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Under the background of global warming, whether freezing injury is still the main meteorological disaster in northern winter wheat growing region of China becomes uncertain, and whether delaying sowing date is an effective measurement to adapt to climate change becomes an urgent scientific problem to solve. It is found that the correlation coefficient between winter freezing injury index and winter wheat yield reduction rate is 0.62 in the northern winter wheat region from 1981 to 2000, which indicates that winter freezing injury is one of the main disasters before the year of 2000. However, this correlation becomes very low after the year of 2000, indicating that winter freezing injury is no longer the main factor for yield reduction of winter wheat. Experiments are carried out at Taian and Xianyang stations, showing that the accumulated temperature before winter and the accumulated temperature of the whole growth season of winter wheat are significantly reduced. The plant height, total aboveground dry weight and leaf area index will decrease when sowing date of winter wheat is delayed for 10 days and 20 days. Furthermore, the delay of sowing date has an adverse impact on the yield structure, the effective panicles and grains per panicle are decreased by 5% and 10.2% respectively when the sowing date of winter wheat is delayed for 10 days from 2018 to 2021 at Taian Station, and they are decreased by 17.2% and 11.9% respectively when the sowing date is delayed for 10 days at Xianyang Station. Overall, the average yield of winter wheat is reduced by 22% and 40% when sowing dates are delayed for 10 days and 20 days respectively, which indicates that the delayed sowing date of winter wheat have no positive effects. The possible cause is that the local winter wheat varieties have changed at Xianyang and Taian, and farmers have appropriately adjusted the sowing date according to experience. The current winter wheat sowing date and the main winter wheat varieties have adapted to local climate change.

Since 1998, comprehensive housing marketization has led to a more complex urban residential space structure in China, as evidenced by the changes in new commercial housing. The current stage is critical for China in its pursuit of high-quality and sustainable urban development, with the spatial structure of housing being a key aspect in achieving this goal. In order to clarify the characteristics of the urban residential space in China and grasp the spatio-temporal changes of new commercial housing, this study takes the data of new commercial housing projects in Xi'an, northwest China, from 2006 to 2022 as the basis, and uses the GIS method to explore the characteristics of the spatio-temporal evolution of the urban residential space and to investigate the factors influencing it. The results reveal changes in the number, size, and spatial distribution of new commercial housing in Xi'an. The evolution of residential space is influenced by cultural and social changes, population, and economic factors, in addition to the main influence of national policies. The renewal of urban villages into commercial housing projects is a prominent feature of changes in urban residential space, which saves construction land and improves residents' living conditions. Finally, the expansion of urban residential space parallels the urbanization process, showing a pattern of 'external expansion accompanied by internal renewal', and the evolution process and property rights management are different from those of other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Long non‐coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play crucial roles in cellular processes, with dysregulation implicated in various diseases, including cancers. The lncRNA TPT1‐AS1 (TPT1 Antisense RNA 1) promotes tumor progression in several cancers, including ovarian cancer (OC), but its influence on ferroptosis and interaction with other proteins remains underexplored. Methods: In this study, we employed a multi‐faceted approach to investigate the functional significance of TPT1‐AS1 in OC. We assessed TPT1‐AS1 expression in OC specimens and cell lines using RT‐qPCR, in situ hybridization (ISH), and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) assays. Functional assays included evaluating the impact of TPT1‐AS1 knockdown on OC cell proliferation, migration, invasiveness, and cell cycle progression. Further, we explored and validated the interaction of TPT1‐AS1 with other proteins using bioinformatics. Finally, we investigated TPT1‐AS1 involvement in erastin‐induced ferroptosis using Iron Assay, Malondialdehyde (MDA) assay, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) detection. Results: Our findings revealed that TPT1‐AS1 overexpression in OC correlated with an unfavorable prognosis. TPT1‐AS1 knockdown suppressed cell proliferation, migration, and invasiveness. Additionally, TPT1‐AS1 inhibited erastin‐induced ferroptosis, and in vivo experiments confirmed its oncogenic impact on tumor development. Mechanistically, TPT1‐AS1 was found to regulate Glutathione Peroxidase 4 (GPX4) transcription via CREB1 (cAMP response element‐binding protein 1) and interact with RNA‐binding protein (RBP) KHDRBS3 (KH RNA Binding Domain Containing, Signal Transduction Associated 3) to regulate CREB1. Conclusion: TPT1‐AS1 promotes OC progression by inhibiting ferroptosis and upregulating CREB1, forming a regulatory axis with KHDRBS3. These findings highlight the regulatory network involving lncRNAs, RBPs, and transcription factors in cancer progression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to explore the practical application of ultrasonic imaging in the pregnancy stage of Mongolian sheep and the role of L-selectin in the embryo implantation process of Mongolian sheep, this paper systematically observed the early embryonic development by B-mode ultrasonic imaging wave diagnostic instrument with 5 MHz rectal probe and detected the expression of sLex and L-selectin in embryonic cells (jar cells) and endometrial cells (RL95-2 cells) by immunoassay to show the role of L-selectin in embryonic adhesion. The results were as follows: the correct rate of fetal sex determination by ultrasound imaging increased with the increase of pregnancy days and reached 93% at 84 days; sLex/L-selectin on the surface of Jar/RL95-2 cells is involved in the adhesion between embryo and endometrium; and when the concentration of L-selectin was 30 μg/ml, the implantation success rate of fertilized eggs and embryos was the highest, reaching 95%. It is proved that ultrasonic intelligent imaging exploration can summarize the imaging characteristics of the early development law of sheep fetus, which provides a basis for B-ultrasound to monitor fetal growth and predict fetal age. While discussing the molecular mechanism of implantation, it provides a new idea and means for the clinical intervention of contraception and pregnancy assistance with oligosaccharide as the target. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lung cancer in humans is majorly represented by non-small cell lung cancer cells, and there is a constant search for an efficient therapeutic approach. This study aims to find the anti-proliferative and apoptotic effects of matricin on H1299 cells via activation of MAPK pathway. Non-small cell H1299 cells were subjected to viability analysis with MTT assay and anti-proliferation analysis with different concentrations of matricin. Apoptosis was determined with annexin V/propidium iodide (PI) and flow cytometric analysis. Analysis of oxidative stress markers, reduced glutathione, lipid peroxidation (LPO), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and catalase (CAT) activities were done using standard assay kits. Apoptosis enzymes caspase-3, caspase-8, and caspase-9 levels were measured using colorimetric kit analysis. Western blot analysis on apoptotic proteins was performed to determine the involvement of MAPK pathway activation in apoptosis. Matricin significantly (P < 0.01) exerted anti-proliferative activities on H1299 cells in a dose-dependent manner. Flow cytometric apoptosis analysis showed increasing concentrations of matricin had increased apoptosis (P < 0.01) in the H1299 cells. Levels of oxidative stress markers were altered significantly (P < 0.01) by matricin. Caspase-3, caspase-8, and caspase-9 levels were significantly increased (P < 0.01) in matricin-treated H1299 cells. Western blot analysis showed decreased expression of anti-apoptotic Bcl-2, increased expressions of Bax and phosphorylated JNK, ERK 1/2, and p-38 MAPK proteins in matricin-treated H1299 cells. Matricin has significant anti-proliferative and apoptosis-inducing effects via activation of MAPK pathway in non-small cell lung cancer cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Byline: Xiaoying Bai, Zhibin Cao, Yinong Chen To address the challenges of dynamic, distributed and collaborative Web Services (WS) testing, this paper proposes a trustworthy service broker architecture and a dependence-based progressive group testing technique. The new architecture extends the traditional Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) service broker by introducing the check-in and check-out testing interfaces, which are associated with a set of automated tools. The design objectives of the trustworthy service broker are to perform rigorous testing and evaluation effectively and to ensure that only quality WS can be registered and released to the public. A group testing technique is applied to reduce the test cost by using a hierarchy of increasingly sophisticated test scripts, which progressively rules out low quality WS. WS are further ranked based on the group testing results using ranking criteria. Experiments show that this approach can effectively test and choose WS in an open environment and in reduced number of tests.

The flux-switching permanent-magnet (PM) double-rotor machine (FSPM-DRM) used for hybrid electric vehicles has attracted considerable attention due to the compact structure and high torque density. Compared with the conventional machine, the FSPM-DRM suffers from more iron loss, PM eddy-current loss, and conductor eddy-current loss for its larger rotor pole numbers. The iron loss exists not only in the stator but also in the rotor, while its calculation becomes more difficult due to complex flux density waveforms. A more accurate analytical model for the iron loss, PM eddy-current loss, and conductor eddy-current loss calculation is proposed for the FSPM-DRM and compared with the results from finite-element method. Based on the calculated losses, the efficiency of the FSPM-DRM is also investigated. Some experimental results are reported, validating the numerical and simulation results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nitric oxide (NO) and salicylic acid (SA) are two important signaling molecules, which could alleviate chlorosis of peanut under iron (Fe) deficiency. Here, we further investigated the mechanism of different combinations of sodium nitroprusside (SNP, a nitric oxide donor) and SA supplying in alleviation Fe deficiency symptoms and selected which is the best combination. Thus, peanut was cultivated in hydroponic culture under iron limiting condition with different combinations of SNP and SA application. After 21 days, Fe deficiency significantly inhibited peanut growth, decreased soluble Fe concentration and chlorophyll contents, and disturbed ionic homeostasis. In addition, the content of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and malondialdehyde (MDA) concentration increased, which led the lipid peroxidation. Application of SNP and SA significantly changed Fe trafficking in cells and organs, which increased Fe uptake from nutrient solution, and transport from root to shoot, enhanced the activity of ferric-chelate reductase (FCR), that increased the available Fe in cell organelles, and the active Fe, chlorophyll contents in leaves. Furthermore, ameliorated the inhibition of calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg) and zinc (Zn) uptake and promoted plant growth in Fe deficiency. At the same time, it increased the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD) and catalase (CAT) to protect the plasmolemma from peroxidation. Results demonstrated that different combinations of SNP and SA application could alleviate the chlorosis of peanut in Fe deficiency by various mechanisms. Such as increased the available Fe and chlorophyll concentrations in leaves, improved the activities of antioxidant enzymes and modulated the mineral elements balance and so on. Foliar application of SNP and SA is the best to protect leaves while directly adding them into nutrient solution is the best to protect roots. These results also indicated that the effects of SNP and SA supplying together to leaves or roots are better than respectively adding to roots and spraying to leaves. The best combination is foliar application of SNP and SA. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we present generic cloud performance models for evaluating Iaas, PaaS, SaaS, and mashup or hybrid clouds. We test clouds with real-life benchmark programs and propose some new performance metrics. Our benchmark experiments are conducted mainly on IaaS cloud platforms over scale-out and scale-up workloads. Cloud benchmarking results are analyzed with the efficiency, elasticity, QoS, productivity, and scalability of cloud performance. Five cloud benchmarks were tested on Amazon IaaS EC2 cloud: namely YCSB, CloudSuite, HiBench, BenchClouds, and TPC-W. To satisfy production services, the choice of scale-up or scale-out solutions should be made primarily by the workload patterns and resources utilization rates required. Scaling-out machine instances have much lower overhead than those experienced in scale-up experiments. However, scaling up is found more cost-effective in sustaining heavier workload. The cloud productivity is greatly attributed to system elasticity, efficiency, QoS and scalability. We find that auto-scaling is easy to implement but tends to over provision the resources. Lower resource utilization rate may result from auto-scaling, compared with using scale-out or scale-up strategies. We also demonstrate that the proposed cloud performance models are applicable to evaluate PaaS, SaaS and hybrid clouds as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of salicylic acid (SA) on alleviating chlorosis induced by iron (Fe) deficiency in peanut seedlings ( Arachis hypogaea L.) were studied by investigating the symptoms, plant growth, chlorophyll concentrations, soluble Fe concentration, Fe distribution in subcellular, and antioxidant enzymes. Fe deficiency caused serious chlorosis and inhibited growth of peanut seedlings, and dramatically decreased the soluble Fe concentration and chlorophyll concentration. Furthermore, ion balance was disturbed. The addition of 50, 100, and 250 μM SA significantly increased the absorption of Fe from the cell wall to cell organelles and the soluble fraction, enhanced the Fe concentration in cell organelles, Fe activation and chlorophyll concentrations in leaves, ameliorated the inhibition of Ca, Mg, and Zn absorption induced by Fe deficiency, alleviated the chlorosis induced by Fe deficiency and promoted plant growth. The accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) is dramatically increased in peanut seedlings exposed to Fe deficiency, and resulted in lipid peroxidation, which was indicated by accumulation of malondialdehyde (MDA). The application of 50, 100, and 250 μM SA significantly decreased the level of ROS and MDA concentrations, and significantly increased the activities of superoxide dismutase, peroxidase, and catalase in peanut seedlings exposed to Fe deficiency. The addition of 100 μM SA had the best effect on alleviating chlorosis induced by Fe deficiency, whereas the addition of 500 μM SA had no significant effect under Fe deficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]