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Abstract Progesterone and its derivatives attracted widespread interest because of their applications in medicine, health care and birth control, which is the main active ingredient of contraceptive pills known as one of the five chemistry discoveries that changed human life. Although the research of pharmacological effects on contraceptive pill-related compounds has been around for decades, their ferroelectricity has long been overlooked. Here, we report that 4-androsten-3-one-5-ene-17-carboxylic acid, a derivative of progesterone, is an organic single-component ferroelectric, as confirmed by the polarization–electric field hysteresis loops. It crystallizes in the monoclinic space group P21 with a polar packing structure and undergoes a reversible structural phase transition at a high temperature of 489 K. Thermal analysis revealed that its ferroelectricity can persist up to 533 K, giving a wide working temperature range. As the first ferroelectric in steroid biomaterials, 4-androsten-3-one-5-ene-17-carboxylic acid shows great potential in applications for flexible devices, biomedical devices, bio-machines and so on.

AIM: To detect proteomic differences in tears between adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC) and pleomorphic adenoma (PA). METHODS: Tear samples were collected from 4 patients with ACC, 5 with PA, and 4 control cases. Label-free analysis and parallel reaction monitoring (PRM) were used to screen and validate the tear proteome. Gene Ontology (GO) annotation and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) were conducted for bioinformatics analysis. RESULTS: In total, 1059 proteins in tear samples were identified by label-free analysis. Between ACC and PA, 415 differentially expressed proteins were detected. Based on the GO annotation, enzyme regulator activity and serine-type endopeptidase inhibitor activity in the molecular function category, blood microparticle and extracellular matrix in the cellular component category, and response to nutrient levels in the biological process category were most predominant. By KEGG pathway annotation, the different proteins between ACC and PA mainly participated in complement and coagulation cascades, amoebiasis, African trypanosomiasis and cholesterol metabolism. Eight proteins with mostly significant differences were verified by PRM, and five proteins with more than 10-fold increases in ACC compared with PA, including integrin β, α-2-macroglobulin, epididymal secretory sperm binding protein Li 78p, RAB5C, and complement C5, were identified. CONCLUSION: The combined tools of label-free analysis and PRM are very effective and efficient, especially for samples such as tears. Some proteomic differences in tears between ACC and PA are identified and these protein candidates may be specific biomarkers for future exploration.

This study aimed to investigate the impacts of vegetables with different textures on food oral processing behavior, food intake and satiety. Broccoli cooked by microwave for different periods of time were tested in this study. The oral processing behavior of simultaneous and sequential consumption of cooked broccoli and rice, ad libitum food intake and postprandial satiety were measured in healthy subjects. Results showed that compared with co-ingestion of soft broccoli and seasoned rice (SSR), sequential ingestion of hard broccoli followed by seasoned rice (H + SR) increased the number of chews, the oral sensory exposure time and the number of chews per gram by 44%, 34% and 57%, respectively, and reduced the eating rate by 25% and the rice intake by 20%. Moreover, compared with SSR, H + SR effectively suppressed the perception of postprandial hunger. In conclusion, hard-cooked broccoli helped to reduce food intake and inhibit subjective hunger by enhancing oral processing, and this effect was more significant when the vegetable was first consumed cooked by cooked.

The Chang 9 oil layer deposits within Ansai District, Ordos Basin, yield considerable reserves of crude oil, yet their source remains ambiguous. This research endeavor was designed to characterize the Chang 9 crude oil and the Chang 7 and Chang 9 source rocks (SRs) of the Yan-Chang Formation via organic geochemical analysis. The results indicate that the Chang 9 crude oil exhibits a Pr/Ph ratio of 0.84–2.29 and Ga/C30H less than 0.1, implying formed in a weak reduction to weak oxidation freshwater environment. The regular sterane C27-C28-C29 configuration assumes an inversed “L” type, reflecting mixed sources and dominant terrestrial plant input. Ratios such as C2920S/20S+20R (0.54–0.6) and C29ββ/ββ+αα (0.44–0.58) indicate a mature oil stage. The depositional environment of the C7 and C9 SRs is similar, with weak oxidation to reduction conditions, and consists mainly of Type I and II organics, with a relatively higher maturity of the C9 SRs. A difference in C19/C23TT and C30D/C30H was found between the C7 and C9 SRs. The results show that the C9 crude oils have a similar C19/C23TT with the C9 SRs and similar diahopanes distribution with Class II SRs (C7 and part of the C9 SRs). Thus, the C9 crude oils most likely originate from the C9 SR mixed with the C7 SRs.

PurposeTo explore the association between type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and body composition based on magnetic resonance fat fraction (FF) mapping.MethodsA total of 341 subjects, who underwent abdominal MRI examination with FF mapping were enrolled in this study, including 68 T2DM patients and 273 non-T2DM patients. The FFs and areas of visceral adipose tissue (VAT), subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) and abdominal muscle (AM) were measured at the level of the L1-L2 vertebral. The FF of bone marrow adipose tissue (BMAT) was determined by the averaged FF values measured at the level of T12 and L1 vertebral, respectively. The whole hepatic fat fraction (HFF) and pancreatic fat fraction (PFF) were measured based on 3D semi-automatic segmentation on the FF mapping. All data were analyzed by GraphPad Prism and MedCalc.ResultsVAT area, VAT FF, HFF, PFF of T2DM group were higher than those of non-T2DM group after adjusting for age and sex (P < 0.05). However, there was no differences in SAT area, SAT FF, BMAT FF, AM area and AM FF between the two groups (P > 0.05). VAT area and PFF were independent risk factors of T2DM (all P < 0.05). The area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) for VAT area and PFF in differentiating between T2DM and non-T2DM were 0.685 and 0.787, respectively, and the AUC of PFF was higher than VAT area (P < 0.05). Additionally, in seemingly healthy individuals, the SAT area, VAT area, and AM area were found to be significantly associated with being overweight and/or obese (BMI ≥ 25) (all P < 0.05).ConclusionsIn this study, it was found that there were significant associations between T2DM and VAT area, VAT FF, HFF and PFF. In addition, VAT area and PFF were the independent risk factors of T2DM. Especially, PFF showed a high diagnostic performance in discrimination between T2DM and non-T2DM. These findings may highlight the crucial role of PFF in the pathophysiology of T2DM, and it might be served as a potential imaging biomarker of the prevention and treatment of T2DM. Additionally, in individuals without diabetes, focusing on SAT area, VAT area and AM area may help identify potential health risks and provide a basis for targeted weight management and prevention measures.

Teaching online physical education courses under the epidemic normalization plays a positive role in students’ physical fitness. In this paper, taking 308 college students of X Sports College as a research case, personalized recommendation of physical education online teaching courses is carried out through a user collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm based on fuzzy clustering and user interests. The model of sports skill action development is constructed based on the mountain peak model and hourglass model, and the exercise intensity of the initial exercise is modified according to the results of home exercise intensity adjustment to obtain a personalized home exercise program suitable for individuals. Finally, the effectiveness of the home exercise optimization program was verified through the analysis of teaching constraints and exercise effects. The results show that under the epidemic normality, the difference between the demonstration movements and the test results in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd optimized teaching phases is between ±5.86, which is closer to the value of each index of the demonstration movements, indicating that the optimization and adjustment scheme of the home exercise of the physical education network teaching course has good effects. This paper has reference value for universities to conduct online teaching and training of university physical education courses in the context of major public health emergencies.

Vitamin D deficiency is associated with various diseases such as obesity, digestive problems, osteoporosis, depression, and infections, and has therefore emerged as a topic of great interest in public healthcare. The quantitative assessment of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25-OH VD) in human serum may accurately reflect the nutritional status of vitamin D in the human body, which is significant for the prevention and treatment of vitamin D-deficient patients. In this study, we developed an assay for quantitative detection of 25-OH VD based on the 25-OH VD monoclonal antibody (mAb), and identified the optimal process parameters. The following process settings were found to be suitable for the test strips: pH of 7.6, 1-Ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide (EDC) ratio of 1:2000, and the anti-25-OH VD mAb ratio was 1:8. The equilibration time of the immune dynamic assay was 15 min. Under optimal conditions, the quantum dot nanoparticle-based fluorescent immunochromatographic assay (QDs-FICA) exhibited dynamic linear detection of 25-OH VD in PBS, from 5 ng/mL to 100 ng/mL, and the strip quantitative curve could be represented by the following regression equation: y = −0.02088 logx)+1.444 (R2 = 0.9050). The IC50 of the QDs-FICA was 39.6 ± 1.33 ng/mL. The specificity of the QDs-FICA was evaluated by running several structurally related analogues, including 25-OH VD2, 25-OH VD3, 1,25-OH2VD3, 1,25-OH2VD2, VD2, and VD3. The coefficients of variation were all below 10%. The shelf life of the test strips in this study was about 160 days at room temperature. Briefly, this study is the first to perform QDs-FICA for the rapid visual and quantitative detection of 25-OH VD, with great potential significance for clinical diagnosis of vitamin D-associated diseases.

Vascular endothelial cells (ECs) sense and respond to hemodynamic forces such as pulsatile shear stress (PS) and oscillatory shear stress (OS). Among the metabolic pathways, glycolysis is differentially regulated by atheroprone OS and atheroprotective PS. Studying the molecular mechanisms by which PS suppresses glycolytic flux at the epigenetic, transcriptomic, and kinomic levels, we have demonstrated that glucokinase regulatory protein (GCKR) was markedly induced by PS in vitro and in vivo, although PS down-regulates other glycolysis enzymes such as hexokinase (HK1). Using next-generation sequencing data, we identified the binding of PS-induced Krüppel-like factor 4 (KLF4), which functions as a pioneer transcription factor, binding to the GCKR promoter to change the chromatin structure for transactivation of GCKR. At the posttranslational level, PS-activated AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) phosphorylates GCKR at Ser-481, thereby enhancing the interaction between GCKR and HK1 in ECs. In vivo, the level of phosphorylated GCKR Ser-481 and the interaction between GCKR and HK1 were increased in the thoracic aorta of wild-type AMPKα2+/+ mice in comparison with littermates with EC ablation of AMPKα2 (AMPKα2-/-). In addition, the level of GCKR was elevated in the aortas of mice with a high level of voluntary wheel running. The underlying mechanisms for the PS induction of GCKR involve regulation at the epigenetic level by KLF4 and at the posttranslational level by AMPK.

A comparative analysis of the changes in indicators of myofibrillar protein oxidation and the activities of cathepsins B, H and in red shrimp during frozen storage after immersion freezing (?18 and ?30 ℃) and refrigerator freezing (?18 and ?30 ℃) was conducted. Microstructural observation of myofibrillar protein was carried out to analyze the effect of cathepsin activity on myofibrillar protein hydrolysis and its correlation with muscle tissue structure was explored. The results showed that the contents of salt-soluble protein in the immersion freezing groups at ?18 and ?30 ℃ were 92.7 and 97.8 mg/g, respectively, significantly higher than those in the refrigerator freezing groups at ?18 and ?30 ℃ (72.40 and 77.90 mg/g, respectively). The surface hydrophobicity in the immersion freezing group at ?30 ℃ was the lowest =(400.6 μg), and Ca2+-ATPase activity was higher at ?30 ℃ than at ?18 ℃ for both freezing methods. The trend of change in total sulfhydryl content was consistent with that of Ca2+-ATPase activity. At the early stage of storage (0–60 days), immersion freezing at lower temperature could better inhibit cathepsin activity and maintain myofibrillar protein structure. At the late stage of storage (60–120 days), the cathepsin inhibitory effect decreased. Based on the above results, it was clear that during a certain storage period, immersion freezing could better attenuate the oxidation of myofibrillar protein and cathepsin activity of Solenocera crassicornis than refrigerator freezing, and lower freezing temperature of antifreeze liquid resulted in higher freezing rate, weaker cathepsin activity and lower extent of myofibrillar protein oxidation, which was more conducive to the maintenance of myofibrillar protein structure.

The forest canopy height is a key indicator for measuring global forest carbon stocks. Spaceborne LiDAR, a satellite remote sensing technology, plays an essential role in large-scale canopy height estimations. However, there are still some problems with existing methods of the spaceborne LiDAR canopy height estimates: the retrieval accuracy is degraded by the topographic relief and vegetation cover, as well as uneven spatial distribution of mapping height uncertainties. In this paper, we investigated the possibility of fusing multimodal spaceborne LiDAR and optical images to improve these above problems. We proposed a hybrid model fusing spaceborne full-waveform and photon-counting LiDAR data with optical imagery. Specifically, our approach divided the regional extent into multiple fusion patterns based on the spatial distribution of the LiDAR footprints in an object-oriented method. We then constructed canopy height models corresponding to each pattern and finally integrated the model results using a weighting scheme considering geospatial distances. We used GEDI (full-waveform LiDAR), ICESat-2 (photon-counting LiDAR) and Sentinel-2 (optical imagery) products as the input data and validated the model accuracy in four representative biomes of global forest ecosystems (i.e., evergreen broadleaf forests, deciduous broadleaf forests, savannas and coniferous forests). The experimental results demonstrated that fusing multisource spaceborne LiDAR data and optical images can not only enhance the canopy height estimation accuracy (R2 0.65 ∼ 0.90 and RMSE 0.57 ∼ 4.15 m in four biomes) but also maintain stable accuracy under undulating slope and large vegetation cover. Moreover, the uncertainty of canopy height estimation was low (meanerror −0.20 ∼ 0.03 m) and uniformly distributed in space (stdev 0.71 ∼ 4.45 m). We also compared the performances with two other advanced canopy height models, as well as two global canopy height products, and our model showed significant advantages in each test region. Our study demonstrates the effectiveness of fusing multimodal spaceborne LiDAR data and optical imagery for canopy height estimation accuracy improvement.

To determine the rupture processes of big earthquakes is a fundamental problem of earthquake studies, which also supports earthquake physics research. Although the joint use of seismic, geodetic and seismicity data provides good constraints to determine the fault plane information of inland earthquakes, it is still challenging to unveil non-planar fault planes for oceanic earthquake ruptures. For complicated earthquakes, that ruptured more than one fault plane, a method to stably obtain focal mechanism changes is required to determine the fault plane information precisely. In this study, we analyze the stability and flexibility of multiple seismic methods, i.e. back-projections, multi-point-source inversion and finite fault inversion, to determine the rupture kinematics of big earthquakes, and find the stability spatial-temporal resolution and flexibility to resolve focal mechanisms that are not compatible in each single techniques. A sequential strategy is thus proposed to use back-projection results to prescribe the a priori information of multi-point-source inversion to achieve mechanism changing point source solutions with high spatial-temporal accuracy. Two strategies to connect these two techniques and other technique concerns are also discussed.