Search

Abstract In this study, the effects on silage performance and microbial community of sorghum straw treated with the addition of enzymes (cellulase (CE), xylanase (XE)) and extrusion puffing technology, combined with SEM, XRD, and FTIR techniques, were thoroughly investigated. The results showed that the enzyme preparations, especially xylanase, significantly improved the nutritional value and fermentation efficiency of straw and enhanced the silage effect. Extruding significantly changes the surface structure of the straw, increasing the surface area and porosity, and promoting the attachment of microorganisms. This study not only optimized the sorghum straw silage performance but also provided technical support for the efficient use of straw resources, which is of great significance for the sustainable development of animal husbandry and the resource utilization of agricultural waste.

The clinical efficacy of current cancer therapies falls short, and there is a pressing demand to integrate new targets with conventional therapies. Autophagy, a highly conserved self-degradation process, has received considerable attention as an emerging therapeutic target for cancer. With the rapid development of nanomedicine, nanomaterials have been widely utilized in cancer therapy due to their unrivaled delivery performance. Hence, considering the potential benefits of integrating autophagy and nanotechnology in cancer therapy, we outline the latest advances in autophagy-based nanotherapeutics. Based on a brief background related to autophagy and nanotherapeutics and their impact on tumor progression, the feasibility of autophagy-based nanotherapeutics for cancer treatment is demonstrated. Further, emerging nanotherapeutics developed to modulate autophagy are reviewed from the perspective of cell signaling pathways, including modulation of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway, autophagy-related (ATG) and its complex expression, reactive oxygen species (ROS) and mitophagy, interference with autophagosome-lysosome fusion, and inhibition of hypoxia-mediated autophagy. In addition, combination therapies in which nano-autophagy modulation is combined with chemotherapy, phototherapy, and immunotherapy are also described. Finally, the prospects and challenges of autophagy-based nanotherapeutics for efficient cancer treatment are envisioned.

Female sexual receptivity is essential for reproduction of a species. Neuropeptides play the main role in regulating female receptivity. However, whether neuropeptides regulate female sexual receptivity during the neurodevelopment is unknown. Here, we found the peptide hormone prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH), which belongs to the insect PG (prothoracic gland) axis, negatively regulated virgin female receptivity through ecdysone during neurodevelopment in Drosophila melanogaster. We identified PTTH neurons as doublesex-positive neurons, they regulated virgin female receptivity before the metamorphosis during the third-instar larval stage. PTTH deletion resulted in the increased EcR-A expression in the whole newly formed prepupae. Furthermore, the ecdysone receptor EcR-A in pC1 neurons positively regulated virgin female receptivity during metamorphosis. The decreased EcR-A in pC1 neurons induced abnormal morphological development of pC1 neurons without changing neural activity. Among all subtypes of pC1 neurons, the function of EcR-A in pC1b neurons was necessary for virgin female copulation rate. These suggested that the changes of synaptic connections between pC1b and other neurons decreased female copulation rate. Moreover, female receptivity significantly decreased when the expression of PTTH receptor Torso was reduced in pC1 neurons. This suggested that PTTH not only regulates female receptivity through ecdysone but also through affecting female receptivity associated neurons directly. The PG axis has similar functional strategy as the hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal axis in mammals to trigger the juvenile–adult transition. Our work suggests a general mechanism underlying which the neurodevelopment during maturation regulates female sexual receptivity.

BackgroundClinical studies have demonstrated that microbes play a crucial role in human health and disease. The identification of microbe-disease interactions can provide insights into the pathogenesis and promote the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. Although a large number of computational methods are designed to screen novel microbe-disease associations, the accurate and efficient methods are still lacking due to data inconsistence, underutilization of prior information, and model performance.MethodsIn this study, we proposed an improved deep learning-based framework, named GIMMDA, to identify latent microbe-disease associations, which is based on graph autoencoder and inductive matrix completion. By co-training the information from microbe and disease space, the new representations of microbes and diseases are used to reconstruct microbe-disease association in the end-to-end framework. In particular, a similarity fusion strategy is conducted to improve prediction performance.ResultsThe experimental results show that the performance of GIMMDA is competitive with that of existing state-of-the-art methods on 3 datasets (i.e., HMDAD, Disbiome, and multiMDA). In particular, it performs best with the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.9735, 0.9156, 0.9396 on abovementioned 3 datasets, respectively. And the result also confirms that different similarity fusions can improve the prediction performance. Furthermore, case studies on two diseases, i.e., asthma and obesity, validate the effectiveness and reliability of our proposed model.ConclusionThe proposed GIMMDA model show a strong capability in predicting microbe-disease associations. We expect that GPUDMDA will help identify potential microbe-related diseases in the future.

Abstract Negative pressure wound therapy with instillation and dwell time (NPWTi-d) is increasingly used for a diverse range of wounds. Meanwhile, the topical wound irrigation solution consisting of polyhexamethylene biguanide and betaine (PHMB-B) has shown efficacy in managing wound infections. However, the effectiveness of this solution as a topical instillation solution for NPWTi-d in patients with diabetic foot infections (DFIs) has not been thoroughly studied. The objective of this retrospective study was to evaluate the impact of using PHMB-B as the instillation solution during NPWTi-d on reducing bioburden and improving clinical outcomes in patients with DFIs. Between January 2017 and December 2022, a series of patients with DFIs received treatment with NPWTi-d, using either PHMB-B or normal saline as the instillation solution. Data collected retrospectively included demographic information, baseline wound characteristics, and treatment outcomes. The study included 61 patients in the PHMB-B group and 73 patients in the normal saline group, all diagnosed with DFIs. In comparison to patients treated with normal saline, patients with PHMB-B exhibited no significant differences in terms of wound bed preparation time (P = 0.5034), length of hospital stay (P = 0.6783), NPWTi-d application times (P = 0.1458), duration of systematic antimicrobial administration (P = 0.3567), or overall cost of hospitalization (P = 0.6713). The findings of the study suggest that the use of either PHMB-B or normal saline as an instillation solution in NPWTi-d for DFIs shows promise and effectiveness, yet no clinical distinction was observed between the two solutions.

Abstract Electrocatalytic conversion of organic small molecules is a promising technique for value-added chemical productions but suffers from high precious metal consumption, poor stability of electrocatalysts and tedious product separation. Here, a Pd/NiMoO4/NF electrocatalyst with much lowered Pd loading amount (3.5 wt.%) has been developed for efficient, economic, and ultra-stable glycolate synthesis, which shows high Faradaic efficiency (98.9%), yield (98.8%), and ultrahigh stability (1500 h) towards electrocatalytic ethylene glycol oxidation. Moreover, the obtained glycolic acid has been converted to value-added sodium glycolate by in-situ acid-base reaction in the NaOH electrolyte, which is atomic efficient and needs no additional acid addition for product separation. Moreover, the weak adsorption of sodium glycolate on the catalyst surface plays a significant role in avoiding excessive oxidation and achieving high selectivity. This work may provide instructions for the electrocatalyst design as well as product separation for the electrocatalytic conversions of alcohols.

Tibial dyschondroplasia (TD) is a severe bone disease that affects fast-growing broiler chickens and causes economic loss. Despite previous studies, the regulatory mechanism of TD remains unclear and is thought to be primarily based on thiram induction, which may differ from that of naturally occurring diseases. To better understand TD, a digital X-ray machine was used in the present study to determine its incidence in four hundred yellow-feathered broiler chickens. The results showed that the incidence of TD was 22% after 6 weeks and gradually decreased after 8 and 10 weeks. The body weight of broilers with TD decreased significantly compared to that of NTD broilers. In addition, the length and density of the tibia were reduced after eight and 10 weeks, and the density of the tibia was reduced after 6 weeks compared with the NTD chickens. This study also examined tibial quality parameters from TD (n = 12) and NTD broilers (n = 12) and found that bone mineral content, bone mineral density, bone ash content, calcium content, and phosphorus content were significantly reduced in TD broilers. Transcriptome analysis revealed 849 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the growth plate between TD (n = 6) and NTD groups (n = 6). These genes were enriched in ECM-receptor interaction, cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, calcium signaling pathway, and TGF-β signaling. Genes encoding the alpha chain of type XII collagen, that is, COL1A1, COL5A1, and COL8A1) were identified as critical in the regulatory network of TD. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) revealed that the pathways of cartilage development, circulatory system development, and nervous system development were changed in the growth plates of TD birds. In the blood transcriptome, 12 DEGs were found in TD (n = 4) and NTD chickens (n = 4), and GSEA revealed that the pathways from TD broilers’ blood related to the phagosome, linoleic acid metabolism, monoatomic ion homeostasis, and calcium ion transport were downregulated. This study provides a comprehensive understanding of TD, including its effects on tibial quality, tibial changes, and the circulatory system, along with identifying important genes that may lead to the development of TD.

This study presents a fabrication method for preparing Ni using material extrusion-based 3D printing. First, the corresponding printing process window was optimized by exploring the relationship between the layer thickness and printing parameters (printing air pressure, printing speed, and printing height) of different solid content slurries, slurries rheology, and platform heating temperature. Then, the experiments on Ni slurries with different solid contents under different post-treatment methods were investigated to obtain the effect of solid content and temperature on the material properties. The results show that when the solid content of Ni slurry increases from 70 to 84 wt. %, the relative density of Ni increases, the shrinkage decreases, and the mechanical properties increase; when the sintering temperature increases from 1250 to 1400 °C, the relative density of Ni increases, the shrinkage increases, the mechanical properties decrease, and the particle size increases. The relative density range is 82%–96.6%, the shrinkage range is 53.5%–59.6%, the tensile strength range is 237.7–294 MPa, and the hardness range is 51.6–104.8 HV. Finally, the relationship between slurry, manufacturing process, structure, and properties was established through process optimization and experimental results, and 3D models of different structures were prepared to complete the preparation of Ni with high structural integrity, good interlayer bonding, and excellent properties.

Abstract Aedes aegypti are vectors for several arboviruses infecting hundreds of millions of people annually. Controlling mosquito populations by regulating their reproduction is a potential strategy to minimize viral transmission in the absence of effective antiviral therapies or vaccines. Here, we demonstrate that leucine aminopeptidase1 (LAP1), detected by a SWATH-MS-based proteomic screen of female spermathecae, is a crucial determinant in mosquito population expansion. Mitochondrial defects and aberrant autophagy of sperm in LAP1 mutant males (LAP1 −/− ), prepared using CRISPR/Cas9 system, result in a reduction of reproduction in wild-type females that mated with them. The fitness of LAP1 −/− males is strong enough to efficiently transmit genetic changes to mosquito populations through a low number of hatchable offspring. Thus, LAP1 −/− males represent an opportunity to suppress mosquito populations and further studies should be undertaken to characterize LAP1’s suitability for gene drive usage.

Objective The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of biogas slurry application on biomass production and the silage quality of corn. Methods A field experiment was conducted in which corn was grown using different biogas slurry application rates. The effect of 25% to 500% biogas slurry nitrogen replacement (T1 to T14) on the yield and quality indices of corn were studied by field plot experiments. Results The results revealed that biogas slurry application improved the stem diameter and relative feed value of corn silage in treatments T13 and T11. Moreover, the fermentation quality of corn silage was improved due to an increase in lactic acid content; in comparison with the chemical synthetic fertilizer (CF) group. The crude protein contents of corn silage had no obvious change with increasing biogas slurry application. However, the forage quality index of acid detergent fiber was decreased (p

Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) can be used to reinforce steel structures depending on its high strength and lightweight resistance. To analyze and evaluate the load-carrying capacity of CFRP-reinforced steel structures. This study uses the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and the experimental tests combined to investigate the influence that the reinforcement patterns and the relevant parameters have on the load-carrying capacity. We made specimens with different reinforcement patterns. Take the steel beam specimen with full reinforcement as an example. Compared with the load-carrying capacity of the steel beam reinforced by two-layer CFRP cloth, that respectively increases by 5.16% and 11.1% when the number of the CFRP cloth increases to four and six, respectively. Based on a specimen set consisting of CFRP-reinforced steel structures under different reinforcement patterns, the random forest algorithm is used to develop an evaluation model for the load carrying. The performance test results show that the MAE (Mean Absolute Error) of the evaluation model can reach 0.12 and the RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) is 0.25, presenting a good prediction accuracy, which lays a solid foundation for the research on the CFRP-based reinforcement technology and process.

Gastric cancer (GACA) is a complex and multifaceted disease influenced by a variety of environmental and genetic factors. Somatic mutations play a major role in its development, and their characteristics, including the asymmetry between two DNA strands, are of great interest and appear as a signal of information and guidance, revealing mechanisms of DNA damage and repair. Here, we analyzed the impact of High-frequency mutated genes on patient prognosis and found that the effect of expression levels of tumor protein p53 (TP53) and lysine methyltransferase 2C (KMT2C) genes remained high throughout the development of GACA, with similar expression patterns. After investigating mutation asymmetry across mutagenic processes, we found that transcriptional asymmetry was dominated by T > G mutations under the influence of transcription couples repair and damage. The apolipoprotein B mRNA editing enzyme catalytic polypeptide like (APOBEC) enzyme that induces mutations during DNA replication has been identified here and we identified a replicative asymmetry, which was dominated by C > A mutations in left-replicating. Strand bias in different mutation classes at transcription factor binding sites and enhancer regions were also confirmed, which implies the important role of non-coding regulatory elements in the occurrence of mutations. This work systematically describes mutational strand asymmetries in specific genomic regions, shedding light on the DNA damage and repair mechanisms underlying somatic mutations in cohorts of GACA patients with gastric cancer.

Abstract Background The rapid global emergence and spread of carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative bacilli (CR-GNB) is recognized as a major public health concern, and there are currently few effective treatments for CR-GNB infection. The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical characteristics and outcomes of patients with CR-GNB infections treated with ceftazidime/avibactam (CAZ/AVI) combined with colistin from October 2019 to February 2023 in China. Methods A total of 31 patients with CR-GNB infections were retrospectively identified using the electronic medical record system of Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital. Results Thirty-one patients were treated with CAZ/AVI combined with colistin. Respiratory tract infections (87%) were most common. The common drug-resistant bacteria encompass Klebsiella pneumonia (54.8%), Acinetobacter baumannii (29.0%), and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (16.1%). The 30-day mortality rate was 29.0%, and the 7-day microbial clearance rate was 64.5%. The inflammatory marker CRP changes, but not PCT and WBC, were statistically significant on days 7 and 14 after combination therapy. There were seven patients developing acute renal injury (AKI) after combination therapy and treating with continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT). Two patients developed diarrhea. Conclusion The combination of CAZ/AVI and colistin has potential efficacy in patients with CR-GNB infection, but more studies are needed to determine whether it can reduce 30-day mortality rates and increase 7-day microbial clearance. At the same time, the adverse reactions of combination therapy should not be ignored.

Abstract The algebraic approach to the spectrum of quasinormal modes has been made as simple as possible for the BTZ black hole by the strategy developed in [16]. By working with the self-dual warped AdS black hole, we demonstrate in an explicit way that such a strategy can be well adapted to those warped AdS balck holes with the SL(2, R) × U(1) isometry. To this end, we first introduce two associated tensor fields with the quadratic Casimir of SL(2, R) × U(1) Lie algebra in the self-dual warped AdS black hole and show that they correspond essentially to the metric and volume element up to a constant prefactor, respectively. Then without appealing to any concrete coordinate system, we can further show that the solutions to the equations of motion for the scalar, vector, spinor fields all fall into the representations of the SL(2, R) × U(1) Lie algebra by a purely abstract tensor and spinor analysis. Accordingly, the corresponding spectrum of quasinormal modes for each fixed azimuthal quantum number can be derived algebraically as the infinite tower of descendants of the highest weight mode of the SL(2, R) Lie subalgebra.

Puerarin is an isoflavone extracted from Gegen (Pueraria lobata) and has been widely utilized to treat various human diseases; however, information regarding its benefits in animal production is limited. In this study, we aimed to investigate the influence of dietary puerarin supplementation on growth performance, immune organ index, immunoglobulin profile, antioxidant capacity, and intestinal morphology in pigeons. In total, 375 healthy 28-day-old White King pigeons were randomly divided into five groups, each consisting of five replicates and 15 pigeons per replicate. Each group was administered one of five dietary treatments: the basal diet, or the basal diet supplemented with 40, 80, 120, or 160 mg/kg puerarin. Treatment duration was 30 days following a 7-day acclimation period. Puerarin treatment did not significantly alter the growth performance of pigeons but afforded a significant linear enhancement in the thymus index (P < 0.05). Additionally, puerarin supplementation significantly increased serum immunoglobulin A and immunoglobulin M levels in pigeons in a linear manner (P < 0.05). Similarly, puerarin significantly and linearly increased the activities of total antioxidant capacity, superoxide dismutase, glutathione, and catalase in the serum and liver, and decreased the malondialdehyde content (P < 0.05). Moreover, the villus height (VH), crypt depth (CD), and VH/CD ratio of the small intestine (including the duodenum, jejunum, and ileum) increased linearly upon puerarin supplementation (P < 0.05). Collectively, these results indicate that puerarin supplementation could improve the immune response, antioxidant capacity, and intestinal morphology of pigeons.

Within a generalized vector autoregressive framework comprising 22 country-level economic policy uncertainty indices, this study used a 12-period-ahead forecast error variance decomposition to compute spillovers. The results showed that although it has been in a downtrend since the third quarter of 2016, the overall spillover among the major economies remains high. Net spillover analyses in either the full or rolling samples illustrated that Singapore was the most decisive transmitter of spillovers, followed by Japan. Meanwhile, Ireland, the Netherlands, Russia, Brazil, Colombia, Italy, and Mexico were clear receivers of net spillover. After reorganizing the net pairwise spillovers into a directed weighted network, the core–periphery structure and backbone were extracted, and the diffusion centrality was calculated to ascertain the key player. Regardless of using the full or rolling samples, Singapore played an influential role in the diffusion network of global economic policy uncertainty.

Eggs are a vital dietary component for humans, and it is beneficial to increase egg production to support poultry farming. Initially, the egg production rate rises rapidly with young hens until it reaches its peak, and then it declines gradually. By extending the duration of peak egg production, the hens’ performance can be enhanced significantly. Previous studies found dynamic changes in gut microbiota during egg-laying, and several species of microbiota isolated from the chicken gut improved egg-laying performance. However, the interaction between microbes and host gene expression is still unclear. This study provides a more comprehensive understanding of chicken egg-laying by examining dynamic alterations in the microbiota of the entire intestinal tract (i.e., duodenum, jejunum, and ileum) and gene expression. The microbial community in the intestine underwent significant changes during different egg-laying periods (i.e., pre-, peak-, and late-laying periods). Metagenomic functional analysis showed that the relative abundance of biosynthesis of amino acids, secondary metabolites, and cofactors decreased significantly in the duodenum, jejunum, and ileum of aging hens. The relative levels of aldosterone, GnRH, insulin, growth hormone, and other hormone-related pathways increased dramatically in the intestinal microbiota during egg-laying, but only in the microbiota located in the duodenum and ileum. Transcriptome analysis suggested that genes associated with various transport processes were upregulated consistently in the small intestine during egg-laying; genes involved in the development of intestinal structure were down-regulated; and genes involved in response to DNA damage and stress were consistent with changes in laying rate. The abundance of Lactobacillus was related to the expression of ANGPTRL1, ANGPTRL2, ANGPT1L, and NOXO1 in the duodenum; Muricomes was correlated significantly with NFKBIZ, LYG2, and IRG1L expression in the jejunum; and Campylobacter was correlated positively with the expression of KMT2A and USF3 in the ileum. These results indicated that the intestinal microbiota and host gene expression may influence egg production jointly.

In order to reveal the yield-increasing mechanism of relay intercropping (RI) maize with different varieties from the perspective of plant growth, source sink relationship, and root growth, a two-factor randomized block design trial was designed, which includes different maize varieties (Rongyu1210 (RY1210), Zhongyu 3 (ZY3)) and plant pattern (RI, Sole cropping (SC)). The leaf area index (LAI), dry matter accumulation and distribution, root dry weight (RDW), root length (RL), root surface area (RSA), root volume (RV), and maize yield were determined. LAI of RI RY1210 was significantly higher than that of the SC RY1210 at the filling stage and maturity stage. The dry matter accumulation of RI RY1210 ear was significantly higher than that of SC RY1210 and RI ZY3, and the RDW of RY1210 was significantly higher than that of ZY3. The ratio of RDW of RI RY1210 was higher than that of RI ZY3 in the 20–40 and 40–60 cm soil layers, respectively. The RDW, RL, RV, and RSA of RI RY1210 were significantly lower than that of sole RY1210 by 25.43%, 10.75%, 30.79%, and 23.73%, respectively, but higher than that of RI ZY3 by 143.98%, 278.29%, 54.40%, and 29.57%, respectively. The average yield of RI RY1210 was 8782.71 kg ha−1, with no significant difference compared to SC, which was mainly attributed to a larger ear dry matter accumulation, higher LAI in later growth stages, larger RDW, and the ratio of roots in deeper soil layers. This study will be useful and helpful to farmers for how to select and plant high-yielding maize varieties in strip relay intercropping.

This paper examines the impact of risk spillovers between Chinese stock and futures markets on stock hedging policies. This paper calculates the correlation between the overall risk spillover and the hedging ratio, effectiveness, and hedging cost based on the hedging portfolio of stock futures of the CSI 300 index, the SSE 50 index, and the CSI 500 index. The results show that, on the one hand, the CSI 300 and CSI 500 futures markets are the propagators of risk spillovers, which shows that the price fluctuations of these two types of futures markets have a stronger impact on the stock spot price. The CSI 50 Futures market is the recipient of risk, and the CSI 50 Futures price is more vulnerable to the impact of the stock market. The results of the three types of samples show that when the stock market experiences extreme decline, the Risk Spillover Effect in the futures and spot markets will be significantly reduced, which indicates that the price of stocks and their derivatives is more deviated from the equilibrium relationship of pricing, and at this time, the function of derivatives in risk control is unreliable. On the other hand, the total spillover index of stock futures and spot markets has a positive correlation with hedging rate, hedging effectiveness and hedging cost. When the total spillover real number increases, it will get a more effective hedging effect. In addition, the hedging index is more sensitive to the overall spillover of high asset liquidity hedging portfolios. These conclusions provide a basis for adjusting asset positions according to the changes of Risk Spillover between the futures market and the spot market to obtain higher hedging effectiveness. The contribution of this paper is to reveal the possibility of finding the risk factors of hedging from the perspective of Risk Spillover in a very simple way, so it has reliable practicability in practice.

An understanding of the multifractal and long-range dependence of impervious surfaces (IS) spatiotemporal patterns is helpful for regional environmental assessment and urban planning. Linear spectral-mixture analysis has been applied to compute IS in the coastal city of Xiamen, China, based on Landsat TM/OLI/TIRS images, and then the long-term trends and multifractal characteristics of IS patterns have been investigated using two-dimensional multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis. The IS spatial distribution displayed similar positive long-range correlations in study areas during the 1994–2015 period. IS have a long-memory characteristic within a certain spatial range, with an increase in the value of a pixel likely to cause an increment in the value of its neighbors. The multifractality of the IS distribution increased in Xiamen City during 1994–2015, but was lower than those in Xiamen Island. The multifractal spectra in Xiamen City vary in shape between years, capturing its evolution from right truncation with a long left tail to left truncations and long right tails and then a symmetrical shape. The fractal structure for Xiamen Island exhibits similar patterns of long right tails and left truncations. Economic and political considerations coupled with natural geographic conditions dominate the long-range trends in the IS spatial patterns.

Light is one of the most important environmental factors for plant growth. In the production process of tung oil tree cultivation, due to the inappropriate growth of shading conditions, the lower branches are often dry and dead, which seriously affects the yield of tung oil trees. However, little is known about the key factors of light-induced tree photomorphogenesis. In this study, a total of 22 VfBBX family members were identified to provide a reference for candidate genes in tung tree seedlings. All members of the VfBBX family have different numbers of highly conserved B-box domains or CCT domains. Phylogenetic evolution clustered the VfBBX genes into four categories, and the highest density of members was on chromosome 6. Interspecific collinearity analysis suggested that there were six pairs of duplicate genes in VfBBX members, but the expression levels of all family members in different growth and development stages of the tung tree were significantly divergent. After different degrees of shading treatment and physiological data determination of tung tree seedlings, the differential expression level and chlorophyll synthesis genes correlation analysis revealed that VfBBX9 was a typical candidate nuclear localization transcription factor that was significantly differentially expressed in light response. This study systematically identified the VfBBX gene family and provided a reference for studying its molecular function, enhanced the theoretical basis for tung tree breeding, and identified excellent varieties.

For water temperature stratified reservoirs, stratified water intake structures are used to extract surface warm water to reduce the adverse effects of low-temperature discharge on river habitats and agricultural irrigation. A physical simulation method has been explored and used to conduct the comparative experimental study on the efficiency of the three types of intake structures: a traditional stoplog gate intake, a stoplog gate with a horizontal curtain and a vertical curtain upstream of the intake. In order to extend the laboratory results to the prototype, a similarity relationship for water temperature stratification was derived based on the principle of equal density stratification Froude number between the model and the prototype, as well as the functional relationship between water density and temperature. The similarity relationship makes it possible to simulate the same prototype density flow under different laboratory water temperature conditions, and this was confirmed through experiments conducted in several months with different water temperatures. Under constant water flow conditions, a stable target water temperature distribution can be formed in the experimental model through continuous stratified heating and real-time power regulation, to simulate the density flow generated by various intake operation in water temperature stratified reservoir. The relationships between the intake water temperature and the reference water temperature at intake depth in reservoir were analyzed to distinguish the difference of water intake efficiency. The experimental results showed that, the traditional stoplog gate has a relatively lower efficiency in extracting warm water affected by the lower edge expansion of the drag layer into the cold water zone below the intake elevation; by setting horizontal curtain to prevent the cold water from climbing below, it is helpful to improve the water intake efficiency; by setting vertical curtain in the upstream area of the intake, the velocity of warm water in the upper part of the drag layer increases, and the intake efficiency has been significantly improved. The above research provides a scientific approach for mechanism research and mathematical model validation of thermal density flow.

Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is characterized by decreased systolic function and left or biventricular enlargement. There is no single specific medicine to delay the progression of DCM. Melatonin (Mel) plays a key role in many cardiovascular diseases by regulating cell damage, oxidative stress and other pathological processes,delaying myocardial remodeling and protecting cardiac function. There is a close relationship between DCM and Mel. It is confirmed that Mel plays an important role in delaying the progression of DCM.

Abstract Engineered cardiac tissues (ECTs) derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) are viable alternatives for cardiac repair, patient‐specific disease modeling, and drug discovery. However, the immature state of ECTs limits their clinical utility. The microenvironment fabricated using 3D scaffolds can affect cell fate, and is crucial for the maturation of ECTs. Herein, the authors demonstrate an electric‐field‐driven (EFD) printed 3D highly ordered microstructure with cell feature size to promote the maturation of ECTs. The simulation and experimental results demonstrate that the EFD jet microscale 3D printing overcomes the jet repulsion without any prior requirements for both conductive and insulating substrates. Furthermore, the 3D highly ordered microstructures with a fiber diameter of 10–20 µm and spacing of 60–80 µm have been fabricated by maintaining a vertical jet, achieving the largest ratio of fiber diameter/spacing of 0.29. The hiPSCs‐derived cardiomyocytes formed ordered ECTs with their sarcomere growth along the fiber and developed synchronous functional ECTs inside the 3D‐printed scaffold with matured calcium handling compared to the 2D coverslip. Therefore, the EFD jet 3D microscale printing process facilitates the fabrication of scaffolds providing a suitable microenvironment to promote the maturation of ECTs, thereby showing great potential for cardiac tissue engineering.

This study proposes an integrated docking approach for autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), which directly generate control force and torque from visual guidance features to drive precise AUV docking. Accurate docking control has been constructed as nonlinear offset-free model predictive control (OFNMPC) problem to effectively deal with external disturbances, model mismatch, and various other constraints. For the problem of state and disturbance estimation required by OFNMPC, observers have been presented based on the extended Kalman filter (EKF) and moving horizon estimation (MHE). A visual observation model is proposed so that the observer can directly use visual measurements. OFNMPC was integrated with EKF and MHE, and the proposed OFNMPC-EKF and OFNMPC-MHE docking approaches were applied to an actual AUV model. The simulation results show that the proposed approaches could drive the AUV to complete accurate docking along a reasonable trajectory based on visual measurements. The navigation, guidance, and control functions of docking were effectively integrated. It was observed that in the presence of external disturbances and measurement noise, OFNMPC-EKF has better robustness.

Abstract Background The study carries the aim to compare the clinical efficacy and economic outcomes of using barbed suture closure versus conventional closure for wounds after posterior long-segment lumbar surgery. Methods One hundred and eighty-one patients undertaking posterior long-segment lumbar surgery participated in the prospective randomized controlled trial study to receive either barbed suture wound closure (n = 91) or conventional suture closure (n = 90). Outcome measures included operating room time (ORT), wound closure time, length of incision, length of hospital stay (LOS), 90-day readmission rates, wound complications of dehiscence and infection, and costs. Results Barbed suture group was related with significantly lower ORT (P = 0.036), wound closure time (P

ELONGATED HYPOCOTOYL5 (HY5) and PHYTOCHROME INTERACTING FACTORs (PIFs) are two types of important light-related regulators of plant growth, however, their interplay remains elusive. Here, we report that the activated tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) HY5 (SlHY5) triggers the transcription of a Calcium-dependent Protein Kinase SlCPK27. SlCPK27 interacts with and phosphorylates SlPIF4 at Ser-252 and Ser-308 phosphosites to promote its degradation. SlPIF4 promotes hypocotyl elongation mainly by activating the transcription of SlDWF, a key gene in brassinosteroid (BR) biosynthesis. Such a SlHY5-SlCPK27-SlPIF4-BR cascade not only plays a crucial role in photomorphogenesis but also regulates thermomorphogenesis. Our results uncover a previously unidentified mechanism that integrates Ca2+ signaling with the light signaling pathways to regulate plant growth by modulating BR biosynthesis in response to changes in ambient light and temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Light-triggered thyristor (LTT) has attracted considerable interest in power conversion and control systems because of its strong anti-interference ability and large power capacity. In this work, we propose a monolithic LTT that can be light-triggered directly without an amplifying gate (AG) design, to improve the device reliability and operating speed. The cathode structure is redesigned into an interdigitated structure with a relatively large light-incident area. The cathode shorts are re-arranged to balance the trigger intensity and the light incident depth, so as to ensure optimal $\text{d}{V}/\text{d}{t}$ capability. Devices are fabricated and adequate performances are obtained, verifying the feasibility of our design.

The interactions between the microbiota and the human host can affect the physiological functions of organs (such as the brain, liver, gut, etc.). Accumulating investigations indicate that the imbalance of microbial community is closely related to the occurrence and development of diseases. Thus, the identification of potential links between microbes and diseases can provide insight into the pathogenesis of diseases. In this study, we propose a deep learning framework (MDAGCAN) based on graph convolutional attention network to identify potential microbe-disease associations. In MDAGCAN, we first construct a heterogeneous network consisting of the known microbe-disease associations and multi-similarity fusion networks of microbes and diseases. Then, the node embeddings considering the neighbor information of the heterogeneous network are learned by applying graph convolutional layers and graph attention layers. Finally, a bilinear decoder using node embedding representations reconstructs the unknown microbe-disease association. Experiments show that our method achieves reliable performance with average AUCs of 0.9778 and 0.9454 ± 0.0038 in the frameworks of Leave-one-out cross validation (LOOCV) and 5-fold cross validation (5-fold CV), respectively. Furthermore, we apply MDAGCAN to predict latent microbes for two high-risk human diseases, i.e., liver cirrhosis and epilepsy, and results illustrate that 16 and 17 out of the top 20 predicted microbes are verified by published literatures, respectively. In conclusion, our method displays effective and reliable prediction performance and can be expected to predict unknown microbe-disease associations facilitating disease diagnosis and prevention.

The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of rearing systems on the bone quality parameters in chickens using a metabolomics strategy. A total of 419 male one-day-old chicks were randomly allocated to two groups, a floor rearing group (FRG, n = 173) and a cage rearing group (CRG, n = 246). At 6, 8, 10, and 12 weeks of age, all chickens were radiographed by a digital X-ray machine, and body weight was recorded. At 12 weeks of age, 12 birds were selected from each group to obtain tibia and femur, and bone quality parameters of bone mineral density (BMD), mineral content (BMC), breaking strength (BBS), stiffness, Young’s modulus (YM), ash content, calcium content, and phosphorus content were determined. An untargeted metabolomics assay was performed to identify changes in the serum metabolic profile (n = 8 birds/group). The results showed that cage-reared chickens had wider tibiae and greater body weight compared with floor-reared chickens. There were no significant differences in BMC or BBS between the two groups (p > 0.05), but BMD, ash content, calcium content, and phosphorus content of the tibia and femur of FRG were significantly higher than those of CRG (p < 0.05). Greater stiffness and YM of the femur were also observed in birds raised in the FRG compared with those raised in the CRG (p < 0.05). Taken together, the results suggest that rearing systems affected bone quality parameters. Furthermore, 148 and 149 differential metabolites were identified in positive and negative ion modes by LC-MS/MS analysis, among which 257 metabolites were significantly correlated with 16 bone quality parameters, including leucine, myristoleic acid, glycocholic acid, and N-phenylacetamide. KEGG analysis indicated that 15 metabolic pathways, including six pathways of amino acid metabolism, two pathways of lipid metabolism, and two pathways of carbohydrate metabolism, were responsible for bone quality. Overall, the present study demonstrated the effect of rearing systems on bone quality parameters, and identified several metabolites and metabolic pathways associated with bone quality parameters.