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Aims: This study aims to evaluate the efficacy and safety of tripterygium glycosides combined with angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors/angiotensin receptor blockers (ACEI/ARBs) in treating Diabetic nephropathy and provide high-level evidence to support its standardized application. Methods: Literatures were retrieved from PubMed, Web of Science, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, CNKI, Wanfang and VIP databases, the search time frame was defined as from the time of establishment to April 2023. This study only included randomized controlled trials of tripterygium glycosides combined with ACEI/ARB in the treatment of diabetic nephropathy, and the final included studies were identified according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and meta-analysis of data was performed using RevMan 5.3 software. Results: A total of 44 RCTs with 3537 DN patients were included in the study. Compared with the control group, tripterygium glycosides combined with ACEI/ARB significantly reducing 24 h-UTP (24 h urine total protein) [SMD = −1.46, 95% CI (−1.70, −1.23), P < 0.00001], increasing effective rate [RR = 1.23, 95% CI (1.17,1.29), P < 0.00001], elevating serum albumin [SMD = 0.85, 95% CI (0.69, 1.02), P < 0.00001], improving serum creatinine [SMD = −0.35, 95% CI (−0.59, −0.11), P = 0.004], with no difference in BUN (blood urea nitrogen) [SMD = −0.17, 95% CI (−0.48,0.13), P = 0.27], the adverse reactions rate was higher than those of the control group [RR = 1.96, 95%CI (1.43, 2.68), P < 0.0001]. Conclusion: This study showed that the combination of tripterygium glycosides and ACEI/ARB was more effective than ACEI/ARB alone. However, the side effects of the combined treatment group were higher than those of the control group, especially liver function damage, which also suggested that its safety in the treatment of diabetic nephropathy was worth considering. Therefore, although tripterygium glycosides provided a choice for the clinical treatment of diabetic nephropathy, its side effects limited its clinical application. In future studies, we need to further optimize tripterygium glycosides and reduce its side effects to ensure the safety of clinical application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maize (Zea mays) is India's third-largest grain crop, serving as a primary food source for at least 30% of the population and sustaining 900 million impoverished people globally. The growing human population has led to an increasing demand for maize grains. However, maize cultivation faces significant challenges due to a variety of environmental factors, including both biotic and abiotic stresses. Abiotic stresses such as salinity, extreme temperatures, and drought, along with biotic factors like bacterial, fungal, and viral infections, have drastically reduced maize production and grain quality worldwide. The interaction between these stresses is complex; for instance, abiotic stress can heighten a plant's susceptibility to pathogens, while an overabundance of pests can exacerbate the plant's response to environmental stress. Given the complexity of these interactions, comprehensive studies are crucial for understanding how the simultaneous presence of biotic and abiotic stresses affects crop productivity. Despite the importance of this issue, there is a lack of comprehensive data on how these stress combinations impact maize in key agricultural regions. This review focuses on developing abiotic stress-tolerant maize varieties, which will be essential for maintaining crop yields in the future. One promising approach involves the use of Plant Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR), soil bacteria that colonize the rhizosphere and interact with plant tissues. Scientists are increasingly exploring microbial strategies to enhance maize's resistance to both biotic and abiotic stresses. Throughout the cultivation process, insect pests and microorganisms pose significant threats to maize, diminishing both the quantity and quality of the grain. Among the various factors causing maize degradation, insects are the most prevalent, followed by fungal infections. The review also delves into the latest advancements in applying beneficial rhizobacteria across different agroecosystems, highlighting current trends and offering insights into future developments under both normal and stress conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highway toll stations are equipped with electronic toll collection (ETC) lanes and manual toll collection (MTC) lanes. It is anticipated that connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs), MTC human-driven vehicles (MTC-HVs), and ETC human-driven vehicles (ETC-HVs) will coexist for a long time, sharing toll station infrastructure. To fully leverage the congestion reduction potential of ETC, this paper addresses the problem of ETC lane allocation at toll stations under heterogeneous traffic flows, modeling it as a mixed-integer nonlinear bilevel programming problem (MINLBP). The objective is to minimize total toll station travel time by optimizing the number of ETC lanes at station entrances and exits while considering ETC-HVs' lane selection behavior based on the user equilibrium principle. As both upper-level and lower-level problems are convex, the bilevel problem is transformed into an equivalent single-level optimization using the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions of the lower-level problem, and numerical solutions are obtained using the commercial solver Gurobi. Based on surveillance video data from the Liulin toll station (Lianhuo Expressway) in Zhengzhou, China, numerical experiments were conducted. The results illustrate that the proposed method reduces total vehicle travel time by 90.44% compared to the current lane allocation scheme or the proportional lane allocation method. Increasing the proportion of CAVs or ETC-HVs helps accommodate high traffic demand. Dynamically adjusting lane allocation in response to variations in traffic arrival rates is proven to be a more effective supply strategy than static allocation. Moreover, regarding the interesting conclusion that all ETC-HVs choose the ETC lanes, we derived the relaxed analytical solution of MINLBP using a parameter iteration method. The analytical solution confirmed the validity of the numerical experiment results. The findings of this study can effectively and conveniently guide lane allocation at highway toll stations to improve traffic efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]