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Sexual dimorphism of plants shapes the different morphology and physiology between males and females. However, it is still unclear whether it influences belowground ecological processes. In this study, rhizosphere soil of male and female Populus deltoides and bulk soil were collected from an 18-year plantation (male and female trees mix-planted) and grouped into three soil compartments. Soil carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) levels were determined, and soil bacterial communities were analyzed by high-throughput sequencing. The results showed the less total carbon and total organic carbon, the more nutrients (available phosphorus, nitrate nitrogen and ammonium nitrogen) available in the rhizosphere soils of female poplars than soils of males. However, α-diversity indices of the rhizosphere bacterial communities under male plants were significantly higher. Principal component analysis showed that the bacterial communities were significantly different between the male and female soil compartments. Further, the bacterial co-occurrence network in soil under male trees had more nodes and edges than under females. BugBase analysis showed the more functional bacteria taxa related to biofilm formation and antioxidation under males. The results indicate that soils under male poplars had more diverse and more complex co-occurrence networks of the rhizosphere bacterial community than soils under female trees, implying that male poplars might have better environmental adaptability. The study provides insight into the different soil-microbe interactions of dioecious plants. More details about the influencing mechanism of sexual dimorphism on rhizosphere soil bacterial communities need to be further studied.

Purpose This study aimed to examine the clinical characteristics and outcomes of patients with estrogen receptor-negative (ER−)/progesterone receptor-positive (PR+) early breast cancer. We also aimed to investigate the benefits of adjuvant endocrine therapy (ET) in this patient population. Methods Patients with early breast cancer diagnosed at West China Hospital were divided into the ER−/PR+, ER+, and ER−/PR− groups. The chi-square test was used to analyze differences in clinical and pathological features among the groups. Multivariable Cox and Fine–Gray regression models were used to compare mortality and locoregional recurrence (LRR)/distant recurrence (DR), respectively. We performed a subgroup analysis to determine which ER−/PR+ patients can benefit more from ET. Results From 2008 to 2020, we enrolled 443, 7104, and 2892 patients into the ER−/PR+, ER+, and ER−/PR− groups, respectively. The ER−/PR+ group showed more unfavorable clinical features and aggressive pathological characteristics than the ER+ group. The mortality, LRR, and DR rates were higher in the ER−/PR+ than in the ER+ group. Most clinical features and pathological characteristics were similar between the ER−/PR+ and ER−/PR− group and their outcomes were comparable. In the ER−/PR+ group, patients who received ET showed significantly lower LRR and mortality rates than those who did not; however, no difference was observed in DR. Subgroup analysis suggested that ER−/PR+ patients age ≥ 55 years, and postmenopausal status can benefit from ET. Conclusion ER−/PR+ tumors have more aggressive pathological characteristics and more unfavorable clinical features than ER+ tumors. ET can reduce the LRR and mortality rates in ER−/PR+ patients. Postmenopausal and age ≥ 55 years ER−/PR+ patients can benefit from ET.

Objectives This study assesses the style of tutor-postgraduate interactions in Chinese medical colleges and explores the association between postgraduates’ demographic factors and tutors’ demographic characteristics. Methods With the stratified sampling method, a cross-sectional online survey was used. A total of 813 medical postgraduates were recruited as participants, with an effective response rate of 85.49%. The two dimensions of “Professional Ability Interaction” and “Comprehensive Cultivation Interaction” in the self-developed “Instructor-Graduate Interaction Scale for Medical Colleges” were used as dependent variables. And tutors’ demographic characteristics and postgraduates’ demographic characteristics were taken as independent variables. Logistic regression analysis was used to explore the influencing factors of Tutor-Postgraduates Interactions in medical colleges. Results The Tutor-Postgraduates Interaction scale consists of 14 items from the two dimensions of “Professional Ability Interaction” and “Comprehensive Cultivation Interaction”. The results of the logistic regression analysis show the reasons for selecting the mentor students (industry recognition, the tutor’s research direction, charm in attracting mentors, and recommendations for mentor selection); student to mentor satisfaction; student to study life satisfaction; and regular academic seminars. Indirect guidance and a high postgraduate grade high are the protective factors of interaction between tutors and postgraduates of medical colleges and universities postgraduates. Older mentors and more graduate tutors are the risk factors for Tutor-Postgraduates Interaction in medical colleges (P Conclusion The current study proposes that managers should pay more attention to the double-track promotion of “Professional Ability Interaction” and “Comprehensive Cultivation Interaction”. We should not only pay attention to the cultivation of postgraduates’ professional ability but also pay more attention to the comprehensive cultivation including postgraduates’ mental and psychological aspects. The interaction between tutors and postgraduates in medical colleges is generally good, but much attention should be given to the dual-track promotion mentioned above. Regular academic seminars play an important role in the process of postgraduate training. The research findings, including the influencing factors regarding tutor-postgraduate interactions, the Professional Ability Interaction and Comprehensive Cultivation Interaction, are very informative and can contribute to strategies for postgraduate management systems that enhance this relationship.

Background In this study, we estimated the trend of unintentional injury mortality among children aged under-five years in China during 2010–2020. Methods Data were obtained from China’s Under 5 Child Mortality Surveillance System (U5CMSS). The total unintentional injury mortality and all specific-causes unintentional injury mortality was calculated, annual numbers of deaths and live births were adjusted by a 3-year moving average under-reporting rate. The Poisson regression model and the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel method were used to calculate the average annual decline rate (AADR) and the adjusted relative risk (aRR) of the unintentional injury mortality. Results In 2010–2020, a total of 7,925 unintentional injury-related deaths were reported in U5CMSS, accounting for 18.7% of all reported deaths. The overall proportion of unintentional injury-related deaths to total under-five children deaths has increased from 15.2% to 2010 to 23.8% in 2020 (χ2 = 227.0, p Conclusion The unintentional injury mortality rate of children aged under-five years decreased significantly from 2010 to 2020 in China, but great inequity exists in unintentional injury mortality in urban and rural areas. Unintentional injuries are still an important public health problem affecting the health of Chinese children. Effective strategies should be strengthened to reduce unintentional injury in children and these policies and programmes should be targeted to more specific populations, such as rural areas and males.

To identify the feasibility of deep learning-based diagnostic models for detecting and assessing lower-extremity fatigue fracture severity on plain radiographs.This retrospective study enrolled 1151 X-ray images (tibiofibula/foot: 682/469) of fatigue fractures and 2842 X-ray images (tibiofibula/foot: 2000/842) without abnormal presentations from two clinical centers. After labeling the lesions, images in a center (tibiofibula/foot: 2539/1180) were allocated at 7:1:2 for model construction, and the remaining images from another center (tibiofibula/foot: 143/131) for external validation. A ResNet-50 and a triplet branch network were adopted to construct diagnostic models for detecting and grading. The performances of detection models were evaluated with sensitivity, specificity, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), while grading models were evaluated with accuracy by confusion matrix. Visual estimations by radiologists were performed for comparisons with models.For the detection model on tibiofibula, a sensitivity of 95.4%/85.5%, a specificity of 80.1%/77.0%, and an AUC of 0.965/0.877 were achieved in the internal testing/external validation set. The detection model on foot reached a sensitivity of 96.4%/90.8%, a specificity of 76.0%/66.7%, and an AUC of 0.947/0.911. The detection models showed superior performance to the junior radiologist, comparable to the intermediate or senior radiologist. The overall accuracy of the diagnostic model was 78.5%/62.9% for tibiofibula and 74.7%/61.1% for foot in the internal testing/external validation set.The deep learning-based models could be applied to the radiological diagnosis of plain radiographs for assisting in the detection and grading of fatigue fractures on tibiofibula and foot.• Fatigue fractures on radiographs are relatively difficult to detect, and apt to be misdiagnosed. • Detection and grading models based on deep learning were constructed on a large cohort of radiographs with lower-extremity fatigue fractures. • The detection model with high sensitivity would help to reduce the misdiagnosis of lower-extremity fatigue fractures.

Introduction Super-enhancer-associated lncRNAs play important roles in the occurrence and development of malignant tumors, including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Objectives The current work aimed to identify and characterize super-enhancer-associated lncRNAs in the pathogenesis of HCC. Methods H3K27ac ChIP-seq data from HepG2 cell line and two HCC tissues were used to identify super-enhancer-associated lncRNAs in HCC. JQ-1 treatment and CRISPR-dCas9 system were performed to confirm super-enhancer activity. Quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR), ChIP-qPCR, and dual-luciferase reporter system assay demonstrated the regulation of E2F1 on super-enhancer. Functional loss experiment was used to identify the function of LINC01004. Results In this study, we identified and characterized LINC01004, a novel super-enhancer-associated lncRNA, as a crucial oncogene in HCC. LINC01004 was upregulated in liver cancer tissues and was associated with poor patient prognosis. Moreover, LINC01004 promoted cell proliferation and metastasis of HCC. The binding of E2F1 to the super-enhancer could promote the transcription of LINC01004, while the inhibition of super-enhancer activity decreased LINC01004 expression. Conclusion This finding might provide mechanistic insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying hepatocarcinogenesis and the biological function of super-enhancer. LINC01004 can serve as a potential therapeutic target for HCC patient. Graphical abstract

Flexible electrodes have attracted the interest of a wide range of people because they can monitor human health signals like ECG, EMG and EEG as wearable devices. However, PDMS-based membrane electrodes have the problem of difficulty in depositing metal layers, while fabric electrodes have high contact impedance. Furthermore, the widely used Ag/AgCl electrodes have the shortcomings of skin inflammation or skin irritation. Therefore, we fabricate a skin-like electrical conductive electrode via electroless silver plating on the surface of regenerated cellulose membrane, in which the cellulose membrane is obtained by the dissolution of cotton fiber with green solvent ionic liquid [Bmim]Cl. The as-prepared biocompatible electrode with low skin-electrode contact impedance can be used as a dry electrode for a long-term period of use. The impedance at 700 Hz is only 8 kΩ/cm2, and the conductivity can reach 252 s/cm. After 5 hours of wear, the skin contact impedance of the electrode was only 10 kΩ/cm2 under 700 Hz(when AgNO3 was used at a concentration of 0.20 mol/L). Importantly, the electrodes not only provide a stable and clear ECG signal, but also offer a high level of comfort and low impedance, when used for long-term health monitoring.

The present work investigated the cyclic deformation behavior and fatigue life of thermal-aged cerium oxide (CeO2)-modified vulcanized natural rubber (NR/CeO2). Thermal aging was carried out at the temperature ranging from 60 to 100 °C for 24 h and 72 h, respectively. The experimental results show that the CeO2 filler is a useful reinforcing role, which can improve the comprehensive mechanical properties of the heat-aged vulcanizates. The uniaxial fatigue properties of thermal-aged NR/CeO2 rubber were studied at the strain amplitudes of 0–125%, 0–150% and 0–175%, respectively. The axial stress amplitude of NR/CeO2 is higher than that of NR. The CeO2 filler can significantly improve the fatigue strength of rubbers. When the aging temperature is lower than 80 °C, the fatigue life of NR/CeO2 is longer than that of NR at the axial strains of 0–125% and 0–150%.

Background Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) are a growing concern and a challenge for maternity care providers as the prevalence of hypertension continues to increase. However, optimal management of HDP is unclear. Therefore, we aimed to explore the differences in adverse fetal outcomes among women with different subtypes of HDP and different blood pressure (BP) levels, to provide evidence-based management of HDP. Methods We obtained data from China’s National Maternal Near-Miss Surveillance System from 2012 to 2020. Associations between BP management and adverse fetal outcomes, stratified by the four subtypes of HDP, were assessed using logistic regression analysis with a robust variance estimator. Results For the period, a total of 393,353 pregnant women with HDP were included in the study; 8.51% had chronic hypertension, 2.27% had superimposed preeclampsia, 50.17% had preeclampsia or eclampsia, and 39.04% had gestational hypertension. The BP levels at delivery admission were mostly (61.14%) of non-severe stage 2 (systolic BP 140–159 mm Hg and/or diastolic BP 90–109 mm Hg) hypertension by American Heart Association classification. A high rate of adverse fetal outcomes was observed among women with HDP, especially among those aged 35 y or those diagnosed with superimposed preeclampsia. Compared with those with normal BP levels at delivery admission, we found an upward curve with increased risk among pregnant women with more severe BP levels, including the risk of preterm birth and small for gestational age (SGA) fetus. The odds ratios (ORs) of stillbirth, neonatal death, and low Apgar scores associated with severe stage 2 hypertension increased significantly. In addition, the association between BP at admission and fetal outcomes differed among women with varying HDP subtypes. Pregnant women with preeclampsia or eclampsia had an increased risk for preterm birth (adjusted OR [aOR], 1.33 [95% confidence interval {CI}, 1.07 ~ 1.65]) and SGA (aOR, 1.37 [95% CI, 1.10 ~ 1.71]) even when the admission BP was at stage 1 level. Conclusion Greater attention should be paid to cases involving preeclampsia superimposed on chronic hypertension and pregnant women aged 35 y to mitigate the burden of adverse fetal outcomes caused by HDP.

Purpose To evaluate the impact of Nausea and vomiting in pregnancy (NVP) on the risk of preterm birth (PTB) and low birth weight (LBW), and explore the effect of genetic polymorphisms on the severity of NVP. Methods A prospective study was conducted. Participants’ experience of NVP prior to 12 gestational weeks were evaluated by a Pregnancy-Unique Quantification of Emesis and Nausea (PUQE) scale. 11 Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) loci located in growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF15) and leucine rich repeat containing 25 (LRRC25) gene of chr19p13.11 and intergenic region of chr4q12 were genotyped, which were implicated as genetic risk factors for NVP. Logistic regression models were applied to determine the effect of NVP in the first trimester on the risk of PTB and LBW, and genetic polymorphisms on the risk of NVP. Results Among 413 pregnant women, the incidence of nausea and vomiting was 85.5% (n = 353) in the first trimester, including 38.7% (n = 160) mild vomiting, 42.6% (n = 176) moderate vomiting and 4.1% (n = 17) severe vomiting. 33 were PTB, 20 were LBW. Compared with pregnant women without NVP, women with mild, moderate or severe NVP in the first trimester were not associated with the risk of PTB and LBW. Besides, the polymorphisms of 11 SNPs loci were not associated with the risk of NVP. Conclusions Our study indicated that symptoms of nausea and vomiting in the first trimester were not significantly associated with PTB and LBW, and there were also no associations between GDF15 and LRRC25 polymorphisms and NVP.

T cell receptor excision circles (TRECs) are small circularized DNA elements produced during rearrangement of T cell receptor (TCR) genes. Because TRECs are fairly stable, do not replicate during mitosis, and are not diluted during division of naïve T cells (Dion et al. [1]), they are suitable for assessing the number of newly formed T cells (Ping and Denise [2]). In this study, we detected TRECs in 521 healthy Chinese children aged 0-18 years in different clinical settings. The TRECs decrease with aging and show lower levels in preterm and low birth weight (BW) babies compared to those in full-term infants, while the preterm babies can also show comparable levels of TRECs when they have a gestation age (GA)-matched BW. We found a strong correlation between TRECs and peripheral CD4 naïve T cell numbers, which was age-related. We also analyzed the TRECs in different PIDs. Since T cell defects vary in PIDs, TREC levels change inconsistently. For example, in Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (WAS), combining the level of TREC with lymphocyte subsets can help to distinguish subtypes of disease.Conclusion: We established the reference value range for TRECs by evaluating children below 18 years old in China, which could be used to screen for PIDs during early life. What is Known: • The TREC levels are decreased with age, and there is a positive correlation between TRECs and the numbers of naïve T cells. What is New: • This is the largest study to determine TREC reference levels in healthy Chinese pediatric, we provide solid data showing a correlation between CD4 naïve T cell counts and TREC levels according to age. We point out the GA matched BW is need to be considered during the SCID newborn screening. We are the first group showed that TREC levels can help clinician distinguish different WAS phenotype.

As a valuable medicine food homology plant, Codonopsis Radix has been widely used in China. This study aimed to analyze the content of nine potentially toxic elements in three Codonopsis Radix varieties and evaluate their health risks to the human body. In this study, a total of 147 samples were collected from five provinces in China. The content of nine potentially toxic elements (Al, Mn, Cu, Cr, Ni, As, Pb, Cd, and Hg) were determined by ICP-MS. Results showed that the average contents of Al, Mn, Cu, Cr, Ni, Pb, As, Cd, and Hg were 486.81, 30.30, 5.59, 1.38, 1.24, 0.40, 0.20, 0.16, and 0.11 mg/kg, respectively. The Codonopsis tangshen Oliv. samples from Hubei showed the highest contents of eight elements (Al, Mn, Cr, Ni, Pb, As, Cd, and Hg) among three varieties, and the highest Cu level was found in Codonopsis pilosula (Franch.) Nannf. samples from Shanxi. The content of toxic elements in three Codonopsis Radix varieties showed significant differences (p

Ultra-light electromagnetic (EM) wave absorbers with strong absorption bandwidth are highly desired in reducing EM pollution. Herein, a series of nanocomposites with ZnO nanoparticles decorated nanoscale reduced graphene oxide (NRGO) were synthesized via a simple and efficient hydrothermal process. The characterizations reveal that NRGO with layered structure possesses intensive folds and the ZnO nanoparticles are well attached on the surface of NRGO. The EM parameters demonstrate that the EM wave absorption properties of ZnO/NRGO nanocomposite are closely related to the amount of NRGO. The minimum reflection loss (RL) values of ZnO/NRGO-10, ZnO/NRGO-15 and ZnO/NRGO-20 are − 44.4 dB with a thickness of 4.5 mm, − 39.6 dB with a thickness of 2.5 mm and − 18.8 dB with a thickness of 2.0 mm, respectively. The largest effective absorption bandwidths of ZnO/NRGO-10, ZnO/NRGO-15 and ZnO/NRGO-20 are 5.5 GHz at 2.5 mm, 5.2 GHz at 2.5 mm and 5.5 GHz at 2.0 mm, respectively. These outstanding EM wave absorption properties resulting from the multiple reflection, various polarization relaxation processes and synergistic effects between ZnO and NRGO. It is believed that as-synthesized ZnO/NRGO nanocomposite could be used as promising EM wave absorber.

Heavy metal contamination in ground dust presents potential environmental and human health threats. However, the heavy metal contamination status of ground dust in the vicinity of public point utilities remain poorly explored. Therefore, this study has been designed to analyze the heavy metal contaminations in the ground dust collected monthly near a public bronze sculpture in an urban campus of Nantong, China, using geo-accumulation indexes (Igeo), enrichment factors (EF), potential ecological risk indexes (RI), and health risks (non-carcinogenic risks-HI and carcinogenic risks-CR). This study revealed that the maximum Cr, Cu, Mn, Ni, Pb, and Zn concentrations in ground dust samples were 156.2, 708.8, 869.8, 140.8, 180.5, and 1089.7 mg kg-1 respectively in which the mean Cu and Zn concentrations were 9 and 7 times higher than the background level in soil. Temporally speaking, for the majority of heavy metals (with the exception of Ni), the high concentration seasons tend to mainly be the summer and autumn, as indicated by the higher Xlf and SIRM values during those seasons. It was observed that Cu and Zn exhibited significant enrichment (EF = 11.7 and 8.4, respectively), moderate to strong pollution (Igeo = 2.4 and 2.0, respectively), and moderate and low potential ecological risks (Eir = 45.6 and 6.6, respectively). The non-carcinogenic risks which adults exposed to the heavy metal concentrations suffered were found to be insignificant. However, the carcinogenic risks related to Ni (1.3E-04) had exceeded the acceptable level. Based on the obtained PCA and correlation analysis, the heavy metal concentrations in the ground dust of urban campuses could be related to public utilities, traffic-related exhaust sources, and industrial activities. This study’s findings demonstrated that urban public utilities require increased attention due to their significant enrichment, ecological risk factors, and the significant carcinogenic risks to the population.

Background Breeding of conventional and hybrid rice (Oryza sativa L.) have solved hunger problems and increased farmers' income in the world. Molecular markers have been widely used in marker-assisted breeding and identification of larger numbers of different bred varieties in the past decades. The recently developed SNP markers are applied for more stable and detectable compared with other markers. But the cost of genotyping lots SNPs is high. So, it is essential to select less representative SNPs and inexpensive detecting methods to lower the cost and accelerate variety identification and breeding process. KASP (Kompetitive Allele-Specific PCR) is a flexible method to detect the SNPs, and large number of KASP markers have been widely used in variety identification and breeding. However, the ability of less KASP markers on massive variety identification and breeding remains unknown. Results Here, 48 KASP markers were selected from 378 markers to classify and analyze 518 varieties including conventional and hybrid rice. Through analyzing the population structure, the 48 markers could almost represent the 378 markers. In terms of variety identification, the 48 KASP markers had a 100% discrimination rate in 53 conventional indica varieties and 193 hybrid varieties, while they could distinguish 89.1% conventional japonica rice from different breeding institutes. Two more markers added would increase the ratio from 68.38 to 77.94%. Additionally, the 48 markers could be used for classification of subpopulations in the bred variety. Also, 8 markers had almost completely different genotypes between japonica and indica, and 3 markers were found to be very important for japonica hybrid rice. In hybrid varieties, the heterozygosity of chromosomes 3, 6 and 11 was relatively higher than others. Conclusions Our results showed that 48 KASP markers could be used to identify rice varieties, and the panel we tested could provide a database for breeders to identify new breeding lines. Also, the specific markers we found were useful for marker-assisted breeding in rice, including conventional and hybrid.

Objective We aimed to investigate the effect of differentially methylated genes and chronic childhood stress on the development of depressive symptoms in Chinese adolescents, as well as to test whether methylation at baseline can be used as a predictor of remission at follow-up after six weeks of treatment. Methods After recruiting 87 MDD patients and 53 healthy controls, we compared demographic and baseline clinical characteristics. The Childhood Chronic Stress Questionnaire was used to assess stress caused by early-life events. MDD patients underwent six weeks of treatment, and response to treatment was assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory-II. In addition, four MDD patients and five controls were randomly chosen for genome-wide methylation analysis. Results The gene RPS6KA5 showed significant methylation differences between the two groups. Severity of chronic childhood stress was significantly associated with increased risk of depression in adolescents, but not with treatment response. Baseline RPS6KA5 methylation can predict remission after six weeks of treatment. We did not observe any interaction between RPS6KA5 methylation and chronic childhood stress. Conclusions Our results suggest that RPS6KA5 methylation can be used as a predictor of response to treatment in adolescent MDD patients. Here we offer new evidence for the role of epigenetics in early response to treatment of depression. Trial registration ChiCTR, ChiCTR2000033402, 31/05/2020, http://www.chictr.org.cn/index.aspx

The present work reports the construction of polypyrrole (PPy) hydrogels directly with the as-synthesized PPy nanotubes (PPy-NTs) through infiltration of poly vinyl alcohol (PVA) and poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) solutions. This method avoids the time-consuming purification of the in-situ formed conducting hydrogels and provides a facile way to incorporate nanostructured conducting polymers evenly into the hydrogel matrix. PPy-NTs/PVA/PAA hydrogels with dual cross-linking networks were prepared through multiple freeze-thawing cycles followed by coordination with iron (III) ions. The tensile and compression strength of the hydrogels are ca. 54 kPa and 160 kPa, respectively. The PPy-NTs/PVA/PAA hydrogel was mainly electronic conducting dominated, and it showed the highest conductivity of ca. 0.04 S/cm after swollen in 0.2 M HCl (with 2wt% of PPy-NTs). Benefited from the high aspect ratio and high conductivity of PPy nanotubes, it is probable to mediate the PPy content and the integrity of the electronic conducting pathways to develop high-performance hydrogel materials used as strain sensors.

The development of increasingly affordable ultrasonic detectors and automatic classifiers has increasingly boosted the use of acoustic recording of echolocation calls to survey bats all over the world. Echolocation call keys are crucial to reliably classify acoustic recordings, but those are not available for many regions, such as China. In the present study, we conducted a systematic review of bat echolocation studies across continental China and developed an acoustic identification key. Based on 130 studies, published from 1999 to 2020, we obtained echolocation parameters from 64 bat species (47.4% of the total echolocating species known from the country). This review highlights the lack of echolocation references from continental China for 71 species, from which, the echolocation of 21 has never been described. Additionally, we developed the Bat Knowledge Index, an indicator that allows the identification of key priority areas for future research on bat acoustics and geographic biases in the existing studies, further highlighting the lack of studies in the northwestern regions of the country. The compiled identification key provides easy-to-follow identification steps to classify the echolocation calls of 114 species (84.5% of all Chinese echolocating species) to either species (11.4%) or phonic group level (88.6%). This key represents a useful baseline tool and a further step to increase bioacoustic studies’ suitability in China.

Monolayer MoS2 is a typical transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), which is similar to graphene. However, MoS2 is a direct band gap semiconductor material. Based on the density functional theory, the changes of band structure, densities of states, phonon dispersion relations, and Raman spectrum of 2H monolayer MoS2 under ab biaxial strain are studied in this paper. The results show that the band gap, the structural stability, and the peak value of Raman spectrum of monolayer MoS2 are obviously changed under the biaxial strain. At compressive strain of 4%, monolayer MoS2 changed from direct band gap semiconductor to indirect band gap semiconductor, and at tensile strain of 10%, it changed from semiconductor material to metal material. During compressive strain above 4%, imaginary frequency appears in the phonon dispersion curve, and it means that the structure becomes unstable.

At present, the Chinese government is encouraging people to learn calligraphy; however, an automatic evaluation method for the results is not available. Calligraphy evaluation is challenging, because calligraphic characters are complex graphics composed of strokes as basic units. Therefore, it is necessary to consider not only the structure of the whole character but also the details of each stroke. To address this problem, we propose an automatic stroke segmentation method for calligraphic images as the foundation for the subsequent evaluation task. Specifically, we treat the stroke segmentation problem as an image to image translation problem and propose the stroke segmentation generative adversarial network (SSGAN) algorithm. Unlike the existing approaches that do not exhibit a satisfactory performance or are not suitable for use in practical projects, the proposed approach can efficiently obtain accurate results. The SSGAN enables the simultaneous generation of all the strokes of a calligraphic image, based on a multistroke tensor training strategy. Moreover, we specifically design a ResU-Net structure with embedded attention modules to enhance the accuracy of the results. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method over the existing state of the art models.

Background As an adequate plant protein raw material, soybean meal has attracted extensive attention because of its high protein content, abundant amino acids essential for animals, and many functional nutrients. Feed fermentation is a new way to improve nutrient absorption of animals by inoculating microorganisms, which can also play a probiotic role. In order to screen the lactic acid bacteria with remarkable protease-producing performance and excellent growth and fermentation characteristics, 1000 strains isolated from different materials were evaluated in this study. After primary and re-screening, 22 strains both with protein clear zone diameters larger than 15.00 mm (including the diameter of a hole puncher 10.00 mm) and protease activities greater than 20.00 U/mL were screened out for physiological and biochemical tests, as well as antimicrobial performance tests. Results Strains P (Pig) 15 and ZZUPF (Zhengzhou University Pig Fecal) 95, which have excellent physiological and biochemical characteristics, as well as good inhibition abilities for Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, Listeria monocytogenes, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Micrococcus luteus, were selected and used as fermenting agents for 3- and 30-day (d) fermentation of soybean meal. The analysis of microorganisms, fermentation quality, and chemical composition during fermentation revealed that all lactic acid bacteria addition groups had lower harmful bacteria and pH value, as well as higher lactic acid bacteria content and lactic acid level compared with CK and protease-treated groups. These effects were even better especially after 30 days of fermentation. Conclusions This study indicated that the selected strains Lactiplantibacillus plantarum subsp. plantarum P15 and Enterococcus faecalis ZZUPF95 could be considered as potential probiotics for fermenting soybean meal for further research. Graphical abstract

Multi-elemental analysis is widely used to identify the geographical origins of plants. The purpose of this study was to explore the feasibility of combining chemometrics with multi-element analysis for classification of Codonopsis Radix from different producing regions of Gansu province (China). A total of 117 Codonopsis Radix samples from 7 counties of Gansu province were collected. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was used for the determination of 28 elements (39 K, 24 Mg, 44Ca, 27Al, 137Ba, 57Fe, 23Na, 88Sr, 55Mn, 66Zn, 65Cu, 85Rb, 61Ni, 53Cr, 51 V, 7Li, 208Pb, 59Co, 75As, 133Cs, 71 Ga, 77Se, 205Tl, 114Cd, 238U, 107Ag, 4Be and 202Hg). Among macro elements, 39 K showed the highest level, whereas 23Na was found to have the lowest content value. Micro elements showed the concentrations order of: 88Sr > 55Mn > 66Zn > 85Rb > 65Cu. Among trace elements, 53Cr and 61Ni showed higher content and 4Be was not detected in all samples. Intra-regions differentiation was performed by principal component analysis (PCA), cluster analysis (CA) and supervised learning algorithms such as linear discriminant analysis (LDA), k-nearest neighbors (k-NN), support vector machines (SVM), and random forests (RF). Among them, the RF model performed the best with an accuracy rate of 78.79%. Multi-elemental analysis combined with RF was a reliable method to identify the origins of Codonopsis Radix in Gansu province.

BackgroundThe infant mortality rate (IMR) is considered a basic measure of public health for countries around the world. The specific aim of our study was to provide an updated description of infant mortality rate among different regions in rural China, and assess the trends and causes of the IMR geographical disparities.MethodsData were collected from China’s Under-5 Child Mortality Surveillance System(U5CMSS). The annual number of deaths and causes of death were adjusted using a 3-year moving average underreporting rate based on annual national data quality control results. The average annual decline rate (AADR) and the relative risk (RR) of the IMR and cause-specific infant mortality were calculated by Poisson regression and the Cochran–Mantel–Haenszel method. Data analysis was completed by SAS software.ResultsThere was an apparent decrease in infant mortality in rural China from 2010 to 2018, at the AADR of 11.0% (95%CI 9.6–12.4), 11.2% (95%CI 10.3–12.1) and 6.6% (95%CI 6.0–7.3) in the eastern, central and western rural areas, respectively. The IMR was highest in the western rural area, followed by the central and eastern rural areas. Compared with the eastern rural area, the RR of infant mortality in the central rural area remained at 1.4–1.6 and increased from 2.4 (95%CI 2.3–2.6) in 2010–2012 to 3.1 (95% CI 2.9–3.4) in 2016–2018 in the western rural area. Pneumonia, preterm birth /LBW and birth asphyxia were the leading causes of infant deaths in the western rural area. Mortality rates of these three causes fell significantly in 2010–2018 but contributed to a higher proportion of deaths in the western rural area than in the central and western rural ares.ConclusionsOur study indicated that the infant mortality rate dropped significantly from 2010 to 2018, however, geographical disparities of IMR in rural China are still persist. Therefore, there is an urgent need for public health programmes and policy interventions for infants in western rural China.

Electrocardiography is one of the most significant technologies for detecting cardiovascular diseases. Nowadays, the problems of various electrodes still meet a great challenge. Herein, we design a low cost, environmentally friendly and flexible conductive electrode using cellulose and polyvinyl alcohol as a substrate assembled with conductive polymer polythiophene by in situ oxidative polymerization, and the green solvent 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride as a crosslinking agent. The polyvinyl alcohol/cellulose/PEDOT:PSS(PCPP) composite electrode has excellent features of flexibility, low skin contact impedance and comfortable contact with skin. When the load of EDOT reaches 15 wt%, the electrode is stable and can clearly monitor the characteristic wave of ECG signals. Therefore, based on cellulosic biopolymer and conductive polymer PEDOT:PSS, an environmentally friendly, flexible and stable PCPP composite electrode is obtained and can be a promising candidate applied in the fields of energy storage and ECG sensing.

Herein, binary CuS/BTO and ternary CuS/Ag/BTO composite photocatalysts have been fabricated by anchoring CuS and Ag nanoparticles onto BaTiO3 (BTO) polyhedra. The as-prepared composite photocatalysts were characterized by means of the techniques of transmission/scanning electron microscopy, x-ray powder diffraction, ultraviolet–visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and photoluminescence spectroscopy. Transient photocurrent and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurements suggest that the ternary 5%CuS/(1%Ag/BTO) composite possesses the highest separation efficiency of electron/hole pairs. The photodegradation experiments were conducted by using simulated sunlight as the light source to decompose Rhodamine B in water solution. The 5%CuS/(1%Ag/BTO) and 5%CuS/BTO composites are demonstrated to have the highest and second highest photodegradation activity, respectively. As compared with that of bare BaTiO3 and CuS, the photoactivity of 5%CuS/(1%Ag/BTO) is increased to 3.3 and 2.0 times, respectively. The electron/hole separation mechanism and the role of localized surface plasmon resonance of Ag nanoparticles in the dye photodegradaton were systematically investigated.

Grain refinement has been applied to enhance the materials strength for miniaturization and lightweight design of nuclear equipment. It is critically important to investigate the low-cycle fatigue (LCF) properties of grain refined 316LN austenitic stainless steels for structural design and safety assessment. In the present work, a series of fine-grained (FG) 316LN steels were produced by thermo-mechanical processes. The LCF properties were studied under a fully reversed strain-controlled mode at room temperature. Results show that FG 316LN steels demonstrate good balance of high strength and high ductility. However, a slight loss of ductility in FG 316LN steel induces a significant deterioration of LCF life. The rapid energy dissipation in FG 316LN steels leads to the reduction of their LCF life. Dislocations develop rapidly in the first stage of cycles, which induces the initial cyclic hardening. The dislocations rearrange to form dislocations cell structure resulting in cyclic softening in the subsequent cyclic deformation. Strain-induced martensite transformation appears in FG 316LN stainless steels at high strain amplitude (Δe/2 = 0.8%), which leads to the secondary cyclic hardening. Moreover, a modified LCF life prediction model for grain refined metals predicts the LCF life of FG 316LN steels well.

The effects of a cerium oxide (CeO2) filler on the fatigue properties of heat-aged vulcanised natural rubber (NR) were tested and analysed. The vulcanised NR specimens, filled and unfilled with CeO2, were heat-treated for 24 h. Uniaxial fatigue tests were performed on the two specimens under different strain amplitudes, and the microstructures of the fracture surfaces of the specimens were analysed using scanning electron microscopy. The results show that filling with CeO2 improves both the ageing resistance and fatigue resistance of the material. Notably, CeO2 has good dispersibility in the matrix, improves the internal network structure of the rubber, and enhances the interactions between the molecular chains of the rubber. The fatigue fracture surfaces of both materials have a fish-scale-like appearance, indicating ductile fracture, but the CeO2-filled heat-aged vulcanised NR has a smoother surface, better wettability of the filler, and longer fatigue life.

Background Older adults are at a higher risk from COVID-19. Individual preventive behaviors including frequent hand washing, mask wearing, and social distancing play important roles in reducing the transmission of COVID-19 in the community. This study aimed to identify the determinants of three preventive behaviors of older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic by using an Integrated Social Cognition Model. Methods Using a prospective study design, 516 Chinese older adults from Hubei province of China (mean age = 67.55 years, SD = 6.60, 57.9% females) completed two online questionnaire surveys. The demographics, social cognition constructs (motivational self-efficacy, risk perception, attitude, subjective norm, health knowledge, intention, volitional self-efficacy, planning, action control) and three preventive behaviors were measured during the first-wave online survey from 18 May 2020 to 7 June 2020. One month later, three preventive behaviors were measured again during the second-wave online survey. Data were analyzed by structural equation modelling. Results Models showed attitude, motivational self-efficacy and subjective norm were consistent predictors of intention, motivational self-efficacy was a consistent predictor of volitional self-efficacy, planning and volitional self-efficacy were consistent predictors of action control, and health knowledge was a consistent predictor of behaviors across all three preventive behaviors. In addition, mediating relationships were found in the model of hand washing behavior. In particular, planning (β = .109, p = .042) and action control (β = .056, p = .047) mediated between volitional self-efficacy and hand washing respectively. Action control also mediated between planning and hand washing (β = .087, p = .044). Moreover, the inclusion of past behaviors in three models attenuated most of the structural relations. Conclusions The current study’s findings basically supported the Integrated Social Cognition Model and identified key modifiable determinants of preventive behaviors. Based on this model, future interventions aiming to promote COVID-19 preventive behaviors among older adults are warranted.

With the popularization of intelligent transportation system, the demand for vision-based algorithms and performance becomes more and severe. Vehicle detection techniques have made great strides in the past decades; however, there are still some challenges, such as the classification of tiny vehicles. The images of distant vehicles are generally blurred and lack detailed information due to their low resolutions. To solve this problem, we propose a novel method to generate high-resolution (HR) images from fuzzy images by employing a generative adversarial network (GAN). In addition, the dataset used for training standard GAN is generally constructed by down-sampling from the neutral HR images. Unfortunately, the effect of reconstruction is more modest. To cope with this trouble, we first construct our dataset by using three fuzzy kernels. Then, the exposure of the low-resolution (LR) image is adjusted randomly. Furthermore, a hybrid objective function is designed to guide the model to restore image details. The experimental results on the KITTI data set verify the effectiveness of our method for tiny vehicle classification.

The initial-boundary value problem for the three-dimensional Euler–Boltzmann equations of a polytropic, ideal and isentropic fluid in radiation hydrodynamics is considered outside a unit ball. It is proved that some $$C^{1}$$ solution will develop singularities in a finite time provided that a weighed functional associated with the initial momentum and the initial intensity of radiation is large.

Automatic detection of suburban building areas (SBAs) is one of the research hotspots for remote sensing images (RSIs), which are widely used in the dynamic monitoring of land use, illegal building monitoring, anti-terrorism, etc. However, because the buildings are distributed targets and their appearances are quite different, the current mainstream detection methods have difficulty obtaining good detection results. To improve the detection performance, this paper presents an SBA detection method based on a deformation adaptability model. It can be divided into two main stages. (1) During key structure (KS) extraction, we first obtain building potential area by Mask R-CNN, and then we extract KS from building potential area based on roof parallel structures (RPSs) to achieve the rapid extraction of KSs. (2) In candidate region identification, to make full use of the relationship among the key structures of buildings, we present a deformation adaptability model, which adapts well to distributed targets with different appearances, and it also has strong resistance to intra-class deformations and a strong ability to eliminate false alarms. We test the proposed method on both general and complex datasets, and the experimental results show that our method has a higher detection accuracy and efficiency than typical methods.

In this study, we aimed to characterize lactic acid bacteria strains derived from infants’ feces, to evaluate the probiotic potential and explore the wide-spectrum antimicrobial activity. Of 800 isolates, 20 inhibited the growth of enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli K88 and Salmonella enterica ATCC 13076. On the basis of 16S rRNA sequence analysis, the 20 isolates were assigned to Lactobacillus casei (7), Lactobacillus paracasei (2), Lactobacillus plantarum (4), Lactobacillus rhamnosus (2), Enterococcus avium (3), Enterococcus faecium (1), and Enterococcus lactis (1) species. In addition, 12 strains with high antimicrobial activity were investigated for the presence of probiotic properties such as physiological-biochemical characteristics, antimicrobial susceptibility, hemolytic activity, hydrophobicity, and aggregation activity. Wide-spectrum antimicrobial activity analysis revealed that approximately all tested strains inhibited the ten pathogens, and four strains (ZX221, ZX633, ZX3131, and ZX3875) had good probiotic properties and survived after being exposed to simulated gastrointestinal tract conditions. Moreover, we investigated the influence of pH on the wide-spectrum antimicrobial activity and found that four strains inhibited most pathogens at pH 4.5 and pH 5, whereas only ZX633 had an inhibitory effect on Bacillus subtilis ATCC 6633 and Micrococcus luteus ATCC 4698 at pH 5.5. Overall, Lact. casei ZX633 had wide-spectrum antimicrobial activity and could be considered a potential probiotic.

Differential uniformity of permutation polynomials has been studied intensively in recent years due to the differential cryptanalysis of S-boxes. The boomerang attack is a variant of differential cryptanalysis which combines two differentials for the upper part and the lower part of the block cipher. The boomerang uniformity measures the resistance of block ciphers to the boomerang attack. In this paper, by using the resultant elimination method, we study the boomerang uniformity of normalized permutation polynomials of the low degree over finite fields. As a result, we determine the boomerang uniformity of all normalized permutation polynomials of degree up to six over the finite field $${\mathbb {F}}_{q}$$.

To enhance the solubility of polyanilines (PANI), polymeric ionic liquid (PIL) was introduced into the polymerization synthesis of PANI with various proportions. The structure and properties of the modified PANIs were characterized by 1H NMR, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, ultraviolet-visible spectrum, etc. It was found that the obtained PANIs doped with PILs were soluble in various organic solvents such as N,N-dimethyl formamide and acetonitrile. Compared with the pure PANI, the PANIs doped by PILs showed remarkable solubility and their chemical structure and conductivity kept integrated.

Activated phosphoinositide 3-kinase δ syndrome (APDS) is an autosomal-dominant combined immunodeficiency disorder resulting from pathogenic gain-of-function (GOF) mutations in the PIK3CD gene. Patients with APDS display abnormal T cell homeostasis. However, the mechanisms by which PIK3CD GOF contributes to this feature remain unknown. Here, with a cohort of children with PIK3CD GOF mutations from multiple regions of China and a corresponding CRISPR/Cas9 gene-edited mouse model, we reported that hyperactive PI3Kδ disrupted T(Naive) cell homeostasis in the periphery by intrinsically promoting the growth, proliferation, and activation of T(Naive) cells. Our results showed that PIK3CD GOF resulted in loss of the quiescence-associated gene expression profile in naive T cells and promoted naive T cells to overgrow, hyperproliferate and acquire an activated functional status. Naive PIK3CD GOF T cells exhibited an enhanced glycolytic capacity and reduced mitochondrial respiration in the resting or activated state. Blocking glycolysis abrogated the abnormal splenic T cell pool and reversed the overactivated phenotype induced by PIK3CD GOF in vivo and in vitro. These results suggest that enhanced aerobic glycolysis is required for PIK3CD GOF-induced overactivation of naive T cells and provide a potential therapeutic approach for targeting glycolysis to treat patients with APDS as well as other immune disorders.

Activated PI3Kδ syndrome 1 is a primary immunodeficiency disease, usually caused by heterozygous mutations in PIK3CD. We aimed to identify the cause of homozygous mutation at c.G3061A (p.E1021K) in a patient and the effect of allele dose in this mutation. Genomic DNA from the parent-child trio was analyzed by next-generation sequencing. We performed phenotypic analyses in the patient and in Pik3cdE1024K+/+ mice. The patient was a girl harboring a homozygous mutation for p.E1021K in PIK3CD. At the age of 2 months, she began experiencing respiratory tract infections and lymphoproliferation, accompanied by bronchiectasis and extensive atelectasis in the lungs. She suffered from Haemophilus influenzae and Cytomegalovirus infections and experienced restricted growth and development. Whole-exome sequencing showed a region that included PIK3CD, with loss of heterozygosity (LOH) in chromosome 1 of the patient. The patient had not inherited any allele from her father in the LOH region. Copy number variation analysis showed no changes in the patient’s father and the patient. Ultra-deep sequencing of genomic DNA from the patient’s mother showed that the mutant allele frequency for c.G3061A was 1.64%. Thus, the presence of segmental maternal uniparental disomy and maternal gonosomal mosaicism resulted in the homozygous mutation. Lymphadenopathy, differentiation of activated T cells, and follicular B cells lymphopenia were found to be more prominent in Pik3cdE1024+/+ mice than in Pik3cdE1024+/− mice. This report showed the coexistence of uniparental disomy and mosaicism in PIK3CD. Some immunological features were seen to be allele dose-dependent in the presence of p.E1021K mutation.

Signal transducer and activator of transcription 1 (STAT1) is a transcription factor that mediates cellular responses to interferons (IFNs) and other cytokines and growth factors in diverse cell types. STAT1 gain-of-function (GOF) mutations result in an unexpectedly wide range of clinical features. It remains unclear why STAT1 GOF mutations result in such a broad spectrum of phenotypes. We analyzed the clinical, molecular, and phenotypic characteristics of nine Chinese patients with STAT1 GOF mutations. This study enrolled nine patients with STAT1 GOF mutations including five novel mutations. We discuss the molecular and phenotypic characterization such as unique Penicillium marneffei lymphadenitis. Patients with STAT1 GOF mutations had defects in both innate and adaptive immunity, including impaired T cell receptor (TCR) diversity; reduced numbers of naive and effector memory CD4+ T cells, memory B cells, and NK cells; and defects in the production of IL-17A and IFN-γ. In addition, experiments with primary immune cells revealed that enhanced STAT1 phosphorylation resulted from not only lower rates of STAT1 dephosphorylation but also increased total STAT1 expression. Our report provides the first comprehensive overview of the molecular genetics, clinical heterogeneity, and underlying immunological abnormalities of patients with STAT1 GOF mutations in China. In further study, to find the relationship between different STAT1 GOF mutations and clinical phenotype as well as the mechanism of increased total STAT1 expression will be needed.

Fruit characteristics of sweet watermelon are largely the result of human selection. Here we report an improved watermelon reference genome and whole-genome resequencing of 414 accessions representing all extant species in theCitrullusgenus. Population genomic analyses reveal the evolutionary history ofCitrullus, suggesting independent evolutions inCitrullus amarusand the lineage containingCitrullus lanatusandCitrullus mucosospermus. Our findings indicate that different loci affecting watermelon fruit size have been under selection during speciation, domestication and improvement. A non-bitter allele, arising in the progenitor of sweet watermelon, is largely fixed inC. lanatus. Selection for flesh sweetness started in the progenitor ofC. lanatusand continues through modern breeding on loci controlling raffinose catabolism and sugar transport. Fruit flesh coloration and sugar accumulation might have co-evolved through shared genetic components including a sugar transporter gene. This study provides valuable genomic resources and sheds light on watermelon speciation and breeding history.

Background Cryptococcosis is a major opportunistic invasive mycosis in immunocompromised patients, but it is also increasingly seen in immunocompetent patients. In the early stages of cryptococcosis, limitations of the detection method may hinder the diagnosis. A molecular diagnostic technique based on nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA) method was developed to fulfil the need for efficient diagnosis of cryptococcosis. Methods We compared the diagnostic performance of NASBA, PCR and cryptococcal antigen (CrAg) test (colloidal gold method) in clinical samples from 25 cryptococcosis patients (including 8 cryptococcal meningoencephalitis and 17 pulmonary cryptococcosis) who were categorized as proven cases (n = 10) and probable cases (n = 15) according to the revised EORTC/MSG definitions. 10 patients with non-Cryptococcus infection and 30 healthy individuals were categorized as control group. Results The lowest detection limit of NASBA was 10 CFU/mL, and RNA of non-target bacteria or fungi was not amplified. The sensitivity of NASBA, PCR and colloidal gold method was 92.00% (95% CI 72.50–98.60%), 64.00% (95% CI 42.62–81.29%), 100.00% (95% CI 83.42–100.00%), and the specificity was 95.00% (95% CI 81.79–99.13%), 80.00% (95% CI 63.86–90.39%) and 82.50% (95% CI 66.64–92.11%) respectively. The highest specificity (97.50%), accuracy (95.38%) and k value (0.90) were achieved when both NASBA and colloidal gold results were positive. Conclusions NASBA is a new alternative detection method for cryptococcosis which is both accurate and rapid without expensive equipment and specialised personnel. It may be used as a tool for confirming current infection as well as monitoring the effectiveness of antifungal treatment. The use of NASBA to detect Cryptococcus RNA in blood samples is of great significance for the diagnosis of pulmonary cryptococcosis. The combination of NASBA and colloidal gold can improve the diagnostic accuracy of cryptococcosis.

The Xanthomonas outer protein C2 (XopC2) family of bacterial effectors is widely found in plant pathogens and Legionella species. However, the biochemical activity and host targets of these effectors remain enigmatic. Here we show that ectopic expression of XopC2 promotes jasmonate signaling and stomatal opening in transgenic rice plants, which are more susceptible to Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzicola infection. Guided by these phenotypes, we discover that XopC2 represents a family of atypical kinases that specifically phosphorylate OSK1, a universal adaptor protein of the Skp1-Cullin-F-box ubiquitin ligase complexes. Intriguingly, OSK1 phosphorylation at Ser53 by XopC2 exclusively increases the binding affinity of OSK1 to the jasmonate receptor OsCOI1b, and specifically enhances the ubiquitination and degradation of JAZ transcription repressors and plant disease susceptibility through inhibiting stomatal immunity. These results define XopC2 as a prototypic member of a family of pathogenic effector kinases and highlight a smart molecular mechanism to activate jasmonate signaling., XopC2 effectors are present in many plant bacterial pathogens. Here the authors show that XopC2 has kinase activity and enhances disease susceptibility by phosphorylating the OSK1 protein, which increases its interaction with the jasmonate receptor COI1b to promote JA signaling and stomatal opening.

Background As reported, 27-93 % of pregnant women take at least one drug during pregnancy. However, drug exposure during pregnancy still lacks sufficient foetal safety evidence of human origin. It is urgent to fill the knowledge gap about medication safety during pregnancy for optimization of maternal disease treatment and pregnancy drug consultation. Methods and analysis The China Teratology Birth Cohort (CTBC) was established in 2019 and is a hospital-based open-ended prospective cohort study with the aim of assessing drug safety during pregnancy. Pregnant women who set up the pregnancy health records in the first trimester or who seek drug consultation regardless of gestational age in the member hospitals are recruited. Enrolled pregnant women need to be investigated four times, namely, 6–14 and 24–28 weeks of gestational age, before discharge after hospital delivery, and 28–42 days after birth. Maternal medication exposure during pregnancy is the focus of the CTBC. For drugs, information on the type, name, and route of medication; start and end time of medication; single dose; frequency of medication; dosage form; manufacturer; and reason for medication is collected. The adverse pregnancy outcomes collected in the study include birth defects, stillbirth, spontaneous abortion, preterm birth, post-term birth, low birth weight, macrosomia, small for gestational age, large for gestational age and low Apgar score. CTBC uses an electronic questionnaire for data collection and a cloud system for data management. Biological samples are collected if informed consents are obtained. Multi-level logistic regression, mixed-effect negative binomial distribution regression and spline function regression are used to explore the effect of drugs on the occurrence of birth defects. Discussion The findings of the study will assist in further understanding the risk of birth defects and other adverse pregnancy outcomes associated with maternal drug exposure and developing the optimal treatment plans and drug counselling for pregnant women. Trial registration This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the West China Second Hospital of Sichuan University and registered at the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (http://www.chictr.org.cn/index.aspx, registration number ChiCTR1900022569).

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) participate in transcription and in epigenetic or post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. They also have roles in epithelial to mesenchymal transition and in carcinogenesis. Because lncRNAs may also have a role in thyroid cancer progression, we examined a group of thyroid tumors which included papillary thyroid carcinomas and anaplastic thyroid carcinomas to determine the specific lncRNAs that were upregulated during thyroid tumor progression. An RT2 Profiler PCR Array Human Cancer Pathway Finder consisting of 84 lncRNAs (Qiagen) and fresh tissues of normal thyroid, PTCs, and ATCs with gene expression profiling was used to determine genes upregulated and downregulated in ATCs. Two of the most highly upregulated genes, prostate cancer antigen 3 (PCA3) and HOX antisense intergenic RNA myeloid 1 (HOTAIRM1 or HAM-1), were selected for further studies using a thyroid tissue microarray(TMA) with formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissues of normal thyroid (NT, n = 10), nodular goiters (NG, n = 10), follicular adenoma (FA, n = 32), follicular carcinoma (FCA, n = 28), papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC, n = 28), follicular variant of papillary thyroid carcinoma (FVPTC, n = 28), and anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC, n = 10). TMA sections were analyzed by in situ hybridization (ISH) using RNAscope technology. The results of ISH analyses were imaged with Vectra imaging technology and quantified with Nuance® and inForm® software. The TMA analysis was validated by qRT-PCR using FFPE tissues for RNA preparation. Cultured thyroid carcinoma cell lines (n = 7) were also used to analyze for lncRNAs by qRT-PCR. The results showed 11 lncRNAs upregulated and 7 downregulated lncRNAs more than twofold in the ATCS compared with PTCs. Two of the upregulated lncRNAs, PCA3 and HAM-1, were analyzed on a thyroid carcinoma TMA. There was increased expression of both lncRNAs in ATCs and PTCs compared with NT after TMA analysis. qRT-PCR analyses showed increased expression of both lncRNAs in ATCs compared with NT and PTCs. Analyses of these lncRNAs from cultured thyroid carcinoma cell lines by qRT-PCR showed the highest levels of lncRNA expression in ATCs. TGF-β treatment of cultured PTC and ATC cells for 21 days led to increased expression of PCA3 lncRNA in both cell lines by day 14. These results show that the lncRNAs PCA3 and HAM-1 are upregulated during thyroid tumor development and progression and may function as oncogenes during tumor progression.

When investigating the long-term variation of wave characteristics as associated with storm surges in the Bohai Sea, the Simulating Waves Nearshore (SWAN) model and ADvanced CIRCulation (ADCIRC) model were coupled to simulate 32 storm surges between 1985 and 2014. This simulation was validated by reproducing three actual wave processes, showing that the simulated significant wave height (SWH) and mean wave period agreed well with the actual measurements. In addition, the long-term variations in SWH, patterns in SWH extremes along the Bohai Sea coast, the 100-year return period SWH extreme distribution, and waves conditional probability distribution were calculated and analyzed. We find that the trend of SWH extremes in most of the coastal stations was negative, among which the largest trend was −0.03 m/a in the western part of Liaodong Bay. From the 100-year return period of the SWH distribution calculated in the Gumbel method, we find that the SWH extremes associated with storm surges decreased gradually from the center of the Bohai Sea to the coast. In addition, the joint probability of wave and surge for the entire Bohai Sea in 100-year return period was determined by the Gumbel logistic method. We therefore, assuming a minimum surge of one meter across the entire Bohai Sea, obtained the spatial SWH distribution. The conclusions of this study are significant for offshore and coastal engineering design.

Local reliability sensitivity (RS) and global RS can provide useful information in reliability-based design optimization, but the algorithm for solving them is still a challenge, especially in case of small failure probability and high dimensionality. In this paper, a novel method by combining Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) with line sampling (LS), an efficient method for estimating small failure probability in case of the high dimensionality, is proposed to evaluate local RS and global RS simultaneously. Since the proposed method employs LS samples to approximately screen out the failure samples from the MCS sample set, the proposed method possesses both the efficiency of the LS and the accuracy of the MCS. One numerical example and two engineering examples illustrate the accuracy and the efficiency of the proposed method.

Although histamine inhibitors have been used in the motility-associated vertigo, the link between histamine and sleep deprivation (SD)-induced vertigo has not been clearly demonstrated. The histamine plasma levels were assayed in the SD volunteers before SD and 24 h after SD. Pinnacle's automated sleep deprivation system was used to establish the female C57BL/6 mice SD model. Histidine decarboxylase inhibitor 4-bromo-3-hydroxybenzoic acid (BHOA), and antihistamine diphenhydramine (DPHM) were injected intraperitoneally to test their effects on SD-induced vertigo. Rotarod tests and vestibular scores 24 and 48 h post SD were utilized to assay the vestibular function. Western blot was used to determine the expression of histidine decarboxylase (HDC) in the vestibular, and PowerChrom was utilized to quantify the concentrations of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) histamine. SD increased plasma concentration of histamine in humans. Upregulated HDC in the vestibular and increased CSF concentration of histamine can be detected in the SD mice, indicating vestibular dysfunction which can be ameliorated by both BHOA and DPHM. Histamine signaling inhibition may ameliorate SD-induced vertigo, and histamine can be considered as a potential treatment target.

The mixed inheritance model involving major genes and polygenes was used to analyze the inheritance of radish flowering time trait in the B1, B2, F1, and F2 generations. Our results showed that flowering time was regulated by two additive-dominant-epistatic major genes and additive-dominant-epistatic polygenes (E-0 model). The major gene heritability estimated for the B1, B2, and F2 generations was 70.48%, 82.80%, and 86.90%, respectively, while the polygene heritability estimated was 0.00, 12.58%, and 8.19%, respectively. These results suggested that the flowering time of radish was regulated by major genes, with polygenes playing only a minor role. In practice, high heritability of major genes is favorable for an efficient selection of B2 and F2 generations during radish breeding. Six hundred twenty-six SSR markers were screened between late-bolting bulk and the early bolting bulk from F2 population. A marker RSS0119 associated to the flowering time trait was obtained, which revealed a high correlation with the flowering time in the F2 population as well as in 59 radish inbred lines (83.61% and 61.02%, respectively). Our findings will be useful for breeding late-bolting varieties.