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As rate-limiting enzymes of peroxisomal β-oxidation, acyl-coenzyme A oxidase (ACOXs) play vital roles in maintaining energy homeostasis and regulating reactive oxygen species (ROS) metabolism. However, there are no studies on the functions of ACOXs in crustaceans. In the present study, four full-length cDNA sequences of acoxs, namely the acox-1a (2403 bp), acox-1b (2733 bp), acox-3a (2878 bp) and acox-3b (3445 bp), were successfully isolated from mud crab Scylla paramamosain, which encoded 666, 673, 701 and 658 amino acids, respectively. Sequence analysis showed that the ACOX-1a, ACOX-1b and ACOX-3a possessed conserved structural domains like FAD-binding motif, fatty acyl CoA oxidase domain and peroxisomal targeting signal, while the ACOX-3b lacked peroxisomal targeting signal. Results of phylogenetic tree indicated that the four ACOXs of mud crab grouped gathered with their corresponding orthologues from crustaceans. The acox-1a, acox-3a and acox-3b were highly expressed in hepatopancreas, and the acox-1b was mainly distributed in muscle and hepatopancreas. Compared with feeding groups, the expression levels of acox-1a, acox-3a and acox-3b in hepatopancreas and acox-3a in muscle were markedly up-regulated in fasting groups, suggesting that the acoxs had significant effects in modulating energy balance during fasting. In addition, fasting significantly increased the transcriptional levels of nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor (nrf2) and its downstream antioxidant genes (catalase (cat), glutathione peroxidase (gpx) and glutathione S-transferase (gst)) to improve antioxidant capacity for removing excessive ROS produced by ACOX-mediated peroxisomal β-oxidation. These results would be conducive to providing new insights into evolutionary characteristics and functions of acoxs in crustaceans.

Low remediation efficiency due to low bioavailability is a primary restrictive factor for phytoremediation applications. Specifically, this investigation examines whether Suaeda heteroptera Kitagawa (S. heteroptera) can be used in combination with β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) to remediate contaminated site. The study was conducted on the growth response of S. heteroptera, bioavailability and dissipation of petroleum hydrocarbons (PHs) in soil under the influence of β-CD Our preliminary studies confirmed that β-CD is effective in increasing the biomass and height of plants. The presence of β-CD could dramatically elevate polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and n-alkanes in S. heteroptera. Moreover, a remarkable positive correlation between PHs levels in roots with the dosage of β-CD and a negative correlation between the PHs levels in roots with KOW of PHs have been observed. The dissipation of n-alkanes was estimated to be 38.73–62.27%, and the dissipation of PAHs was 36.59–60.10%. In addition, the dissipation behavior of n-alkanes and PAHs was well agreement with the first-order kinetic model. These results display that applying β-CD accelerated the desorption process of PHs from soil and promoted the absorption process of PHs onto the root epidermis. The enhancement of phytoremediation was achieved by increasing the bioavailability of PHs. NOVELTY STATEMENT: There has been an increasing concern regarding soil contamination by petroleum hydrocarbons (PHs) released by industrial activities. The study attempted to investigate how β-CD affects the phytoremediation of PHs-contaminated sites. The findings of this study offer an environmentally friendly and cost-effective method of phytoremediating industrially contaminated sites using β-CD enhanced-phytoremediation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address the issue of insufficient deep contextual information mining in the semantic segmentation task of multiple defects in concrete bridges, due to the diversity in texture, shape, and scale of the defects as well as significant differences in the background, we propose the Concrete Bridge Apparent Multi-Defect Segmentation Network (PID-MHENet) based on a PID encoder and multi-feature fusion. PID-MHENet consists of a PID encoder, skip connection, and decoder. The PID encoder adopts a multi-branch structure, including an integral branch and a proportional branch with a "thick and long" design principle and a differential branch with a "thin and short" design principle. The PID Aggregation Enhancement (PAE) combines the detail information of the proportional branch and the semantic information of the differential branch to enhance the fusion of contextual information and, at the same time, introduces the self-learning parameters, which can effectively extract the information of the boundary details of the lesions, the texture, and the background differences. The Multi-Feature Fusion Enhancement Decoding Block (MFEDB) in the decoding stage enhances the information and globally fuses the different feature maps introduced by the three-channel skip connection, which improves the segmentation accuracy of the network for the background similarity and the micro-defects. The experimental results show that the mean Pixel accuracy (mPa) and mean Intersection over Union (mIoU) values of PID-MHENet on the concrete bridge multi-defect semantic segmentation dataset improved by 5.17% and 5.46%, respectively, compared to the UNet network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand the prevalence of rhinovirus (RV) among acute respiratory infection (ARI) patients, 10‐year ARI surveillance in multiple provinces of China were conducted during 2012−2021. Of 15 645 ARI patients, 1180 (7.54%) were confirmed to have RV infection and 820 (69.49%) were children under 5 years of age. RV typing was performed on the 527 VP1 gene sequences, and species A, B, and C accounted for 73.24%, 4.93%, and 21.82%, respectively. Although no significant difference in the proportions of age groups or disease severity was found between RV species, RV‐C was more frequently detected in children under 5 years of age, RV‐A was more frequently detected in elderly individuals (≥60), and the proportions of pneumonia in RV‐A and RV‐C patients were higher than those in RV‐B patients. The epidemic peak of RV‐A was earlier than that of RV‐C. A total of 57 types of RV‐A, 13 types of RV‐B, and 35 types of RV‐C were identified in RV‐infected patients, and two uncertain RV types were also detected. The findings showed a few differences in epidemiological and clinical features between RV species in ARI patients, and RV‐A and RV‐C were more prevalent than RV‐B. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flexible lasing mode regulation is significant for optoelectronic applications, such as on-chip communication and optoelectronic integration. However, reversible and dynamic single mode lasing output is still a challenge. Herein, reversible lasing modes tuning is demonstrated in whispering gallery mode microcavity controlled by bias voltages. Especially in coupled microcavity consisting of two microrods, applied electrical fields cause lasing modes shifting of one microrod, and the optical field coupling process with the other microrod occurs simultaneously to select distinct single mode lasing. Hence, the switchable single mode lasing can be achieved. The mechanisms of Vernier effect, electro-optic effect, and their synergy on lasing mode modulation are analyzed via experimental results and theoretical analysis. Synergistically running the two effects, the high quality factor of the single mode indicates an effective coupling process, providing an effective way for controllable lasers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]