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Global warming has led to a high incidence of extreme heat events, and the frequent occurrence of extreme heat events has had extensive and far-reaching impacts on wetland ecosystems. The widespread distribution of plastics in the environment, including polyethylene (PE), polylactic acid (PLA), and tire particles (TPs), has caused various environmental problems. Here, high-throughput sequencing techniques and metabolomics were used for the first time to investigate the effects of three popular microplastic types: PE, PLA, and TP, on the sediment microbiome and the metabolome at both temperatures. The microplastics were incorporated into the sediment at a concentration of 3% by weight of the dry sediment (wt/wt), to reflect environmentally relevant conditions. Sediment enzymatic activity and physicochemical properties were co-regulated by both temperatures and microplastics producing significant difference s compared to controls. PE and PLA particles inhibited bacterial diversity at low temperatures and promoted bacterial diversity at high temperatures, and TP particles promoted both at both temperatures. For bacterial richness, only PLA showed inhibition at low temperature; all other treatments showed promotion. PE, PLA, and TP microplastics changed the community structure of sediment bacteria, forming two clusters at low and high temperatures. Furthermore, PE, PLA, and TP changed the sediment metabolic profiles, producing differential metabolites such as lipids and molecules, organic heterocyclic compounds, and organic acids and their derivatives, especially TP had the most significant effect. These findings contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the potential impact of microplastic contamination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The oligomer of β-amyloid (Aβ) is considered the main neurotoxin in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Therefore, the inhibition of the formation of Aβ oligomer could be a target for AD therapy. In this study, with the help of the dot blotting assay and transmission electronic microscopy, it was have discovered that 5-hydroxycyclopenicillone, a cyclopentenone recently isolated from a sponge-associated fungus, effectively reduced the formation of Aβ oligomer from Aβ peptide in vitro. Molecular dynamics simulations suggested hydrophobic interactions between 5-hydroxycyclopenicillone and Aβ peptide, which might prevent the conformational transition and oligomerization of Aβ peptide. Moreover, Aβ oligomer pre-incubated with 5-hydroxycyclopenicillone was less toxic when added to neuronal SH-SY5Y cells compared to the normal Aβ oligomer. Although 5-hydroxycyclopenicillone is not bioavailable in the brain in its current form, further modification or encapsulation of this chemical might improve the penetration of 5-hydroxycyclopenicillone into the brain. Based on the current findings and the anti-oxidative stress properties of 5-hydroxycyclopenicillone, it is suggested that 5-hydroxycyclopenicillone may have potential therapeutic efficacy in treating AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Valid and comparable cause of death (COD) statistics are crucial for health policy analyses. Variations in COD assignment across geographical areas are well-documented while socio-institutional factors may affect the process of COD and underlying cause of death (UCD) determination. This study examines the comparability of UCD statistics in Hong Kong and Shanghai, having two political systems within one country, and assesses how socioinstitutional factors influence UCD comparability. Methods: A mixed method was used. Quantitative analyses involved anonymized official mortality records. Mortality rates were analyzed by location of death. To analyze the odds ratio of being assigned to a particular UCD, logistic regressions were performed. Qualitative analyses involved literature reviews and semi-structural interviews with key stakeholders in death registration practices. Thematic analysis was used. Results: Age-standardized death rates from certain immediate conditions (e.g., septicemia, pneumonia, and renal failure) were higher in Hong Kong. Variations in UCD determination may be attributed to preference of location of death, procedures of registering deaths outside hospital, perceptions on the causal chain of COD, implications of the selected UCD for doctors' professional performance, and governance and processes of data quality review. Conclusions: Variations in socio-institutional factors were related to the process of certifying and registering COD in Hong Kong and Shanghai. To improve regional data comparability, health authorities should develop standard procedures for registering deaths outside hospital, provide guidelines and regular training for doctors, develop a unified automated coding system, consolidate a standard procedure for data review and validity checks, and disseminate information concerning both UCD and multiple causes of death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new cyclopentenone, 5-hydroxycyclopeni cillone (1), was isolated together with three known compounds, ar-turmerone (2), citreoisocoumarin (3), and 6-O-methyl-citreoisocoumarin (4), from a culture of the sponge-derived fungus Trichoderma sp. HPQJ-34. The structures of 1-4 were characterized using comprehensive spectroscopic analyses. The absolute configuration of 1 was determined by comparison of electronic circular dichroism (ECD) spectra with literature values used for the reported analogue, cyclopenicillone (5), which was not isolated in this research. Compound 1 was shown to scavenge 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl free radicals, and decrease β-amyloid (Aβ) fibrillization in vitro. Moreover, 1 significantly reduced H2O2-induced neurotoxicity in SH-SY5Y cells. These findings suggested that compound 1, a newly discovered cyclopentenone, has moderate anti-oxidative, anti-Aβ fibrillization properties and neuroprotective effects, and might be a good free radical scavenger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Esophageal cancer is the fourth most common gastrointestinal cancer, it generally has a poor prognosis and novel strategies are required for prevention and treatment. Vitamin E succinate (VES) is a potential chemical agent for cancer prevention and therapy as it exerts anti-tumor effects in a variety of cancers. However, the role of VES in tumorigenesis and progression of cancer remains to be elucidated. The present study aimed to determine the effects of VES in regulating the survival and apoptosis of human esophageal cancer cells. EC109 human esophageal cancer cells were used to investigate the anti-proliferative effects of VES. The MTT and Annexin V-fluorescein isothiocyanate/propidium iodide assays demonstrated that VES inhibited cell proliferation and induced apoptosis in esophageal cancer cells. Furthermore, VES downregulated constitutively active basal levels of phosphorylated (p)-serine-threonine kinase AKT (AKT) and p-mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), and decreased the phosphorylation of AKT substrates Bcl-2-associated death receptor and caspase-9, in addition to mTOR effectors, ribosomal protein S6 kinase β1 and eIF4E-binding protein 1. Phosphoinositide-3-kinase (PI3K) inhibitor, LY294002 suppressed p-AKT and p-mTOR, indicating PI3K is a common upstream mediator. The apoptosis induced by VES was increased by inhibition of AKT or mTOR with their respective inhibitor in esophageal cancer cells. The results of the present study suggested that VES targeted the PI3K/AKT signaling pathways and induced apoptosis in esophageal cancer cells. Furthermore, the current study suggests that VES may be useful in a combinational therapeutic strategy employing an mTOR inhibitor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aimed to determine the effect and mechanism of fuzhisan (FZS) and donepezil on the SIRT1 signaling pathway and the metabolism of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) in PC12 cells. An experimental cell model of PC12 cells with Aβ25-35-induced neurotoxicity was established and cell proliferation was determined by the MTT assay following treatment with donepezil and FZS. In addition, cell apoptosis was determined using DAPI staining and light microscopy. Furthermore, western blot analysis and ELISA were utilized to evaluate the expression levels of associated APP, Aβ40, Aβ42, sAPPα, sAPPβ, ADAM10, sirtuin 1 (SIRT1) and forkhead box O (FoxO) protein. The results indicated that the cell model was successfully established and FZS protected the PC12 cells from the neurotoxic effects of Aβ25-35, in a similar effect to donepezil, in a dose-dependent manner. The expression of APP remained at the same level during the experimental period. The levels of Aβ40, Aβ42 and sAPPβ were downregulated, where as sAPPα, ADAM10, SIRT1 and FoxO expression levels were upregulated. In conclusion, FZS treatment attenuated the Aβ25-35-induced neurotoxicity in vitro. The neuroprotective mechanism of FZS was determined, including the induction of ADAM10 and SIRT1-FoxO pathway, which participated in the process of neuroprotection. The present study identified the neuroprotective function of FZS, which may protect against Aβ-induced toxicity. Therefore, FZS may be used clinically as a beneficial therapeutic drug for the development or progression of Alzheimer's disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In contrast to the mortality dynamics of the former socialist economies of Europe during their transition era, few studies have examined mortality changes in China since the start of its socialist economic reforms. This article examines mortality trends of Shanghai permanent residents during the transition from planned socialism to state capitalism. The previously steady improvement in life expectancy slowed down between 1992 and 1996. Mortality among young working-age men (ages 20-44) increased, largely due to rising cardiovascular disease and injuries. Transportation deaths increased but not mortality from suicide or liver disease. These unfavourable mortality patterns are linked to reform-associated institutional changes such as weaker social protection, increased unemployment, psychological stress, unsafe transport and hazardous environments. However, the unfavourable effects were moderate and transient due to gradualist reform strategies and strong institutions combined with rapid economic growth. The lessons learned from the Shanghai experience may be useful for other socialist countries wishing to shift to a market economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cognition of randomness consists of perceptual and conceptual components. One might be able to discriminate random from nonrandom stimuli, yet be unable to identify which is which. In a series of experiments, we compare the ability to distinguish random from nonrandom stimuli to the accuracy with which given stimuli are identified as "random." In a further experiment, we also evaluate the encoding hypothesis according to which the tendency of a stimulus to be labeled random varies with the cognitive difficulty of encoding it (Falk & Konold, 1997). In our experiments, the ability to distinguish random from nonrandom stimuli is superior to the ability to correctly label them. Moreover, for at least 1 class of stimuli, difficulty of encoding fails to predict the probability of being labeled random, providing evidence against the encoding hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rice husk ash (RHA), an agricultural waste, was used as biosorbent for the removal of Iron(II) and Manganese(II) ions fromaqueous solutions. The structural and morphological characteristics of RHA and its elemental compositions before and after adsorption of Fe(II) and Mn(II) were determined by scanning electron microscopic (SEM) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analyses. Batch experiments were carried out to determine the influence of initial pH, contact time, adsorbent dosage, and initial concentration on the removal of Fe(II) and Mn(II) ions. Langmuir, Freundlich, and Dubinin-Radushkevich (D-R) models were applied to describe the biosorption isotherm of the metal ions by RHA. The correlation coefficient (R 2) of Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models equals 0.995 and 0.901 for Fe(II), 0.9862 and 0.8924 forMn(II), respectively, so the Langmuirmodel fitted the equilibriumdata better than the Freundlich isotherm model. The mean free energy values evaluated from the D-R model indicated that the biosorption of Fe(II) and Mn (II) onto RHA was physical in nature. Experimental data also showed that the biosorption processes of both metal ions complied with the pseudo-second-order kinetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, adsorption of zinc onto the adsorbent (untreated rice husk and NaOH-treated rice husk) was examined. During the removal process, batch technique was used, and the effects of pH and contact time were investigated. Langmuir isotherm was applied in order to determine the efficiency of NaOH-treated rice husk used as an adsorbent. The zinc adsorption was fast, and equilibrium was attained within 30 min. The maximum removal ratios of zinc for untreated rice husk and NaOH-treated rice husk after 1.5 h were 52.3% and 95.2%, respectively, with initial zinc concentration of 25 mg/L and optimum pH of 4.0. Data obtained from batch adsorption experiments fitted well with the Langmuir isotherm model. Maximum adsorption capacity of zinc onto untreated rice husk and NaOH-treated rice husk was 12.41 mg/g, and 20.08 mg/g respectively, at adsorbent dosage of 1g/L at 25°C. The nature of functional groups (i.e., amino, carboxyl, and hydroxyl) and metal ion interactions was examined by the FT-IR technique. It was concluded that the NaOH-treated rice husk had stronger adsorption capacity for Zn2+ compared with the untreated rice husk. The NaOH-treated rice husk is an inexpensive and environmentally friendly adsorbent for Zn2+ removal from aqueous solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In urban China, mortality from injuries has increased over the past five decades. By contrast, life expectancy has continued to increase and has come to nearly equal life expectancy in developed countries. Currently, most of the life expectancy lost due to injury (65%) in urban China would be recovered if injury rates were the same as in countries with low injury-related mortality. Fundamentally, the rising trend in urban injury mortality in China reflects a continued focus on injury treatment rather than prevention in the face of fast socioeconomic development and increasing exposure to risk factors for injury. Despite improved injury prevention legislation and a "Safe Community" campaign, urban China needs to modify its approach to urban injury management and focus on prevention. The gap between urban China and countries with low injury mortality can be closed by means of legislation, strengthened law enforcement and the establishment of safer communities. Risks affecting children and migrants deserve greater attention, and the government needs to allocate more resources to injury prevention, especially to urban areas in the central-west region of China. Based on the population size of urban China, measures for the prevention of injury mortality would save an annual 436.4 million years of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The visual system is an efficient statistician, extracting statistical summaries over sets of objects (statistical summary perception) and statistical regularities among individual objects (statistical learning). Although these two kinds of statistical processing have been studied extensively in isolation, their relationship is not yet understood. We first examined how statistical summary perception influences statistical learning by manipulating the task that participants performed over sets of objects containing statistical regularities (Experiment 1). Participants who performed a summary task showed no statistical learning of the regularities, whereas those who performed control tasks showed robust learning. We then examined how statistical learning influences statistical summary perception by manipulating whether the sets being summarized contained regularities (Experiment 2) and whether such regularities had already been learned (Experiment 3). The accuracy of summary judgments improved when regularities were removed and when learning had occurred in advance. In sum, calculating summary statistics impeded statistical learning, and extracting statistical regularities impeded statistical summary perception. This mutual interference suggests that statistical summary perception and statistical learning are fundamentally related. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Homelessness is an economic and social crisis. In a cluster-randomized controlled trial, we address a core cause of homelessness—lack of money—by providing a one-time unconditional cash transfer of CAD$7,500 to each of 50 individuals experiencing homelessness, with another 65 as controls in Vancouver, BC. Exploratory analyses showed that over 1 y, cash recipients spent fewer days homeless, increased savings and spending with no increase in temptation goods spending, and generated societal net savings of $777 per recipient via reduced time in shelters. Additional experiments revealed public mistrust toward the ability of homeless individuals to manage money and demonstrated interventions to increase public support for a cash transfer policy using counter-stereotypical or utilitarian messaging. Together, this research offers a new approach to address homelessness and provides insights into homelessness reduction policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Binary information is prevalent in the environment and contains 2 distinct outcomes. Binary sequences consist of a mixture of alternation and repetition. Understanding how people perceive such sequences would contribute to a general theory of information processing. In this study, we examined how people process alternation and repetition in binary sequences. Across 4 paradigms involving estimation, working memory, change detection, and visual search, we found that the number of alternations is underestimated compared with repetitions (Experiment 1). Moreover, recall for binary sequences deteriorates as the sequence alternates more (Experiment 2). Changes in bits are also harder to detect as the sequence alternates more (Experiment 3). Finally, visual targets superimposed on bits of a binary sequence take longer to process as alternation increases (Experiment 4). Overall, our results indicate that compared with repetition, alternation in a binary sequence is less salient in the sense of requiring more attention for successful encoding. The current study thus reveals the cognitive constraints in the representation of alternation and provides a new explanation for the overalternation bias in randomness perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Recent studies have linked synaptojanin 1 (synj1) with Alzheimer disease (AD). Results: We report that synj1 reduction decreases amyloid plaque burden and attenuates cognitive deterioration in an AD mouse model. These effects are mediated through accelerating endosomal/lysosomal degradation of Aβ. Conclusion: Our data suggest a novel mechanism by which synj1 reduction promotes Aβ clearance. Significance: These studies implicate a therapeutic strategy for AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wicherts and Scholten criticized our study on statistical and psychometric grounds. We show that (i) using a continuous income variable, the interaction between income, and experimental manipulation remains reliable across our experiments; (ii) our results in the cognitive control task do not appear driven by ceiling effects; and (iii) our observed post-harvest improvement is robust to the presence of learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lung cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related death. Most advanced lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) patients have poor survival because of drug resistance and relapse. Neglecting intratumoral heterogeneity might be one of the reasons for treatment insensitivity, while single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) technologies can provide transcriptome information at the single-cell level. Herein, we combined scRNA-seq and bulk RNA-seq data of LUAD and identified a novel cluster of malignant epithelial cells - KRT81 + malignant epithelial cells - associated with worse prognoses. Further analysis revealed that the hypoxia and EMT pathways of these cells were activated to predispose them to differentiate into metastatic lung adenocarcinoma cells. Finally, we also studied the role of these tumor cells in the immune microenvironment and their role in the classification and prognosis prediction of lung adenocarcinoma patients., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2023 The Authors.)