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Introduction Metritis is a common postpartum disease in dairy cows. As a mast cell (MC) mediator, leukotriene B4 (LTB4) is the strongest phagocyte chemokine. It is important in inflammation for the recruitment of immune cells to resist infection. This study investigated the effect of LTB4 in metritis. Material and Methods Twenty Holstein cows 3 to 6 years old and at 6 to 10 days postpartum were selected, ten of which with postpartum metritis were the experimental group, and the other ten of which as healthy cows were the control group. The levels of LTB4, substance P (SP) and vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) were measured by ELISA, the expression of LTB4 receptor 2 (BLT2), matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2 and MMP-9 mRNA was measured by qPCR, and collagens I and IV were detected by immunohistochemical staining. Results Concentrations of SP and LTB4 were significantly higher, but those of VIP were significantly lower in the experimental group than those in the control group. The expression of BLT2, MMP-2 and MMP-9 mRNA was significantly higher in the experimental group than that in the control group. The expression of collagen Ⅰ and collagen Ⅳ was significantly lower in the experimental group than that in the control group. Conclusion In metritis, SP promotes the activation of MC and the synthesis and release of LTB4. Leukotriene B4 chemotactic immune cells promote the high expression of collagenase, which accelerated the hydrolysis of collagen, while the inhibitory effect of VIP on MC was weakened. This may further aggravate the damage to uterine tissue.

A novel photo-induced strategy for oxidation of organosilanes to access silanols, promoted by a photoactive charge-transfer complex (CTC) between sodium benzenesulfinate and molecular O2, has been developed.

This study aimed to evaluate the hepatoprotective effects of peptides from Antarctic krill (AKP) on carbon tetrachloride (CCl4)-induced acute liver injury (ALI) in mice and the underlying molecular mechanisms.

Transformer benefits from the high parallelization of attention networks in fast training, but it still suffers from slow decoding partially due to the linear dependency O(m) of the decoder self-attention on previous target words at inference. In this paper, we propose a generalized average attention network (AAN+) aiming at speeding up decoding by reducing the dependency from O(m) to O(1). We find that the learned self-attention weights in the decoder follow some patterns which can be approximated via a dynamic structure. Based on this insight, we develop AAN+, extending our previously proposed average attention (Zhang et al., 2018a, AAN) to support more general position- and content-based attention patterns. AAN+ only requires to maintain a small constant number of hidden states during decoding, ensuring its O(1) dependency. We apply AAN+ as a drop-in replacement of the decoder selfattention and conduct experiments on machine translation (with diverse language pairs), table-to-text generation and document summarization. With masking tricks and dynamic programming, AAN+ enables Transformer to decode sentences around 20% faster without largely compromising in the training speed and the generation performance. Our results further reveal the importance of the localness (neighboring words) in AAN+ and its capability in modeling long-range dependency.

Ginseng is the main Chinese herbal medicine for tonifying Qi and invigorating the spleen. It has been used to treat spleen-qi deficiency with good protective effects for thousands of years, however, its biological mechanism has not been fully elucidated. This study aims to explore the mechanism of ginseng in the treatment of spleen-qi deficiency by using a comprehensive method combining metabolomics and network pharmacological analysis. Gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy was applied for investigating the changes in urine metabolites in spleen-qi deficiency rats and after treatment with ginseng. Metabolomics and network pharmacology analysis were applied to screen potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets of ginseng in the treatment of spleen-qi deficiency, respectively. Molecular docking was employed to further evaluate the docking mode of potential biomarkers and therapeutic target proteins. The results of metabolomics showed that the therapeutic effects of ginseng are mainly related to its regulation of three metabolic pathways. The molecular structure of potential biomarkers and common proteins was further analyzed by molecular docking to verify its effectiveness. Ginseng has good pharmacological effects by controlling key targets of related metabolic pathways, signal pathways, and potential biomarkers.

We prove matrix Li-Yau-Hamilton estimates for positive solutions to the heat equation and the backward conjugate heat equation, both coupled with the K\"ahler-Ricci flow. As an application, we obtain a monotonicity formula., Comment: 13 pages. Comments are welcome

The wind characteristics of the atmospheric boundary layer in forested regions exhibit a significant complexity due to rugged terrain, seasonal climate variability, and seasonal growth of vegetation, which play a key role not only in designing optimal blades to gain better performance but also in assessing the structural response, and there is a paucity of research on such wind fields. Therefore, this paper investigates wind characteristics via on-site wind field measurement. The mean and fluctuating wind characteristics of the forested region in different seasons were analyzed based on the field measurement data. The results show that for the mean wind characteristics, the seasonally fitted exponents play a decisive role in characterizing the mean wind profile, while the season and temperature are the key factors affecting the mean wind direction in forested regions. For fluctuating wind characteristics, the seasonal power-law function can accurately characterize the turbulence intensity profile. Moreover, the ratio of the three turbulence intensity components is significantly affected by temperature and season, and the Von Kármán spectrum has better applicability in the cold and less canopy-disturbed winter than in the other three seasons. The proposed seasonally fitted parameters show better applicability in terms of vertical coherence.

Shenkang Injection (SKI) is a traditional Chinese medicine injection commonly used in the clinical treatment of chronic kidney disease. Although it has been confirmed that SKI has anti-kidney fibrosis effects, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. To investigate the effects of SKI on epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and Wnt/β-catenin pathway and explore its potential anti-fibrosis mechanism. A unilateral ureteral obstruction (UUO) model was induced by ligating the left ureter of male SD rats. A total of 24 rats were randomly divided into the following four groups: sham group, model group, SKI group, and benazepril group. The rats in each group were treated for 28 days, and renal function was evaluated by blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and serum creatinine (Scr). The degree of renal fibrosis was assessed by hematoxylin and eosin (HE) and Masson staining. Extracellular matrix (ECM) deposition was evaluated by immunohistochemistry. Real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) and western blotting were used to detect the expression of genes and proteins in the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. Further studies were performed in vitro using HK-2 cells treated with TGF-β1. At 28 days postoperation, the levels of BUN and Scr expression were significantly increased in the UUO group. SKI and benazepril reduced the levels of BUN and Scr, which displayed protective renal effects. Pathological staining showed that compared with the sham operation group, the renal parenchymal structure was severely damaged, the number of glomeruli was reduced, and a large amount of collagen was deposited in the kidney tissue of the UUO group. SKI treatment reduced morphological changes. Immunohistochemistry showed that compared with the sham operation group, the content of collagen I and FN in the kidney tissue of the UUO group were significantly increased, whereas the SKI content was decreased. In addition, compared with the UUO group, the levels of Wnt1, active β-catenin, Snail1, and PAI-1 expression were reduced in the SKI group, suggesting that SKI may reduce renal fibrosis by mediating the Wnt/β-catenin pathway. Further in vitro studies showed that collagen I, FN, and α-SMA levels in HK-2 cells were significantly increased following stimulation with TGF-β1. SKI could significantly reduce the expression of collagen I, FN, and α-SMA. A scratch test showed that SKI could reduce HK-2 migration. In addition, by stimulating TGF-β1, the levels of Wnt1, active β-catenin, snail1, and PAI-1 were significantly upregulated. SKI treatment could inhibit the activity of the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway in HK-2 cells. SKI improves kidney function by inhibiting renal fibrosis. The anti-fibrotic effects may be mediated by regulation of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway and EMT inhibition.

Photo-degradation of organic pollutants is of immense importance for environmental protection. The key is low-cost photocatalysts of high efficiency. Templating approach is attractive to gain hierarchical porous photocatalysts with high surface area, while is usually stuck by the limited types of desirable templates, in particular those with sophisticated microstructures. Herein, we showed a bio-inspired templating strategy that was applied to fabricate an efficient TiO2 photocatalyst with a unique hierarchical porous structure. Taking rape-pollen grains as a typical example of bio-templates, a process combining hydrothermal treatment with calcination was developed to grow TiO2 nanoparticles of 6-14 nm on the templates and subsequently to remove the organic biotemplates. As-obtained TiO2 were micro-sized spheres or ellipsoids that were surrounded by open tubular arrays. The surface area was as large as ~175 m2/g. For photodegradation, the rape-pollen-grains-architectured TiO2 has a rate (k) of 0.150 min-1, which is 10.9 times faster than the non-templated TiO2. The superior photocatalytic activity should be ascribed to the unique hierarchical porous structures, which provided interconnected channels for efficient mass transport and a large surface area for fast reaction. Our work demonstrates an effective method, namely bioinspired templating, for the scalable synthesis of efficient photocatalysts. Considering the structural diversity of pollen grains, this work may inspire others on the research of photo-response materials that rely on morphology optimization.

We apply square matrix method to obtain in high speed a "convergence map", which is similar but different from frequency map. The convergence map is obtained from solving nonlinear dynamical equation by iteration of perturbation method and study the convergence. The map provides information about the stability border of dynamical aperture. We compare the map with frequency map from tracking. The result indicates the new method may be applied in nonlinear lattice optimization, taking the advantage of the high speed (about 10~50 times faster) to explore x, y and the off-momentum phase space., Proceedings of the 12th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2021, Campinas, SP, Brazil

Background Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients have worse nutritional status and gait performance, but the current research is not in-depth, and the relationship between the two is not clear. This study aimed to comprehensively explore the nutrition and gait of AD patients at different stages and the relationship between them. Methods AD patients were consecutively enrolled in this cross-sectional study, and divided into the mild cognitive impairment (MCI) due to AD (AD-MCI) and the dementia due to AD (AD-D) groups. Demographic information, nutritional status and gait performance were compared between the two groups, and the correlation between nutritional status and gait performance was subsequently analyzed by Pearson and Spearman correlation analysis. Results Totals 85 AD patients were included in this study. The AD-D group had lower scores of Mini-nutritional Assessment (MNA) and MNAm, lower levels of blood urea nitrogen, folic acid and vitamin B12, and higher homocysteine level than that in the AD-MCI group (all P P m, and declined levels of blood urea nitrogen and vitamin B12 had reduced gait speed and gait cadence, and prolonged step time and stride time, whereas, homocysteine showed the opposite result (all P P

Background: Biliary atresia (BA) is a destructive, obliterative cholangiopathy characterized by progressive fibro-inflammatory disorder and obliteration of intra- and extrahepatic bile ducts. The Jagged1 (JAG1) gene mutations have been found in some isolated BA cases. We aim to explore the association of common variants in JAG1 with isolated BA risk in the Chinese Han population.Methods: We genotyped 31 tag single nucleotide polymorphisms covering the JAG1 gene region in 333 BA patients and 1,665 healthy controls from the Chinese population, and performed case-control association analysis. The expression patterns of JAG1 homologs were investigated in zebrafish embryos, and the roles of jag1a and jag1b in biliary development were examined by morpholino knockdown in zebrafish.Results: Single nucleotide polymorphisms rs6077861 [PAllelic = 1.74 × 10−4, odds ratio = 1.78, 95% confidence interval: 1.31–2.40] and rs3748478 (PAllelic = 5.77 × 10−4, odds ratio = 1.39, 95% confidence interval: 1.15–1.67) located in the intron region of JAG1 showed significant associations with BA susceptibility. The JAG1 homologs, jag1a and jag1b genes were expressed in the developing hepatobiliary duct of zebrafish, especially at 72 and 96 h postfertilization. Knockdown of both jag1a and jag1b led to poor biliary secretion, sparse intrahepatic bile duct network and smaller or no gallbladders compared with control embryos in the zebrafish model.Conclusion: Common genetic variants of JAG1 were associated with BA susceptibility. Knockdown of JAG1 homologs led to defective intrahepatic and extrahepatic bile ducts in zebrafish. These results suggest that JAG1 might be implicated in the etiology of BA.

BackgroundThis study explored the effectiveness and safety of low-volume polyethylene glycol electrolyte lavage solution (PEG-ELS) combined with ascorbic acid tablets (PEG-ELS/Asc) in bowel preparation for a colonoscopy.MethodsA total of 240 hospitalized patients who underwent a colonoscopy in Wenzhou People’s Hospital, Wenzhou Third Clinical College of Wenzhou Medical University from July 2020 to June 2022 were randomly divided into two groups, with 120 patients each. All of the participants were given a low-residue or residue-free diet one day before the examination and fasted after dinner (completed before 18:00) the day before the examination. The 2-L PEG-ELS/Asc group took 2-L PEG-ELS plus 10 g ascorbic acid tablets once orally, while the 3-L PEG-ELS group took 3-L PEG orally on several occasions. The primary endpoint was the achievement of preparation adequacy and an overall colon cleansing score of ≥6, both assessed by blinded investigators using the Boston Bowel Preparation Scale (BBPS). The bowel cleansing effect, polyp detection rate, adverse reaction rate, oral drug tolerance rate, renal function, and electrolyte level changes were also compared between the two patient groups.ResultsThere were no significant differences in the success rate of bowel preparation, the detection rate of polyps, or the adverse reaction rate between the two groups (P > 0.05). The tolerance rate of bowel preparation in the 2-L PEG-ELS/Asc group was significantly higher than that in the 3-L PEG-ELS group (93.3% vs. 80.23%) (P < 0.05). The levels of creatinine, serum potassium, serum sodium, and serum chlorine of the two groups before and after bowel preparation were within the normal range. In addition, the intestinal cleaning effect of the two preparation schemes for the hospitalized patients with diabetes and constipation is worse than that of those without these conditions (P < 0.05).ConclusionThe effectiveness and safety of using 2-L PEG-ELS/Asc in bowel preparation for a colonoscopy in hospitalized patients were not inferior to using 3-L PEG-ELS. For patients with diabetes and constipation, the cleansing effect of the two bowel preparation options was not very satisfactory, and further clinical research is needed in this regard.

This paper focuses on the safety issue for cyclists and pedestrians at unsignalized intersections. The cycling speed needs to be calmed when approaching the intersection. This study proposes and deploys an integrated portable ultra-wideband/inertial navigation system (UWB/INS) to extract cycling trajectories for a cycling safety study. The system is based on open-source hardware and delivers an open-source code for an adaptive Kalman filter to enhance positioning precision for data quality assurance at an outdoor experimental site. The results demonstrate that the system can deliver reliable trajectories for low-mobility objects. To mitigate accident risk and severity, varied cycling speed calming measures are tested at an experimental site. Based on the trajectory data, the statistical features of cycling velocities are evaluated and compared. A new proposed geometric design is found to be most effective when compared with conventional traffic signs.

Background Apolipoprotein E (APOE) ε4 is one of the greatest risk factors for sporadic Alzheimer's disease (AD), but the relationship between APOE ε4 and different cognitive domains, pathological proteins and neuroinflammatory factors in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is still unclear. This study aimed to explore the roles of APOE ε4 on the neuropathology and neuroinflammation in AD patients. Methods AD patients were divided into the APOE ε4 carrier and the APOE ε4 non-carrier groups according to APOE genotypes. Demographic information, cognitive function, the levels of neuropathological proteins and neuroinflammatory factors in CSF were compared between the two groups, and the correlations among the above-mentioned variables were subsequently analyzed. Results APOE ε4 carriers had significantly worse performances in overall cognitive function and individual cognitive domains (P < 0.05) than the non-carriers. β amyloid protein (Aβ)1-42 level from the APOE ε4 carrier group was significantly lower than that from the non-carrier group (P = 0.023), which was associated with worse cognitive function. The nitric oxide (NO) level was significantly elevated in the APOE ε4 carrier group compared to the non-carrier group (P =0.016), which was significantly and positively correlated with the Trail Making Test (TMT)-A-time (r = 0.21, P = 0.026) and TMT-B-time (r = -0.38, P < 0.01). Conclusion APOE ε4 is associated with poorer cognitive function of AD, particularly the early symptoms of memory, language and attention. APOE ε4 is associated with lower Aβ1-42 level in CSF, and the more numbers of APOE ε4 are carried, the lower level of Aβ1-42 is measured. APOE ε4 is associated with elevated NO level in CSF, which is linked to the impaired cognitive domains of attention and executive function.

Data mining technology and methods are used to effectively optimize manufacturing process parameters due to the complexity and uniqueness of the process parameters. The data-mining-based optimization method for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) process parameters is presented, along with a list of process parameters that have shown to be effective in actual production. The influencing factors of process parameters are analyzed and modeled using an attribute weight analysis and classification analysis algorithm. The optimization scheme of process parameters that meet the requirements is selected, and an example is given for verification, by selecting data records that fall within a certain error range and incorporating the rules of association knowledge discovery. The support vector classification algorithm has a higher accuracy, despite the algorithm's results being understandable. The support vector regression algorithm developed a reliable process optimization model.

Background Dried and red ginseng are well-known types of processed ginseng and are widely used as healthy food. The dried and red ginseng quality may vary with the storage period of raw ginseng. Therefore, herein, the effect of the storage period of fresh ginseng on processed ginseng quality was evaluated through multicomponent quantification with statistical analysis. Methods A method based on ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography coupled to triple quadrupole mass spectrometry in multiple-reaction monitoring mode (UPLC-MRM-MS) was developed for quantitation of ginsenosides and oligosaccharides in dried and red ginseng. Principal component analysis and partial least squares discriminant analysis were conducted to evaluate the dynamic distributions of ginsenosides and oligosaccharides after different storage periods. Results Eighteen PPD, PPT and OLE ginsenosides and nine reducing and nonreducing oligosaccharides were identified and quantified. With storage period extension, the ginsenoside content in the processed ginseng increased slightly in the first 2 weeks and decreased gradually in the following 9 weeks. The content of reducing oligosaccharides decreased continuously as storage time extending, while that of the nonreducing oligosaccharides increased. Chemical conversions occurred during storage, based on which potential chemical markers for the storage period evaluation of fresh ginseng were screened. Conclusion According to ginsenoside and oligosaccharide distributions, it was found that the optimal storage period was 2 weeks and that the storage period of fresh ginseng should not exceed 4 weeks at 0 °C. This study provides deep insights into the quality control of processed ginseng and comprehensive factors for storage of raw ginseng.

A highly modular 1,4-difunctionalization of 1,3-dienes with bromodifluoroacetamides and sulfinates/amines through a photoinduced palladium-catalyzed radical relay process is described herein. This developed protocol offers a facile and general route to access a variety of value-added CF

Sea cucumber saponins Holothurin A and Echinoside A supplement downregulated PI3K/AKT/β-catenin and OPG/RANKL/NF-κB signaling to alleviate high bone turnover status, and finally improving osteoporosis.

The Antarctic krill peptide supplement remodeled the gut microbiota and downregulated secondary bile acid-mediated NLRP3 signaling to improve liver fibrosis.

A photoredox-catalysed chlorination of quinoxalin-2(1H)-ones was developed by using CHCl3 as a chlorine source, thus affording various 3-chloroquinoxalin-2(1H)-ones in moderate to high yields.

International audience; The Cl-initiated oxidation of methacrolein (MACR, C4H6O) under NOx-free conditions has been investigated in a fast flow tube by using a home-made vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) photoionization mass spectrometer complemented by high-level theoretical calculations. The key species such as intermediates and radicals together with products involved in the oxidation are observed online and confirmed in photoionization mass spectra. The reaction potential energy surfaces of the transient C4H5O and C4H6OCl radicals, formed from the hydrogen-abstraction reaction and the addition reaction of MACR with Cl atoms, with oxygen have been theoretically calculated to illuminate the formation of the peroxy radicals of C4H5OO2 and C4H6OClO2. The photoionization processes of these peroxy radicals, whose cations are not stable, and their individual self-reactions as well as bimolecular reactions with HO2 radical are studied and discussed. In addition, kinetic experiments are also performed to get the time evolution of specific products and compared with theoretical models, providing a detailed insight into the reaction mechanism of the Cl-initiated oxidation of MACR.

DFT studies to rationalize the reaction mechanism of the phosphine-catalyzed domino sequences of alkynoates and activated methylenes.