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Additional file 4: Table A1. Robustness test (supplementary variables). Table A2. Robustness test (replace explanatory variables).

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Additional file 1

Foot ulceration is a major complication of diabetes mellitus, which results in significant human suffering and a major burden on healthcare systems. Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) emerged as a promising therapeutic agent for treatment of diabetic wound healing because of their paracrine properties, including the secretion of angiogenic, immunomodulatory and anti-inflammatory factors. However, topical administration of MSCs via direct injection result in low cell viability and poor cell localization at the wound bed, which hinder the efficacy and clinical translation of a MSC therapy product. Here in, we used macromolecular crowding (MMC) concept to develop a MSC-scaffold bio-complex containing the native extracellular matrix (ECM) and investigated its therapeutic effect in a diabetic wound model. Firstly, we investigated the optimal MMC agent in human umbilical cord derived MSC (hUC-MSC) cultures. Seven types of carrageenan at five different concentrations were supplemented to MSC medium. 50 μg/ml l-MV carrageenan was identified to be the optimal cell culture condition, as it did not adversely affect (p > 0.05) cell viability, metabolic activity, proliferation, and the expression of MSC surface markers and immune phenotype markers, whereas it significantly increased (p < 0.05) the deposition of collagen types I, III and IV, fibronectin and laminin. The shortest cell culture time was 4 days. These data highlight the potential of l-MV carrageenan as crowding agents for developing ECM-rich cell therapy product and describes the optimal conditions for use. Secondly, as hUC-MSCs grown under the optimum MMC conditions, can only develop a thin cell layer, which was not suitable for transfer from the tissue culture dish directly to the wound. A collagen porous scaffold was utilised to deliver this ECM-rich MSC layer. Scaffolds were fabricated using either neutralised or non-neutralised collagen. Compared to neutralized scaffold, the non-neutralized scaffold is pliable, thicker and has significantly (p < 0.05) smaller pore size, which is suitable for pre-clinical wound healing studies. hUC-MSCs grown on the non-neutralized scaffold under MMC conditions maintained the cell viability and proliferation at three cell doses (150k, 300k, 600k) groups. hUC-MSCs deposited significantly higher (p < 0.05) fibronectin in the presence of 50 μg/ml l-MV carrageenan at 300k and 600k cell dose groups and no significant difference was observed between the two groups. These data suggest this MSC-scaffold bio-complex at 300k cell dose may have augmented therapeutic potential for the treatment of diabetic wounds. Thirdly, to evaluate the therapeutic effect of this MSC-scaffold bio-complex, we developed a diabetic model using immunodeficient mice, and reproduced the excisional splinting wound model to avoid the confounding effect of wound contraction. Diabetes was induced in animals using low-dose streptozotocin. Wounds were treated as per groups: Sham (no treatment control), SC (scaffold only), SC+MSC (MSC grown on scaffold), and SC+MSC+MMC (MSC grown on scaffold under MMC conditions). 60% of mice successfully developed diabetes and exhibited mild diabetic signs (polydipsia and polyuria) with no loss of body weight and fatality. Gross view of wounds on day 7 showed no significant difference in wound closure rate. Histology and immunohistochemistry analysis revealed no significant difference in re-epithelialization, granulation tissue area, blood vessel density and ECM deposition between the four groups. Donor comparison analysis revealed no significant difference in therapeutic effects between MSCs from 3 different donors. Correlation analysis revealed no correlation between wound gap and blood glucose level, and each group had similar blood glucose levels. Although current pre-clinical data did not support this MSC-scaffold bio-complex to improve diabetic wound healing, these results direct investigation of alternative scaffolds and cell doses as a next step. Collectively, this study provides a new method for the development of a novel MSC therapy product with augmented therapeutic potential. Further improvement of the wound model and optimization of this MSC therapy product are needed for future study. 2026-08-23

Bacillus amyloliquefaciens is the dominant strain used to produce γ-polyglutamic acid from inulin, a non-grain raw material. B. amyloliquefaciens has a highly efficient tricarboxylic acid cycle metabolic flux and glutamate synthesis ability. These features confer great potential for the synthesis of glutamate derivatives. However, it is challenging to efficiently convert high levels of glutamate to a particular glutamate derivative. Here, we conducted a systematic study on the biosynthesis of L-ornithine by B. amyloliquefaciens using inulin. First, the polyglutamate synthase gene pgsBCA of B. amyloliquefaciens NB was knocked out to hinder polyglutamate synthesis, resulting in the accumulation of intracellular glutamate and ATP. Second, a modular engineering strategy was applied to coordinate the degradation pathway, precursor competition pathway, and L-ornithine synthesis pathway to prompt high levels of intracellular precursor glutamate for l-ornithine synthesis. In addition, the high-efficiency L-ornithine transporter was further screened and overexpressed to reduce the feedback inhibition of L-ornithine on the synthesis pathway. Combining these strategies with further fermentation optimizations, we achieved a final L-ornithine titer of 31.3 g/L from inulin. Overall, these strategies hold great potential for strengthening microbial synthesis of high value-added products derived from glutamate.

Suppose that $A$, $B$ and $S$ are non-empty subsets of a finite abelian group $G$. Then the generalized restricted sumset $$ A\stackrel{S}+B:=\{a+b:\,a\in A,\ b\in B,\ a-b\not\in S\} $$ contains at least $$ \min\{|A|+|B|-3|S|,p(G)\} $$ elements, where $p(G)$ is the least prime factor of $|G|$. Further, we also have $$ |A\stackrel{S}+B|\geq \min\{|A|+|B|-|S|-2,p(G)\}, $$ provided that both $|A|$ and $|B|$ are large with respect to $|S|$., Comment: This is a very preliminary draft

Based on the ever-growing emphasis on high security of biometrics recognition, finger vein recognition has captured more and more attention. However, due to the light scattering in human skin tissue during near-infrared light transmission imaging, the collected finger vein images are always degraded dramatically, which leads to the unreliability of vein features and the low accuracy of finger vein recognition. Although considerable traditional methods are dedicated to eliminating the effect of light scattering on imaging, the clearer images cannot be output end-to-end, the processes of restoring degraded finger vein images are laborious as well. Thereupon, with the aim at improving the visibility of finger vein features and generating clear finger vein images end-to-end, this effort represents a simple and effective method utilizing Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). First, in our previous work, the biological optical model used to settle the matter of skin scattering is modified to output restored finger vein images in an end-to-end manner. Second, a multi-scale CNN named E-Net is established to acquire credible estimation map of finger vein features, which is conducive to the acquisition of pleasurable restoration outcome. Finally, a scattering removal framework, addressed as Finger Vein Image Scattering Removal Network (FVSR-Net), is designed via integrating improved biological optical model with E-Net. Such a novel design facilitates the generation of clearer venous regions and increases computational efficiency and stability. Experiments accomplished on two finger vein datasets demonstrate the superiority of our proposed method in terms of visual quality and recognition performance.

Optical tweezers can manipulate tiny particles. However, the distortion caused by the scattering medium restricts the applications of optical tweezers. Wavefront shaping techniques including the transmission matrix (TM) method are powerful tools to achieve light focusing behind the scattering medium. In this paper, we propose a new kind of TM, named intensity transmission matrix (ITM). Only relying on the intensity distribution, we can calculate the ITM with only about 1/4 measurement time of the widely used four-phase method. Meanwhile, ITM method can avoid the energy loss in diffraction introduced by holographic modulation. Based on the ITM, we have implemented particle manipulation with a high degree of freedom on single and multiple particles. In addition, the manipulation range is enlarged over twenty times (compared with the memory effect) to 200 {\mu}m., Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures

Supplemental Material for Leukocyte and Platelet Related Inflammatory Indicators and Risk of Carotid and Femoral Plaques: A Population-Based Cross-Sectional Study in Southeast China by Ruimei Feng, PhD, Yiquan Dai, MM, Shanshan Du, PhD, Wenbin Liang, PhD, Hongyu Chen, MM, Cheng Chen, MM, Tianmin He, MM, Tao Tao, PhD, Zhijian Hu, PhD, Pingfan Guo, MD, and Weimin Ye, PhD, MD in Angiology

To investigate the degree of fusion in sutures of the skull, the authors analyzed cranial computed tomography (CT) data using digital technologies to obtain the density values of coronal, sagittal, and lambdoid sutures in Chinese Han adolescents.The authors selected 80 patients who had undergone maxillofacial surgery. They were divided by age into a 9- to 12-year-old group and a 13 to 15-year-old group. The grayscale value of the cranial CT suture was segmented and measured using Mimics 20.0 software. The Mimics software measurement data were imported into SPSS 21.0 for data comparison and analysis.The mean grayscale value of coronal sutures was 1203.25 and the standard deviation was 220.48, while the mean grayscale value of sagittal sutures was 1113.76 and the standard deviation was 197.83. The mean grayscale value of lambdoid sutures was 1106.37, and the standard deviation was 200.01. The grayscale values of coronal sutures were higher than those of sagittal sutures or lambdoid sutures. Further paired sample t tests were performed on the 3 types of cranial sutures. The differences between coronal and sagittal sutures and between coronal and lambdoid sutures were both substantial with statistical significance. Nevertheless, the difference between sagittal and lambdoid sutures was not significant. Further, an independent sample t-test, showed the grayscale values of coronal, sagittal and lambdoid sutures in the 9-12-year)ear-old group were significantly lower than those in the 13 to 15-year-old group (P

Recently, demands for magneto-optical (MO) materials with high laser-induced damage thresholds (LIDT) increased rapidly with the continuous development of high power lasers. In order to study the effect of substrate defects on LIDT of (BiTm)3(GaFe)5O12 films, in this study, (BiTm)3(GaFe)5O12 films without gadolinium gallium garnet (GGG) substrates and (BiTm)3(GaFe)5O12/GGG films were prepared by liquid-phase epitaxial (LPE) and mechanical lapping and polishing method. The optical and magneto-optical properties, crystal structure, LIDT and laser-induced damage morphologies of the prepared films were investigated. Experimental results pointed out that epitaxial (BiTm)3(GaFe)5O12 films have very high crystal and surface quality. A discontinuous defective layer with thickness of about 0–500 nm is located between GGG substrates and epitaxial films. Laser-induced damage tests and damage morphologies demonstrate that the discontinuous defective layers have an important effect on LIDT of epitaxial films, and LIDT of epitaxy films can be significantly improved by removing GGG substrates and discontinuous defective layers.

Laser-induced damage of magneto-optical (MO) materials is a key factor that limits the application of optical isolators in high-power laser systems. In order to investigate parameters that affecting laser-induced damage thresholds (LIDT) of MO garnet films grown by liquid-phase epitaxial (LPE) method, YIG, (LuBi)3Fe5O12 and (BiTm)3(GaFe)5O12 single crystal films with small lattice mismatch were prepared in this study. The transmittance, optical absorption coefficient, crystal structures, surface quality and laser-induced damage thresholds (LIDT) of the prepared three kinds of MO films were investigated. Microstructure analysis shows that single crystal garnet films grown by LPE method have high surface and crystal quality. Laser-induced damage tests (@1064 nm, 11 ns) pointed out that LIDT of YIG, (LuBi)3Fe5O12 and (BiTm)3(GaFe)5O12 films are 6.41 ± 0.18 J/cm2, 6.32 ± 0.25 J/cm2 and 4.11 ± 0.27 J/cm2, respectively, and intrinsic optical absorption coefficient of single crystal garnet films plays a decisive role in their laser-induced damage.

Laser-induced damage of magneto-optical (MO) materials in optical isolators remains the crucial factor that limits the application for high-power lasers. In order to explore the application potentiality of Tm3+ and Bi3+ ions-substituted YIG thin films using in high-power laser systems and find parameters that affecting laser-induced damage thresholds (LIDT) of this films. Here, (BiTm)3(GaFe)5O12 single crystal thin films with different growth rate were prepared through liquid-phase epitaxy method. The optical, magneto-optical, LIDT and surface morphologies before and after laser irradiation of the prepared thin films were investigated. Experimental results pointed out that the surface defects generated by lattice mismatch between films and substrates, residual melt in surface defects and difference in intrinsic optical absorption coefficient (α) were the key factors affecting LIDT of (BiTm)3(GaFe)5O12 thin films. Moreover, the maximum Verdet constant (−2.595 × 10−4°/(Oe μm)), the lowest α (66 cm−1@1064 nm) and the highest LIDT (4.28 J/cm2) were obtained of the film with growth rate of 0.84 μm/min, this indicates that the prepared (BiTm)3(GaFe)5O12 thin films are attractive candidate to substitute conventional bulk single crystal MO materials in high-power laser systems.

In real-world application scenarios, object detection usually encounters two technical challenges, i.e., high accuracy and high speed. Although the latest detection frameworks based on anchor-free detection have achieved outstanding performance, they cannot be widely used in real-world scenarios due to their model complexity and slow speed. In this paper, inspired by cross-context attention mechanism of human visual systems, we propose a light but effective single-shot detection framework using Cross-context Attention-guided Network (CCAGNet) to balance the accuracy and speed. CCAGNet uses attention-guided mechanism to highlight the interaction of object-synergy regions, and suppresses non-object-synergy regions by combining Cross-context Attention Mechanism (CCAM), Receptive Field Attention Mechanism (RFAM), and Semantic Fusion Attention Mechanism (SFAM). The main contribution of our work includes establishing a novel attention mechanism that takes the context information of channel, spatial, cross- and adjacent-regions into consideration simultaneously. Extensive experiments demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of our method on the public benchmark datasets. To the best of our knowledge, CCAGNet obtains the state-of-the-art performance on both PascalVOC and MSCOCO with the excellent trade-off between accuracy and speed among single-shot detectors. Especially, the Average Precision (AP) metric is significantly improved by 17.0% on small object detection on MSCOCO.

Computer-aided diagnosis has been extensively investigated for more rapid and accurate screening during the outbreak of COVID-19 epidemic. However, the challenge remains to distinguish COVID-19 in the complex scenario of multi-type pneumonia classification and improve the overall diagnostic performance. In this paper, we propose a novel periphery-aware COVID-19 diagnosis approach with contrastive representation enhancement to identify COVID-19 from influenza-A (H1N1) viral pneumonia, community acquired pneumonia (CAP), and healthy subjects using chest CT images. Our key contributions include: 1) an unsupervised Periphery-aware Spatial Prediction (PSP) task which is designed to introduce important spatial patterns into deep networks; 2) an adaptive Contrastive Repre-sentation Enhancement (CRE) mechanism which can effectively capture the intra-class similarity and inter-class difference of various types of pneumonia. We integrate PSP and CRE to obtain the representations which are highly discriminative in COVID-19 screening. We evaluate our approach comprehensively on our constructed large-scale dataset and two public datasets. Extensive experiments on both volume-level and slice-level CT images demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach with PSP and CRE for COVID-19 diagnosis.

The antioxidant and emulsifying properties of flaxseed gum-whey protein isolate (FSG-WPI) conjugates prepared by Maillard reaction via controlled dry-heating were investigated. The reaction was carried out using a ratio of FSG to WPI of 1:3 at 60 °C and 79% relative humidity for different incubation times. The reaction was confirmed by analysis of the browning index, free amino content and soluble sulfhydryl content, as well as by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. We found that nearly 35% of the protein participated in conjugation with FSG after 48 h of incubation. The antioxidant activity of the conjugates improved markedly after 48 and 72 h incubation time. Differential scanning calorimetry results indicated that the denaturation temperature of the conjugates increased. The FSG-WPI conjugate prepared by 72 h incubation had the best emulsifying properties in stabilizing an oil-in-water emulsion. This research provides significant knowledge for the potential applications of FSG in food industry.

In recent years, the perpendicular plate of the ethmoid (PPE) has emerged as a new autogenous grafting material in rhinoplasty and septoplasty of nasal deviation. However, no studies have outlined the precise size, shape, and morphologic features of the PPE. Therefore, this study aimed to provide detailed information on the anatomical and morphologic characteristics of the PPE to assist surgeons in performing surgeries that are more precise. About 104 Chinese patients who underwent paranasal computed tomography were assessed in this study. By analyzing the features of the PPE reconstructed with 3-dimensional models, the characteristics of the PPE at different stages of development and according to sex were observed. The PPE had a flat shape, and its lower part was relatively thin. It usually developed horizontally with age, which contributed to expansion of the PPE area. The dimensions of the PPE were significantly larger in male patients than in female patients. Through the reconstruction and measurement of Chinese patients' PPE, the authors have established precise information about the PPE's anatomical and morphologic features. The flat shape and proper size, which are similar to those of nasal septum cartilage, make the PPE an ideal alternative to conventional autogenous grafting materials. The findings might be useful to surgeons in helping them perform surgeries that are more precise.

Purpose: Previous studies have revealed that microRNA-665 (miR-665) is dysregulated in a variety of human cancers. However, little is known regarding its expression profiles and functions in retinoblastoma (RB). Therefore, the aims of our study were to evaluate miR-665 expression in RB and determine the precise roles of miR-665 in the progression of RB. Patients and methods: Herein, RT-qPCR was used to determine miR-665 expression levels in RB tissues and cell lines, and a series of functional experiments were performed to explore the influence of miR-665 on RB cell proliferation, colony formation, apoptosis, migration, and invasion as well as tumor growth. The molecular mechanisms underlying the tumor-suppressive action of miR-665 in RB were also explored. Results: We found that miR-665 was markedly reduced in RB tissues and cell lines and that lower miR-665 expression was strongly associated with tumor size, TNM stage, and differentiation in patients with RB. Exogenous expression of miR-665 suppressed cell proliferation, colony formation, migration, and invasion, and induced cell apoptosis in RB cells, while silencing miR-665 expression had the opposite effects. In addition, upregulation of miR-665 decreased the tumor growth of RB cells in vivo. High-mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) was identified as a direct target of miR-665 in RB cells, and decreasing the expression of HMGB1 simulated the regulatory effects of miR-665 overexpression in RB cells, while knockdown of HMGB1 expression counteracted the miR-665-mediated antitumor effects in RB cells. Moreover, miR-665 was shown to regulate the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway by targeting HMGB1 in vitro and in vivo. Conclusion: Taken together, our in vitro and in vivo results suggest that miR-665 acts as a tumor-suppressive miRNA in RB by directly targeting HMGB1 and inactivating the Wnt/β-catenin pathway. Hence, this miRNA is a candidate prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target in patients with RB.

Aim This study was conducted to evaluate the influence of decorin on apoptosis and oxidative stress response upon exposure of human lens epithelial (HLE) cells to high levels of glucose. Methods The HLE cell line (HLEB3) was cultured under various conditions, including normal (5.5 mM) or high glucose (60 mM) medium. Next, 50 nM Decorin was added two hours prior to the addition of high glucose medium. Apoptosis detection was carried out by Western blotting and flow cytometry. Oxidative stress levels were determined by quantifying reactive oxygen species (ROS), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and glutathione peroxidase (GSH) levels. P38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) phosphorylation and rac1 in HLE cells and human lens anterior capsules were evaluated using Western blotting. Knockdown of rac1 and p38 MAPK in HLEB3 cells was achieved using transfection of small-interfering RNAs. Results HLE cells exposed to high levels of glucose underwent oxidative stress and apoptosis, leading to higher proportion of apoptotic cells, ROS generation and a reduction in the bcl/bax ratio, GSH/GSSG ratio, and SOD activity. Additionally, HLEB3 cells exposed to high levels of glucose were found to have increased rac1 and phospho-p38 MAPK. Next, we found that siRNA-mediated knockdown of rac1 or p38 led to a reduction in high-glucose-stimulated cellular apoptosis and oxidative stress. Furthermore, knockdown of rac1 led to a downregulation of p38 MAPK. Interestingly, addition of decorin to HLEB3 cells led to a decrease in apoptosis, oxidative stress, and high-glucose-stimulated induction of rac1 and phospho-p38. Finally, rac1 and p38 levels of capsules were detected to be significantly upregulated in patients with diabetes in comparison to age-matched patients with cataracts. Conclusion The findings indicate that the rac1-p38 pathway plays a role in causing high-glucose-induced injury to the lens epithelial cells. Additionally, these data indicate that decorin can suppress high glucose-stimulated cellular apoptosis and oxidative stress, in part through suppression of the rac1-p38 pathway.

(NdGdBi)3Fe5O12 mono-crystalline films with high magneto-optical figure of merit (FOM) and high laser-induced damage thresholds (LIDTs) at a wavelength of around 1 μm have been grown in this study. Crystal structure, phase composition, magneto-optical (MO) properties and LIDTs of the grown (NdGdBi)3Fe5O12 films were discussed in detail. Tested results show that (NdGdBi)3Fe5O12 films exhibit a low insertion loss of 0.5 dB, a high FOM of 78.7 deg/dB and a high LIDTs of 9.12 J/cm2 at 1.06 μm wavelength. Lattice constant and dopants are two key factors to determine FOM and LIDTs of Bi-doped iron garnet films grown by liquid-phase epitaxial method. The excellent MO properties and LIDTs indicate that (NdGdBi)3Fe5O12 films grown in this study have a great potential to be used in 1–1.1 μm high-power lasers.

In order to further understand the characteristics of the floating potential of low earth orbit spacecraft, the effects of the electron current collection area, background electron temperature, photocurrent emission, spacecraft wake, and the shape of spacecraft on spacecraft floating potential were studied here by particle-in-cell simulation in the low earth orbit. The simulation results show that the electron current collection area and background electron temperature impact on the floating potential by changing the electron current collection of spacecraft. By increasing the electron current collection area or background electron temperature, the spacecraft will float at a lower electric potential with respect to the surrounding plasma. However, the spacecraft wake affects the floating potential by increasing the ion current collected by spacecraft. The emission of the photocurrent from the spacecraft surface, which compensates for the electrons collected from background plasma, causes the floating potential to increase. The shape of the spacecraft is also an important factor influencing the floating potential.

Prostate cancer is the second most common disease of the male reproductive system. Berberine is a quaternary ammonium salt that is extracted from plants. The aim of the current study was to explore the antitumor activity of berberine in prostate cancer cells and identify the underlying mechanism of its effects. PC3 human and RM‑1 mouse prostate cancer cells were treated with increasing concentrations of berberine, followed by analysis of the cell viability with an MTT assay. The results demonstrated that berberine markedly inhibited the proliferation of PC3 and RM‑1 cells, and that the inhibitory effects to PC3 and RM‑1 were enhanced in a concentration‑ and time‑dependent manner. Flow cytometry was used to analyze the cell cycle of PC3 human prostate cancer cells, and the results demonstrated that G0/G1 phase arrest was induced following treatment with 10 µM berberine (P

Let $q$ be an odd prime power. Combining the discussion of Varnavides and a recent theorem of Ellenberg and Gijswijt, we show that a subset $A\subset{\mathbb F}_q^n$ will contain many non-trivial three-term arithmetic progressions, whenever $|A|\geq (c_q q)^n$ for some constant $c_q>0$. After the first version of our manuscript was uploaded in the arXiv, we learned from Professors Jacob Fox and Terence Tao that our result is a special case of a result of Fox and Lovasz [1, Theorem 3]. In fact, [1, Theorem 3] gives a much better bound than ours. For example, when $q=3$, the lower bound given by Fox and Lovasz is $|A|^{2}\cdot (|A|q^{-n})^{11.901}$, while our bound is $|A|^{2}\cdot (|A|q^{-n})^{25.803}$. We thank Professors Jacob Fox and Terence Tao for their helpful comments on our manuscript. [1] Jacob Fox, L\'aszl\'o Mikl\'os Lov\'asz, A tight bound for Green's arithmetic triangle removal lemma in vector spaces, preprint, arXiv:1606.01230., Comment: Our result is weaker than a known result of Fox and Lovasz

Enzymatic modification of starch was conducted by lipase-coupling esterification with octenyl succinic anhydride (OSA). Parameters affecting the esterification were systematically studied. Products were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and viscosity analysis (VA). Optimum condition for lipase-coupling OSA starch preparation was as follows: starch pretreatment at 65 °C for 15 min, starch concentration 35%, amount of lipase and OSA, 0.6% and 3%, reaction pH, temperature and time, 8.0, 40 °C and 30 min respectively, which resulted in 0.0195 of the degree of substitution and 84.05 ± 2.07% of the reaction efficiency. FT-IR spectroscopy confirmed the formation of OSA starch. SEM and X-ray diffraction showed apparent surface change, but no crystalline change. DSC and VA results indicated the synthesized OSA starch gelatinized rapidly with high viscosity. Attractively, reaction time drastically reduced to 30 min, showing vast potential for scale production of OSA starch.

Shanshan Du, New York: Columbia University Press, 2002, xvii + 237 pages (paper).Susan Mann and Yu-Yin Cheng (eds.), Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001, xiii + 310 pages (paper).Reviewer: Lorne Holyoak University of SaskatchewanThe tendency to gloss Han culture as Chinese culture and furthermore to essentialize Han culture as identical throughout time and space is an ongoing issue in the Western representation of cultural Others. This is further manifested in the instance of Chinese cultures by the unsubtle gender critiques applied to China that can only be characterized as monolithic. Yet, as demonstrated in these two volumes, gender roles and relations in China need to be understood in terms of interdependency and complementarity, rather than division or separation (Farrer, 2002).There can be little doubt that the popular imagination in the West is dominated by images of Chinese women with bound feet, of forced marriages and of female infanticide. The historic imagining ignores the majority of the female population, including the peasantry, minority women and the members of the ruling elite (Manchu women were forbidden to bind their feet). Similarly, popular conceptions of contemporary China tend to neglect the conditions of educated, urban women, especially female professionals, and the prominence of rural women in local leadership and entrepreneurship. And as Charles Stafford has demonstrated, women are indispensable to the process of creating social relationships among the Han (Stafford, 2000).Shanshan Du examines gender relations among the Lahu, a Tibeto-Burman speaking people who live in the highland border regions of China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. She is specifically concerned with the Lahu of Yunnan province, in China. However, before describing the Lahu way of life and of constructing gender, Du begins by asking whether there are any gender-egalitarian societies on earth. Her answer is a solid critique of the biases of Western dominated feminist thought, and feminist anthropology in particular. After pointing out that descriptions of gender-egalitarian societies are always qualified as "relative" or "possible," while patriarchy, though necessarily always limited in its implementation, is not described in such an equivocating fashion, Du writes that "according to the academic double standard, inequality and hierarchy can be of any degree, but equality must be perfect" (p. 6). She proceeds in this book to document a society in which male and female members are equally valued, regardless of the role they play--unqualified gender equality. Yet at the same time Du is careful to avoid the essentialising trap that is so common to sinology by acknowledging the complexities and regional variations in Lahu culture.What renders Du's characterization of the Lahu so compelling is her grounding of gender equality within a dyadic worldview that emphasises the need for balance and complementarity in all things. This is clearly expressed symbolically in Lahu mythology and ritual, and throughout the life cycle. This is best expressed in terms of male-female blending: By defining and evaluating personhood according to one's standing in the husband-wife dyad, Lahu classification and symbolism of the life cycle fully elaborate the cosmological ideal of male-female unity.... Specifically, Lahu ideals for men and women tend to blend femininity and masculinity in their religious definitions of human nature and ultimate morality, as well as in personality, social traits, and standards of beauty. (p. 71)Part of what makes Du's analysis convincing is the attention that is paid to the nuanced reality of gender equality. While a strict sexual division of labour is not practiced by the Lahu, the desire to optimize the contribution of both spouses to the family's task schedule does not mean that differences do not exist. …