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Abstract This study evaluated the therapeutic efficacy and underlying mechanisms of crisaborole combined with vitamin D in the treatment of allergic contact dermatitis. While crisaborole, a phosphodiesterase 4 inhibitor, and vitamin D analogs are commonly used in the treatment of atopic dermatitis, their combined therapeutic potential in allergic contact dermatitis (ACD) remains unexplored. Given their anti-inflammatory properties, we hypothesized that the combination of crisaborole and vitamin D could offer superior efficacy in mitigating the symptoms and underlying mechanisms of allergic contact dermatitis. In vitro, HaCaT cells stimulated with tumor necrosis factor-α and interferon-γ were treated with a combination of crisaborole and vitamin D, followed by cytokine expression analysis. In vivo, male C57BL/6 mice were divided into five groups and treated accordingly: blank control, dinitrochlorobenzene-induced model, crisaborole alone, vitamin D alone, and a combination of crisaborole and vitamin D. On day 14, dorsal skin and ear thickness were measured, followed by comprehensive pathological evaluations. In vivo and in vitro experiments showed that the expression levels of inflammatory factors were significantly lower in the DNCB + VD + Cri group than in the DNCB group. Histological analyses revealed that, compared with the DNCB group, the combined treatment group significantly reduced epidermal hyperkeratosis, improved epidermal transdermal water loss, decreased dermatitis scores, and diminished mast cell infiltration. Moreover, it lowered the expression levels of IL-6, IL-4, TNF-α, iNOS, IL-17, CC chemokine ligand 2 (CCL2), and CC chemokine receptor 2 (CCR2). CCL2 recognizes CCR2 and stimulates inflammatory cells, enhancing the inflammatory response. Increased CCL2 expression correlates with heightened inflammation and dendritic cell infiltration in ACD, while downregulation of CCL2 attenuates inflammation. Thus, the combined use of crisaborole and vitamin D demonstrates superior therapeutic efficacy over monotherapy in a mouse model of ACD. The combination of vitamin D and crisaborole significantly reduces inflammation and epidermal hyperkeratosis in a mouse model of allergic contact dermatitis, demonstrating superior therapeutic efficacy compared to either treatment alone. This suggests that the combined therapy could be a promising approach for the prevention and treatment of allergic contact dermatitis.

Abstract Teacher enthusiasm is receiving remarkable scholarly attention in L2 education, and its effect on students’ language learning outcomes has been extensively investigated. Nevertheless, exploring the antecedents of language teacher enthusiasm has received scant attention in foreign language education, particularly within the Chinese context. Thus, informed by the principles of positive psychology, the present study investigated the extent to which English as a foreign (EFL) teachers’ enthusiasm can be predicted by their work engagement and foreign language teaching enjoyment (FLTE) in the context of China. The study involved three online questionnaires completed by 576 EFL teachers in China. The results of structural equation modeling revealed that teacher work engagement and FLTE were strong predictors of Chinese EFL teachers’ enthusiasm. In addition, EFL teachers’ FLTE was a better predictor of their enthusiasm than their work engagement. The findings highlighted the importance of applying positive psychology in foreign language education. Finally, the paper concludes with avenues for future research.

Objective: To construct a structural risk prediction model for visceral pleural invasion in early lung adenocarcinoma based on computed tomography (CT) features. Methods: 170 patients with early lung adenocarcinoma treated surgically in our hospital were retrospectively selected between January 2016 and December 2022 and grouped according into invasion (84 cases) and non-invasion (86 cases) groups. Independent risk factors related to CT imaging features of visceral pleural invasion in early lung adenocarcinoma were evaluated using univariate and multivariate factor methods. The effectiveness of the CT imaging feature prediction model for visceral pleural invasion in early subpleural lung adenocarcinoma was analyzed. Results: Univariate analysis showed that the proportion and maximum diameter of solid components, bridging sign, vascular bundle sign, and relationship between the lesion and pleura may be related to visceral pleural invasion in patients with early subpleural lung adenocarcinoma. Multivariate analysis showed that the bridging sign, vascular bundle sign, and type II/III relationship between the lesion and pleura were independent risk factors for visceral pleural invasion in early subpleural lung adenocarcinoma. The best cutoff values for predicting visceral pleural invasion in early subpleural lung adenocarcinoma using the bridge sign, vascular bundle sign, adjacent relationship between the lesion and pleura, and logistic model prediction probability were 0.50, 0.50, 0.50, and 56.25%, respectively. The Jordan index for each of these was 24.00%, 23.95%, 48.70%, and 55.04%, respectively. Conclusion: Based on the bridge sign, vascular cluster sign, and the relationship between tumor and pleural adjacency, the CT imaging feature model can be used to identify high-risk groups for visceral pleural invasion in early lung adenocarcinoma.

Abstract Background HBV infection can result in severe liver diseases and is one of the primary causes of liver cell carcinoma-related mortality. Liuwei Wuling tablet (LWWL) is a traditional Chinese medicine formula, with a protecting liver and decreasing enzyme activity, usually used to treat chronic hepatitis B with NAs in clinic. However, its main active ingredients and mechanism of action have not been fully investigated. Hence, we aimed to screen the active ingredient and effective ingredient combinations from Liuwei Wuling tablet to explore the anti-herpatitis B virus activity and mechanism. Methods Analysis and screening of effective antiviral components in LWWL by network pharmacology, luteolin (Lut) may be a compound with significant antiviral activity. The mechanism of antiviral action of Lut was also found by real-time PCR detection and western blotting. Meanwhile, we established a co-culture model to investigate the antiviral mechanism of Schisandrin C (SC), one of the main active components of Schisandra chinensis fructus (the sovereign drug of LWWL). Next, HBV-infected mice were established by tail vein injection of pAAV-HBV1.2 plasmid and administered continuously for 20 days. And their antiviral capacity was evaluated by checking serum levels of HBsAg, HBeAg, levels of HBV DNA, and liver levels of HBcAg. Results In this study, we conducted network pharmacology analysis on LWWL, and through in vitro experimental validation and data analysis, we found that luteolin (Lut) possessed obviously anti-HBV activity, inhibiting HBV replication by downregulating hepatocyte nuclear factor 4α (HNF4α) via the ERK pathway. Additionally, we established a co-culture system and proved that SC promoted activation of cGAS-STINIG pathway and IFN-β production in THP-1 cells to inhibit HBV replication in HepG2.2.15 cells. Moreover, we found the combination of SC and Lut shows a greater effect in inhibiting HBV compared to SC or Lut alone in HBV-infected mice. Conclusion Taken together, our study suggests that combination of SC and Lut may be potential candidate drug for the prevention and treatment of chronic hepatitis B.

Objective: Drug-induced liver injury (DILI), a type of acute inflammation, has sparked significant concern owing to its unpredictability and severity. Psoraleae Fructus (PF), an edible Chinese herb widely used in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), causes liver injury. Therefore, the elucidation of the mechanism underlying PF-induced liver injury and the search for more effective means of detoxification using herbal compatibility has become an urgent issue. This study evaluated the hepatoprotective effects of Paeoniae Radix Alba (PRA), a hepatoprotective Chinese medicine, on PF-induced liver injury and explored the underlying mechanisms. Methods: A rat model of lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced immune stress was established to evaluate the hepatotoxicity of PF and the detoxifying effect of PRA. Subsequently, inflammatory pathways were identified using network pharmacology. Finally, the molecular mechanism by which PRA alleviates PF-induced liver injury was validated using an inflammasome activation model in bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMDMs). Results: In vivo, hepatocytes in rats treated with LPS + PF exhibited massive inflammatory infiltration and apoptosis, and the expression of liver injury indicators and inflammatory factors was significantly upregulated, which was reversed by PRA pretreatment. Network pharmacology showed that PRA alleviated PF-induced liver injury and was associated with the NOD-like receptor signaling pathway. Moreover, PF directly induced inflammasome activation in LPS-primed BMDMs which in turn induced caspase-1 activation and the secretion of downstream effector cytokines such as IL-1β. PRA pretreatment inhibited PF-induced activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome by mitigating the accumulation of mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (mtROS). Conclusions: The present study demonstrates that PRA alleviated PF induced-liver injury by inhibiting NLRP3 inflammasome activation. The results of this study are expected to inform the prevention and control of PF-induced hepatotoxicity in clinical practice.

Preimplantation genetic testing for monogenic diseases (PGT-M) can be used to select embryos that do not develop disease phenotypes or carry disease-causing genes for implantation into the mother’s uterus, to block disease transmission to the offspring, and to increase the birth rate of healthy newborns. However, the traditional PGT-M technique has some limitations, such as its time consumption, experimental procedural complexity, and the need for a complete family or reference embryo to construct the haplotype. In this study, proband-independent haplotyping based on NGS-based long-read sequencing (Phbol-seq) was used to effectively construct haplotypes. By targeting the mutation sites of single gene disease point mutations and small fragment deletion carriers, embryos carrying parental disease-causing mutations were successfully identified by linkage analysis. The efficiency of embryo resolution was then verified by classical Sanger sequencing, and it was confirmed that the construction of haplotype and SNP linkage analysis by Phbol-seq could accurately and effectively detect whether embryos carried parental pathogenic mutations. After the embryos confirmed to be nonpathogenic by Phbol-seq-based PGT-M and confirmed to have normal copy number variation by Phbol-seq-based PGT-A were transplanted into the uterus, gene detection in amniotic fluid of the implanted embryos was performed, and the results confirmed that Phbol-seq technology could accurately distinguish normal genotype embryos from genetically modified carrier embryos. Our results suggest that Phbol-seq is an effective strategy for accurately locating mutation sites and accurately distinguishing between embryos that inherit disease-causing genes and normal embryos that do not. This is critical for Phbol-seq-based PGT-M and could help more single-gene disease carriers with incomplete families, de novo mutations or suspected germline mosaicism to have healthy babies with normal phenotypes. It also helps to reduce the transmission of monogenic genetic diseases in the population.

As a famous probiotic, Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus HN001 is widely added to probiotic products. Different L. rhamnosus strains have different probiotic effects, and the active HN001 strain is the key to exerting probiotic effects, so it is of great practical significance for realising the detection of L. rhamnosus HN001 at the strain level in probiotic products. In this study, strain-specific primer pairs and probes were designed. A combined treatment of sodium deoxycholate (SD) and propidium monoazide (PMA) inhibited the amplification of dead bacterial DNA, establishing a SD-PMA-ddPCR system and conditions for detecting live L. rhamnosus HN001 in probiotic powders. Specificity was confirmed using type strains and commercial strains. Sensitivity tests with spiked samples showed a detection limit of 10⁵ CFU/g and a linear quantification range of 1.42 × 10⁵–1.42 × 10⁹ CFU/g. Actual sample testing demonstrated the method’s efficiency in quantifying HN001 in compound probiotic products. This method offers a reliable tool for the rapid and precise quantification of viable L. rhamnosus HN001, crucial for the quality monitoring of probiotic products.

Introduction: Metal corrosion detection is important for protecting lives and property. X-ray inspection systems are widely used because of their good penetrability and visual presentation capability. They can visually display both external and internal corrosion defects. However, existing X-ray-based defect detection methods cannot present and estimate the dense corrosion depths. To solve this problem, we propose a dense metal corrosion depth estimation method based on image segmentation and inpainting.Methods: The proposed method employs an image segmentation module to segment metal corrosion defects and an image inpainting module to remove these segmented defects. It then calculates the pixel-level dense corrosion depths using the X-ray images before and after inpainting. Moreover, to address the difficulty of acquiring training images with ground-truth dense corrosion depth annotations, we propose a virtual data generation method for creating virtual corroded metal X-ray images and their corresponding ground-truth annotations.Results: Experiments on both virtual and real datasets show that the proposed method successfully achieves accurate dense metal corrosion depth estimation.Discussion: In conclusion, the proposed virtual data generation method can provide effective and sufficient training samples, and the proposed dense metal corrosion depth estimation framework can produce accurate dense corrosion depths.

It was necessary to improve the storage quality and commodity quality of Z. jujube ‘Jingcang1’. The effects of different concentrations of salicylic acid (10, 30, 50 mmol/L SA) combined with microporous fresh-keeping bag treatment on the preservation effect of Z. jujube ‘Jingcang1’ were investigated. The results showed that SA treatment could effectively delay the decline of storage quality of' Z. jujube ‘Jingcang1’. After 14 days of storage, the Z. jujube ‘Jingcang1’, which was not packed with microporous plastic bag, was obviously dehydrated and shriveled and its quality deteriorated seriously. The fresh-keeping effect of Z. jujube ‘Jingcang1’ packed with microporous plastic bag was not ideal. Packaging with microporous plastic bag combined with 30 mmol/L SA treatment had the best effect, which could prolong its storage period by about 40 days compared with that of the group without microporous plastic bag. Compared with the control group, microporous plastic bag combined with 30 mmol/L SA treatment can effectively delay the consumption of total soluble solid, titratable acid and other nutrients in the fruit of Z. jujube ‘Jingcang1’, delay the dehydration shrinkage, the decrease of brightness and fruit firmness of the fruit during storage, and maintain a relatively high content of soluble sugar, ascorbic acid, total polypheno, soluble protein and other nutrients and antioxidant activity after storage (P

Premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) induced by chemotherapy is an intractable disorder with a considerable incidence that commonly results in insufficient fertility and concomitant complications in female patients. Due to limitations in the current progress in POI diagnosis and treatment, there is an urgent need to develop novel remedies to improve ovarian function and protect fertility. The ameliorative effect of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUCMSCs) and exosomes derived from them in POI treatment could be a new hope for patients. Herein, we identified exosomes from hUCMSCs (hUCMSC-Exos). Then, systematic infusion of hUCMSC-Exos was accomplished via tail intravenous injection to investigate the feasibility of the treatment of rats with chemotherapy-induced POI by intraperitoneal injection of cyclophosphamide (CTX) and busulfan (BUS). Ovarian functions in the indicated group were evaluated, including oestrous cycle, serum sex hormone levels, follicle counts, ovarian pathological changes, proliferation and apoptosis of granulosa cells (GCs), and reproductive ability testing. Furthermore, the potential influence of hUCMSC-Exos on ovarian tissues was illuminated by conducting RNA-seq and multifaceted bioinformatics analyses. POI rats with hUCMSC-Exos transplantation exhibited a decrease in follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and apoptosis of GCs but an increase in oestradiol (E2), anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH), and the number of ovarian follicles and foetuses in the uterus. And the immunomodulation- and cellular vitality-associated gene sets in rats had also undergone moderate changes. Our data indicated the feasibility of hUCMSC-Exos in improving ovarian function and protecting fertility in chemotherapy-induced POI rats. HUCMSC-Exos can improve the local microenvironment of ovarian tissue in POI rats by participating in immune regulation, cellular viability, inflammation regulation, fibrosis and metabolism, and other related signal pathways.

Panzao (Ziziphus jujuba Mill. cv. ‘Jingcang1’) have a short shelf-life, which hampers their marketability. To investigate effects of combined pre- and postharvest treatments on quality and softening during storage, preharvest Guomantian foliar fertilizer (FF) spray and postharvest salicylic acid (SA) dip were applied to panzao. By day 63 of storage, fruit firmness responded to treatment in the order of FF+SA treatment > FF or SA treatments > Control. All treatments inhibited fruit reddening during storage and, compared with those of the control, alleviated the decline in total soluble solids, ascorbic acid, and phenol contents and decreased the oxidative aging process, which was consistent with the change in firmness. The FF+SA treatment reduced the activities of amylase, cellulase, polygalacturonase, and β-glucosidase, which decreased the degradation of macromolecules including starch, cellulose, and pectin. Principal component analysis showed that FF+SA exhibited a synergistic effect and was the most effective treatment for maintaining fruit quality during storage. FF increased accumulation of nutrients during growth and improved quality, while SA delayed the decline in fruit quality and reduced softening. These results provide the theoretical basis and technical knowledge for improving the shelf-life of panzao during storage and long-distance transportation.

Accurate indoor occupancy information extraction plays a crucial role in building energy conservation. Vision-based methods are popularly used for occupancy information extraction because of their high accuracy. However, previous vision-based methods either only provide 2D occupancy information or require expensive equipment. In this paper, we propose a cost-effective indoor occupancy information extraction system that estimates occupant positions and trajectories in 3D using a single RGB camera. The proposed system provides an inverse proportional model to estimate the distance between a human head and the camera according to pixel-heights of human heads, eliminating the dependence on expensive depth sensors. The 3D position coordinates of human heads are calculated based on the above model. The proposed system also associates the 3D position coordinates of human heads with human tracking results by assigning the 3D coordinates of human heads to the corresponding human IDs from a tracking module, obtaining the 3D trajectory of each person. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system successfully calculates accurate 3D positions and trajectories of indoor occupants with only one surveillance camera. In conclusion, the proposed system is a low-cost and high-accuracy indoor occupancy information extraction system that has high potential in reducing building energy consumption.

ABSTRACT: The quality of raw milk is a key factor influencing the whole dairy processing chain. The richness and diversity of bacteria in raw milk affect its quality and safety. However, traditional microbial detection methods mainly depend on the known microbe culture and are often time consuming. Thus, the development of efficient ways for supervising any possible microbiological contamination is desiderated. In the current work, single-molecule real-time (SMRT) sequencing, developed by Pacific Biosciences (PacBio), was applied to acquire long reads and applied for discrimination of bacteria at species level. Forty samples of raw milk obtained from Beijing, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Shanghai, and Guangdong in China during summer, autumn, and winter were investigated. Among 35 bacteria species identified in these samples, Acinetobacter albensis, Pseudomonas gessardii, Pseudomonas weihenstephanensis, and Rahnella inusitata were the bacteria with the highest relative abundance in the overall sample, whereas the bacteria with the highest relative abundance in raw milk samples of different origins and seasons are different. Significant differences in bacterial richness and bacterial community diversity in raw milk grouped according to different production areas and different sampling seasons were confirmed by Welch's t-test. Interestingly, the transport distance and transport time positively correlated with the relative abundance of Pseudomonas weihenstephanensis, suggesting that the content of this bacteria was expected to be a standard for evaluating the freshness of raw milk. Pathogens Bacillus cereus and Klebsiella pneumoniae were detected in most samples, indicating that the raw milk was at risk of contamination by pathogenic bacteria. Moreover, the findings of this study provide important evidence for quality and safety monitoring and biological control of raw milk.

Abstract The accurate prediction of flight delays is of great significance to airports, airlines and passengers. This paper presents a causal flight delay prediction model developed for a single airport. A long short‐term memory network of delay prediction with an attention mechanism (LSTM‐AM) is established to predict flight delays and analyse their primary causes. In this model, the direct and indirect factors related to delays are comprehensively considered. LSTM‐AM can focus on input data combined with the attention vector to capture the critical time points, which can make the prediction more accurate. The model's performance is verified by actual operational data of Beijing International Airport, one of the busiest airports in the world. Experimental results show that LSTM‐AM has better prediction accuracy than baseline algorithms such as some machine learning methods and deep learning methods. The mean absolute error of LSTM‐AM is about 8.15 min on the test dataset. The study found that using the predicted results of this paper to release delayed information in advance can effectively alleviate the nervousness of passengers. The critical time point captured by LSTM‐AM combined with runway and apron flow control can reduce or eliminate delays of one flight.

In this paper, the macroscopic traffic states and network traffic dynamics during the Qingming Festival holiday are explored with the Macroscopic Fundament Diagram (MFD), including the weekday before the holiday (WBH), the day of Qingming Festival (DQF), and the ordinary weekday (OW). The network is heterogeneous on the densities’ distribution, and the congested areas are different in location and size. Normalized Cut (Ncut) algorithm is used to partition the heterogeneous network into multiple homogeneous subregions. The MFD of each subregion is distributed within the critical density on the WBH, and the high-density region moves from the city center to the periphery. On the DQF, high-density areas are on the central and west of the urban network. The congested branch appears on the MFD of the subregion. Then, two calibrated dynamic models, are applied to analyze the network evolution based on the partitioning results. On the basis of the calibrated model, several control strategies are proposed to relieve regional congestion on holidays. According to the simulation results, congestion on the DQF can be alleviated by controlling the external inflow ratio of subregion 2 or limiting the amount of traffic entering subregion 2 from the outside.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has raised concerns about the use of public transport, with a surge in people considering personal car usage. However, owning private cars is costly and wasteful of resources. Electric car-sharing (ECS) is considered a safer and more private mode of transportation compared with public transportation. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected transport on transportation policies and travel willingness. What is the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on CS travel, especially considering the safety issues during the COVID-19 pandemic? This study analyses the differences in the travel characteristics of private car owners and nonowners while using CS under the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Quantitative analysis during four months before and four months after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic is conducted based on CS order data in Lanzhou, China. It was found that the number of CS orders fell by 55.8% during the COVID-19 pandemic. Travel behavior during the pandemic is different from that before the outbreak of the pandemic. Additionally, both private car owners and nonowners use CS while having differences in travel characteristics. Based on the results, business suggestions are introduced on the distribution of vehicles to help improve the profit of CS operators.

Remote sensing image change detection (RS-CD) has made impressive progress with the help of deep learning techniques. Small object change detection (SoCD) still faces many challenges. On the one hand, when the scale of changing objects varies greatly, deep learning models with overall accuracy as the optimization goal tend to focus on large object changes and ignore small object changes to some extent. On the other hand, the RS-CD model based on deep convolutional networks needs to perform multiple spatial pooling operations on the feature map to obtain deep semantic features, which leads to the loss of small object feature-level information in the local space. Therefore, we propose a Siamese transformer change detection network with a multiscale window via an adaptive fusion strategy (SWaF-Trans). To solve the problem of ignoring small object changes, we compute self-attention in windows of different scales to model changing objects at the corresponding scales and establish semantic information links through a moving window mechanism to capture more comprehensive small object features in small-scale windows, thereby enhancing the feature representation of multiscale objects. To fuse multiscale features and alleviate the problem of small object feature information loss, we propose a channel-related fusion mechanism to model the global correlation between channels for display and adaptively adjust the fusion weights of channels to enable the network to capture more discriminative features of interest and reduce small object feature information loss. Experiments on the CDD and WHU-CD datasets show that SWaF-Trans exceeds eight advanced baseline methods, with absolute F1 scores as high as 97.10% and 93.90%, achieving maximum increases of 2% and 5.6%, respectively, compared to the baseline methods.

Background: Selenium binding protein 1 (SELENBP1) is frequently downregulated in malignancies such as colorectal cancer (CRC), however, whether it is involved in tumor angiogenesis is still unknown. Methods: We analyzed the expression and localization of SELENBP1 in vessels from CRC and neighboring tissues. We investigated the in vitro and in vivo activity of SELENBP1 in angiogenesis and explored the underlying mechanism. Results: SELENBP1 was localized to endothelial cells in addition to glandular cells, while its vascular expression was decreased in tumor vessels compared to that in vessels from neighboring non-tumor tissues. Gain-of-function and loss-of-function experiments demonstrated that SELENBP1 inhibited angiogenesis in vitro, and blocked communications between HUVECs and CRC cells. Overexpression of SELENBP1 in CRC cells inhibited tumor growth and angiogenesis, and enhanced bevacizumab-sensitivity in a mouse subcutaneous xenograft model. Mechanic analyses revealed that SELENBP1 may suppress tumor angiogenesis by binding with Delta-like ligand 4 (DLL4) and antagonizing the DLL4/Notch1 signaling pathway. The inhibitory effects of SELENBP1 on in vitro angiogenesis could largely be rescued by DLL4. Conclusion: These results revealed a novel role of SELENBP1 as a potential tumor suppressor that antagonizes tumor angiogenesis in CRC by intervening the DLL4/Notch1 signaling pathway.

The synergistic impact of hydrogen-rich water (HRW, 394 ppb) and slightly acidic electrolyzed water (SAEW, pH of 6.25 ± 0.19) on the antioxidant metabolism of fresh-cut kiwifruit during storage was investigated (temperature: (3 ± 1) °C, humidity: 80%–85%). Compared with control group, H+S treatment increased the contents of active oxygen-scavenging enzymes (SOD, CAT, POD, and APX) and inhibited the increase of O2•− and H2O2 contents during the storage of fresh-cut kiwifruit. Meanwhile, H+S treatment could reduce the activities of the cell wall-degrading enzymes PG, PME, PL, Cx, and β-Gal, inhibit the formation of soluble pectin, delay the degradation rate of propectin, cellulose, and pseudocellulose, and maintain higher fruit hardness and chewability. The results showed that H+S treatment could enhance free radical scavenging ability and reduce the cell wall metabolism of fresh-cut kiwifruit, maintaining the good texture found in fresh-cut fruit.

Abstract Rural heritage is a living heritage of significant importance; it requires community-oriented management for cultural continuity and local development. Different social relations exist at rural heritage sites, which lead to external contestation among stakeholders and internal contestation within the community. It is essential to identify the impact caused by such contestations and determine an appropriate way to negotiate solutions. This paper examines the case of Loushang in Guizhou Province, identifying the contestations by examining the social relations through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Negotiation requires an appropriate person or social group to act as intermediary: they engage the stakeholders and induce them to collaborate; they also empower the community in heritage management. The case of Loushang indicates the tools that are necessary to facilitate community-oriented management for rural heritage; it bridges theoretical research and heritage practice.

Background: Generally, it is difficult to obtain accurate pose and depth for a non-rigid moving object from a single RGB camera to create augmented reality (AR). In this study, we build an augmented reality system from a single RGB camera for a non-rigid moving human by accurately computing pose and depth, for which two key tasks are segmentation and monocular Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). Most existing monocular SLAM systems are designed for static scenes, while in this AR system, the human body is always moving and non-rigid. Methods: In order to make the SLAM system suitable for a moving human, we first segment the rigid part of the human in each frame. A segmented moving body part can be regarded as a static object, and the relative motions between each moving body part and the camera can be considered the motion of the camera. Typical SLAM systems designed for static scenes can then be applied. In the segmentation step of this AR system, we first employ the proposed BowtieNet, which adds the atrous spatial pyramid pooling (ASPP) of DeepLab between the encoder and decoder of SegNet to segment the human in the original frame, and then we use color information to extract the face from the segmented human area. Results: Based on the human segmentation results and a monocular SLAM, this system can change the video background and add a virtual object to humans. Conclusions: The experiments on the human image segmentation datasets show that BowtieNet obtains state-of-the-art human image segmentation performance and enough speed for real-time segmentation. The experiments on videos show that the proposed AR system can robustly add a virtual object to humans and can accurately change the video background. Keywords: Augmented reality, Moving object, Reconstruction and tracking, Camera pose, Human segmentation

Considering the characteristics of different types of users in hybrid carsharing systems, in which sharing autonomous vehicles (SAVs) and conventional sharing cars (CSCs) coexist, a tailored pricing strategy (TPS) is proposed to maximize the operator’s profit and minimize all users’ costs. The fleet sizes and sizes of SAVs’ stations are also determined simultaneously. A bi-objective nonlinear programming model is established, and a genetic algorithm is applied to solve it. Based on the operational data in Lanzhou, China, carsharing users are clustered into three types. They are loyal users, losing users, and potential users, respectively. Results show the application of the TPS can help the operator increase profit and attract more users. The loyal users are assigned the highest price, while they still contribute the most to the operator’s profit with the highest number of carsharing trips. The losing users and potential users are comparable in terms of the number of trips, while the latter still makes more profit.

An airport ferry vehicle is a ground service vehicle used to transfer passengers between the far apron and the terminal. The travel time of ferry tasks in the airport ferry network is an important decision-making basis for ferry vehicle scheduling. This paper presents a graph-based method to mine the travel time between nodes in the airport ferry network. Firstly, combined with map and trajectory information, the method takes the terminal boarding gates, parking lots, and remote stands as road network nodes to build a complete airport ferry road network. Then, this paper uses big data processing technology to identify the travel time between regional connection nodes by data fusion through the temporal and spatial relationship between flight schedule and ferry vehicle GPS travel trajectory. Finally, the Floyd shortest path algorithm in graph theory is used to obtain the shortest path and travel time of all OD points. The experimental results show that all the ferry times calculated by the method proposed in this paper can better reflect the actual driving situation. This method saves the manpower, material resources, and time cost of on-site investigation and lays a foundation for the scheduling of ferry vehicles.

This study was undertaken to investigate the prevalence, antimicrobial resistance, and virulence gene profiles of Bacillus cereus in different brands of infant formula in Beijing supermarkets. Eighty-eight Bacillus cereus isolates were recovered in sixty-eight infant formulas of five domestic brands and fourteen imported brands. The prevalence rate in domestic and imported samples were 70.6% and 52.9%, respectively. Lower mean prevalence level was found in domestic samples (1.17 MPN/g) compared with the imported samples (3.52 MPN/g). Twenty-four virulence gene profiles were found, and most strains carried at least one virulence gene. The prevalence of nheA, nheB, nheC, cytK, bceT, and entFM in domestic and imported brand samples was similar. The occurrence of enterotoxin genes hblA, hblC, and hblD in domestic samples were 22.2%, 27.8%, and 22.2%, respectively, which was significantly higher than imported samples. Antimicrobial drugs-susceptibility analysis showed that all isolates were susceptible to gentamincin, amikacin, and ciprofloxacin; 38%, 7%, and 2.3% were resistant to rifampin, tetracycline, and chloramphenicol, respectively; and only one isolate was resistant to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. Moreover, the cell numbers of Bacillus cereus in prepared infant formula increased rapidly at room temperature. Thus, monitoring guidelines are needed for accepted levels of Bacillus cereus in infant formula.

ObjectiveThis study aimed to investigate the anxiety levels of healthcare workers and to provide guidance on potential accurate social and psychological interventions for healthcare workers during the epidemic of COVID-19 in Zhejiang Province, China.MethodsHealthcare workers from five hospitals in Zhejiang Province were randomly selected into this study. Zung Self-Assessment Scale for Anxiety (SAS) was used to evaluate the anxiety status of the included 1637 healthcare workers.ResultsThe total anxiety score of healthcare workers in Zhejiang Province was 30.85 ± 6.89. The univariate analysis showed that the anxiety level of healthcare workers was related to gender, education, occupation, physical condition, job risk coefficient, and with family members on the first-line combating COVID-19 (P ConclusionsDuring the epidemic of COVID-19, 1637 healthcare workers generally had an increased tendency to have anxiety. Individualized assessment of the anxiety level of healthcare workers should be provided, and different interventions should be given based on the evaluation results.

An airport gate is the core resource of an airport operation, which is an important place for passengers to get on and off the aircraft and for maintaining aircraft. It is the prerequisite for other related dispatch. Effective and reasonable allocation of gates can reduce airport operating costs and increase passenger satisfaction. Therefore, an airport gate assignment problem (AGAP) needs to be urgently solved in the actual operation of the airport. In this paper, considering the actual operation of the airport, we formulate an integer programming model for AGAP by considering multiple constraints. The model aims to maximize the number of passengers on flights parked at the gate. A tabu search-based algorithm is designed to solve the problem. In the process of algorithm design, an effective initial solution is obtained. A unique neighborhood structure and search strategy for tabu search are designed. The algorithm can adapt to the dynamic scheduling of airports. Finally, tests are performed using actual airport data selected from Kunming Changshui International Airport in China. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method can enhance the local search ability and global search ability and get satisfactory results in a limited time. These results provide an effective support for the actual gate assignment in airport operations.

Gate assignment problem (GAP) is the core issue of airport operation management. However, the limited resources of airport gates and the increase of flight scale result in serious problems for gate allocation. In this paper, to provide decision-making support for large-scale GAPs, a model based on gate assignment rules (e.g., flight type constraints, safe time interval constraints, and adjacency conflict constraints) is built to formulate the problem. An improved adaptive parallel genetic algorithm (APGA) is then designed to solve the model. The algorithm is effective because it introduces the idea of elite strategy and parallel design and can adaptively adjust the crossover probability. Moreover, different instances are presented to demonstrate the proposed algorithm. The calculation results of this algorithm are compared with those of standard genetic algorithm and CPLEX, which show that the proposed algorithm has better performance and takes a shorter computational time. In addition, we verify the stability and practicability of the algorithm by repeated experiments on large-scale flight data.

The cavity pressure in the injection molding process is closely related to the quality of the molded products, and is used for process monitoring and control, to upgrade the quality of the molded products. The experimental platform was built to carry out the cavity pressure experiment with a micro spline injection mold in the paper. The process parameters were changed, such as V/P switchover, mold temperature, melt temperature, packing pressure, and injection rate, in order to analyze the influence of the process parameters on the product weight. The peak cavity pressure and area under the pressure curve were the two attributes utilized in investigating the correlation between cavity pressure and part weight. The experimental results show that the later switchover allowed the injection to proceed longer and produce a heavier tensile specimen. By comparing different cavity pressure curves, the general shapes of the curves were able to indicate different types of shortage produced. When the V/P switchover position is 10 mm, the coefficient of determination (R2 value) of part weight, for the peak cavity pressure and area under the curve, were 0.7706 and 0.8565, respectively. This showed that the area under the curve appeared to be a better process and quality indicator than the peak cavity pressure.

The ventrolateral medulla (VLM), including the lateral paragigantocellular nucleus (LPGi) and rostral VLM (RVLM), is commonly considered to be a chemosensitive region. However, the specific mechanism of chemoreception in the VLM remains elusive. Acid-sensing ion channels (ASICs), a family of voltage-independent proton-gated cation channels, can be activated by an external pH decrease to cause Na+ entry and induce neuronal excitability. TWIK-related acid-sensitive potassium channels (TASKs) are members of another group of pH-sensitive channels; in contrast to AISICs, they can be stimulated by pH increases and are inhibited by pH decreases in the physiological range. Our previous study demonstrated that ASICs take part in chemoreception. The aims of this study are to explore whether TASKs participate in the acid sensitivity of neurons in the VLM, thereby cooperating with ASICs. Our research demonstrated that TASKs, including TASK1 and TASK3, are colocalized with ASIC1 in VLM neurons. Blocking TASKs by microinjection of the non-selective TASK antagonist bupivacaine (BUP), specific TASK1 antagonist anandamide (AEA) or specific TASK3 antagonist ruthenium red (RR) into the VLM increased the integrated phrenic nerve discharge (iPND), shortened the inspiratory time (Ti) and enhanced the respiratory drive (iPND/Ti). In addition, microinjection of artificial cerebrospinal fluid (ACSF) at a pH of 7.0 or 6.5 prolonged Ti, increased iPND and enhanced respiratory drive, which were inhibited by the ASIC antagonist amiloride (AMI). By contrast, microinjection of alkaline ACSF decreased iPND and respiratory drive, which were inhibited by AEA. Taken together, our data suggest that TASK1 and TASK3 are coexpressed with ASIC1 in the VLM. Moreover, TASK1 and TASK3 contribute to the central regulation of breathing by coordinating with each other to perceive local pH changes; these results indicate a novel chemosensitive mechanism of the VLM.

Background/Aims: The ubiquitin-specific peptidase USP22 mediates various cellular and organismal processes, such as cell growth, apoptosis, and tumor malignancy. However, the molecular mechanisms that regulate USP22 activity remain poorly understood. Here we identify STAT3 as a new USP22 interactor. Methods:· We used western blotting and RT-PCR to measure key protein, acetylated STAT3, and mRNA levels in HEK293 and colorectal cancer cell lines transfected with expression plasmids or specific siRNAs. Co-immunoprecipitation was used to demonstrate protein-protein interaction and protein complex composition. Results: USP22 overexpression down-regulated STAT3 acetylation by deubiquitinating SIRT1. The three proteins were found to be present in a single protein complex. SiRNA-mediated depletion of endogenous USP22 resulted in SIRT1 destabilization and elevated STAT3 acetylation. Consistent with this finding, USP22 also down-regulated the expression of two known STAT3 target genes, MMP9 and TWIST. Conclusion: We show that USP22 is a new regulator of the SIRT1-STAT3 signaling pathway and report a new mechanistic explanation for cross talk between USP22 and the SIRT1-STAT pathways.