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Employee health problems including depression, burnout, and even 'karoshi' (i.e., occupational sudden mortality), as a result of overtime work, are becoming increasingly severe, which should cause concern among the general public and current organizational management practices. Employees who have different value orientations differ in terms of their perceptions of physical and mental health. The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of working time characteristics on employees' perceptions of physical and mental health and the role of value orientation. This paper explored the characteristics of working time, and for the first time, developed a four-dimensional structure of the employee working time characteristics based on qualitative analysis. A questionnaire-based investigation was conducted with 448 employees located in the eastern region of China, and a descriptive statistical analysis, correlation analysis, multiple linear regression analysis were employed. The results showed that: (1) at present, employee working time is generally characterized by frequent overtime, insufficient flexibility, and poor work-life boundaries, (2) employee working time characteristics are significantly correlated with employee perceptions of physical and mental health, (3)the relationship between working time characteristics and the perception of physical and mental health is moderated, to a varying degree, by three types of value orientations, which are primarily influenced by 'job orientation', 'calling orientation', and finally, 'career orientation'. This study clarified the relationship between working time characteristics and employees' perceptions of physical and mental health, and confirmed the moderating role of value orientation, which provided a reference for improving occupational health., Author(s): Menghua Yang [sup.1] , Hong Chen [sup.1] , Shanshan Li [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.411510.0, 0000 0000 9030 231X, School of Management, China University of Mining and Technology, , [...]

One of the greatest challenges encountered by enteric pathogens is responding to rapid changes of nutrient availability in host. However, the mechanisms by which pathogens sense gastrointestinal signals and exploit available host nutrients for proliferation remain largely unknown. Here, we identified a two-component system in Vibrio parahaemolyticus, TtrRS, which senses environmental tetrathionate and subsequently activates the transcription of the ttrRS-ttrBCA-tsdBA gene cluster to promote V. parahaemolyticus colonization of adult mice. We demonstrated that TsdBA confers the ability of thiosulfate oxidation to produce tetrathionate which is sensed by TtrRS. TtrRS autoregulates and directly activates the transcription of the ttrBCA and tsdBA gene clusters. Activated TtrBCA promotes bacterial growth under micro-aerobic conditions by inducing the reduction of both tetrathionate and thiosulfate. TtrBCA and TsdBA activation by TtrRS is important for V. parahaemolyticus to colonize adult mice. Therefore, TtrRS and their target genes constitute a tetrathionate-responsive genetic circuit to exploit the host available sulfur compounds, which further contributes to the intestinal colonization of V. parahaemolyticus. Author summary: Access to host nutrients is regarded as a critical step for the pathogen infection. However, the human gastrointestinal tract is colonized by an enormous number of microbes, which limits pathogens' access to nutrient supplies. Sulfur is one of the most abundant elements on Earth and is also essential to all living organisms. The mechanisms by which bacteria, especially intestinal pathogens, regulate the bioavailability of utilizable sulfur in the host are poorly understood. Here, we characterized a tetrathionate-responsive genetic circuit, which was involved in the utilization of sulfur compounds including tetrathionate and thiosulfate in V. parahaemolyticus, and thus contributed to the bacterial intestinal colonization. Our study provides new insight into the ability of bacterial pathogens to sense gastrointestinal signals and exploit host nutrients for their colonization, which contributes to a better understanding of the pathogenesis of enteric pathogens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a significant food‐borne pathogen that is found in diverse aquatic habitats. Quorum sensing (QS), a signaling system for cell–cell communication, plays an important role in V. parahaemolyticus persistence. We characterized the function of three V. parahaemolyticus QS signal synthases, CqsAvp, LuxMvp, and LuxSvp, and show that they are essential to activate QS and regulate swarming. We found that CqsAvp, LuxMvp, and LuxSvp activate a QS bioluminescence reporter through OpaR. However, V. parahaemolyticus exhibits swarming defects in the absence of CqsAvp, LuxMvp, and LuxSvp, but not OpaR. The swarming defect of this synthase mutant (termed Δ3AI) was recovered by overexpressing either LuxOvpD47A, a mimic of dephosphorylated LuxOvp mutant, or the scrABC operon. CqsAvp, LuxMvp, and LuxSvp inhibit lateral flagellar (laf) gene expression by inhibiting the phosphorylation of LuxOvp and the expression of scrABC. Phosphorylated LuxOvp enhances laf gene expression in a mechanism that involves modulating c‐di‐GMP levels. However, enhancing swarming requires phosphorylated and dephosphorylated LuxOvp which is regulated by the QS signals that are synthesized by CqsAvp, LuxMvp, and LuxSvp. The data presented here suggest an important strategy of swarming regulation by the integration of QS and c‐di‐GMP signaling pathways in V. parahaemolyticus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Absolute x-ray ultraviolet diagnostics ensures 2D coverage of the radiation emission region that enables tomographic reconstruction. However, retrieving the local emissivity via tomography remains a challenge due to its ill-posed nature. Tikhonov regularization with smoothness operation generally performs well but tends to over-smooth regions with steep gradients and local structure in the radiation profile and may introduce artifacts. In this paper, a tomography method based on compressive sensing theory with Tikhonov regularization terms is developed. Experimental results on multiple phantom sets show that the proposed method improves the reconstruction accuracy and quality in regions with steep gradients compared with the Tikhonov regularization method and suppresses the unphysical negative emissivity. The analysis of reconstruction uncertainty shows that the dictionary learning process provides more accurate prior information about steep gradients to improve the quality of reconstructed images, and compressive sensing has the denoising capability to reduce the impact of noise. Finally, the method is validated by data from the Sino-UNIted Spherical Tokamak, showing fewer artifacts and more reliable reconstruction images than the earlier method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we fabricated a memristive device with a Cu/HfO2/TiO2 nanowire array (NWA)/FTO structure through a hydrothermal method and atomic layer deposition. The devices exhibit good resistive switching properties, including low set voltages (∼1 V), good retention (>104 s), and multilevel storage. Compared with the Cu/TiO2 NWA/FTO device, Cu/HfO2/TiO2 NWA/FTO devices exhibit better uniformity, which could be due to the difference between the dielectric constants of TiO2 and HfO2. Under the application of consecutive voltage pulses, some synaptic functions were mimicked, including long-term potentiation/depression, paired-pulse facilitation, and spike timing dependent plasticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MrtR, a LuxR homolog in Mesorhizobium tianshanense, is important for symbiosis. We found that MrtR requires its cognate N-acylhomoserine lactone for forming dimers, binding to a single DNA site and activating the downstream promoter. However, MrtR is able to fold independently of its ligand.