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Besides acting as principle cellular building blocks and energy reservoirs, lipids also carry important signals associated with many fundamental cell biological processes, such as proliferation, differentiation, migration, stress responses and cell demise. Hyperactive lipid metabolism is closely associated with cancer progression and unfavorable outcomes. The underlying mechanisms are being gradually deciphered. In this review, we aim to summarize recent advances on how reprogrammed lipid metabolism and accompanying signaling cascades directly modulate cancer cells, as well as influencing stromal cells and immune cells within the tumor microenvironment. For future studies, special attention should be paid to lipid-mediated crosstalk among cancer cells, their neighboring stromal cells, and immune cells, plus how these multi-level communications determine anti-tumor immunity and bring novel immunotherapeutic opportunities.

Background: Few studies have examined the association between treatment given time and clinical outcomes, which is indeed of great importance to clinical management of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We performed this study to explore whether early treatment brings favorable clinical outcomes. Methods: In this retrospective multicenter study, we included patients aged 18 to 87 years with confirmed COVID-19 on admission from 54 hospitals in nine provinces of China from 21 January to 10 March, 2020. Final date of follow-up was March 17, 2020. All patients were treated by Lung cleansing & detoxifying decoction combined with western medicine. Patients were divided into four groups according to the interval from the first date of onset of symptoms to the date of starting a treatment, i.e., ≤1 week group (≤7 days), 1-2 weeks group (>7 days and ≤14 days), 2-3 weeks group (>14 days and ≤21 days) and >3 weeks group (>21 days). Multivariable Cox proportional hazard ratio (HR) models were used to estimate unadjusted and adjusted HRs and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the association between the treatment given time and clinical outcomes (time to recovery, days of viral shedding, duration of hospital stay, course of disease, fever and CT images). Findings: Of the 782 patients (median age was 46 years old, and 405 (52%) were male), there were 321 (41%) patients in ≤1 week group, 221 (28%) in 1-2 weeks group, 123 (16%) in 2-3 weeks group and 117 (15%) in >3 weeks group. Compared to patients in later treatment group (greater than 3 weeks), patients in earlier treatment groups of less than 1 week, 1 to 2 weeks, or 2 to 3 weeks had higher likelihood of recovery, with adjusted HR (95% CI) of 3.81 (2.65-5.48), 2.63 (1.86-3.73) and 1.92 (1.34-2.75), respectively. The median days of viral shedding was 13 days and 12 days in 2-3 weeks group and 3 weeks group (P=0.0137). The median course of disease decreased from 34 days to 24 days, 21 days and 18 days when treatment was given every one week in advance compared to that was given later than 3 weeks from the onset of symptoms (P

The domain adaptation uses labeled source domain data to train a classifier to be used in the target domain with no or small amount of labeled data. Usually there exists discrepancy in terms of marginal and conditional distributions for both source and target domains, which is of critical importance to minimize the distribution discrepancy between domains. As a classical model in deep learning, the autoencoder is capable of realizing distribution matching and enhancing classification accuracy by extracting more abstract and effiective features from data. A Domain adaptation network based on autoencoder (DANA) is proposed. The DANA structure consists of a couple of encoding layers: a feature extraction layer and a classification layer. For the feature extraction layer, the marginal distributions of source and target domains are matched by using the nonparametric maximum mean discrepancy measurement. For the classification layer, the softmax regression model is applied to encode the label information of source domains meanwhile to match the conditional distribution. Experimental results on ImageNet, Corel and Leaves datasets have shown the enhanced classification accuracy by our proposed algorithm compared with the classical methods.

Heterogeneous domain adaptation is a more challenging problem than homogeneous domain adaptation. The transfer effect is not ideally caused by shallow structure which cannot adequately describe the probability distribution and obtain more effective features. In this paper, we propose a heterogeneous domain adaptation network based on autoencoder, in which two sets of autoencoder networks are used to project the source-domain and target-domain data to a shared feature space to obtain more abstractive feature representations. In the last feature and classification layer, the marginal and conditional distributions can be matched by empirical maximum mean discrepancy metric to reduce distribution difference. To preserve the consistency of geometric structure and label information, a manifold alignment term based on labels is introduced. The classification performance can be improved further by making full use of label information of both domains. The experimental results of 16 cross-domain transfer tasks verify that HDANA outperforms several state-of-the-art methods.

International audience; The fine line between human health and disease can be driven by the interplay between host and microbial factors. This ``metagenome'' regulates cancer initiation, progression, and response to therapies. Besides the capacity of distinct microbial species to modulate the pharmacodynamics of chemotherapeutic drugs, symbiosis between epithelial barriers and their microbial ecosystems has a major impact on the local and distant immune system, markedly influencing clinical outcome in cancer patients. Efficacy of cancer immunotherapy with immune checkpoint antibodies can be diminished with administration of antibiotics, and superior efficacy is observed with the presence of specific gut microbes. Future strategies of precision medicine will likely rely on novel diagnostic and therapeutic tools with which to identify and correct defects in the microbiome that compromise therapeutic efficacy.

Autophagy machinery has roles in the defense against microorganisms such as Candida albicans. Lipidated LC3, the marker protein of autophagy, participates in the elimination of C. albicans by forming a single-membrane phagosome; this process is called LC3-associated phagocytosis (LAP). However, the influence of C. albicans on autophagic flux is not clear. In this study, we found that C. albicans inhibited LC3 turnover in macrophages. After the phagocytosis of C. albicans in macrophages, we observed fewer acridine orange-positive vacuoles and RFP-GFP-LC3 puncta without colocalization with phagocytized C. albicans. However, phagocytosis of C. albicans led to LC3 recruitment, but p62 and ATG9A did not colocalize with LC3 or C. albicans. These effects are due to an MTOR-independent pathway. Nevertheless, we found that the C. albicans pattern-associated molecular pattern β-glucan increased LC3 turnover. In addition, phagocytosis of C. albicans caused a decrease in BrdU incorporation. Blocking autophagic flux aggravated this effect. Our findings suggest that phagocytosis of C. albicans decreases autophagic flux but induces LAP in an MTOR-independent manner in macrophages. Occupation of LC3 by recruiting engulfed C. albicans might contribute to the inhibition of autophagic flux. Our study highlights the coordinated machinery between canonical autophagy and LAP that defends against C. albicans challenge.

Modified basalt fiber (MBF) is a sustainable material studied as novel wastewater treatment bio-carrier recently. This work studied the effects of calcium modification on the bacterial affinity of modified fiber (Ca-MBF), bacterial community, and nitrogen removal performance. Results showed that Ca-MBF with hydrophilic (62.66°) and positively-charged (7.80 mV) surface accelerated bacterial attachment. Volatile suspended solids on Ca-MBF (5.46 g VSS/g fiber) were increased by 2.61 times after modification, with high bacterial activity when bio-carriers were cultured in activated sludge. Extracellular polymeric substances on Ca-MBF was 4.35 times higher and consisted of more protein. Bio-nests with unique aerobic/anaerobic structure formed on the ultrafine carriers in bioreactor. Ca-MBF bioreactor exhibited total nitrogen removal efficiency above 72.2% and COD removal efficiency above 94.2% with more stable performance than unmodified carrier in long-term treatment using synthetic domestic wastewater.16S rRNA gene sequencing revealed enhanced abundance of nitrifying and denitrifying bacteria in Ca-MBF bio-nest.

Domain adaptation learning aims to solve the classification problems of unlabeled target domain by using rich labeled samples in source domain, but there are three main problems: negative transfer, under adaptation and under fitting. Aiming at these problems, a domain adaptation network based on hypergraph regularized denoising autoencoder (DAHDA) is proposed in this paper. To better fit the data distribution, the network is built with denoising autoencoder which can extract more robust feature representation. In the last feature and classification layers, the marginal and conditional distribution matching terms between domains are obtained via maximum mean discrepancy measurement to solve the under adaptation problem. To avoid negative transfer, the hypergraph regularization term is introduced to explore the high-order relationships among data. The classification performance of the model can be improved by preserving the statistical property and geometric structure simultaneously. Experimental results of 16 cross-domain transfer tasks verify that DAHDA outperforms other state-of-the-art methods.

High power density is an important target to achieve in the piezoelectric devices and it is primarily limited by internal losses in a piezoelectric material. There are three losses in piezoelectric materials: dielectric, elastic and piezoelectric losses. In this paper, a new equivalent circuit is proposed considering these three losses. First, a six-terminal equivalent circuit is derived based on the Mason’s equivalent circuit. In order to verify the feasibility of the new circuit, four different external loads configurations which reflect intensive and extensive loss behaviors are explored and simulated. The resonance and antiresonance frequencies and their corresponding mechanical quality factors derived from the circuits are compared with the actual samples with the different loads and boundary conditions. The simulation results have the same trend as the experimental measurements. Equivalent circuits with only dielectric, elastic losses were simulated to verify the accuracy improvement of the new equivalent circuits. The voltage distribution of non-electrode sample is simulated with the proposed equivalent circuit and matches the experimental result on the actual sample.

Although remarkable progress has been made in oncology research, cancer is still a leading cause of death worldwide. It is well recognized that cancer is a genetic disease, yet metabolic alterations or reprogramming are the major phenotypes associated with the (epi-)genetic modifications of cancer cells. Thus, understanding the metabolic changes of tumor cells will facilitate the diagnosis of cancer, alleviate drug resistance and provide novel druggable targets that can lead to cures for cancer. The first Sino-US Symposium on Cancer Metabolism was held in Chongqing on October 10th and 11th, with the theme of “cancer metabolism and precision cancer therapy”. The symposium brought about a dozen keynote speakers each from the US and mainland China, as well as one hundred delegates with an interest in cancer metabolism. This short article will briefly summarize the advances reported during this meeting.

The present study explored the protective role of dietary the extract of Angelica sinensis (EAs) on high density, CuSO

In the competition of RoboMaster, the robot needs to trigger the target, the “Energy Mechanism” which consists of nine different dynamic flame numbers, in a nine square area by shooting projectiles. Therefore, 3D target detection should be implemented including target recognition and 3D pose estimation in real-time. As the targets are dynamic flame numbers and quite small in the whole image, it increases the difficulty to detect. The robot should achieve to shoot the target in multi-angle and multi-scale to adjust the competition. To address these issues, we propose a fast and accurate method to detect all nine numbers and estimate each 3D pose based on prior knowledge and convolutional neural network only by a monocular camera. The geometric constraints around the target are employed as prior knowledge when estimating the target pose. Then, we utilize the relative position information to detect the region of each dynamic number in the image, which is recognized by a convolutional neural network trained by flame numbers. Experiments in the actual environment show that our method can achieve the detection of each dynamic number in real-time and high accuracy. The runtime is 29ms on average (about 11ms in detection and 18ms in recognition) and the recognition accuracy is about 94.69%. And our method wins the first place in the technical challenge of 2018 RoboMaster competition.

International audience; Glucocorticoids mediate potent anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive effects. A chronic elevation of the endogenous glucocorticoid tonus subsequent to mental stress, as well as continuous treatment with exogenous glucocorticoids, activate an immunosuppressive transcription factor, TSC22D3, in dendritic cells, causing the subversion of cancer therapy-elicited antineoplastic immune responses and subsequent therapeutic failure.

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Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is a common type of lung cancer characterized by a high incidence of local invasion and metastasis. Programmed cell death factor 4 (PDCD4) is a well-recognized tumor suppressor gene involved in LUAD, however its precise regulatory mechanism remains elusive. This is the first study to report an inverse regulatory relationship between PDCD4 and eukaryotic translation initiation factor 3 subunit H (EIF3H) in LUAD. Co-immunoprecipitation assays combined with mass spectrometry and immunofluorescent co-localization indicated that PDCD4 interacted with EIF3H. Overexpression of PDCD4 in LUAD cells reduced EIF3H mRNA and protein levels by suppressing c-Jun-induced EIF3H transcription. Further, an elevated level of EIF3H protein was found in LUAD tissues compared with para-cancerous normal lung tissues, and was found to be an unfavorable factor promoting LUAD pathogenesis. Moreover, the negative correlation between PDCD4 and EIF3H protein expression was confirmed in LUAD tissues. Functional analyses showed that EIF3H overexpression promoted LUAD cell migration and invasion in vitro as well as metastasis in nude mice by activating epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) signaling. Conversely, EIF3H knockdown with small interfering RNAs reversed these changes in LUAD cells. Furthermore, we discovered that introduction of PDCD4 to EIF3H-overexpressing LUAD cells abrogated the function of EIF3H, reducing migration and invasion of LUAD cells by downregulating EMT signaling. Taken together, our findings identified a previously unknown negative regulation of PDCD4 on EIF3H and confirmed EIF3H as an oncogenic factor in LUAD by enhancing EMT signaling, which was abrogated by PDCD4.

PTEN is a dual-specificity phosphatase that is frequently mutated in human cancer, and its deficiency in cancer has been associated with therapy resistance and poor survival. Although the intrinsic tumour-suppressor function of PTEN has been well established, evidence of its role in the tumour immune microenvironment is lacking. Here, we show that chemotherapy-induced antitumour immune responses and tumour suppression rely on myeloid-cell PTEN, which is essential for chemotherapy-induced activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome and antitumour immunity. PTEN directly interacts with and dephosphorylates NLRP3 to enable NLRP3-ASC interaction, inflammasome assembly and activation. Importantly, supplementation of IL-1β restores chemotherapy sensitivity in mouse myeloid cells with a PTEN deficiency. Clinically, chemotherapy-induced IL-1β production and antitumour immunity in patients with cancer is correlated with PTEN expression in myeloid cells, but not tumour cells. Our results demonstrate that myeloid PTEN can determine chemotherapy responsiveness by promoting NLRP3-dependent antitumour immunity and suggest that myeloid PTEN might be a potential biomarker to predict chemotherapy responses.

A piezoelectric motor that imitates the motion of a hula hoop was developed. It has the advantage of low sliding wear as static friction force is used to drive the rotor. The rotation speed of the rotor can be regulated by changing the exciting frequency of piezoelectric transducers. The stator is composed of four piezoelectric plates attached to a steel rod. Two orthogonal bending modes were excited by driving two pairs of piezoelectric plates, and circular motion was formed on the rod. The reversed motion of the rotor can be obtained by adjusting the phase of two bending modes. The prototype stator working at 39.1 Hz produced a rotation speed of 1142 rpm and a torque of 0.23 mN m.

A compact driver based on current feedback amplifiers is designed to drive interdigital transducers (IDTs) that generate standing surface acoustic waves for cell sorting. Compared with commercial RF amplifiers, this driver can be used to drive a wider range of loads without impedance matching. Furthermore, the driver works in a switch mode triggered by target cells, which significantly reduces power consumption in the system. A Butterworth-Van Dyke equivalent circuit was fabricated to study the electrical characteristics of the IDTs, and the driver was designed and optimized by circuit simulations. A cell sorter was constructed and tested experimentally to demonstrate that the driver meets sorting requirements. The driver allows the cell sorter to extract rare cells while otherwise consuming low power.

In this paper, the adsorption behaviors of nitrogen based gas molecules (NO, N2O, NH3 and NO2) on the Mg-adsorbed C3B monolayers were investigated using the density functional theory computations. Firstly, the adsorption of Mg metal on the C3B nanosheet was considered. Our results suggested that the adsorption of Mg atom on the surface of C3B monolayer is a suitable strategy to enhance the sensitivity of C3B based sensors towards aforementioned gas molecules. The semiconductor to metal phase change occurred upon the adsorption of metal dopant on the C3B monolayer. The considered gas molecules were adsorbed on the Mg site of Mg-C3B sheets via chemical bonds, which indicates the superior media for gas sensing and adsorption. Besides, all the gas adsorbed Mg-C3B nanosheets exhibited metallic behavior. Thus, our findings indicated that Mg-adsorbed C3B nanosheet is an outstanding candidate for sensing nitrogen based gas molecules.

In this paper, a resonant-type piezoelectric inertial motor driven by rectangular pulse is developed. The rectangular pulse drive methodology is explained and its influence on output displacement of the stator is discussed in relation to four factors: frequency ratio, duty ratio, vibration amplitude ratio, and phase difference. A bending stator with second harmonics at its double fundamental resonant frequency is designed to generate saw-tooth type displacements under a rectangular pulse. It is composed of an aluminum plate (20 mm × 4 mm × 2 mm) sandwiched between two piezoelectric plates (10 mm × 4 mm × 0.73 mm). Experiments show that with optimized duty ratios, both the rotation speed and stall torque can be enhanced. The rotation direction of the rotor can be reversed by changing the duty ratio. The maximum no-load angular speed reaches 300 rpm with driving voltage of 60 Vpp at the fundamental resonant frequency of 35.3 kHz in both directions. Using a preload of 1.07 N, stall torque reaches 1220 μNm driven at 80 Vpp and 35.3 kHz. The maximum efficiency of the motor is 2.1%, which is higher than that of the previously reported piezoelectric inertial rotary motors. The proposed inertial motor features simple mechanical and electrical design, which makes it ideal for miniature electro-mechanical device applications.

This paper proposes a boosting-based solution addressing metric learning problems for high-dimensional data. Distance measures have been used as natural measures of (dis)similarity and have served as the foundation of various learning methods. The efficiency of distance-based learning methods heavily depends on the chosen distance metric. With increasing dimensionality and complexity of data, however, traditional metric learning methods suffer from poor scalability, and the limitation due to linearity as the true signals are usually embedded within a low-dimensional nonlinear subspace. In this paper, we propose a nonlinear sparse metric learning algorithm via boosting. We restructure a global optimization problem into a forward stage-wise learning of weak learners based on a rank-one decomposition of the weight matrix in the Mahalanobis distance metric. A gradient-boosting algorithm is devised to obtain a sparse rank-one update of the weight matrix at each step. Nonlinear features are learned by a hierarchical expansion of interactions incorporated within the boosting algorithm. Meanwhile, an early stopping rule is imposed to control the overall complexity of the learned metric. As a result, our approach guarantees three desirable properties of the final metric: positive semi-definiteness, low rank and element-wise sparsity. Numerical experiments show that our learning model compares favorably with the state-of-the-art methods in the current literature of metric learning.

According to the deficiencies of Local Binary Pattern (LBP), the dimension of extraction is large, and it is not conducive to describe all characteristics of image texture, this paper proposes a novel facial expression recognition algorithm "K-ELBP" which uses uniform patterns of Extended Local Binary Pattern (ELBP), and combines with the covariance matrix transform in K-L transform (KLT). In this paper, ELBP is used for the first step to extract the feature matrix of expression images, then covariance matrix transform is applied to the ELBP matrix for reducing the dimension, which aims at extracting the main feature vectors. And the best recognition performance is obtained by using SVM for classification. A series of experiments by using different divided methods are designed to evaluate the effects of characteristics which are extracted by K-ELBP algorithm. According to the results of the experiments, the proposed K-ELBP algorithm can extract facial expression features effectively, and the rates of recognition are satisfying.

Graphical abstract, The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic has been almost controlled in China under a series of policies, including “early diagnosis and early treatment”. This study aimed to explore the association between early treatment with Qingfei Paidu decoction (QFPDD) and favorable clinical outcomes. In this retrospective multicenter study, we included 782 patients (males, 56 %; median age 46) with confirmed COVID-19 from 54 hospitals in nine provinces of China, who were divided into four groups according to the treatment initiation time from the first date of onset of symptoms to the date of starting treatment with QFPDD. The primary outcome was time to recovery; days of viral shedding, duration of hospital stay, and course of the disease were also analyzed. Compared with treatment initiated after 3 weeks, early treatment with QFPDD after less than 1 week, 1-2 weeks, or 2-3 weeks had a higher likelihood of recovery, with adjusted hazard ratio (HR) (95 % confidence interval [CI]) of 3.81 (2.65–5.48), 2.63 (1.86-3.73), and 1.92 (1.34-2.75), respectively. The median course of the disease decreased from 34 days to 24 days, 21 days, and 18 days when treatment was administered early by a week (P < 0.0001). Treatment within a week was related to a decrease by 1-4 days in the median duration of hospital stay compared with late treatment (P

Previous studies have revealed that parenting is a typical external factor influencing the formation and development of children’s empathy; however, little is known about the underlying processes that may mediate or moderate this relationship. This study examined the possible patterns of relationship between parenting, self-integrity, sense of coherence, and adolescents’ empathy through a moderated mediating model. A sample of 2228 adolescents participated in this study and completed the measures of parenting, empathy, self-integrity and sense of coherence. Mediation analyses indicated that self-integrity mediated the relationship between positive parenting and adolescents’ empathy. Moderated mediation analyses revealed that sense of coherence moderated the relationship between positive parenting and adolescents’ empathy, as well as the relationship between positive parenting and self-integrity. The findings of this study can contribute to a better understanding of the mechanism of associations between parenting and adolescents’ empathy. The results obtained from current study can provide guidance for effectively improving adolescents’ empathy.

The current microfluidic chip design generally forms a stagnation point in the exit flow area of the microfluidic chip. The presence of the stagnation area can cause problems such as choke of channel and sample purity degradation. For this problem, a microfluidic chip with converse fluid was designed. The converse sheath liquid can avoid the adverse effects caused by the presence of the stagnation point. It can prevent the cells from contacting the wall surface, and avoid the blocking problem of cell. At the same time, the introduction of the converse sheath liquid can also focus the sample flow in the sorting channel and the waste channel again, which is convenient for the detection of the sorted sample. The fluid flow state in this microfluidic chip was also simulated, and it verified the benefit of introducing converse sheath fluid, which has reference value for the design of microfluidic chip for cell analysis and sorting.

This paper presents the first measurements of the charge independent (CI) and charge dependent (CD) two-particle transverse momentum correlators G2CI and G2CD in Pb–Pb collisions at sNN=2.76TeV by the ALICE collaboration. The two-particle transverse momentum correlator G2 was introduced as a measure of the momentum current transfer between neighboring system cells. The correlators are measured as a function of pair separation in pseudorapidity (Δη) and azimuth (Δφ) and as a function of collision centrality. From peripheral to central collisions, the correlator G2CI exhibits a longitudinal broadening while undergoing a monotonic azimuthal narrowing. By contrast, G2CD exhibits a narrowing along both dimensions. These features are not reproduced by models such as HIJING and AMPT. However, the observed narrowing of the correlators from peripheral to central collisions is expected to result from the stronger transverse flow profiles produced in more central collisions and the longitudinal broadening is predicted to be sensitive to momentum currents and the shear viscosity per unit of entropy density η/s of the matter produced in the collisions. The observed broadening is found to be consistent with the hypothesized lower bound of η/s and is in qualitative agreement with values obtained from anisotropic flow measurements.

The main bottleneck causing lags in the application of transition metal oxides as substitutes for poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly (styrene-sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) are the relatively low level efficiencies of quantum dot light-emitting diodes (QLEDs), even though they can improve a device's stability. High-performance QLEDs are fabricated with long lifetimes using low-cost, reliable and all-solution-processed hole injection materials with a double hole injection layer (HIL) structure. Vanadium oxide (V2O5)/PEDOT:PSS double HILs offer a small staircase interface barrier, which enhance the hole injection and achieve a better charge balance. By using this double HIL regular planar architecture device, the maximum external quantum efficiency (ηEQE) reaches 18.09% and over 13355 h of lifetime. The related control PEDOT:PSS-based and V2O5-based QLEDs have maximum ηEQE of 13.79% and 9.13% with 6117 and 30881 h of lifetime, respectively. Due to the enhanced hole injection with the staircase interface barrier, the double HIL architecture QLEDs also have a high ηEQE above 15.00% over a wide range of 900–26000 cd m−2 with a low efficiency roll-off. These discoveries support the use of inorganic transition metal oxides as HILs for QLEDs with high efficiency and brightness for long operational lifetimes.

Psychological distress has long been suspected to influence cancer incidence and mortality. It remains largely unknown whether and how stress affects the efficacy of anticancer therapies. We observed that social defeat caused anxiety-like behaviors in mice and dampened therapeutic responses against carcinogen-induced neoplasias and transplantable tumors. Stress elevated plasma corticosterone and upregulated the expression of glucocorticoid-inducible factor Tsc22d3, which blocked type I interferon (IFN) responses in dendritic cell (DC) and IFN-γ

Understanding the extent of pesticide overuse and what drives rice farmers to overuse pesticide in agricultural production theoretically and empirically is imperative to increase farmers’ income, promote agricultural transformation and agricultural sustainable development. In this paper, we examined the phenomenon and pattern of pesticides overuse based on the data collected from 861 rice farmers in Jiangsu and Anhui, two provinces in China. By applying the Cobb-Douglas production function (C-D production function) and the damage control model, we estimated the marginal productivity of pesticides. We also adopted the Binary Probit model to further explore factors leading to overuse of pesticide among farmers. Our findings suggested that the marginal productivity of pesticides is close to zero, indicating that there is an excessive use of pesticides in the surveyed areas. According to the Binary Probit model, we also discovered that female farmers, farmers with knowledge about pesticide toxicity, pesticide residue and farmers who hold the view that massive use of pesticide is inimical to the environment, and farmers who participate in pesticide training organized by the government, are more likely to overuse pesticide. On the contrary, experienced farmers have a lower chance of overusing pesticides. Possible explanations to the above findings may be that applying pesticides in accordance with the instructions causes overusing and farmers who are loss-averse, in order to avoid the risk of income loss that may be caused by disease and insect pests, and keep its own income stable, will still increase the amount of pesticide application. It also indicates that farmers are insensitive to increased pesticide overuse.

The paper aims to investigate Chinese consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for pork characterized by four attributes, namely food safety certification labels, location-of-origin, “free from veterinary drug residues” label, and price, based on a choice experiment conducted among 844 consumers from Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, China. A Random Parameter Logit model was estimated to elicit consumers’ WTP. The results showed that Jiangsu consumers’ WTP for pork with a “Organic Food” certification (26.78 Yuan) was the highest among all attributes, followed by “Green Food” certification (20.22 Yuan), “free from veterinary drug residues” label (23.18 Yuan), and location-of-origin (12.77 Yuan). However, there was only a moderate preference for “Safe Food” certification (8.10 Yuan). In addition, respondents from the more developed region (i.e., Jiangsu) had significantly higher WTP for all attributes than respondents from Anhui, a less developed region. The Random Parameter Logit model shows that better educational attainment and higher income were two factors that were associated with a higher WTP. The main policy recommendations are that public awareness of the different types of verifications should be improved and that authorization of certification logos should be enforced strictly so that food with certification logos are always reflective of the standard being followed.

The study was to explore the effect of the extracts of Angelica sinensis (EAs) on lipid oxidation in fish feeds compared with ethoxyquin (EQ) and the effect of dietary EAs on growth performance of carp (Cyprinus carpio var. Jian). Firstly, fish feeds were respectively added with EQ, and ethyl ether extract, ethyl acetate extract (EAE), acetone extract, ethanol extract (EE) and aqueous extract (AQE) of Angelica sinensis, except for the control. The results showed that EAs and EQ inhibited lipid oxidation in fish feeds (P < 0.05). Of all of the examined EAs, EAE showed the strongest protective effects against lipid oxidation (P < 0.05). Moreover, EAE at high concentrations showed a stronger effect on lipid oxidation compared with EQ (P < 0.05). Then, 7 experimental diets respectively supplemented with 0.0, 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 and 6.0 g/kg of EAE were fed to the respective treatment groups for 30 d. Four replicates were performed for each treatment group; 20 carp (mean weight: 12.10 ± 0.13 g) were in each replicate. The results indicated that dietary EAE improved the growth performance in carp (P < 0.05). The appropriate concentration of EAE for carp growth was estimated to be 3.643 g/kg diet. Thus, EAE could be used as a natural antioxidant in feeds for Jian carp.

In order to investigate the distribution of PM2.5 in indoor air, a model was established. The distribution of PM2.5 in indoor was simulated in the condition of natural ventilation and air conditioning ventilation with different velocities. The influence of different ventilation methods was analyzed on the distribution of PM2.5 in indoor. The results showed that the PM2.5 was gathered near the inlet, outlet and near the wall in indoor. The distribution of PM2.5 was directly impacted by the ventilation method and the concentration of PM2.5 was lower in natural ventilation than that in air conditioning ventilation.

Cancer therapies can temporarily reduce tumor burdens by inducing malignant cell death. However, cancer cure is still far from realization because tumors often gain resistance to current treatment and eventually relapse. Accumulating evidence suggests that successful cancer interventions require anti-tumor immunity. Therapy-induced cell stress responses ultimately result in one or more cell death modalities, including apoptosis, autophagy, necroptosis, and pyroptosis. These irreversible dying processes are accompanied by active or passive release of cell death-associated molecular patterns (CDAMPs), which can be sensed by corresponding pattern recognition receptors (PRR) on tumor-infiltrating immune cells. This crosstalk with the immune system can reawaken immune surveillance in the tumor microenvironment (TME). This review focuses on immune-modulatory properties of anti-cancer regimens and CDAMP-mediated communications between cell stress responses and the immune contexture of TME. In addition, we describe how immunogenic cell death can elicit strong and durable anti-tumor immune responses.

Improper use of pesticides among farmers has caused food safety issues which are serious threats to public health in China. A central question concerns how to motivate farmers to self-regulate their pesticide usage. The paper aims to identify the influence of an internal driving factor, i.e., perceived benefits, and an external driving factor, i.e., subjective norm, on farmers’ safe pesticide behaviors, and whether the two factors are moderated by the exposure to information on government policies and the market, based on a sample of 971 farmers selected from 5 Chinese provinces. The results revealed that farmers’ safe pesticide usage was predominately driven by perceived benefits whereas external pressure or subjective norm did not play much of a role. Interaction effects were found between the exposure to market information and perceived benefits, and also between subjective norm and exposure to government policy. Extensions agencies are recommended to effectively convey to farmers the benefits to follow safe pesticide practices. Meanwhile, surveillance and monitoring systems should be established so that the prices of their agricultural products are reflected by the quality of the products.

The therapeutic efficacy of anthracyclines relies, at least partially, on the induction of a dendritic cell– and T-lymphocyte–dependent anticancer immune response. Here, we show that anthracycline-based chemotherapy promotes the recruitment of functional CD11b+CD11c+Ly6ChighLy6G−MHCII+ dendritic cell–like antigen-presenting cells (APC) into the tumor bed, but not into lymphoid organs. Accordingly, draining lymph nodes turned out to be dispensable for the proliferation of tumor antigen–specific T cells within neoplastic lesions as induced by anthracyclines. In addition, we found that tumors treated with anthracyclines manifest increased expression levels of the chemokine Ccl2. Such a response is important as neoplasms growing in Ccl2−/− mice failed to accumulate dendritic cell–like APCs in response to chemotherapy. Moreover, cancers developing in mice lacking Ccl2 or its receptor (Ccr2) exhibited suboptimal therapeutic responses to anthracycline-based chemotherapy. Altogether, our results underscore the importance of the CCL2/CCR2 signaling axis for therapeutic anticancer immune responses as elicited by immunogenic chemotherapy. Cancer Res; 74(2); 436–45. ©2013 AACR.

A compact ultrasonic motor using sandwiching piezo-ceramic plates was developed, having advantages of low manufacturing costs, simple driving circuit, and high scalability. The stator is composed of two piezoelectric plates attached to a T-shaped steel body. Two orthogonal bending modes can be excited by driving one piezoelectric plate and the reversed motion of the rotor can be obtained by driving the piezoelectric plate on the opposite side. The prototype stator with a size of 15 mm × 2.44 mm × 2 mm, operated at 44.8 kHz, was experimentally characterized, and a maximum torque of 2 mN m was obtained. Maximum power of 2.3 mW and efficiency of 9% were produced with a load of 0.8 mN m at a rotation speed of 27 rpm.

Fully transparent inverted quantum dot light-emitting diodes (QLEDs) were fabricated by incorporating a Ag-nanowire-based anode. Aluminum-doped zinc oxide (ZnO:Al, AZO) was inserted by atomic layer deposition and reduced the sheet resistance by promoting adhesion of Ag nanowires (AgNWs) film and increasing its chemical stability towards oxygen. The performance of the QLEDs was optimal when the thickness of AZO was 20 nm. The current efficiency of the fully transparent inverted QLEDs integrated with the AgNWs/AZO anode reached 15.33 cd A-1. The main peak wavelength and optical transmittance of the inverted QLEDs were 530 nm and 75.66%, respectively. This discovery is expected to provide a basic method for the production of flexible displays with full transparency by AgNWs-based electrodes.

Chemoimmunotherapy is reported to activate a robust T cell antitumor immune response by triggering immunogenic cell death (ICD), which has initiated a number of clinical trials. However, current chemoimmunotherapy is restricted to a small fraction of patients due to low drug delivery efficacy and immunosuppression within the tumor microenvironment. A tumor microenvironment-activatable prodrug vesicle for cancer chemoimmunotherapy using ICD is herein reported. The prodrug vesicles are engineered by integrating an oxaliplatin (OXA) prodrug and PEGylated photosensitizer (PS) into a single nanoplatform, which show tumor-specific accumulation, activation, and deep penetration in response to the tumoral acidic and enzymatic microenvironment. It is demonstrated that codelivery of OXA prodrug and PS can trigger ICD of the tumor cells by immunogenic cells killing. The combination of prodrug vesicle-induced ICD with Î ± CD47-mediated CD47 blockade further facilitates dendritic cell (DC) maturation, promotes antigen presentation by DCs, and eventually propagates the antitumor immunity of ICD. CD47 blockade and ICD induction efficiently inhibit the growth of both primary and abscopal tumors, suppress tumor metastasis, and prevent tumor recurrence. Collectively, these results imply that boosting antitumor immunity using ICD induction and suppressing tumor immune evasion via CD47 blockade might be promising for improved cancer chemoimmunotherapy.

Autophagy constitutes a mechanism for the sequestration and lysosomal degradation of various cytoplasmic structures, including damaged organelles and invading microorganisms. Autophagy not only represents an essential cell-intrinsic mechanism to protect against internal and external stress conditions but also shapes cellular immunity. Recent evidence indicates that autophagic responses in antigen-donor cells affect the release of several cytokines and "danger signals." Thus, especially when it precedes cell death, autophagy alerts innate immune effectors to elicit cognate immune responses. Autophagy is also important for the differentiation, survival, and activation of myeloid and lymphoid cells. Accordingly, inherited mutations in autophagy-relevant genes are associated with immune diseases, whereas oncogenesis-associated autophagic defects promote the escape of developing tumors from immunosurveillance. Here, we discuss the regulation of autophagy in the course of cellular immune responses and emphasize its impact on the immunogenicity of antigen-donor cells and on the activity of antigen-presenting cells and T lymphocytes.

International audience; The therapeutic efficacy of anthracyclines relies on antitumor immune responses elicited by dying cancer cells. How chemotherapy-induced cell death leads to efficient antigen presentation to T cells, however, remains a conundrum. We found that intra-tumoral CD11c + CD11b + Ly6C hi cells, which displayed some characteristics of inflammatory dendritic cells and included granulomonocytic precursors, were crucial for anthracycline-induced anticancer immune responses. ATP released by dying cancer cells recruited myeloid cells into tumors and stimulated the local differentiation of CD11c + CD11b + Ly6C hi cells. Such cells efficiently engulfed tumor antigens in situ and presented them to T lymphocytes, thus vaccinating mice, upon adoptive transfer, against a challenge with cancer cells. Manipulations preventing tumor infiltration by CD11c + CD11b + Ly6C hi cells, such as the local overexpression of ectonu-cleotidases, the blockade of purinergic receptors, or the neutralization of CD11b, abolished the immune system-dependent antitumor activity of anthracyclines. Our results identify a subset of tumor-infiltrating leukocytes as therapy-relevant antigen-presenting cells.

Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) has been demonstrated as a promising solid-state analytical tool which can probe intermolecular interactions through crystal lattice vibrations. However, the current studies commonly investigate the interactions between two biological or pharmaceutical molecules with relatively low molecular weights. The interaction between small biomolecule and biomacromolecule in the crystallization process has not been reported. In this study, THz-TDS was used as a novel technique to characterize the interaction between small biomolecule (Glucosamine) and biomacromolecule (Collagen) in the crystallization process. The absence of THz absorption peak in solvent mixed sample with weight ratio of 1:1 showed the crystallization process of glucosamine was disturbed by collagen. The recurrence of THz absorption peak in solvent mixed sample with weight ratio of 7:1 may be related to the saturation of interaction between glucosamine and collagen. The dissolving and lyophilizing processes were validated to hardly affect the crystal formation of glucosamine. This study further demonstrates THZ-TDS has the capability to characterize the interaction between small biomolecule and biomacromolecule in solid-state.

Terahertz (THz) time-domain spectroscopy (TDS) imaging is considered a nondestructive evaluation method for composite materials used for examining various defects of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites and fire-retardant coatings in the reflective imaging modality. We demonstrate that hidden defects simulated by Teflon artificial inserts are imaged clearly in the perpendicular polarization mode. The THz TDS technique is also used to measure the thickness of thin fire-retardant coatings on CFRP composites with a typical accuracy of about 10 micrometers. In addition, coating debonding is successfully imaged based on the time-delay difference of the time-domain waveforms between closely adhered and debonded sample locations.

Several pattern recognition receptors including toll-like receptors and purinergic receptors are implicated in the anticancer immune response elicited by anthracyclines or oxaliplatin. Recently, formyl peptide receptor-1 (FPR1) has been involved in this response as well. FPR1 is required for the correct positioning of dendritic cells (DC) close to dying cancer cells. A genetic defect in FPR1 abrogates cross-presentation of tumor antigens by DC, thereby compromising therapy-elicited immunosurveillance.

Chemotherapy can reinstate anticancer immunosurveillance through inducing tumor immunogenic cell death (ICD). Here, we show that anthracyclines and oxaliplatin can trigger necroptosis in murine cancer cell lines expressing receptor-interacting serine-threonine kinase 3 (RIP3) and mixed lineage kinase domain-like (MLKL). Necroptotic cells featured biochemical hallmarks of ICD and stimulated anticancer immune responses in vivo. Chemotherapy normally killed Rip3 (-/-) and Mlkl (-/-) tumor cells and normally induced caspase-3 activation in such cells, yet was unable to reduce their growth in vivo. RIP3 or MLKL deficiency abolished the capacity of dying cancer cells to elicit an immune response. This could be attributed to reduced release of ATP and high mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) by RIP3 and MLKL-deficient cells. Measures designed to compensate for deficient ATP and HMGB1 signaling restored the chemotherapeutic response of Rip3 (-/-) and Mlkl (-/-) cancers. Altogether, these results suggest that RIP3 and MLKL can contribute to ICD signaling and tumor immunogenicity.

Published version. Source at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/cddis.2016.47 LTX-315 is a cationic amphilytic peptide that preferentially permeabilizes mitochondrial membranes, thereby causing partially BAX/ BAK1-regulated, caspase-independent necrosis. Based on the observation that intratumorally injected LTX-315 stimulates a strong T lymphocyte-mediated anticancer immune response, we investigated whether LTX-315 may elicit the hallmarks of immunogenic cell death (ICD), namely (i) exposure of calreticulin on the plasma membrane surface, (ii) release of ATP into the extracellular space, (iii) exodus of HMGB1 from the nucleus, and (iv) induction of a type-1 interferon response. Using a panel of biosensor cell lines and robotized fluorescence microscopy coupled to automatic image analysis, we observed that LTX-315 induces all known ICD characteristics. This conclusion was validated by several independent methods including immunofluorescence stainings (for calreticulin), bioluminescence assays (for ATP), immunoassays (for HMGB1), and RT-PCRs (for type-1 interferon induction). When injected into established cancers, LTX-315 caused a transiently hemorrhagic focal necrosis that was accompanied by massive release of HMGB1 (from close-to-all cancer cells), as well as caspase-3 activation in a fraction of the cells. LTX-315 was at least as efficient as the positive control, the anthracycline mitoxantrone (MTX), in inducing local inflammation with infiltration by myeloid cells and T lymphocytes. Collectively, these results support the idea that LTX-315 can induce ICD, hence explaining its capacity to mediate immune-dependent therapeutic effects.