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Abstract Background We aimed to investigate the post-cessation T2DM risk in male NAFLD and NAFLD-free smokers in a 7-year cohort study. Methods The study population was male adults who underwent annual health checkups in a 7-year cohort study. Recent quitters were categorized into four groups based on their weight gain during follow-up:

Diaporthe spp. are a significant plant pathogen causing wood canker, blight, dieback, and fruit decay in numerous economically important plant hosts worldwide. D. nobilis has been identified as a highly pathogenic isolate responsible for causing kiwifruit (Actinidia spp.) rot, representing one of the most significant threats to the kiwifruit industry. Here, a comprehensive genome-wide sequence of D. nobilis strain DJY16A 5-1 utilizing advanced Nanopore third-generation sequencing technology is presented. The genome of D. nobilis strain DJY16A 5-1 was assembled into 26 contigs containing a combined size of 59.28 Mb and N50 length of 4.47 Mb. The virulence-related genes were analyzed, including 3,407 transmembrane proteins, 1,410 secreted proteins, 1,866 signal peptides, 135 effector proteins, 1,069 carbohydrate-active enzymes, 143 membrane transporter proteins, and 4,995 pathogen–host interaction-related proteins. The genome assembly and annotation facilitate the analysis of pathogen–host interaction, laying the foundation for in-depth research on the infection mechanism of pathogens. [Figure: see text] Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.

Abstract Aims/Introduction To explore the association between estimated small dense low‐density lipoprotein cholesterol (sdLDL‐C) and the risk of incident nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in nonobese populations. Materials and Methods This study included participants who underwent health checkups in 2014 and were followed up until 2019. We carried out Cox proportional hazards regression analyses to evaluate the association of estimated sdLDL‐C with NAFLD. Discordance analyses were carried out to estimate the relative NAFLD risk in estimated sdLDL‐C versus low‐density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL‐C) discordant/concordant groups. Estimated sdLDL‐C was calculated by equations based on LDL‐C and triglycerides. The diagnosis of NAFLD was based on the presence of abdominal ultrasonography after excluding other causes of chronic liver disease. Results Over a mean follow‐up period of 26,694 person‐years, 844 incident NAFLD cases were recorded. Compared with the first quartile of estimated sdLDL‐C, the fourth quartile was associated with a 2.933‐fold increased risk of NAFLD (95% confidence interval 2.095–4.107). With the increase in estimated sdLDL‐C, the risk of NAFLD gradually increased both in participants within the normal range of LDL‐C (hazard ratio 2.854, 95% confidence interval 1.650–5.617) and beyond the normal range of LDL‐C (hazard ratio 2.636, 95% confidence interval 1.263–5.502). In addition, the inconsistent high estimated sdLDL‐C/low LDL‐C group was associated with an increased risk of NAFLD, but not the low estimated sdLDL‐C/high LDL‐C group. Conclusions Estimated sdLDL‐C was positively associated with the risk of incident NAFLD in a nonobese population, independent of LDL‐C.

Abstract Background Gastric cancer (GC) is one of the most common malignant tumors worldwide. Nevertheless, GC still lacks effective diagnosed and monitoring method and treating targets. This study used multi omics data to explore novel biomarkers and immune therapy targets around sphingolipids metabolism genes (SMGs). Method LASSO regression analysis was performed to filter prognostic and differently expression SMGs among TCGA and GTEx data. Risk score model and Kaplan-Meier were built to validate the prognostic SMG signature and prognostic nomogram was further constructed. The biological functions of SMG signature were annotated via multi omics. The heterogeneity landscape of immune microenvironment in GC was explored. qRT-PCR was performed to validate the expression level of SMG signature. Competing endogenous RNA regulatory network was established to explore the molecular regulatory mechanisms. Result 3-SMGs prognostic signature (GLA, LAMC1, TRAF2) and related nomogram were constructed combing several clinical characterizes. The expression difference and diagnostic value were validated by PCR data. Multi omics data reveals 3-SMG signature affects cell cycle and death via several signaling pathways to regulate GC progression. Overexpression of 3-SMG signature influenced various immune cell infiltration in GC microenvironment. RBP-SMGs-miRNA-mRNAs/lncRNAs regulatory network was built to annotate regulatory system. Conclusion Upregulated 3-SMGs signature are excellent predictive diagnosed and prognostic biomarkers, providing a new perspective for future GC immunotherapy.

Synthetic aperture radar imagery plays a vital role in maritime vessel detection, despite facing challenges like complex marine environments, low-contrast target recognition, and similarities between ships and sea surface waves. In addition, the deployment of traditional large models on radar-equipped edge devices is hampered by their extensive computational demands. Addressing these challenges, this study presents an ultralightweight network lightweight enhanced network (L-ENet), improving upon YOLOv5n. The backbone network is switched to a more efficient ShufflenetV2, integrated with an improved attention mechanism, dual-core fusion attention mechanism, for effective interchannel information balancing. In the network's neck, the original C3 module has been replaced with the C3EGhost convolution. This convolution module integrates the Ghost and efficient channel attention mechanisms, aiming to mitigate potential accuracy loss during the lightweight process. Furthermore, this study introduces a novel multiscale fusion pathway and a Concat module with adaptive weights to better harmonize semantic and detail information. Furthermore, the trihead detection structure is revised to a dual-head structure omni-dimensional adaptive spatial feature fusion, using object detection convolution to allocate weights across different scales for efficient detection. Experimental results show that L-ENet has a computational cost of 0.6 M and a parameter count of 2.1 giga floating point operations per second. These figures are 65% and 50% lower than those of the original YOLOv5n while maintaining the same detection accuracy of 97.8%. Hence, L-ENet offers an efficient and viable solution for maritime target detection, showcasing commendable detection performance in comparison with advanced models.

Abstract To meet the demand of low bit error rate and high bandwidth for high-speed links, a reliable 112 Gb/s four-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4) transceiver design scheme with adaptive threshold voltage and adaptive decision feedback equalizer is proposed in this paper. In this scheme, three continuous time linear equalizers (CTLEs) at the front end of receiver are used to compensate the high-frequency, mid-frequency and low-frequency signals, respectively, and the variable gain amplifier (VGA) and saturation amplifier (SatAmp) are used to scale the signal amplitude. In addition to the three data samplers, four auxiliary samplers are also used for threshold adaptation. The sign-sign least mean squares algorithm uses the offset between the data sampler and the auxiliary sampler at the receiver side to drive the auxiliary reference voltage to converge to the signal constellation level, thus ensuring that the eye diagram of the PAM4 received signal has equal spacing and a constant signal–noise ratio for the three eyes in the vertical direction. In addition, the adaptive DFE for PAM4 signaling allows the transceiver to better adapt to the channel and thus achieve better equalizer performance. The simulation results show that the PAM4 transceiver design can compensate up to 25 dB of channel loss with an average eye height of 59.6 mv and an average eye width of 0.27 UI at a bit error rate of 10−12 under the condition of 3-tap feedforward equalizer (FFE) transmitter.

Abstract Background Gastric cancer (GC) carries significant morbidity and mortality globally. An increasing number of studies have confirmed that circular RNA (circRNA) is tightly associated with the carcinogenesis and development of GC, especially acting as a competing endogenous RNA for miRNAs. Objective Our study aimed to construct the circRNA-miRNA-mRNA regulatory network and analyze the function and prognostic significance of the network using bioinformatics tools. Methods We first downloaded the GC expression profile from the Gene Expression Omnibus database and identified differentially expressed genes and differentially expressed circRNAs. Then, we predicted the miRNA-mRNA interaction pairs and constructed the circRNA-miRNA-mRNA regulatory network. Next, we established a protein-protein interaction network and analyzed the function of these networks. Finally, we primarily validated our results by comparison with The Cancer Genome Atlas cohort and by performing qRT-PCR. Results We screened the top 15 hub genes and 3 core modules. Functional analysis showed that in the upregulated circRNA network, 15 hub genes were correlated with extracellular matrix organization and interaction. The function of downregulated circRNAs converged on physiological functions, such as protein processing, energy metabolism and gastric acid secretion. We ascertained 3 prognostic and immune infiltration-related genes, COL12A1, COL5A2, and THBS1, and built a nomogram for clinical application. We validated the expression level and diagnostic performance of key prognostic differentially expressed genes. Conclusions In conclusion, we constructed two circRNA-miRNA-mRNA regulatory networks and identified 3 prognostic and screening biomarkers, COL12A1, COL5A2, and THBS1. The ceRNA network and these genes could play important roles in GC development, diagnosis and prognosis.

The current challenges in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) ship detection tasks revolve around handling significant variations in target sizes and managing high computational expenses, which hinder practical deployment on satellite or mobile airborne platforms. In response to these challenges, this research presents YOLOv7-LDS, a lightweight yet highly accurate SAR ship detection model built upon the YOLOv7 framework. In the core of YOLOv7-LDS's architecture, we introduce a streamlined feature extraction network that strikes a delicate balance between detection precision and computational efficiency. This network is founded on Shufflenetv2 and incorporates Squeeze-and-Excitation (SE) attention mechanisms as its key elements. Additionally, in the Neck section, we introduce the Weighted Efficient Aggregation Network (DCW-ELAN), a fundamental feature extraction module that leverages Coordinate Attention (CA) and Depthwise Convolution (DWConv). This module efficiently aggregates features while preserving the ability to identify small-scale variations, ensuring top-quality feature extraction. Furthermore, we introduce a lightweight Spatial Pyramid Dilated Convolution Cross-Stage Partial Channel (LSPHDCCSPC) module. LSPHDCCSPC is a condensed version of the Spatial Pyramid Pooling Cross-Stage Partial Channel (SPPCSPC) module, incorporating Dilated Convolution (DConv) as a central component for extracting multi-scale information. The experimental results show that YOLOv7-LDS achieves a remarkable Mean Average Precision (mAP) of 99.1% and 95.8% on the SAR Ship Detection Dataset (SSDD) and the NWPU VHR-10 dataset with a parameter count (Params) of 3.4 million, a Giga Floating Point Operations Per Second (GFLOPs) of 6.1 and an Inference Time (IT) of 4.8 milliseconds. YOLOv7-LDS effectively strikes a fine balance between computational cost and detection performance, surpassing many of the current state-of-the-art object detection models. As a result, it offers a more resilient solution for maritime ship monitoring.

Postharvest rot, caused by Penicillium expansum, in tomatoes poses significant economic and health risks. Traditional control methods, such as the use of fungicides, raise concerns about pathogen resistance, food safety, and environmental impact. In search of sustainable alternatives, plant secondary metabolites, particularly phenolic compounds and their derivatives, have emerged as promising natural antimicrobials. Among these, feruloyl glyceride (FG), a water-soluble derivative of ferulic acid, stands out due to its antioxidant properties, antibacterial properties, and improved solubility. In this study, we provide evidence demonstrating FG is capable of inhibiting the spore germination of P. expansum and effectively reducing the incidence rate of Penicillium rot of tomatoes, without compromising quality. Electron microscopy observations combined with metabolite and transcriptomic analyses revealed that FG treatments resulted in enhanced suberin accumulation through promoting the expression of suberin synthesis related genes and, consequently, inhibited the growth and expansion of P. expansum on the fruits. This work sheds light on the mechanisms underlying FG’s inhibitory effects, allowing its potential application as a natural and safe alternative to replace chemical fungicides for postharvest preservation.

Summary: Diaporthe genus is the dominant pathogens of kiwifruit soft rot with long incubation period and rapid onset and very hard to detect in advance. It is of great significance to develop point-of-care tests for disease prevention and field management. Here we screen a pair of genus-level primers for constructing plasmonic dimer Rayleigh/Raman spectroscopy, which enables rapid, specific, and sensitive detection of Diaporthe genus in real kiwifruits. Dark-filed Rayleigh scattering clearly visualizes the target-induced dimer assembly of nanoprobes. Plasmonic dimer-enhanced Raman spectroscopy has high specificity for 12 common isolates of Diaporthe genus in one batch samples with highly accurate results and much higher sensitivity than polymerase chain reaction (PCR). It realizes the recognition of Diaporthe infection at an early stage of 24 h when the kiwifruits do not have any noticeable symptoms. It demonstrates a bright prospect of point-of-care tests for early warning of kiwifruit soft rot infection and quality control.

As a notorious pathogenic fungus, Botrytis cinerea has been reported to infect more than 1400 species of plants and cause postharvest gray mold of numerous economic fruits, leading to substantial economic losses. Traditional chemical fungicides in pathogen control have potential issues regarding environmental pollution, disease resistance and human health. More safety and efficacious prevention technique of postharvest gray mold are in urgent demand. This study aims to investigate the potential function and mechanism of Bacillus velezensis to control gray mold for harvested fruits. The results showed that the cell-free supernatant (CFS) generated from B. velezensis strain A4 was able to inhibit spore germination, germ tube elongation and hyphal growth of B. cinerea in vitro, and impair the pathogenicity of B. cinerea on the four tested fruits. Further analysis demonstrated that CFS significantly reduced the expression of genes associated with growth and pathogenicity and weakened the ability of B. cinerea spores to penetrate plant cell walls in a dose-dependent manner. Moreover, the CFS destroyed the membrane of hyphae, resulting in exosmosis of cell contents and caused hyphal cells to accumulate excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS), leading to hyphal oxidative damage. Our findings indicate that B. velezensis CFS can damage B. cinerea mycelial cells by promoting excessive accumulation of ROS to realize its biological control function.

Abstract A through‐silicon via (TSV)‐based, common‐mode, noise‐suppressing filter (TSV‐CMF) with the silicon interposer process is proposed to improve the electromagnetic compatibility in 3D integrated circuits. A differential fifth‐order T‐model low‐pass filter prototype circuit for transmission lines with common inductance is used to characterize and design the stopband and the corresponding two transmission zeros for the common mode (CM). The circuit parameters are carefully designed and calculated to fit the performance requirement. The TSV‐CMF is implemented in an interposer process with TSV as the vertical connect and redistribution layer (RDL) as the capacitance and inductance. TSV‐CMF samples are tested, and the measurement results match those of the full‐wave simulation. The differential cut‐off frequency of the TSV‐CMF can reach 16 GHz, and the CM stopband is around 5.3–16.0 GHz with 100% fractional bandwidth.

Abstract Background The incidence of pertussis shows an increasing trend in recent years, but some clinicians often lack sufficient understanding of the clinical characteristics and risk factors for severe pertussis, and more effective measures should be taken to reduce the incidence and mortality of pertussis in young infants Methods A retrospective study was conducted, and 184 infants and children with pertussis who had been hospitalized in the Department of Pediatrics of Beijing Ditan Hospital affiliated with Capital Medical University from January 2016 to December 2017 were included. Clinical data of the patients were collected and the clinical characteristics were statistically analyzed Results Among the 184 patients, 41.85% were infants < 3 months of age, and 65.22% of the total patients were not vaccinated against pertussis. There were 22 critically ill children, among whom 4 died, and compared with mild cases, they had a higher proportion of children younger than 3 months of age and infants not vaccinated against pertussis (63.64% vs. 38.89% and 100% vs. 60.49%, respectively); a higher proportion of children with severe pneumonia (100% vs. 0%); higher leukocyte count(× 109/L , 35.80 ± 20.53 vs 19.41 ± 8.59); and a higher proportion of children with severe hyperleukocytosis (18.18% vs. 0%, respectively) (P

With the continuous growth of signal frequency and package density, discontinuity of the high-frequency interconnection in 3D micro/nano integration becomes unavoidable, which results in serious signal integrity problems. Traditional interconnection design schemes, such as termination and shielding/isolation, cannot meet the requirements under the unified constraints of specific cost, space occupancy, and performance. In this study, a transmission line design optimization scheme based on the segmental transmission line (STL) methodology is proposed. The genetic algorithm is used to select the optimal segment structure parameters of the transmission line to construct an STL with satisfying transmission performance or meet the specific signal amplitude adjustment requirements. This scheme can be adapted to various signal transmission scenarios to significantly improve the signal loss caused by reflection or other negative electromagnetic factors and meet the requirements for the modeling of discontinuous transmission lines. The simulation results show that this scheme is effective in the design scenario of performance improvement or equivalent modeling of discontinuous transmission lines and has significant advantages in circuit area reduction.

Abstract Background To observe the effect of pretreatment with ketorolac tromethamine on sufentanil-induced cough in general anesthesia patients. Methods A total of 102 patients were screened, and 90 patients were scheduled for elective surgery under general anesthesia. The 90 patients were randomly divided into two groups: the control group (C group) and the observation group (KT group). Five minutes before anesthesia induction, the observation group was given ketorolac tromethamine 0.5 mg/kg intravenously within 3 s, while the control group was given the same amount of normal saline intravenously. All patients were given a sufentanil bolus of 0.5 μg/kg (within 3 s) intravenously. One minute later, propofol 2.5 mg/kg and vecuronium 0.15 mg/kg were injected intravenously, and endotracheal intubation was guided by laryngoscopy. The number of coughs that occurred within 1 min after sufentanil injection was recorded. The mean arterial pressure (MAP), heart rate (HR) and pulse oxygen saturation (SpO2) were recorded at T0 (immediately before pretreatment), T1 (5 min after pretreatment), T2 (before intubation), T3 (1 min after intubation) and T4 (5 min after intubation). The incidence of adverse reactions, including nausea and vomiting, dizziness, drowsiness, delay of recovery, restlessness in the recovery period, respiratory depression and postoperative incision pain, was analyzed. Results Within 1 min after sufentanil injection, the incidence and severity of cough in the KT group was significantly lower than that in the C group (P 0.05). There was no significant difference in the dosage of sufentanil, propofol, remifentanil and vecuronium, the incidence of nausea and vomiting, the delay of recovery, dizziness, drowsiness or respiratory depression between the two groups (P > 0.05). However, the incidence of restlessness and the number of patients with VAS scores > 3 in the KT group were significantly lower than those in the C group (P

Mobile devices support more and more real-time multimedia contents such as live video, high-definition television, virtual reality and so on. Real-time multimedia services over mobile networks face several challenges, including the efficient management of radio resources, high data throughput and the latency induced by transmission delay. In order to address network errors on Long Time Evolution (LTE) multimedia broadcast services, forward error correction and unicast recovery techniques are proposed in standard at the application level. In this paper, a parallel coding scheme with Turbo Product Code (TPC) is proposed to fit the antenna array of Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Filter Bank Multi-Carrier (MIMO-FBMC) system for transmission latency reduction. In this scheme, multimedia content information data are firstly reformed into two dimensional blocks with (k1 × k2) bits in every block. And then each block is encoded into (n1 × n2) codeword block using TPC to be transmitted parallel through the massive antenna array of transmitter in MIMO-FBMC system. In the receiver, the multimedia content information is re-formed by concurrent soft decision iterative decoding algorithm of TPC. This parallel TPC coding scheme achieves high throughput, low transmission latency and high reliability, which is suitable for the multimedia communication. Simulation results confirmed the superiority of the proposed parallel TPC coding scheme.

Biological control of postharvest diseases has been proven to be an effective alternative to chemical control. As an environmentally friendly biocontrol agent, Bacillus subtilis has been widely applied. This study explores its application in kiwifruit soft rot and reveals the corresponding mechanisms. Treatment with cell-free supernatant (CFS) of Bacillus subtilis BS-1 significantly inhibits the mycelial growth of the pathogen Botryosphaeria dothidea and attenuates the pathogenicity on kiwifruit in a concentration-dependent manner. In particular, mycelial growth diameter was only 21% of the control after 3 days of treatment with 5% CFS. CFS caused swelling and breakage of the hyphae of B. dothidea observed by scanning electron microscopy, resulting in the leakage of nucleic acid and soluble protein and the loss of ergosterol content. Further analysis demonstrated that CFS significantly induces the expression of Nox genes associated with reactive oxygen species (ROS) production by 1.9–2.7-fold, leading to a considerable accumulation of ROS in cells and causing mycelial cell death. Our findings demonstrate that the biocontrol effect of B. subtilis BS-1 CFS on B. dothidea is realized by inducing oxidative damage to the mycelia cell.

Background. This study aimed to explore the association between high-density lipoprotein cholesterol to apolipoprotein A-I ratio (HDL-C/apo A-I) and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Methods. A total of 9025 Chinese adults were enrolled in this cross-sectional study, who presented their annual health checkups at Zhenhai Lianhua Hospital, Ningbo, during 2017. Results. The NAFLD prevalence was 33.7%, and HDL-C/apo A-I was significantly decreased in NAFLD patients, as well as in lean NAFLD and in patients with NAFLD-related advanced fibrosis (all P

Summary: Proline accumulation is one of the most important adaptation mechanisms for plants to cope with environmental stresses, such as drought and freezing. However, the molecular mechanism of proline homeostasis under these stresses is largely unknown. Here, we identified a mitochondrial protein, DFR1, involved in the inhibition of proline degradation in Arabidopsis. DFR1 was strongly induced by drought and cold stresses. The dfr1 knockdown mutants showed hypersensitivity to drought and freezing stresses, whereas the DFR1 overexpression plants exhibited enhanced tolerance, which was positively correlated with proline levels. DFR1 interacts with proline degradation enzymes PDH1/2 and P5CDH and compromises their activities. Genetic analysis showed that DFR1 acts upstream of PDH1/2 and P5CDH to positively regulate proline accumulation. Our results demonstrate a regulatory mechanism by which, under drought and freezing stresses, DFR1 interacts with PDH1/2 and P5CDH to abrogate their activities to maintain proline homeostasis, thereby conferring drought and freezing tolerance. : Proline accumulation is very important for plants to cope with drought and freezing stresses. Ren et al. show that, in response to drought and freezing stresses, a mitochondrial protein DFR1 interacts with PDH1/2 and P5CDH to abrogate their activities to maintain proline homeostasis, thereby conferring drought and freezing tolerance. Keywords: Arabidopsis, DFR1, drought, freezing, proline degradation, PDH1, PDH2, P5CDH

In this paper, two versions of capacitive accelerometers based on low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) technology are developed, different with respect to the detection technique, as well as the mechanical structure. Fabrication of the key structure, a heavy proof mass with thin beams embedded in a large cavity, which is extremely difficult for the conventional LTCC process, is successfully completed by the optimized process. The LC resonant accelerometer, using coupling resonance frequency sensing which is first applied to LTCC accelerometer and may facilitate application in harsh environments, demonstrates a sensitivity of 375 KHz/g over the full scale range 1 g, with nonlinearity less than 6%, and the telemetry distance is 5 mm. The differential capacitive accelerometer adopting differential capacitive sensing presents a larger full scale range 10 g and lower nonlinearity less than 1%, and the sensitivity is 30.27 mV/g.

The accurate onboard detection of clouds in hyperspectral images before lossless compression is beneficial. However, conventional onboard cloud detection methods are not applicable all the time, especially for shadowed clouds or darkened snow-covered surfaces that are not identified in normalized difference snow index (NDSI) tests. In this paper, we propose a new spectral-spatial classification strategy to enhance the performance of an orbiting cloud screen obtained on hyperspectral images by integrating a threshold exponential spectral angle map (TESAM), adaptive Markov random field (aMRF) and dynamic stochastic resonance (DSR). TESAM is applied to roughly classify cloud pixels based on spectral information. Then aMRF is used to do optimal process by using spatial information, which improved the classification performance significantly. Nevertheless, misclassifications occur due to noisy data in the onboard environments, and DSR is employed to eliminate noise data produced by aMRF in binary labeled images. We used level 0.5 data from Hyperion as a dataset, and the average tested accuracy of the proposed algorithm was 96.28% by test. This method can provide cloud mask for the on-going EO-1 and related satellites with the same spectral settings without manual intervention. Experiments indicate that the proposed method has better performance than the conventional onboard cloud detection methods or current state-of-the-art hyperspectral classification methods.

Although a through-silicon via (TSV) is widely used in three-dimensional integrated circuit systems, one of its major design challenges is noise coupling between TSVs and active devices. This paper investigates noise coupling between TSVs and active devices for 20/14-nm technology nodes. The effect of variations of structural parameters on noise coupling was examined using a three-dimensional full-wave electromagnetic field solver and its result was explained. Additionally, transient analysis on coupling noise was conducted with Synopsys TCAD. Furthermore, a combined strategy employing doped signal TSVs and ‘bare’ ground TSVs was proposed and compared with conventional signal/ground schemes. Demonstrated to improve noise isolation effectively, the proposed strategy is inherently advantageous to circuits of advanced technology nodes compared with other noise isolation schemes, for it demands no modification of the original circuit design, placement and routing.

Epigenetic modification generally refers to phenotypic changes by a mechanism other than changes in DNA sequence and plays a significant role in developmental processes. In this study, we found that overexpression of one alternatively spliced tomato DDB1 transcript, DDB1(F) that is prevalently present in all tested tissues, resulted in reduction of organ size. Transgenic plants constitutively expressing the DDB1(F) from a strong cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) 35S promoter displayed moderately reduced size in vegetative organs (leaves and stems) and radically decreased size in reproductive organs (flowers, seeds and fruits), in which several genes encoding negative regulators for cell division were upregulated. Significantly, reduction of organ size conferred by overexpression of DDB1(F) transgene appears not to segregate in the subsequent generations, suggesting the phenotypic alternations are manipulated in an epigenetic manner and can be transmitted over generations. This notion was further substantiated by analysis of DNA methylation level at the SlWEE1 gene (encoding a negative regulator of cell division), revealing a correlation between less methylation in the promoter region and elevated expression level of this gene. Thus, our results suggest DDB1 plays an important role in regulation of the epigenetic state of genes involved in organogenesis, despite the underlying mechanism remains to be elucidated.

Growth hormone (GH) is an important regulator of metabolism and body composition. GH deficiency is associated with increased visceral body fat and other features of the metabolic syndrome. Here we performed a cross-sectional study to explore the association of GH levels with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which is considered to be the hepatic manifestation of the metabolic syndrome. A total of 1,667 subjects were diagnosed as NAFLD according the diagnostic criteria, and 5,479 subjects were defined as the controls. The subjects with NAFLD had significantly lower levels of serum GH than the controls. Those with low GH levels had a higher prevalence of NAFLD and the metabolic syndrome. A stepwise logistic regression analysis showed that GH levels were significantly associated with the risk factor for NAFLD (OR = 0.651, 95%CI = 0.574-0.738, P

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a common form of chronic liver disease, and serum uric acid is observed to be significantly elevated in NAFLD patients. However, whether this elevation is causal, a bystander, or a consequence of NAFLD remains unclear. We performed a population-based prospective study among the employees of Zhenhai Refining & Chemical Company Ltd., Ningbo, China to investigate whether the elevation of serum uric acid has a casual role for NAFLD. A total of 6890 initially NAFLD-free subjects were followed up for 3 years. Overall, 11.80% (813/6890) subjects developed NAFLD over 3 years of follow-up. The cumulative incidence of NAFLD increased with progressively higher baseline serum uric acid levels (the cumulative incidence was 7.2%, 9.5%, 11.5%, 13.8%, and 17.2% in quintile 1, quintile 2, 3, 4 and 5, respectively; P value for trend

Basic military training consists of highly regimented training in the context of fairly extreme psychosocial stressors, and some recruits suffered from rigorous disturbance in mind. Even if practical measures which include instructive psychological intervention have been taken to ameliorate the disturbance, some questions still have not been settled in our practical work for recruits. For example, what are the manifestations of psychological problems for recruits? What is the difference of the psychological problems at different stages during the training? A perspective investigation was found that emotion disturbances before the training and somatic symptoms at the end of the 1st month of training are remarkable, which can be viewed as, if needed, target symptoms in the psychological intervention. While recruits got more objective social supports in the later training and their sleep status had not shown significant change during the military training. Based on the investigations, we also submitted our suggestion to mental health intervention for recruits, and this may be helpful for health education in the army.

Context: Serum levels of remnant cholesterol have been reported to predict the prognosis of cardiovascular disease, independent of traditional lipid profiles. Objective: This study aimed to explore the association between serum remnant cholesterol and the development of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Methods: A total of 9184 adults who underwent physical examination annually were included in this study. The association between serum remnant cholesterol and incident NAFLD was analyzed by Cox proportional hazards regression. We evaluated the relative risk of NAFLD in the groups with discordant remnant cholesterol vs traditional lipid profiles using clinically relevant treatment targets. Results: During a total of 31 662 person-years of follow-up, 1339 incident NAFLD cases were identified. In the multivariable-adjusted model, the fourth quartile of remnant cholesterol was positively associated with NAFLD risks compared with the first quartile (hazard ratio [HR]: 2.824; 95% CI, 2.268-3.517; P < .001). This association remained significant among individuals with normal levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and triglycerides (HR: 1.929; 95% CI, 1.291-2.882; P < .001). In individuals achieving the different treatment targets of LDL-C and non-HDL-C for risk stratification according to clinical guidelines, the association between remnant cholesterol and incident NAFLD was still significant. Conclusion: Serum levels of remnant cholesterol have predictive value for the development of NAFLD beyond traditional lipid profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]