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To investigate the regulatory effect of all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) on the expression interleukin-1β (IL-1β) in macrophages and the mechanisms involved.Macrophages were treated with 1 μmol/L ATRA for 24 h before RNA-Sequence. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were screened out and analyzed by Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis, gene ontology (GO) functional analysis, and protein-protein interaction networks (PPI) analysis. After treatment with different doses of ATRA for 24 h, the expression of IL-1β was examined with qRT-PCR and Western blot. The activation of NF-κB signaling and caspase-1 was observed by Western blot and immunofluorescence staining.Compared with the blank control group, a total of 71 DEGs of macrophages were upregulated in the ATRA treatment group. KEGG analysis showed that the up-regulated DEGs were involved in IL-17 signaling pathway, tumor necrosis factor (TNF) signaling pathway, etc. GO analysis indicated that the up-regulated DEGs were involved in the biological processes of the production of IL-1β, response to lipopolysaccharide, etc. PPI analysis revealed that inflammatory cytokines, adhesion molecules, and chemokines were the key genes that ATRA acted on.ATRA may promote the expression of IL-1β by activating NF-κB signaling and caspase-1 in macrophages, this study may provide evidence for the immune regulatory function of ATRA on macrophages.

Cold goods manufacturers and logistics service providers are two essential groups of players in the goods safety issue in cold chains under the administration or inspection of governments and various stakeholders, including customers and final consumers. In this research, we applied the evolutionary game theory to examine the behavioral strategies of manufacturers and logistics service providers, while we formulated the governments and various other stakeholders’ impacts by contracted subsidy and penalty. First, we developed an evolutionary game theory model of the interaction between manufacturers and logistics service providers. Then, we examined the evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) of the manufacturers and logistics service providers under various constraints. Finally, we used simulation to demonstrate the impact of combinations of various parameters on the ESS and evolutionary paths. The results showed that the behavior strategies of the manufacturers and logistics service providers are interleaved and affected by the parameters in the developed model. We analyzed the ESSs and evolutionary paths by considering profits of the cold goods, the cold chain logistics costs, mainly the additional profits and costs of sharing information, and the subsidy and penalty regulated by contracts and governments. By tuning the parameters for numerical studies, we can find that the subsidy and penalty are essential for the cold chain manufactures and logistics service providers to adopt the information-sharing strategy, while the cost of the strategy and the profit of them constrains the positivity. Although, besides instant costs and profits, the information-sharing strategy can add values to cold chains in the long run, the administrators must consider the two populations of players and advocate them to adopt the information-sharing strategy consistently by using optimal policies.

Cold chain brokenness is a source of safety problems related to cool cargos. The cold chain logistics companies (CCLCs) can share their logistics information with governments to provide cold chain transparency, traceability, and brokenness proofs. The governments administrate the information sharing of the companies to prevent social loss and recovery costs when disastrous events happen. In this research, we apply the evolutionary game theory to examine the mutual interactions between the CCLCs (whose behavioral space consists of two strategies, information sharing and not) and the governments (whose behavioral space consists of two strategies, administration and not). First, we formulate the interactions as an evolutionary game model considering the governments and CCLCs as two interacted populations, whose dynamics are impacted by some parameters (including administration cost, penalty, subsidy, revenues, and logistics costs). Second, we devise eight propositions to examine the parameter impacts, the equilibrium points, and the evolutionary stable strategies (ESSs). Third, eight propositions, the effects of critical parameters on the ESSs, their dynamics and sensitivities are then simulated and investigated numerically. As results in theoretical and numerical analysis, high administration cost is harmful to advocate long-term information sharing strategy; subsidization is useful to encourage the companies for adopting information sharing strategy but is absent for long-term impacts; penalty cost is critical to administrate the CCLCs; high revenue of the CCLCs without information sharing strategy will challenge the governments’ administration mechanism. We finally discuss the contributions of information sharing to avoiding cold chain brokenness, as well as the future research directions considering the three pillars of sustainability for cold chains.

Uterine decidualization, characterized by stromal cell proliferation and differentiation into polyploid decidual cells, is critical to the establishment of pregnancy in mice, although the mechanism underlying this process remains poorly understood. This study is the first to investigate the expression of gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA) and the GABA A-type receptor π subunit (GABPR) in the early-pregnancy mouse uterus and their roles in decidualization. The expression of GABRP was detected from Day 4 to 8 of pregnancy. The effects of GABA and GABA A-type receptor on cell proliferation and apoptosis were investigated using the Cell Titer 96® AQueous One Solution Cell Proliferation Assay and flow cytometry. The levels of cyclin D3 protein were measured in cultured stromal cells artificially induced to undergo decidualization, and treated with GABA and a GABA A-type receptor agonist or antagonist, respectively, at the same time. mRNA expression of gabrp in implantation sites was lower than that in inter-implanted sites. GABA and GABRP protein were localized in the luminal and glandular epithelium, stromal cells, and decidual cells. In vitro, GABPR protein level was decreased in cultured stromal cells during the decidualization process. The addition of GABA and the GABA A-type receptor agonist Muscimol inhibited stromal cell proliferation, promoted apoptosis, and arrested cells in S-phase, followed by decreased expression of cyclin D3. These results show that in mice, GABA was actively involved in inhibiting stromal cell proliferation and suppresses decidualization progress through GABA A-type receptors by down-regulating cyclin D3 level.

To evaluate the therapeutic effect of minimally invasive percutaneous nephrolithotomy (MPCNL) under ultrasonic and X-ray guidance in the treatment of complicated renal calculi.A retrospective analysis was conducted among 36 patients undergoing MPCNL under ultrasonic and X-ray guidance for complicated renal calculi. The general clinical data, stone size, operative time, blood loss, complications and stone clearance rate were analyzed.Double working channel was established accurately under ultrasonic and X-ray guidance in the 36 cases. The stone clearance rate in one treatment session was 80.56%, with an average operation time of 100 min and a mean hospital stay of 13.5 days (13-15 days) after operation. A second lithotripsy was performed in 5 cases and no residual renal calculi were found 1 month after the operation. Sixteen out of the 18 patients with preoperative elevation of serum creatinine recovered normal creatinine level after the operation.MPCNL under ultrasonic and X-ray guidance is safe and effective for treatment of complicated renal calculi and is associated with few postoperative complications.