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Cross-lingual text summarization is a highly desired service for overseas report editing tasks and is formulated in a distributed application to facilitate the cooperation of editors. The multilanguage pre-trained language model (MPLM) can generate high-quality cross-lingual text summaries with simple fine-tuning. However, the MPLM does not adapt to complex variations, like the word order and tense in different languages. When the model performs on these languages with separate syntactic structures and vocabulary morphologies, it will lead to the low-level quality of the cross-lingual summary. The matter worsens when the cross-lingual summarization datasets are low-resource. We use a knowledge distillation framework for the cross-lingual summarization task to address the above issues. By learning the monolingual teacher model, the cross-lingual student model can effectively capture the differences between languages. Since the teacher and student models generate summaries in two languages, their representations lie on different vector spaces. In order to construct representation relationships across languages, we further propose a similarity metric, which is based on bidirectional semantic alignment, to map different language representations to the same space. In order to improve the quality of cross-lingual summaries further, we use contrastive learning to make the student model focus on the differentials among languages. Contrastive learning can enhance the ability of the similarity metric for bidirectional semantic alignment. Our experiments show that our approach is competitive in low-resource scenarios on cross-language summarization datasets in pairs of distant languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyanobacterial blooms threaten the quality and safety of the Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis. A combination of microalgae and probiotics seems a promising way to prevent and control cyanobacterial blooms in aquaculture ponds. In E. sinensis cultivation, however, a related strategy is still lacking. To assess the potential combined effects of effective microorganisms (EM) and Chlorella vulgaris on regulating cyanobacterial blooms, in this study, we detected the alterations in the physiology of E. sinensis, as well as water quality and microbial compositions of E. sinensis culture ponds with cyanobacterial blooms. As a result, supplementary EM and C. vulgaris had no adverse effects on the growth or digestive or antioxidant ability of E. sinensis but improved the water quality of the pond by reducing total ammonia nitrogen and total nitrogen levels. We found an increase in bacterial diversity and evenness, while a decrease in the diversity of fungal and phytoplankton communities was related to supplementary EM and C. vulgaris. Interestingly, EM coupling C. vulgaris promoted the restoration of the bacterial and fungal community composition in cyanobacterial blooms ponds, particularly the increase of Mychonastes abundance and the decrease of Cyclotella. This study laid the foundation for the prevention and control of potential risks in aquaculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American shad (Alosa sapidissima) is an important freshwater food fish, yet little is known about its postmortem quality. We sampled the meat of American shad and tracked the changes in color, pH, shear stress, cooking loss and total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N) over 48 h of storage at 24 °C (unrefrigerated) or 4 °C (refrigerated). Thereafter, the essential nutrients, fatty acids, hydrolyzed amino acids, free amino acids, and electronic tongue were evaluated. The results show that the L* and a* values decreased as storage progressed, while the b* value increased. The shear force decreased, but cooking losses in the American shad increased; the TVB-N value continuously increased over the duration of storage. The TVB-N content deviated from the freshness range at 48 h when stored at 24 °C. At 24 °C, the sweet amino acids reached a maximum at 6 h, and the bitter amino acids reached a maximum at 48 h. At 4 °C, there was a significant difference in bitter free amino acids at 48 h (p < 0.05). The nutrient composition showed that the contents of fat and protein decreased, whereas the water content increased. These results showed that American shad should be eaten within 6 h when stored at 24 °C, while American shad stored at 4 °C can maintain freshness for 24 h to obtain better product quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The regulator of calcineurin 1 (RCAN1) is expressed in multiple organs, including the heart, liver, brain, and kidney, and is closely linked to the pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases, Down syndrome, and Alzheimer's disease. It is also implicated in the development of various organ tumors; however, its potential role in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains poorly understood. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate the potential mechanisms of RCAN1 in HCC through bioinformatics analysis. Methods: We conducted a joint analysis based on the NCBI and TCGA databases, integrating both bulk transcriptome and single-cell analyses to examine the principal biological functions of RCAN1 in HCC, as well as its roles related to phenotype, metabolism, and cell communication. Subsequently, an RCAN1-overexpressing cell line was established, and the effects of RCAN1 on tumor cells were validated through in vitro experiments. Moreover, we endeavored to identify potential related drugs using molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulations. Results: The expression of RCAN1 was found to be downregulated in 19 types of cancer tissues and upregulated in 11 types of cancer tissues. Higher levels of RCAN1 expression were associated with improved patient survival. RCAN1 was predominantly expressed in hepatocytes, macrophages, endothelial cells, and monocytes, and its high expression not only closely correlated with the distribution of cells related to the HCC phenotype but also with the distribution of HCC cells themselves. Additionally, Rcan1 may directly or indirectly participate in metabolic pathways such as alanine, aspartate, and glutamate metabolism, as well as butanoate metabolism, thereby influencing tumor cell proliferation and migration. In vitro experiments confirmed that RCAN1 overexpression promoted apoptosis while inhibiting proliferation and invasion of HCC cells. Through molecular docking of 1615 drugs, we screened brompheniramine as a potential target drug and verified our results by molecular dynamics. Conclusion: In this study, we revealed the relationship between RCAN1 and HCC through bioinformatics methods, verified that RCAN1 can affect the progress of the disease through experiments, and finally identified potential therapeutic drugs through drug molecular docking and molecular dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Physical disability is an important cause of affecting the quality of life in the elderly. The association between standing height and physical disability is less studied. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the possible link between standing height and physical disability among U.S. adults aged 60 years and older. Methods: The cross-sectional data were obtained from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2015–2018. Physical disability was assessed by six questions: "Have serious difficulty hearing (SDH)?", "Have serious difficulty seeing (SDS)?", "Have serious difficulty concentrating (SDC)?", "Have serious difficulty walking (SDW)?", "Have difficulty dressing or bathing (DDB)?" and "Have difficulty doing errands alone (DDEA)?". Responses to these questions were "yes" or "no". Answer yes to one of the above six questions was identified as physical disability. Standing height (cm) was measured with an altimeter. Multivariate logistic regression was performed to examine the possible link between standing height and physical disability after adjustment for all covariates. Results: A total of 2624 participants aged ≥ 60 years were included in our study, including 1279 (48.7%) females and 1345 (51.3%) males. The mean age of participants was 69.41 ± 6.82 years. After adjusting for all potential confounders, the inverse relationship between standing height and all physical disability (APD) was statistically significant (OR = 0.976, 95%CI:0.957–0.995). In addition, among six types of physical disability (SDH, SDS, SDC, SDW, DDB, DDEA), standing height was also a protective factor for SDW (OR = 0.961, 95%CI:0.939–0.983) and DDEA (OR = 0.944, 95%CI:0.915–0.975) in the full-adjusted model. Conclusion: The cross-sectional population based study demonstrates that standing height is a protective factor for physical disability among U.S. adults aged 60 years and older. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The spectral-element method (SEM), which combines the flexibility of the finite element method (FEM) with the accuracy of spectral method, has been successfully applied to simulate seismic wavefields in geological models on different scales. One kind of SEMs that adopts orthogonal Legendre polynomials is widely used in seismology community. In the SEM with orthogonal Legendre polynomials, the Gauss-Lobatto-Legendre (GLL) quadrature rule is employed to calculate the integrals involved in the SEM leading to a diagonal mass matrix. However, the GLL quadrature rule can exactly approximate only integrals with a polynomial degree below 2N-1 (N is the interpolation order in space) and cannot exactly calculate those of polynomials with degree 2N involved in the mass matrix. Therefore, the error of the mass matrix originating from inexact numerical integration may reduce the accuracy of the SEM. To improve the SEM accuracy, we construct a least-squares objective function in terms of numerical and exact integrals to increase the accuracy of the GLL quadrature rule. Then, we utilise the conjugate gradient method to solve the objective function and obtain a set of optimal quadrature weights. The optimal mass matrix can be obtained simultaneously by utilising the GLL quadrature rule with optimal integration weights. The improvement in the numerical accuracy of the SEM with an optimal mass matrix (OSEM) is demonstrated by theoretical analysis and numerical examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abscisic acid (ABA) plays a physiological role in regulating the heat tolerance of plants and maintaining crop productivity under high-temperature stress. Appropriate cultivation techniques can regulate endogenous ABA and help farmers improve food production under high-temperature stress. Here, the physiological basis for ABA-induced heat tolerance in crops is reviewed. High-temperature stress stimulates ABA, which reduces stomatal opening and promotes root growth. The root system absorbs water to maintain the water status, thus allowing the plant to maintain physiological activities under high-temperature stress. ABA plays a synergistic role with nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide biosynthesis to improve the thermal stability of the cell membrane, maintain a dynamic balance between material and energy, and reduce the negative effects of high-temperature stress on kernel number and kernel weight. Cultivation and tillage techniques adapted to high-temperature stress, such as adjustment of sowing time, application of plant growth regulators and fertilizers, and the use of irrigation, subsoiling and heat acclimation, and the mechanisms by which they improve crop heat tolerance, are also reviewed. The results of the studies reviewed here will help researchers develop techniques for cultivating food crops under heat stress and apply them to food-production fields to improve crop productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2015 Mw7.8 Gorkha earthquake is the latest strong event with magnitude greater than Mw7.5 in the Himalayas. The occurrence of this event provides a good opportunity to better understand the characteristics of ground motion produced by a low dip thrust fault. In this study, we constructed a kinematic source model and established a numerical model that incorporates realistic surface topography, velocity structure and the Kathmandu basin for the Gorkha event. Based on the source and structure models, ground motions in the periods of 2–20 s were simulated by a spectral element method. Our results are as follow. (1) Ground motions show prominent directivity along strike. (2) The basin effect can amplify the amplitude of ground motion in Kathmandu especially on the horizontal component. (3) Horizontal ground motions in Kathmandu valley exhibit obvious amplification in the frequency range of 0.2–0.4 Hz, which is absent in vertical component. The results of this work are of importance for future studies on assessing seismic hazard in the Himalayas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) is a tropical woody oil crop of the palm family and is known as "the oil king of the world," but its palm oil contains about 50% palmitic acid, which is considered unhealthy for humans. Intron polymorphisms (IP) are highly efficient and easily examined molecular markers located adjacent to exon regions of functional genes, thus may be associated with targeted trait variation. In order to speed up the breeding of oil palm fatty acid composition, the current study identified a total of 310 introns located within 52 candidate genes involved in fatty acid biosynthesis in the oil palm genome. Based on the intron sequences, 205 primer pairs were designed, 64 of which showed polymorphism among 70 oil palm individuals. Phenotypic variation of fatty acid content in the 70 oil palm individuals was also investigated. Association analysis revealed that 13 IP markers were significantly associated with fatty acid content variation, and these IP markers were located on chromosomes 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10 of oil palm. The development of such IP markers may be useful for the genetic improvement of fatty acid composition in oil palm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]