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Isonitrile lipopeptides (INLPs) are known to be related to the virulence of pathogenic mycobacteria by mediating metal transport, but their biosynthesis remains obscure. In this work, we use in vitro biochemical assays, site-directed mutagenesis, chemical synthesis, and spectroscopy techniques to scrutinize the activity of core enzymes required for INLP biosynthesis in mycobacteria. Compared to environmental Streptomyces, pathogenic Mycobacterium employ a similar chemical logic and enzymatic machinery in INLP biosynthesis, differing mainly in the fatty-acyl chain length, which is controlled by multiple enzymes in the pathway. Our in-depth study on the non-heme iron(II) and α-ketoglutarate-dependent dioxygenase for isonitrile generation, including Rv0097 from Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), demonstrates that it recognizes a free-standing small molecule substrate, different from the recent hypothesis that a carrier protein is required for Rv0097 in Mtb. A key residue in Rv0097 is further identified to dictate the varied fatty-acyl chain length specificity between Streptomyces and Mycobacterium.

The general problem of constructing regions that have a guaranteed coverage probability for an arbitrary parameter of interest $$\psi \in \Psi $$ ψ ∈ Ψ is considered. The regions developed are Bayesian in nature and the coverage probabilities can be considered as Bayesian confidences with respect to the model obtained by integrating out the nuisance parameters using the conditional prior given $$\psi .$$ ψ . Both the prior coverage probability and the prior probability of covering a false value (the accuracy) can be controlled by setting the sample size. These coverage probabilities are considered as a priori figures of merit concerning the reliability of a study while the inferences quoted are Bayesian. Several problems are considered where obtaining confidence regions with desirable properties have proven difficult to obtain. For example, it is shown that the approach discussed never leads to improper regions which has proven to be an issue for some confidence regions.

Carbon emissions in the tourism industry stem from independent industries (e.g., aviation, accommodation, and catering), but it is unclear whether the participation of the tourism sector promotes carbon emission reduction. In China, the tourism sector has been involved in the formulation and implementation of low-carbon tourism policies since 2017, providing a quasi-natural experimental condition for studying whether the participation of the tourism sector can promote the reduction of carbon emission in the tourism industry. Through a quantitative analysis, we find that the participation of the tourism sector promotes the carbon emission reduction. In particular, the participation of tourism departments in the formulation and implementation of low-carbon tourism policies leads to 1.622 million more tons (1% significance level) of carbon emission reduction in tourism-developed cities than in other cities. The participation of the tourism sector can promote carbon emission reduction in the transportation, construction, and commodity production sectors. It can also promote a low-carbon lifestyle. Finally, we suggest that the tourism industry should use the market to promote a carbon peak and use technology to achieve carbon neutrality. This study is of great significance for the reduction of carbon emissions in China’s tourism industry.

Purpose Coral degradation is a worldwide ecological problem. Bacterial diseases are a great danger to coral health. However the bacterial communities in coral reef ecosystems are complex and variable. Therefore, real-time and accurate detection of coral pathogenic bacteria is necessary. This study aims to develop a detection method for pathogenic bacteria Vibrio alginolytcus XSBZ14, which could cause Porites andrewsi white syndrome (PAWS), is an enormous threat to coral reef ecosystem in the South China Sea. That could provide help for the protection of coral reefs in the South China Sea. Methods At first, a low sequence identity single-copy sequence S2 was selected from the genome by in-house perl script. Using the designed specific primers, four different types of standard curves were subsequently plotted for the accurate quantification of the strain XSBZ14 in four different samples (DNA, bacterial suspension, coral tissue, seawater). Then, using the strain to infect the Galaxea fascicularis and test the strain in the coral culture water during the week. Results The rapid detection method of pathogenic bacteria by RT-PCR was established. The limit of detection (LOD) of the RT-PCR was 0.88 pg/reaction (0.44 pg/µL) in DNA, 2 CFU/reaction (1000 CFU/mL) in bacterial suspension, 2 CFU/reaction in coral tissue, 20 CFU/reaction in seawater for the strain XSBZ14, respectively. In addition, according to the detection results of the RT-PCR, the strain XSBZ14 could survive in Galaxea fascicularis for a week, and the strain could also be detected from its reared seawater. Conclusion These results indicated that other coral species and their habitats might act as an important reservoir for the strain XSBZ14 and mediated its horizontal transmission in coral reefs. In a word, the RT-PCR detection method of a coral pathogenic strain XSBZ14 was firstly established. The method is a robust tool for the rapid detection and quantification of the coral pathogen, XSBZ14, and is very useful for PAWS epidemiological survey and specific pathogen-free coral transplantation in the South China Sea.

The hazards of antibiotics as emerging contaminants to aquatic ecosystems and human health have received global attention. This study investigates the presence, concentration levels, spatial and temporal distribution patterns, and their potential risks to aquatic organisms and human health of sulfonamides (SAs) in the Shaanxi section of the Weihe River. The SA pollution in the Weihe River was relatively less than that in other rivers in China and abroad. The spatial and temporal distribution showed that the total concentrations of SAs in the Weihe River were highest in the main stream (ND–35.296 ng/L), followed by the south tributary (3.718–34.354 ng/L) and north tributary (5.476–9.302 ng/L) during the wet water period. Similarly, the order of concentration from highest to lowest during the flat water period was main stream (ND–3 ng/L), north tributary (ND–2.095 ng/L), and south tributary (ND–1.3 ng/L). In addition, the ecological risk assessment showed that the SAs other than sulfadiazine (SDZ) and sulfamethoxazole (SMZ) posed no significant risk (RQS < 0.01) to the corresponding sensitive species during both periods, with no significant risk to human health for different age groups, as suggested by the health risk assessment. The risk of the six SAs to both aquatic organisms and human health decreased significantly from 2016 to 2021.

Gout is one of the most common inflammatory arthropathies in the developed world. However, involvement of the spine is relatively rare, and other sinister differential diagnoses will need to be considered. We describe an unusual case of gouty tophi deposition within the spine in an elderly patient presenting with signs and symptoms of acute cord compression. Important differential diagnoses that need to be excluded include bony metastases from underlying malignancy and other infective/inflammatory causes. Early recognition of imaging findings can avoid delayed or inappropriate medical treatment.

ObjectiveAccurate and rapid phenotyping is a prerequisite to leveraging electronic health records (EHRs) for biomedical research. While early phenotyping relied on rule-based algorithms curated by experts, machine learning (ML) approaches have emerged as an alternative to improve scalability across phenotypes and healthcare settings. This study evaluates ML-based phenotyping with respect to (i) the data sources used, (ii) the phenotypes considered, (iii) the methods applied, and (iv) the reporting and evaluation methods used.Materials and MethodsWe searched PubMed and Web of Science for articles published between 2018 and 2022. After screening 850 articles, we recorded 37 variables on 100 studies.ResultsMost studies utilized data from a single institution and included information in clinical notes. Although chronic conditions were most commonly considered, ML also enabled characterization of nuanced phenotypes such as social determinants of health. Supervised deep learning was the most popular ML paradigm, while semi-supervised and weakly-supervised learning were applied to expedite algorithm development and unsupervised learning to facilitate phenotype discovery. ML approaches did not uniformly outperform rule-based algorithms, but deep learning offered marginal improvement over traditional ML for many conditions.DiscussionDespite the progress in ML-based phenotyping, most articles focused on binary phenotypes and few articles evaluated external validity or used multi-institution data. Study settings were infrequently reported and analytic code was rarely released.ConclusionContinued research in ML-based phenotyping is warranted, with emphasis on characterizing nuanced phenotypes, establishing reporting and evaluation standards, and developing methods to accommodate misclassified phenotypes due to algorithm errors in downstream applications.

Epidemics of influenza are major public health concerns. Since influenza prediction always relies on the weekly clinical or laboratory surveillance data, typically the weekly Influenza-like illness (ILI) rate series, accurate multi-step-ahead influenza predictions using ILI series is of great importance, especially, to the potential coming influenza outbreaks. This study proposes Comprehensive Learning Particle Swarm Optimization based Machine Learning (CLPSO-ML) framework incorporating support vector regression (SVR) and multilayer perceptron (MLP) for multi-step-ahead influenza prediction. A comprehensive examination and comparison of the performance and potential of three commonly used multi-step-ahead prediction modeling strategies, including iterated strategy, direct strategy and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) strategy, was conducted using the weekly ILI rate series from both the Southern and Northern China. The results show that: (1) The MIMO strategy achieves the best multi-step-ahead prediction, and is potentially more adaptive for longer horizon; (2) The iterated strategy demonstrates special potentials for deriving the least time difference between the occurrence of the predicted peak value and the true peak value of an influenza outbreak; (3) For ILI in the Northern China, SVR model implemented with MIMO strategy performs best, and SVR with iterated strategy also shows remarkable performance especially during outbreak periods; while for ILI in the Southern China, both SVR and MLP models with MIMO strategy have competitive prediction performance

States play a central role in systematic studies of agrarian changes in East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia. However, due to China’s belated agrarian change, agrarian studies on China have only begun recently, and the role of the state is still relatively undiscussed. First, we review the history of state intervention on agricultural development. Then we focus on fiscal policies of the state’s intervention that have been implemented since the taxes and fees reforms, which involved a large number of state agricultural projects. Such state intervention is aimed at promoting food security and agricultural modernization and, in practice, is typically accompanied by land transfer promoted by local government. The local governments’ intervention has directly resulted in the emergence of capitalized family farms and the flow of industrial/commercial capital to the countryside, both of which constitute main aspects of China’s agrarian transition. Based on a case study of a county in Hunan Province, focusing on examples of the food security project and the agricultural vertical integration project, combining with the process of land transfer promoted by local government, we analyse the role of the state in the emergence of capitalized family farms and capital flow to the countryside, as well as connections between state interventions and capital accumulation. Then, we present the general development of capitalized family farms as well as the flow of agro-capital to the countryside based on provincial data, and interpret how agrarian transition evolves at a different pace among regions against the backdrop of state intervention. We emphasize the internal mechanism between state intervention and agrarian transformation based on the operation of specific agricultural projects and the local governments’ promotion of land transfer.

Roughly a decade ago, the Chinese government implemented a green credit policy aimed at lowering emissions from highly polluting corporations through improving information disclosure quality during the loan process. According to policy guidelines, banks may provide financial support only for new projects that passed an environmental assessment or were explicitly designed to decrease pollution. This paper used panel data from 320 companies in heavy polluting industries listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange from 2008 to 2016 and adopted a fixed effects regression model to examine whether collusion between local governments and Chinese listed companies has prevented the green credit policy from achieving its target. The results show that there is no significant positive correlation between CEID and corporate green financing, which means that the environmental information disclosure system does not send valuable signals to the market and has failed to become a decision-making tool for bank-risk management.

Recovery of acute insulin response (AIR) is shown to be associated with long-term outcomes of patients with early type 2 diabetes treated with short-term intensive insulin therapy (SIIT). However, the complexity of measuring an AIR limits its utility in a real-world clinical setting. The aim of the study was to assess fasting indicators that may estimate recovery of the AIR after SIIT. We enrolled 62 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) of varying disease duration who had poor glycemic control. Participants were treated with SIIT using insulin pumps to achieve near normoglycemia for 7 days. The AIR before and after the therapy were measured by intravenous glucose tolerance tests. After the therapy, AIR increased from −16.7 (−117.4, 52.4) pmol/L·min to 178.7 (31.8, 390.7) pmol/L·min (P<0.001) while hyperglycemia was alleviated; this improvement was observed in all disease duration categories. AIR was almost absent when fasting plasma glucose (FPG) > 10 mmol/L, while both AIR (R=−0.53, P<0.001) and its improvement from baseline (△AIR, R=−0.52, P<0.001) were negatively associated with FPG after SIIT when FPG

Objective: In patients with early type 2 diabetes, short-term intensive insulin therapy (SIIT) reverses ß cell dysfunction measured by acute insulin response (AIR). However, the complicated procedures limit large-scale use of AIR. Also unclear is whether SIIT is effective in patients with longer duration. This study is performed to assess fasting indicators estimating recovery of AIR after SIIT for type 2 diabetes of various duration. Research Design and Methods: Patients with type 2 diabetes (n=62) who had poor glycemic control were enrolled. Near-nomoglycaemia was achieved and maintained for 7 days with insulin pump. AIR was measured by intravenous tolerance tests before and after SIIT. Results: Both fasting plasma glucose (FPG, 12.0 ± 3.0 vs. 7.71± 1.6 mmol/L, P6 years respectively, P=0.10). AIR was almost absent when FPG was over 10 mmol/L. However, when FPG after SIIT was less than 10 mmol/L it was negatively associated with AIR (R= -0.53, P Conclusions: Recovery of AIR could be obtained in patients with various duration of type 2 diabetes, and it could be estimated conveniently by FPG and other fasting indicators. Disclosure L. Liu: None. S. Yang: None. J. Liu: None. L. Hai: None. J. Liu: None. Y. Li: None.

Meme, as defined in Dawkins' 1976 book 'The Selfish Gene', is "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture". Internet meme is an extension of meme, with the defining characteristic being its spread via Internet. While online communities of all cultures generate their own memes, owing to the colossal amount of content in English and the long & widespread adoption of Internet across all strata of society in English-speaking countries, the vast majority of high-impact and well-documented memes have their origin in English-speaking communities. In addition to their spread in the original culture sphere, some of these prominent memes have also crossed the cultural boundaries and entered the parlance of Chinese Internet communities. This paper seeks to give a brief introduction to Internet memes in general, and explore the factors that control and/or facilitate a meme’s ability to enter Chinese communities.