Search

A novel intelligent film was developed by immobilizing 1%, 3% and 5% black rice bran anthocyanins (BACNs) into oxidized-chitin nanocrystals (O-ChNCs)/ chitosan (CS) matrix. The ultraviolet-visible spectrum of BACNs solutions showed color variations from red to greyish green in a range of pH 2.0-12.0. Fourier transform infrared spectrum and atomic force microscope of the films showed that O-ChNC and BACNs were well dispersed into the CS matrix. Although the incorporation of BACNs decreased the mechanical and barrier properties of the CS/O-ChNCs/BACNs (COB) films, it endowed the COB films with excellent UV-barrier, antioxidant and pH sensitivity character. The results of the application trial showed that the COB films containing 3% of BACNs (COB-3) were able to monitor the spoiling of fish and shrimp by visible color changes. Therefore, the developed COB-3 films could be used as an intelligent food packaging for monitoring animal-based protein food spoilage.

To examine sex-specific associations of neonatal and childhood exposure to eight trace elements with cognitive abilities of school-age children. The association between exposure and effects was assessed among 296 school-age children from a population-based birth cohort study, who had manganese (Mn), cadmium (Cd), and lead (Pb) exposure measured in cord blood and chromium (Cr), manganese, cobalt (Co), copper (Cu), arsenic (As), selenium (Se), cadmium, and lead exposure quantified in spot urine. Cognitive abilities were assessed using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Chinese Revised (WISC-CR). Generalized linear models were performed to analyze associations of intelligence quotient (IQ) with trace element concentrations in cord blood and urinary trace element levels. General linear models were used to evaluate association between exposure fluctuation and children’s IQ. Urinary Cd concentrations were negatively associated with full-scale IQ (β = − 3.469, 95% confidence interval (CI) − 6.291, − 0.647; p = 0.016) and performance IQ (β = − 4.012, 95% CI − 7.088, − 0.936; p = 0.011) in girls; however, neonatal Cd exposure expressed as Cd concentrations in cord blood was in inverse associations with verbal IQ (β = − 2.590, 95% CI − 4.570, − 0.609; p = 0.010) only in boys. Positive association between urinary Mn concentrations and performance IQ (β = 1.305, 95% CI 0.035, 2.575; p = 0.044) of children was observed, especially in girls. In addition, inverse association of urinary Cu concentrations with verbal IQ (β = − 2.200, 95% CI − 4.360, − 0.039; p = 0.046) was only found in boys. Childhood Cd exposure may adversely affect cognitive abilities, while Mn exposure may beneficially modify cognitive abilities of school-age children, particularly in girls.

Antibacterial films were prepared by incorporating konjac glucomannan (KGM) and gellan gum (GG) as a matrix, glycerin as a plasticizer, CaCl

Background Chlorophenols (CPs), suspected as endocrine disrupting chemicals, exposure during early life may contribute to body size. However, limited human data with inconsistent findings have examined the developmental effects of CPs exposure. Objective To explore associations between prenatal and postnatal CPs exposure and anthropometric parameters in children aged 3 years. Methods A subset of 377 mother-child pairs with urinary five CP concentrations were enrolled from a prospective birth cohort. Generalized linear models were conducted to evaluate associations of CPs exposure with children's anthropometric measures. Results Maternal urinary 2,4,6-trichlorophenol (2,4,6-TCP) concentrations were significantly negatively associated with weight z scores [regression coefficient (β) = −0.51, 95% confidence interval (CI): -0.96, −0.05; p = 0.01], weight for height z scores (β = −0.54, 95% CI: -1.02, −0.06; p = 0.01) and body mass index (BMI) z scores (β = −0.53, 95% CI: -1.03, −0.03; p = 0.01) of children aged 3 years, after adjustment for potential confounders and postnatal CPs exposure. In the sex-stratified analyses, these inverse associations remained among boys, while in girls, positive associations of prenatal 2,4,6-TCP exposure with weight for height z scores and BMI z scores were observed. Postnatal exposure to 2,5-diclorophenol (2,5-DCP) was positively associated with weight z scores (β = 0.26, 95% CI: 0.02, 0.50; p = 0.04), after controlling for possible confounders and maternal CPs exposure during pregnancy. Considering potential sex-specific effects, these associations were only observed in girls. Conclusions Our findings indicate that prenatal 2,4,6-TCP exposure and postnatal 2,5-DCP exposure may have adverse and sex-specific effects on children's physical development.

Machine learning plays an important role in building intrusion detection systems. However, with the increase of data capacity and data dimension, the ability of shallow machine learning is becoming more limited. In this paper, we propose a fuzzy aggregation approach using the modified density peak clustering algorithm (MDPCA) and deep belief networks (DBNs). To reduce the size of the training set and the imbalance of the samples, MDPCA is used to divide the training set into several subsets with similar sets of attributes. Each subset is used to train its own sub-DBNs classifier. These sub-DBN classifiers can learn and explore high-level abstract features, automatically reduce data dimensions, and perform classification well. According to the nearest neighbor criterion, the fuzzy membership weights of each test sample in each sub-DBNs classifier are calculated. The output of all sub-DBNs classifiers is aggregated based on fuzzy membership weights. Experimental results on the NSL-KDD and UNSW-NB15 datasets show that our proposed model has higher overall accuracy, recall, precision and F1-score than other well-known classification methods. Furthermore, the proposed model achieves better performance in terms of accuracy, detection rate and false positive rate compared to the state-of-the-art intrusion detection methods.

Pesticides are substances that are meant to control pests or weeds. The production and use of synthetic pesticides have been increasingly growing in recent years worldwide. Pesticides are designed to be toxic to specific groups of organisms, which bring benefits to humans. However, they have considerable adverse effects on other living creatures as well as environmental media including air, water, and soil. Pesticides can enter the human body via the skin, the mouth, and the lungs, thereby leading to diverse toxicity actions on humans. This chapter provides a brief overview of classification, toxicity, health effects, and environmental exposure of pesticides, as well as toxicity and mechanism of three major pesticides (organophosphorus, pyrethroid, and carbamate pesticides).

In relation extraction, directly adopting a model trained in the source domain to the target domain will suffer greatly performance decrease. Existing studies extract the shared features between domains in a coarse-grained way, which inevitably introduce some domain-specific features or suffer from information loss. Inspired by human beings often using different views to find connection between domains, we argue that, there exist some fine-grained features which can be shared across different views of origin data. In this paper, we proposed a cross-view adaptation network, which use adversarial method to extract shared features and introduce cross-view training to fine-turn it. Besides, we construct some novel views of input data for cross-domain relation extraction. Through experiments we demonstrated that the different views of data we construct can effectively avoid introducing some domain-specific features into unified feature space and help the model learn a fine-grained shared features of different domain. On the three different domains of ACE 2005 dataset, Our method achieved the state-of-the-art results in F1-score.

Nearest neighbor (NN) models play an important role in the intrusion detection system (IDS). However, with the advent of the era of big data, the NN model has the disadvantages of low efficiency, noise sensitivity, and high storage requirement. This paper presents a neighbor prototype selection method based on CCHPSO for intrusion detection. In the model, the prototype selection and feature weight adjustment are performed simultaneously and k-nearest neighbor (KNN) is used as the basic classifier. To deal with large-scale optimization problems, a cooperative coevolving algorithm based on hybrid standard particle swarm and binary particle swarm optimization, which employs the divide-and-conquer strategy, is proposed in this paper. Meanwhile, a fitness function based on the accuracy and data reduction rate is defined in the CCHPSO to obtain a set of appropriate prototypes and feature weights. The KDD99 and NSL datasets are used to assess the effectiveness of the method. The empirical results indicate that the data reduction rate of the proposed method is very high, ranging from 82.32% to 92.01%. Compared with all the data used, the proposed method can not only achieve comparable accuracy performance but also save a lot of storage and computing resources.

The goal of the study is to develop a novel pH-indicating intelligent packaging by using purple potato extractions (PPE), chitosan and surface-deacetylated chitin nanofibers (CN). Since the major pH-sensitive pigment of PPE was anthocyanin (24.3 mg/g), whether anthocyanins could be loaded on a solid phase to prevent its color fading was further tested. The results of Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometry (FT-IR) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) indicated that PPE was efficiently attached into the chitosan film. Meanwhile, adding CN (0.450%, w/v) into chitosan film could significantly enhance the tensile strength (TS), the water-resistant ability and the roughness of chitosan film. Whereas higher content of CN (0.600%, w/v) did not further improve mechanical properties and CN would distribute unevenly due to aggregation in the films. In addition to pH-indicating ability, CS-CN-PPE exhibited the extraordinary antioxidant activities and this provides another advantage of packaging readily oxidizable substances. Taken together, the current study provided a novel and biocompatible packaging with strengthened mechanical property and intelligent pH indicator.

Automatically classifying human personality traits through analysis of their social network behaviors is an important yet challenging task to date considering the low accuracy of current researches. In that detection of significant features is an essential part of a personality recognition system, this paper proposes an in-depth analysis of features that contributes to the recognition of a given trait. Besides the common features of social network used by most current researches, text style features and TF-IDF-based psychological features are proposed and prove to be effective to predict certain personality trait. Also particle swarm optimization (PSO) feature optimization algorithm has been adopted to select the best combination of features. Simulation results show that with the best combination of features, the F-measure value of the personality recognition has been improved around 12%.

Topic-to-Essay generation task aims to generate topic related and coherence text based on user input. Previous research generates text solely based on the input words and the generation results in not satisfactory. The traditional methods using semantic relationships of words from corpus to guide the model, which made the model rely heavily on the corpus. In this paper, we propose a sememe-based topic-to-essay generation model(S-TEG), which integrates sememes from external knowledge graph HowNet with input topic words to guide the model. In order to prevent introducing noise, we elaborately devise measuring the similarity of the non-current topic words to filter sememes information. The experiment results demonstrate that our approach achieved 4.10 average score in subjective evaluation and a 3.60 BLEU score, which shows that our model is able to generate text that is more coherence, topic-related and fits the daily logic.

The research on emotional response generation is one of the directions in dialog system research. However, most of the researches on emotional dialog generation focus on the expression of expected emotion in single round dialogue. In this paper, we propose a method to model the emotion in multi-turn dialogue. Our model bases on a proposed model: Emotional Chatting Machine, and solves the problem of ECM model that which emotion should be used to the response. We compared the effects of various models and finally chose LSTM to model emotions in multi-turn dialogue. Experiments show that the performance of the dialogue system can be effectively improved by modelling emotion in multi-turn dialogue.

This study aims to generate more topic-related and coherence essays based on user-defined topic words. Existing research generates essays without considering the semantic information from the corpus. However, the corpus contains statistical relationships of words which can be used to guide the model to generate more coherent and fluent essays. To fill this gap, we propose a corpus-based topic-to-essay generation model (C-TEG). We elaborately devise a background network based on the co-occurrence relationships of words from the corpus. The empirical results demonstrate that our approach has achieved 4.14 average score in subjective evaluation and a better BLEU-2 score, which shows that our model is able to generate more topic-related and coherent text than existing models.

Background Early-life carbamate exposure during developmental period has been linked with adverse health effects and attracted attention. Methods Three hundred and three children at age of seven were included in the current study. Urinary carbofuranphenol concentrations were measured using gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Verbal, performance and full-scale intelligence quotients (IQV, IQP, and IQFS) were assessed using Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Chinese Revised. Generalized linear models were used to explore the associations between carbofuranphenol levels and IQs. Generalized estimating equations were used to explore long-term health effect and sensitive time window. Results Carbofuranphenol was detected in 96.6% of the seven-year-old urinary samples, the geometric mean, median, and inter quartile range of the carbofuranphenol concentrations were 0.67 μg/L, 0.30 μg/L, and 0.09–3.72 μg/L, respectively, which were similar with the level of three-year-old children from the SMBCS cohort. Seven-year-old carbofuranphenol level was negatively associated with IQP [β = −0.044; 95% confidence interval (CI): −0.087, −0.001; p = 0.045]. Three-year-old carbofuranphenol level was negatively associated with IQP (β = −0.100; 95% CI: −0.186, −0.014; p = 0.022) and IQFS (β = −0.087; 95% CI: −0.173, −0.001; p = 0.047). Carbamate exposure of maternal and children at both three and seven years old had negative associations with IQP (β = −0.089; 95% CI: −0.171, −0.007; p = 0.034), and IQFS (β = −0.064; 95% CI: −0.127, −0.000; p = 0.049) of children at age of seven. Conclusion Results of the present study verify that children in an agricultural region of China were widely exposed to carbamate pesticides. Carbamate exposure in utero and at three and seven years may adversely impact children’s neurodevelopment.

To improve the antibacterial stability, a self-assembly method was applied. The typical antibiotic of nisin was loaded in chitosan nanoparticles (Nano-N) which was used as a carrier of antibiotics. The characteristics and formation mechanism of nano-scale antibiotic as well as its preservation properties on silvery pomfret were investigated. The results exhibited that the nano-scale antibiotics were nearly sphere-like with the mean size of 150 nm. The formation of nano-scale antibiotics was attributed to interactions among the functional groups of chitosan, sodium tripolyphosphate and nisin by hydrogen bonds and electrostatic interactions. Meanwhile, the preservation effects to silvery pomfret by the nano-scale antibiotic coatings were better than nisin or chitosan nanoparticle coating alone, which was ascribed to a more efficient prevented oxygen, microorganism as well as protein degradation from silvery pomfret by the self-assembled nano-scale antibiotic coating. Thus, it could extend the shelf life of fish by 3 d–9 d, suggesting that nano-nisin coating have great potential in the seafood preservation field.

The effects of preparation method (boiled, cooled, and reheated) on the structural characteristics and in vitro digestibility of potato were investigated. The highest equilibrium starch hydrolysis was obtained after boiling (82.21%), followed by reheating (66.98%) and cooling (54.31%). The potato after cooling treatment exhibited a narrower melting temperature range and a higher melting enthalpy compared with the potatoes after boiling and the microwave reheating. X-ray diffraction patterns revealed that the relative crystallinity of the cooled potato was higher than those of the reheated and boiled potatoes, consistent with the results in melting enthalpy. Moreover, compared with the boiled potato, a large number of wrinkles were observed on the surface of the cooled potato, whereas after microwave reheating, larger clearances of starch granule regions were found. This study demonstrated that cooling and microwave reheating significantly affected the potato's microstructure and digestibility and were suggested as alternative choices to prepare potato dishes.

Background: Prenatal exposure to organophosphorous (OP) pesticides has been found to be associated with adverse effects on child neurodevelopment, but evidence on potential effects induced by both prenatal and postnatal OP exposure in infants is limited. Objectives: Our aim was to investigate the associations of both prenatal and postnatal OP exposure with birth outcomes and infant neurodevelopment. Methods: Exposure to OP in 310 mother–infant pairs was assessed by measuring dimethylphosphate (DM), diethylphosphate (DE), and total dialkylphosphate (DAP) metabolites in urines from pregnant women and their children at 2 years of age. The Gesell Developmental Schedules was administered to examine neurodevelopment of 2-year-old children. Results: Based on the Gesell Developmental Schedules, the proportions of children with developmental delays were < 6%. Adverse associations between head circumference at birth and prenatal OP exposure were demonstrated. Both prenatal and postnatal OP exposure was significantly associated with increased risk of being developmentally delayed. Specifically, odds ratio (OR) value for prenatal DEs was 9.75 (95% CI: 1.28, 73.98, p = 0.028) in the adaptive area, whereas in the social area, OR values for postnatal DEs and DAPs were 9.56 (95% CI: 1.59, 57.57, p = 0.014) and 12.00 (95% CI: 1.23, 117.37, p = 0.033), respectively. Adverse associations were observed only in boys, not in girls. Conclusions: Both prenatal and postnatal OP exposure may adversely affect the neurodevelopment of infants living in the agricultural area. The present study adds to the accumulating evidence on associations of prenatal and postnatal OP exposure with infant neurodevelopment. Citation: Liu P, Wu C, Chang X, Qi X, Zheng M, Zhou Z. 2016. Adverse associations of both prenatal and postnatal exposure to organophosphorous pesticides with infant neurodevelopment in an agricultural area of Jiangsu Province, China. Environ Health Perspect 124:1637–1643; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/EHP196

The chitosan gallates (CG) were obtained by free-radical-initiated grafting of gallic acid (GA) onto chitosan (CS) in this work. The chemical structures of the CG were corroborated by UV-vis, GPC and (1)H NMR analysis. The grafting reaction was accompanied with a degradation of the CS molecule. The shear-thinning flow behavior of CG film-forming solutions (CG FFS) decreased with the grafting amount of GA into CS chain, while the CG FFS grafted at a lower GA value behaved like a networks containing entangled or cross-linked polymer chains with a more elastic behavior. The increasing of GA grafting onto the CS chain led to a reduction of tensile strength, elongation at break and water resistance in the corresponding films, but increases in the antioxidant and antimicrobial activities were observed. The microstructure of the film was investigated using scanning electron and atomic force microscope, and the results were closely related to the observed film properties.

The effect of chitosan (CS)-gallic acid (GA) conjugate (chitosan gallate, CS-g-GA) coating on the quality of silvery pomfret (Pampus argenteus) during refrigerated storage at 4 °C for 15 days was investigated. The total mesophilic and psychrotrophic microbes in control and coated fish samples were counted periodically; physicochemical analyses to determine pH, total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N), peroxide value (POV), thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances (TBARS), K-value, and water-holding capacity (WHC) were carried out; and sensory attributes were evaluated. The results indicated that both CS + GA and CS-g-GA coatings effectively preserved the silvery pomfret quality during refrigerated storage. However, CS-g-GA had higher antimicrobial activity and a better ability to inhibit the formation of volatile bases (TVB-N) and lipid oxidation products (POV and TBARS) as well as the degradation of ATP and its breakdown products (K value) than CS + GA during the storage period. Furthermore, the CS-g-GA coating also helped to maintain a higher WHC and had better sensory properties for a longer period of time compared to the other treated samples, thus extending the shelf life and delaying the deterioration of fresh silvery pomfret by 3–6 days during refrigerated storage. These results suggest that a CS-g-GA coating could be employed as an active packaging material in the fish preservation industry.

Exposures to chlorophenols (CPs) have been linked with adverse health effects on wildlife and humans. This study aimed to evaluate prenatal exposure to five CP compounds using maternal urinary concentrations during pregnancy and the potential associations with birth outcomes of their infants at birth. A total of 1100 mother-newborn pairs were recruited during June 2009 to January 2010 in an agricultural region, China. Urinary concentrations of five CPs from dichlorophenol (DCP) to pentachlorophenol (PCP), namely, 2,5-DCP, 2,4-DCP, 2,4,5-trichlorophenol (2,4,5-TCP), 2,4,6-TCP and PCP, were measured using large-volume-injection gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LVI-GC-MS-MS), and associations between CP levels and weight, length as well as head circumference at birth were examined. Median urinary creatinine-adjusted concentrations of 2,5-DCP, 2,4-DCP, 2,4,5-TCP, 2,4,6-TCP and PCP were 3.34 μg/g, 1.03 μg/g, < LOD, 1.78 μg/g and 0.39 μg/g creatinine, respectively. We found lower birth weight 30 g [95% confidence interval (CI): -57, -3; p = 0.03] for per SD increase in log10-transformed concentrations of 2,4,6-TCP and lower birth weight 37 g (95% CI: -64, -10; p = 0.04) for PCP, respectively. Similarly, head circumference decrease in associations with creatinine-corrected 2,4,6-TCP and PCP concentrations were also achieved. Considering sex difference, the associations of lower birth weight were only found among male neonates, while head circumference was associated with 2,4-DCP and 2,5-DCP only found among female neonates. This study showed significant negative associations between CPs exposure and reduction in neonatal anthropometric measures. The biological mechanisms concerning CPs exposure on fetal growth deserved further investigations.

It is of great interest to develop strategic methods to enable chemicals' metabolites to be accurately and rapidly screened and identified. To screen and identify a category of metabolites with distinct isotopic distribution, this study proposed a generic strategy using in silico metabolite prediction plus accurate-mass-based isotopic pattern recognition (AMBIPR) and library identification on the data acquired via the data dependent MS/MS scan of LC-Q Exactive Orbitrap mass spectrometry. The proposed method was evaluated by the analysis of flurochloridone (FLC) metabolites in rat urine sample collected from toxicity tests. Different from the traditional isotopic pattern recognition (IPR) approach, AMBIPR here was performed based on the potential metabolites predicted via in silico metabolite prediction tools. Thus, the AMBIPR treated FLC data was only associated with FLC metabolites, consequently not only avoiding great efforts made to remove FLC-unrelated information and reveal FLC metabolites, but also increasing the percent of positive hits. Among the FLC metabolite peaks screened using AMBIPR, 87% of them (corresponding 97 metabolites and 49 biotransformation) were successfully identified via multiple MS identification techniques packaged in an established FLC's metabolites library based on Mass Frontier. Noteworthy, 34 metabolites (89%) were identified without distinct naturally isotopic distribution. The universal strategic approach based on background subtraction (BS) and mass defect filtering (MDF) was used to evaluate the AMBIPR and no more false positive and negative metabolites were detected. Furthermore, our results revealed that AMBIPR is very effective, inherently sensitive and accurate, and is easily automated for the rapidly screening and profiling chemicals related metabolites.

PAX5 is indispensable for the commitment of early lymphoid progenitors to the B cell lineage as well as for the development of B cells. Although previous studies have indicated that the Pax5-conditional-knockout mouse exhibited dedifferentiation of mature B cell and the development of aggressive lymphomas, the changes of Pax5 gene expressions in pre-B cells have not been analyzed. To understand the functional importance of Pax5 gene in the proliferation and survival of pre-B cells, we established a Pax5-knockdown model using 70Z/3 pre-B cell line. Pax5 knockdown 70Z/3 cells (70Z/3-KD cells) showed down-regulations of pre-BCR compounds such as CD19, BLNK, Id2 and λ5. The signaling via pre-BCRs was significantly diminished in the 70Z/3-KD cells, and this alteration was normalized by restored Pax5 gene expression. Loss of PAX5 reduced the growth rates in the 70Z/3-KD cells, compared to the mock cells. Meanwhile, the proliferation of pre-B cells was reduced by the knockdown of Pax5 gene. Moreover, further examinations showed that PAX5 was also activated in B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL) as a cell proliferation enhancer. These findings suggested that pax5 is critically important for the proliferation and survival of pre-B cells.

Exposure to 4-tert-octylphenol (tOP) has been linked with adverse health outcomes in animals and humans, while epidemiological studies about associations between prenatal exposure to tOP and fetal growth are extremely limited. We measured urinary tOP concentrations in 1100 pregnant women before their delivery, and examined whether tOP levels were associated with birth outcomes, including weight, length, head circumference and ponderal index at birth. tOP could be detected in all samples, and the median uncorrected and creatinine-corrected tOP concentrations were 0.90 μg/L (range from 0.25 to 20.05 μg/L) and 1.33 μg/g creatinine (range from 0.15 to 42.49 μg/g creatinine), respectively. Maternal urinary log-transformed tOP concentrations were significantly negatively associated with adjusted birth weight [β (g) = -126; 95% confidence interval (CI): -197, -55], birth length [β (cm) = -0.53; 95% CI:-0.93, -0.14], and head circumference [β (cm) = -0.30; 95% CI: -0.54, -0.07], respectively. Additionally, considering sex difference, these significant negative associations were also found among male neonates, while only higher maternal tOP concentrations were associated with a significant decrease in birth weight among female neonates. This study suggested significant negative associations between maternal urinary tOP concentrations and neonatal sizes at birth, and they differed by neonatal sex. Further epidemiological studies are required to more fully elaborate the associations between prenatal tOP exposure and birth outcomes.

A precise, high-throughput and sensitive ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method has been developed for the determination of fluorochloridone (FLC) in rat plasma. The extraction of analytes from plasma samples was carried out by protein precipitation procedure using acetonitrile prior to UPLC-MS/MS analysis. Verapamil was proved as a proper internal standard (IS) among many candidates. The chromatographic separation based on UPLC was well optimized. Multiple reaction monitoring in positive electrospray ionization was used with the optimized MS transitions at: m/z 312.0 → 292.0 for FLC and m/z 456.4 → 165.2 for IS. This method was well validated with good linear response (r(2) > 0.998) observed over the investigated range of 3-3000 ng/mL and with satisfactory stability. This method was also characterized with adequate intra- and inter-day precision and accuracy (within 12%) in the quality control samples, and with high selectivity and less matrix effect observed. Total running time was only 1.5 min. This method has been successfully applied to a pilot FLC pharmacokinetic study after oral administration. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The synergistic effect of gallic acid (GA) and chitosan (CS) as edible coatings on the quality and shelf life of Pacific mackerel (Pneumatophorus japonicus) fillets during chilled storage was investigated in this study. Pacific mackerel fillets were periodically evaluated to assess their microbiological (total viable count), physicochemical (pH, total volatile basic nitrogen, biogenic amine, thiobarbituric acid, and K value), and sensory characteristics. The results indicated that CS + GA was more effective than either treatment alone in inhibiting microbial growth, protein decomposition, biogenic amine formation, lipid oxidation and nucleotide breakdown, and maintaining better sensory characteristics during storage, thereby extending the shelf life of mackerel by 6 days compared with the control group. Therefore, a coating with the combination of chitosan with GA represents a promising method for maintaining the storage quality of Pacific mackerel fillets and has broad potential applications in the seafood industry as a food-grade biopreservative.

This study demonstrated the combined use of sonolysis with the H2O2/ascorbic acid (Vc) redox reaction to degrade chitosan (CS). The influence of operating parameters, such as the initial CS concentration (1–15 mg mL−1), the input power level (15–45% of the total input power), the H2O2 and Vc concentration (10–70 mM) and the pH (3.0–5.0) of the reaction solution, on the molecular weight and degradation kinetics of CS were investigated and optimized. Based on the degradation kinetics, a synergetic effect of sonolysis with H2O2 and Vc on the degradation of CS was observed. Structural analysis by FT-IR and 1H and 13C NMR indicated no significant difference between the chemical structure of chitosan before and after degradation. Moreover, intermolecular hydrogen bonds were broken, and the crystallinity of degraded chitosan decreased. Using the above analysis, CS degradation by the combination of sonolysis with the H2O2/Vc redox reaction was proposed to be due to mechanical effects along with HO˙ attack on the β-1,4-glucoside linkages of glucosamine units. These results suggest that the sonolysis/H2O2/Vc combined technique is promisingly suitable for large-scale manufacture of chitooligosaccharide.

To improve the availability of citrus essential oil (CEOs), nanoemulsions based on chitosan nanoparticles loaded with CEOs were prepared by the emulsion-ionic gelation technique. The structural information and the coating characteristics of the nanoemulsion as well as its preservation properties on silvery pomfret were investigated. The results showed that the amount of CEOs added into a nanoemulsion reduced the stability and rheological properties of the nanoemulsion systems, which indirectly affected the physicochemical properties of the coatings. The formation of the nanoemulsion was attributed to interactions between the functional groups of chitosan and CEOs by hydrogen bonds and electrostatic interactions. Furthermore, the preservation effects on silvery pomfret by the nanoemulsion coating were better than conventional emulsion coatings, which were ascribed to more efficient preventative microorganisms and lipid oxidation from silvery pomfret by the nanoemulsion coating. These results suggested that nanoemulsion coating containing CEOs have great potential in the seafood preservation field.

Nisin is an antibiotic peptide widely used in food and pharmaceutical industry. To improve its efficiency, nisin was encapsulated in a poly-γ-glutamic acid (γ-PGA) and chitosan nanoparticle system using self-assembly method. The effects of the nisin concentration and chitosan coating on the properties of the nanoparticles were investigated. The release behavior and transport mechanism of nisin from the nanoparticles were also examined under different conditions (temperature of 4 and 25 °C and pH of 3.0, 6.0 and 8.0 respectively). Results showed that the loading content (LC) and mean particle size of the nanoparticles were increased with the increasing of nisin concentration, but encapsulation efficiency (EE) was declined. The chitosan coating enhanced the stability of nanoparticle (higher ζ potential) and led to a higher EE and LC, and bigger mean particle size. FT-IR spectroscopy suggested that the formation of nisin/γ-PGA/chitosan nanoparticle (N–P–C-NPs) was mainly attributed to the interactions among the function groups of chitosan, γ-PGA and nisin by hydrogen bonding and electrostatic interactions. The release of nisin from the nanoparticles exhibited a pH-dependent pattern, and the experimental data were fitted to a linear superimposition model which suggested that the release mechanism of nisin from the nanoparticles was an anomalous behavior. In addition, the in vitro antibacterial test showed that N–P–C-NPs was more efficient than nisin/γ-PGA nanoparticle or nisin in inhibiting the growth of Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Listeria monocytogenes, suggesting N–P–C-NPs could be developed as a promising novel food preservative.

Study Objective To demonstrate practical tips and tricks for successful use of the transvaginal NOTES technique for preforming HUS. Design Stepwise demonstration with narrated video footage (Canadian Task Force classification III). Setting An academic tertiary care hospital. Patients or Participants A 58-year-old G2P2, NSVDx2 with Stage III anterior vaginal prolapse, Stage II uterine prolapse & posterior vaginal prolapse. The preoperative vaginal length was 7 cm. Interventions High uterosacral ligament suspension (HUS) is well accepted for apical prolapse due to its advantages of good apical support and simplification of intraperitoneal suture passage. Transvaginal natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery (NOTES) is a novel minimally invasive approach that avoids an abdominal incision while providing improved visualization, leading to simplified intraperitoneal suture placement. However, this approach may be technically challenging. After performing transvaginal hysterectomy and anterior repair, the single-site port was placed, and BSO was subsequently performed. The following key techniques were utilized to perform NOTES-HUS: ○ Tagging the sutures for bilateral uterosacral ligament before single-site port placement ○ Identifying the ischial spine and ureters ○ Pulling the tagged uterosacral ligament suture to assist in locating the high uterosacral ligament ○ Grasping and lifting uterosacral ligament while placing a suture ○ Giving the suture a tug after placement to confirm the correct location Measurements and Main Results The procedure was successfully performed in approximately 160 minutes with a postoperative vaginal length of 6 cm. Postoperative pelvic organ prolapse quantification was stage 0. Conclusion The transvaginal NOTES-HUS is a feasible and practical technique for apical vaginal prolapse. Applying the tips and tricks presented here, such as tagging uterosacral ligament before port placement, etc., the challenging transvaginal NOTES-HUS can be performed efficiently and safely.

Background Environmental phenols, bisphenol A (BPA), triclosan (TCS), and benzophenone-3 (BP-3), are known as emerging endocrine-disrupting chemicals; however, their impacts on thyroid hormones and children's neurobehaviors are still unclear. Objectives We aimed to examine the associations of prenatal and childhood exposure to phenols with neonatal thyroid function and childhood behavioral problems aged 10 years. Methods A total of 386 mother-singleton pairs were included from Sheyang Mini Birth Cohort Study (SMBCS), a longitudinal birth cohort in China. We quantified urinary BPA, TCS and BP-3 concentrations in maternal and 10-year-old children's urine samples using gas chromatography tandem mass spectrometry and thyroid function parameters in cord serum samples. Caregivers completed the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) for their children at 10 years of age. Multivariable linear regression models and logistic regression models were applied to estimate associations of urinary phenol concentrations with thyroid hormones and risks of children's behavioral problems, respectively. Results The median values of urinary BPA, TCS and BP-3 concentrations for pregnant women were 1.75 μg/L, 0.54 μg/L and 0.37 μg/L, while 1.29 μg/L, 6.64 μg/L and 1.39 μg/L for children, respectively. Maternal urinary BPA concentrations were in associations with 1.00% [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.20%, 1.92%] increases in cord serum FT4 concentrations and significantly associated with increased risks of total difficulties [odds ratio (OR): 1.45, 95% CI: 1.07, 1.97], while maternal urinary levels of BP-3 were significantly related to poorer prosocial behaviors (OR: 1.58, 95% CI: 1.04, 2.39) of children at 10 years of age. In sex-stratified analyses, maternal urinary BPA concentrations were related to increased total difficulty subscales only in boys. Conclusions The findings indicated that higher prenatal urinary BPA concentrations were associated with increased risks of total difficulties, especially in boys and maternal urinary BP-3 concentrations were related to poorer prosocial behaviors at 10 years.

In this study, a series of multifunctional bionanocomposite films (KCZ-MAE) based on konjac glucomannan (KGM)/chitosan (CS) (KC) with Nano-ZnO and mulberry anthocyanin extract (MAE) were prepared by a solution casting method. Effects of Nano-ZnO and/or MAE on rheology of film-forming solutions (FFS), physicochemical properties and functional properties of the KC biocomposite films were systematically characterized. Cross-section microstructure of the films showed that the films were dense and compact. Although the incorporation of MAE decreased the transmittance of the films, it enhanced the UV–Vis light barrier properties. Water vapor permeability (WVP) of the films was decreased from 4.09 (g mm/m2.day.kPa) for KC film to 2.84, 2.61, 1.82 and 2.40 for KCZ, KCZ-MAE I, KCZ-MAE II and KCZ-MAE III films, respectively. In contrast, the tensile strength (TS) of films increased from 42.83 MPa to 52.00 MPa. Also, KCZ-MAE films showed strong antioxidant activity, good thermal stability and good antibacterial activity against E. coli and S. aureus. KCZ-MAE films showed the higher antioxidant activity than KC and KCZ film, respectively 65.93%, 69.14% and 71.98%. Moreover, the KCZ-MAE films presented relatively wide color differences from red to blue in different buffer solutions (pH 2–12), which was clearly observed by the naked eye. The multifunctional bionanocomposite films have promising potential for applications in active and intelligent food packaging in the future.

Currently, most text style transfer methods encode the text into a style-independent latent representation and decode it into new sentences with the target style. Due to the limitation of the latent representation, previous works can hardly get satisfactory target style sentence especially in terms of semantic remaining of the original sentence. We propose a &ldquo, Mask and Generation&rdquo, structure, which can obtain an explicit representation of the content of original sentence and generate the target sentence with a transformer. This explicit representation is a masked text that masks the words with the strong style attribute in the sentence. Therefore, it can preserve most of the semantic meaning of the original sentence. In addition, as it is the input of the generator, it also simplified this process compared to the current work who generate the target sentence from scratch. As the explicit representation is readable and the model has better interpretability, we can clearly know which words changed and why the words changed. We evaluate our model on two review datasets with quantitative, qualitative, and human evaluations. The experimental results show that our model generally outperform other methods in terms of transfer accuracy and content preservation.

Background Parabens, suspected as endocrine-disrupting chemicals, are nearly ubiquitous in the human body and exposure to these chemicals during pregnancy may disrupt thyroid hormones homeostasis and even affect fetal growth, although the impacts are still unclear. Objectives We aimed to estimate associations of maternal urinary paraben concentrations with cord serum thyroid hormones and birth weight. Methods A subset of 437 mother-newborn pairs were included from a prospective birth cohort with five parabens quantified in maternal urine and seven thyroid function indicators measured in cord serum samples. Multivariable linear regression models and elastic net regression (ENR) models were applied to explore associations between individual and mixtures of prenatal urinary paraben concentrations and thyroid hormones and birth weight, respectively. Results Maternal urinary ethyl-paraben (EtP) concentrations were associated with increased cord serum total triiodothyronine levels (TT3) [percent change: 1.51%; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.20%, 2.74%; p=0.017]. Urinary propyl-paraben (PrP) levels predicted higher thyroid peroxidase antibodies (percent change: 4.19%, 95%CI: 0.20%, 8.44%; p=0.041). Maternal urinary EtP and butyl-paraben (BuP) concentrations were significantly positively associated with birth weight [regression coefficient, (β)=40.9g, 95%CI: 3.99, 76.6; p=0.030; β=62.1g, 95%CI: 8.70, 115; p=0.023, for EtP and BuP, respectively]. In sex-stratified analyses, positive relationship between EtP levels and birth weight was observed in boys. Urinary EtP concentrations predicted higher TT3 levels in cord serum samples, assessing parabens as a chemical mixture with ENR models. Conclusions Prenatal exposure to parabens may affect thyroid hormone indicators with increased serum TT3 levels and associate with higher birth weight, especially in boys. The underlying biological mechanisms and effects of prenatal paraben exposures on disruption of thyroid function homeostasis and potential impacts of childhood growth and development needed to be further investigated.

In this study, biocomposite films of konjac glucomannan (KGM)/carboxymethyl chitosan (CMCS) with different epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) concentrations (0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%, w/w, based on KGM dry weight) were prepared by the solution casting method. To evaluate the effect of EGCG incorporation on the structural and physicochemical properties of the KGM/CMCS matrix, the obtained composite film-forming solutions (FFS) and films were systematically evaluated. The results from the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) analysis showed that EGCG interacted with the KGM/CMCS matrix through hydrogen bonds in the composite matrix, which corroborated with the rheological results of FFS. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images revealed that the incorporated EGCG (5–15%) was well-dispersed within the composite matrix, thereby improving the final biocomposite films' physicochemical properties. The addition of EGCG significantly enhanced the antioxidant and antibacterial activities of the films (P

Objective Prenatal exposure to heavy metals, pesticides and phenols has been suggested to interfere with neurodevelopment, but the neurotoxicity of their mixtures is still unclear. We aimed to elucidate the associations of maternal urinary concentrations of selected chemical mixtures with intelligence quotient (IQ) in children. Methods Maternal urinary concentrations of selected heavy metals, pesticide metabolites, and phenols were quantified in pregnant women who participated in the Sheyang Mini Birth Cohort Study (SMBCS) from June 2009 to January 2010. At age 7 years, child’s IQ score was assessed using the Chinese version of Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (C-WISC) by trained pediatricians. Generalized linear regression models (GLM), Bayesian kernel machine regression (BKMR) models and elastic net regression (ENR) models were used to assess the associations of urinary concentrations individual chemicals and their mixtures with IQ scores of the 7-year-old children. Results Of 326 mother-child pairs, single-chemical models indicated that prenatal urinary concentrations of lead (Pb) and bisphenol A (BPA) were significantly negatively associated with full intelligence quotient (FIQ) among children aged 7 years [β = −2.31, 95% confidence interval (CI): −4.13, −0.48; p = 0.013, sex interaction p-value = 0.076; β = −1.18, 95% CI: −2.21, −0.15; p = 0.025; sex interaction p-value = 0.296, for Pb and BPA, respectively]. Stratified analysis by sex indicated that the associations were only statistically significant in boys. In multi-chemical BKMR and ENR models, statistically significant inverse association was found between prenatal urinary Pb level and boy’s FIQ scores at 7 years. Furthermore, BKMR analysis indicated that the overall mixture was associated with decreases in boy’s IQ when all the chemicals’ concentrations were at their 75th percentiles or higher, compared to at their 50th percentiles. ENR models revealed that maternal urinary Pb levels were statistically significantly associated with lower FIQ scores (β = −2.20, 95% CI: −4.20, −0.20; p = 0.031). Conclusions Prenatal exposure to selected chemical mixtures may affect intellectual performance at 7 years of age, particularly in boys. Pb and BPA were suspected as primary chemicals associated with child neurodevelopment.

Pd/C catalysts were prepared by an incipient-wetness impregnation and their catalytic performance in disproportionation of rosin was investigated. The texture structure, groups on the activated carbon surfaces, and acidity were characterized by N2 physisorption-desorption, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and temperature-programmed desorption (TPD). The Pd/AC3 (treated at 443 K) had the highest Pd dispersion (23.60%) with the highest specific surface area of activated carbon (1057 m2/g). Nevertheless, the Pd/AC0 (original carbon black) had the lowest Pd dispersion (13.07%) with a lower specific surface area of original activated carbon (994 m2/g). Pd/AC3 presented a considerable catalytic activity in the rosin disproportionation reaction, with 64.15% dehydroabietic acid and without abietic acid in product. However, Pd/AC0 (Pd supported on the original carbon) showed a much lower catalytic activity in the rosin disproportionation reaction, with 42.64% dehydroabietic acid and 3.59% abietic acid in product.

An active and intelligent film was developed by immobilizing red cabbage anthocyanins (RCA) into an oxidized-chitin nanocrystals (O-ChNCs)/konjac glucomannan (KGM) matrix. O-ChNCs were selected as a host complex to anchor RCA and were considered as a reinforcement filler in the films. Zeta-potential, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, rheology, and release results revealed that RCA interacted with O-ChNCs through electrostatic interactions and altered the complex spatial structure between KGM and O-ChNCs. Microstructure observations showed that O-ChNCs and RCA were well distributed in a KGM matrix. Although the incorporation of RCA decreased the mechanical performance and light transmittance of the films, it endowed the KGM/O-ChNCs/RCA (KCR) films with an excellent UV-barrier, and antioxidant and antibacterial properties. The KCR films exhibited a good release control of RCA and a predominant Fickian diffusion release mechanism. Moreover, the KCR films were pH-sensitive and showed remarkable color changes in different buffer solutions. Therefore, KCR films have promising potential for applications in active and intelligent food packaging.

An anoxic-aerobic membrane bioreactor (AO-MBR), an anaerobic side-stream reactor (ASSR) coupled MBR (A-MBR), and an MBR with ASSR packed with carriers (AP-MBR) were operated parallelly to investigate biological nutrient removal, microbial community structure and mass balance of nutrients in sludge reduction systems. Compared to AO-MBR, A-MBR and AP-MBR were both efficient in COD and NH4+-N removal, had significantly higher nitrogen removal, reduced sludge production by 35.0% and 45.9%, but deteriorated biological phosphorus removal. Nitrosomonadaceae and Nitrospira were major bacteria responsible for ammonium and nitrite oxidation in the three systems. Inserting ASSR and packing carriers both favored denitrifying bacteria enrichment and organic substances release, and thus resulted in higher nitrate uptake rate (NUR) in the anoxic tank. Higher endogenous NUR in ASSR than in anoxic tank also indicated that ASSR and carriers both accelerated sludge decay. Denitrification and sludge reduction occurred in ASSR played important roles in biological nutrient removal.

Hairtail fish samples were stored at different freezing temperatures of −5 °C, −20 °C, −40 °C and −80 °C. To establish an effective quality evaluation approach for hairtail samples during frozen storage, fractal dimension was used to observe the porous microstructure that resulted from the ice crystal formation in frozen hairtail meat. The results showed that the initial value of fractal dimension of all the samples was 1.968. After frozen storage, the fractal dimension of samples at −5 °C, −20 °C, −40 °C and −80 °C decreased to 1.539, 1.682, 1.856 and 1.896, respectively. Traditional quality indicators such as water activity, color and textural properties (i.e., hardness, springiness and chewiness) also exhibited a similar decreasing trend, and the rate of change decreased with a decrease in storage temperature. The relationships were analyzed, and these traditional quality indicators were correlated with the fractal dimension with determined correlation coefficients within ±0.900. Moreover, based on the fractal dimension model, the first-order kinetic equation of fractal dimension variation during storage was $${{\bf{d}}}_{{\bf{t}}}={\bf{1.968}}\,{{\bf{e}}}^{{\boldsymbol{-}}{\bf{0.928}}{\bf{t}}{{\bf{e}}}^{{\boldsymbol{-}}{\bf{1431.396}}/{\bf{T}}}}$$ d t = 1.968 e − 0.928 t e − 1431.396 / T , which can be used to predict the shelf life of preserved hairtails at different storage temperatures. The results demonstrated fractal dimension was a novel and feasible method to evaluate the quality of hairtails in frozen storage.

The exploration of methods to produce biomaterials with antibacterial properties in ultra-small scales is of great scientific and technological interest. Here, we reported a microfluidic spinning approach to prepare a novel film combined with konjac glucomannan (KGM), polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). The film was characterized by scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and thermogravimetric analysis. This film was transparent, orderly, thermally stable, and uniform in size, with an average width less than 1 μm. Also, the film exhibited excellent antibacterial efficiency (97.1% against E. coli, 99.7% against S. aureus, 97.3% against S. enterica and 99.9% against B. subtilis) in our antibacterial test. In addition, the film promoted wound healing with the advanced development of neovascularization and hair follicles. This strategy provides a facile and green pathway for the construction of biomaterial films for medical applications.

In this work, covalent organic frameworks SNW-1 incorporated polyacrylonitrile (SNW-1@PAN) nanofiber was synthesized and used as pipette tip solid phase extraction (PT-SPE) adsorbent for preconcentration of five sulfonamides (SAs) in meat samples. The SNW-1@PAN nanofiber was fabricated via two steps, including the hydrothermal synthesis of SNW-1 and co-electrospinning of the SNW-1/PAN mixture. The three dimensional networks of electrospun nanofiber provide both low backpressure and rapid mass transfer in PT-SPE application, thus preventing the problems of high backpressure and leakage caused by directly packing SNW-1 into PT-SPE cartridge. The SNW-1@PAN nanofiber packed PT-SPE cartridge was used to extract SAs in meat samples followed by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The effects of different parameters influencing the extraction and desorption efficiency were intensively investigated and optimized. Under the optimum conditions, the linear ranges of SAs were in the range of 5–125 ng mL−1 with correlation coefficients above 0.998, and the limits of detection of the five SAs ranged from 1.7 to 2.7 ng mL−1. The interday and intraday precision (RSD) for five replicate extractions of the five SAs (50 ng mL−1 for each) was in the range of 5.4–9.2%. The applicability of the proposed method was examined by analyzing the SAs in the pork and chicken samples. The recoveries of the five SAs varied in the range of 86–111% with good precision, showing the good capability of the proposed method for the determination of SAs in the complicated real samples.

The exploration of methods for degrading konjac glucomannan (KGM) is of great significant and technological interest. Here, laser at the power of 10 W was employed to degrade KGM. The laser degraded konjac glucomannan (LDK) was analyzed by viscosity, Rheology, Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy and laser light scatter (LLS). The viscosity of the LDK decreased from 8.38 Pa·s to 2.26 Pa·s and the average molecular weight (Mw) decreased from 7.6 × 105 Da to 5.7 × 105 Da with a polydispersity index (PDI) of 1.166. FT-IR spectra and IR images of the LDK indicated that the breakage of glucosidic bonds occurred during laser irradiation. DSC results indicated that the thermal stability of KGM has improved slightly after degradation. In addition, the determination of 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging activity suggested that the antioxidant activity of the LDK improved versus KGM. This stratagem provides a new pathway for efficiently degrading KGM.

Background Extranodal natural killer/T-cell lymphoma (ENKTL) is a rare lymphoid malignancy with diverse clinical features and prognoses. The aims of this study were to explore the pretreatment prognostic factors of ENKTL and develop a new individual prognostic model. Patients and Methods We retrospectively enrolled 81 ENKTL patients with newly diagnosed disease between June 2006 and August 2017 at the Affiliated Cancer Hospital of Guangxi Medical University. Survival analysis was used to assess the prognostic value of various factors. A nomogram was developed to predict overall survival (OS) based on the Cox proportional hazards model. Results The median survival time of the patients was 48 months, and the 5-year OS rate was 47.5%. Cox regression analysis showed that the prognostic factors of OS for ENKTL patients included Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status, Ann Arbor stage, pretreatment albumin-to-globulin ratio, and platelet count. A prognostic nomogram was developed to predict the OS rate for ENKTL patients based on these factors. The calibration curve showed that the nomogram was able to predict OS accurately. The concordance index of the nomogram for OS prediction was 0.807. Conclusion Our proposed nomogram based on Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status, Ann Arbor stage, albumin-to-globulin ratio, and platelet count provides an individualized risk estimate of OS in patients with ENKTL.

There are reports of fluorochloridone (FLC)-induced male reproductive toxicity, but the underlying toxicological mechanisms remain unknown. In this study, we looked at how FLC exposure affected the integrity of the blood-testis barrier (BTB) and the Sertoli cell barrier and studied the molecular mechanisms. Male rats received gavage administration of FLC (30 mg/kg/d) for 14 consecutive days with sample collection at the 7th and 14th day; and primary cultured Sertoli cells were treated with 0–10 μM FLC in vitro for 24 h. Our in vivo findings revealed that FLC exposure caused time-dependent testicular injuries, sperm quality decrease as well as adverse changes in BTB integrity, F-actin organization, and expressions of claudin-11 and Arp3. In Sertoli cells isolated from FLC-treated rat testis, Sertoli cell barrier tightness was increased. In Sertoli cells in vitro exposed to FLC, abnormal changes in the barrier permeability were also observed, and the protein expressions of occludin, claudin-11, ZO-1, connexin-43, and Arp3 were significantly decreased in a dose- and time-dependent manner. Furthermore, the FLC-induced adverse changes in Sertoli cell barrier and F-actin were partly alleviated by the induction of Arp3 overexpression. In conclusion, our findings revealed that FLC perturbed BTB/Sertoli cell barrier function through Arp3-mediated F-actin disorganization.

Background Osteopontin (OPN) plays an important role in inflammatory processes and insulin resistance. Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a reproductive metabolic disease associated with insulin resistance and metabolic abnormalities, including high levels of liver fat content (LFC). The objective of this study was to explore whether circulating OPN independently contributes to elevated LFC in non-obese PCOS patients. Methods This study included 61 non-obese PCOS patients and 56 age-matched healthy women from Shanghai, China. After an overnight fast, all participants underwent anthropometric measurements, oral glucose tolerance tests, lipid profile and sex hormone measurements. Quantitative measurement of LFC by ultrasonography was performed. OPN concentrations were measured using ELISA. An independent samples t-test and the Mann-Whitney U test were performed to compare variables between the two groups; one-way ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis test were performed to compare four subgroups of patients. Correlations were determined by Spearman’s correlation tests. Stepwise multiple linear regression analyses were performed to assess for independent contributors. A receiver operating characteristic curve with the maximum Youden index was calculated for the optimal cut-off value. Results In non-obese PCOS women, circulating OPN levels were increased in the subgroups with a higher body mass index (BMI) and free androgen index (FAI), and the LFC levels were increased in the elevated OPN subgroups. Moreover, increased OPN was associated with increased FAI and LFC in PCOS women, and the association between OPN and LFC was independent of triglyceride, HOMA-IR and FAI after adjusting for PCOS status in all participants. OPN combined with FAI and hsCRP may better predict NAFLD than WHR in this study cohort. However, there was no significant difference in circulating OPN levels between non-obese PCOS and normal control women. Conclusions Increased OPN levels may be related to FAI and elevated LFC in non-obese women with PCOS. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12958-018-0331-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

AntMiner is the first swarm intelligence algorithm based on the ant colony optimization algorithm in data mining area. Since AntMiner is easy to fall into the local optimal solution and has long convergence time, we introduce ACSMiner algorithm in this paper. ACSMiner is based on the ant colony system which constructs rules by using the state transition rules, not only updating the pheromone of each ant locally, but also updating the global optimal solution. The KDD99 dataset was used to carry out the experiment. Simulation results demonstrated that compared with the original algorithm, the variant works well in improving the accuracy and reducing false positive rate as well as shortening the training time. It shows that the method can be effectively used in the field of intrusion detection.

Background/Aims: Metformin treatment is reported to be associated with a lower incidence of and mortality from pancreatic cancer (PC) in type 2 diabetes patients. Activated pancreatic stellate cells (PSCs) are key stroma cells responsible for pancreatic fibrogenesis and PC progression. However, little research is about the influence of metformin on PSCs. Given the potential beneficial effects of metformin on PC, pancreatic tumour stroma is an important target for new therapeutics. We observed the effects of metformin on PSCs. We investigated the effects of metformin on human PSCs proliferation and the production of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins. Methods: Cells were cultured with different concentrations of metformin (0-10 mmol/L). Cell proliferation was determined by immunofluorescence staining for nuclear Ki67 labelling. ECM production was studied by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction, immunoblotting and immunofluorescence microscopy. Adenosine monophosphate–activated protein kinase (AMPK), an important regulatory molecule responsible for metformin action, and the organic cation transporter member 1 (OCT1), which is believed to be the most important transporter for the pharmacological action of metformin, were investigated for their possible involvements in metformin-induced proliferation and ECM production. Results: Our results showed that metformin inhibited PSCs proliferation and decreased the production of ECM proteins by activation of AMPK phosphorylation. Silencing of OCT1 expression resulted in a reduction in the effects of metformin on PSCs activity. Conclusions: Collectively, the data indicate that OCT1 may contribute to uptake metformin and regulate PSCs activity. OCT1 is a target of metformin in regulating PSCs activity.

Consumer showrooming – the behavior of examining a product in a brick-andmortar store and later buying it from an online retailer – is seen as a major threat to brick-and-mortar retailers. To combat showrooming, Best Buy announced a price-matching policy in 2012 to compete with major online retailers. In this paper, we examine the impact of Best Buy’s price-matching policy on the price competition between Best Buy and Amazon across a wide variety of product categories. We empirically explore Best Buy’s and Amazon’s pricing patterns using unique datasets collected from different sources, and find robust results that the competitive effect of the price-matching policy depends on the showrooming value of a product. For those products that offer consumers large value from physical store experiences – i.e., the “showrooming products” – the policy led to more intense price competition. Moreover, Amazon cut prices more aggressively than Best Buy. For those products that offer relatively small showrooming value – i.e., the “non-showrooming products” – it alleviated price competition. We also provide theoretical explanations for the findings and illustrate why the price matching policy did not reduce the price gaps between Amazon and Best Buy.

Social bots are intelligent programs that have the ability to receive instructions and mimic real users’ behaviors on social networks, which threaten social network users’ information security. Current researches focus on modeling classifiers from features of user profile and behaviors that could not effectively detect burgeoning social bots. This paper proposed to detect social bots on Twitter based on tweets similarity which including content similarity, tweet length similarity, punctuation usage similarity and stop words similarity. In addition, the LSA (Latent semantic analysis) model is adopted to calculate similarity degree of content. The results show that tweets similarity has significant effect on social bot detection and the proposed method can reach 98.09% precision rate on new data set, which outperforms Madhuri Dewangan’s method.