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Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are widely involved in inflammatory responses, but their specific regulatory roles in cow mastitis remain controversial. In this study, RNA-seq was used to generate a circRNA expression profile, which identified 71 differentially expressed circRNAs (DEcircRNAs) in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated MAC-T bovine mammary epithelial cells (bMECs) at different stages of inflammation. Functional analyses revealed that these DEcircRNAs may be involved in cellular proliferation, apoptosis, migration, and the inflammatory responses through regulation of numerous related signaling pathways. In addition, these data suggest that 2 novel circRNAs, named novel_circ_0004830 and novel_circ_0003097, may act as the key competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) in the regulation of bovine mastitis through binding to inflammation-related microRNAs (miRNAs). These results provide a new angle for the study of the molecular regulatory mechanisms in dairy cow mastitis.

Over the past decade, daptomycin treatment of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections has led to the emergence of daptomycin nonsusceptible (DAP-NS) MRSA strains and a subsequent interest in combinatorial antibiotic therapies. We investigated the phenotypic and genetic changes associated with the seesaw effect, which describes the correlation between daptomycin resistance and increased β-lactam susceptibility in DAP-NS MRSA and the reverse phenomenon of DAP-NS strains acquiring renewed susceptibility to daptomycin after β-lactam exposure.A continuous bioreactor model was used to study the effects of incremental doses of daptomycin followed by oxacillin on MRSA strain N315. Minimum inhibitory concentrations for daptomycin and oxacillin were determined for the bioreactor-derived samples. Transmission electron microscopy and cytochrome C binding assays were used to measure cell wall thickness and cell membrane charge, respectively, in the bioreactor-derived samples. Whole-genome sequencing was used to identify mutations associated with the seesaw effect.Although daptomycin resistance conferred enhanced susceptibility to oxacillin, oxacillin treatment of DAP-NS strains was accompanied by a lowered minimum inhibitory concentration for daptomycin. Additionally, there was a reduction in relative positive cell surface charge and cell wall thickness. However, the mutations acquired in our DAP-NS populations were not accompanied by additional genomic changes after treatment with oxacillin, implicating alternative mechanisms for the seesaw effect.In this study, we successfully produced and characterized the seesaw effect in MRSA strain N315 in a unique bioreactor model.

Occupational exposure and non-occupational exposure to excessive levels of manganese (Mn) result in neuronal cell damage through mitochondrial dysfunction. The functional integrity of mitochondria is maintained by mitophagy and mitochondrial biogenesis. Although Mn-induced S-nitrosylation of PTEN-induced putative kinase 1 (PINK1) can interfere with mitophagy, its effect on mitochondrial biogenesis remains unclear. In this study, we established a rat model of Mn poisoning or "manganism" to examine the relationship between PINK1 S-nitrosylation and impairment of mitochondrial biogenesis, and found that treatment with 60 mg/kg Mn induced marked neurobehavioral abnormalities in rats and significantly increased the S-nitrosylation level of PINK1. We also found that the nuclear-encoded peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator 1 alpha (PPARGC1A)-mediated mitochondrial biogenesis was significantly upregulated in rats treated with 15 and 30 mg/kg Mn, and downregulated in rats treated with 60 mg/kg Mn. We further investigated the role of S-nitrosylated PINK1 and its molecular mechanism in the high-dose Mn-mediated impairment of mitochondrial biogenesis in primary cultured neurons treated with the nitric oxide synthase 2 (NOS2) inhibitor 1400 W. Our results revealed that the PPARGC1A-mediated mitochondrial biogenesis was upregulated in neurons treated with 100 μM, but downregulated in neurons treated with 200 μM Mn, which was similar to the in vivo results. However, treatment with 1400W could effectively prevent the 200 μM Mn-mediated impairment of mitochondrial biogenesis by suppressing nitric oxide (NO)-mediated PINK1 S-nitrosylation and rescuing Parkin-interacting substrate (PARIS, ZNF746) degradation, thereby upregulating mitochondrial biogenesis via PPARGC1A. These findings demonstrated that S-nitrosylation of PINK1 and subsequent prevention of ZNF746 degradation were crucial signaling processes involved in the Mn-mediated impairment of mitochondrial biogenesis, which might serve as an underlying mechanism of Mn-induced neurotoxicity. Furthermore, this study provided a reliable target for the prevention and treatment of manganism.

Introduction High altitude polycythemia (HAPC) is a common chronic disease at high altitudes. It is characterized by excessive erythrocytosis (≥190 g·L-1 in females or ≥210 g·L-1 in males). HAPC severely jeopardizes the health status of plateau dwellers. The Qinghai-Tibet plateau, with an elevation above 4000 m, is the highest plateau in the world. Both Han and Tibetan populations residing there face the threat of HAPC. Therapeutic erythrocytapheresis (TE) was introduced to Tibet as an alternative to phlebotomy in 2015. Methods In this study, we retrospectively analyzed 155 patients with HAPC treated with TE in Tibet. Routine blood testing values before and after TE were compared to evaluate treatment efficacy. The efficiency rate, defined as the rate of increase in red blood cell depletion attained by TE compared with 450 mL whole blood phlebotomy, was calculated using whole blood volume and hematocrit before and after treatment and used to identify patients who maintained a normal hemoglobin level in the year after the TE procedure. Results On average, TE reduced red blood cell levels by 1.5×1012·L-1, hemoglobin concentration by 52 g·L-1, and hematocrit by 14% (P Conclusions TE is a feasible therapeutic method to treat HAPC on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau. The efficiency rate is a useful tool to predict the expected interval between TE procedures.

Proactive caching is a novel smart communication resource management method that can offer intelligent and economic networking services in the next generation cellular networks. In proactive caching, a common operation is using k-means to estimate content popularity. However, during the process, the base stations have to collect user’s location and content preference information to train a k-means model, which causes user privacy leakage. And current privacy-preserving k-means schemes usually suffer dramatic user quality of experience reduction, and cannot deal with the user dropout condition. Therefore, we propose a privacy-preserving federated k-means scheme (named PFK-means) for proactive caching in the next generation cellular networks. PFK-means is based on two privacy-preserving techniques, federated learning and secret sharing. In PFK-means, a suite of secret sharing protocols are designed to lightweight and efficient federated learning of k-means. These protocols allow privacy-preserving k-means training for proactive caching when there are dropout users. We seriously analyze the security of PFK-means and conduct comprehensive experiments to prove its security, effectiveness and efficiency. Through comparison, we can conclude that PFK-means outperforms other existing related schemes.

As a critical resource for tenants in cloud datacenter, network bandwidth is shared and competed by tenants at the same time. Previous static bandwidth allocation strategies have a good performance in the sharing case. However, for the competing case where bandwidth oversubscription causes conflicts in network resources, existing bandwidth allocation strategies cannot offer a satisfactory solution. In this article, we propose an auto pre-allocation strategy to solve the bandwidth oversubscription issue in cloud datacenter. Our proposal aims to design and implement a bandwidth allocation system embedded in cloud platform using the technology of software-defined networking (SDN). We employ two sampling methods in bandwidth collection and adopt the ARIMA model to make the prediction. Firstly, the virtual machines (VMs) are divided into predictable and unpredictable groups based on ARIMA model, and each predictable VM has three states in terms of its loading status. After that, corresponding bandwidth allocation strategy is produced to limit the bandwidth utilization in a proper range by adjusting the bandwidth for next period. The experimental results show that the auto pre-allocation strategy improves network performance of cloud datacenter, in both bandwidth utilization ratio and network capacity.

Vertically-oriented graphene (VG) directly grown on carbon cloth serves as unique support for uniform growth of Zif-67 nanocrystals, and subsequent melamine-assisted pyrolysis results in the anchoring of multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) encapsulated Co on VG. Systematic measurements indicate that pyridinic N and pyrrolitic N contents decreased from 600 to 900 °C, and the highest metallic Co contents, as well as well-defined MWCNTs were obtained at 800 °C. Taking advantage of the unique hierarchical nanostructures and adjusted compositions, the free-standing electrode shows excellent bifunctional oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activities. The presence of MWCNTs, metallic Co, active N species and Co-NxC sites, as well as in-situ formed Co oxides, will synergistically contribute to the electrocatalytic performance. Such free-standing film directly act as air-cathode to construct all solid-state Zn-air batteries (ZABs), showing comparable rechargeability to commercial Pt/C&Ir/C electrocatalysts, and also possessing unique flexibility. Present work opens a new avenue to improve the ORR and OER performance of Zif-67 derived nanomaterials via manipulating the hierarchical structure and chemical compositions, and sheds insights to the understanding of the electrocatalytic mechamism, also promotes the development of solid-state ZABs.

Poor crystalline MoS2/C hollow nanosphere with highly exposed active sites were rationally designed for the enhanced the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance and long-term durability. Polyoxometalates were used as oxidants to spontaneously initiate the polymerization of pyrrole, and served as Mo sources for synthesizing MoS2 in the following sulfurization, as well as P sources for doping carbon. Solid, hollow, and double-shelled hollow nanoshperes were facilely controlled via improving the annealing temperature, and showing varied HER performance due to the variations in nanostructure, crystallinity, defects, mass transports, etc. It is found that hollow nanospheres annealed at 800 °C exhibited the best HER performance, showing overpotential of 207 mV at 10 mA cm−2, and Tafel slope of 73 mV dec−1, as well as long-term stability for 25 h. Poor crystalline phase with abundant defective sites and highly accessible surface area possessing highly exposed active sites, as well as the synergistic effects between MoS2 and N, P-dual doped mesoporous carbon, contributed to improving the HER performance. Present work proved that the smart manipulation of the crystallinity of MoS2 is an efficient way to prepare high performance HER catalysts, which might be further utilized in photoelectrocatalytic water splitting in comparison to complete amorphous phase.

Bifunctional electrocatalysts for both hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is of fundamental significance for efficient solar-water splitting devices. Herein, we report the preparation of CoP nanoparticles embedded in N-doped mesoporous carbon via a simple yet facile route involving the polymerization of dopamine, Co salts and Si precursor, as well as the subsequent phosphidation treatment. The as-prepared catalysts not only can efficiently catalyze the HER in acidic and basic media with overpotential of 139 and 203 mV to reach current density of 10 mA cm−2, but also favors the sluggish OER process due to the presence of cobalt oxy-hydroxide on the surface of CoP, showing overpotential of 345 mV to acquire the same current density. The efficient catalytic activities are, highly probably, attributed to the favorable mass-transfer in the nanoporous carbon, interfacial effects at nitrogen dopants enriched site, small charge transfer resistance, as well as synergistic effect between active species and underlying support. The catalysts are appealing to serve as the promising bifunctional electrocatalysts for overall water-splitting with overpotential of 1.72 V to reach current density of 10 mA cm−2.

Background: Using the nationally representative data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), we conducted cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses to estimate the association between sarcopenia and depressive symptoms among older adults. Methods: In the cross-sectional analysis, the sample comprised 7706 participants aged ≥ 60 years (50.6% women; mean age 68.0 ± 6.5). A total of 4652 participants without depressive symptoms were recruited from the same cohort and were followed up in 2018. Findings: The prevalence of depressive symptoms in total populations, no-sarcopenia, possible sarcopenia and sarcopenia individuals were 27.1% (2085/7706), 21.5% (927/4310), 33.6% (882/2627), 35.9% (276/769), respectively. Both possible sarcopenia and sarcopenia were positively associated with higher odds of depressive symptoms (P < 0.01). 956 cases (20.6%) with incident depressive symptoms were identified. In the longitudinal analysis, individuals with the diagnosed possible sarcopenia (HR:1.27, 95% CI: 1.01–1.58, P = 0.040) and sarcopenia participants (HR:1.49, 95% CI: 1.06–2.09, P = 0.021) were more likely to have new onset depressive symptoms than no-sarcopenia peers. Compared with the individuals without any sarcopenia components, those having low muscle mass alone were not significantly associated with higher odds of depressive symptoms or increased risk of depressive symptoms ( P＞0.05). Interpretation: Both possible sarcopenia and sarcopenia were independent predictors for the occurrence of depressive symptoms among Chinese older adults. Our findings supports the longitudinal connection between sarcopenia and mental health problems, timely identification and management of both possible sarcopenia and sarcopenia as part of comprehensive strategies to fight against depressive symptoms. Funding; None to declare. Declaration of Interest: None to declare. Ethical Approval: This study was approved by the Ethical Review Committee of Peking University (approval number: IRB00001052-11015).

Summary: Background: Little is known about the association between sarcopenia and cardiovascular disease (CVD) among middle-aged and older adults. Using the nationally representative data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), we conducted cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses to investigate the association between sarcopenia status and CVD in middle-aged and older Chinese population. Methods: The sample comprised 15,137 participants aged at least 45 years from the CHARLS 2015. Sarcopenia status was defined according to the Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia 2019 (AWGS 2019) criteria. CVD was defined as the presence of physician-diagnosed heart disease and/or stroke. A total of 11,863 participants without CVD were recruited from the CHARLS 2015 and were followed up in 2018. Cox proportional hazards regression models were conducted to examine the effect of sarcopenia on CVD. Findings: The pre valence of CVD in total populations, no-sarcopenia, possible sarcopenia and sarcopenia individuals were 12.6% (1905/15,137), 10.0% (1026/10,280), 18.1% (668/3685), 18.0% (211/1172), respectively. Both possible sarcopenia [OR (95% CI): 1.29 (1.13–1.48)] and sarcopenia [1.72 (1.40–2.10)] were associated with CVD in total populations. During the 3.6 years of follow-up, 1,273 cases (10.7%) with incident CVD were identified. In the longitudinal analysis, individuals with the diagnosis of possible sarcopenia (HR:1.22, 95% CI: 1.05–1.43) and sarcopenia participants (HR:1.33, 95% CI: 1.04–1.71) were more likely to have new onset CVD than no-sarcopenia peers. Interpretation: Both possible sarcopenia and sarcopenia, assessed using the AWGS 2019 criteria, were associated with higher CVD risk among middle-aged and older Chinese adults. Funding: None.

Searching for superior air-cathodes is a long-term goal for practical applications of Zn-air batteries (ZABs). The sluggish process of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in air cathodes can be accelerated by introducing heteroatoms into carbon networks, due, most probably, to the improved electron and spin densities of carbon atoms, thus leading to the urgent demand of carbonaceous electrocatalysts. Here, N, S-codoped porous carbon materials are successfully prepared via the self-activation pyrolysis of garlic stems, and exhibit promising ORR activities and improved ZABs performances. GSC-900 shows onset and half-wave potentials of 0.89 and 0.80 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode, and efficient 4 electrons pathway, resistance to methanol crossover effect and CO poison, as well as robust durability after 30,000 s tests in alkaline electrolyte solution. GSC-900 as air cathode in a primary ZABs illustrates 1.19 V discharge voltage at 10 mA cm−2, and power density of 95 mW cm−2, higher stability than commercial Pt/C. GSC-900 combined with FeCoOx served as bifunctional ORR/OER air-cathode illustrated robust stability in rechargeable ZABs. Turning the biowastes into value-added products not only contributes to the environmental sustainability, but also provides a rational yet low-cost route for the generation of ORR electrocatalysts for metal-air batteries or fuel cells.

The pollution associated has intensified the environmental pressure within industrial transfer between the central and the western region in China. It’s the key issue that how to use environmental regulations to promote the orderly pollution-intensive industries transfer and the optimization of industrial structure to realize the construction of ecological civilization during the transformation and upgrading of economic. By constructing the index of environmental regulation and industry transfer, this paper analyzed the spatial-temporal change of pollution-intensive industry transfer. We collected panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2004 to 2016 and studied the spatial differences of pollution-intensive industry transfer from the perspective of environmental regulation. This paper studied the path and mechanism of environmental regulation on the pollution-intensive industry transfer theoretically and empirically with System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) model. The conclusions are as follows: Firstly, the pollution-intensive industry transfer in China shows a general trend from the east to the central and western regions. Secondly, there are obvious differences in environmental regulation between different regions. Thirdly, there are some differences in the impact of environmental regulation on industrial transfer. Therefore, the central and western regions should coordinate economic development and environmental protection when undertaking industrial transfer from the east, to optimize and upgrade industrial structure, and promote long-term economic development.

Background Although there have been a few studies reporting thromboembolic events (TEEs) in patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), the detailed profile of the TEEs and the prothrombotic effects of ICIs remain mostly unknown. Methods Data from January 2004 to December 2019 in the FAERS database were retrieved. We investigated the clinical characteristics of the TEEs and conducted disproportionality analysis by using reporting odds ratios (ROR) to compare ICIs with the full database and other anti-cancer agents. Results We identified 1855 reports of TEEs associated with ICIs. Affected patients tended to be male (59.68%) and older than 65 (47.12%). The case-fatality rate of the reported TEEs was high (38%). The median time to onset (TTO) of all cases was 42 (interquartile range [IQR] 15–96) days and the median TTO of fatal cases (31 [IQR 13–73] days) was significantly shorter than non-fatal cases (50 [IQR 20–108] days, p = 0.000002). ICIs showed increased risks of VTE (ROR 2.81, 95% CI 2.69–2.95) and ATE (ROR 1.44, 95% CI 1.37–1.52) compared with the full database. Compared with protein kinase inhibitors, ICIs showed an increased risk of VTE (ROR 1.23, 95% CI 1.17–1.29), but only anti-PD-L1 showed an increased risk of cerebral ATE (ROR 1.38, 95% CI 1.08–1.76). Compared with chemotherapy, ICIs showed an increased risk of PE (ROR 1.14, 95% CI 1.07–1.21). Conclusions Our study suggested ICIs tend to increase risks of VTE and ATE. The poor clinical outcome and early onset of these events should attract clinical attention.

In human, microRNA-214 (miR-214) plays crucial roles in mechanisms of immunity. However, the potential importance of miR-214 in immune mechanisms in dairy cows has not been investigated. In this study, we assessed potential immunity-related functions of miR-214 in human 293A cells and in bovine mammary epithelial cells (BMECs). We found that NFATc3 and TRAF3 could be targeted by miR-214 in both 293A cells and BMECs. We also found that miR-214 indirectly inhibited the expression of MAP3K14, TBK1 and inflammatory cytokines IL-6 and IL-1β. Taken together, our data revealed miR-214 regulated immunity-related genes by targeting NFATc3 and TRAF3, which provides insight into the molecular basis of immunity.

The passive residual heat removal system (PRHRS) of Modular High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (MHTGR) plays an important role in removing the residual heat of the reactor core and thus keeps nuclear power plant in safe. The PRHRS has been adopted for both the 10 MW High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTR-10) and the High Temperature Reactor Pebble-bed Modules (HTR-PM). A specific steady-state model has been built to calculate whether the system has sufficient heat transfer capacity under design parameters. The accuracy of the steady-state model is the key factor. Experiments of PRHRS was designed and conducted on HTR-10. The model's computation results were compared with the experimental data to analyze the deviations and to further improve the model. Other improvements are also suggested.

The effect of pulsed air-impingement jet drying (AID) on the sensory qualities of Shiitake mushroom was comprehensively examined compared with hot air drying (HAD) and vacuum freeze-drying (VFD). AID considerably improved the characteristic flavors (onion-like odor and umami) of dried mushrooms by partially inhibiting enzymatic and Maillard reactions. The texture characteristics (rehydration and shrinkage) of AID mushrooms had no significant difference to VFD ones and were better than HAD ones. AID combined the advantages of HAD and VFD technologies and outperformed HAD and VFD in terms of overall quality, though the total content of free amino acids and soluble sugars of AID mushrooms dropped slightly. In summary, AID is a promising drying technology for obtaining high sensory quality Shiitake mushrooms compared to prevailing drying methods.

Francisella tularensis, the causative agent of a fatal human disease known as tularemia, has been used in the bioweapon programs of several countries in the past, and now it is considered a potential bioterror agent. Extreme infectivity and virulence of F. tularensis is due to its ability to evade immune detection and to suppress the host's innate immune responses. However, Francisella-encoded factors and mechanisms responsible for causing immune suppression are not completely understood. Macrophages and neutrophils generate reactive oxygen species (ROS)/reactive nitrogen species as a defense mechanism for the clearance of phagocytosed microorganisms. ROS serve a dual role; at high concentrations they act as microbicidal effector molecules that destroy intracellular pathogens, and at low concentrations they serve as secondary signaling messengers that regulate the expression of various inflammatory mediators. We hypothesized that the antioxidant defenses of F. tularensis maintain redox homeostasis in infected macrophages to prevent activation of redox-sensitive signaling components that ultimately result in suppression of pro-inflammatory cytokine production and macrophage microbicidal activity. We demonstrate that antioxidant enzymes of F. tularensis prevent the activation of redox-sensitive MAPK signaling components, NF-κB signaling, and the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines by inhibiting the accumulation of ROS in infected macrophages. We also report that F. tularensis inhibits ROS-dependent autophagy to promote its intramacrophage survival. Collectively, this study reveals novel pathogenic mechanisms adopted by F. tularensis to modulate macrophage innate immune functions to create an environment permissive for its intracellular survival and growth.

Exposure to benzo(a)pyrene (BaP) is associated with poor neurodevelopment in children and memory impairment in adults. Previous research has demonstrated that mitochondrial damage plays an important role in BaP-induced neurotoxicity. Of interest, increasing evidence has suggested that resveratrol (RSV) can alleviate nerve cell damage, however the exact mechanisms of biological activity in mitochondria are not fully understood. In the current study, Wistar rats were exposed to BaP (1, 2, 4 mg/kg) and/or RSV (15, 30 mg/kg) during embryonic development and adolescence, and learning and memory ability, mitochondrial damage, and the expression of proteins associated with mitochondrial biogenesis and mitophagy were evaluated. These studies indicated that 2 and 4 mg/kg BaP could induce disorders of mitochondrial biogenesis and mitophagy, which leads to abnormal nerve cell development. However, pretreatment with 30 mg/kg RSV alleviated cell damage and the disorder of mitochondrial biogenesis by activating the AMPK/PGC-1α signaling pathway and promoting mitophagy. These findings suggested that RSV had utility in promoting mitochondrial homeostasis against BaP-induced nerve cell damage in the hippocampus of rats.

It is highly desired to develop low-cost and effective non-precious metal based electrocatalysts for water-to‑hydrogen conversion assisted by urea electro-oxidation reaction. In this work, Ni0-rich Ni/NiO nanocrystals were facilely synthesized on the surface of acid-treated nickel foam via thermal annealing in Ar/H2 (denoted as NF@Acid-H2). The three-dimensional free-standing NF@Acid-H2 electrode exhibited high HER and UOR activities at 156 mV and at 1.33 V to reach the current density of 10 mA/cm2, respectively. The urea electrolyzer needed a cell voltage of 1.49 V to deliver the current density of 10 mA/cm2, and could continuously generate H2 for 20 h with negligible activity loss. Systematic study revealed that the presence of Ni0 played a significant role to improve both HER and UOR performance. In particular, the Ni0-rich Ni/NiO exhibited better catalytic performance than that of Ni0-less counterpart. This work proved that the high urea electrolysis performance was dependent on the rational design of non-precious metal electrocatalysts with controllable compositions and hierarchical nanostructures.

A generalized Subset Simulation is developed for multiple stochastic responses.Unified intermediate events are constructed to solve the sorting difficulty.The proposed approach is more efficient than the original Subset Simulation.The proposed approach may be used in reliability-based optimization design. Estimating failure probabilities of multiple stochastic responses using a single run of Subset Simulation remains a challenging task in structural reliability analysis. To address this issue, this study develops a generalized Subset Simulation (GSS) approach, in which a unified intermediate event is defined to drive the simulation procedure progressively approaching multiple failure regions simultaneously. It bypasses the sorting difficulty arising from the multiple stochastic responses. The failure probabilities of multiple stochastic responses are obtained simultaneously by a single run of GSS. Finally, four representative examples are used to demonstrate the efficiency, accuracy and robustness of the proposed GSS approach.

Cerium(III) trislaurylsulfonate (Ce(LS)3), a Lewis acid and surfactant combined catalyst, was prepared and characterized by SEM, SEM-EDX, XRD, NMR, FT-IR, TG, and elemental analysis. Ce(LS)3 was found to be stable and efficient to catalyze one-pot Biginelli and solvent-free esterification reactions. Furthermore, Ce(LS)3 is easy to recycle after reaction by pouring into cold water and filtration. Present work will shed deep insight into the understanding of the catalytic nature of LASCs, and extend its application in important organic transformations.

Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) is essential for initiating the innate response to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) from Gram-negative bacteria by acting as a signal transducting receptor. In order to help in investigating TLR4 as a candidate disease-resistance gene in cows, we isolated the cDNA (GenBank accession no. DQ839566) by RT-PCR and rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) experiments and analyzed the sequence characters by bioinformatics. The results showed that cattle TLR4 gene about 3 739 bp contains an open reading frame of 2 526 bp encoded 841 amino acids (aa), 470 bp 5′ untranslated region (UTR), and 743 bp 3′ UTR. Tissue expression profile by RT-PCR indicated that TLR4 gene expresses in mammary glands, liver, muscle, duodenum, fats, uterus, kidneys, hearts, lungs, pancreas, and ovary. TLR4 protein domain predicted by bioinformatics consists of signal peptide, transmembrane helices domain, 3 sorts of leucine-rich repeat domains (LRR, LRR-TYP, and LRRCT), and a toll-interleukin1-resistance domain (TIR). Leucine-rich repeat domains were related with recognizing a broad of pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMP) from pathogen, and TIR domain for downstream signaling transduction was most conservative (98% identify) than other domains after alignment of protein from ovine, porcine, human, and mouse. In addition, a 470 bp 5′-flanking region sequence was amplified by PCR, and 15 putative DNA binding sites were predicted, but this sequence lacks TATA box, CCAAT character, and GC-rich regions.