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Periodontitis is an oral chronic inflammatory disease. Inhibiting tissue destruction and promoting tissue regeneration are important means for the treatment of periodontitis. Metformin not only has hypoglycemic effect but also has anti-inflammatory effect. Metformin has been shown to inhibit oxidative stress and activate autophagy through AMPK/mTOR pathway. High mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) has been implicated in the pathogenesis of many inflammatory diseases including periodontitis, it can participate in the induction of oxidative stress. HMGB1 is an autophagy regulator under oxidative stress, which can activate mTOR pathway. However, it is not clear whether metformin is related to HMGB1 and its mechanism in the process of periodontitis. Cell viability and expression of inflammatory cytokines were clarified by Cell Counting Kit-8, real-time PCR and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Western blot and immunofluorescence were conducted to determine HMGB1 intracellular localization and expression of autophagy-associated proteins in vitro. Experimental periodontitis mice model was induced by administering a ligature. Immunohistochemistry was performed to detect the expression and localization of HMGB1 in vivo. The results of CCK-8, real-time PCR, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, Western blot and immunofluorescence showed lipopolysaccharide (LPS) treatment inhibited cell viability, and increased HMGB1 expression at a dose-independent manner. Metformin can reduce the effect of LPS. It also improves autophagy pathway inhibited by LPS and down-regulates mTOR expression. In addition, metformin attenuated alveolar bone resorption induced by ligation. This study provides new evidence for that metformin is a potential drug for the treatment of periodontitis and HMGB1 may be a potential target for periodontal intervention.

This study aimed to investigate the current situation regarding fertility intentions, parenting attitudes, and fear of childbirth among college students in mainland China and the factors related to these variables.A cross-sectional study SETTING: Colleges across China PARTICIPANTS: Five hundred and eighty-three college students attending regular institutions of higher education MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Fertility intentions and fear of childbirth were measured using the Swedish Fertility Awareness Questionnaire and the Childbirth Fear Prior to Pregnancy scale.Only 38.8% of participants expressed their willingness to have children, and there was a significant difference between male and female students (P.02). Males regarded having children as more important (P.01), and females were more concerned about the negative effects of becoming parents, including difficulties in the labor market, having less freedom, and having less money. When deciding whether to have children, factors such as work, economics, and childcare were more important to females. Students who did not want children had higher levels of fear of childbirth than those who wanted children or were unsure (P.02).The fertility intentions of college students were not optimistic. In addition to the 2-child Chinese fertility policy, interventions aimed at reducing the cost of raising children, eliminating gender inequality in the workplace, and normalizing childcare institutions might help alleviate conflict between work and childrearing.

Accurate genome editing based on various molecular tools has always been the focus of gene-editing research and the primary goal for therapeutic application. The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-Cas9 system is a well-established gene-editing method that is preferred due to its simplicity and high efficiency. In this study, a group of single-stranded DNA aptamers with high affinity and high specificity for the Cas9 protein were obtained by the systematic evolution of ligands through the exponential enrichment method. Their binding affinity and possible binding domains to the Cas9 protein were analyzed. In addition, we demonstrated the effectiveness of aptamers in regulating dCas9-modulated gene transcription, in terms of both transcriptional activation and repression. Additionally, the aptamers successfully reduced the off-target effect and improved the efficiency of gene homologous recombination repair mediated by CRISPR-Cas9. The findings suggest a potential method to better control precise gene editing and enrich the diversity of modulating tools for the CRISPR-Cas9 system.

In this study, a polysaccharide (MP1) with a molecular weight of 38 kDa was isolated from Momordica charantia which contains arabinose, galactose, xylose, and rhamnose. (MP1) was used to formulate composite gels with Whey Protein Isolate (WPI) that were characterized for their functional properties, microstructure, thermal resistance, probiotic encapsulating ability, and potential toward metabolic syndrome (MS). Results showed that the highest complex index was obtained at MP concentration of 2 %. MP-WPIs demonstrated superior (p 0.05) water holding capacity and emulsifying properties than WPI gels. MP-WPIs also had higher (p 0.05) thermal stability via TGA and DSC analysis. MP-WPI morphology was observed via SEM whereas protein structure as affected by MP concentration was studied using CLSM. Also, FTIR revealed that MP and WPI bonded mainly through electrostatic, hydrophobic and hydrogen interactions. More, MP-WPIs successfully enhanced probiotic Lactobacillus acidophilus (LA) survival upon freeze-drying with high encapsulation efficiency (98 %) and improved storage stability. MP-WPIs improved LA survival upon digestion suggesting a potential prebiotic activity. Finally, synbiotic formulation LA-MP-WPIs exhibited effective biological activity against MS. Therefore, MP-WPIs is a propitious strategy for effective probiotic gastrointestinal delivery with potential toward MS.

This paper studies the multistability of delayed recurrent neural networks (DRNNs) with a class of piecewise nonlinear activation functions. The coexistence as well as the stability of multiple equilibrium points (EPs) of DRNNs are proved. With the Brouwer's fixed point theorem as well as the Lagrange mean value theorem, it is obtained that under some conditions, the n-neuron DRNNs with the proposed activation function can have at least 5

Peanut (Arachis hypogea L.) bacterial wilt (BW) is a devastating disease caused by Ralstonia solanacearum that results in severe yield and quality losses. Plant defensins are short cysteine-rich peptides with antimicrobial activity. The role of defensin genes (AhDef) in peanut is unclear. A genome-wide investigation of AhDef genes was undertaken, and 12 identified AhDef genes were classified into two groups containing the gamma-thionin domain formed by four disulfide pairs: Cys1-Cys8, Cys2-Cys5, Cys3-Cys6, and Cys4-Cys7. In silico analysis revealed that AhDef genes showed highly conserved architectural features and contained cis-elements associated with phytohormone signaling and defense responses. A highly resistant cultivar, H108 (R) and a susceptible accession, H107 (S) were tested by R. solanacearum inoculation. H108 (R) showed fewer symptoms than H107 (S) owing to inhibition of bacterial reproduction and spread in the vascular bundles of roots and stems. In a transcriptomic expression profile, AhDef genes, particularly AhDef1.6 and AhDef2.2, were up-regulated in H108 (R) compared with H107 (S) under R. solanacearum infection and phytohormone treatment. Subcellular localization showed that the AhDef1.6 and AhDef2.2 proteins were both expressed specifically on the plasma membrane. Overexpression of protein fusion AhDef2.2-YFP in Nicotiana benthamiana and peanut leaves increased resistance to R. solanacearum, suggesting its role in response to BW infection. AhDef2.2 may be valuable for peanut resistance breeding.

In this study, the effect of microcrcaks strengthening on damage evolution of Al2TiO5 (AT) flexible ceramics was investigated by acoustic emission (AE). Results reveal that with increasing content of ZrO2, the strength of AT flexible ceramics improves gradually and the strain increases at first then decreases. When the content of ZrO2 is 12% and 8%, the strength and strain at maximum stress are increased by 154.92% and 38.27%, respectively. In addition, thanks to the “strengthening effect” of ZrTiO4 on grain boundary microcracks, the damage development thresholds (σmin and σonset), elastic modulus and fracture toughness of AT flexible ceramics modified with ZrO2 are significantly improved. Moreover, the visible transverse cracks and matrix shedding in ATZ-0 are the most, but the cumulative AE damage events in ATZ-8 and ATZ-4 are more than ATZ-0 at late stage, for which the fracture of ZrTiO4 glass phase and crack branching induced by ZrTiO4 should be responsible.

The dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration is an important index of water quality. It has a significant impact on the biodegradation process in water and the survival of aquatic organisms. Low DO concentrations often exist and may result in a deterioration in water quality and an increase in wastewater treatment expenses. An analysis of the oxygen transfer efficiency as correlated with the flow characteristics of a falling jet could help to solve these problems. Experiments related to oxygen transfer along a falling water jet were conducted, and the effects of the flowrate ( Q ), falling height ( H ) and initial DO concentration ( c u ) were considered. The results demonstrated that a falling jet in air could be an effective way of improving the DO concentration. The results also indicated that the oxygen transfer efficiency is linearly dependent on c u and has a negative exponential relation with H . To deeply analyze the oxygen transfer process, the jet disturbance process was divided into 3 parts for the first time based on flow features: a smooth zone, turbulent zone and breakup zone. The results showed that the jet outlet velocity had a limited influence on the smooth zone height but assisted in jet breakup. Thereafter, a correlation modeling DO reaeration along the falling jet considering jet disturbance characteristics was obtained. This correlation was also applied to predict the aeration efficiency in experimental cases from the literature and showed good agreement with the reported results.

Clustering is one of the most popular data mining methods for analyzing the time series, not only due to its exploratory power, but also because it is often a preprocessing step or subroutine for other techniques. In this paper, an incremental fuzzy clustering algorithm of time series (IFCTS) is proposed, in which the clustering is divided into two stages: offline and online clustering. During the offline clustering process, the fuzzy clustering validity evaluation index is introduced to FCM to automatically obtain the optimal number of initial clusters for off-line data. Then, in the online clustering process, IFCTS algorithm can dynamically update the existing clusters in the incremental data snapshot, distinguish outliers and control the creation of new clusters adaptively by combining with the previous clusters. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has good clustering accuracy and efficiency for both equal-length and unequal-length time series.

Ignition of coal dust caused by hot particles (ICDHP) will lead to serious combustion or explosion. In this work, the coupling details of multi–physical fields of the ICDHP were established. Two different chemical reactions of flaming combustion of volatiles and smoldering of coal dust were established to understand the mechanism and process of the ICDHP. The evolution of temperature, volatiles molar concentration and heat release characteristics under different particle temperatures and contact conditions between the hot particle and coal dust were investigated. Results show that there are two ways of the ICDHP, which are volatiles ignition and coal smoldering ignition. The ignition delay time (IDT) increases exponentially with the decrease of the hot particle temperature. The temperature of the hot particle is 1100 K, and thermal runaway occurs in the way of coal smoldering ignition. When the temperature of the hot particle is higher than 1100 K, thermal runaway occurs in the way of volatiles ignition. In addition, it is found that the IDT decreases exponentially with the increase of the buried depth (lp) of the hot particle in coal dust for the hot particle temperature of 1186 K. The IDT shows a trend of decreasing – increasing – decreasing with the increase of lp for the hot particle temperatures of 1271 K and 1369 K. If the hot particle is completely embedded in the coal dust, the smoldering combustion of the coal dust is found. In addition, the volatiles first react on the side of the hot particle, and the thermal runaway occurs at the position where the concentration and temperature of volatiles are high enough.