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To reduce the waste of energy in communications, unequal error protection (UEP) is used to provide asymmetric protection for messages with different levels of importance. This paper proposes new efficient strategies of UEP based on bilayer protograph-based low-density parity check (PLDPC) codes in decoding-and-forward (DF) relay systems. In particular, we jointly utilize source coding and channel coding to design UEP strategies and then save transmission energy. According to the different levels of importance of discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients of image and variance statistical characteristics of image sub-blocks, bilayer-lengthened PLDPC codes are exploited to protect the transmitted image information with different importance levels at the half-duplex relay system. In the end, the simulation result shows that the proposed UEP schemes achieve excellent performance gains compared to conventional equal error protection (EEP) scheme. Additionally, the complexity analysis of the UEP strategies is given.

Edge devices (EDs) carry limited energy, but 6th generation mobile networks (6G) communication will consume more energy. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-aided wireless communication network can provide communication links to EDs without a signal. However, with the time-lag system, the EDs cannot dynamically adjust the emission energy because the dynamic UAV coordinates cannot be accurately acquired. In addition, the fixed emission energy makes the EDs have poor endurance. To address this challenge, in this paper, we propose a deep learning-based energy optimization algorithm (DEO) to dynamically adjust the emission energy of the ED so that the received energy of the mobile relay UAV is, as much as possible, equal to the sensitivity of the receiver. Specifically, the edge server provides the computing platform and uses deep learning (DL) to predict the location information of the relay UAV in dynamic scenarios. Then, the ED emission energy is adjusted according to the predicted position. It enables the ED to communicate reliably with the mobile relay UAV at minimum energy. We analyze the performance of a variety of predictive networks under different time-delay systems through experiments. The results show that the Weighted Mean Absolute Percentage Error (WMAPE) of this algorithm is 0.54%, 0.80% and 1.15% under the effect of a communication delay of 0.4 s, 0.6 s and 0.8 s, respectively.

Tillering is an important agronomic trait essential for the yield of Triticum aestivum and the propagation of Aegilops tauschii. However, the effect of phytohormones on T. aestivum and Ae. tauschii tillering and the underlying regulatory mechanisms remain poorly understood. In the study, we found that T. aestivum and Ae. tauschii exhibited different tillering sensitivities to the auxin herbicide 2,4-D isooctyl ester. At 3 days post-application, tiller bud growth was inhibited by 77.50% in T. aestivum, corresponding to 2.0-fold greater inhibition than that in Ae. tauschii (38.71%). Transcriptome analysis showed that differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the T. aestivum response to 2,4-D isooctyl ester were mainly enriched in plant hormone metabolism and signal transduction pathways, but similar changes were not observed in Ae. tauschii. Among that, the auxin biosynthesis and signaling induced by 2,4-D isooctyl ester was quite different between the two species. A total of nine candidate genes involved in varied tillering responses were selected from the DEGs and validated by quantitative real-time PCR. Endogenous hormone levels were assayed to further verify the RNA-seq results. After 2,4-D isooctyl ester treatment, a significant increase in abscisic acid (ABA) levels was observed in T. aestivum, whereas ABA levels were relatively stable in Ae. tauschii. The herbicide induced more cytokinin (CTK) accumulation in Ae. tauschii than in T. aestivum. External ABA clearly restricted tiller bud growth in both T. aestivum and Ae. tauschii, while 6-benzyl aminopurine had no significant effect. These results indicate that ABA and CTK may be related with 2,4-D isooctyl ester-regulated tillering differences between the two species, which will help to further understand the mechanism of the auxin-mediated regulation of tillering

Salmonella spp. is among the main foodborne pathogens which cause serious foodborne diseases. An isothermal real-time recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) and lateral flow strip detection (LFS RPA) were used to detect Salmonella spp. targeting the conserved sequence of invasion protein A (invA). The Real-time RPA was performed in a portable florescence scanner at 39°C for 20 min. The LFS RPA was performed in an incubator block at 39°C for 15 min, under the same condition that the amplifications could be inspected by the naked eyes on the LFS within 5 min. The detection limit of Salmonella spp. DNA using real-time RPA was 1.1 × 101 fg, which was the same with real-time PCR but 10 times higher than that of LFS RPA assay. Moreover, the practicality of discovering Salmonella spp. was validated with artificially contaminated lamb, chicken, and broccoli samples. The analyzing time dropped from 60 min to proximately 5–12 min on the basis of the real-time and LFS RPA assays compared with the real-time PCR assay. Real-time and LFS RPA assays’ results were equally reliable. There was no cross-reactivity with other pathogens in both assays. In addition, the assays had good stability. All of these helped to show that the developed RPA assays were simple, rapid, sensitive, credible, and could be a potential point-of-need (PON) test required mere resources.

This study aimed to explore the molecular regulatory network among microRNA-125b (miR-125b), forkhead box Q1 (FOXQ1), prostaglandin-endoperoxide synthase 2 (PTGS2), and cyclin-dependent kinase 5 (CDK5), as well as their effects on cell apoptosis, neurite outgrowth, and inflammation in Alzheimer disease (AD). Rat embryo cerebral cortex neurons and nerve growth factor–stimulated PC12 cells were insulted by Aβ1−42 to construct two AD cellular models. Negative control (NC) inhibitor, miR-125b inhibitor, NC siRNA, FOXQ1 siRNA, PTGS2 siRNA, and CDK5 siRNA were transferred into the two AD cellular models alone or combined. Then, cell apoptosis, neurite outgrowth, proinflammatory cytokines, miR-125b, FOXQ1, PTGS2, and CDK5 expressions were detected. MiR-125b inhibition facilitated neurite outgrowth but suppressed cell apoptosis and proinflammatory cytokines (tumor necrosis factor-α, interleukin 1β, and interleukin 6); meanwhile, it upregulated FOXQ1 but downregulated PTGS2 and CDK5. Furthermore, FOXQ1 inhibition promoted cell apoptosis and proinflammatory cytokines but repressed neurite outgrowth; PTGS2 inhibition achieved the opposite effects; CDK5 inhibition attenuated cell apoptosis, whereas it less affected neurite outgrowth and inflammation. Notably, FOXQ1 inhibition attenuated, whereas PTGS2 inhibition elevated the effect of miR-125b inhibition on regulating neurite outgrowth, cell apoptosis, and proinflammatory cytokines. As for CDK5 inhibition, it enhanced the effect of miR-125b inhibition on regulating cell apoptosis, but less impacted the neurite outgrowth and proinflammatory cytokines. Additionally, PTGS2 inhibition and CDK5 inhibition both reversed the effect of FOXQ1 inhibition on regulating cell apoptosis, neurite outgrowth, and proinflammatory cytokines. In conclusion, targeting miR-125b alleviates AD progression via blocking PTGS2 and CDK5 in a FOXQ1-dependent way.

Hydrogenation of CO2 to form methanol utilizing green hydrogen is a promising route to realizing carbon neutrality. However, the development of catalyst with high activity and selectivity to methanol from the CO2 hydrogenation is still a challenge due to the chemical inertness of CO2 and its characteristics of multi-path conversion. Herein, a series of highly active carbon-confining molybdenum sulfide (MoS2@C) catalysts were prepared by the in-situ pyrolysis method. In comparison with the bulk MoS2 and MoS2/C, the stronger interaction between MoS2 and the carbon layer was clearly generated. Under the optimized reaction conditions, MoS2@C showed better catalytic performance and long-term stability. The MoS2@C catalyst could sustain around 32.4% conversion of CO2 with 94.8% selectivity of MeOH for at least 150 h.

Abstract Supplemental oxygen (O2) therapy in preterm infants impairs lung development, but the impact of O2 on long‐term systemic vascular structure and function has not been well‐explored. The present study tested the hypothesis that neonatal O2 therapy induces long‐term structural and functional alterations in the systemic vasculature, resulting in vascular stiffness observed in children and young adults born preterm. Newborn Sprague‐Dawley rats were exposed to normoxia (21% O2) or hyperoxia (85% O2) for 1 and 3 weeks. A subgroup exposed to 3 weeks hyperoxia was recovered in normoxia for an additional 3 weeks. Aortic stiffness was assessed by pulse wave velocity (PWV) using Doppler ultrasound and pressure myography. Aorta remodeling was assessed by collagen deposition and expression. Left ventricular (LV) function was assessed by echocardiography. We found that neonatal hyperoxia exposure increased vascular stiffness at 3 weeks, which persisted after normoxic recovery at 6 weeks of age. These findings were accompanied by increased PWV, aortic remodeling, and altered LV function as evidenced by decreased ejection fraction, cardiac output, and stroke volume. Importantly, these functional changes were associated with increased collagen deposition in the aorta. Together, these findings demonstrate that neonatal hyperoxia induces early and sustained biomechanical alterations in the systemic vasculature and impairs LV function. Early identification of preterm infants who are at risk of developing systemic vascular dysfunction will be crucial in developing targeted prevention strategies that may improve the long‐term cardiovascular outcomes in this vulnerable population.

Face hallucination is an example of the image super-resolution problem, where the higher resolution face images can be obtained from the lower resolution ones. Many methods based on the sparse representation have been proposed to solve this problem. These methods use the position-patch strategy, which divides the input image into several small patches and represents each patch by the patches at the same position in the training set. An effective image prior is critical to improve the quality of the estimated superresolution images. Thus, we try to exploit the gradient information during the patch representation to achieve better hallucination result. In this paper, we propose a novel face hallucination model based on the sparse representation, called iterative gradient constrained weighted sparse representation method. Our model incorporates both the gradient information of the images and the l1 reweighted constraint into the sparse representation to achieve better performance. An iterative algorithm is proposed to refine these reconstructed high-resolution images. The experiments on several face databases show the better performance of our algorithm compared with other baseline algorithms.

A recently proposed network-coded multiple access (NCMA), consisting of XOR-based channel decoding and multi-user complete decoding (MUD-CD), can significantly improve throughput over conventional successive interference cancellation (SIC) decoding under near power-balanced channels. In this paper, we propose an improved NCMA (I-NCMA) for non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) in the 5G wireless communications, consisting of multiple users and a single base station (BS). At the transmitter side, the proposed scheme enables all users to simultaneously transmit messages to the BS in the same time and frequency. At the receiver side, we propose a joint-user channel decoding (JU-CD) to jointly decode all user messages by a single decoder. Then, the extrinsic messages from JU-CD can be jointly utilized by MUDCD for decoding all user messages. Also, other than conventional NCMA that mainly deals with two users, I-NCMA adapts to the NOMA networks with an arbitrary number of users. Simulation results indicate that the proposed I-NCMA achieves a better decoding performance than both SIC and conventional NCMA over near power-balanced channels in the low-to-medium SNR regime, while retaining a performance close to conventional NCMA in the high SNR regime.

This paper proposes a novel encoder architecture of low-density parity-check (LDPC) generator matrix in frequency modulation-China digital radio (CDR), which was promulgated in August 2013. We utilize the specific structure of LDPC parity matrix to parallelize row and column encoding operations. An optimized method is also proposed to control memories, which can be reused for the LDPC code with different code rates to improve the utilization of hardware resources. The proposed LDPC encoder and decoder are implemented on Xilinx FPGA. According to simulation results of ModelSim and MATLAB, we also verify that the proposed method has the advantages of reduced resource consumption, low power, and high accuracy. The proposed encoder can achieve throughput up to 400 Mbps. In particular, with Lena binary image as the test transmission data, we find that the decoded result meets the error requirements of CDR.

Selenium participates in the antioxidant defense mainly through a class of selenoproteins, including thioredoxin reductase. Epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) is the most abundant and biologically active catechin in green tea. Depending upon the dose and biological systems, EGCG may function either as an antioxidant or as an inducer of antioxidant defense via its pro-oxidant action or other unidentified mechanisms. By manipulating the selenium status, the present study investigated the interactions of EGCG with antioxidant defense systems including the thioredoxin system comprising of thioredoxin and thioredoxin reductase, the glutathione system comprising of glutathione and glutathione reductase coupled with glutaredoxin, and the Nrf2 system. In selenium-optimal mice, EGCG increased hepatic activities of thioredoxin reductase, glutathione reductase and glutaredoxin. These effects of EGCG appeared to be not due to overt pro-oxidant action because melatonin, a powerful antioxidant, did not influence the increase. However, in selenium-deficient mice, with low basal levels of thioredoxin reductase 1, the same dose of EGCG did not elevate the above-mentioned enzymes; intriguingly EGCG in turn activated hepatic Nrf2 response, leading to increased heme oxygenase 1 and NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase 1 protein levels and thioredoxin activity. Overall, the present work reveals that EGCG is a robust inducer of the Nrf2 system only in selenium-deficient conditions. Under normal physiological conditions, in selenium-optimal mice, thioredoxin and glutathione systems serve as the first line defense systems against the stress induced by high doses of EGCG, sparing the activation of the Nrf2 system.

Differential-chaos-shift-keying cooperative communication (DCSK-CC) has attracted a great deal of attention in the past five years, because it can overcome the negative effect of wireless multipath fading. However, the conventional DCSK-CC system suffers from a major disadvantage of low data rate due to the resource consumption in cooperation. To address the issue, this paper proposes an efficient cooperative scheme, called partial-sequence CC (PS-CC) scheme, for the DCSK-CC system. In the PS-CC framework, the source and relays only transmit a partial chaotic sequence corresponding to one bit to the destination, while consuming the same transmission energy as DCSK-CC. To validate the feasibility of the DCSK PS-CC system, this paper carries out the error performance, diversity order, and data rate analyses under different cooperative conditions over multipath fading channels. Both numerical and simulated results show that the proposed PS-CC system outperforms the DCSK-based non-cooperative system and DCSK-CC systems over the range of signal-to-noise ratio under study. Moreover, the proposed system can enhance data rate and reduce the computational overhead of the relays as compared with the DCSK-CC system. In addition, it will be demonstrated that the DCSK PS-CC system preserves its advantages in typical ultra-wideband (UWB) channels. Overall, the PS-CC appears to be a desirable cooperative scheme for those applications featured by high-data-rate, low-power, and low-complexity, such as wireless sensor networks using the transmitted reference UWB technique.

This work could help to better understand the solvent effects on crystal habits and aspect ratio changes at the molecular level, which provide some guidance for solvent selection in industrial crystallization processes. With the catechol crystal habits acquired using both experimental and simulation methods in isopropanol, methyl acetate and ethyl acetate, solvent effects on crystal morphology were explored based on the modified attachment energy model. Firstly, morphologically dominant crystal faces were obtained with the predicted crystal habit in vacuum. Then, modified attachment energies were calculated by the molecular dynamics simulation to modify the crystal shapes in a real solvent environment, and the simulation results were in agreement with the experimental ones. Meanwhile, the surface properties such as roughness and the diffusion coefficient were introduced to analyze the solvent adsorption behaviors and the radial distribution function curves were generated to distinguish diverse types of interactions like hydrogen bonds and van der Waals forces. Results show that the catechol crystal habits were affected by the combination of the attachment energy, surface structures and molecular interaction types. Moreover, the changing aspect ratios of catechol crystals are closely related to the existence of hydrogen bonds which contribute to growth inhibition on specific faces.

Rhizoma Gastrodiae (also known as Tian ma), the dried rhizome of Gastrodia elata Blume, is a famous Chinese herb that has been traditionally used for the treatment of headache, dizziness, spasm, epilepsy, stoke, amnesia and other disorders for centuries. Gastrodin, a phenolic glycoside, is the main bioactive constituent of Rhizoma Gastrodiae. Since identified in 1978, gastrodin has been extensively investigated on its pharmacological properties. In this article, we reviewed the central nervous system (CNS) effects of gastrodin in preclinical models of CNS disorders including epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, affective disorders, cerebral ischemia/reperfusion, cognitive impairment as well as the underlying mechanisms involved and, where possible, clinical data that support the pharmacological activities. The sources and pharmacokinetics of gastrodin were also reviewed here. As a result, gastrodin possesses a broad range of beneficial effects on the above-mentioned CNS diseases, and the mechanisms of actions include modulating neurotransmitters, antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, suppressing microglial activation, regulating mitochondrial cascades, up-regulating neurotrophins, etc. However, more detailed clinical trials are still in need for positioning it in the treatment of neurological disorders.

Previous research of Bornean Micronectidae Jaczewski, 1924 (pygmy water boatmen) is summarized based on the data from the literature and recent work. All the Bornean micronectids belong to the genus Micronecta Kirkaldy, 1897. Descriptions or redescriptions and a key to the eight species, which have so far been found in Borneo are presented, namely M. decorata Lundblad, 1933, M. ludibunda Breddin, 1905, M. liewi sp. n., M. lakimi sp. n., M. lumutensis Chen, Nieser & Lansbury, 2008, M. skutalis Nieser & Chen, 1999, M. kymatista Nieser & Chen, 1999) and M. quadristrigata Breddin, 1905. The synonyms are indicated under each species. To facilitate identification, illustrations and habitus photos are provided. The faunistic components of Micronectidae in Borneo are discussed from a zoogeographic point of view.

The aim of this study was to enable measurement of cartilage formation by a novel biomarker of type II collagen formation. The competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) Pro-C2 was developed and characterized for assessment of the beta splice variant of type II procollagen (PIIBNP). This is expected to originate primarily from remodeling of hyaline cartilage. A mouse monoclonal antibody (Mab) was raised in mouse, targeting specifically PIIBNP (QDVRQPG) and used in development of the assay. The specificity, sensitivity, 4-parameter fit and stability of the assay were tested. Levels of PIIBNP were quantified in human serum (0.6–2.2 nM), human amniotic fluid (163–188 nM) and sera from different animal species, e.g., fetal bovine serum (851–901 nM) with general good linearity (100% (SD 7.6) recovery) and good intra- and inter-assay variation (CV% < 10). Dose (0.1 to 100 ng/mL) and time (7, 14 and 21 days) dependent release of PIIBNP were evaluated in the conditioned medium from bovine cartilage explants (BEX) and human cartilage explants (HEX) upon stimulation with insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1 and fibroblastic growth factor-2 (FGF-2). TGF-β1 and IGF-1 in concentrations of 10–100 ng/mL significantly (p < 0.05) induced release of PIIBNP in BEX compared to conditions without treatment (WO). In HEX, IGF-1 100 ng/mL was able to induce a significant increase of PIIBNP after one week compared to WO. FGF-2 did not induce a PIIBNP release in our models. To our knowledge this is the first assay, which is able to specifically evaluate PIIBNP excretion. The Pro-C2 assay seems to provide a promising and novel marker of type II collagen formation.

In order to measure the chromaticity of water and the content of dissolved matter more accurately, effectively, and cheaply, a chromaticity measurement system based on the image method was proposed and applied. The measurement system used the designed acquisition device and image processing software to obtain the Red-Green-Blue (RGB) values of the image and converted the color image from RGB color space to Hue-Saturation-Intensity (HSI) space to separate the chromaticity and brightness. According to the definition of chromaticity, the hue (H), saturation (S) values, and chromaticity of standard chromaticity solution images were fitted by a non-linear surface, and a three-dimensional chromaticity measurement model was established based on the H and S values of water images. For the measurement of a standard chromaticity solution, the proposed method has higher accuracy than spectrophotometry. For actual water sample measurements, there is no significant difference between the results of this method and the spectrophotometer method, which verified the validity of the method. In addition, the system was tried to measure the concentration of ammonia nitrogen, phosphate, and chloride in water with satisfactory results.

In petroleum-contaminated aquifers, biodegradation is always associated with various types of microbial metabolism. It can be classified as autotrophic (such as methanogenic and other carbon fixation) and heterotrophic (such as nitrate/sulfate reduction and hydrocarbon consumption) metabolism. For each metabolic type, there are several key genes encoding the reaction enzymes, which can be identified by metagenomics analysis. Based on this principle, in an abnormally low dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) petroleum-contaminated aquifer in North China, nine groundwater samples were collected along the groundwater flow, and metagenomics analysis was used to discover biodegradation related metabolism by key genes. The major new finding is that autotrophic metabolism was revealed, and, more usefully, we attempt to explain the reasons for abnormally low DIC. The results show that the methanogenesis gene, Mcr, was undetected but more carbon fixation genes than nitrate reduction and sulfate genes were found. This suggests that there may be a considerable number of autotrophic microorganisms that cause the phenomenon of low concentration of dissolved inorganic carbon in contaminated areas. The metagenomics data also revealed that most heterotrophic, sulfate, and nitrate reduction genes in the aquifer were assimilatory sulfate and dissimilatory nitrate reduction genes. Although there was limited dissolved oxygen, aerobic degrading genes AlkB and Cdo were more abundant than anaerobic degrading genes AssA and BssA. The metagenomics information can enrich our microorganic knowledge about petroleum-contaminated aquifers and provide basic data for further bioremediation.

We have developed a methodology to capture acidic proteins, alkaline proteins, and glycoproteins separately in mouse serum using a combination of three functionalized temperature-responsive chromatographic stationary phases. The temperature-responsive polymer poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) was attached to the stationary phase, silica. The three temperature-responsive chromatographic stationary phase materials were prepared by reversible addition−fragmentation chain transfer polymerization. Alkaline, acidic, and boric acid functional groups were introduced to capture acidic proteins, alkaline proteins, and glycoproteins, respectively. The protein enrichment and release properties of the materials were examined using the acidic protein, bovine serum albumin; the alkaline protein, protamine; and the glycoprotein, horseradish peroxidase. Finally, the three materials were used to analyze mouse serum. Without switching the mobile phase, the capture and separation of mouse serum was achieved by the combination of three temperature-responsive chromatographic stationary phase materials. On the whole, 313 proteins were identified successfully. The number of different proteins identified using the new method was 1.46 times greater than the number of proteins that has been identified without applying this method. To our knowledge, this method is the first combinatorial use of three functionalized temperature-responsive chromatographic stationary phase silica materials to separate proteins in mouse serum.

The interval neutrosophic set (INS) can be easier to express the incomplete, indeterminate and inconsistent information, and TOPSIS is one of the most commonly used and effective method for multiple attribute decision making, however, in general, it can only process the attribute values with crisp numbers. In this paper, we have extended TOPSIS to INS, and with respect to the multiple attribute decision making problems in which the attribute weights are unknown and the attribute values take the form of INSs, we proposed an expanded TOPSIS method. Firstly, the definition of INS and the operational laws are given, and distance between INSs is defined. Then, the attribute weights are determined based on the Maximizing deviation method and an extended TOPSIS method is developed to rank the alternatives. Finally, an illustrative example is given to verify the developed approach and to demonstrate its practicality and effectiveness.

We report the dependence of the near-field optical modes in metal-insulator-metal quantum well infrared photodetector (MIM-QWIP) on the incident angles. Three optical modes are observed and attributed to the 2nd- and the 3rd-order surface plasmon polariton (SPP) modes and the localized surface polariton (LSP) mode. In addition to the observation of a responsivity enhancement of 14 times by the LSP mode, the varying pattern of the three modes against the incident angle are revealed, in which the LSP mode is fixed while the 2nd SPP mode splits into two branches and the 3rd SPP mode red-shifts. The detailed mechanisms are analyzed and numerically simulated. The results fit the experiments very well, demonstrating the wavevector coupling effect between the incident light and the metal gratings on the SPP modes. Our work will pave the way to fully understanding the influence of incident angles on a detector’s response for applying the MIM-QWIP to focal plane arrays.

The benefits of an electron-transfer mechanism for petroleum biodegrading have been widely acknowledged, but few have studied the spatial pattern of microbial community diversity in groundwater fields, and few discuss the bacterial community’s diversity in relation to electron donors-acceptors distribution, which is largely determined by groundwater flow. Eleven samples in different groundwater fields are collected at a petroleum-contaminated site, and the microbial communities are investigated using 16S rRNA gene sequences with multivariate statistics. These are mainly linked to the chemical composition analysis of electron donor indexes COD, BTEX and electron acceptor indexes DO, NO3−, Fe2+, Mn2+, and SO42−, HCO3−. The spatial pattern of the bacterial community’s diversity is characterized and the effect of the electron redox reaction on bacterial community formation in different groundwater field zones is elucidated. It is found that a considerable percentage (>65%) of the bacterial communities related to petroleum degrading suggest that petroleum biodegrading is occurring in groundwater. The communities are subject to the redox reaction in different groundwater field zones: The side plume zone and the upstream of the source zone are under aerobic redox or denitrification redox, and the corresponding bacteria are Rhodoferax, Novosphingobium, Hydrogenophaga, and Comamonas; the source zone and downstream of the source zone are under Fe3+, Mn4+, and SO42− reduction redox, and the corresponding bacteria are Rhodoferax, Treponema, Desulfosporosinus, Hydrogenophaga, and Acidovorax. These results imply that groundwater flow plays a definitive role in the bacterial community’s diversity spatial pattern formation by influencing the distribution of electron donor and acceptor.

The dysregulation of glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK3) has been implicated in Alzheimer disease (AD) pathogenesis and in Aβ-induced neurotoxicity, leading us to investigate it as a therapeutic target in an intracerebroventricular Aβ infusion model. Infusion of a specific GSK3 inhibitor SB216763 (SB) reduced a downstream target, phospho-glycogen synthase 39%, and increased glycogen levels 44%, suggesting effective inhibition of enzyme activity. Compared to vehicle, Aβ increased GSK3 activity, and was associated with elevations in levels of ptau, caspase-3, the tau kinase phospho-c-jun N-terminal kinase (pJNK), neuronal DNA fragmentation, and gliosis. Co-infusion of SB corrected all responses to Aβ infusion except the induction of gliosis and behavioral deficits in the Morris water maze. Nevertheless, SB alone was associated with induction of neurodegenerative markers and behavioral deficits. These data support a role for GSK3 hyperactivation in AD pathogenesis, but emphasize the importance of developing inhibitors that do not suppress constitutive activity.

Salmon calcitonin has chondroprotective effect both in vitro and in vivo, and is therefore being tested as a candidate drug for cartilage degenerative diseases. Recent studies have indicated that different chondrocyte phenotypes may express the calcitonin receptor (CTR) differentially. We tested for the presence of the CTR in chondrocytes from tri-iodothyronin (T3)-induced bovine articular cartilage explants. Moreover, investigated the effects of human and salmon calcitonin on the explants.Early chondrocyte hypertrophy was induced in bovine articular cartilage explants by stimulation over four days with 20 ng/mL T3. The degree of hypertrophy was investigated by molecular markers of hypertrophy (ALP, IHH, COLX and MMP13), by biochemical markers of cartilage turnover (C2M, P2NP and AGNxII) and histology. The expression of the CTR was detected by qPCR and immunohistochemistry. T3-induced explants were treated with salmon or human calcitonin. Calcitonin down-stream signaling was measured by levels of cAMP, and by the molecular markers.Compared with untreated control explants, T3 induction increased expression of the hypertrophic markers (p

The organic anion of the title compound, {[Na(C15H9O10S)(H2O)2]·H2O}n {systematic name: poly[[diaqua[μ-2-(3,4-dihydroxyphenyl)-3,5,7-trihydroxy-4-oxo-4H-chromene-8-sulfonato]sodium] monohydrate]}, has a nearly planar structure. The Na atom is six-coordinated by O atoms, two from water molecules and four from the anion. The dihedral angle between the ring systems in the anion is 10.1 (1)°. Intramolecular O—H...S and O—H...O interactions occur. In the crystal structure, an extensive network of classical intermolecular O—H...S and O—H...O hydrogen bonds forms layers along the c axis.

The title compound, C16H24O3, has a cage-type molecular structure and is of interest with respect to its photochemical properties. The structure displays non-classical intermolecular C—H...O hydrogen bonding, which links the molecules into a three-dimensional network.

The root and canal anatomy of maxillary first molar is very complicated. The incidence of having two canals in the mesiobuccal root of maxillary first molar is higher than that in its distobuccal root. This article described a maxillary first molar with five root canals, including two canals in mesiobuccal and distobuccal roots.