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Mutations in the leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) gene are the most frequent cause of autosomal dominant Parkinson's disease (PD), producing psychiatric and motor symptoms. We conducted this study to explore whether microglial dopaminergic (DAergic) fiber refinement and synaptic pruning are involved in the abnormal behavioral phenotypes of carriers of the LRRK2 G2019S mutation, by employing young and middle-aged PD model mice. The results revealed a characteristic late-onset hyperactivity and a progressive decline in the motor coordination of the LRRK2 G2019S mutation mice. LRRK2 G2019S mutation-induced aberrant microglial morphogenesis, with more branches and junctions per cell, resulted in excessive microglial refinement of dopaminergic (DAergic) fibers. Moreover, aberrant synaptic pruning distinctly impacted the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and dorsal striatum (DS), with significantly higher spine density in the PFC but the opposite effects in the DS region. Furthermore, LRRK2 G2019S mutation remodeled the inflammatory transcription landscape of microglia, rendering certain cerebral areas highly susceptible to microglial immune response. These findings indicate that LRRK2 G2019S mutation induces the production of inflammatory cytokines and mediates abnormal microglial morphogenesis and activity, resulting in abnormal phagocytosis, synaptic pruning and loss of DAergic fibers during aging, and, eventually, PD-related behavioral abnormalities.

Background Sleep disorder-associated cognitive impairments are often accompanied by impaired synaptic plasticity. In the pathological process of sleep deprivation, microglia, as an important innate immune cell in central nervous system, are involved and mediate the synaptic pruning, in which the CX3C-chemokine receptor 1 receptor (CX3CR1) plays an indispensable role. In this study, the potential role of CX3CR1 in modulating the cognition decline during sleep deprivation was evaluated in terms of microglial neuroinflammation and synaptic pruning. Methods Middle-aged wild type C57BL/6 mice (WT) (13 months) and age-matched CX3CR1 -/- mice were either subjected to sleep deprivation (SD) or allowed normal sleep (S) for 8 h to mimic the pathophysiological changes of middle-aged people after staying up all night in real life. The hippocampus-dependent cognition was assessed by fear conditioning test. Mice brains were extracted for neuroinflammation and synaptic pruning studies. Data were analyzed by Student’s t-test and one-way analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA). Results The CX3CR1 deficiency mice differed from WT mice in many measures. CX3CR1 deficiency prevented SD-induced cognitive impairments, in which the levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and phosphorylated cAMP-responsive element binding protein (p-CREB) were markedly increased in the hippocampus. Compared with the CX3CR1 -/- -S group, the CX3CR1 -/- -SD mice reported a markedly decreased microglial density in the dentate gyrus, notably-decreased levels of cellular oncogene fos (c-fos), and pro-inflammatory cytokines and increased levels of anti-inflammatory cytokines in the hippocampus, and a significant increase in the density of spines of the dentate gyrus area. Furthermore, the CX3CR1 -/- -SD group also showed a decreasing expression of microglial phagocytosis-related factors. Conclusion These findings suggest that CX3CR1 deficiency leads to different cerebral behaviors and responses to sleep deprivation. CX3CR1 deletion can alleviate the sleep deprivation-induced cognitive impairment. The inflammation-attenuating activity and the related modification of synaptic pruning are possible mechanism candidates, which indicate CX3CR1 as a candidate therapeutic target for the prevention of the sleep loss-induced cognitive impairments.

The vibration characteristics of the tendon-based parallel robot for processing are presented. Firstly, the free vibration equations of the robot on the stable position and orientation were modeled, and secondly the natural frequencies were deduced from the transformation of principal coordinates into modal coordinates. Next, cutting-force model was introduced and the solutions of the forced vibration equations were obtained from the Runge-Kutta method, where the minimum natural frequency was taken as basis of the time step that was important for computation convergence. Lastly, the algorithm was verified by simulations, also including solution transformation of time domain into frequency domain by Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT). The vibration properties could be manifested clearly by the solutions in frequency domain. The results show that the eccentricity and the mass of the moving platform are the important factors to make system instable in certain excitation frequency.

Road-deposited sediment (RDS) is an important environmental medium for impacting the characteristics of pollutants in stormwater runoff; it is of critical importance to investigate the water quality of urban environments. The paper develops a rainfall simulator as an important research tool to ensure homogeneity and reduce the large number of variables that are usually inherent to urban water quality research. The rainfall simulator was used to experiment runoff samples from typical residential and traffic areas in the Zhenjiang. The data show that land use is one of the major factors contributing to the difference in the pollutants concentration in the RDS. The maximum mean EMC for TN, TDN, TP, and TDP at residential area was 5.52, 3.07, 1.65, and 0.36 mg/L, respectively. The intense traffic area displayed the highest metal concentrations. Concentrations of runoff pollutants varied greatly with land use and storm characteristics. The correlation of pollutant concentrations with runoff times was another predominant phenomenon. Peaks in pollutants concentration occurred at 1 and 10 min during the whole storm event. A concentration peak that correlates with a peak in runoff flowrate correlates with rainfall intensity. The pollutant loadings (kilograms per hectare) in the Zhenjiang were 11.39 and 55.28 for COD, 8.42 and 57.48 for SS, 0.11 and 0.88 for TN, 0.02 and 0.14 for TP, 0.02 and 0.09 for Zn, and 0.01 and 0.04 for Pb. The higher rainfall contribute to the higher pollutant loading at the residential and intense traffic areas, as a result of the pollutant loadings direct dependence on rainfall intensity. The results confirmed that the rainfall simulator is a reliable tool for urban water quality research and can be used to simulate pollutant wash-off. These findings provide invaluable information for the development of appropriate management strategies to decrease nonpoint source contamination loading to the water environment in urban areas.

Moisture content is an important indicator for crop water stress condition, timely and effective monitoring crop water content is of great significance for evaluate crop water deficit balance and guide agriculture irrigation. In order to improve the saturated problems of different forms of typical NDWI (Normalized Different Water Index), we tried to introduce EVI (Enhanced Vegetation Index) to build new vegetation water indices (NDWI#) to estimate crop water content. Firstly, PROSAIL model was used to study the saturation sensitivity of NDWI, and NDWI# to canopy water content and LAI (Leaf Area Index). Then, the estimated model and verified model were estimated using the spectral data and moisture data in the field. The result showed that the new indices have significant relationships with canopy water content. In particular, by implementing modified standardized for NDWI1450, NDWI1940, NDWI2500. The result indicated that newly developed indices with visible-infrared and shortwave infrared spectral feature may have greater advantage for estimation winter canopy water content.

Recent studies suggest that high-salt diet is associated with cognitive decline in human and mouse. The fact that genetic factors account for less than 50% cases of sporadic Alzheimer’s disease (AD) highlights the important contribution of environmental factors, such as high-salt diet, in AD pathogenesis. However, whether and how high-salt diet fits the “amyloid cascade” hypothesis remains unexplored. Here, we show sodium chloride (NaCl) could increase Aβ levels in the medium of HEK293 cells overexpressing amyloid precursor protein (APP) or C99 fragment. NaCl treatment dose not affect APP level, gamma secretase level or activity. Instead, NaCl treatment suppresses the capacity of cells to clear Aβ and reduces Apolipoprotein E (ApoE) level. Finally, NaCl treated THP-1 or BV2 cells are inefficient in clearing Aβ when co-cultured with rat primary neurons. Our study suggests that high-salt diet may increase AD risk by directly modulating Aβ levels.

Moisture content is an important index of crop water stress condition, timely and effective monitoring of crop water content is of great significance for evaluating crop water deficit balance and guiding agriculture irrigation. The present paper was trying to build a new crop water index for winter wheat vegetation water content based on NIR-Red spectral space. Firstly, canopy spectrums of winter wheat with narrow-band were resampled according to relative spectral response function of HJ-CCD and ZY-3. Then, a new index (PWI) was set up to estimate vegetation water content of winter wheat by improveing PDI (perpendicular drought index) and PVI (perpendicular vegetation index) based on NIR-Red spectral feature space. The results showed that the relationship between PWI and VWC (vegetation water content) was stable based on simulation of wide-band multispectral data HJ-CCD and ZY-3 with R2 being 0.684 and 0.683, respectively. And then VWC was estimated by using PWI with the R2 and RMSE being 0.764 and 0.764, 3.837% and 3.840%, respectively. The results indicated that PWI has certain feasibility to estimate crop water content. At the same time, it provides a new method for monitoring crop water content using remote sensing data HJ-CCD and ZY-3.

Churg-Strauss syndrome (CSS) is a rare autoimmune vasculitis of unknown etiology that involves small- and medium-sized blood vessels. Its onset is thought to be associated with adult-onset asthma, and vasculitis typically involves vessels in the lungs. However, due to increased blood and tissue eosinophilia, vasculitis may result in the involvement multiple systems of (neurological, skin, etc.). We report a case of CSS with manifestations that included skin purpura and severe peripheral nerve degeneration in a 56-year-old woman with a recent history of asthma. After the treatment with methylprednisolone and standard immunosuppressive therapy, her rashes resolved, there were no acute asthma attacks, and the numbness in her lower limbs improved.

The thermal denaturation of beta-lactoglobulin of milk was investigated by using DSC, circular dichroism spectra, and fluorescence spectra systematically. And its corresponding immunogenicity was tested with ELISA experiments. In addition, bioinformatics methods were also used to explain the spectral characteristics and its corresponding immunogenic change, analyze the conformational changes of the protein during thermal denaturation, and discuss the relationship between conformational change of beta-lactoglobulin caused by heat and immunogenic change. Results from this study should be useful to the establishment of a spectral method examining the extent of thermal denaturation of the food allergen, and be helpful to the understanding of the mechanism of immunogenic change of food allergen treated by heat.

Urban surface pollutants is now recognized as a major source of urban non-point pollution source. In order to the effective control urban stormwater runoff, it is key wash-off process of pollutants to scientifically calculate surface pollutants loads. The artificial rainfall experiment was conducted to simulate road surface pollutant wash-off process under nature rainfall condition from representative land uses types in Zhenjiang. The results show that tthe wash-off intensity is the main factor affecting the wash-off process, CF is depends on rainfall intensity, along with the rainfall intensity change of the linear growth stage, the stable change stage of the washed fine particles and the rapid increase stage of the washed big particles. The parameter of wash-off capacity is introduced to modify the pollutant wash-off model. Through the compared with calculated and measured values of pollutants, the parameter calibration of wash-off equation is correct, the computed result is reasonable, which provides the scientific basis for non-point source pollution control and management in China.

This review focused on the diagnosis and clinical features of multiple sclerosis (MS) in China. We have identified the published researching information from 1976 to 2008 in China. The key issues related to the diagnosis and clinical features of MS in China were summarized. The first patient with MS in China was reported in 1926 from Xiehe hospital. Case reports on MS have been increasing during recent decades. Almost all the patients with MS were confirmed by the McDonald criteria (1977) before 1984. After the year of 1992, even to this day, the Poser criteria were widely used in China. Although the new diagnostic criteria, McDonald criteria (2001), were presented in 2001, only few papers published in Chinese were reported. The most frequent initial symptoms or signs of the patients with MS were optic nerve, motor weakness and sensory symptoms. The most frequent location of MS lesions over the course was found to be the spinal cord, followed by the cerebrum and optic nerves. Almost all patients had been treated with corticosteroids. This review supported previous observations in Chinese patients with MS. However, further studies are needed to understand epidemiologic features of MS in China.