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Non-timber forest product plantations (NTFP plantations), also known as "economic forests" in China, refer to forest plantations cultivated for the production of non-timber products such as fruits, nuts, oils, seasonings, and medicinal materials. With a rapid increase in the total area in the past two decades, NTFP plantations have become an important type of forestland use in China. The shift of agricultural labor to the non-agricultural sector caused by rising salaries in China will inevitably have a great impact on land use, forestry, and agricultural production. To understand the effects of off-farm employment on the development of NTFP plantations in China, a total of 709 valid household questionnaires from Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces were collected. Heckman's two-stage model was employed in the empirical analysis. The results of the study show that off-farm employment has a significant positive effect on both the probability that a household has planted NTFP plantations and the plantation area. Households engaged in off-farm employment would prefer to plant NTFP plantations. Moreover, the higher the degree of participation in off-farm employment, the more likely households are to choose to plant NTFP plantations. The area of NTFP plantations would increase with the increase in off-farm employment degrees. Besides, the age and education level of the household head show a positive effect on the NTFP plantation planting. The implication of the results is that with a continuing increase in the proportion of off-farm employment, NTFP plantation cultivation could also continue to expand. Funds are still an important constraint for households to choose to plant NTFP plantations. Therefore, if policymakers want to promote the development of NTFP plantations on collectively owned forestland, they should first resolve households' financial constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To enhance the encryption quality and the transmission efficiency, an optical compression and encryption scheme for multiple images based on chaotic apertured quaternion fractional Mellin transform (QFrMT) is designed. The apertured optical systems and the quaternions with several imaginary components guarantee our designed scheme harder for the attackers to acquire valuable information. The QFrMT with the chaotic aperture is proposed to eliminate potential insecurity resulting from the known-plaintext attack and the phase-retrieval attack. The quaternion signal containing the main information of the plaintext images is converted into the chaotic apertured QFrMT domain, and then the resulting amplitude is encrypted with the chaotic mask constructed by the truncated phase in the fractional Fourier plane for nonlinear processing and information integrity. The chaos-based non-conventional diffusion is applied to further enhance the robustness against attacks. Extensive experiments results verify the security and efficiency of the presented optical multi-image encryption scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To investigate the effect of Morinda officinalis polysaccharides(MOP) on the expression of fibronectin(FN) and fibronectin containing extra domain A(FN-EDA) in inflammatory periodontal ligament fibroblasts., Methods: Thirty six rats were randomly divided into a control group(n=12) and a model group (n=24). The model group used orthodontic wire ligation to establish periodontitis. After three weeks, 6 rats from each group were selected and confirmed by Micro-CT to complete the modeling. The remaining rats in the model group were randomly divided into periodontitis group, normal saline(NS) group, and MOP group. In the MOP group, MOP (200 mg/kg for 3 d, 50 μL for 4 weeks) was injected into the palatal side of the left maxillary first molar of the rats. In the NS group, same volume of NS was injected, and no treatment was performed in the periodontitis group. The left maxillary tissue of rats were taken and the pathological changes of periodontal tissue were observed by H-E staining. The expression of FN and FN-EDA was detected by immunohistochemistry. Periodontal ligament fibroblasts were cultured in vitro, the effect of MOP on cell activity detected by CCK-8. The fourth generation cells were divided into control group, inflammation group (10 mg/mL lipopolysaccharide), and experimental group (12.5 μg/mL MOP, 12.5 μg/mL MOP+10 mg/mL lipopolysaccharide). The expression of FN and FN-EDA was detected by qRT-PCR and Western blot. The data were statistically analyzed using Prism 8.0 software package., Results: In vivo experiments, the expression of FN-EDA in the MOP group was significantly lower than that in the periodontitis group and NS group(P＜0.05), and the infiltration of inflammatory cells was reduced. However, there was no significant difference in the expression of FN in each group. In vitro experiments, compared with the control group, the expression of FN-EDA mRNA and protein in the inflammation group was significantly increased(P＜0.000 1). MOP significantly reduced the expression of FN-EDA in inflammatory cells, but had no significant effect on FN expression., Conclusions: With increased expression of FN-EDA in inflammatory periodontal ligament tissues and cells, MOP may play a role in inhibiting inflammation by down-regulating FN-EDA.