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Intake of high-fat diet is associated with increased fatty livers. Hepatic lipid accumulation and oxidative stress are key pathophysiological mechanisms in this disease. Micronutrients polyphenols, tocopherols and phytosterols in rapeseed exert potential benefit to hepatoprotection, but most of these micronutrients are removed by the traditional refining process. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether rapeseed oil fortified with these micronutrients can decrease hepatic lipid accumulation and oxidative stress induced by high-fat diet. Sprague-Dawley rats received rodent diet contained 20% fat whose source was refined rapeseed oil (RRO) or fortified RRO with low, middle and high quantities of these micronutrients for 10 weeks. Intake of RRO caused a remarkable hepatic steatosis. Micronutrients supplementation was effective in reducing steatosis as well as total triglyceride and total cholesterol contents in liver. These micronutrients also significantly increased hepatic antioxidant defense capacities, as evaluated by the significant elevation in the activities of SOD and GPx as well as the level of GSH, and the significant decline in lipid peroxidation. These findings suggest that rapeseed oil fortified with micronutrients polyphenols, tocopherols and phytosterols may contribute to prevent fatty livers such as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease by ameliorating hepatic lipid accumulation and oxidative stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improved understanding of changes in soil recalcitrant organic carbon (C) in response to global warming is critical for predicting changes in soil organic C (SOC) storage. Here, we took advantage of a long-term field experiment with increased temperature and precipitation to investigate the effects of warming, increased precipitation and their interactions on SOC fraction in a semiarid Inner Mongolian grassland of northern China since April 2005. We quantified labile SOC, recalcitrant SOC and stable SOC at 0-10 and 10-20 cm depths. Results showed that neither warming nor increased precipitation affected total SOC and stable SOC at either depth. Increased precipitation significantly increased labile SOC at the 0-10 cm depth. Warming decreased labile SOC (P = 0.038) and marginally but significantly increased recalcitrant SOC at the 10-20 cm depth (P = 0.082). In addition, there were significant interactive effects of warming and increased precipitation on labile SOC and recalcitrant SOC at the 0-10 cm depth (both P,0.05), indicating that that results from single factor experiments should be treated with caution because of multi-factor interactions. Given that the absolute increase of SOC in the recalcitrant SOC pool was much greater than the decrease in labile SOC, and that the mean residence time of recalcitrant SOC is much greater, our results suggest that soil C storage at 10-20 cm depth may increase with increasing temperature in this semiarid grassland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Micronutrients polyphenols, tocopherols and phytosterols in rapeseed exert potential benefit to cardiovascular system, but most of these micronutrients are removed by the refining process. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of rapeseed oil fortified with these micronutrients on the atherosclerosis risk factors in rats fed a high-fat diet. Methods: The rodent diet contained 20% fat whose source was refined rapeseed oil (RRO) or fortified refined rapeseed oil with low, middle and high quantities of these micronutrients (L-, M- and H-FRRO). Forty male SD rats were divided into four groups. One group received RRO diet and other groups received L-, M- and H-FRRO diet for 10 weeks. Results: Micronutrients supplementation significantly increased plasma antioxidant defense capacities, as evaluated by the significant elevation in the activities of GPx, CAT and SOD as well as the level of GSH, and the significant decline in lipid peroxidation. These micronutrients also reduced the plasma contents of TG, TC and LDL-C and increased the ratio of HDL-C/LDL-C. In addition, in parallel with the enhancement of these micronutrients, plasma levels of IL-6 and CRP declined remarkably. Conclusion: Rapeseed oil fortified with micronutrients polyphenols, tocopherols and phytosterols may contribute to prevent atherogenesis by ameliorating plasma oxidative stress, lipid profile and inflammation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ungulate grazing is known to play a crucial role in regulating nutrient cycling and controlling plant community structure and productivity in grassland ecosystems. However, little is known about the effects of grazing intensities on soil bacterial community structure and diversity, particularly at the long-term scale. In this study, we measured plant biomass and diversity, soil characteristics and bacterial community structure, and diversity in a 16-year field experiment that had four grazing intensity treatments (non-grazed, CK; low-intensity grazing (LG), moderate-intensity grazing (MG), and high-intensity grazing (HG)) in an Inner Mongolian typical grassland. The CK, LG, MG, and HG sites were grazed by 0.00, 1.33, 4.00, and 6.67 sheep ha, respectively. Bacterial community structure and diversity under grazing intensity treatments were assessed with PCR amplification of DNAs extracted from soils and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) separation. The results showed that the CK soil had higher moisture, organic C, NH-N, and NO-N concentrations than grazed soils, and the HG treatment had the lowest plant biomass and diversity across all the treatments. Principal component analysis of DGGE patterns showed that the LG and MG treatments were different from the CK and HG treatments. In addition, soil bacterial diversities in the LG and MG treatments were significantly higher than those in the other treatments. The relationships between environmental variables and soil bacterial community structure were assessed using redundancy analysis, and we found that soil moisture content, Artemisia frigida biomass, and pH were the best indicator of the changes in soil bacterial community structure among all the treatments. Overall, our results indicated that intermediate grazing intensities (LG and MG) increased soil bacterial diversities, and along with previous studies in this area, we suggested the MG treatment was the most suitable management practice in the Inner Mongolian steppe, not only supporting greater livestock amounts but also harboring greater bacterial diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which develops new method for the quantum simulation of Hamiltonian spectra using eigenstate witness. Topics include the calculation of the eigenvalues for both ground and excited states, the scalability and performance of the eigenstate witness in simulating complex Hamiltonians, and the positive implication of the approach in quantum chemistry.

This paper investigates the adaptive consensus for networked mobile agents with heterogeneous nonlinear dynamics. Using tools from matrix, graph, and Lyapunov stability theories, sufficient consensus conditions are obtained under adaptive control protocols for both first-order and second-order cases. We design an adaptive strategy on the coupling strengths, which can guarantee that the consensus conditions do not require any global information except a connection assumption. The obtained results are also extended to networked mobile agents with identical nonlinear dynamics via adaptive pinning control. Finally, numerical simulations are presented to illustrate the theoretical findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inflammation has been implicated in the hypothalamic leptin and insulin resistance resulting defective food intake during high fat diet period. To investigate hypothalamic inflammation in dietary induced obesity (DIO) and obesity resistant (DIO-R) rats, we established rat models of DIO and DIO-R by feeding high fat diet for 10 weeks. Then we switched half of DIO and DIO-R rats to chow food and the other half to high fat diet for the following 8 weeks to explore hypothalamic inflammation response to the low fat diet intervention. Body weight, caloric intake, HOMA-IR, as well as the mRNA expression of hypothalamic TLR4, NF-κB, TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6 in DIO/HF rats were significantly increased compared to DIO-R/HF and CF rats, whereas IL-10 mRNA expression was lower in both DIO/HF and DIO-R/HF rats compared with CF rats. Switching to chow food from high fat diet reduced the body weight and improved insulin sensitivity but not affecting the expressions of studied inflammatory genes in DIO rats. Take together, upregulated hypothalamic inflammation may contribute to the overeating and development of obesity susceptibility induced by high fat diet. Switching to chow food had limited role in correcting hypothalamic inflammation in DIO rats during the intervention period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In almost all quantum applications, one of the key steps is to verify that the fidelity of the prepared quantum state meets expectations. In this Letter, we propose a new approach solving this problem using machine-learning techniques. Compared to other fidelity estimation methods, our method is applicable to arbitrary quantum states, the number of required measurement settings is small, and this number does not increase with the size of the system. For example, for a general five-qubit quantum state, only four measurement settings are required to predict its fidelity with ±1% precision in a nonadversarial scenario. This machine-learning-based approach for estimating quantum state fidelity has the potential to be widely used in the field of quantum information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]