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C21H25N3O2, triclinic, P1̄ (no. 2), a = 7.6536(6) Å, b = 11.027(1) Å, c = 12.6899(11) Å, α = 66.863(2)°, β = 80.598(2)°, γ = 71.772(2)°, V = 934.38(14) Å3, Z = 2, R gt(F) = 0.0679, wR ref(F 2) = 0.1150, T = 296 K.

This paper investigates the impact of non-ideal environmental factors, including hardware impairments, random user distributions, and imperfect channel conditions, on the performance of distributed reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted air–ground fusion networks. Using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as an aerial base station, performance metrics such as the outage probability, ergodic rate, and energy efficiency are analyzed with Nakagami-m fading channels. To highlight the superiority of RIS-assisted air–ground networks, comparisons are made with point-to-point links, amplify-and-forward (AF) relay scenarios, conventional centralized RIS deployment, and fusion networks without hardware impairments. Monte Carlo simulations are employed to validate theoretical analyses, demonstrating that in non-ideal environmental conditions, distributed RIS-assisted air–ground fusion networks outperform benchmark scenarios. This model offers some insights into the improvement of wireless communication networks in emerging smart cities.

The basic oxygen steelmaking process is based on the CaO-FeO-SiO2 ternary slag system, characterized by a high melting point and low lime dissolution rate, often becoming one of the key factors limiting the efficiency of the converter. The bulk solid waste red mud, produced by the Bayer alumina process and rich in Fe2O3/Al2O3/Na2O, significantly reduces the melting point of the steelmaking slag system and enhances the efficiency of lime dissolution. This study utilized red mud as the main raw material to prepare a fluoride-free flux. An in situ online observation system was used to measure the melting point of the flux and the dissolution rate of lime in the flux. The results indicate that the melting point of the red mud-based flux is below 1200 °C, and under the same conditions, the lime dissolution rate is 10 to 15 times higher than when this flux is not used. Experiments in a 10 kg induction furnace show that using this flux, the dephosphorization rate under conditions without oxygen blowing is close to 40%, far higher than the rate achieved using CaF2. Under oxygen-blowing conditions, the dephosphorization rate using the red mud-based flux is comparable to that of CaF2, and significantly higher than without any flux, especially under high [C] content conditions. The data show that the red mud-based flux has the potential to be widely used as a fluoride-free flux in the steelmaking process.

Abstract In order to improve the functionality and additional value of agricultural products, this study developing nano-selenium fermentation broth and established a new application strategy of bio-nano-selenium by screening and identifying selenium-rich microorganisms. We isolated a new strain from tobacco waste and named it Bacillus subtilis SE201412 (GenBank accession no. OP854680), which could aerobically grow under the condition of 66,000 mg L−1 selenite concentration, and could convert 99.19% of selenite into biological nano-selenium (BioSeNPs) within 18 h. Using strain SE201412, we industrially produced the different concentrations of fermentation broth containing 5000–3000 mg L−1 pure selenium for commercial use. The synthesized selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs) were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA). TEM and SEM results showed that SeNPs were distributed outside cells. NTA assay of fermentation broth indicated that the nanoparticles were spherical with an average particle size of 126 ± 0.5 nm. Toxicity test revealed that the median lethal dose (LD50) of the fermentation broth to mice was 2710 mg kg−1, indicating its low toxicity and high safety. In addition, we applied BioSeNP fermentation broth to rice and wheat through field experiments. The results showed that the application of fermentation broth significantly increased the total selenium content and organic selenium percentage in rice and wheat grains. Our findings provide valuable reference for the development of BioSeNPs with extensive application prospects.

Electric vehicles (EVs) play a crucial role in the global transition towards decarbonization and renewable energy resources (RERs). As EVs gain popularity, this has resulted in various challenges for the power grid, such as an intensified peak-to-valley load differential, causing transformer overloading. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology has emerged as a promising solution due to its controllable charging and discharging capabilities. Mature business schemes can incentivize the development of V2G technology. However, the business schemes of V2G technology are still unclear. Therefore, this paper provides a comprehensive review of the business schemes associated with V2G technology, especially focusing on its feasibility and challenges with respect to the electricity market. In this paper, several business schemes with respect to the electricity market are explored by conducting extensive literature reviews, including peak-to-valley arbitrage, the spot market, demand–response (DR), frequency regulation, voltage regulation, spinning reserve, and black start. Next, application scenarios and real-world use cases of the V2G technology’s business schemes are investigated. Furthermore, the challenges faced by the V2G technology’s business schemes are assessed by considering the technical, economical, and social aspects. By identifying these challenges, it is important to highlight the existing shortcomings and areas of interest for V2G technology’s research and development. This review contributes to a deeper understanding of V2G technology and its implications for the energy sector.

Sulfamethoxazole (SMZ) is an important antibiotic used to prevent and treat infections in both clinical settings and animal husbandry. High levels of SMZ may exhibit endocrine toxicity. Environmental SMZ enters the human body via food and water; however, the toxicity of environmental doses of SMZ and its effects on reproductive health are unknown. In the present study, zebrafish were exposed to low concentrations of SMZ (1000 and 5000 ng/L) from 2 h post-fertilization to 120 d post-fertilization. Consequently, the proportion of mature oocytes in adult female zebrafish ovarian tissue increased by 98.2 %, indicating that SMZ promotes ovarian maturation. Metabolomics analysis revealed significant changes in ovarian lipid and amino acid levels after SMZ treatment. An enzyme-linked immunoassay used to detect sex hormones in the ovaries showed that SMZ exposure significantly increased the levels of estradiol, a follicle-stimulating hormone, and of luteinizing hormone. Furthermore, an association analysis showed that most of the differentially expressed metabolites in the ovary were strongly correlated with the levels of sex hormones secreted by the pituitary gland. Therefore, significantly increased transcript levels of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) and follicle-stimulating hormone detected in brain tissue suggested that SMZ may exhibit ovarian toxicity via the hypothalamus. In vitro experiments were performed to demonstrate that SMZ targets neurons in the hypothalamus. Exposure to SMZ significantly increased the GnRH content in GnRH neurons. Finally, molecular docking simulations indicated the potential interaction of SMZ with G protein-coupled receptor 54; this molecular binding can activate, synthesize, and release GnRH in neurons. In conclusion, long-term environmental exposure to SMZ may induce ovarian toxicity by affecting the hypothalamus–pituitary–gonad axis.

Oxytetracycline, a widely produced and administered antibiotic, is uncontrollably released in low concentrations in various types of environments. However, the impact of exposure to such low concentrations of antibiotics on the host remains poorly understood. In this study, we exposed zebrafish to a low concentration (5,000 ng/L) of oxytetracycline for 1 month, collected samples longitudinally (Baseline, and Days 3, 6, 9, 12, 24, and 30), and elucidated the impact of exposure on microbial composition, antibiotic resistance genes, mobile genetic elements, and phospholipid metabolism pathway through comparison of the sequenced data with respective sequence databases. We identified Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a well-known pathogen, to be significantly positively associated with the duration of oxytetracycline exposure (Adjusted P = 5.829e−03). Several tetracycline resistance genes (e.g., tetE) not only showed significantly higher abundance in the exposed samples but were also positively associated with the duration of exposure (Adjusted P = 1.114e−02). Furthermore, in the exposed group, the relative abundance of genes involved in phospholipid metabolism had also decreased. Lastly, we characterized the impact of exposure on zebrafish intestinal structure and found that the goblet cell counts were decreased (~82%) after exposure. Overall, our results show that a low concentration of oxytetracycline can increase the abundance of pathogenic bacteria and lower the abundance of key metabolic pathways in the zebrafish gut microbiome that can render them prone to bacterial infections and health-associated complications.

Smart dental materials are designed to intelligently respond to physiological changes and local environmental stimuli to protect the teeth and promote oral health. Dental plaque, or biofilms, can substantially reduce the local pH, causing demineralization that can then progress to tooth caries. Progress has been made recently in developing smart dental materials that possess antibacterial and remineralizing capabilities in response to local oral pH in order to suppress caries, promote mineralization, and protect tooth structures. This article reviews cutting-edge research on smart dental materials, their novel microstructural and chemical designs, physical and biological properties, antibiofilm and remineralizing capabilities, and mechanisms of being smart to respond to pH. In addition, this article discusses exciting and new developments, methods to further improve the smart materials, and potential clinical applications.

Zebrafish have been used as a model organism for more than 50 years and are considered an excellent model for studying host-microbiome interactions. However, this largely depends on our understanding of the zebrafish gut microbiome itself. Despite advances in sequencing and data analysis methods, the zebrafish gut microbiome remains highly understudied. This study performed the de novo metagenome assembly and recovery of the metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) through genome binning (and refinement) of the contigs assembled from the zebrafish stool. The results indicate that majority of the MAGs had excellent quality i.e. high completeness (≥90%) and low contamination levels (≤5%). MAGs mainly belong to the taxa that are known to be members of the core zebrafish stool microbiome, including the phylum Proteobacteria, Fusobacteriota, and Actinobacteriota. However, most of the MAGs remained unclassified at the species level and reflected previously unexplored microbial taxa and their potential novelty. These MAGs also contained genes with predicted functions associated with diverse metabolic pathways that included carbohydrate, amino acid, and lipid metabolism pathways. Lastly, we performed a comparative analysis of Paucibacter MAGs and reference genomes that highlighted the presence of novel Paucibacter species and enriched metabolic potential in the recovered MAGs.

6-(4-chlorophenoxy)-tetrazolo[5,1-a]phthalazine is a national class I innovative antiepileptic drug candidate in clinical trials with independent intellectual property rights. The 1H, 13C and 15N NMR spectra of the compound were acquired at 500 MHz. Aided by GIAO (Gauge-Independent Atomic Orbital)-NMR quantum chemistry calculation, the chemical shifts of the compound were assigned, providing elaborate structural information of the compound. Linear regression comparison results showed good consistency between the theoretical predictions and the experimental data for structural elucidations.

Abstract Food allergy appears to have its roots in an insufficient exposure to a diverse range of environmental microbiota during early life. Microbial exposure ensures the colonization of the gastrointestinal tract with commensal microbes, which is necessary for the induction of a balanced and tolerogenic immune function. High-throughput sequencing technology has facilitated in-depth studies of the gut microbiota as well as bacterial-derived metabolites. Although the role of the microbiota in allergies is now widely studied, its importance for food allergy was only recently noted. Studies in human cohorts have shown that there is an association of dysbiosis and pathogenesis of food allergy, while studies from animal models have demonstrated the capacity of specific species in the gut microbiota to alter immune response, which may lead to the desensitization of food allergy. This article reviews the role of the gut microbiota in food allergy, and discusses the influence of environmental factors as well as prevention and management strategies relating to such regulatory mechanism.

For the shortest link scheduling (SLS), i.e., scheduling a given set of links with minimum time slots, we consider the distributed algorithm design by using the locality of the protocol model with high fidelity under the Rayleigh fading. Different from most previous works, focusing on distributed algorithm design under the deterministic SINR model, which ignores the fading effects in signal propagation, we first show that a successful link of protocol model is also feasible under the deterministic SINR model, then it can be scheduled successfully with high probability under the Rayleigh fading, by upper-bounding interference outside interference range of protocol model. Then on the basis of this key conclusion, we design LLS-SLS algorithm to solve SLS within (2eΔmaxT + 1)δ log2 ΔmaxT time slots for a constant δ. Specifically, ΔmaxT is the number of a sender's neighbors within some certain range, and can be upper-bounded. Next, based on the concept of random contention, we design CLLS algorithm to schedule all links after costing 4(δ + 1)ΔmaxT ln (ΔmaxT + 1) time slots. In addition, extensive simulations evaluate the performance of two proposed algorithms.

The Blockchain technology, featured with its decentralized tamper-resistance based on a Peer-to-Peer network, has been widely applied in financial applications, and even further been extended to industrial applications. However, the weak scalability of traditional Blockchain technology severely affects the wide adoption due to the well-known trillema of decentralization-security-scalability in Blockchains. In regards to this issue, a number of solutions have been proposed, targeting to boost the scalability while preserving the decentralization and security. They range from modifying the on-chain data structure and consensus algorithms to adding the off-chain technologies. Therein, one of the most practical methods to achieve horizontal scalability along with the increasing network size is sharding, by partitioning network into multiple shards so that the overhead of duplicating communication, storage, and computation in each full node can be avoided. This paper presents a survey focusing on sharding in Blockchains in a systematic and comprehensive way. We provide detailed comparison and quantitative evaluation of major sharding mechanisms, along with our insights analyzing the features and restrictions of the existing solutions. We also provide theoretical upper-bound of the throughput for each considered sharding mechanism. The remaining challenges and future research directions are also reviewed.

Background: Although evidence suggests that the immune system plays a key role in the pathophysiology of nut allergy, the precise immunological mechanisms of nut allergy have not been systematically investigated. The aim of the present study was to identify gene network patterns and associated cellular immune responses in children with or without nut allergy. Methods: Transcriptome profiling of whole blood cells was compared between children with and without nut allergy. Three genes were selected to be validated on a larger cohort of samples (n = 86) by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reactions (RT-qPCR). The composition of immune cells was inferred from the transcriptomic data using the CIBERSORTx algorithm. A co-expression network was constructed employing weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) on the top 5000 most variable transcripts. The modules were interrogated with pathway analysis tools (InnateDB) and correlated with clinical phenotypes and cellular immune responses. Results: Proportions of neutrophils were positively correlated and CD4+ T-cells and regulatory T-cells (Tregs) were negatively correlated with modules of nut allergy. We also identified 2 upregulated genes, namely Interferon Induced With Helicase C Domain 1 (IFIH1), DNA damage-regulated autophagy modulator 1 (DRAM1) and a downregulated gene Zinc Finger Protein 512B (ZNF512B) as hub genes for nut allergy. Further pathway analysis showed enrichment of type 1 interferon signalling in nut allergy. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that upregulation of type 1 interferon signalling and neutrophil responses and downregulation of CD4+ T-cells and Tregs are features of the pathogenesis of nut allergy.

The mechanism of lime dissolution in steelmaking slag and the factors that influence the dissolution rate are highly significant in improving the efficiency of the steelmaking process; however, they are yet to be fully understood. Here, the effects of Al2O3/TiO2/Na2O additives on the dissolution rate of lime and the composition of molten slag were investigated using a rotating cylinder technique. The results indicate that the promotion coefficients at 1400 °C decrease in the order of Na2O > TiO2 > Al2O3. Furthermore, the CaO dissolution rate and kinetic parameters were calculated, and the lime dissolution mechanisms in the presence or absence of Al2O3, TiO2, and Na2O were compared. Additionally, the data show that ATN (a mixture with a mass ratio of Al2O3:TiO2:Na2O = 15:4:3) can be used as a suitable flux in the steelmaking process.

Ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (uRLLC) has received great attention in the study of wireless communication for it can provide high network performance in terms of reliability and latency. However, the reliability requirements of uRLLC require further investigation due to the inherent openness of the wireless channel. Different from the previous reliable contributions that focused on the retransmission mechanism, in this paper, we consider scenarios with the interference of multiple UAVs. We establish an analytical framework of the packet error rate (PER) for an air-to-ground (A2G) channel. In this framework, the cellular users are allocated to different UAVs according to their minimum path loss with the aim of minimizing the PER. Furthermore, a wireless link scheduling algorithm is proposed to enhance the reliability between the UAV and cellular user. Simulated results show that, under the same power and channel block length level, our proposed non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheduling scheme has the best performance.

Bone tissue engineering is a promising approach that uses seed-cell-scaffold drug delivery systems to reconstruct bone defects caused by trauma, tumors, or other diseases (e.g., periodontitis). Metformin, a widely used medication for type II diabetes, has the ability to enhance osteogenesis and angiogenesis by promoting cell migration and differentiation. Metformin promotes osteogenic differentiation, mineralization, and bone defect regeneration via activation of the AMP-activated kinase (AMPK) signaling pathway. Bone tissue engineering depends highly on vascular networks for adequate oxygen and nutrition supply. Metformin also enhances vascular differentiation via the AMPK/mechanistic target of the rapamycin kinase (mTOR)/NLR family pyrin domain containing the 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome signaling axis. This is the first review article on the effects of metformin on stem cells and bone tissue engineering. In this paper, we review the cutting-edge research on the effects of metformin on bone tissue engineering. This includes metformin delivery via tissue engineering scaffolds, metformin-induced enhancement of various types of stem cells, and metformin-induced promotion of osteogenesis, angiogenesis, and its regulatory pathways. In addition, the dental, craniofacial, and orthopedic applications of metformin in bone repair and regeneration are also discussed.

Trace levels of oxytetracycline (OTC)—a veterinary antibiotic and feed additive—are widespread in the environment. Studies revealed that OTC potentially impairs thyroid function, which may affect neurobehaviour; however, the impact of exposure to environmental concentrations of OTC on adult neurobehaviour is unknown. In this study, the effects of OTC on zebrafish after 30-day exposure were investigated. The total swimming distance was significantly increased under vibration and light/dark stimulation, while time spent in the white area was prolonged during the black/white preference test, indicating that the zebrafish became bolder and more impulsive under low OTC exposure. Additionally, monoamine neurotransmitter (5-hydroxytryptamine, dopamine, norepinephrine) levels were decreased and gene expression of monoamine oxidase (mao) involved in neurotransmitter metabolism was upregulated at the transcription level after OTC exposure. Because triiodothyronine (T3) levels were enhanced following exposure to OTC, we speculated that T3 may mediate OTC damage to the nervous system. Our simulated molecular docking analysis showed that OTC combined with the sodium iodide cotransporter protein may result in excessive T3 synthesis. We further exposed zebrafish to T3, and they exhibited similar behaviour to the OTC exposure group. In conclusion, environmental OTC may activate monoamine oxidase and enhance the metabolism of monoaminergic neurotransmitters via T3, thereby inducing abnormal neurobehaviour.

Abstract Two-way communication is required to support control functions like packet acknowledgement and channel feedback. Most previous works on the transmission capacity of wireless ad hoc networks, however, focused on one-way communication; reverse communication from the destination to the source was ignored. In this paper, we first establish mathematical expression for two-way transmission capacity under the fixing transmission distance (i.e., the distance between the source and the destination is a constant), by introducing the concept of two-way outage and setting different rate requirements in both directions. Next, based on the concept of guard zone and cooperative communication, methods of increasing two-way transmission capacity are proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed methods can improve two-way transmission capacity significantly.

Wireless Time-Sensitive Networking (WTSN) has emerged as a promising technology for Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications. To meet the latency requirements of WTSN, wireless local area network (WLAN) such as IEEE 802.11 protocol with the time division multiple access (TDMA) mechanism is shown to be a practical solution. In this paper, we propose the RT-WiFiQA protocol with two novel schemes to improve the latency and reliability performance: real-time quality of service (RT-QoS) and fine-grained aggregation (FGA) for TDMA-based 802.11 systems. The RT-QoS is designed to guarantee the quality-of-service requirements of different traffic and to support the FGA mechanism. The FGA mechanism aggregates frames for different stations to reduce the physical layer transmission overhead. The trade-off between the reliability and FGA packet size is analyzed with numerical results. Specifically, we derive a critical threshold such that the FGA can achieve higher reliability when the aggregated packet size is smaller than the critical threshold. Otherwise, the non-aggregation scheme outperforms the FGA scheme. Extensive experiments are conducted on the commercial off-the-shelf 802.11 interface. The experiment results show that compared with the existing TDMA-based 802.11 system, the developed RT-WiFiQA protocol can achieve deterministic bounded real-time latency and greatly improves the reliability performance.

Consumption of antibiotics is continuing to increase, with China accounting for approximately one quarter of the global intake. As a class of emerging environmental contaminants, antibiotics may pose a potential threat to human health, especially in children. However, the internal antibiotic exposure levels in pregnant women and their determinants remain unclear. Here we investigated the urinary creatinine-corrected concentration of 15 antibiotics in 762 pregnant women from the Shanghai Prenatal Cohort, by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Logistic regression analysis identified associations between high-antibiotic-level and maternal dietary factors. Results show that cumulatively antibiotics were detected at a frequency of 0.13 – 82.7%, with veterinary antibiotics (VAs) and preferred veterinary antibiotics (PVAs) detected in 76.9% and 98.2% of samples, respectively; PVAs were the most significant contributors to hazard index values > 1. Further, ciprofloxacin was the predominant antibiotic (median: 73.5 μg/mg creatinine), followed by norfloxacin (54.2 μg/mg creatinine); while sulfamethoxazole, enrofloxacin, and ciprofloxacin levels, used as a PVA or VA, were significantly higher in normal-weight and underweight women compared to overweight and obese women. Also, sulfamethoxazole, sulfadiazine, and ciprofloxacin were more frequently detected in mothers with a relatively low education degree. Interestingly, pregnant women with higher milk intake had a 1.96-times (95% CI: 1.10–3.49) greater risk of high-VA-exposure-level than the lower-intake group. The odds of exposure to high PVA, VA, PVA + VA, and all antibiotics levels for mothers with high egg consumption frequency were more than twice that of low-consumption individuals. Collectively, pregnant women in Shanghai are exposed to multiple environmental antibiotics, primarily as PVAs and VAs. Herein, we provide evidence for the association between dietary factors and maternal environmental antibiotic exposure in China. Special attention to antibiotic exposure and confirmation of potential determinants should be taken in the future. Keywords: Birth cohort study, Environmental antibiotic, Food consumption, Maternal-fetal exposure assessment, Veterinary antibiotic

Abstract The leader election problem is one of the fundamental problems in distributed computing. Different from most of the existing results studying the multi-leader election in static networks or one leader election in dynamic networks, in this paper, we focus on the multi-leader election in dynamic sensor networks where nodes are deployed randomly. A centralized simple leader election algorithm (VLE), a distributed leader election algorithm (NMDLE), and a multi-leader election algorithm (PSMLE) are proposed so as to elect multi-leaders for the purpose of saving energy and prolonging the network lifetime, respectively. Specifically, the proposed algorithms aim at using less leaders to control the whole network, which is controlled by at least k opt leaders, here k opt denotes the optimal number of network partitions. Then we analyze the impacts of the sleep scheme of nodes and node moving on energy consumption and establish a theoretical model for energy cost. Finally, we provide extensive simulation results valuating the correctness of theoretical analysis.

Ferroptosis is an iron-dependent programmed cell death associated with severe kidney diseases, linked to decreased glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4). However, the spatial distribution of renal GPX4-mediated ferroptosis and the molecular events causing GPX4 reduction during ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) remain largely unknown. Using spatial transcriptomics, we identify that GPX4 is situated at the interface of the inner cortex and outer medulla, a hyperactive ferroptosis site post-I/R injury. We further discover OTU deubiquitinase 5 (OTUD5) as a GPX4-binding protein that confers ferroptosis resistance by stabilizing GPX4. During I/R, ferroptosis is induced by mTORC1-mediated autophagy, causing OTUD5 degradation and subsequent GPX4 decay. Functionally, OTUD5 deletion intensifies renal tubular cell ferroptosis and exacerbates acute kidney injury, while AAV-mediated OTUD5 delivery mitigates ferroptosis and promotes renal function recovery from I/R injury. Overall, this study highlights a new autophagy-dependent ferroptosis module: hypoxia/ischemia-induced OTUD5 autophagy triggers GPX4 degradation, offering a potential therapeutic avenue for I/R-related kidney diseases.

High molecular weight glutenin subunits (HMW-GSs) are key determinants for the end-use quality of wheat. Chinese wheat landraces are an important resource for exploring novel HMW-GS genes to improve the wheat baking quality. Two novel Glu-1Dy HMW-GSs (designated as 1Dy12.6 and 1Dy12.7) were identified and cloned from two Chinese wheat landraces Huazhong830 and Luosimai. The 1Dy12.6 and 1Dy12.7 subunits were deposited as the NCBInr Acc. No KR262518, and KR262519, respectively. The full open reading frames (ORFs) of 1Dy12.6 and 1Dy12.7 were 2022 bp and 1977 bp, encoding for proteins of 673 and 658 amino acid residues, respectively. Each contains four typical primary regions of HMW-GSs (a signal peptide, N- and C-terminal regions, and a central repetitive region). Their deduced molecular masses (70,165 Da and 68,400 Da) were strikingly consistent with those identified by MALDI-TOF-MS (69,985Da and 68,407 Da). The 1Dy12.6 is the largest 1Dy glutenin subunits cloned in common wheat up to date, containing longer repetitive central domains than other 1Dy encoded proteins. In comparison with the most similar active 1Dy alleles previously reported, the newly discovered alleles contained a total of 20 SNPs and 3 indels. The secondary structure prediction indicated that 1Dy12.6 and 1Dy12.7 have similar proportion of α-helix, β-turn, and β-bend to those of 1Dy10 (X12929). The phylogenetic analysis illustrated that the x- and y-type subunits of glutenins were well separated, but both 1Dy12.6 and 1Dy12.7 were clustered with the other Glu-1Dy alleles. Our results revealed that the 1Dy12.6 and 1Dy12.7 subunit have potential to strengthen gluten polymer interactions, and are valuable genetic resources for wheat quality improvement.

This paper presents the strengths and fracture toughness of low-activation concrete (LAC) which can be used in the nuclear shielding structures and possibly in the nuclear decommissioning project. The research used four mixtures which include high alumina cement with 20%, 40% and 60% aluminum oxide as fine aggregate replacement and compared with those of normal concrete. All of the concrete strengths were evaluated and compared. The test results showed that LAC has high early strength and decays later due to conversion effect. The other fundamental mechanical properties will also be presented in this paper.

Wireless technologies have been increasingly applied in industrial automation systems due to flexible installation, mobility, and cost reduction. Unlike traditional wireless sensor networks (WSNs), industrial wireless sensor networks (IWSNs), when expanding from wireless monitoring to wireless control, have more stringent requirements on reliability, real-time performance, and robustness in a number of industrial applications. Successive transmission failures or deadline misses in these applications may severely degrade the control quality and result in serious economic losses and safety problems. Therefore, when deploying IWSNs in harsh industrial environments, to achieve reliable and deterministic end-to-end transmissions is critically important. In this paper, we explain the primary challenges of designing appropriate routing protocols and present a reliable real-time flooding-based routing protocol for IWSNs (REALFLOW). Instead of traditional routing tables, related node lists are generated in a simple distributed manner, serving for packet forwarding. A controlled flooding mechanism is applied to improve both reliability and real-time performance. A seamless transition in the event of topology change can be achieved by REALFLOW. Performance evaluations via simulations verify that significant improvements of reliability, real-time performance, and network recovery time can be achieved by REALFLOW, compared with traditional routing protocols.