Search

In China, the innovative development of education for older people is an important response to the aging population, and an important way to meet the spiritual, cultural, and social needs of older people. Current academic research mainly focuses on the social factors that affect the participation of older people in education and there are few empirical studies on the individual psychological characteristics of older adult learning behavior. This study takes a positive psychology approach to the exploration of the factors influencing the participation of older adults in education in a number of universities of the Third Age in Fujian Province, China. The study is based on curriculum preferences and frequency of participation in extracurricular activities. The results show that the personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism, as well as gender, age, level of educational attainment, and family economic status significantly affect frequency of participation in extracurricular activities and the curriculum preferences of older learners. The results of this study suggest that we can strengthen personality matching to promote the learning enthusiasm of older people in education, and adhere to the demand-oriented to promote the Third age education curriculum personalized. Furthermore, we should increase the scope for popularizing Third age education, improve the accessibility of education for the older people, accelerate the integration of older adult education with the Internet, innovate the form of older adult education, and then promote the development of customized curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we developed a novel liquid fermentation medium of Cordyceps militaris using pupa powder and wheat bran as nitrogen resources instead of the traditionally used peptone. This process not only reduced the cost by approximately 50%, but increased production by over 30%. Then, we explored a method to extract and purify cordycepin by combining hydrothermal reflux extraction with macroporous resin adsorption, which is inexpensive and suitable for the industrial production. The optimum conditions for hydrothermal reflux were extracting three times at 95 °C with 1:10 sample-to-water ratio, and the cordycepin purity with macroporous resin HPD-100 reached 95.23%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of CyTA: Journal of Food is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Gene expression programming (GEP) models, a robust variant of genetic programming, are developed in this study to correlate resilient modulus with routine properties of subgrade soils and state of stress for pavement design applications. A database used for building the model was developed that contained grain size distribution, Atterberg limits, standard Proctor, unconfined compression, and resilient modulus results for 97 soils from 16 different counties in Oklahoma. Of these, 63 soils (development data set) are used in training, and the remaining 34 soils (evaluation data set) from two different counties are used in evaluation of the models developed. Two different correlations were developed using different combinations of the influencing parameters. The proposed constitutive models relate the resilient modulus of routine subgrade soils to moisture content , dry density , plasticity index (PI), percent passing a No. 200 sieve (), unconfined compressive strength , deviatoric stress , and bulk stress . The results are compared with those from artificial neutral network (ANN) models. Overall, GEP models show good performance and are proven to be better than ANN models. The GEP-based design equations can be readily used for pavement design purposes or may be used as a fast check on solutions developed by more in-depth deterministic analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gummy stem blight of Cucumis melo L. (melon) caused by Didymella bryoniae is a serious disease in the major production area of northwest China. Two Streptomyces isolates (Streptomyces pactum A12 and S. globisporus subsp. globisporus C28) previously isolated from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau were investigated regarding their biocontrol of gummy stem blight and growth promotion of melon under controlled conditions. Streptomyces A12 and C28 indicated obvious antagonistic activity against D. bryoniae in vitro. Both A12 and C28 significantly decreased disease severity and AUDPC (area under the disease progress curve) of melon gummy stem blight in vivo (P < 0.05). Ten-fold dilution of C28 culture filtrate was more effective in controlling the disease compared with other treatments, the disease reduction effects were 41.0–64.2%. The mean fresh weights were increased by 40.4% for plants, 44.2% for roots, and 40.3% for aerial parts, when A12 was applied in both nursery soil and transplanted soil. Streptomyces C28 also increased the mean fresh weights of melon plants by 18.4–49.0% compared with the control in pot trial. Streptomyces A12 and C28 showed substantial colonization abilities in the rhizosphere and on the rhizoplane of melon plants. Results demonstrated that Streptomyces A12 and C28 were of positive effect on the biocontrol of gummy stem blight and growth promotion of Cucumis melo L. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Paocai is a popular fermented vegetable side dish or appetizer in China. This study was to investigate the relationship between its sensory quality and physicochemical properties by different statistical methods and to establish a regression prediction model for sensory scores. Principal component analysis disclosed that the sensory properties were negatively correlated with lactic acid and acetic acid contents. The cluster analysis classified the samples into three groups based on their sensory scores and the main differences among the groups were firmness, salinity, and acid production. Finally, a prediction model with an adjusted R2 of 85.28% was established by partial least squares regression to predict the sensory scores and showed high reliability on six tested samples. Practical applications: Paocai is a popular side dish or appetizer in China that has a large annual production and consumption. Nowadays, the evaluation of the quality of paocai is mainly relied on sensory assessment, which is expensive to implement, time‐consuming, and sometimes cannot be implemented online for immediate feedback. By establishing the relationship between sensory quality and physicochemical properties of paocai, it is possible to build online feedback of paocai production by instrumental detections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this paper, the catalytic performance of non-purified esterase from wheat bran immobilized on glass fibre membrane carrier is established, the immobilization conditions observed were enzyme 1 mL, phosphate buffer 3 mL (pH 7.0), immobilization time 1 h, immobilization temperature 29 °C. After carrier functionalization some characteristics of immobilized enzyme were studied, the results showed that immobilized enzyme presenting improved characteristic than that of free enzyme. The optimum pH for free and immobilized enzymes were found to be 8 and 7, respectively. As for optimum temperature for free and immobilized enzymes were observed to be 30 °C and 40 °C, respectively. When the enzyme was immobilized on glass fibre membranes, its K m increased about 7 times. In addition, storage and thermal stability of the free wheat esterase were increased by as a result of membrane immobilization, after 12 days of storage, the immobilized enzyme still retained about 91.10% of its original activity at 4 °C, indicating a great potential in industrial application. Graphical abstract Unlabelled Image Highlights • The wheat esterase was immobilized on glass fiber film for the first time. • Enzymatic properties of immobilized wheat esterase are proposed. • Catalytic properties of wheat esterase changes of the presence of carrier. • Immobilized wheat esterase presenting improved characteristic than that of free enzyme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paocai is a popular fermented vegetable side dish or appetizer in China. This study was to investigate the quality and microbial flora changes of paocai during the multiple rounds of fermentation, in order to provide practical suggestions for the industrial production. A total of 4 kinds of lactic acid bacteria were identified based on morphology and calcium dissolution zone size and further 16s RNA identifications. The paocai quality was evaluated on titratable acid, organic acid, amino acid and volatile components content. The results showed that the brine starters after the 4 rounds of fermentation could significantly accelerate the fermentation process from 6 days to only 1–2 days. After 4th round of fermentation, the quality of radish paocai was roughly unified as regard for the microbial flora, organic acid, free amino acid and volatile components content at the maturation point. Therefore, the brine after 4th round of radish paocai fermentation could be used as starters for radish paocai production in industrial scale. • Starter could accelerate the fermentation process of paocai; • After 4 rounds of fermentation could unify the quality of paocai; • Starter of brine after 4 rounds decreases fermentation time from 6 days to 2 days; • Paocai Quality is significantly influenced by the microbial flora changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Adolescence is a pivotal stage vulnerable to mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. Although self-acceptance and social comparison are known to affect adolescent mental health, their interactive and moderating roles are not fully understood., Aims: To explore the role of self-acceptance, social comparison and attributional style in predicting these mental health outcomes among adolescents in clinical settings., Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample of 242 adolescents. Participants completed measures assessing self-acceptance, social comparison, attributional style and mental health outcomes (depression and anxiety). Mediation models and multi-group analysis were used to examine the relationships among these variables., Results: Our findings demonstrated a significant relationship between self-acceptance, social comparison, depression and anxiety ( r s = 0.32-0.88). Specifically, lower self-acceptance and higher social comparison were associated with higher levels of depression and anxiety. Additionally, individuals with external attributional tendencies reported higher depression (Cohen's d = 0.61) and anxiety ( d = 0.58) compared with those with internal tendencies. Mediation modelling showed that social comparison is a mediator between self-acceptance and depression (effect size -0.04, 95% CI -0.08 to -0.01) and anxiety (effect size -0.06, 95% CI -0.10 to -0.02). Crucially, multi-group analysis showed that the impact of social comparison on mental health outcomes varied significantly based on attributional style., Conclusions: These findings underscore the importance of considering self-acceptance, social comparison and attributional style in understanding and addressing mental health challenges during adolescence. This could inform the development of targeted interventions to promote mental health and well-being among adolescents. However, further research is needed to confirm these findings in diverse populations and to explore the underlying mechanisms in greater detail.