Search

In order to improve the stability and stealth of vector propulsion motors in deep-sea exploration, a control method of deep-sea vector propulsion motors based on the position-sensorless and variable carrier frequency was derived from surface-mounted permanent magnet synchronous motors by using periodic spread spectrum modulation technology and position-sensorless control technology of improved sliding mode observer. Through simulations of motors’ variable carrier frequency, motor start-up speed variation, and sudden load change, the control effects of the proposed method were analyzed. The simulation results show that the rotation speed estimation of the studied control method is accurate, and the method has good dynamic tracking performance for rotation speed. The estimation error rate at the rated rotation speed is only 0.32%, and the estimation error rate at 0.5 times the rated rotation speed is only 0.09%. In addition, the proposed control method has an obvious high frequency harmonic spread spectrum suppression effect and good dynamic anti-interference performance. Combined with the simplification effect of reducing the motor structure brought by the position sensor, the control method proposed in this paper can effectively lower the failure rate of the deep-sea vector propulsion motor during operation, reduce the high-order fixed frequency harmonics that are easy to be detected, improve the reliability and stealth of the deep-sea vector propulsion motor, and provide efficient and reliable power guarantee for deep-sea unmanned undersea vehicles.

Auxins play significant roles in plant growth and development. The transporter inhibitor response1/auxin signaling F-box (TIR1/AFB) gene family encodes the auxin receptor proteins and plays an essential role in the auxin signaling pathway. Here we identified and characterized the TIR1/AFB family in Carya cathayensis (Cc) plants (named as CcTIR1/AFB). Seven CcTIR1/AFBs were identified and further confirmed by cloning. All proteins encoded by these genes conservatively contained two domains, the F-box and leucine-rich repeat (LRR) domains. The CcTIR1/AFBs were located in the nucleus. Phylogenetic analysis suggested that CcTIR1/AFBs were evenly scattered in four different subgroups. The cis-acting element analysis indicates that CcTIR1/AFBs might be activated by auxin. The spatial and temporal expression of CcTIR1/AFBs during grafting suggested that both CcAFB1 and CcAFB2 in scions and CcAFB4 in the rootstocks were significantly upregulated at 3 days after grafting, which indicated the specialization of three CcAFBs during grafting. The Y2H assay indicated that three CcAFBs were capable of interacting with CcIAA16, CcIAA27b, and CcIAA29a, among which CcAFB4 interacted strongly with CcIAA1 and CcIAA16. Our study provides the opportunity to understand the potential role of not only CcTIR1/AFBs but also special CcAFBs (CcAFB1, CcAFB2, and CcAFB4), which is a great aspect to further explore the molecular mechanism during the grafting process.

Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) is the only widely used prophylactic tuberculosis (TB) vaccine that can prevent severe TB in infants. However, it provides poor protection in adults, and therefore, there is ongoing research into new TB vaccines and immunization strategies with more durable immune effects. The recombinant BCG and BCG prime-protein booster are two important vaccine strategies that have recently been developed based on BCG and could improve immune responses. In this study, three immune strategies based on four protective antigens, namely, ESAT-6, CFP-10, nPPE18, and nPstS1, were applied to construct recombinant rBCG-EPCP009, EPCP009 subunit protein, and BCG prime-EPCP009 booster vaccine candidates. The short- and long-term immune effects after vaccination in Balb/c mice were evaluated based on humoral immunity, cellular immunity, and the ability of spleen cells to inhibit in vitro mycobacterial growth. At 8 and 12 weeks after the initial immunization, splenocytes from mice inoculated with the BCG prime-EPCP009 protein booster secreted higher levels of PPD- and EPCP009-specific IFN-γ, IL-2, TNF-α, IL-17, GM-CSF, and IL-12 and had a higher IFN-γ+CD4+ TEM:IL-2+CD8+ TCM cell ratio than splenocytes from mice inoculated with the rBCG-EPCP009 and EPCP009 proteins. In addition, the EPCPE009-specific IgG2a/IgG1 ratio was slightly higher in the BCG prime-EPCP009 protein booster group than in the other two groups. The in vitro mycobacterial inhibition assay showed that the splenocytes of mice from the BCG prime-EPCP009 protein booster group exhibited stronger inhibition of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) growth than the splenocytes of mice from the other two groups. These results indicate that the BCG prime-EPCP009 protein booster exhibited superior immunogenicity and M. tuberculosis growth inhibition to the parental BCG, rBCG-EPCP009, and EPCP009 proteins under in vitro conditions. Thus, the BCG prime-EPCP009 protein booster may be important for the development of a more effective adult TB vaccine.

Winterberry (Ilex verticillata (L.) A. Gray) is a recently introduced ornamental tree species in China that has not been closely investigated for its drought resistance. In this study, we used two-year-old cuttings from I. verticillata (L.) A. Gray and two representative varieties derived from it, I. verticillata ‘Oosterwijk’ and I. verticillata ‘Jim Dandy’, as materials to investigate how this plant responds to drought stress and whether exogenous spermidine (SPD) can alleviate the negative effects caused by drought stress. The results showed that as the degree of drought stress increased, the leaves of winterberry seedlings became chlorotic, and their edges became dry. Similarly, the relative water content, specific leaf weight, chlorophyll content, leaf nitrogen content, net photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance and transpiration rate were significantly reduced, whereas the content of malondialdehyde continuously increased with the degree of drought stress. The activities of superoxide dismutase, peroxidase, and catalase increased under moderate drought stress and then decreased under severe drought stress. The levels of soluble sugar and abscisic acid continued to increase, while those of auxin and gibberellic acid decreased. When compared with individual drought stress, an increase in the amount of external SPD clearly alleviated the effect of drought stress on winterberry seedlings. The combined phenotypes and physiological indices of the winterberry leaves under drought stress conditions revealed that the drought resistance of the native species was significantly higher than its two varieties. This finding serves as an important theoretical foundation for the popularization and application of I. verticillata (L.) A. Gray and the two varieties.

Grafting is an effective way to improve Chinese hickory while salt stress has caused great damage to the Chinese hickory industry. Grafting and salt stress have been regarded as the main abiotic stress types for Chinese hickory. However, how Chinese hickory responds to grafting and salt stress is less studied. Auxin has been proved to play an essential role in the stress response through its re-distribution regulation mediated by polar auxin transporters, including PIN-formed (PIN) proteins. In this study, the PIN gene family in Chinese hickory (CcPINs) was identified and structurally characterized for the first time. The expression profiles of the genes in response to grafting and salt stress were determined. A total of 11 CcPINs with the open reading frames (ORFs) of 1,026–1,983 bp were identified. Transient transformation in tobacco leaves demonstrated that CcPIN1a, CcPIN3, and CcPIN4 were localized in the plasma membrane. There were varying phylogenetic relationships between CcPINs and homologous genes in different species, but the closest relationships were with those in Carya illinoinensis and Juglans regia. Conserved N- and C-terminal transmembrane regions as well as sites controlling the functions of CcPINs were detected in CcPINs. Five types of cis-acting elements, including hormone- and stress-responsive elements, were detected on the promoters of CcPINs. CcPINs exhibited different expression profiles in different tissues, indicating their varied roles during growth and development. The 11 CcPINs responded differently to grafting and salt stress treatment. CcPIN1a might be involved in the regulation of the grafting process, while CcPIN1a and CcPIN8a were related to the regulation of salt stress in Chinese hickory. Our results will lay the foundation for understanding the potential regulatory functions of CcPIN genes during grafting and under salt stress treatment in Chinese hickory.

Government subsidies generally play an important role in the sustainable operations management of a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC). This paper investigates the optimal government subsidy decision and its influence on the sustainable development of the CLSC, consisting of one manufacturer, one retailer, and one third-party collector, from the economic, environmental, and social perspectives. Based on game analysis technology, different Stackelberg game models among the government and the CLSC members are formulated to analyze the optimal decisions under different power structures. By conducting theoretic comparative and sensitivity analyses and a case study, the effects of the government subsidy and the power structure are explored from the total profit, environmental benefit, and social welfare. Results show that the subsidy is good for sustainable development of the CLSC, which improves the total profit of the CLSC members, environmental benefit, and social welfare and the improvement effect is more prominent when the CLSC members have unequal bargaining power. Moreover, according to the growth proportion of profit, the retailer and collector benefit more from the subsidy among the CLSC members when they have different bargaining power, otherwise, the CLSC members benefit equally from the subsidy, and the subsidy is more beneficial to the environment compared with the total supply chain profit and social welfare.

Hickory (Carya cathayensis) is a critical tree species of the genus Carya from the Juglandaceae family that contains nutrient-rich nuts. Due to large-scale soil degradation, the pests and diseases of hickory are becoming more and more serious. Thaumatin-like proteins (TLPs) are vital proteins involved in the complex defense process of plant pathogens. In this study, 40 CcTLP genes were identified genome-widely and phylogenetically grouped into three subfamilies. The sequence of CcTLPs had a conservative pattern, such as eight stable disulfide bonds, REDDD, and G-X-[GF]-X-C-X-T-[GA]-D-C-X(1,2)-G-X-(2,3)-C structure. In total, 57 cis-elements related to stress-responsive, light-responsive, phytohormone-responsive, and plant-responsive were discovered. Under salicylate (SA), methyl jasmonate (MeJA), and ethephon (ETH) treatments, the expressions of CcTLP28, CcTLP29, CcTLP30, CcTLP31, CcTLP32, CcTLP33, CcTLP37, CcTLP38, and CcTLP39 had different patterns. This is an indication that most of the TLP genes were upregulated by SA and downregulated by MeJA. Notably, seven TLP genes were significantly upregulated under the Botryosphaeria dothidea inoculation, especially CcTLP31, with an over 20-fold change. Nine genes were shown by subcellular localization analysis to be located at the plasma membrane and cytoplasm. The knowledge of the disease-resistant function of the CcTLP family in hickory is promoted by these results. A foundation reference for the molecular breeding of this plant in the future is provided by our findings.

Cancer is a heterogeneous disease that is driven by the accumulation of both genetic and nongenetic alterations, so integrating multiomics data and extracting effective information from them is expected to be an effective way to predict cancer driver genes. In this paper, we first generate comprehensive instructive features for each gene from genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic levels together with protein–protein interaction (PPI)-networks-derived attributes and then propose a novel semisupervised deep graph learning framework GGraphSAGE to predict cancer driver genes according to the impact of the alterations on a biological system. When applied to eight tumor types, experimental results suggest that GGraphSAGE outperforms several state-of-the-art computational methods for driver genes identification. Moreover, it broadens our current understanding of cancer driver genes from multiomics level and identifies driver genes specific to the tumor type rather than pan-cancer. We expect GGraphSAGE to open new avenues in precision medicine and even further predict drivers for other complex diseases.

Fuzzy arithmetic is of great significance in dealing with vague information, especially the basic arithmetic operations (i.e., ⊕, ⊖, ⊗, ⊙). However, the classical and widely accepted accurate and approximate approaches, the interval arithmetic approach and standard approximation method, cannot output accurate or well-approximated expressions of the membership function, which may prevent decision makers from making the right decisions in real applications. To tackle this problem, this paper first discusses the relationships among the membership function, the credibility distribution, and the inverse credibility distribution and summarizes the relationships as several theorems. Then, by means of the theorems and the newly proposed operational law, this paper proposes an inverse credibility distribution approach that can output the accurate expression of the membership function for continuous and strictly monotone functions of regular LR fuzzy intervals. To better demonstrate the effectiveness of the raised approach, the commonly-used LR fuzzy interval, the symmetric trapezoidal fuzzy number, is employed, and several comparisons with the other two methods are made. The results show that the proposed approach can output an exact or well-approximated expression of the membership function, which the others cannot. In addition, some comparisons of the proposed approach with other methods are also made on a completion time analysis of a construction project to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach in real applications.

We study the problem of communicating over a discrete memoryless two-way channel using non-adaptive schemes, under a zero probability of error criterion. We derive single-letter inner and outer bounds for the zero-error capacity region, based on random coding, linear programming, linear codes, and the asymptotic spectrum of graphs. Among others, we provide a single-letter outer bound based on a combination of Shannon’s vanishing-error capacity region and a two-way analogue of the linear programming bound for point-to-point channels, which, in contrast to the one-way case, is generally better than both. Moreover, we establish an outer bound for the zero-error capacity region of a two-way channel via the asymptotic spectrum of graphs, and show that this bound can be achieved in certain cases.

Background: Type I diabetes is a global public health concern that affects young people of reproductive age and can damage oocytes, reducing their maturation rate and blocking embryonic development. Understanding the effects of type I diabetes on oocytes is important to facilitate the maintenance of reproductive capacity in female diabetic patients. Methods: To analyze the effects of type I diabetes on mammalian oocytes, protein profile changes in mice with streptozotocin-induced type I diabetes were investigated using proteomic tools; non-diabetic mouse oocytes were used as controls. Immunofluorescence analysis for the spindle and mitochondria of oocytes. Results: We found that type I diabetes severely disturbed the metabolic processes of mouse oocytes. We also observed significant changes in levels of histone H1, H2A/B, and H3 variants in diabetic oocytes (fold change: > 0.4 or Conclusion: Our results indicate that type I diabetes disrupts metabolic processes, spindle formation, mitochondria distribution and modulates epigenetic code in oocytes. Such effects could have a major impact on the reproductive dynamics of female patients with type I diabetes.

Purpose: Mitochondrial dysfunction in adipose tissue has emerged as key to the development of obesity and diabetes. Salvianolic acid B (SalB) is a water-soluble ingredient derived from Salvia miltiorrhiza that has been shown to possess potential anti-obese and anti-diabetic activities. However, the cellular mechanism of SalB on mitochondrial function with respect to these metabolic disorders has not been elucidated. Therefore, we aim to investigate the effects of SalB on mitochondrial function in 3T3-L1 adipocytes and analyze the underlying molecular mechanism.Methods: The effects of SalB on adipocyte differentiation, glucose uptake, and glycerol release were evaluated in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. Differentiated adipocytes were treated with SalB (50 μM) with or without PPARγ antagonist (GW9662, 20 μM) for 48 h, and mitochondrial oxygen consumption rate (OCR) as well as extracellular acidification rate (ECAR) were assessed using an XF Extracellular Flux Analyzer. The mitochondrial distribution of adipocytes was assessed using Mito Tracker Green (MTG) and observed under a fluorescent microscope. In addition, the mRNA expression levels of peroxisome proliferators-activated receptor γ/α (PPARγ/α), CCAAT/enhancer binding proteinα (C/EBPα), Nuclear respiratory factor 1/2 (NRF1/2), Uncoupling protein 2 (UCP2), and phosphofructokinase 2/fructose-2, 6-bisphosphatase 2 (PFKFB2) were detected by RT-PCR. Finally, changes in the protein levels of peroxisome proliferators-activated receptor γ coactivator-1α (PGC-1α) were determined by western blotting and immunofluorescence analysis.Results: Treatment with SalB increased glucose uptake and mitochondrial respiration, reduced glycerol release and promoted adipocyte differentiation by increasing mRNA expression of adipogenic transcription factors including PPARγ, C/EBPα, and PPARα. Furthermore, SalB enhanced adipocytes mitochondrial content, mitochondrial respiration and glycolysis capacity, which had been attenuated by GW9662 treatment through the increased expression of PGC-1α.Conclusion: Our results provide novel insights into the role of PGC-1α and mitochondria as probable mediators of SalB activity in the regulation of adipocyte differentiation in 3T3-L1 adipocytes.

In this paper, we study the portfolio selection problem considering transaction costs under multiple periods. For non-professional investors, it is a critical factor to choose an appropriate model among multiple portfolio selection models in investment. Based on the credibility measure, we formulate a multi-period polynomial portfolio selection model to gather the risk indicators involving variance, semi-variance, entropy, and semi-entropy, helping investors bet on assets. According to the polynomial goal programming (PGP) approach, investors can conquer the fields by combining apposite indicators to build appropriate models. Subsequently, an adjusted genetic algorithm on the foundation of the penalty function is designed to obtain the optimal solution of this multi-period model. The results indicate that the PGP method is suitable for investors to choose the model and assigns the proper models to investors with different risk preferences.

Curcumin is an active component derived from Curcuma longa L. which is a traditional Chinese medicine that is widely used for treating metabolic diseases through regulating different molecular pathways. Here, in this study, we aimed to comprehensively investigate the effects of curcumin on glycolipid metabolism in vivo and in vitro and then determine the underlying mechanism. Male C57BL/6 J obese mice and 3T3-L1 adipocytes were used for in vivo and in vitro study, respectively. Our results demonstrated that treatment with curcumin for eight weeks decreased body weight, fat mass and serum lipid profiles. Meanwhile, it lowered fasting blood glucose and increased the insulin sensitivity in high-fat diet-induced obese mice. In addition, curcumin stimulated lipolysis and improved glycolipid metabolism through upregulating the expressions of adipose triglyceride lipase and hormone-sensitive lipase, peroxisome proliferator activated receptor γ/α (PPARγ/α) and CCAAT/enhancer binding proteinα (C/EBPα) in adipose tissue of the mice. In differentiated 3T3-L1 cells, curcumin reduced glycerol release and increased glucose uptake via upregulating PPARγ and C/EBPα. We concluded that curcumin has the potential to improve glycolipid metabolism disorders caused by obesity through regulating PPARγ signalling pathway.

Rough random theory, generally applied to statistics, decision-making, and so on, is an extension of rough set theory and probability theory, in which a rough random variable is described as a random variable taking “rough variable” values. In order to extend and enrich the research area of rough random theory, in this paper, the well-known probabilistic inequalities (Markov inequality, Chebyshev inequality, Holder’s inequality, Minkowski inequality and Jensen’s inequality) are proven for rough random variables, which gives a firm theoretical support to the further development of rough random theory. Besides, considering that the critical values always act as a vital tool in engineering, science and other application fields, some significant properties of the critical values of rough random variables involving the continuity and the monotonicity are investigated deeply to provide a novel analytical approach for dealing with the rough random optimization problems.