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Abstract: By use of a tensor method, an analytical formula for a partially coherent Gaussian Schell-model (GSM) beam truncated by a circular phase aperture propagating through a paraxial ABCD optical system is derived. The propagation properties of a GSM beam truncated by a circular phase aperture in free space are studied numerically. It is found that the circular phase aperture can be used to shape the beam profile of a GSM beam and generate partially coherent dark hollow or flat-topped beam, which is useful in many applications, e.g., optical trapping, free-space optical communication, and material thermal processing. The propagation factor of a GSM beam truncated by a circular phase aperture is also analyzed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• HIF-1α has a protective effect on acute lung injury in LPS induced septic mice. • FG-4592 treatment remarkably ameliorated the LPS-induced lung injury through the stabilization of HIF-1α. • The clinical use of FG-4592 might be extended to ALI. Acute lung injury (ALI) is one of the most severe outcomes of sepsis which still waiting for effective treatment method. Roxadustat (FG-4592) which is often used for treatment of anemia in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), its affection on LPS-induced ALI haven't been evaluated. MH-S and MLE-12 cell injury and ALI mouse model was induced LPS. Several assays were used to explore the role of FG-4592 in reducing the damage caused by LPS. FG-4592 treatment significantly upregulated HIF-1α and HO-1 and strikingly attenuated inflammation in vivo and in vitro. Furthermore, septic mice overexpressing HIF-1α had high level of survival rate and lower expression of inflammatory factors while down-regulation can enhance the damage of LPS. HIF-1α has a protective effect on acute lung injury in LPS induced septic mice. FG-4592 treatment remarkably ameliorated the LPS-induced lung injury through the stabilization of HIF-1α. Besides the role in treating CKD anemia, the clinical use of FG-4592 also might be extended to ALI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remarkably little information is available about the interaction between the gut microbiota and intestinal immunity in fish and crustaceans. In our study, we used Illumina MiSeq sequencing and real-time quantitative PCR to compare the microbial community and immunity genes expression in the foregut, midgut and hindgut of Chinese mitten crab (Eriocheir sinensis). Our results indicated that the community richness of the midgut is higher than in the foregut or the hindgut, although the bacterial diversity in the hindgut is higher. The predominant phyla were Tenericutes and Firmicutes in the foregut, Tenericutes and Proteobacteria in the midgut and Proteobacteria, Tenericutes and Bacteroidetes in the hindgut. When compared with the midgut, the expression of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) were significantly elevated in the hindgut (P < 0.05), and the gene expression of EsRelish (IMD pathway) was higher than the Toll signaling pathway genes. Actinobacteria and Lactobacillus had negative correlationship with the expression of AMPs, although Acinetobacter, Bacteroides, Flavobacterium can up-regulate the expression of AMP genes. Collectively, our data indicate that microbiota are site-specific within the digestive tracts of crabs and the bacterial community and intestinal immunity have a close relationship in E. sinensis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To achieve automatic recognition of lightning images, which cannot easily be handled using the existing methods and still requires significant human resources, we propose a lightning image dataset and a preprocessing method. The lightning image data over five months were collected using a camera based on two optical observation stations, and then a series of batch labeling methods were applied, which greatly reduced the workload of subsequent manual labeling, and a dataset containing more than 30,000 labeled samples was established. Considering that lightning varies rapidly over time, we propose a time sequence composite (TSC) preprocessing method that inputs lightning's time-varying characteristics into a model for better recognition of lightning images. The TSC method was evaluated through an experiment on four backbones, and it was found that this preprocessing method enhances the classification performance by 40%. The final trained model could successfully distinguish between the "lightning" and "non-lightning" samples, and a recall rate of 86.5% and a false detection rate of 0.2% were achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metabolic-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) is a chronic liver disease caused by fat deposition in the liver of humans and mammals, while fatty liver hemorrhagic syndrome (FLHS) is a fatty liver disease in laying hens which can increase the mortality and cause severe economic losses to the laying industry. Increasing evidence has shown a close relationship between the occurrence of fatty liver disease and the disruption of mitochondrial homeostasis. Studies have proven that taurine can regulate hepatic fat metabolism, reduce hepatic fatty deposition, inhibit oxidative stress, and alleviate mitochondrial dysfunction. However, the mechanisms by which taurine regulates mitochondrial homeostasis in hepatocytes need to be further studied. In this study, we determined the effects and mechanisms of taurine on high-energy low-protein diet-induced FLHS in laying hens and in cultured hepatocytes in free fatty acid (FFA)-induced steatosis. The liver function, lipid metabolism, antioxidant capacity, mitochondrial function, mitochondrial dynamics, autophagy, and biosynthesis were detected. The results showed impaired liver structure and function, mitochondrial damage and dysfunction, lipid accumulation, and imbalance between mitochondrial fusion and fission, mitochondrial autophagy, and biosynthesis in both FLHS hens and steatosis hepatocytes. Taurine administration can significantly inhibit the occurrence of FLHS, protect mitochondria in hepatocytes from disease induced by lipid accumulation and FFA, up-regulate the expression levels of Mfn1, Mfn2, Opa1, LC3I, LC3II, PINK1, PGC-1α, Nrf1, Nrf2, and Tfam, and down-regulate the expression levels of Fis1, Drp1, and p62. In conclusion, taurine can protect laying hens from FLHS through the regulation of mitochondrial homeostasis, including the regulation of mitochondrial dynamics, autophagy, and biosynthesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a general phase retrieval method is proposed, which is based on one single interferogram with a small amount of fringes (either tilt or power). Zernike polynomials are used to characterize the phase to be measured; the phase distribution is reconstructed by a non-linear least squares method. Experiments show that the proposed method can obtain satisfactory results compared to the standard phase-shifting interferometry technique. Additionally, the retrace errors of proposed method can be neglected because of the few fringes; it does not need any auxiliary phase shifting facilities (low cost) and it is easy to implement without the process of phase unwrapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sepsis is a public cause of death in intensive care unit patients. Probiotics were widely used to increase the survival rate of sepsis by a series of clinical research. The purpose of this research was to investigate the therapeutic effects of Lactobacillus johnsonii 6084 in septic mice. Sepsis mouse model was induced by LPS treatment. The influence of L. johnsonii 6084 on the protection of organ injury induced by sepsis was explored. Moreover, the composition of gut microbiota was studied to clarify the mechanism of L. johnsonii 6084 therapeutic effect on sepsis. L. johnsonii 6084 treatment could conspicuously decrease the mortality and organ injury of sepsis. The reduction of gut microbial diversity and richness in septic mice were moderated by the administration of 6084. The abundance of Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria were change by LPS treatment while restored by L. johnsonii 6084. To conclude, probiotic 6084 may has optimistic result on reducing mortality of sepsis through rebalancing gut microbiota. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In males, the decline of androgen synthesis, spermatogenesis and sexual function are the main phenotypes of aging, which may be attributed to testicular dysfunction. Taurine can act as an antioxidant, a testosterone secretion stimulator, a sperm membrane stabilizer and motility factor, and an anti-apoptotic agent. Recent observational studies suggested that taurine may play an important role in spermatogenesis, but to date whether taurine has anti-aging effects on testes remains unknown. We found that in aged rats testicular SDH and G6PDH activities, marker enzymes of testes, serum testosterone, testicular 3β-HSD and 17β-HSD mRNA expression levels were significantly increased by taurine treatment. Taurine administration also markedly raised the sperm count, viability and motility, decreased the sperm abnormality. Our data suggested that taurine can postpone testicular function deterioration in aged rats. Importantly, we observed obvious elevation of testicular antioxidant enzymes (SOD, GSH, GSH-Px) activities, and remarkable reduction of ROS and MDA by taurine administration, indicating taurine can decrease testicular oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation in aged rats. Finally, we found taurine effectively reduced testicular DNA fragmentation, increased testicular Bcl-2 protein expression, and decreased cytochrome c, Bax, Fas, FasL and caspase-3 expression, suggesting taurine can prohibit aged testicular apoptosis by mitochondrial dependent and independent signal pathway. In summary, our results indicated that taurine can suppress testicular function deterioration by increasing antioxidant ability and inhibiting apoptosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Controlling The Growth modes. By modifying the add volume of ligand MBIA, the coverage of MBIA over Au NBPs is controlled, and so does the growth mode of Au on Au NBPs. • Au Doposition on Au NBPs. Our work chose the less-reserched nanoparticle as the core-shell or islands-growing nanoparticles are mostly synthesized with nanospheres, nanorods and nanopolyhedrons as the core. • Size-university of Au NBP. The experiments were repeated with three sizes of Au NBPs and the results were generally the same. Gold deposition on Au nanoparticles is a common method to control the shape and further modify the properties of nanoparticles as their properties have a strong correlation with their nanostructures. For Au nanobipyramid (Au NBP), it has advantages such as the enhancement of electric field and a higher tunability in plasmon wavelength than the Au nanorod and thus owns a greater potential in shape control. In this paper, we demonstrate a scheme of depositing Au on the surface of Au NBP with the presence of a type of ligand 2-mercaptobenzoimidazole-5-carboxylic acid (MBIA) to synthesize Au NBP@Au dimers. The growth mode of Au depositing on Au NBP can be controlled by the coverage of MBIA. As the coverage is low, with a concentration of MBIA below 0.4 mM, the rough core–shell nanostructure is synthesized; However, as the coverage is high, with a concentration of MBIA over 0.8 mM, gold deposition may form islands on the surface of Au NBP. The SERS performance of Au depositing on Au NBP can also be enhanced by growth mode. For the rough-surface core–shell growth mode, the enhancement is more significant as the EF is improved from 3.5 × 105 to 1.06 × 106 than the islands-growing growth mode due to the coupling between core and shell. And our results show that with multiple types of nanosturctures easy to obtained by changing modified ligand coverage, the controlled growth has a great potential in the dimer design and SERS enhancement using Au NBP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The calpain-1-activated apoptotic pathway plays a key role in right ventricular hypertrophy (RVH). Taurine has been shown to attenuate apoptosis by inhibiting calpain activity. This experiment aimed to determine whether taurine could prevent RVH by inhibiting the calpain-1/cytochrome c apoptotic pathway. The broilers were given 1% taurine dissolved in drinking water and were raised at 10 °C ~ 12 °C from day 21 to day 42. At 21 d, 28 d, 35 d and 42 d, the right ventricular (RV) tissues were collected. Increased RVH index, angiotensin II, norepinephrine and atrial natriuretic peptide mRNA expression were reduced by taurine in the broiler RVs. Taurine obviously inhibited cardiomyocyte apoptosis via maintaining the mitochondrial membrane potential and decreased the activation of caspase-9 and caspase-3 in the broiler RVs. The antioxidant assay demonstrated that taurine enhanced the activities of superoxide dismutase, total antioxidant capacity and glutathione peroxidase and the glutathione/glutathione disulfide ratio. Western blot results revealed that taurine also downregulated the expression of calpain-1 and cytosolic cytochrome c while upregulating the expression of Bcl-2/Bax and mitochondrial cytochrome c in broiler cardiomyocytes during RVH. In summary, we found that taurine could enhance cardiomyocyte antioxidant ability and further prevented cardiomyocyte apoptosis by inhibiting the calpain-1/cytochrome c pathway during RVH in broilers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Hollow Gaussian beam (HGB) was introduced in [Cai et al., Optics Letters 2003;28:1084–1086 [12]] and the fractional Fourier transform (FRT) for a HGB was studied theoretically in [Zheng, Physics Letters A 2006;355:156–161 [53]] . In this paper, we derive the analytical formula for the truncated FRT for a HGB, and we report experimental observation of the FRT and the truncated FRT for a HGB. The influences of the fractional order and the truncation parameter on the intensity distribution of the HGB in the FRT plane have been studied in detail both theoretically and experimentally. It is found that the FRT optical system provides an efficient way for modulating the beam profile of a HGB. Our experimental results agree well with the theoretical predictions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• A novel trend prediction method is proposed for bearing performance degradation. • A feature extraction method based on MRSVD is proposed for noisy vibration signals. • LSTM-RNN with hidden layer connections is utilized to predict the performance degradation trend. Evaluating and predicting bearing performance degradation is essential to the reliability and safety of mechanical equipment systems. However, due to the complex working conditions, bearing vibration signals always suffer from serious noise, which is reflected in bearing degradation features and makes the performance prediction more difficult. To solve the problem, this paper proposes a novel method that utilizes long short-term memory network with multi-resolution singular value decomposition to predict bearing performance degradation. To explore feature expressions that are more conducive to trend prediction, the fault features from original vibration signals are enhanced, and multi-resolution singular value decomposition (MRSVD) is used for decomposition and reconstruction to accurately detect the fault point in vibration signals, and suppress the influence of interfering noise. Finally, a long short-term memory (LSTM) network is used to predict bearing performance degradation. Case studies with accelerated bearing degradation tests verified the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of groundwater evolution is of great significance for water resource protection and management, groundwater pollution control, and ecological environment protection. Experts and scholars have found that the hydrochemical processes and evolutionary patterns of groundwater are determined by both natural processes and human activities. However, there is relatively little research on the evolution of groundwater in mining areas where human activities have a significant impact. Therefore, to study the main controlling factors affecting the hydrogeochemical evolution of groundwater in mining areas, this paper proposes a method combining mixed ratio calculation and multivariate statistical analysis. Firstly, a total of 40 groundwater samples are classified into six clusters via hierarchical cluster analysis. By comprehensively analyzing the spatial location of the samples, it was found that there was no obvious distribution pattern of groundwater in space. Furthermore, the rationality of the cluster analysis is evaluated via principal component analysis. Next, hydrochemical and isotopic analyses were conducted to determine the source of groundwater in the mining area, and a three terminal element mixing model was established to identify the source of pollutants and calculate the terminal element mixing ratio. The research results indicate that groundwater in mining areas is formed by a mixture of shallow bedrock fissure water, deep bedrock fissure water, and rainwater, and the mixing effect is the main factor affecting the evolution of groundwater in mining areas, with a more significant impact than the depth of groundwater circulation. In addition, different types and degrees of water-rock interaction in different regions have altered the hydrochemical characteristics of groundwater in mining areas, such as the dissolution of multiple minerals, cation exchange, and common ion effects. Based on the above analysis results, a water circulation model for the mining area has been established. The findings of this study not only contribute to the protection of shallow fissure groundwater in the study area, but also provide a basis for investigating the groundwater evolution patterns in other metal mines., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2024 The Authors.)

In the field of topological photonics, one goal is to seek specialized structures with topological protection that can support the stable propagation of light. We have designed a topological configuration featuring a broad channel to sustain edge or interface states. The topological properties are elucidated by analyzing the energy spectrum, eigenstates, and winding numbers. Furthermore, the propagation characteristics of light within our structure are examined through the computation of intensities derived from the coupled mode equations. Our findings reveal that the structure is capable of confining light to the central region, facilitating stable and robust propagation for large-sized beams. Additionally, simulations conducted using commercial software have substantiated the theoretical analysis. Our finding may have significant implications for the modulation of structured light and the development of photonic devices with wide channel capabilities.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a serious metabolic disease characterized by insulin resistance and reduced insulin production, which causes abnormally elevated blood glucose. It has been reported that T2DM can enhance oxidative stress and inflammatory responses, and stimulate a variety of complications including liver injury. Studies have shown that taurine has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects that can not only ameliorate diabetes but also alleviate liver injury caused by various diseases. However, its effect on liver injury in T2DM is not clear. In our study, a high-fat diet and intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin (STZ) was used to induce liver injury in T2DM rats, and taurine was given as a treatment. Through the use of HE staining on paraffin sections, ELISA, and qRT-PCR, the effects of taurine on liver pathological alterations, antioxidant capacity, and inflammatory response were investigated. We found that: hepatic transaminase levels of rats were reduced significantly following taurine administration; histopathological observations revealed that the morphology of rat hepatocytes was close to normal, and the number of inflammatory cells around liver vessels was significantly reduced; antioxidant-related indicators were significantly increased, including SOD, CAT, GSH-Px and T-AOC, while related factors of the Nrf2 signalling pathway and its downstream HO-1, NQO1 and γ-GCS were significantly increased; the expression of the JAK2-STAT1 signalling pathway, TLR4/NF-κB signalling pathway and NLRP3 inflammatory vesicle-related factors were significantly reduced. Our results suggest taurine can alleviate T2DM-induced liver injury by improving the antioxidant capacity of the liver and inhibiting macrophage M1-type polarization and the inflammatory response mediated thereby., Competing Interests: The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests:Jiancheng Yang and Gaofeng Wu reports was provided by National Natural Science Foundation of China. Jiancheng Yang and Gaofeng Wu reports a relationship with 10.13039/501100001809National Natural Science Foundation of China that includes: funding grants. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

We demonstrate that the spiral spectrum (also known as orbital angular momentum spectrum) of a Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beam with topological charge (TC) l is asymmetrically broadened propagating through moderate-to-strong atmospheric turbulence, even the statistics of turbulence is isotropic. This phenomenon is quite different from that predicted in weak turbulence where the spiral spectrum of a disturbed LG beam is symmetric with respect to its TC number l. An explicit analytical expression of the spiral spectrum of the LG beam with l = 1 is derived based on the extend Huygens-Fresnel integral and quadratic approximation, which is used to illustrate the transition scenarios of the spiral spectrum from symmetry to asymmetry in weak-to-strong turbulence. The physical mechanism for the asymmetric spiral spectrum in moderate-to-strong turbulence is thoroughly discussed. Our results are confirmed by the multi-phase screen numerical simulations and are consistent with the experimental results reported in Phys. Rev. A105, 053513 (2022)10.1103/PhysRevA.105.053513 and Opt. Lett.38, 4062 (2013)10.1364/OL.38.004062.

In some situations, the beam is partially blocked by an obstacle during propagation, and the influence of the obstacle and ways to decrease the influence have been studied for practical applications. The self-healing effect of Bessel beams is considered as one potential technology for this. The optical pin beam (OPB) can evolve into a Bessel-like beam and can retain its robust property after long-distance propagation. In this paper, we study the propagation property of an OPB after it is partially blocked by an obstacle. We observe the self-healing effects of the OPB and find that it exhibits robust self-healing abilities. An experiment is conducted to confirm the self-healing effect of the OPB. As one example of the application of the self-healing effect, the radiation forces of an obstructed OPB are calculated. Our findings may have important applications in various fields such as micro-imaging, trapping, and long-distance optical communication under disturbance conditions.

We introduce an efficient approach to simultaneously tailor the spatial profile and the degree of coherence (DOC) of partially coherent light by devising its statistical properties in the spatial frequency domain. The relationship between the beam profile and the DOC in the source plane and the correlation function and power spectrum in the spatial frequency domain is analyzed in detail. This approach enables us to generate partially coherent sources with spatially uniform or non-uniform coherence states, and the source profiles are controlled. The condition for switching two coherence states is given through two theoretical examples. Furthermore, we validate our approach in experiment through generating two kinds of spatially non-uniform correlated sources with controllable beam profiles. The experimental results agree well with our theoretical analysis.

Background: Hypertrophic scars (HS) affect millions of people each year and require better treatment strategies. Bacterial extracellular vesicles (EVs) are advantaged by low cost and high yield which was commonly used in the treatment of diseases. Here, we investigated the therapeutic efficacy of EVs obtained from Lactobacillus druckerii in hypertrophic scar. In vitro, the effects of Lactobacillus druckerii-derived EVs (LDEVs) on Collagen I/III and α-SMA in fibroblasts obtained from HS. In vivo, a scleroderma mouse model was used to investigate the effects of LDEVs on fibrosis. The impact of LDEVs on excisional wound healing was explored. The different proteins between PBS and LDEVs treated fibroblasts derived from hypertrophic scar were studied by untargeted proteomic analysis., Results: In vitro, LDEVs treatment significantly inhibited the expression of Collagen I/III and α-SMA and cell proliferation of fibroblasts derived from HS. In vivo, LDEVs withdrawn the hypertrophic scar formation in scleroderma mouse model and decreased the expression of α-SMA. LDEVs promoted the proliferation of skin cells, new blood vessel formation and wound healing in excisional wound healing mice model. Moreover, proteomics has shown that LDEVs inhibit hypertrophic scar fibrosis through multiple pathways., Conclusions: Our results indicated that Lactobacillus druckerii-derived EVs has the potential application in the treatment of hypertrophic scars and any other fibrosis diseases., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

In this study, a large construction waste dump in Beijing, China, was used as the study area. Nineteen effective atmospheric dust samples were collected. The mass fractions of 14 metal elements (Ca, Fe, Al, Mg, Mn, Zn, Cr, Cu, V, Pb, Ni, As, Co, and Cd) were determined for the samples using ICP-MS. The pollutants and the potential ecological risk levels of 10 different heavy metals were evaluated using the enrichment factor, geo-accumulation index, and a potential ecological risk assessment method. The results showed that the Ca, Fe, Al, and Mg contents in the dust fall were considerably high and accounted for 98.81% of the total mass of the analysed metals. Cd and Zn were the main metal contaminants in the dust fall in the vicinity of the construction waste dump, followed by Cu and Mn. The Cd, Zn, Cu, and Mn contents in the construction waste had a significant impact on atmospheric pollution within 250 m of the dump. Moreover, Cd had the largest contribution to the comprehensive ecological risk posed by the heavy metals in the dust fall and was determined to be the primary ecological risk factor in the atmospheric environment in the vicinity of the construction waste dump.

The clinical correlation between adiponectin (APN) signal and hypertrophic scar (HS) remains unclear. Here, we found significantly reduced expression of APN receptors (AdipoR1/2) in HS tissues and derived fibroblasts (HFs), suggesting that HS formation may be associated with APN/AdipoR1/2 decline. RNA sequencing and RT-PCR validation revealed that APN significantly elevated the expression of SIRT1 . Both in vitro and in vivo experiments confirmed that SIRT1 plays important role in APN inhibiting the fibrotic phenotype transformation and proliferation of scar fibroblasts and improving skin fibrosis. Mechanistically, SIRT1 inhibited the acetylation of C/EBPβ K39, histone H3K27, and H3K9, resulting in impaired transcription activity of C/EBPβ and compact chromatin conformation, thus preventing C/EBPβ from activating the transcription of YAP . Moreover, we found that YAP was critical for the transcriptional regulation of CTGF , CCND1, and CCNE1 by TEAD4. In conclusion, our study revealed the role of APN in antagonizing HS fibrosis by regulating the SIRT1/C/EBPβ/YAP pathway., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2022 The Authors.)

The analytical formula of the probability density of a single orbital angular momentum (OAM) mode for pin-like optical vortex beams (POVBs) in turbulent atmosphere is derived. Its OAM spectrum in the receiving plane is obtained by the numerical calculation. For comparison, the OAM spectrum of commonly Gaussian vortex beams is showed, too. Those results show that POVBs show good performance on resisting the cross talk of the OAM mode induced by the turbulence in some cases, such as smaller radius of the receiving aperture, longer propagation distance, and stronger turbulence. Our finding has application in free-space optical communication based on the OAM mode.

Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), which widely exists in soil and crops, is the most toxic aflatoxin and a carcinogen to humans and animals. The liver is the main organ that processes AFB1 and other mycotoxins and is also the main target of AFB1 toxicity. Taurine is known to exhibit a variety of physiological and pharmacological functions. In the present study, taurine was administered to detect the protective effect and mechanism of taurine in AFB1-induced liver injury in rats. The results showed that taurine inhibited the increase in hepatic injury indices, hepatic apoptosis and hepatic malondialdehyde (MDA) contents while significantly enhanced the hepatic activities of antioxidant enzymes and mitochondrial function-related indices in AFB1-poisoned rats. Meanwhile, the expression levels of key factors in the Nrf2 signalling pathway were upregulated while the expression levels of key proteins in the mitochondria-mediated apoptotic pathway were downregulated after taurine administration. The results showed that taurine can reverse AFB1-induced liver injury and abnormal apoptosis through activation of the Nrf2 signalling pathway and its downstream antioxidant enzymes, which further protects mitochondria from oxidative stress and the subsequent apoptotic pathway., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

It is known that a twisted Gaussian Schell-model (TGSM) beam with elliptical Gaussian amplitude will rotate its beam spot upon propagation because of the vortex structure of the transverse energy flux. In this paper, we study a special kind of twisted partially coherent beams named twisted Hermite-Gaussian correlated Schell model (HGCSM) beam whose degree of coherence (DOC) is non-circularly symmetric but the source amplitude is of the circular Gaussian profile. Our results reveal that the beam spot (average intensity distribution) does not rotate during propagation even if the circular symmetry of the beam spot is broken. However, the DOC pattern shows the rotation under propagation. From the investigation of the transverse energy flux and OAM density flux, we attribute the nontrivial rotation phenomenon to the redistribution of the transverse energy flux by non-circular DOC. Furthermore, based on Hyde's approach [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A37, 257 (2020)10.1364/JOSAA.381772], we introduce a method for the generation of this class of twisted partially coherent sources. The non-rotation of the beam spot and rotation of the DOC are demonstrated in experiment.

Hypoxia caused by low ambient temperature leads to hypoxemia in broilers, which aggravates the metabolic burden of the liver. Liver damage is closely related to oxidative stress and apoptosis. It has been proved that taurine can reduce oxygen free radicals, exert antioxidant properties, and inhibit mitochondria-dependent apoptosis. This experiment aimed to determine whether taurine could prevent liver damage by inhibiting oxidative stress and the cytochrome c-mediated apoptotic pathway in broilers under low ambient temperature. Broilers were given 1% taurine in drinking water, and the temperature was raised at 10 °C ~ 12 °C from 21 to 42 days. At 28 and 42 days, the hepatic tissues were collected. The antioxidant capacity of liver tissues and mRNA expression levels of the factors related with cytochrome c-medicated apoptosis pathway were measured. The results showed taurine significantly increased the total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC) at 28 days. Furthermore, taurine also increased the activities of glutathione peroxidase (GSH-PX) while reducing malondialdehyde (MDA) concentration at 28 days and 42 days. Our results also revealed that taurine significantly increased the mRNA expression levels of Hsp 27 and Hsp 90 while decreasing caspase-3 mRNA expression in broiler hepatocytes at 28 days. In addition, taurine also upregulated the expression level of Bcl-2 at 42 days. In summary, the present study found that taurine enhances the antioxidant ability and alleviates cytochrome c-mediated apoptosis in hepatic tissue of broilers under low temperature., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)

Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) is one of the most toxic mycotoxins, which can cause serious kidney damage after ingestion. Taurine protects the kidney, an effect related to its antioxidation and anti-apoptotic actions. In the present study, taurine was administered to detect the protective effect and mechanism of taurine on AFB1-induced renal injury in rats. The results show that taurine ameliorated the increase in serum blood urea nitrogen (BUN), blood creatinine (CRE), blood uric acid (UA), cystatin c (Cys-c), and urinary protein and AKP levels. Taurine also inhibits the content of superoxide dismutase (SOD), total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC), catalase (CAT), glutathione (GSH), glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px), succinate dehydrogenase (SDH), and the mRNA expression of SOD, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate-quinine oxidoreductase 1 (NQO1), γ-glutamylcysteine synthetase (γ-GCS), heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), and glutamate cysteine ligase catalytic (GCLC) in rat kidney tissue. The apoptotic rate of renal cells was decreased by taurine through inhibition of a mitochondrial mechanism. In summary, we found that taurine prevents AFB1-induced renal injury via enhanced antioxidant ability and mitochondrial-dependent apoptosis., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)