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Microorganism types and quantities in male semen correlate with male semen parameters and male infertility. There has been a growing body of evidence suggesting that identifying microorganisms in male semen through metagenomic sequencing is useful for assessing male fertility and planning appropriate treatment interventions. Nevertheless, non-targeted metagenomic sequencing of semen samples is challenging due to the large number of sperm cells and high amounts of intracellular and extracellular human DNA, which can obscure microbial DNA. In this study, we assessed and refined three methods for DNA extraction from semen. Using low-speed centrifugation, propidium monoazide (PMA) photochemical induction, and the HostZERO Microbial DNA Kit, metagenomic sequencing was performed to detect and evaluate its efficacy. Our findings indicate that low-speed centrifugation effectively reduces sperm and sperm-associated DNA but may inadvertently remove microbial DNA. Increasing sample quantities is a potential strategy for enhancing the microbial DNA ratio in semen samples. PMA and the HostZERO Microbial DNA Kit utilization and optimization show promise in reducing total semen DNA and augmenting microbial DNA representation. Preliminary results suggest that traditional disinfection methods during semen sample collection do not increase microbial contamination significantly. In particular, due to the limited sample size, further investigation with a larger cohort is necessary for conclusive validation of our findings.

Adipose tissue inflammation is now considered to be a key process underlying metabolic diseases in obese individuals. However, it remains unclear how adipose inflammation is initiated and maintained or the mechanism by which inflammation develops. We found that microRNA-802 (Mir802) expression in adipose tissue is progressively increased with the development of dietary obesity in obese mice and humans. The increasing trend of Mir802 preceded the accumulation of macrophages. Adipose tissue-specific knockout of Mir802 lowered macrophage infiltration and ameliorated systemic insulin resistance. Conversely, the specific overexpression of Mir802 in adipose tissue aggravated adipose inflammation in mice fed a high-fat diet. Mechanistically, Mir802 activates noncanonical and canonical NF-κB pathways by targeting its negative regulator, TRAF3. Next, NF-κB orchestrated the expression of chemokines and SREBP1, leading to strong recruitment and M1-like polarization of macrophages. Our findings indicate that Mir802 endows adipose tissue with the ability to recruit and polarize macrophages, which underscores Mir802 as an innovative and attractive candidate for miRNA-based immune therapy for adipose inflammation.

Abstract Patients who have non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations are more prone to brain metastasis (BM) and poor prognosis. Previous studies showed that the tumor microenvironment of BM in these patients is immunosuppressed, as indicated by reduced T‐cell abundance and activity, although the mechanism of this immunosuppression requires further study. This study shows that reactive astrocytes play a critical role in promoting the immune escape of BM from EGFR‐mutated NSCLC by increasing the apoptosis of CD8+ T lymphocytes. The increased secretion of interleukin 11(IL11) by astrocytes promotes the expression of PDL1 in BM, and this is responsible for the increased apoptosis of T lymphocytes. IL11 functions as a ligand of EGFR, and this binding activates EGFR and downstream signaling to increase the expression of PDL1, culminating in the immune escape of tumor cells. IL11 also promotes immune escape by binding to its intrinsic receptor (IL11Rα/glycoprotein 130 [gp130]). Additional in vivo studies show that the targeted inhibition of gp130 and EGFR suppresses the growth of BM and prolongs the survival time of mice. These results suggest a novel therapeutic strategy for treatment of NSCLC patients with EGFR mutations.

Abstract Background Spatial mapping of transcriptional states provides valuable biological insights into cellular functions and interactions in the context of the tissue. Accurate 3D cell segmentation is a critical step in the analysis of this data towards understanding diseases and normal development in situ. Current approaches designed to automate 3D segmentation include stitching masks along one dimension, training a 3D neural network architecture from scratch, and reconstructing a 3D volume from 2D segmentations on all dimensions. However, the applicability of existing methods is hampered by inaccurate segmentations along the non-stitching dimensions, the lack of high-quality diverse 3D training data, and inhomogeneity of image resolution along orthogonal directions due to acquisition constraints; as a result, they have not been widely used in practice. Methods To address these challenges, we formulate the problem of finding cell correspondence across layers with a novel optimal transport (OT) approach. We propose CellStitch, a flexible pipeline that segments cells from 3D images without requiring large amounts of 3D training data. We further extend our method to interpolate internal slices from highly anisotropic cell images to recover isotropic cell morphology. Results We evaluated the performance of CellStitch through eight 3D plant microscopic datasets with diverse anisotropic levels and cell shapes. CellStitch substantially outperforms the state-of-the art methods on anisotropic images, and achieves comparable segmentation quality against competing methods in isotropic setting. We benchmarked and reported 3D segmentation results of all the methods with instance-level precision, recall and average precision (AP) metrics. Conclusions The proposed OT-based 3D segmentation pipeline outperformed the existing state-of-the-art methods on different datasets with nonzero anisotropy, providing high fidelity recovery of 3D cell morphology from microscopic images.

The theory of social-ecological systems (SESs) provides an ideal tool for understanding complex human-nature systems in protected areas. We adopt Ostrom’s SESs framework to analyze the complex interactions within Qilian Mountain National Park (QMNP), an essential ecological security barrier in China. Through qualitative and quantitative analyses of action situations, we identify the interactions among the resource system, resource units, governance system, and actors. The results show that applying the SESF in protected areas is feasible and operable; the development level of ecosystems in QMNP is better than that of the social systems; and the coupling coordination among the four subsystems is at primary coordination (0.6–0.7), indicating that the interaction between four subsystems needs to be strengthened. Moreover, the comprehensive evaluation index and the interactions between subsystems differ among townships, indicating the necessity for tailored management strategies. We emphasize integrating social components into protected areas management to achieve sustainable development and resilience in SESs.

Global-scale energy use has contributed to worldwide environmental issues, including climate change, global warming, and air and haze pollution. Home appliances are commonly used products that consume a lot of energy. This study aims to empirically assess the factors that lead to pro-environmental consumer behavior in households under the influence of haze pollution. The relationship among the variables of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) (attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, purchase intention, and purchase behavior), the norm activation model (NAM) (ascription of responsibility, awareness of consequences, personal norms), and additional psychological variables such as green trust and environmental concern has been examined. In addition, the moderating role of herd mentality on consumer purchasing has also been assessed. A non-probability-based purposive sampling technique has been employed to gather data from 429 respondents. The results from PLS-SEM show that haze pollution stimulates the usage of energy-saving appliances. Environmental concern positively affects consumers' intentions to purchase energy-efficient household appliances, and green trust positively influences environmental concern. Subjective norms, attitudes, perceived consumer effectiveness, and environmental concern shape purchase intention. Personal norms are influenced by the awareness of consequences and the ascription of responsibility. The influence of these factors on consumers' pro-environmental behavior is evident in purchasing energy-efficient household appliances to minimize haze and mitigate associated environmental issues. This study proposes strategies to persuade individuals to purchase energy-efficient household equipment based on the empirical findings.

Earthquakes are one of the main causes of bedding slope instability, and scientifically and quantitively evaluating seismic stability is of great significance for preventing landslide disasters. This study aims to assess the bedding slope stability under seismic loading and the influences of various parameters on stability using a pseudo-dynamic method. Based on the limit equilibrium theory, a general solution for the dynamic safety factor of bedding slope is proposed. The effects of parameters such as slope height, slope angle, cohesion, internal friction angle, vibration time, shear wave velocity, seismic acceleration coefficient, and amplification factor on stability are discussed in detail. To evaluate the validity of the pseudo-dynamic solution, the safety factors are compared with those given by early cases, and the results show that the safety factors calculated by the present formulation coincide better with those of previous methods. Moreover, a two-dimensional numerical solution of bedding slope based on Mohr–Coulomb’s elastic–plastic failure criterion is also performed by using the finite element procedure, and the minimum safety factor is essentially consistent with the result of the pseudo-dynamic method. It is proved that the pseudo-dynamic method is effective for bedding slope stability analyses during earthquakes, and it can overcome the limitations of the pseudo-static method.

Robust ecological security patterns (ESPs) serve as the fundamental basis for the entirety of the ecological realm and are the essence of constructing a territorial spatial planning system that promotes development and preservation. However, as urbanization, industrialization, and transportation accelerate, the ecological security of urban agglomerations faces an unprecedented challenge. Nevertheless, judiciously identifying and optimizing ESPs can mitigate this threat. In this study, we constructed a “material-sensitivities-disturbances” framework covering both natural and social indicators and identified ESPs using geo-information system (GIS) spatial analysis, MSPA, minimum cost routes, and gravity models. The identification results reveal that the Xiangyang metropolitan area has 17 248.21 km2 of ecological source area, 80 possible ecological corridors, 26 ecological hubs, and 4 ecological functional regions. The natural sources are mostly found in Qinba Mountain, Dahong Mountain, Tongbai Mountain, and the woods and rivers around the Han River. We suggested an ecological optimization framework consisting of “one axis, three screens, four belts, and multiple nodes” based on the geographical distribution of ecological safety levels. This study proposes a set of spatial optimization techniques for coordinating urbanization with ecological conservation, which may be utilized as a model for ecological governance and restoration in the Xiangyang metropolitan region and even throughout Central China.

IntroductionIn recent years, the quality of male semen has been decreasing, and the number of male infertilities caused by asthenozoospermia is increasing year by year, and the diagnosis and treatment of patients with asthenozoospermia are gradually receiving the attention of the whole society. Due to the unknown etiology and complex pathogenesis, there is no specific treatment for asthenozoospermia. Our previous study found that the administration of chestnut polysaccharide could alter the intestinal microbiota and thus improve the testicular microenvironment, and rescue the impaired spermatogenesis process by enhancing the expression of reproduction-related genes, but its exact metabolome-related repairment mechanism of chestnut polysaccharide is still unclear.Methods and resultsIn this study, we studied the blood metabolomic changes of busulfan-induced asthenozoospermia-model mice before and after oral administration of chestnut polysaccharide with the help of metabolome, and screened two key differential metabolites (hydrogen carbonate and palmitic acid) from the set of metabolomic changes; we then analyzed the correlation between several metabolites and between different metabolites and intestinal flora by correlation analysis, and found that palmitic acid in the blood serum of mice after oral administration of chestnut polysaccharide had different degrees of correlation with various metabolites, and palmitic acid level had a significant positive correlation with the abundance of Verrucomicrobia; finally, we verified the role of palmitic acid in rescuing the damaged spermatogenesis process by using asthenozoospermia-model mice, and screened the key target gene for palmitic acid to play the rescuing effect by integrating the analysis of multiple databases.DiscussionIn conclusion, this study found that chestnut polysaccharide rescued the damaged spermatogenesis in asthenozoospermia-model mice by upregulating palmitic acid level, which will provide theoretical basis and technical support for the use of chestnut polysaccharide in the treatment of asthenozoospermia.

This paper focuses on the northwest region, which is related to China’s overall ecological security and ethnic stability. This paper selects the neighboring regions of Dingxi City, Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture as the starting point, deeply and systematically analyzes the impact of different lifestyles on the environment. Using environmental economics, ecological economics, environmental sociology and other related theories, ecological footprint were used to investigate different lifestyles’ impact to environment. Neural network were also used to carry out multi-perspective environmental impact research from the spatial scale and time scale. The research finds that Dingxi, Gannan and Linxia’s different mode of production has led to different lifestyle, and results in different impact on environment. The governments of the three places should take actions to promote ecological civilization and encourage the establishment of an ecologically-friendly and environmentally-friendly way of life so as to reduce the impact on the ecological environment and realize regional sustainable development.

This study aims to reveal the deformation characteristics of buried pipelines and the effects of various parameters on settlement displacement using the analytical analysis method. A simplified mechanical model for the settlement displacement of buried pipelines is proposed with the theory of the Winkler model, and the sensitivity impacts of various parameters are performed by comparing them with those given by other cases. The rationality of the proposed approach is verified by a comparison with previous cases, and it also turned out that the present method performed better than the other two methods in the literature in its overall tendency of settlement displacement and error precision. The parameter analysis results of this study indicate that the maximum settlement displacement of the buried pipelines only increases linearly with the increase in ground displacement. Other parameters such as the subgrade modulus and calculated length increase to a certain threshold; the maximum settlement displacement will remain stable. However, the diameter and elastic modulus of the pipelines only have a small effect on the maximum settlement displacement of the pipelines, so they are not a sensitive factor and these effects can be ignored. In addition, an engineering example of pipeline deformation in a deep foundation pit from open-cut excavation is researched to verify the practicality of this present method.

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