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Antimicrobial agents are safe preservatives having the ability to protect foods from microbial spoilage and extend their shelf life. Many factors, including antimicrobials’ chemical features, storage environments, delivery methods, and diffusion in foods, can affect their antimicrobial activities. The physical-chemical characteristics of the food itself play an important role in determining the efficacy of antimicrobial agents in foods; however the mechanisms behind it have not been fully explored. This review provides new insights and comprehensive knowledge regarding the impacts of the food matrix, including the food components and food (micro)structures, on the activities of antimicrobial agents. Studies of the last 10 years regarding the influences of the food structure on the effects of antimicrobial agents against the microorganisms’ growth were summarized. The mechanisms underpinning the loss of the antimicrobial agents’ activity in foods are proposed. Finally, some strategies/technologies to improve the protection of antimicrobial agents in specific food categories are discussed.

BackgroundPeripheral vascular disease remains a leading cause of vascular morbidity and mortality worldwide despite advances in medical and surgical therapy. Besides traditional approaches, which can only restore blood flow to native arteries, an alternative approach is to enhance the growth of new vessels, thereby facilitating the physiological response to ischemia.MethodsThe ActinCreER/R26VT2/GK3 Rainbow reporter mouse was used for unbiased in vivo survey of injury-responsive vasculogenic clonal formation. Prospective isolation and transplantation were used to determine vessel-forming capacity of different populations. Single-cell RNA-sequencing was used to characterize distinct vessel-forming populations and their interactions.ResultsTwo populations of distinct vascular stem/progenitor cells (VSPCs) were identified from adipose-derived mesenchymal stromal cells: VSPC1 is CD45-Ter119-Tie2+PDGFRa-CD31+CD105highSca1low, which gives rise to stunted vessels (incomplete tubular structures) in a transplant setting, and VSPC2 which is CD45-Ter119-Tie2+PDGFRa+CD31-CD105lowSca1high and forms stunted vessels and fat. Interestingly, cotransplantation of VSPC1 and VSPC2 is required to form functional vessels that improve perfusion in the mouse hindlimb ischemia model. Similarly, VSPC1 and VSPC2 populations isolated from human adipose tissue could rescue the ischemic condition in mice.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that autologous cotransplantation of synergistic VSPCs from nonessential adipose tissue can promote neovascularization and represents a promising treatment for ischemic disease.

In animal husbandry, feed efficiency is a crucial economic trait. In this study, the general linear model was used to perform association analysis for various genotypes and feed conversion ratio (FCR)-related traits. Reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) was used to detect the expression of SHISA3 and RFC3 mRNA levels in 10 tissues from 6 sheep. The results showed that SNPs in the NC_040257.1:c.625 T > C and NC_040261.1:g.9905 T > C were analyzed whether they were associated to feed efficiency parameters in Hu sheep (body weight, feed intake, average daily growth, and feed conversion ratio). NC_040257.1:c.625 T > C was shown to be significantly associated with body weight at 80, 100, and 120 days as well as feed conversion ratio (P < 0.05), whereas NC_040261.1:g.9905 T > C was found to be significantly associated with average daily weight gain from 80-140 days (ADG80-140) and FCR (P < 0.05). In Hu sheep, the CC genotypes of SHISA3 and RFC3 were the most common genotypes related to feed efficiency traits. Furthermore, the feed conversion ratio of the combined genotypes TTSHISA3-CCRFC3, TTSHISA3-CTRFC3, TTSHISA3-TTRFC3, CTSHISA3-CCRFC3 and CTSHISA3-CTRFC3 was significantly better than the FCR of CCSHISA3-TTRFC3. RT-qPCR results showed that the expression levels of SHISA3 were lower in the lung than in spleen, kidney, muscle and lymph (P < 0.05), and RFC3 was the lung had a highly significant higher expression level than the heart, liver, spleen, and muscle (P < 0.01). In conclusion, SHISA3 and RFC3 polymorphisms can be used as genetic markers for improving feed conversion efficiency in Hu sheep.

Additional file 1: Fig. S1. Early-senescence phenotype of old12 under short-day condition. Fig. S2. Visualization of allele frequency by SHOREmap. Fig. S3. Absence of old12 phenotype in p2k2-1. Fig. S4. Comparison of the protein sequence of P2K2 from different accessions. Fig. S5. Conservation of the C-terminal extension of P2K2 in Brassicaceae. Fig. S6. Full blot images for figure 4 Fig. S7. Tissue-specific expression of P2K2 in Col-0. Fig. S8. Crossing of npr1 into the old12 mutant results in leaf bleaching. Table S1. Putative EMS-induced SNPs on Chromosome I. Table S2. qPCR primers used.

Video moment retrieval pursues an efficient and generalized solution to identify the specific temporal segments within an untrimmed video that correspond to a given language description. To achieve this goal, we provide a generative diffusion-based framework called MomentDiff, which simulates a typical human retrieval process from random browsing to gradual localization. Specifically, we first diffuse the real span to random noise, and learn to denoise the random noise to the original span with the guidance of similarity between text and video. This allows the model to learn a mapping from arbitrary random locations to real moments, enabling the ability to locate segments from random initialization. Once trained, MomentDiff could sample random temporal segments as initial guesses and iteratively refine them to generate an accurate temporal boundary. Different from discriminative works (e.g., based on learnable proposals or queries), MomentDiff with random initialized spans could resist the temporal location biases from datasets. To evaluate the influence of the temporal location biases, we propose two anti-bias datasets with location distribution shifts, named Charades-STA-Len and Charades-STA-Mom. The experimental results demonstrate that our efficient framework consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods on three public benchmarks, and exhibits better generalization and robustness on the proposed anti-bias datasets. The code, model, and anti-bias evaluation datasets are available at https://github.com/IMCCretrieval/MomentDiff., Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures

Background Intracranial aneurysms may be misdiagnosed with other vascular lesions such as vascular loops, infundibulum, or the stump of an occluded artery (very rare and reported compromising only the middle cerebral artery and the posterior circulation territory). Our aim was to describe a unique case of occlusion of an anterior cerebral artery mimicking a cerebral aneurysm in a probable moyamoya disease patient, and to highlight its clinical presentation, diagnosis, and management, and to perform an extensive literature review. Case A 67-year-old man suffering from recurrent dizziness for 3 months. Previous medical history was unremarkable. Brain magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) and digital subtraction angiography (DSA) demonstrated occlusion of the right middle cerebral artery (MCA) associated with a “probable moyamoya disease” and an aneurysm-like shadow protruding lesion at the anterior communicating artery (AcomA). Perfusion images showed ischemia along the right temporo-occipital lobe. Due to MCA occlusion with perfusion deficits and unspecific symptoms, we offered a right side encephalo-duro-myo-synangiosis (EDMS) and clipping of the AcomA aneurysm in one session. Intraoperatively, there was no evidence of the AcomA aneurysm; instead, this finding corresponded to the stump of the occluded right anterior cerebral artery (A1 segment). This segment appeared to be of yellowish color due to atherosclerosis and lacked blood flow. The patient underwent as previously planned a right side EDMS and the perioperative course was uneventful without the presence of additional ischemic attacks. Conclusion Arterial branch occlusions can sometimes present atypical angiographic characteristics that can mimic a saccular intracranial aneurysm. It is relevant to consider this radiographic differential diagnosis, especially when aneurysm treatment is planned.

Progressive bone loss during aging makes osteoporosis one of the most common and life impacting conditions in geriatric populations. The bone homeostasis is maintained through persistent remodeling mediated by bone-forming osteoblast and bone-resorbing osteoclast. Inflammaging, a condition characterized by increased pro-inflammatory markers in the blood and other tissues during aging, has been reported to be associated with skeletal stem/progenitor cell dysfunction, which will result in impaired bone formation. However, the role of age-related inflammation and metabolites in regulation of osteoclast remains largely unknown. In the present study, we observed dichotomous phenotypes of anti-inflammatory metabolite itaconate in responding to inflammaging. Itaconate is upregulated in macrophages during aging but has less reactivity in responding to RANKL stimulation in aged macrophages. We confirmed the inhibitory effect of itaconate in regulating osteoclast differentiation and activation, and further verified the rescue role of itaconate in lipopolysaccharides induced inflammatory bone loss animal model. Our findings revealed that itaconate is a crucial regulatory metabolite during inflammaging that inhibits osteoclast to maintain bone homeostasis.

Our aim was to determine the impact of targeted blood pressure modifications on cerebral blood flow in ischemic moyamoya disease patients assessed by single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). From March to September 2018, we prospectively collected data of 154 moyamoya disease patients and selected 40 patients with ischemic moyamoya disease. All patients underwent in-hospital blood pressure monitoring to determine the mean arterial pressure baseline values. The study cohort was subdivided into two subgroups: (1) Group A or relative high blood pressure (RHBP) with an induced mean arterial pressure 10–20% higher than baseline and (2) Group B or relative low blood pressure (RLBP) including patients with mean arterial pressure 10–20% lower than baseline. All patients underwent initial SPECT study on admission-day, and on the following day, every subgroup underwent a second SPECT study under their respective targeted blood pressure values. In general, RHBP patients showed an increment in perfusion of 10.13% (SD 2.94%), whereas RLBP patients showed a reduction of perfusion of 12.19% (SD 2.68%). Cerebral blood flow of moyamoya disease patients is susceptible to small blood pressure changes, and cerebral autoregulation might be affected due to short dynamic blood pressure modifications.

Chitooligosaccharides (COSs) have various physiological activities and broad application prospects; however, their pharmacokinetics and tissue distribution remain unclear. In this study, a sensitive and selective ultra-performance liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (UPLC–MS) method for determining chitobiose (COS 2) and chitotriose (COS 3) in rat serum and tissues was developed. This method was successfully validated based on FDA guidelines in terms of selectivity, calibration curves (lower limit of quantification was 0.002 µg/mL for COS 2 and 0.02 µg/mL for COS 3), precision (intra-day relative standard deviation of 0.04%–3.55% and inter-day relative standard deviation of 1.94%–11.63%), accuracy (intra-day relative error of − 1.81%–11.06% and inter-day relative error of − 9.41%–8.63%), matrix effects, recovery (97.10%–101.29%), stability, dilution integrity, and carry-over effects. Then, the method was successfully applied to the pharmacokinetics and tissue distribution study of COS 2 and COS 3 after intragastric and intravenous administration. After intragastric administration, COS 2 and COS 3 were rapidly absorbed, reached peak concentrations in the serum after approximately 0.45 h, and showed rapid elimination with clearances greater than 18.82 L/h/kg and half-lives lower than 6 h. The absolute oral bioavailability of COS 2 and COS 3 was 0.32%–0.52%. COS 2 and COS 3 were widely distributed in Wistar rat tissues and could penetrated the blood–brain barrier without tissue accumulation. Graphic Abstract

Additional file 2: Table S2. Effect of uniconazole on DEGs in mungbean leaves under chilling stress at the Rl stage.

Additional file 5: Figure S1. Effects of uniconazole on photosynthetic pigments in Lvfeng 5 under chillingstress at the R1 stage.

Additional file 1.

Additional file 1: Table S1. Primer sequences used in qPCR.

Additional file 4: Table S4. Expression level of genes associatedwith cutin, suberin and wax biosynthesis(Vra00073) in mung bean.

Additional file 4: Table S4. Expression level of genes associatedwith cutin, suberin and wax biosynthesis(Vra00073) in mung bean.

Additional file 1: Table S1. Selected genes and primers forquantitative qRT���PCR.

Additional file 5: Figure S1. Effects of uniconazole on photosynthetic pigments in Lvfeng 5 under chillingstress at the R1 stage.

Additional file 6: Figure S2. Pearsoncorrelation between samples.

Additional file 2.

Probabilistic graphical models play a crucial role in machine learning and have wide applications in various fields. One pivotal subset is undirected graphical models, also known as Markov random fields. In this work, we investigate the structure learning methods of Markov random fields on quantum computers. We propose a quantum algorithm for structure learning of an $r$-wise Markov Random Field with a bounded degree underlying graph, based on a nearly optimal classical greedy algorithm. The quantum algorithm provides a polynomial speed-up over the classical counterpart in terms of the number of variables. Our work demonstrates the potential merits of quantum computation over classical computation in solving some problems in machine learning., Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure

Additional file 6: Figure S2. Pearsoncorrelation between samples.

Additional file 3: Table S3. Expression level of genes associatedwith ribosome (Vra03010) in mung bean.

Ca3Ln3Ce7Ta2O26.5 (Ln = Gd or Yb) oxides were synthesised using a high-temperature sintering technology at 1873 K for 10 h in air. The crystal lattice structures and thermophysical properties of these two oxides were estimated. The fabricated ceramics present an onefold pyrochlore-kind lattice. Because of the relatively higher atomic weight of Ca3Yb3Ce7Ta2O26.5 than that of Ca3Gd3Ce7Ta2O26.5, the heat-insulation ability of Ca3Yb3Ce7Ta2O26.5 is less than that of Ca3Gd3Ce7Ta2O26.5. Due to the minor electro-negativity of Yb than that of Gd, Ca3Yb3Ce7Ta2O26.5 exhibits greater thermal expansion coefficient than Ca3Gd3Ce7Ta2O26.5.

Porous silicon nanowires (SiNWs) is considered as one of promising candidates for high-performance NO2 sensor application in human health and quality life owing to its fast response and stable operation at room temperature. However, the development of SiNWs-based gas sensors for stable detection of ppb-level NO2 in practical high-humidity environments remains a challenge. In this study, octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS) was utilized to modify partially insensitive SiNWs surface with the Si-O bond, yielding an immunity to high humidity in gas detection process. The modified OTS provides an umbrella-like barrier blocking water molecules attraction on the nanowire surface which disinhibits the main adsorption sites and sensing channels of the sensor. The OTS-modified porous SiNWs (OTS/SiNWs) sensor exhibited a practical capability to detect 5 ppb NO2 at humidity of 25%–55% RH and a response of 1.8% to 50 ppb NO2 at 75% RH at room temperature. Moreover, the fast response/recovery characteristics and good reversibility of the OTS/SiNWs sensor was observed even under high humidity conditions. In addition, the OTS/SiNWs sensor displayed excellent stability to humidity variations. The enhanced gas sensing performance is attributed to a marriage of porous structure of SiNWs and OTS. The simple modification for SiNWs-based gas sensor will broaden new avenues, not only in chemical trace detection, but also in high humidity health monitoring.

Surface modification by noble metal nanoparticles has been proved highly effective on response enhancement of a semiconductor gas sensor. In this work, the adsorption of NO2 on Ag-modified silicon nanowire (Ag@SiNW) was investigated by means of density functional theory (DFT) calculations with aim to explore the nature and theoretical mechanism of Ag modification for sensing response enhancement. Ag surface modification tunes the electronic structure of SiNW considerably, which is further moderated by the spontaneous adsorptions of NO2 on surface Si site and on the modified Ag atom. The modified Ag as a donor creates an n-doping state, activating the surface Si atom and promoting the adsorption of Si surface to NO2 gas. Nevertheless, Mulliken charge transfer calculations clarify that the enhanced response observed experimentally for an Ag@SiNW sensor is mainly attributed from the gas adsorption right on Ag atom. The adsorbed NO2 on modified Ag atom captures 1.27 e from the nanowire surface, which is more than twice as much as that with Si site adsorption. The calculations on geometry and charge density difference reveal the catalyst nature of the modified Ag for NO2 adsorption and further clarify theoretically the possible reaction of NO2, i.e., dissociation and spillover, occurring on the Ag atom. Besides, a defect-induced preferential etching mechanism of metal (Ag)-assisted chemical etching (MACE) for SiNW was proposed from a new perspective based on the lattice distortion analysis induced by Ag modification.

At present, most of the small-scale solar power generation systems are fixed, which generally have low power generation efficiency and single system function. In order to solve this problem, this paper designs a set of solar power generation system with light tracing to achieve higher power generation efficiency. At the same time, it has a rainwater collection system, so that the system can collect rainwater resources in rainy days, which can be applied to urban and road lighting and greening and other occasions. Through theoretical analysis, the scale model is built and tested. The experimental results show that the power generation under sunny and cloudy test can be improved by 20.229% and 19.096% respectively. It show that the system can track the sun's path intelligently by sensors, increase the efficiency of power generation, and effectively solve the problem that the popular power generation system can only play a role in sunny days.

In many real-world datasets, like WebVision, the performance of DNN based classifier is often limited by the noisy labeled data. To tackle this problem, some image related side information, such as captions and tags, often reveal underlying relationships across images. In this paper, we present an efficient weakly supervised learning by using a Side Information Network (SINet), which aims to effectively carry out a large scale classification with severely noisy labels. The proposed SINet consists of a visual prototype module and a noise weighting module. The visual prototype module is designed to generate a compact representation for each category by introducing the side information. The noise weighting module aims to estimate the correctness of each noisy image and produce a confidence score for image ranking during the training procedure. The propsed SINet can largely alleviate the negative impact of noisy image labels, and is beneficial to train a high performance CNN based classifier. Besides, we released a fine-grained product dataset called AliProducts, which contains more than 2.5 million noisy web images crawled from the internet by using queries generated from 50,000 fine-grained semantic classes. Extensive experiments on several popular benchmarks (i.e. Webvision, ImageNet and Clothing-1M) and our proposed AliProducts achieve state-of-the-art performance. The SINet has won the first place in the classification task on WebVision Challenge 2019, and outperformed other competitors by a large margin., Comment: Accepted by ECCV 2020

Background: Cataract is the most prevalent cause of blindness worldwide, and millions of cataract surgeries are performed in China every year. Postoperative endophthalmitis (POE), a devastating infectious complication of cataract surgery, often results in extremely poor visual prognosis, even blindness. We investigated the incidence of acute POE after cataract surgery in Northern China from 2012 to 2018, evaluated the effectiveness of perioperative infection prophylaxis and analyzed the potential prognosis factor for the final visual outcome of POE patients. Methods: The study was designed as a retrospective multicenter research, with seven hospitals in Northern China enrolled. The diagnosis of acute-onset POE was mainly made on the basis of clinical manifestations within six weeks after initial surgery. By reviewing electronic medical system, the number of cataract surgeries and acute POE cases were recorded to estimate the overall incidence and incidences among different years and hospitals. Perioperative measures for preventing infection in different hospitals were collected to evaluate their effectiveness in reducing the risk of developing POE. The correlations between final visual acuity and potential factors including basal information and clinical characteristics were examined to determine the predictive factors for the visual prognosis. Findings: Of 72,255 cataract surgeries performed during seven years in the seven hospitals, 19 cases developed acute POE, yielding an incidence of 0·026% (95%CI 0·015%, 0·038%). The occurrence rate of acute POE significantly declined year by year over the period (p=0·021), from 0·056% in 2012 to 0·007% in 2018. The incidence of acute POE significantly decreased in Hospital-D after the application of 0·5% povidone-iodine (PVP-I) for conjunctival washing (p =0·003). Two hospitals adopting tobramycin in the irrigation solution achieved a significant lower incidence than the other hospitals (p=0·044). At the onset of endophthalmitis, the best BCVA presented was 20/70 and only four patients (21·1%) achieved BCVA better than counting fingers (CF). The positive rate of pathogen culture was just 17·6% (3/19) in our study, with Staphylococcus hominis isolated in two cases and Streptococcus cultured in one case. Patients with presenting BCVA of CF or better was more likely to achieve a better final visual outcome than those with worse presenting BCVA (p=0·003). Interpretation: In the past seven years, the incidence of POE after cataract surgery declined annually in Northern China, but there are still broad gaps among different level hospitals which much more effort should be made to eliminate. Due to the regional variation in the POE incidence, it is essential for cataract surgeons to figure out the recent incidence and changing tendency of POE in their own regions, thereby being sensitive and keeping alerting to its occurrence. Prophylactic use of 0·5% PVP-I and tobramycin in irrigation solution should be applied to prevent POE after cataract surgery, and presenting BCVA could be regarded as a prognosis factor for the final visual outcome. Funding Statement: National Science and Technology Major Project (2018ZX10101004) Declaration of Interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Ethics Approval Statement: The study was designed as a retrospective multicenter research. It was approved by the Ethical Committees of all the included hospitals and conformed to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Previous studies suggest a relationship between sleep disordered breathing (SDB) and lower extremity artery disease (LEAD) though disagreements remain. This study was performed to assess the association between SDB and LEAD in a metaanalysis. PubMed and Embase databases were searched for observational studies. A random-effects model incorporating between-study heterogeneity was used to pool the data. The search revealed 7 studies including 152,885 participants. Patients with SDB had higher odds of LEAD (risk ratio [RR] = 1.32, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.07 to 1.63, p = 0.01, I 2 = 66%) compared to non-SDB participants. In subgroup analyses, SDB was related to higher odds of LEAD in patients with stroke or diabetes (RR = 3.28, p < 0.001) than in a community-derived population (RR = 1.17, p = 0.08; p for subgroup difference < 0.001). Furthermore, the odds of LEAD was increased in patients with moderate (RR = 1.34, 95% CI = 1.04 to 1.73, p = 0.02) or severe SDB (RR = 1.81, 95% CI = 1.08 to 3.03, p = 0.02), but not in those with mild SDB (RR = 0.94, 95% CI = 0.69 to 1.29, p = 0.71). Differences in study design or methods for LEAD diagnosis did not appear to affect the association between SDB and LEAD. Patients with SDB have higher odds of LEAD compared to non-SDB participants.

The field of regeneration for functional cartilage has progressed tremendously. Conventional approaches for regenerating the damaged tissue based on integrated manufacturing are limited by their inability to produce precise and customized biomimetic tissues. On the other hand, 3D bioprinting is a promising technique with increased versatility because it can co-deliver cells and biomaterials with proper compositions and spatial distributions. In the present article, we review recent progress in the complete 3D printing process involved in functional cartilage regeneration, including printing techniques, biomaterials and cells. We also discuss the combination of 3D in vivo hybrid bioprinting with spheroids, gene delivery strategies and zonal cartilage design as a future direction of cartilage regeneration research.

Li(Ni0.8Co0.15Al0.05)O2 (NCA) cathode material for lithium ion batteries is synthesized by calcining Ni–Co–Al hydroxide or carbonate hydroxide hydrate precursor, which is obtained by hydrothermal method, and the NCA cathode material is hierarchical hollow microspheres with the diameter in the range of 3–5 µm and composed of nanoflakes and/or nanowires. The effect of hydrothermal reaction time on the morphologies and the crystalline quality of the NCA cathode material is investigated on the basis of scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and tunneling electron microscopy. The NCA cathode material shows smooth and monotonous charge/discharge characteristics, delivers a reversible capacity as 144.4 mAh/g and retains 90.4% after 50 cycles at a current density of 0.1 C between 2.5 and 4.3 V.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to explore the therapeutic effect of autologous bone marrow stem cell (ABMSC) mobilization combined anti-infection therapy on patients with moyamoya disease (MMD), and to provide reference for the clinical treatment of MMD and cerebrovascular disease. Methods: 54 adult patients with MMD diagnosed in Henan Provincial People’s Hospital from March 2017 to March 2019 were chosen as research objects. All patients were randomly divided into study group (SG) and control group (CG), with 27 patients in each group. Patients in both groups received conventional drug treatment after diagnosis of MMD, and received dura turnover of brain - temporal muscle - superficial temporal artery application surgery during indirect vascular reconstruction. On the basis of surgical treatment, patients in the SG were given ABMSC mobilization combined with low-dose dexamethasone for anti-inflammatory and anti-infection treatment. ABMSCs were mobilized by recombinant human granulocyte colony stimulating factor (rhG-csF) and recombinant human granulocyte - macrophage colony stimulating factor (rhoM-esF). The therapeutic effects of the patients were evaluated BF, one month after treatment (AF), three months AF, and six months AF. The number of hematopoietic stem cells (HpCs) and inflammatory indicators were compared between the two groups before and 4 weeks AF. Results: Firstly, the Barthcl index of patients in the two groups showed a gradual increase trend at the 3rd and 6th months AF, and the ascensional range in the research group was higher than that in the CG (P

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative disease resulting in irreversible, progressive destruction of articular cartilage1. The etiology of OA is complex and involves a variety of factors, including genetic predisposition, acute injury and chronic inflammation2-4. Here we investigate the ability of resident skeletal stem-cell (SSC) populations to regenerate cartilage in relation to age, a possible contributor to the development of osteoarthritis5-7. We demonstrate that aging is associated with progressive loss of SSCs and diminished chondrogenesis in the joints of both mice and humans. However, a local expansion of SSCs could still be triggered in the chondral surface of adult limb joints in mice by stimulating a regenerative response using microfracture (MF) surgery. Although MF-activated SSCs tended to form fibrous tissues, localized co-delivery of BMP2 and soluble VEGFR1 (sVEGFR1), a VEGF receptor antagonist, in a hydrogel skewed differentiation of MF-activated SSCs toward articular cartilage. These data indicate that following MF, a resident stem-cell population can be induced to generate cartilage for treatment of localized chondral disease in OA.

Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) causes huge losses to tomato production worldwide. In July 2011 and July–August 2012, we screened for potential TYLCV hosts in a tomato-growing area in Shandong Province, the core vegetable-producing region in China. PCR detection showed that 5 species of plants, Zinnia elegans, Acalypha australis, Gossypium hirsutum, Abutilon theophrasti, and Nicotiana tabacum, were infected. Full genomic sequences of the new TYLCV isolates were obtained and submitted for sequence analysis. Sequence alignment and similarity analysis showed that they all belonged to the TYLCV-IL strain.

Summary Recently, samples of the Chinese tallow tree (Sapium sebiferum) displaying yellowing symptoms were collected from a grove in Tai'an, Shandong Province, China. The association of phytoplasma with yellowing disease was ascertained using nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) of the 16S rRNA gene by using the phytoplasma-specific universal primer pair P1/P7, followed by R16F2n/R16R2 as nested primers, and rp genes primed using rpL2F3/rp(I)R1A followed by rp(III)-FN/rp(I)R1A. The sequence and phylogenetic analyses of the 16S rRNA gene and rp genes revealed that the phytoplasma associated with the Chinese tallow tree belonged to the 16SrIII group (the X-disease group). Computer-simulated and gel-based restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analyses revealed that the RFLP patterns were different from the reference patterns of all previously established 16SrIII subgroups, with the maximum similarity coefficient exceeding the threshold for delineation of a new subgroup RFLP pattern type within the 16SrIII group. Thus, the phytoplasma associated with the Chinese tallow tree yellowing disease, designated as ‘CTTY’, represents a new subgroup (16SrIII-Y). This study shows the Chinese tallow tree as a new host of phytoplasma belonging to the 16SrIII group in China and worldwide.

Tomato chlorosis virus (ToCV) is a whitefly-transmitted, phloem-limited, bipartite Crinivirus. In 2012, severe interveinal symptoms characteristic of ToCV infections were observed in greenhouse tomato plants in the Shandong province of China. High levels of infestation by whiteflies (Bemisia tabaci), which transmit ToCV, were also observed on tomato plants in all the greenhouses investigated. The presence of ToCV was confirmed by specific RT-PCR either in the sampled plants or in the whiteflies collected from the ventral surface of the leaves of diseased plants. The complete genomic nucleotide sequences (RNA1 and RNA2) of the Shandong isolate of ToCV (ToCV-SDSG) were determined and analysed. ToCV-SDSG RNA1 consisted of 8594 nucleotides encompassing four open reading frames (ORFs). ToCV-SDSG RNA2 consisted of 8242 nucleotides encompassing nine ORFs. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that the Chinese ToCV-SDSG isolate is most similar to the ToCV-Florida isolate.

A deep residual network, built by stacking a sequence of residual blocks, is easy to train, because identity mappings skip residual branches and thus improve information flow. To further reduce the training difficulty, we present a simple network architecture, deep merge-and-run neural networks. The novelty lies in a modularized building block, merge-and-run block, which assembles residual branches in parallel through a merge-and-run mapping: Average the inputs of these residual branches (Merge), and add the average to the output of each residual branch as the input of the subsequent residual branch (Run), respectively. We show that the merge-and-run mapping is a linear idempotent function in which the transformation matrix is idempotent, and thus improves information flow, making training easy. In comparison to residual networks, our networks enjoy compelling advantages: they contain much shorter paths, and the width, i.e., the number of channels, is increased. We evaluate the performance on the standard recognition tasks. Our approach demonstrates consistent improvements over ResNets with the comparable setup, and achieves competitive results (e.g., $3.57\%$ testing error on CIFAR-$10$, $19.00\%$ on CIFAR-$100$, $1.51\%$ on SVHN).

A betaine-free reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) assay was developed and optimised for detecting tomato chlorosis virus (ToCV), one of the most important viruses that infect tomato crops worldwide. A set of four specific primers was designed against the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) gene. The betaine-free RT-LAMP procedure could be completed within 40 min under isothermal conditions at 60 °C without a thermal cycler, and no cross-reactivity was seen with other tomato viral pathogens. Sensitivity analysis showed that RT-LAMP could detect viral dilutions up to 2.0 × 10 −7 ng, which is 100-times more sensitive than reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). In addition, naked-eye observation after staining in-tube RT-LAMP products with SYBR Green I facilitated detection of ToCV by avoiding the requirement for ethidium staining following gel electrophoresis. These results suggest that ToCV RT-LAMP is a rapid, sensitive, and affordable diagnostic tool that is more suitable than RT-PCR for the detection and surveillance of ToCV in field samples.

To solve the complicated problem elevator fault classifications, a Bayesian confidence network structural learning algorithm based on Stigmergy is put forward. It was put into tests in the Bayesian network to diagnose elevator faults. With three fault datasets of the elevator of the same model, a Stigmergy Strategy based Bayesian Elevator Fault Classification Network, SSBCN for short, is constructed. In the 20 times of 10-crossing-over tests, the average classification accuracy of SSBCN experiments validates the effectiveness of the approach.