still remains unclear on the utility of different EMG indices in muscle fatigue evaluation induced by cycling exercise. In this study, ten cyclist volunteers performed a 30-second all-out cycling exercise after a warm-up period. Surface electromyography (sEMG) from vastus lateralis muscle (VL) and power output and cadence were recorded and EMG RMS, MF and MPF based on Fourier Transform, MDF and MNF based on wavelet packet transformation, and C(n) based on Lempel-Ziv complexity algorithm were calculated. Utility of the indices was compared based on the grey rational grade of sEMG indices and power output and cadence. The results suggested that MNF derived from wavelet packet transformation was significantly higher than other EMG indices, indicating the potential application for fatigue evaluation induced by all-out cycling exercise.

A systematic approach was developed to obtain analytic solutions for the concentrations of the quasi steady state (QSS) species in reduced mechanisms. The nonlinear algebraic equations for the QSS species concentrations were first approximated by a set of linear equations, and the linearized quasi steady state approximations (LQSSA) were then analytically solved with a directed graph, namely a QSSG, which was abstracted from the inter-dependence of QSS species. To obtain analytic solutions of high computational efficiency, the groups of strongly connected QSS species were first identified in the QSSG. The inter group couplings were then resolved by a topological sort, and the inner group couplings were solved with variable elimination by substitution. An efficient algorithm was developed to identify a near-optimal sequence for the variable elimination process. The proposed LQSSA-QSSG method was applied to generate a 16-step reduced mechanism for ethylene/air, and good accuracy and high efficiency were observed in simulations of auto-ignition and perfectly stirred reactors with the reduced mechanism.