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Source term investigation is a critically important aspect of reactor decommissioning, particularly as the range of nuclides under consideration expands beyond the capabilities of existing analysis methods. In this study, we try to propose a methodology to indirectly determine the radioactivity of long-lived nuclides which are non-γ or low energy in various nuclear waste materials by measuring the radioactivity of 60Co. The critical point of this method is to establish relationship between some easy to measure (ETM) key nuclides, such as certain γ emitters (like 60Co), and the difficult to measure (DTM) nuclides to derive information for the DTM nuclides of interest. To begin, we calculate nuclide bulk densities of 55Fe, 60Co, 63Ni and 152Eu in nuclear waste materials. By constructing inversion matrices and analyzing the intensity matrices of characteristic γ lines emitted by 60Co, we can extract the radioactivity of non-γ radionuclides (55Fe, 63Ni, and 152Eu) present in the nuclear waste materials that are contained within a specific container. Furthermore, our methodology accounts for the influence of voids within the container, thereby ensuring the reliability and validity of the obtained results. This innovative approach offers a promising avenue for efficiently sorting nuclear waste.

The aim of the study was to investigate the changes in serum glypican 4 (GPC4) and clusterin (CLU) levels in patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) as well as their correlation with sex hormones and metabolic parameters. A total of 40 PCOS patients and 40 age-matched healthy women were selected. Serum GPC4 and CLU levels were compared between the PCOS and control groups, and binary logistic regression was used to analyze the relative risk of PCOS at different tertiles of serum GPC4 and CLU concentrations. Stepwise linear regression was used to identify the factors influencing serum GPC4 and CLU levels in PCOS patients. Serum GPC4 (1.82 ± 0.49 vs 1.30 ± 0.61 ng/mL, P < 0.001) and CLU (468.79 ± 92.85 vs 228.59 ± 82.42 μg/mL, P < 0.001) were significantly higher in PCOS patients than in healthy women after adjustment for body mass index (BMI). In the PCOS group, serum GPC4 was positively correlated with follicle-stimulating hormone, fasting plasma glucose (FPG), fasting insulin (FINS), homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), triglyceride, and CLU (P < 0.05), whereas serum CLU was positively correlated with BMI, FPG, FINS, and HOMA-IR (P < 0.05). Multiple stepwise linear regression analysis showed that HOMA-IR was independently associated with serum GPC4, and BMI and HOMA-IR were independently associated with CLU (P < 0.05). Serum GPC4 and CLU levels were significantly higher in PCOS patients than in healthy women, suggesting that GPC4 and CLU may be markers associated with insulin resistance in women with PCOS.

Abstract Within the realm of contemporary medicinal chemistry, bioisosteres are empirically used to enhance potency and selectivity, improve adsorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicity profiles of drug candidates. It is believed that bioisosteric know-how may help bypass granted patents or generate novel intellectual property for commercialization. Beside the synthetic expertise, the drug discovery process also depends on efficient in silico tools. We hereby present BioisoIdentifier (BII), a web server aiming to uncover bioisosteric information for specific fragment. Using the Protein Data Bank as source, and specific substructures that the user attempt to surrogate as input, BII tries to find suitable fragments that fit well within the local protein active site. BII is a powerful computational tool that offers the ligand design ideas for bioisosteric replacing. For the validation of BII, catechol is conceived as model fragment attempted to be replaced, and many ideas are successfully offered. These outputs are hierarchically grouped according to structural similarity, and clustered based on unsupervised machine learning algorithms. In summary, we constructed a user-friendly interface to enable the viewing of top-ranking molecules for further experimental exploration. This makes BII a highly valuable tool for drug discovery. The BII web server is freely available to researchers and can be accessed at http://www.aifordrugs.cn/index/ . Scientific Contribution: By designing a more optimal computational process for mining bioisosteric replacements from the publicly accessible PDB database, then deployed on a web server for throughly free access for researchers. Additionally, machine learning methods are applied to cluster the bioisosteric replacements searched by the platform, making a scientific contribution to facilitate chemists’ selection of appropriate bioisosteric replacements. The number of bioisosteric replacements obtained using BII is significantly larger than the currently available platforms, which expanding the search space for effective local structural replacements. Graphical Abstract

As a auxiliary braking device in vehicle’s downhill process, parallel hydraulic retarder has strict requirements for its rapidity of response performance and accuracy of braking torque. The parallel hydraulic retarder uses high-pressure gas as the control medium, which pushes the oil into the working chamber through the high-speed on/off valve. Because the oil filling process of the chamber is an indirect process, the complicated gas–liquid movement during the oil filling period affects the accuracy and response of the braking process. In this paper, the mechanical characteristics of high-speed on/off valve had analyzed by computational fluid dynamics. The oil filling system’s characteristics has analyzed, which had verified by experimental data. Compared with the three dimensional method to directly analyze the response process of the oil charging and discharging system, it has the characteristics of simplicity and fast calculation.The modeling method used in this paper is mainly suitable for hydraulic system which uses air pressure and liquid as control medium. This integration model can obtain the characteristics of valve group more accurately and has certain novelty rather than Theoretical formula calculation. Then the influence of different control pressure and input speed on transient braking response has discussed and analyzed. The results has showed that the shortest opening response time is 1.49 s when the control pressure is 3.2 bar. With the decrease of the oil amount and speed, the oil-discharging response time increases gradually. When the speed is 1800 rpm and the liquid filling rate is 25 %, the oil discharge time reaches 5.48 s.

The main purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of external flow field circulation of hydraulic torque converter assembly in analysis. Compared with simply considering the internal flow field characteristics, it has influence on the internal flow field analysis, external characteristics and structural stress of hydraulic torque converter assembly. This paper models the flow path of the torque converter with different Schemes, the flow field pressures distribution on the impeller are analysed using computational fluid dynamics method (CFD). Scheme A adopts the traditional idea, which simply considering the influence of internal flow field on the performance. Scheme B contacts the external flow field especially including the auxiliary cavity, and comprehensively studies the influence of it on the performance. The results show that with the addition of an auxiliary chamber, the overall flow field pressure of the torque converter is lower than that without the auxiliary chamber. The external characteristics of the torque converter assembly were tested on experiment equipment, which has been verified that the CFD simulation results with the addition of the auxiliary chamber are closer to the experiment data, proving the accuracy of the method for the pressure simulation of flow field. On this basis, the stresses and deformations of the torque converter considering the auxiliary fluid chamber are compared and analysed in relation to the displacement limitations of the impellers. The results show that the maximum stress in the turbine is reduced by 57%–12% compared to the scheme A without considering the auxiliary fluid. In the case of special operating condition, the maximum stress was 137.06 MPa before considering the auxiliary fluid, while the maximum stress was 60.625 MPa after considering the auxiliary fluid, and the reduction is 57%. The effects of input speed, speed ratio and impeller structure on the stress and deformation were also analysed, and the results show that the impeller structure and input speed have a great influence on the stress and deformation.

Abstract Background Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a chronic inflammatory arthritis. Upregulation of microRNA (miR)-92b-3p is associated with enhanced osteoblastic differentiation. The current study sought to investigate the functional mechanism of miR-92b-3p in osteogenic differentiation of AS fibroblasts. Methods First, fibroblasts were isolated from AS and non-AS patients and cultured. Next, cell morphology was observed, cell proliferation was assessed and the vimentin expression pattern was determined. Alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity and levels of osteogenic markers RUNX2, OPN, OSX, and COL I were additionally measured, followed by determination of miR-92b-3p and TOB1 levels. The binding site of miR-92b-3p and TOB1 was predicted, and their target relationship was validated. Lastly, miR-92b-3p inhibitor, si-TOB1, and the BMP/Smad signaling pathway inhibitor LDN193189 were delivered into AS fibroblasts to evaluate the osteogenic differentiation of AS fibroblasts and the activation of the BMP/Smad pathway. Results miR-92b-3p was highly expressed in AS fibroblasts. AS fibroblasts showed enhanced osteogenic differentiation and proliferation, while inhibition of miR-92b-3p suppressed osteogenic differentiation and proliferation of AS fibroblasts. miR-92b-3p targeted TOB1, and TOB1 was poorly expressed in AS fibroblasts. The concurrent downregulation of TOB1 and inhibition of miR-92b-3p elevated the levels of RUNX2, OPN, OSX, and COL I and ALP activity and further enhanced the proliferation of AS fibroblasts. The BMP/Smad pathway was activated in AS fibroblasts. Silencing miR-92b-3p could inhibit the activation of the BMP/Smad pathway by upregulating TOB1. Inhibition of the BMP/Smad pathway reduced the number of calcified nodules and hindered the osteogenic differentiation and proliferation of AS fibroblasts. Conclusion Our findings highlighted that silencing miR-92b-3p inhibited the osteogenic differentiation and proliferation of AS fibroblasts by upregulation of TOB1 and inhibition of the BMP/Smad pathway. Graphical abstract

Increased pollution caused by socio-economic development has led to compound-contaminated high-hardness water pollution. In this study, laboratory-scale nanofiltration (NF) treatment of such water was investigated. Response-surface methodology was used to optimize the NF operating parameters, and a regression model with desalination rate and transmembrane pressure changes as response values was established. The NF membrane efficiencies in contaminant removal from groundwater and surface water with compound-contaminated high hardness and the membrane-fouling characteristics during long-term operation were investigated. The results show that the optimal operating parameters for the NF membrane in the removal of inorganic salts from groundwater are as follows: influent pH 8, influent pressure 1 MPa, and water yield 27.976%. The removal rates for groundwater total hardness, total alkalinity, total soluble solids, K+, Na+, Ca2+, Mg2+, , Cl−, , and were 99.4, 90.3, 84.7, 63.2, 56.8, 99.6, 95.2, 99.6, 68.3, 86.1, and 65.9%, respectively. Surface water contains more complex components; therefore, membrane fouling during surface water is more serious. The NF membrane was operated continuously for more than 35 days under the optimal operating conditions with no serious membrane fouling. HIGHLIGHTS Response-surface methodology was used to optimize the NF operating parameters.; NF membrane was operated continuously for more than 35 days under the optimal operating conditions with no serious membrane fouling.; The membrane fouling by hardness ion was analyzed by SEM-EDS.;

Halobenzoquinones are disinfection by-products with cytotoxicity, carcinogenicity, and genotoxicity. In this study, we investigated the removal of the HBQ 2,6-dichloro-1,4-benzoquinone (DCBQ) from water using advanced oxidation processes. The removal of DCBQ from water using UV, H2O2, and O3 advanced oxidation processes individually was not ideal with removal rates of 36.1% with a UV dose of 180 mJ/cm2, 32.0% with 2 mg/L H2O2, and 57.9% with 2 mg/L O3. Next, we investigated using the combined UV/H2O2/O3 advanced oxidation process to treat water containing DCBQ. A Box–Behnken design was used to optimize the parameters of the UV/H2O2/O3 process, which gave the following optimum DCBQ removal conditions: UV dose of 180 mJ/cm2, O3 concentration of 0.51 mg/L, and H2O2 concentration of 1.76 mg/L. The DCBQ removal rate under the optimum conditions was 94.3%. We also found that lower humic acid concentrations promoted DCBQ degradation, while higher humic acid concentrations inhibited DCBQ degradation. HIGHLIGHTS Box–Behnken design (BBD) was used to optimize the parameters of UV/H2O2/O3 process for the degradation of 2,6-dichloro-1,4-benzoquinone (DCBQ). A secondary model was developed to eliminate DCBQ to the maximum extent.; The combined UV/H2O2/O3 process proposed in this study can be used to control the by-products of halogenated benzoquinone disinfection in water plant.;

BackgroundMost patients with cancer experience psychological or physical distress, which can adversely affect their quality of life (QOL). Smartphone app interventions are increasingly being used to improve QOL and psychological outcomes in patients with cancer. However, there is insufficient evidence regarding the effect of this type of intervention, with conflicting results in the literature. ObjectiveIn this systematic review and meta-analysis, we investigated the effectiveness of mobile phone app interventions on QOL and psychological outcomes in adult patients with cancer, with a special focus on intervention duration, type of cancer, intervention theory, treatment strategy, and intervention delivery format. MethodsWe conducted a literature search of PubMed, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, Embase, Scopus, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and WanFang to identify studies involving apps that focused on cancer survivors and QOL or psychological symptoms published from inception to October 30, 2022. We selected only randomized controlled trials that met the inclusion criteria and performed systematic review and meta-analysis. The standardized mean difference (SMD) with a 95% CI was pooled when needed. Sensitivity and subgroup analyses were also conducted. ResultsIn total, 30 randomized controlled trials with a total of 5353 participants were included in this meta-analysis. Compared with routine care, app interventions might improve QOL (SMD=0.39, 95% CI 0.27-0.51; P

Dynamic stochastic resonance (DSR) has been proved to be able to enhance the shadow region of HSIs. However, DSR can only be used for the enhancement on the spatial or spectral dimensions respectively, which destroy the correlation and integrality of HSI. Therefore, in this paper, to maintain the 3D characteristic of HSI, the spatial and spectral enhanced HSI has been fused. Furthermore, to make full use of two-modal information of HSI, a multimodal convolutional neural net-work () has been proposed for classification. In both 2D spatial modal and 3D tensor information can be integrated to improve the classification. Firstly, the shadow areas of HSI could be enhanced by DSR from spatial and spectral dimensions to get spatial enhanced HIS and spectral enhanced HSI respectively. Secondly, the enhanced HIS can be obtained by fuzing and in different proportions. Finally, can be classified by Two scenes containing shadow areas of a real-world HSI have been used in the experiment to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The results have shown that the proposed method has a promising prospect in the classification of HSI with shadow.

The innate immune DNA sensing cGAS-STING signaling pathway has been widely recognized for inducing interferons (IFNs) and subsequent antiviral state. In addition to IFN, the cGAS-STING pathway also elicits other cell autonomous immunity events including autophagy and apoptosis. However, the downstream signaling events of this DNA sensing pathway in livestock have not been well defined. Here, we systematically analyzed the porcine STING (pSTING) induced IFN, autophagy and apoptosis, revealed the distinct dynamics of three STING downstream events, and established the IFN independent inductions of autophagy and apoptosis. Further, we investigated the regulation of autophagy on pSTING induced IFN and apoptosis. Following TBK1-IRF3-IFN activation, STING induced Atg5/Atg16L1 dependent autophagy through LIR motifs. In turn, the autophagy likely promoted the pSTING degradation, inhibited both IFN production and apoptosis, and thus restored the cell homeostasis. Therefore, this study sheds lights on the molecular mechanisms of innate immunity in pigs.

Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) has caused great damage to the global pig industry. Innate immunity plays a significant role in resisting viral infection; however, the exact role of innate immunity in the anti-PEDV response has not been fully elucidated. In this study, we observed that various porcine innate immune signaling adaptors are involved in anti-PEDV (AJ1102-like strain) activity in transfected Vero cells. Among these, TRIF and MAVS showed the strongest anti-PEDV activity. The endogenous TRIF, MAVS, and STING were selected for further examination of anti-PEDV activity. Agonist stimulation experiments showed that TRIF, MAVS, and STING signaling all have obvious anti-PEDV activity. The siRNA knockdown assay showed that TRIF, MAVS, and STING are also all involved in anti-PEDV response, and their remarkable effects on PEDV replication were confirmed in TRIF−/−, MAVS−/− and STING−/− Vero cells via the CRISPR approach. For further verification, the anti-PEDV activity of TRIF, MAVS, and STING could be reproduced in porcine IPEC-DQ cells treated with siRNAs. In summary, this study reveals that multiple pattern-recognition receptor (PRR) signaling pathways of porcine innate immunity play an important role in the anti-PEDV infection, providing new and useful antiviral knowledge for prevention and control of PEDV spreading.

Jinan is a city that typifies the water resource shortage in North China. This study selected nine indices to evaluate the regional water resources carrying capacity (WRCC), which is an important constraining factor in relation to socioeconomic development and the ecological environment. The AHP-CRITIC weighting method was applied to determine the index weighting, and WRCC dynamics during 2011–2016 were analysed and evaluated quantitatively using the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method. The results revealed the following. (1) During 2011–2016, the comprehensive score of the WRCC was

To improve the adsorption efficiency of layered double hydroxides (LDHs) for heavy metals, a novel sodium alginate (SA) intercalated MgAl-LDH (SA-LDH) was synthesized in this work. SA-LDH was characterized by XRD, FTIR, XPS and employed as adsorbent for Cd(II), Pb(II), Cu(II) elimination. Adsorbent dosage, initial pH and contact time, which are regarded as several key parameters, were optimized. The results showed that SA-LDH exhibited better adsorption performance compared with the pristine MgAl-LDH. The maximum adsorption capacities of SA-LDH for Cu(II), Pb(II) and Cd(II) reached 0.945, 1.176 and 0.850 mmol/g, respectively. The possible mechanisms were analyzed by XPS, XRD and FTIR. The results showed that Cd(II), Pb(II) and Cu(II) may be removed by SA-LDH via (i) bonding or complexation with Sur-OH or Sur-O- of SA-LDH, (ii) precipitation of metal hydroxides or carbonates, (iii) isomorphic substitution, and (iv) chelation with −COO− in the interlayers. This work provides an effective method for the development of LDH-based adsorbent and the treatment of wastewater containing heavy metals.

In a harsh environment, function aggregation of air–ground integrated network service function chaining (SFC) deployment can easily cause network load imbalance, which affects the network security and reliability. In this study, a task-similarity-based virtual network function (VNF) aggregation scheme was proposed. It considered air–ground network resource consumption and load balance before SFC mapping. A model for selecting VNFs to be aggregated based on task similarity was built. The tasks were classified based on their similarity. Furthermore, the VNFs to be aggregated were selected within the class under the constraints of the underlying physical resources. Load balancing was achieved by adjusting the similarity threshold. Moreover, an SFC mapping selection scheme based on network resource awareness was used to obtain the most suitable physical nodes for single-chain and multi-chain mapping according to various attributes of physical network nodes. The simulation results indicated that the proposed scheme with a better load balance design outperformed existing works on VNF aggregation. We also demonstrated that the task-similarity-based scheme was resource-consumption efficient and effective.

The innate immune system is the first line of host defense sensing viral infection. Manganese (Mn) has recently been found to be involved in the activation of the innate immune DNA-sensing cGAS-STING pathway and subsequent anti-DNA virus function. However, it is still unclear whether Mn2+ mediates host defense against RNA viruses. In this study, we demonstrate that Mn2+ exhibited antiviral effects against various animal and human viruses, including RNA viruses such as PRRSVs and VSV, as well as DNA viruses such as HSV1, in a dose-dependent manner. Moreover, cGAS and STING were both investigated in the Mn2+ mediated antiviral roles using the knockout cells made by the CRISPR-Cas9 approach. Unexpectedly, the results revealed that neither cGAS knockout nor STING knockout had any effect on Mn2+-mediated antiviral functions. Nevertheless, we verified that Mn2+ promoted the activation of the cGAS-STING signaling pathway. These findings suggest that Mn2+ has broad-spectrum antiviral activities in a cGAS-STING pathway independent manner. This study also provides significant insights into redundant mechanisms participating in the Mn2+ antiviral functions, and also indicates a new target for Mn2+ antiviral therapeutics.

Building change detection (BCD) is crucial for urban construction and planning. The powerful discriminative ability of deep convolutions in deep learning-based BCD methods has considerably increased the accuracy and efficiency. However, dense and continuously distributed buildings contain a wide range of multi-scale features, which render current deep learning methods incapable of discriminating and incorporating multiple features effectively. In this work, we propose a Siamese cross-attention discrimination network (SCADNet) to identify complex information in bitemporal images and improve the change detection accuracy. Specifically, we first use the Siamese cross-attention (SCA) module to learn unchanged and changed feature information, combining multi-head cross-attention to improve the global validity of high-level semantic information. Second, we adapt a multi-scale feature fusion (MFF) module to integrate embedded tokens with context-rich channel transformer outputs. Then, upsampling is performed to fuse the extracted multi-scale information content to recover the original image information to the maximum extent. For information content with a large difference in contextual semantics, we perform filtering using a differential context discrimination (DCD) module, which can help the network to avoid pseudo-change occurrences. The experimental results show that the present SCADNet is able to achieve a significant change detection performance in terms of three public BCD datasets (LEVIR-CD, SYSU-CD, and WHU-CD). For these three datasets, we obtain F1 scores of 90.32%, 81.79%, and 88.62%, as well as OA values of 97.98%, 91.23%, and 98.88%, respectively.

Abstract Background Trisomy 8 mosaicism has a wide phenotypic variability, ranging from mild dysmorphic features to severe malformations. This report concluded a female pregnant woman with trisomy 8 mosaicism, and carefully cytogenetic diagnoses were performed to give her prenatal diagnostic information. This report also provides more knowledge about trisomy 8 mosaicism and the prenatal diagnostic for clinicians. Case presentation In this present study, we reported one case of pregnancy woman with trisomy 8 mosaicism. Noninvasive prenatal testing prompted an abnormal Z-score, but further three dimension color ultrasound result suggested a single live fetus with no abnormality. The phenotypic of the pregnant woman was normal. Based on our results, there were no abnormal initial myeloid cells (

Fusarium head blight (FHB) caused by Fusarium graminearum is a significant disease among cereal crops. In F. graminearum, biosynthesis of leucine, which is a branched chain amino acid, is achieved by converting α-isopropylmalate to β-isopropylmalate catalyzed by isopropylmalate isomerase encoded by LEU1. Considering the potential for targeting this pathway by fungicides, we characterized the gene FgLEU1 (FGSG-09589) in the Fusarium graminearum genome using bioinformatics methods. For functional characterization, we constructed a deletion mutant of FgLEU1 (ΔLEU1) through homologous recombination. Compared with the wild-type strain PH-1, ΔLEU1 showed slower colony growth and fewer aerial mycelia. Leucine addition was needed to ensure proper mutant growth. Further, ΔLEU1 showed decreased conidial production and germination rates, and could not produce ascospores. Moreover, ΔLEU1 showed complete loss of pathogenicity and reduced ability to produce deoxynivalenol (DON) and aurofusarin. Upstream and downstream genes of FgLEU1 were significantly upregulated in ΔLEU1. Contrary to previous reports, the deletion mutant was more resistant to osmotic stress and cell wall-damaging agents than the wild-type. Taken together, FgLEU1 plays a crucial role in leucine synthesis, aerial mycelial growth, sexual and asexual reproduction, pathogenicity, virulence, and pigmentation in Fusarium graminearum, indicating its potential as a target for novel antifungal agents.

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) has a strict cell tropism. In addition to the primary alveolar macrophages, PRRSV is strictly cytotropic to African green monkey kidney cells, such as MARC-145 cells; however, MARC-145 cells are not infected by most NADC30-like and NADC34-like PRRSV strains. The essential scavenger receptor CD163 has been proved to mediate productive infection of PRRSV in various non-permissive cell lines. In this study, we systematically tested the porcine CD163 stably expressing 3D4/21 cells for infections with various PRRSV strains. The results showed that the porcine CD163-expressing macrophages support the infections of PRRSV2 of lineages 1, 5, and 8, as evidenced by Western blotting, immunofluorescence assay, quantitative PCR, and virus titration assay. Considering the current prevalence of NADC30-like and NADC34-like PRRSV2 of lineage 1 in China, the CD163-expressing macrophages are very useful for PRRSV research and disease management.

The tissue equivalent proportional counter (TEPC) is often used in the measurement of ionizing radiation. However, there are many factors that can cause the micro-dose spectrum’s distortion and affect the accuracy of the measurement. In the TEPC design process, several factors can be analyzed through simulation methods. The simulation capabilities of the TEPC physical process are established and verified in this paper. The wall material, tissue equivalent gas, and electrode are selected as the main objects, and the corresponding design choices are given. The wall material has a great impact on the spectrum, and y¯F and y¯D show that A-150 plastic is closer to the human tissue in the TEPC physical process simulation. Both the two tissue equivalent gases have good simulation accuracy. After further analysis, propane-based equivalent gas is the better choice. Among the three electrode sizes, the size of 0.006 35 cm is the most suitable one for TEPC. The analysis results and analysis methods can provide references for the important elements design of TEPC.

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) causes PRRS and is known to effectively suppress host innate immunity. The current strategies for controlling PRRSV are limited and complete understanding of anti-PRRSV innate immunity is needed. Here, we utilized nine porcine innate immune signaling adaptors which represent all currently known innate immune receptor signaling pathways for screening of anti-PRRSV activity. The analysis of PRRSV N gene transcription and protein expression both suggested that the multiple ectopic adaptors exhibited varying degrees of anti-PRRSV activities, with TRIF and MAVS most effective. To better quantify the PRRSV replication, the GFP signal of PRRSV from reverse genetics were measured by flow cytometry and similarly varying anti-PRRSV activities by different signaling adaptors were observed. Based on the screening data, and considering the importance of viral nucleic acid in innate immune response, endogenous TRIF, MAVS and STING were selected for further examination of anti-PRRSV activity. Agonist stimulation assay showed that MAVS and STING signaling possessed significant anti-PRRSV activities, whereas siRNA knockdown assay showed that TRIF, MAVS and STING are all involved in anti-PRRSV activity, with TLR3-TRIF displaying discrepancy in anti-PRRSV infection. Nevertheless, our work suggests that multiple pattern recognition receptor (PRR) signaling pathways are involved in anti-PRRSV innate immunity, which may have implications for the development of future antiviral strategies.

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) modulates host innate immunity which plays a key role against PRRSV infection. As a RNA virus, PRRSV is mainly sensed by innate immune RNA receptors, whereas the role of innate immune DNA sensors in the PRRSV infection has not been elucidated. Here, we investigated the roles of DNA sensing cGAS-STING pathway in both PRRSV infected Marc-145 cells and porcine macrophages. The results show that in Marc-145 cells, the stable expression of STING with or without stimulations exhibited anti-PRRSV activity, and STING knockout heightened PRRSV infection. In CD163-3D4/21 porcine macrophages, either expression of STING or stimulation of cGAS-STING signaling obviously suppressed PRRSV infection, whereas in STING knockdown macrophages, the PRRSV infection was upregulated. Our results clearly demonstrate that the host cGAS-STING signal exerts an important antiviral role in PRRSV infection.

The development of electric bus has been an effective method of solving the energy crisis and environmental pollution caused by automotives. Present electric buses have fixed ratio gearboxes, however, the one-speed gearboxes cannot meet the requirements of torque and driving range simultaneously. Electric buses also have substantial requirements from batteries and driving motors. A driving system consisting of driving motor and multi-speed automated manual transmission has a simple structure, is cost-effective and easy to match. Therefore, this study focuses on the dedicated automated manual transmission structure of an electric bus without using a clutch and a synchronizer. The research also proposes the shift control strategy by actively synchronising the driving motor and by clearing the control phase division and the shift quality evaluation index. This index further studies the method of determining the range of optimal speed difference, the control strategy of the driving motor and other key techniques. The index also forms a practical shift integrated control strategy. In addition, prototype vehicle testing verifies that the strategy can shorten torque interruption time. Moreover, the absolute value of shift impact is far less than the standard value of 10 m/s 3 . Finally, the success rate of the shift reaches 100%.

Drivers usually show different driving styles in a transportation system. In analyzing the explicit linkage between driving style and driver’s dynamic demand, driving style can be classified into sports, moderate, and economical types. The sum of current driving resistance and the absolute value of its change rate is chosen as a measurement of driver’s dynamic demand. The influence of subjective and objective factors on driver’s dynamic demand has been analyzed. Single-exponential smoothing is adopted to predict the overall and staged driving style based on historical driver’s dynamic demand data. The most prominent advantage of the proposed prediction method is that there is no need to store significant historical data while considering the importance of each period data. The vehicle test scheme of driving style recognition method is designed including the test vehicle and drivers’ selection, driving route and task design. Test results show that driving style can be identified accurately with no additional sensors using the proposed method, and it can be used to quantitatively analyze the influence of different factors on driving style through statistical analysis. According to recognition results, automatic transmission shift point can be corrected to improve the adaptability of gearshift strategy for different driving styles.

The ultrafast dynamic evolution of an atomic system under medium-strength laser fields is studied by performing transient absorption measurement. An analytical model developed from perturbation theory with a modified transition dipole moment is presented to explain the spectral features of the multilevel system. By fitting the measured absorption spectra to the model, the system’s dynamic evolution is quantified by different amplitude and phase modulation factors in the pump-probe and probe-pump scenarios. This study provides a way to understand laser-matter interaction in the transition area between the strong-field and weak-field regimes.

Field localization by nanostructures illuminated with laser pulses of well-defined waveform enables spatio-temporal tailoring of the near-fields for sub-cycle control of electron dynamics at the nanoscale. Here, we apply intense linearly-polarized two-color laser pulses for all-optical control of the highest energy electron emission from SiO _2 nanoparticles. For the size regime where light propagation effects become important, we demonstrate the possibility to control the preferential emission angle of a considerable fraction of the fastest electrons by varying the relative phase of the two-color field. Trajectory based semi-classical simulations show that for the investigated nanoparticle size range the directional steering can be attributed to the two-color effect on the electron trajectories, while the accompanied modification of the spatial distribution of the ionization rate on the nanoparticle surface has only a minor effect.

Figla (factor in the germ line, alpha), a female germ cell-specific transcription factor, had been shown to activate genetic hierarchies in oocytes. The ectopic expression of Figla was known to repress spermatogenesis-associated genes in male mice. However, the potential role of Figla in other vertebrates remains elusive. The present work was aimed to identify and characterize the functional relevance of Figla in the ovarian development of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus). Tissue distribution and ontogeny analysis revealed that tilapia Figla gene was dominantly expressed in the ovary from 30 days after hatching. Immunohistochemistry analysis also demonstrated that Figla was expressed in the cytoplasm of early primary oocytes. Intriguingly, over-expression of Figla in XY fish resulted in the disruption of spermatogenesis along with the depletion of meiotic spermatocytes and spermatids in testis. Dramatic decline of sycp3 (synaptonemal complex protein 3) and prm (protamine) expression indicates that meiotic spermatocytes and mature sperm production are impaired. Even though Sertoli cell (dmrt1) and Leydig cell (star and cyp17a1) marker genes remained unaffected, hsd3b1 expression and 11-KT production were enhanced in Figla-transgene testis. Taken together, our data suggest that fish Figla might play an essential role in the ovarian development by antagonizing spermatogenesis.