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Ethiopia and China share a common educational agenda in cultivating and obtaining competent vocational graduates who fulfill the need of the modern, technologically advanced industrial workplace. Unlike most evidence, the present study adopted Self-determination Theory to understand Ethiopian and Chinese higher Vocational education and Training (VET) college students' learning motivation. Hence, this study recruited and interviewed 10 volunteers senior higher VET students from each setting to unfold their satisfaction with psychological needs. The study's main finding affirms that although both groups felt the autonomy of choosing the vocational field they sought to master, their learning process was submissive to their henpecked teaching method, which ultimately restrained the participants' feeling of competence for being enclosed in less practical training space. As per the study findings, we forward feasible policy and practical implications suggested for meeting the motivational needs of VET students and promoting learning stability.

This paper focuses on studying the optimization problem of multi-agent systems (MAS) under undirected graph. To reduce the communication frequency among agents, a zero-gradient-sum (ZGS) algorithm based on dynamic event-triggered (DET) mechanism is investigated. The event-triggered condition of each agent only uses its own state information and the neighbor's state information at the previous triggering instants, without requiring continuous state information from the neighbor. In addition, the designed algorithm allows for the sampling period to be arbitrarily large. The Lyapunov method is utilized to derive the sufficient conditions that incorporate time delay and parameters. As the event is only checked at the periodic moment, zeno behavior can be directly excluded. Finally, numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To assess the ability of a polarization transfer (PT) magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) technique to improve the detection of the individual phospholipid metabolites phosphocholine (PC), phosphoethanolamine (PE), glycerophosphocholine (GPC), and glycerophosphoethanolamine (GPE) in vivo in breast tumor xenografts. Materials and Methods: The adiabatic version of refocused insensitive nuclei enhanced by polarization transfer (BINEPT) MRS was tested at 9.4 Tesla in phantoms and animal models. BINEPT and pulse-acquire (PA) 31P MRS was acquired consecutively from the same orthotopic MCF-7 (n = 10) and MDA-MB-231 (n = 10) breast tumor xenografts. After in vivo MRS measurements, animals were euthanized, tumors were extracted and high resolution (HR)-MRS was performed. Signal to noise ratios (SNRs) and metabolite ratios were compared for BINEPT and PA MRS, and were also measured and compared with that from HR-MRS. Results: BINEPT exclusively detected metabolites with 1H-31P coupling such as PC, PE, GPC, and GPE, thereby creating a significantly improved, flat baseline because overlapping resonances from immobile and partly mobile phospholipids were removed without loss of sensitivity. GPE and GPC were more accurately detected by BINEPT in vivo, which enabled a reliable quantification of metabolite ratios such as PE/GPE and PC/GPC, which are important markers of tumor aggressiveness and treatment response. Conclusion: BINEPT is advantageous over PA for detecting and quantifying the individual phospholipid metabolites PC, PE, GPC, and GPE in vivo at high magnetic field strength. As BINEPT can be used clinically, alterations in these phospholipid metabolites can be assessed in vivo for cancer diagnosis and treatment monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) plays a critical role in immune and inflammatory responses and is important in controlling a variety of processes in monocytes and macrophages. However, very little information is available about the functions of HIF-1α in fish monocytes/macrophages (MO/MФ). In this study, the cDNA sequence of the mudskipper (Boleophthalmus pectinirostris) HIF-1α gene (BpHIF-1α) was determined. Sequence comparison and phylogenetic tree analysis showed that BpHIF-1α is clustered in the fish HIF-1α tree. Constitutive expression of BpHIF-1α mRNA was detected by real-time quantitative PCR in all tested tissues, and the expression was found to be dramatically increased in the skin, liver, spleen, and kidney after Edwardsiella tarda infection. In addition, hypoxia and infection induced the expression of the BpHIF-1α transcript and protein in MO/MФ, respectively. Hypoxia caused an increase in phagocytic and bactericidal capacity of mudskipper MO/MФ in a BpHIF-1α-dependent manner. BpHIF-1α induced an anti-inflammatory status in MO/MФ upon E. tarda infection and hypoxia. Therefore, BpHIF-1α may play a predominant role in the modulation of mudskipper MO/MФ function in the innate immune system.

Prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) plays an important role in a broad spectrum of physiological and pathological processes by interacting with E-type prostanoid receptors (EPs). EP4 is one of four EP subtypes known to mediate the immune response in mammalian monocytes/macrophages. However, the precise function and characteristics of EP4 in fish remain unclear. In this study, we characterized a novel EP4-like (PaEP4L) gene from ayu, Plecoglossus altivelis. The cDNA sequence of PaEP4L is 2781 nucleotides (nts) in length, encoding a polypeptide of 459 amino acid residues with a calculated molecular weight of 51.17 kDa. Sequence comparison and phylogenetic tree analysis showed that PaEP4L shared 76% amino acid identity with that of the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). PaEP4L mRNA was detected by real-time quantitative PCR (QPCR) in all tested tissues and head kidney-derived monocytes/macrophages (MO/MФ). It varied greatly in liver, spleen and MO/MФ upon Vibrio anguillarum infection. Western blot analysis revealed a significant increase of PaEP4L in cell homogenates from ayu MO/MФ upon V. anguillarum infection. Moreover, anti-PaEP4L IgG reversed the down-regulation of interleukin 1β (IL-1β) and tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) mRNA expression as well as phagocytosis in ayu MO/MФ caused by PGE2. There were no significant differences in the respiratory burst response between PGE2 treated and untreated cells. We further found that cAMP mediated PGE2/PaEP4L signal in ayu MO/MФ. In conclusion, our results indicate that PaEP4L mediates PGE2 effects on ayu MO/MФ function, revealing that EP4 also plays a role in the modulation of cells of the fish's innate immune system.