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To explore the mechanism of action of Bacillus velezensis against sweet cherry soft rot disease, the inhibitory effect of Bacillus velezensis KT against Rhizopus stolonifer LC-7 in vitro and in inoculated sweet cherry fruits, and the effect of B. velezensis KT on defense-related enzyme activities were investigated. Besides, the expression of genes related to secondary metabolite synthesis and biological control in B. velezensis KT during the interaction with R. stolonifer was also analyzed by transcriptomics. The results showed that the percentage inhibition of 1 × 109 CFU/mL B. velezensis KT suspension against mycelial growth of R. stolonifer LC-7 was 87.12%, and the percentage of spore germination and germ length of R. stolonifer LC-7 in the presence of B. velezensis KT were 21.54% and 11.45 μm, respectively. At 48 h after being treated with 1 × 109 CFU/mL B. velezensis KT suspension, the incidence of soft rot in cherry fruits was about 20% and was about 80% lower than that in the control group. B. velezensis KT suspension inhibited the activity of polyphenoloxidase (PPO) and lipoxidase (LOX), increased the activity of peroxidase (POD), phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL) chitinase (CHI) and β-1,3-glucanase (GLU), and improved disease resistance and antioxidant capacity in cherry fruits. It was observed by scanning electron microscopy that after co-cultured with B. velezensis KT, the morphology of the mycelia and spores of R. stolonifer LC-7 was distorted and malformed. Transcriptomic analysis showed that the expression of pksIJ in the biosynthetic gene cluster for antibiotic bacillaene and tuaAGE in the biosynthetic gene cluster for teichuronic acid were up-regulated, and the differentially expressed genes were mainly concentrated in ribonucleoprotein complex assembly, subunit assembly and ribosomal assembly during biological processes. The B. velezensis KT could directly inhibit R. stolonifer LC-7 probably through nutritional and spatial competition and secreting anti-bacterial substances and could also induce disease resistance in sweet cherry fruits. The results showed that B. velezensis KT had an obvious control effect on sweet cherry soft rot caused by R. stolonifer LC-7, making it a potential biocontrol agent.

In recent years, frequent conflicts in the South Sea of China have hindered peaceful Chinese development processes. For the first time, this study used political geography and territory to examine the process of interplaying national cartographic practices and power relations in this space. Combined with a previous discussion on territory and cartography, this study proposed a national cartographic analysis framework from the territory and applied it to the cartography of the South Sea of China. First, we performed a longitudinal comparison of cartographic evolution in the South Sea of China between China and the United States. Then, a longitudinal comparison of expressions between China and the United States was performed for three aspects of cartographic practice. The longitudinal comparison showed that the evolution of South Sea of China cartography resulted in a more complete sea area, standardized island names, and a sea boundary line that appears in China. In the United States, the South Sea of China showed enlarged sea areas, but the overall picture was incomplete. According to the longitudinal comparison, the United States differs from China in the following three aspects of the cartography of the South Sea of China: sea area, status of islands and reefs, and sea boundaries. In summary, we can draw three conclusions. 1) In China and the United States, the cartographic evolution of the sea areas of the South Sea of China, the names of islands and reefs, and the expression of sea boundaries reflect the influence of the country's power. 2) The difference in the cartography of the South Sea of China between China and the United States stems from the need to safeguard the core interests of the country. China, through the territorialization of cartography, has strengthened the maritime jurisdiction of the South Sea of China, increased awareness of national sea rights internally, and declared the sovereignty of the South Sea of China externally. However, the United States has emphasized the public seas and multinational attributes of the South Sea of China through cartographic territorialization. 3) As a territorial tool, a map presents the Chinese story of the South Sea of China on the international stage and may also clearly express China's consistent and clear position on the sovereignty of the islands and surrounding waters of the South Sea of China. The territorial expression of the South Sea of China should be strengthened from the following three aspects: map rights protection, map innovation, and map publicity. Thus, cartography may play a more important role in the governance of China's maritime territory in the South Sea of China.

Radar jamming recognition is a key step in electronic countermeasures, and accurate and sufficient labeled samples are essential for supervised learning-based recognition methods. However, in real practice, collected radar jamming samples often have weak labels (i.e., noisy-labeled or unlabeled ones), which degrade recognition performance. Additionally, recognition performance is hindered by limitations in capturing the global features of radar jamming. The Transformer (TR) has advantages in modeling long-range relationships. Therefore, a weakly supervised Transformer is proposed to address the issues of performance degradation under weak supervision. Specifically, complementary label (CL) TR, called RadarCL-TR, is proposed to improve radar jamming recognition accuracy with noisy samples. CL learning and a cleansing module are successively utilized to detect and remove potentially noisy samples. Thus, the adverse influence of noisy samples is mitigated. Additionally, semi-supervised learning (SSL) TR, called RadarSSL-PL-TR, is proposed to boost recognition performance under unlabeled samples via pseudo labels (PLs). Network generalization is improved by training with pseudo-labeling unlabeled samples. Moreover, the RadarSSL-PL-S-TR is proposed to further promote recognition performance, where a selection module identifies reliable pseudo-labeling samples. The experimental results show that the proposed RadarCL-TR and RadarSSL-PL-S-TR outperform comparison methods in recognition accuracy by at least 7.07 % and 6.17 % with noisy and unlabeled samples, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aims: Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a global health problem, and dietary intervention is still considered one of the primary interventions. This study aimed to examine cross-sectional associations between dietary and serum levels of folate and NAFLD. Methods: We conducted a study of 7543 adults who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2009–2018. NAFLD status was determined by a fatty liver index (FLI) value ≥60. Multivariable logistic regression models were used to estimate associations between folate and NAFLD. Results: Almost half (45%) of the patients were classified as having NAFLD based on the FLI. In the fully adjusted model, participants in the highest quartile of dietary total folate and food folate were found to have a lower prevalence of NAFLD than those in the lowest quartile [odds ratio (OR)quartile 4 versus 1 = 0.582; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.350–0.968; and ORquartile 4 versus 1 = 0.737; 95% CI = 0.611–0.888, respectively], and the fourth quartile values of serum total folate and 5-methyl-tetrahydrofolate were significantly negatively associated with NAFLD prevalence (ORquartile 4 versus 1 = 0.664; 95% CI = 0.495–0.891; and ORquartile 4 versus 1 = 0.712; 95% CI = 0.532–0.954, respectively). Subgroup analyses revealed that this beneficial association was more significant in women (ORquartile 4 versus 1 = 0.526; 95% CI = 0.329–0.843; pinteraction < 0.001) than in men (ORquartile 4 versus 1 = 0.805; 95% CI = 0.546–1.186). Conclusions: Higher dietary folate intake and serum folate levels are associated with a lower NAFLD prevalence among U.S. adults and the trend is more pronounced among women, indicating opportunities for dietary NAFLD interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]