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The development of functional nanoparticles with ultra-fast and high adsorption capacities is an important strategy for wastewater treatment. Here, α-MnO2@polydopamine nanocomposites (α-MnO2@PDAs) were synthesized by coating α-MnO2 nanowires with polydopamine and were used to remove U(vi) from solutions. The α-MnO2@PDAs possessed a large surface area (22.8 m2 g−1), excellent dispersibility, and abundant surface functional groups. The adsorption of U(vi) was clearly influenced by pH rather than ionic strength, which suggested inner-sphere surface complexation. The adsorption could reach equilibrium within 5 min, and the kinetics was well fitted by the pseudo-second-order model. The maximum adsorption capacity determined from the Langmuir model at 298 K and different pH values was in the order of pH 5.0 (383.14 mg g−1) ＞ 8.0 (213.22 mg g−1) ＞ 3.0 (158.73 mg g−1), which indicated that the α-MnO2@PDAs could still remove U(vi) efficiently at a pH of 8, which is close to the pH of natural water. Spectroscopic analyses suggested that favourable adsorption occurred on active binding sites, e.g., phenolic O–H and amide functional groups. The higher removal efficiency of the α-MnO2@PDAs for U(vi) was due to electrostatic attraction and surface complexation. Moreover, the practical applicability of the α-MnO2@PDAs in the treatment of real wastewater was confirmed by their high adsorption capacity for U(vi) from natural or synthetic water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tanshinone is one of the major medicinal components of the roots of Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge, and SmCPS1 and SmKSL1 are key enzymes in the tanshinone biosynthesis pathway. To increase our understanding of the coding single nucleotide polymorphisms (cSNPs) involved in tanshinone biosynthesis, seven S. miltiorrhiza landraces were examined. Our results revealed that the tanshinone content was significantly different among the seven landraces. In total, 48 cSNPs in SmCPS1 and 47 cSNPs in SmKSL1 were identified, and of these, 38 and 42 cSNPs, respectively, were associated with tanshinone content. The highest A/G and C/T base substitution rates were in SmCPS1 and SmKSL1, respectively. SmKSL1 expression was significantly, positively correlated with tanshinone IIA and tanshinone I contents, and SmCPS1 expression was significantly associated with tanshinone IIA content. Interestingly, subcellular SmCPS1 and SmKSL1 expression was enriched in the plastids. Therefore, cSNPs of SmCPS1 and SmKSL1 are involved in tanshinone biosynthesis in the plastids, where SmCPS1 and SmKSL1 enzymes catalyze tanshinone production in this species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Office workers tend to waste energy at work due to little motivation for saving energy. This study investigates the effectiveness of online feedback (e.g., self-monitoring, advice, comparison) and control strategies (e.g., online remote control, scheduled control) that can promote voluntary energy conservation in the workplace. Eighty office workers were divided into four groups, and feedback and control interventions were field-tested for 9 months. Baseline data was collected for 14 weeks; different interventions were given to the four groups for 13 weeks and then removed from the groups for 11 weeks. During and after the interventions occurred, the groups that had online controls achieved more energy savings than the groups that had no online controls. While there were no statistical energy savings with computer usage before and after the intervention, the monitor, light, and phone devices showed significant savings as a result. Surveys and interviews were also conducted after the experiment to learn the participants' behavior and intentions. The findings discussed are based on their responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malabar spinach (Basella alba), amaranth (Amaranthus tricolor), and sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) are leafy vegetables found in Southwest China. The variation of chlorophyll, carotenoids, ascorbic acid, total flavonoids, phenolic compounds, and antioxidant capacity was studied in the leaves and stems of the three vegetables. The content of main health-promoting compounds and the antioxidant capacity in the leaves were higher than that in the stems, indicating that the leaves of the three vegetables possess greater nutritional value. The trend of total flavonoids in all three vegetables was similar to the trend of antioxidant capacity, suggesting that the total flavonoids may be the major antioxidants wihin these vegetables. Eight individual phenolic compounds were detected in three different vegetables. The most abundant levels of individual phenolic compounds in the leaves and stems of malabar spinach, amaranth, and sweet potato were 6′-O-feruloyl-d-sucrose (9.04 and 2.03 mg g−1 DW), hydroxyferulic acid (10.14 and 0.73 mg g−1 DW), and isorhamnetin-7-O-glucoside (34.93 and 6.76 mg g−1 DW), respectively. Sweet potato exhibited a higher total and individual phenolic compound content compared to malabar spinach and amaranth. Overall, the results demonstrate that the three leafy vegetables possess high nutritional value, and could be used not only for consumption but also in various other fields, including medicine and chemistry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese kale is a widely cultivated plant in the genus Brassica in the family Brassicaceae. The origin of Brassica has been studied extensively, but the origin of Chinese kale remains unclear. In contrast to Brassica oleracea, which originated in the Mediterranean region, Chinese kale originated in southern China. The chloroplast genome is often used for phylogenetic analysis because of its high conservatism. Fifteen pairs of universal primers were used to amplify the chloroplast genomes of white-flower Chinese kale (Brassica oleracea var. alboglabra cv. Sijicutiao (SJCT)) and yellow-flower Chinese kale (Brassica oleracea var. alboglabra cv. Fuzhouhuanghua (FZHH)) via PCR. The lengths of the chloroplast genomes were 153,365 bp (SJCT) and 153,420 bp (FZHH) and both contained 87 protein-coding genes and eight rRNA genes. There were 36 tRNA genes in SJCT and 35 tRNA genes in FZHH. The chloroplast genomes of both Chinese kale varieties, along with eight other Brassicaceae, were analyzed. Simple sequence repeats, long repeats, and variable regions of DNA barcodes were identified. An analysis of inverted repeat boundaries, relative synonymous codon usage, and synteny revealed high similarity among the ten species, albeit the slight differences that were observed. The Ka/Ks ratios and phylogenetic analysis suggest that Chinese kale is a variant of B. oleracea. The phylogenetic tree shows that both Chinese kale varieties and B. oleracea var. oleracea were clustered in a single group. The results of this study suggest that white and yellow flower Chinese kale comprise a monophyletic group and that their differences in flower color arose late in the process of artificial cultivation. Our results also provide data that will aid future research on genetics, evolution, and germplasm resources of Brassicaceae. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Mustard seeds are rich in glucosinolates and glucosinolate breakdown products (GBPs). • Sinigrin is the predominant glucosinolate in mustard seeds. • SIN-ITC is the predominant GBP in mustard seeds. • Leaf mustard have higher total GBP content compared with root and stem mustards. The glucosinolates and glucosinolate breakdown products (GBPs) in the seeds of three types of mustard (root, stem, and leaf mustards) from a core collection of 50 cultivars were studied. Nine glucosinolates and ten GBPs were identified, with sinigrin and 2-propenyl isothiocyanate (SIN-ITC) being the dominant glucosinolate and GBP, respectively. Among the tested cultivars, the contents of total glucosinolates and GBPs ranged from 46.84 to 89.30 μmol g −1 FW and from 23.07 to 82.20 μmol g −1 FW, respectively. Leaf mustard had both the highest average levels of glucosinolates and GBPs (65.04 μmol g −1 FW and 55.97 μmol g −1 FW, respectively) and the greatest variation in total GBP content compared with root and stem mustards. L8 had the highest content of SIN-ITC (72.06 μmol g −1 FW). These findings indicate that mustard seeds, especially cultivar L8, can be good candidates for functional foods since they contain extremely high levels of SIN-ITC, a potent anti-carcinogenic isothiocyanate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, image recognition based on deep neural networks has become the mainstream direction of research; therefore, significant progress has been made in its application in the field of tea detection. Many deep models exhibit high recognition rates in tea leaves detection. However, deploying these models directly on tea-picking equipment in natural environments is impractical; the extremely high parameters and computational complexity of these models make it challenging to perform real-time tea leaves detection. Meanwhile, lightweight models struggle to achieve competitive detection accuracy; therefore, this paper addresses the issue of computational resource constraints in remote mountain areas and proposes Reconstructed Feature and Dual Distillation (RFDD) to enhance the detection capability of lightweight models for tea leaves. In our method, the Reconstructed Feature selectively masks the feature of the student model based on the spatial attention map of the teacher model; it utilizes a generation block to force the student model to generate the teacher's full feature. The Dual Distillation comprises Decoupled Distillation and Global Distillation. Decoupled Distillation divides the reconstructed feature into foreground and background features based on the Ground-Truth. This compels the student model to allocate different attention to foreground and background, focusing on their critical pixels and channels. However, Decoupled Distillation leads to the loss of relation knowledge between foreground and background pixels. Therefore, we further perform Global Distillation to extract this lost knowledge. Since RFDD only requires loss calculation on feature map, it can be easily applied to various detectors. We conducted experiments on detectors with different frameworks, using a tea dataset collected at the Huangshan Houkui Tea Plantation. The experimental results indicate that, under the guidance of RFDD, the student detectors have achieved performance improvements to varying degrees. For instance, a one-stage detector like RetinaNet (ResNet-50) experienced a 3.14% increase in Average Precision (AP) after RFDD guidance. Similarly, a two-stage model like Faster RCNN (ResNet-50) obtained a 3.53% improvement in AP. This offers promising prospects for lightweight models to efficiently perform real-time tea leaves detection tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • The preparation method of fiber catalyst is simple. • The reaction was carried out under mild conditions. • The chosen fiber catalyst PAN T-UdA F-I is highly efficient and recyclable. • Possible mechanism based on the fiber's microenvironment is proposed. Fiber-supported quaternary ammonium catalysts for the fixation of CO 2 with epoxides were designed and prepared via amination and quaternization of polyacrylonitrile fiber, followed by ion exchange with different anions. The impact of different quaternary ammonium structures and counter anions on the reaction yields was investigated. A fiber catalyst (PAN T-UdA F-I) with a C 11 carboxylic acid chain and iodide counter anion exhibited excellent catalytic activity in the fixation of CO 2 with epoxides under mild and solvent-free conditions (80 °C, 0.1 MPa) with a very low catalyst amount (0.5 mol%), and diverse cyclic carbonates were obtained in yields between 24–99 %. PAN T-UdA F-I could be conveniently separated by filtration and showed good recyclability and durability till the 4th cycle. Novel cooperative catalytic mechanism is proposed where the ionic microenvironment plays a crucial role to stabilize the ionic intermediates and lowers the activation energy of the reaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A series of polyacrylonitrile fiber (PANF)-supported copper(II) catalysts were prepared through the immobilization of Cu(II) into prolinamide-modified PANF (PAN PA-2 F) and subsequently used for the synthesis of diverse N -arylimidazoles from arylboronic acids and imidazole. The prepared Cu(II)@PAN PA-2 Fs were well characterized by mechanical strength, FT-IR, XRD, XPS and SEM. Among them, CuCl 2 @PAN PA-2 F exhibited excellent catalytic performance, and its activity was significantly affected by the Cu loading. This catalytic system also displayed good activity in the synthesis of N -arylsulfonamides from arylboronic acids and tosyl azide. It was highly efficient in gram-scale reactions and could be reused five times. The advantages of low cost, easy preparation, good durability and facile recovery make the fiber catalyst attractive. Unlabelled Image • Prolinamide-functionalized polyacrylonitrile fiber (PAN PA-2 F) was used to immobilize copper (II) as a novel support. • Cu content was easily adjusted based on various functional degree of PAN PA-2 F. • The cupric chloride-immobilized fiber showed excellent activity in base-free Chan-Lam coupling reactions. • The fiber catalyst can be easily recycled and reused for 5 runs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Treating patients with advanced sarcomas is challenging due to great histologic diversity among its subtypes. Leiomyosarcoma (LMS) and de-differentiated liposarcoma (DDLPS) are two common and aggressive subtypes of soft tissue sarcoma (STS). They differ significantly in histology and clinical behaviors. However, the molecular driving force behind the difference is unclear.Methods: We collected 20 LMS and 12 DDLPS samples and performed whole exome sequencing (WES) to obtain their somatic mutation profiles. We also performed RNA-Seq to analyze the transcriptomes of 8 each of the LMS and DDLPS samples and obtained information about differential gene expression, pathway enrichment, immune cell infiltration in tumor microenvironment, and chromosomal rearrangement including gene fusions. Selected gene fusion events from the RNA-seq prediction were checked by RT-PCR in tandem with Sanger sequencing.Results: We detected loss of function mutation and deletion of tumor suppressors mostly in LMS, and oncogene amplification mostly in DDLPS. A focal amplification affecting chromosome 12q13-15 region which encodes MDM2, CDK4 and HMGA2 is notable in DDLPS. Mutations in TP53, ATRX, PTEN, and RB1 are identified in LMS but not DDLPS, while mutation of HERC2 is only identified in DDLPS but not LMS. RNA-seq revealed overexpression of MDM2, CDK4 and HMGA2 in DDLPS and down-regulation of TP53 and RB1 in LMS. It also detected more fusion events in DDLPS than LMS (4.5 vs. 1, p = 0.0195), and the ones involving chromosome 12 in DDLPS stand out. RT-PCR and Sanger sequencing verified the majority of the fusion events in DDLPS but only one event in LMS selected to be tested. The tumor microenvironmental signatures are highly correlated with histologic types. DDLPS has more endothelial cells and fibroblasts content than LMS.Conclusions: Our analysis revealed different recurrent genetic variations in LMS and DDLPS including simultaneous upregulation of gene expression and gene copy number amplification of MDM2 and CDK4. Up-regulation of tumor related genes is favored in DDLPS, while loss of suppressor function is favored in LMS. DDLPS harbors more frequent fusion events which can generate neoepitopes and potentially targeted by personalized immune treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The aim of this study was to explore the utility of circulating free DNA (cfDNA) in the evaluation of clinical tumor burden and survival in Chinese patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) and to preliminarily summarize some metastatic characteristics associated with mutational status.Methods: A panel covering a total of 197 hotspot mutations of KRAS, NRAS, BRAF and PIK3CA was used to evaluate the mutational status in plasma by next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology in 126 patients with mCRC. An amplification-refractory mutation system (ARMS) was used to analyze genomic DNA from matched tissue samples. Clinical markers including carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), carbohydrate antigen 199 (CA199), carbohydrate antigen 125 (CA125), neuron-specific enolase (NSE) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) in serum and the sum of all tumor diameters on CT or PET/CT were collected to indicate clinical tumor burden. The correlations between cfDNA and clinical tumor burden were analyzed using Pearson correlation and linear regression models. The median progression-free survival (PFS) and 1-year overall survival (OS) rates were calculated by Kaplan-Meier (K-M) survival analysis.Results: Of the 126 enrolled patients, patients who were tested positive for mutations in plasma accounted for 45.2% (57/126). Mutations in KRAS, NRAS, BRAF and PIK3CA were detected in 37.3% (47/126), 1.6% (2/126), 3.2% (4/126) and 13.5% (17/126) of patients, respectively. The overall concordance rate of mutational status between plasma and matched tissues was 78.6% (99/126). Sixteen patients had mutations in plasma that were not detected in tissue, including some rare hotspot mutations. The cfDNA concentration was significantly correlated with the levels of clinical markers, especially CEA (P < 0.0001, Pearson r = 0.81), LDH (P < 0.0001, Pearson r = 0.84) and the sum of tumor diameters (P < 0.0001, Pearson r = 0.80). Patients with a high cfDNA concentration (> 17.91 ng/ml) had shorter median progression-free survival (6.6 versus 11.7 months, P < 0.0001) and lower 1-year overall survival rate (56% versus 94%, P < 0.0001) than those with a low cfDNA concentration (≤17.91 ng/ml). The most common metastatic site was the liver (77.8%), followed by the lymph nodes (62.7%), lung (40.5%), peritoneum (14.3%) and bone (10.3%), in all patients. There was no significant difference in metastasis between different mutational statuses.Conclusion: Analyzing mutations in plasma could provide a more comprehensive overview of the mutational landscape than analyzing mutations in tissue. The cfDNA concentration could be a quantitative biomarker of tumor burden and could predict survival in Chinese patients with mCRC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]