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To investigate the effect of basal immunoglobulin (BSG) expression during postmortem maturation on meat quality, changes in quality indicators such as pH, cooking loss and myofibril fragmentation index (MFI), as well as energy substance and BSG contents of Qinchuan cattle meat were measured after different periods (0, 2, 4, 6 and 8 days) of postmortem aging at 4 ℃. The proteomic changes were also analyzed using 4D-label free quantification (4D-LFQ). The results showed that during the postmortem storage period, the expression of BSG showed an overall trend of initially increasing and then decreasing. The levels of the energy substances ATP, ADP, AMP and NADH showed a decreasing trend; pH and cooking loss initially decreased and then increased; MFI showed a continuous increasing trend. The correlation analysis showed that the expression of BSG was significantly positively correlated with cooking loss (P < 0.01), but negatively correlated with pH, ATP and NADH levels (P < 0.05). However, it had no significant correlation with ADP or AMP contents. Therefore, the change of BSG expression in the Longissimus dorsi muscle of Qinchuan cattle during postmortem maturation was closely related to the quality and energy metabolism of beef. Proteomics identified that BSG and its associated differential proteins had catalytic activity, hydrolase activity and proton-transporting ATP synthase activity, bound to ATP, ribonucleotides and carbohydrate derivatives in cells, and were involved in the regulation of molecular functions and hydrogen ion transport across membranes. These biological effects caused mitochondrial damage and were involved in changes in meat tenderness through energy metabolism.

In order to explore the effects of basigin (BSG) on the mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway and apoptosis in Qinchuan cattle muscle during postmortem maturation, the changes in BSG and related differentially expressed proteins were analyzed by 4D-label free quantification (4D-LFQ). The BSG inhibitor tunicamycin was injected into the longissimus dorsi of Qinchuan cattle after slaughter, and the expression levels of key proteins in the MAPK signaling pathway during storage at 4 ℃ were determined by Western blotting. An apoptosis detection kit was used to determine the change in the activity of caspase-3. The results showed that the expression of BSG increased first and then decreased during the postmortem storage period of Qinchuan cattle muscle. Through Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis, it was found that BSG and related differentially expressed proteins were significantly annotated to the oxidative phosphorylation pathway, calcium signal pathway and MAPK signaling pathway, indicating that BSG played an important role through the MAPK signaling pathway. In addition, for the tunicamycin group, the relative expression of the key proteins in the MAPK signaling pathway was significantly down-regulated, indicating that BSG inactivated the MAPK signaling pathway. This finding lays a good foundation for exploring the effect of BSG on the MAPK signaling pathway. After inhibiting BSG expression, caspase-3 activity in the tunicamycin group increased significantly, indicating that apoptosis was an important link in cell injury mechanism, and tunicamycin acted on the N-terminal structure of BSG to deglycosylate the protein and inhibited the folding of intracellular proteins and consequently their biological activity, thereby inducing cell apoptosis.

The quality of tea is relative with its concentration. In this paper, we present a method to identify the concentration of tea based on Tyndall effect. The tea is illuminated by 3-watt LED light sources with the main wavelength in ultraviolet and visible bands. The intensities of transmitted light are detected using the distributed photometer and the images of light distribution are captured by CCD camera at vertical direction to observe the Tyndall effect. The intensities and images for different light sources are compared. The experimental results show that there exist Tyndall phenomenon in tea. In addition, the Tyndall effect becomes weaker as the tea concentration increases when the tea is illuminated by the LED light sources with the main wavelength in the ultraviolet band. The method presented in this paper should be helpful for rapid identification of the tea quality

The influence of Ti addition (~0.10 wt%) on hot ductility of as-cast high-manganese austenitic steels has been examined over the temperature range 650–1,250 °C under a constant strain rate of 10−3 s−1 using Gleeble3500 thermal simulation testing machine. The fracture surfaces and particles precipitated at different tensile temperatures were characterized by means of scanning electron microscope and X-ray energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM–EDS). Hot ductility as a function of reduction curves shows that adding 0.10 wt% Ti made the ductility worse in the almost entire range of testing temperatures. The phases’ equilibrium diagrams of precipitates in Ti-bearing high-Mn austenitic steel were calculated by the Thermo-Calc software. The calculation result shows that 0.1 wt% Ti addition would cause Ti(C,N) precipitated at 1,499 °C, which is higher than the liquidus temperature of high-Mn austenitic steel. It indicated that Ti(C,N) particles start forming in the liquid high-Mn austenitic steel. The SEM–EDS results show that Ti(C,N) and TiC particles could be found along the austenite grain boundaries or at triple junction, and they would accelerate the extension of the cracks along the grain boundaries.

Physical layer security(PLS) is efficient in providing security for wireless communications and in relaxing the complexity of the required cryptographic technologies. A PLS method, i.e. detection of active eavesdropper, using large scale planar arrays is proposed in this paper. The system is assumed to be time division duplex and the channels are of Rician distribution. The proposed method can effectively detect the active eavesdropper by assuming that the K-factor of the channel and the noise variance of the base station are known. Simulation results show that the performance of the proposed method is improved as the number of the antennas or the value of the K-factor is increasing. In addition, the performance of the proposed method is independent of the angle of the users.

The most common somatic event in primary prostate cancer is a fusion between the androgen-related TMPRSS2 gene and the ERG oncogene. Tumors with these fusions, which occur early in carcinogenesis, have a distinctive etiology. A smaller subset of other tumors harbor fusions between TMPRSS2 and members of the ETS transcription factor family other than ERG. To assess the genomic similarity of tumors with non-ERG ETS fusions and those with fusions involving ERG, this study derived a transcriptomic signature of non-ERG ETS fusions and assessed this signature and ERG-related gene expression in 1,050 men with primary prostate cancer from three independent population-based and hospital-based studies. Although non-ERG ETS fusions involving ETV1, ETV4, ETV5, or FLI1 were individually rare, they jointly accounted for one in seven prostate tumors. Genes differentially regulated between non-ERG ETS tumors and tumors without ETS fusions showed similar differential expression when ERG tumors and tumors without ETS fusions were compared (differences explained: R2 = 69-77%), including ETS-related androgen receptor (AR) target genes. Differences appeared to result from similarities among ETS tumors rather than similarities among non-ETS tumors. Gene sets associated with ERG fusions were consistent with gene sets associated with non-ERG ETS fusions, including fatty acid and amino acid metabolism, an observation that was robust across cohorts.ImplicationsConsidering ETS fusions jointly may be useful for etiologic studies on prostate cancer, given that the transcriptome is profoundly impacted by ERG and non-ERG ETS fusions in a largely similar fashion, most notably genes regulating metabolic pathways.

The effective discrimination of targets from backgrounds in environments characterized by a low signal-to-clutter ratio (SCR) is paramount for the advancement of infrared small target detection (IRSTD). In this work, we propose a novel detection framework predicated on low-rank sparse decomposition (LRSD), incorporating an improved logarithmic norm and a mechanism for sparse structure refinement, herein referred to as the improved logarithmic norm and sparse structure refinement (ILN-SSR). The ILN-SSR framework more precisely characterizes the sparse properties of both the background and the target, enabling a more effective distinction between the target and its background. Initially, our approach entails the utilization of an improved logarithmic norm to precisely estimate the low-rank attributes of the infrared image background. This is followed by the employment of a linear sparse regularization term alongside a target-traits-based sparse regularization term aimed at meticulously identifying targets within sparse regions and refining the sparse structure. Subsequently, we combine these components into the ILN-SSR framework, which formulates IRSTD as an optimization problem. The resolution of this framework is achieved through the implementation of the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). The efficacy of the proposed framework is corroborated through the analysis of six image sequences. Comprehensive experimental assessments affirmed the framework's substantial robustness in navigating various complex backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Verticillium wilt (VW) is a disruptive symptom caused by Verticillium dahliae, which affects fiber yield and quality of cotton in China. AP2/ERF transcription factors play prominent role in plant growth, development and stress response. In order to excavate the genes related to resistance to VW in cotton and explore their biological functions, the candidate gene GhERF020 (XM_016842745.1) was obtained by homologous alignment of AT1G22810.1 related gene of Arabidopsis thaliana against V. dahliae. Bioinformatic analysis showed that the open reading frame length of GhERF020 was 441 bp, encoded 147 amino acids. GhERF020 contained a conserved AP2 domain, the relative molecular weight was 16.16 kD without transmembrane structure, belonging to the hydrophilic protein. It was predicted that the promoter region contained response elements of salicylic acid (SA), methyl jasmonate (MEJA), abscisic acid (ABA) and other response elements. The expression of GhERF020 was induced by V. dahliae infection. Subcellular localization analysis showed that GhERF020 protein was localized in the nucleus. As the expression of GhERF020 was downregulated by virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) technique, the susceptibility of cotton plants to V. dahliae was significantly enhanced, and the disease index and pathogen biomass were distinctly increased. Above results indicated that GhERF020 was a positive regulator in resistance against V. dahliae in cotton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental leadership has received continuous attention from the business sector in recent years, yet few studies have examined the internal mechanisms and contingent conditions that link environmental leadership to firm performance. The aim of this article is to advance research by investigating the relationship between environmental leadership and firm performance by considering the mediating role of green innovation practices and the moderating role of environmental knowledge learning. A questionnaire survey is used to collect data from 353 agricultural products corporations in China. Empirical results show that environmental leadership has a positive relationship with the two dimensions of firm performance, namely, environmental performance and financial performance. Results also indicate that green innovation practices (including green innovation strategy and actions) play a mediating role between environmental leadership and firm performance. Meanwhile, it is also found that environmental knowledge learning positively moderates the effect of environmental leadership on green innovation practices. This study adds value to the environmental management literature by introducing leadership style as an antecedent variable to examine the impact of environmental leadership on firm performance in China. And the study also highlights the important moderating effect of environmental knowledge learning on the relationship between environmental leadership and green innovation practices. The findings of this article could be important in terms of both management and policy implications.