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Abstract: This study uses anthocyanins in the red flowers of section Camellia as taxonomic markers to investigate the phenetic relationships among 33 wild species from China, Taiwan, and Japan. The 25 anthocyanins from section Camellia produced 38 pigment patterns that serve as phenetic markers. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) indicated that the attachment of one or two glucoses to the cyanidin-core structure at the 3- or the 3- and 5-positions, respectively, was the most influential pattern against the first factor, Z 1. In addition, two alternative pigment patterns, acylated or non-acylated, and the structural isomerism (cis- or trans-) of the p-coumaroyl group were relatively significant patterns. Ward’s minimum-variance cluster analysis (WMVCA) produced a dendrogram that consisted of two sub-clusters. One sub-cluster (A) was constructed by species that have mainly two types of anthocyanins: 3,5-di-O-β-glucosides (Camellia saluenensis) and sambubioside of cyanidin (Camellia reticulata). The other sub-cluster (B) was made up of the 3-O-β-glucosides of cyanidin (Camellia japonica) and delphinidin (Camellia hongkongensis), with a higher proportion of the 3-O-β-galactosides (Camellia mairei and Camellia boreali-yunnanica). The former group showed a higher proportion of acylation, over 63%, but with the exception of Camellia azalea. The latter group showed less than 52% acylation, but with the exception of C. hongkongensis and C. boreali-yunnanica. PCA and WMVCA indicated that the greater the amount of di-O-glycosides and acylation, the more primitive anthocyanin traits the species possess. Based on these results, in conjunction with geographical and literary information, the data suggest that the Xinan district is the site/center of origin for the red-flowered Camellia species of which both C. saluenensis and C. reticulata have the most primitive anthocyanin traits. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Aims: To investigate interstitial lung disease (ILD) in men with prostate cancer receiving hormone therapy. Methods: We gathered cases diagnosed with prostate cancer based on the United States Food and Drug Administration Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) database from 2004 to 2020. We divided the included cases into 3 groups based on the primary suspected drugs: a hormone therapy group, a positive control group (taxanes), and a negative control group. We employed reporting odds ratio, a disproportionality method, to detect the association between ILD events and target drugs. Results: We finally included a total of 85 403 cases, 69 894 cases (628 ILD event cases) in the hormone therapy group, 2302 cases (158 ILD event cases) in the positive control group and 13 207 cases (72 ILD event cases) in the negative control group. There were 394 ILD event cases (62.74%) in the hormone therapy group in Japan; 78.68% of the ILD events occurred within the first year after hormone treatment. Disproportionality analysis indicated that ILD events were significantly associated with nilutamide, flutamide, bicalutamide, goserelin, degarelix and apalutamide; the reporting odds ratios (95% confidence interval) were 32.14 (11.03–93.63), 9.93 (3.62–27.21), 8.19 (6.01–11.16), 3.74 (2.61–5.37), 2.41 (1.55–3.75) and 1.94 (1.01–3.75), respectively. Conclusion: Based on this FAERS pharmacovigilance analysis, the association between ILD events and hormone therapy drugs, including bicalutamide, flutamide, nilutamide, goserelin, degarelix and apalutamide, should not be ignored, especially in the Japanese population. Lung function of prostate cancer patients should be monitored when receiving the hormone therapy drugs mentioned above, especially for the first year post medication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Frog assemblages respond to multiple habitats at landscape and local scales. • Elevation, forest area, water area, etc., shape amphibian communities. • Frog may be a good indicator of different habitats health or restoration status. Amphibian declines are caused by multiple stressors at the landscape and local levels, resulting in habitat loss, fragmentation, splits, and degradation. However, the combined effects of different landscape scales on the amphibian declines are poorly understood. We examined the breeding distribution of three frog species, Rana japonica , Rana ornativentris , and Bufo japonicus formosus , along an ecological gradient from urban to mountain areas. The number of egg masses and data on landscape and local variables were collected at 124 sites in Toyota, Okazaki, and Shitara, central Japan. The best model with the lowest value of the Akaike Information Criteria (AIC) was obtained using landscape variables at a 500-m-radius buffer for all three species. The number of egg masses increased with forest area for all frog species. Yet, other variables differently affected the number of egg masses of three species at each site. The egg-mass number of R. japonica was positively affected by the residential region with much vegetation area & elevation difference, and negatively affected by elevation. That of R. ornativentris was positively influenced by the abandoned paddy-field, and negatively influenced by the total road density. Regarding B. japonicus formosus , its egg-mass number was positively affected by the residential region with much vegetation area, and negatively affected by elevation difference. At the local scale, the water area positively affected the number of egg masses of all three species, while the percentage of concrete revetment has negative effects. This study not only assesses how the assemblage of frogs respond to different habitats at multiple spatial scales along the land use gradient (urban-mountain), but also emphasizes the importance of strategic management actions in agricultural landscapes, allowing the maintenance of habitat diversity for amphibians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To deal with the treatment of huge amounts of Cs-polluted soil from the first nuclear power plant in Fukushima (Japan), a low temperature hydrothermal technology has been developed to convert polluted soil into pollucite for the in-situ immobilization of Cs. The results show that pollucite could be synthesized with a wide range of Cs content using a short curing time (2 h) or low curing temperature (160 °C). However, a higher curing temperature or a longer curing time seems to favor the formation of more pollucite. With the addition of Ca(OH) 2 , a tough pollucite body could be synthesized, and the strength enhancement is mainly due to calcium silicate hydrate (C-S-H) formation. This also suggests that the hydrothermal technology has great potential for the direct immobilization of polluted Cs with a tough synthesized pollucite body, similar to cement or glass solidification of nuclear waste. The extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) results reveal that the polluted Cs is immobilized into the structure of the synthesized pollucite rather than physically adsorbed in the pores. The leaching test results show that the amount of Cs leached from the synthesized specimens is very low (2.43 × 10 −3  g·m −2 ·d −1 and 6.46 × 10 −4  g·m −2 ·d −1 ), even lower than that of the reference hollandite-rich synroc (2.0 × 10 −2  g·m −2 ·d −1 ). As such, the hydrothermal synthesis of pollucite using only Cs-polluted soil for immobilization of polluted Cs, may provide a new technology for the treatment of Cs-polluted soil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]