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The main problem of coal direct chemical looping hydrogen generation (CLHG) is that coal ash and oxygen carrier (OC) cannot be effectively separated, which makes the OC activity is reduced after multiple cycles. In this study, a double plate-fixed bed reactor is adopted. The gasification of coal and the reduction reaction of oxygen carrier were integrated in the same furnace, and the hydrogen production characteristics of ZhunDong coal by chemical looping were studied. Cu-Fe composite oxygen carrier was prepared by chemical synthesis method. The results show that the higher the copper oxide content and the smaller the coal particle size, the better the effect of hydrogen yield. The potassium can promote the rate of coal gasification and increase oxygen carrier reduction rate, but faster reduction reaction rate will aggravate the formation of carbon deposition. The oxygen consumed in reduction of OC is preferentially from CuO, while Fe/FeO reacts with H2O prior to Cu/Cu2O in the hydrogen production stage. Compared with Cu-Fe OC, the implantation of MgAl2O3 plays an important role in stabilizing the redox ability and mechanical properties of OC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are regulatory RNA molecules that bind to target messenger RNAs (mRNAs) and affect the stability or translational efficiency of the bound mRNAs. Single or dual‐luciferase reporter systems have been successfully used to identify miRNA target genes in mammalian cells. These reporter systems, however, are not sensitive enough to verify miRNA–target gene relationships in insect cell lines because the promoters of the target luciferase (usually Renilla) used in these reporter systems are too weak to drive sufficient expression of the target luciferase in insect cells. In this study, we replaced the SV40 promoter in the psiCHECK‐2 reporter vector, which is widely used with mammalian cell lines, with the HSV‐TK or AC5.1 promoter to yield two new dual‐luciferase reporter vectors, designated psiCHECK‐2‐TK and psiCHECK‐2‐AC5.1, respectively. Only psiCHECK‐2 and psiCHECK‐2‐AC5.1 had suitable target (Renilla)/reference (firefly) luciferase activity ratios in mammalian (HeLa and HEK293) and insect (Sf9, S2, Helicoverpa zea fat body and ovary) cell lines, while psiCHECK‐2‐TK had suitable Renilla/firefly luciferase activity ratios regardless of the cell line. Moreover, psiCHECK‐2‐TK successfully detected the interaction between Helicoverpa armigera miRNA9a and its target, the 3′‐untranslated region of heat shock protein 90, in both mammalian and H. zea cell lines, but psiCHECK‐2 failed to do so in H. zea cell lines. Furthermore, psiCHECK‐2‐TK with the target sequence, HzMasc (H. zea Masculinizer), accurately differentiated between H. zea cell lines with or without the negative regulation factor (miRNA or piRNA) of HzMasc. These data demonstrate that psiCHECK‐2‐TK can be used to functionally characterize small RNA target genes in both mammalian and insect cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiencing positive emotions together facilitates interpersonal understanding and promotes subsequent social interaction among individuals. However, the neural underpinnings of such emotional-social effect remain to be discovered. The current study employed the functional near-infrared spectroscopy–based hyperscanning to investigate the abovementioned relationship. After participants in dyad watched movie clips with happily or neutral emotion, they were asked to perform the interpersonal cooperative task, with their neural activation of prefrontal cortex being recorded simultaneously via functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Results suggested that compared with the neutral movie watching together, a higher interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) in left inferior frontal gyrus during participant dyads watching happiness movie together was observed. Subsequently, dyads in happiness showed more effective coordination interaction during the interpersonal cooperation task compared to those in the neutral condition, and such facilitated effect was associated with increased cooperation-related INS at left middle frontal cortex. A mediation analysis showed that the coordination interaction fully mediated the relationship between the emotion-induced INS during the happiness movie-viewing and the cooperation-related INS in interpersonal cooperation. Taken together, our findings suggest that the faciliatory effect experiencing happiness together has on interpersonal cooperation can be reliably reflected by the INS magnitude at the brain level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Author(s): Xianchun Li (corresponding author) [1, 2]; Mary A. Schuler [3]; May R. Berenbaum (corresponding author) [2] Jasmonate and salicylate are plant-produced signals that activate plant defence genes after herbivory [...]

Genetically engineered crops simultaneously produce defensive allelochemicals and Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxin proteins to kill some of the world's most devastating insect pests. How the two types of toxins, when ingested sequentially or simultaneously, interact at both lethal and sublethal doses in these pests remains underexplored. Here, we examined the toxicological interactions between the Bt toxin Cry1Ac and the flavonoid allelochemical flavone in Helicoverpa armigera. Simultaneous exposure of H. armigera neonates to lethal doses (LC25) of Cry1Ac and flavone caused a mortality significantly higher than that of either toxin alone and their expected additive mortality. Preexposure for 24 h to a sublethal dose (LC10) of Cry1Ac followed by 6‐d simultaneous exposure to the same dose of Cry1Ac plus a lethal dose (1.6 mg/g diets, LC50) of flavone resulted in a mortality significantly higher than that of the LC50 dose of flavone alone and the expected additive mortality of the LC50 dose of flavone plus the LC10 dose of Cry1Ac. One‐day preexposure to the sublethal dose (LC10) of flavone followed by 6‐d simultaneous exposure to the LC50 dose (6 ng/cm2) of Cry1Ac plus the LC10 dose of flavone yielded a mortality significantly higher than that of the LC50 dose of Cry1Ac but similar to the expected additive mortality of the LC50 dose of Cry1Ac plus the LC10 dose of flavone. The results suggest that Cry1Ac induces and synergizes the toxicity of flavone against H. armigera larvae. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Workers of Apis cerana cerana undergo an in‐hive nursing to outdoor foraging transition, but the genes underlying this age‐related transition remain largely unknown. Here, we sequenced the head transcriptomes of its 7‐day‐old normal nurses, 18‐ and 22‐day‐old normal foragers, 7‐day‐old precocious foragers and 22‐day‐old over‐aged nurses to unravel the genes associated with this transition. Mapping of the sequence reads to Apis mellifera genome showed that the three types of foragers had a greater percentage of reads from annotated exons and intergenic regions, whereas the two types of nurses had a greater percentage of reads from introns. Pair‐ and group‐wise comparisons of the five transcriptomes revealed 59 uniquely expressed genes (18 in nurses and 41 in foragers) and 14 nurse‐ and 15 forager‐upregulated genes. The uniquely expressed genes are usually low‐abundance long noncoding RNAs, transcription factors, transcription coactivators, RNA‐binding proteins, kinases or phosphatases that are involved in signaling and/or regulation, whereas the nurse‐ or forager‐upregulated genes are often high‐abundance downstream genes that directly perform the tasks of nurses or foragers. Taken together, these results suggest that the nurse‐forager transition is coordinated by a social signal‐triggered epigenetic shift from introns to exons/intergenic regions and the resulting transcriptional shift between the nurse‐ and forager‐associated genes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]