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Introduction: Individualized treatment of spinal deformity is needed for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS), and the integration of pelvic rotation correction based on proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) into regular physiotherapy may be a promising approach. However, few high-quality studies have investigated its effects. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of pelvic rotation correction combined with Schroth exercises in the treatment of mild AIS. Methods: This was a randomized controlled trial. Forty-two AIS patients were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. Both groups underwent 20 therapeutic sessions over 24 weeks. All patients (n = 42) performed Schroth exercises at each session. In addition, the experimental group (n = 21) also participated in a pelvic rotation correction program based on PNF at each session. The primary outcome was the concave/convex ratio of hipbone widths, and the secondary outcomes included the Cobb angle, trunk rotation angle, self-perception, apical vertebral translation, and apical vertebral rotation. Patients were evaluated before and after 24 weeks of intervention. Results: There was a significant between-group difference in the change from baseline between the experimental and control groups for the following parameters: concave/convex ratio 2.89% (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.58 to 4.20, P<0.001), trunk rotation angle −1.26° (95% CI, −2.20 to −0.32; P = 0.01), and apical vertebral rotation improved by at least one class from baseline in 3 patients (14.3%) in the control group and 9 patients (42.9%) in the experimental group (P = 0.04). While Cobb angle −1.60° (95% CI, −7.75 to 0.54; P = 0.14), self-image 0.149 (95% CI, 0.001 to 0.297; P = 0.049), apical vertebral translation −0.58 mm (95% CI, −3.83 to 2.67; P = 0.72), and pelvic obliquity 0.10° (95% CI, −0.21 to 0.41; P = 0.52) did not differ significantly. Conclusions: Pelvic rotation correction combined with Schroth exercises more effectively improved pelvic axial rotation and other spinal deformities, including trunk rotation and apical vertebral rotation, than Schroth exercises alone in the treatment of mild AIS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have suggested an association between pelvic rotation (PR) and scoliotic deformity in severe adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS), but none have investigated this relationship in mild to moderate AIS. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relationship between PR and trunk rotation in mild to moderate AIS. METHODS: This was a case-control study. The cases were 32 AIS patients with PR in the opposite direction to the thoracic curve, and the controls were 32 AIS patients with PR in the same direction as the thoracic curve. All patients were assessed with the Adams forwards bend test. Type II trunk rotation was selected as exposure. Logistic regression was used to estimate the association between PR direction and types of trunk rotation while accounting for confounders. Multiple linear regression was used to analyse the relationships between PR magnitude and the angle of trunk rotation (ATR). RESULTS: Logistic regression showed an unadjusted OR of 9.13 (95% CI 2.92–28.50, P < 0.001), and adjustment for sex and Cobb angle only slightly changed the OR (adjusted OR, 8.23; 95% CI, 2.51–27.01; P = 0.001). The concave/convex ratio was associated with ATR measurements in both cases (β = - 0.379; P = 0.030) and controls (β = - 0.468, P = 0.008). CONCLUSION: An association was found between PR and trunk rotation, which may help achieve more effective physiotherapy in mild to moderate AIS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mer and c-Met kinases, which are commonly overexpressed in various tumors, are ideal targets for the development of antitumor drugs. This study focuses on the design, synthesis, and evaluation of several 2-substituted aniline pyrimidine derivatives as highly potent dual inhibitors of Mer and c-Met kinases for effective tumor treatment. Compound 18c emerged as a standout candidate, demonstrating robust inhibitory activity against Mer and c-Met kinases, with IC50 values of 18.5 ± 2.3 nM and 33.6 ± 4.3 nM, respectively. Additionally, compound 18c displayed good antiproliferative activities on HepG2, MDA-MB-231, and HCT116 cancer cells, along with favorable safety profiles in hERG testing. Notably, it exhibited exceptional liver microsomal stability in vitro, with a half-life of 53.1 min in human liver microsome. Compound 18c also exhibited dose-dependent cytotoxicity and hindered migration of HCT116 cancer cells, as demonstrated in apoptosis and migration assays. These findings collectively suggest that compound 18c holds promise as a dual Mer/c-Met agent for cancer treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intensive aquaculture combatting the decline of large yellow croaker populations can trigger bacterial outbreaks, resulting in extensive antibiotic use. In this study, we screened 5 aquaculture sites in the coastal areas of Zhejiang and identified 17 antibiotics in large yellow croakers using UPLC-MS/MS. The distribution and occurrence of antibiotic pollutants were different in the different tissues of large yellow croakers, being primarily dominated by quinolones. Relatively higher average residue levels of enrofloxacin and ciprofloxacin were detected in the inedible parts, specifically the gills (37.29 μg/kg). Meanwhile, relatively high average residue levels of enrofloxacin and ciprofloxacin were also found in the edible parts, particularly in the muscle (23.18 μg/kg). We observed that the residue levels detected in the swim bladder exceeded the prescribed limit for fish muscle, but there is currently no specific regulatory limit established for this particular tissue. Despite the HI values of enrofloxacin and ciprofloxacin being below 0.01, the health risks should not be disregarded. The findings of this research provide significant practical implications for assessing antibiotic contamination and enhancing the risk management of coastal regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On-line gambling is the key illegal behaviour of public security department in most countries due to the potential threat to cyberspace security and social stability. Hence, the research on gambling domain names (GDN) classification is quite important and in great demand for academia and industry. Till now, there is very little research work on this topic. Most of the GDN training datasets in previous work were chosen from GDN blacklists provided by publicly available data sources, and the authors did not verify the authenticity and accuracy of these datasets, and the classification results are not particularly satisfactory. In this paper, certificated and textual analysis-based classification method CT-GDNC is proposed to get GDN training data set with an accuracy of 0.9776 and significantly improve the classification results of GDN. The exhaustive comparative experiments on 10K GDN obtained via Bert fine-tuning model and 10K benign data collected from Alex Top 1 million list show that the proposed method achieves new baseline result for GDN classification with classification accuracy 0.9936, precision 0.9936, F1 0.9936 and recall 0.9939. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finger-vein has been used for automatic personal recognition systems for over a decade. Its size and characteristics against presentation attacks make it suitable for various commercial and governmental applications. As with other biometric traits, the majority of finger-vein recognition methods employ hand-crafted feature for image classification. Lately, there are some convolutional neural network (CNN) models are designed for finger-vein identification and verification. Whereas, the CNN-based approaches tend to set up increasing layers and more parameters, which incur equipment memory issue and algorithm execution speed issue. Besides, many researchers have made great efforts to enhance hand-crafted feature-based method by using image enhancement algorithms. Hence, it is significant to explore high-performance finger-vein recognition without image enhancement in deep learning world. In this work, two different dimension issues are investigated: lightweight CNN model, the effect of image enhancement on finger-vein biometrics in deep feature space. Transfer learning plays an important role in extracting informative and representative features by information transfer from the pre-trained network to a novice via fine-tuning. The experimental results on four benchmark databases HKPU, FV-USM, SDUMLA and UTFVP demonstrate the proposed lightweight model 'LightFVN' outperforms the existing published competition winners. Furthermore, image enhancement turns out not to be essential for CNN-based finger-vein biometrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detecting and controlling illegal websites (gambling and pornography sites) through illegal domain names has been an unsolved problem. Therefore, how to mine and discover potential illegal domain names in advance has become a current research hotspot. This paper studies a method of generating illegal domain names based on the character similarity of domain name structure. Firstly, the K-means algorithm classified illegal domain names with similar structures. Then, put the classified clusters into the adversarial generative network for training. Finally, through a specific result verification method, the experiment shows that the average concentration of the generation algorithm is 23.82%, the effective concentration is 63.54%, and the expansion rate is 7.5. By comparing the results with the enumeration algorithm, the generation algorithm has greatly improved in terms of generation efficiency and accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Millions of new domain names are registered every day, but a large proportion of them are malicious and usually discovered and blacklisted after the crime has been committed. In order to improve the security of domain name registration, this paper proposes a lightweight detection method based on the AdaBoost to identify malicious domain names, which focuses on proactively detecting malicious domain names by exploring the abnormal WHOIS records. The domain name registries and registrars can adopt the proposed method as the first layer of defense to identify malicious domains on the domain registration stage. Extensive experiments on a large-scale database demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves satisfactory results on various malicious domain names. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the backbone of the domain name system (DNS), DNS resolvers are essential to the Internet. Nowadays, the measurement of DNS resolvers, especially open DNS resolvers, has become a research focus. Previous research works show that DNS responses returned from some open DNS resolvers are not expected for clients and the Internet. We call these DNS responses 'unexpected DNS responses'. Research on unexpected DNS responses is beneficial to the research, usage and management of open DNS resolvers. This paper explores unexpected DNS responses returned from open DNS resolvers in terms of identification and classification to better understand the behaviours of open DNS resolvers. First, an identification method is proposed to identify all kinds of DNS responses from each section of DNS messages. Second, a classification method is proposed to classify unexpected DNS responses by their influences on clients and the Internet. Furthermore, an efficient identification and classification method is proposed to simplify the above process. Among about 9 million responding open DNS resolvers in the experiments on the IPv4 address space, about 40% return unexpected DNS responses. Experimental results show that the proposed methods can identify and classify all kinds of DNS responses returned from open DNS resolvers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Domain name system (DNS) is crucial to Internet services. Previous studies have pointed out that the name dependency in domain name resolution poses a risk to the security of DNS. In this paper, we present measurement results from a dataset containing resolution paths of domain names collected from a large-scale survey. This dataset is used to research the effect of the name dependency on the DNS, reaffirm findings in published work, and notice some significant differences. When name resolution spans multiple domains, it will lead to name dependency and make the resolution process more complex. Furthermore, we assess the risk of domain name resolution: a name resolution fault analysis model and the calculation of the failure probability of name resolution is proposed. The model can identify the key server sets that lead to the resolution failure of a domain name, and quantify the failure probability of its resolution. This research provides a breakthrough point for guiding the configuration, management, deployment, and upgrading of the DNS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cybercriminals often register many pornographic or gambling domains (known as abusive domains) with similar character compositions in bulk to reduce their investment in buying domains and make it easier for clients to remember and spread them. Therefore, this study combines the ideas of text similarity and text generation and proposes an abusive domain generation model based on GRU for rapidly generating new abusive domain names from known ones. Additionally, we develop a two-layer detection system for pornography and gambling domains using fastText and CNN models to obtain an abusive domain dataset for model training and validation. In the end, our detection system identifies pornographic and gambling domains with 99% precision while balancing correctness and speed. By inputting 40,000 random keywords into the abusive domain generation model, we obtained 130,220 online domains that served web pages, of which about 66% were pornographic or gambling domains. The results show that by exploiting cybercriminals' behaviors in registering abusive domain names, such as bulk registration of similar domain names, we can prospectively acquire a large number of new abusive domains based on known ones. This study demonstrates that predicting new abusive domains not only expands the domain blacklist but also allows researchers to target the generated suspicious domains and dispose of them in time before they show abusive behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This study aimed to elucidate the information mechanism of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) in sturgeon fillets, and its inhibition by polyphenol. The results revealed that LTVH fillets (processed using low temperature vacuum heating method, LTVH) did not have lower values of AGEs than those treated using TC method (a typical thermal procedure using boiling water at 100 °C). The addition of tea polyphenol, on the other hand, drastically reduced the AGEs levels in LTVH fillets. An in vitro model including sturgeon myofibrillar protein and glucose was employed in this work to evaluate the inhibition of AGEs by tea polyphenol. The results showed that free Arginine was susceptible to interaction with glucose, which caused the development of AGEs. However, the addition of tea polyphenol competed with glucose for binding to free Arginine, leading to a substantial decrease in free Arginine concentration and an increase of free amino loss rate, resulting in the inhibition of AGEs generation. The LTVH technique, in combination with tea polyphenol, can be used to prevent the production of AGEs on fillets during the thermal treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large number of domains are abused every day for cybercrime. At the same time, the fight against abusive domains is not the fight of one person or organization but a battle that requires the cooperation of the entire community. However, very little research has been done to quantify the positive benefits of this strategy for dealing with abusive domains. As a result, using pornography and gambling domain names as examples, we present the first empirical study evaluating the usability and effectiveness of all Internet entities (e.g., registrars and hosting providers) in the DNS ecosystem for receiving and handling abusive domain reports. First, the paper thoroughly demonstrates the mechanisms for receiving and handling abusive domain reports at various Internet entities in China. Second, we select and report the appropriate 2433 abusive domains to 43 service providers across six categories of Internet entities. Finally, we discover the methods and response time used by each Internet entity to handle abuse reports based on the changes in reported domains. Based on the above data, we analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of Internet entities in dealing with abusive domains. Moreover, we indicate the scope of protection and disadvantages of each method, i.e., whether the abusive domain can escape handling. The paper aims to provide a more detailed overview and reference for the security communities, service providers, and Internet entities concerned with dealing with abusive domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Palmprint is an important key player in biometric family and also informs some extra basic personality details of an individual. In this paper, we utilize these extra information and designed an automated mobile vision (MV) system to extract principal lines from human palm and analyze them for behavioral significances. Hence, the main concern of this paper is to come up with a simple yet powerful low-level MV solution to extract the complex challenging features from palmprint. In the proposed system, the computational tasks are offloaded to a dedicated palmistry server and efficiently minimizes the energy consumption of mobile device after performing some preliminary computational low-level tasks. The implementation is divided into four major phases: (i) hand-image acquisition and pre-processing, (ii) region-of-interest extraction from the palm images, (iii) post-processing to extract principal lines and (iv) features computation for behavior analysis. The basic palmistry uses line lengths, angles, curves and branches to identify a person's behavior. The exhaustive experiments show that the proposed system achieves an average accuracy of 96%, 92% and 84% for heart, life and head line detection and personality prediction, respectively. Finally, mapping the extracted results with the original palmprint is augmented back to the use for better visualization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was aimed to investigate the effect of low-temperature vacuum heating (LTVH; versus the traditional thermal method– TC - 100°C boiling water) on water content/distributions, microstructure, and tenderness of sturgeon fillets. Although all fillets were well done, those fillets heated at lower temperature/time showed higher moisture content (P<.05). Furthermore, microstructure by paraffin section and shear force results also indicated LTVH70-30 (LTVH method; 70°C, 30 min) shown the most similar to TC fillets, the less firm and less juicy. Oppositely, LTVH60-15/30 (LTVH method, 60°C, 15/30 min) showed the best tenderness/juiciness among all fillets. Therefore, the LTVH method is agood alternative to the TC for fish processing in the catering industry, with tenderness/juiciness gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online palmprint recognition and latent palmprint identification are two branches of palmprint studies. The former uses middle-resolution images collected by a digital camera in a well-controlled or contact-based environment with user cooperation for commercial applications and the latter uses high-resolution latent palmprints collected in crime scenes for forensic investigation. However, these two branches do not cover some palmprint images which have the potential for forensic investigation. Due to the prevalence of smartphone and consumer camera, more evidence is in the form of digital images taken in uncontrolled and uncooperative environment, e.g., child pornographic images and terrorist images, where the criminals commonly hide or cover their face. However, their palms can be observable. To study palmprint identification on images collected in uncontrolled and uncooperative environment, a new palmprint database is established and an end-to-end deep learning algorithm is proposed. The new database named NTU Palmprints from the Internet (NTU-PI-v1) contains 7881 images from 2035 palms collected from the Internet. The proposed algorithm consists of an alignment network and a feature extraction network and is end-to-end trainable. The proposed algorithm is compared with the state-of-the-art online palmprint recognition methods and evaluated on three public contactless palmprint databases, IITD, CASIA, and PolyU and two new databases, NTU-PI-v1 and NTU contactless palmprint database. The experimental results showed that the proposed algorithm outperforms the existing palmprint recognition methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a fault early warning approach of coal mills based on the Thermodynamic Law and data mining. The Thermodynamic Law is used to describe the working characteristics of coal mills and to determine the multi-parameter vector that characterize the operating state of the coal mill. Data mining technology is applied to analysis the interrelationships among elements of the multi-parameter vector. Then the abnormal boundaries of parameters are calculated based on the distribution of parameters under different working conditions according to the Pauta criterion. Finally, the fault early warning model is implemented combining the abnormal boundaries and the confidence algorithm that can detect the working status of coal mills. Two actual numerical examples are used to illustrate the proposed method is capable of estimating the abnormality of coal mills before the fault happens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The superheated steam temperature system of the thermal power plant has the characteristics of large inertia, nonlinearity, and strong time variation, which make it difficult to be controlled. To address these problems, this paper proposes a generalized predictive control algorithm with an adaptive forgetting factor. First, based on a fuzzy algorithm and a recursive least squares algorithm, the controlled object's model can be quickly and accurately obtained with the adaptive forgetting factor in real time. It overcomes the nonlinear and time‐varying problems of the controlled object in the control progress. Meanwhile, it also solves the problem of data saturation and the weight assignment of the "new and old" data during online identification. Second, an adaptive generalized predictive controller algorithm has been developed with the controlled object. It solves the large inertia problem of the controlled object. Finally, through establishing simulation model of the superheated steam temperature system and simulating, the results show that the proposed method has better control performance, antidisturbance ability, adaptability, and robustness. Moreover, it has a certain reference significance for the design of a practical control system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using newly designed epoxy group activated carbon shell magnetic beads as a goat against mouse antibody (G-Mab) carrier, a competitive immunoassay was conducted on the surface of G-Mab-coated magnetic beads (G-Mab-MBs). Mouse monoclonal antibody against Okadaic acid (MAb), Okadaic acid-horseradish peroxidase conjugate (OA-HRP) and OA were simultaneously added into a reaction system. The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was performed in a 96-well microplate incorporated with magnetic bars. Detection of the OA level by using the current approach provided an excellent linear relationship in the range of 0.35–25.0 µg L−1 with a half-maximal inhibitory concentration IC50 of 3.27 µg L−1 and LOD values of 0.35 µg L−1. The shellfish matrix and other algal toxins presented in the sample extraction did not produce obvious interference. As a comparison, tests were conducted via commercial ELISA and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), and the corresponding analytical results demonstrated the reliability of the current protocol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ibuprofen (IBU), as a commonly used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) and pharmaceutical and personal care product (PPCP), is frequently prescribed by doctors to relieve pain. It is widely released into environmental water and soil in the form of chiral enantiomers by the urination and defecation of humans or animals and by sewage discharge from wastewater treatment plants. This study focused on the alteration of metabolism in the adult zebrafish ( Danio rerio ) brain after exposure to R-(-)-/S-(+)-/rac-IBU at 5 μg L −1 for 28 days. A total of 45 potential biomarkers and related pathways, including amino acids and their derivatives, purine and its derivatives, nucleotides and other metabolites, were observed with untargeted metabolomics. To validate the metabolic disorders induced by IBU, 22 amino acids and 3 antioxidant enzymes were selected to be quantitated and determined using targeted metabolomics and enzyme assay. Stereoselective changes were observed in the 45 identified biomarkers from the untargeted metabolomics analysis. The 22 amino acids quantitated in targeted metabolomics and 3 antioxidant enzymes determined in enzyme assay also showed stereoselective changes after R-(-)-/S-(+)-/rac-IBU exposure. Results showed that even at a low concentration of R-(-)-/S-(+)-/rac-IBU, disorders in metabolism and antioxidant defense systems were still induced with stereoselectivity. Our study may enable a better understanding of the risks of chiral PPCPs in aquatic organisms in the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: To detect and quantify synephrine in feed, an effective analytical method based on quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe solid‐phase extraction coupled to ultra high performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry was developed with isotopic internal standards. Pretreatment was performed using quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe solid‐phase extraction with primary secondary amine and C18 sorbent as sorbents in combination with Oasis MCX column clean‐up to extract and purify feed samples. Tandem mass spectrometry detection in positive ion mode was conducted in positive multiple reaction monitoring mode in addition to the quantitative internal standard method. Two transitions of synephrine at m/z 168.1/150.0 and 168.1/135.0 were selected, and m/z 168.1/135.0 was determined as the quantification ion pair. D9‐Terbutaline was selected as an internal standard, for which m/z 235.1/153.0 was selected as the quantification ion pair. Good linearity was shown for synephrine in the range of 0.5–50 μg/L, and the correlation coefficient exceeded 0.999. The recoveries in three different feed samples at three spiked levels were 81.42–112.08%, and the relative standard deviations were not greater than 14.66%. The method proposed in this study was reliable and highly effective, and its sensitivity, accuracy, and precision are suitable for determining synephrine residues in feed samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diamides have become one of the most promising new classes of insecticides. In this study, we evaluated the toxicity of three diamides (chlorantraniliprole, cyantraniliprole and flubendiamide) to Daphnia magna . The acute toxicity test showed that the 48-h EC 50 of chlorantraniliprole, cyantraniliprole and flubendiamide were 8.5, 23.9 and 63.5 μg/L, respectively. Biochemical measurements revealed a significant increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS) in D. magna after acute exposure to the three diamides. A significant decrease in activities of antioxidant enzymes superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) was observed, which was consistent with the down-regulated transcription of antioxidant genes sod and gpx . Catalase (CAT) activity exhibited a significant increase while the related gene cat showed no obvious change in daphnids acutely exposed to the three diamides. The chronic test revealed that the three diamides could cause lethal and sub-lethal effects on daphnids within constricted range of concentrations at μg/L level. The 21-d EC 50 of chlorantraniliprole, cyantraniliprole and flubendiamide for mobility were 5.0, 13.6 and 36.8 μg/L, respectively. The chronic LOEC of chlorantraniliprole, cyantraniliprole and flubendiamide based on survival, growth and reproduction of D. magna were 4.05, 10.24 and 19.36 μg/L, respectively. Moreover, these three diamides can induce severe developmental abnormalities in D. magna embryos including underdeveloped second antennae, curved tail spine and abnormal body region after acute exposure and the 48-h EC 50 were 6.2, 14.1 and 30.8 μg/L for chlorantraniliprole, cyantraniliprole and flubendiamide respectively. Our findings indicate that even low levels of diamides can pose ecological risks to aquatic ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strobilurins constitute a new class of fungicides that is the most widely used in the world. The present study was conducted to investigate the aquatic toxicity of 3 common strobilurin fungicides (kresoxim-methyl, pyraclostrobin, and trifloxystrobin) to Daphnia magna. The neonate acute immobilization test showed that the 48-h 50% effective concentration (EC50) values of kresoxim-methyl, pyraclostrobin, and trifloxystrobin were 443.3µg/L, 20.9µg/L, and 23.0µg/L, respectively. In addition, the 3 strobilurins significantly induced activity of the important detoxification enzyme glutathione S-transferase (GST) in D. magna, and there was a significant positive relationship between GST activity and immobility of D. magna after acute exposure. The 3 strobilurins showed higher toxicity to D. magna embryos, and the 48-h EC50 were 157.3µg/L, 3.9µg/L, and 1.7µg/L for kresoxim-methyl, pyraclostrobin, and trifloxystrobin, respectively. The 21-d chronic test revealed that the strobilurins could also significantly affect the reproduction, development, and growth of D. magna at sublethal concentrations. The lowest-observed-effect concentrations of kresoxim-methyl, pyraclostrobin, and trifloxystrobin for reproduction were 20µg/L, 0.15µg/L, and 0.2 µg/L, respectively, which were close to environmental concentrations. The findings indicate that strobilurin fungicides are very toxic to D. magna and they are sufficient to cause harm to D. magna at environmentally relevant concentrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to investigate the oxidative stress process and bioaccumulation the racemic/(−)-/(+)- 2,2ʹ,3,4ʹ,6-pentachlorobiphenyl were administered to adult zebrafish ( Danio rerio ) after prolonged exposure of 56-days uptake and 49-days depuration experiments. Stereoselective accumulation was observed in adult samples after racemic exposure as revealed by decreased enantiomer fractions. The two enantiomers of PCB91 accumulated at different rates with logBCF k values close to 3.7, suggesting that they were highly hazardous and persistent pollutants. Exposure to racemic/(−)-/(+)- PCB91 stereoselectively induced oxidative stress owing to changes in reactive oxygen species, malondialdehyde contents, antioxidant enzyme activities and gene expressions in brain and liver tissues. In addition, the stereoselective relationship between bioconcentration and oxidative stress were also presented in this study. Our findings might be helpful for elucidating the environmental risk of the two enantiomers of PCB91 that induce toxicity in aquatic organisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper was designed to study stereoselective enrichment and changes in gene expression when zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryo-larvae were exposed to racemic, (-)- or (+)- PCB149 (2,2’,3,4’,5’,6- hexachlorobiphenyl). Based on bioconcentration analysis, non-racemic enrichment was significantly observed after racemic exposure. No isomerization between the two isomers was found after (-)/(+)-PCB149 exposure. Furthermore, based on gene expression-data mining, CYPs genes (cyp2k6, cyp19a1b, and cyp2aa4) were differential genes after (+)-PCB149 exposure. No obvious differences of dysregulation of gene expression caused by racemic and (-)-PCB149, were observed in embryo-larvae. The above results suggested that (-)-PCB149 could be considered as the main factor causing the dysregulation of gene expression in embryo-larvae after racemic exposure; and (+)-PCB149 should be pursued apart from the racemate, when considering the toxicity of chiral PCB149. Thus, the information in our study could provide new insights to assess the environmental risk of chiral PCBs in aquatic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Difenoconazole is a widely used triazole fungicide and has been reported to have negative impacts on zebrafish embryos. To investigate the mechanism of its developmental toxicity, zebrafish embryos were exposed to 0.5 and 2.0 mg/L difenoconazole for 96 h. The morphological and physiological indicators of embryo development were tested. The total cholesterol (TCHO) level, triglyceride (TG) level and malondialdehyde (MDA) content were measured at 96 hpf (hours post-fertilization). In addition, the transcription of genes related to embryo development, the antioxidant system, lipid synthesis and metabolism was quantified. Our results showed that a large suite of symptoms were induced by difenoconazole, including hatching regression, heart rate decrease, growth inhibition and teratogenic effects. 0.5 mg/L difenoconazole could significantly increase the TG content of zebrafish embryos at 96 hpf, while no apparent change in the TCHO and MDA level was observed post 96 h exposure. Q-PCR (quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction) results showed that the transcription of genes related to embryonic development was decreased after exposure. Genes related to hatching, retinoic acid metabolism and lipid homeostasis were up-regulated by difenoconazole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbosulfan (CAS) is used as an insecticide on vegetables, but its toxicity might increase due to the formation of higher toxic metabolites including carbofuran (CAN), 3-hydroxycarbofuran (3-OH) and 3-ketocarbofuran (3-KETO). In this study, the transformation of CAS to its metabolites in pakchoi (Brassica campestrisssp.) and cucumber (CucumissativusL.) was investigated in the field in Beijing and Changsha and in a greenhouse in Hangzhou. CAS was metabolised to CAN, 3-OH and 3-KETO in pakchoi but only to CAN and 3-OH in cucumber. In pakchoi, the degradation of CAS (as measured by the DT50value, the time marking the disappearance of 50% of the pesticide) was the fastest in Hangzhou (0.7 d), followed by Changsha (1.4 d) and Beijing (2.3 d), whereas in cucumber, its degradation was the fastest in Changsha (1.6 d) and Hangzhou (1.6 d), followed by Beijing (2.5 d). These results suggested the monitoring of metabolites should be a prior objective for CAS, and different metabolites should be considered when assessing the risk of CAS in different vegetables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyhalofop-butyl is a selective herbicide widely employed in paddy field, which can transfer into aquatic environments. However, details of the environmental risk and aquatic toxicity of cyhalofop-butyl have not been fully investigated. In this study, zebrafish ( Danio rerio ) embryos were exposed to a range of cyhalofop-butyl until 120 hour post-fertilization (hpf) to assess embryonic toxicity of the chemical. Our results demonstrated that cyhalofop-butyl was highly toxic to zebrafish embryos, with concentration-dependent negative effects in embryonic development. In addition, exposure to cyhalofop-butyl resulted in significant increases in reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and cell apoptosis in heart area. The mRNA levels of the genes related to oxidative stress and apoptosis were also altered significantly after cyhalofop-butyl exposure. Moreover, the activity of capspase-9 and caspase-3 were significantly increased. Therefore, we speculated that oxidative stress-induced apoptosis should be responsible for abnormal development during embryogenesis after cyhalofop-butyl exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]