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Abstract [Introduction] Seven smoke constituents, including hydrogen cyanide (HCN), ammonia (NH 3), phenol, benzo[α]pyrene (B[a]P), carbon monoxide (CO)¸ crotonaldehyde, and 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1- (3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK), are proposed be the most relevant constituents for smoking-related diseases. [Methods] Different combinations of leaf stalk positions, varieties and locations were used to create variable chemistry of cigarette filler and smoke. Experimental cigarettes were measured for emission level of seven smoke toxicants and content of seventy-three filler components. [Results] The ranges of coefficient of variation (CV) for seven smoke toxicants were 15.43%–43.15%. The emission pattern of NNK and crotonaldehyde were different from that of other five smoke toxicants. Most of the seven smoke toxicants were influenced in following order: stalk position > location > variety. The leaf constitutes closely correlated with seven smoke toxicants were analyzed. [Conclusions] The results showed that seven toxicants were significantly influenced by leaf position and location, and closely correlated with leaf components, such as potassium, malate and alkaloid contents. The results provide useful and comprehensive information on the affecting factors and correlating leaf constituents for the variations of seven smoke toxicants. Graphical abstract Image 1 Highlights • HCN, NH 3 , phenol, B[a]P, CO¸ crotonaldehyde, and NNK, are relevant constituents for smoking-related diseases. • Tobacco from different leaf stalk positions, varieties and locations were used for cigarette fillers. • Experimental cigarettes were measured for emission level of seven toxicants and content of seventy-three filler components. • Seven toxicants were influenced by stalk position and location, and correlated with potassium, malate and alkaloid in leaf. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ultrasonic guided wave has emerged as a promising tool for structural health monitoring (SHM) and nondestructive testing (NDT) due to their capability to propagate over long distances with minimal loss and sensitivity to both surface and subsurface defects. The dispersion effect degrades the temporal and spatial resolution of guided waves. A novel ultrasonic guided wave processing method for both single mode and multi-mode guided waves dispersion compensation is proposed in this work based on compressed sensing, in which a dispersion signal dictionary is built by utilizing the dispersion curves of the guided wave modes in order to sparsely decompose the recorded dispersive guided waves. Dispersion-compensated guided waves are obtained by utilizing a non-dispersion signal dictionary and the results of sparse decomposition. Numerical simulations and experiments are implemented to verify the effectiveness of the developed method for both single mode and multi-mode guided waves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immature dendritic cells (iDCs) have been shown to be able to induce peripheral T-cell tolerance through distinct pathways. Here, we investigated the tolerogenic property of recipient iDCs whose maturation was arrested by a dominant negative mutant of inhibitor of nuclear factor kappa-B kinase 2 (dnIKK2) gene. We found that dnIKK2-iDCs presented a typical semi-mature morphology and expressed lower levels of CD80 and CD86, slightly higher MHC-II than untransfected iDCs. The expression of these molecules had no significant change even dnIKK2-iDCs were pulsed by donor antigen. In primary mixed leukocyte reaction (MLR), dnIKK2-iDCs exhibited impaired ability to stimulate allogeneic T-cells, but induced CD4 + CD25 − T-cell formation. In co-culture MLR, these CD4 + CD25 − T-cells suppressed T-cell alloreaction in an antigen-specific manner. Besides, CD4 + CD25 − T-cells inhibited IL-2 and IFN-γ release, whereas promoted IL-10 and TGF-β secretion. These data suggested recipient dnIKK2-iDCs could maintain peripheral tolerance through down-regulating costimulatory molecule expressions and inducing CD4 + CD25 − T-cell formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Melatonin is a well-known signaling molecule that mediates a range of physiological activities and various stress reactions in plants. We comprehensively tested the effect of melatonin on the development of root hairs and glandular trichomes and found that melatonin pretreatment of tobacco seeds significantly increased the length of root hairs. Furthermore, melatonin-treated tobacco exhibited significantly higher density of trichomes and larger glandular heads on long-stalk glandular trichomes than untreated plants, which resulted in enhanced secretion in glandular trichomes. Exogenous melatonin enhanced the aphid resistance of plants by facilitating the accumulation of cembranoids in the glandular trichomes and alleviated cadmium toxicity by increasing the Cd-exudation capacity of long glandular trichomes. Metabolic analysis indicated that the contents of 108 metabolites significantly changed upon melatonin treatment, with the contents of those that are directly/indirectly involved in melatonin metabolism changing the most. Further, KEGG pathway analysis suggested that the metabolic pathways of amino acids, reducing sugar, secondary metabolites, indole alkaloid biosynthesis, purine, pyrimidine, and ABC transporters were greatly influenced by exogenous melatonin application. Moreover, metabolisms of melatonin-related antioxidants and pyrimidine nucleoside antibiotics were enhanced after melatonin treatment. Melatonin improved tobacco resistance to high salinity, drought, and extreme temperature stresses, as indicated by improved photosynthetic and antioxidant capacities in treated vs. untreated plants. This study lays a foundation for the comprehensive application of melatonin to increase the stress tolerance of plants. [Display omitted] • Melatonin promoted the development of root hairs and glandular trichomes. • Exogenous melatonin enhanced aphid resistance of tobacco plants. • Melatonin facilitated the secretion of glandular trichomes. • Melatonin treatment alleviated cadmium toxicity in tobacco plants. • Exogenous melatonin enhanced the metabolism of some antioxidants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phytoremediation is an essential technique for mines' ecological restoration. Modifiers addition can alleviate the stress of heavy metals to plants and enhanced remediation efficiency. Herein, spent mushroom compost (SMC) and calcium carbonate (CaCO 3) were added to lead-zinc mine tailings to reveal the mechanism of Macleaya cordata adaptive to heavy metals stress. Pot experiments were conducted in 100% tailing (T), 90% tailing + 5% SMC + 5% CaCO 3 (T+), and 100% natural soil (NS). The results indicate that SMC and CaCO 3 amendments could improve the structure and fertility of tailings, and promote the growth of M. cordata , increase the content of heavy metals accumulated in plants, enhance the synthesis of chlorophyll and increas the content of soluble protein in leaves; enhance the activities of antioxidase, that can protectcelluar components from oxidative damage. Moreover, most of Pb, Zn, and Cd existed in the cell wall and soluble components, adding SMC and CaCO 3 could promote the conversion of Pb, Zn, and Cd to chemical forms with less toxicity and migratory capability. The results of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR) showed that SMC and CaCO 3 could protect the structural integrity of cells and increase the contents of –OH, –COOH functional groups that can bind to heavy metals in cells. The addition of SMC and CaCO 3 can alleviate the stress of heavy metals on M. cordata , enhancing its adaptability to heavy metals and phytoremediation capacity. • The SMC and CaCO 3 amendments could strengthen the phytoremediation potential. • Fixation of cell wall play an important role in reducing the stress of Pb, Zn and Cd. • Antioxidant enzyme system effectively reduce the stress of Pb, Zn and Cd to plant. • The SMC and CaCO 3 amendments could alleviate the damage of cell structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] In the biological environment, mineral crystals exquisitely controlled by biomacromolecules often show intricate hierarchical structures and superior mechanical properties. Among these biominerals, spicules, hybrid silica/protein superstructures serving as skeletal elements in demosponges, represent an excellent example for motivating the synthesis of silica materials. Herein, by designing sequence-defined peptoids containing side chains with a strong binding to silica, we demonstrated that self-assembly of these peptoids into fiber structures enables the mimicking of both biocatalytic and templating functions of silicatein filaments for the formation of silica fibers at near-neutral pH and ambient temperature. We further showed that the presence of amino groups is significant for the nucleation of silica on self-assembled peptoid nanofibers. Molecular dynamics simulation further confirmed that having silica-binding of amino side chains is critical for self-assembled peptoid fibers in triggering silica formation. We demonstrated that tuning inter-peptoid interactions by varying carboxyl and amino side chains significantly influences the assembly kinetics and final morphologies of peptoid assemblies as scaffolds for directing silica mineralization to form silica spheres, fibers, and sheets. The formation of silica shell on peptoid fibers increased the mechanical property of peptoid hydrogel materials by nearly 1000-fold, highlighting the great potential of using silicification to enhance the mechanical property of hydrogel materials for applications including tissue engineering. Since peptoids are highly robust and programmable, we expect that self-assembly of peptoids containing solid-binding side chains into hierarchical materials opens new opportunities in the design and synthesis of highly tunable scaffolds that direct the formation of composite nanomaterials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Increasing evidence has suggested that miR-330-5p can function as a tumor suppressor in different types of cancers. However, the effects and underlying mechanisms of miR-330-5p in the development of cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM) remain largely unknown. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of miR-330-5p in CMM and to determine the molecular mechanisms underlying its action. Materials and methods The expression level of miR-330-5p was detected in 26 cases of primary CMM tissues and cell lines by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction. We also assessed whether overexpression of miR-330-5p influences in vitro cell proliferation, invasion, and migration. Western blotting analysis was used to detect the influence of miR-330-5p on the targets, and Pearson analysis was used to calculate the correlation between the expression of targets gene and miR-330-5p in CMM tissues. Results Our study showed that miR-330-5p was downregulated in CMM tissues ( P = 0.010) and cell lines ( P < 0.05), and patients with high mitotic activity showed lower miR-330-5p expression levels ( P = 0.002). Enforced expression of miR-330-5p inhibits malignant CMM cells proliferation and migration and led to downregulation of the TYR and PDIA3 protein. Moreover, the expression level of miR-330-5p in CMM tissues showed inverse relationship with the expression level of TYR and PDIA3 protein. Conclusions In conclusion, our findings suggested that miR-330-5p represents a potential tumor-suppressive miRNA and plays an important role in CMM progression by suppressing TYR and PDIA3 expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• An algorithm is designed to reduce the network blocking rate. • Markov Decision Process based state transfer is provided for online RMSA in real-time. • Offline Deep Q-Network based algorithm is provided to get a well-trained Q-network helping the RMSA state transfer. • The experience priority replay mechanism and Sumtree are introduced to speed up Deep Q-Network training. The continuous growth of the network communication demand puts higher requirements on the network infrastructures. The elastic optical network (EON) has great potential to support the continued demands for communication bandwidth. Efficient use of bandwidth resources of EON has been particularly important to alleviate network blocking, which depends on routing, modulation, and spectrum allocation processes (RMSA). However, the time-varying states of EON caused by the uncertainty of future demands make it a lot tougher to realize the online RMSA in real time. To solve the above problem, this paper proposes a kind of Deep Q Network (DQN) algorithm with prioritized experience replay mechanism to perform the RMSA process in real-time. The proposed algorithm includes two parts. One is the Markov Decision Process (MDP) based state transfer for online RMSA by a trained Q-network. The other is an offline DQN-based algorithm for getting a trained Q-network to help the decision-making of RMSA state transfer, where the experience priority replay mechanism and Sumtree are introduced to speed up DQN training. Simulation results show that compared with the traditional Deep Q Network algorithm, the proposed algorithm nearly doubles the Q-network training speed. And compared with the traditional sp + ff algorithm, the trained Q-network reduces the blocking rate by nearly 35 %. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to investigate the role for Foxq1 in proliferation activity regulation of dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs). Proliferation of DPSC was induced by calcium hydroxide, then expression alteration of Foxq1 was evaluated. Lentivirus was employed to manipulate Foxq1 level in DPSC, and proliferation activities were evaluated. To look into mechanism regulating Foxq1 level after calcium hydroxide stimulation, expressions of various microRNAs were evaluated, then bioinformatics study and dual-luciferase study were carried out to confirm targeting relationship between microRNA and Foxq1. The result of our study indicated that proliferation activities of DPSCs were enhanced after calcium hydroxide stimulation, during which expression of Foxq1 was also up-regulated. Cell viability and progression from G1 to S phase were both improved with overexpression of Foxq1, and microRNAs profiling study and dual-luciferase result suggested miR-320b contributed to the up-regulation of Foxq1 after calcium hydroxide stimulation. These results suggested that miR-320b mediated Foxq1 up-regulation promote proliferation of dental pulp stem cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In vitro predatory activity of 157 native isolates of Arthrobotrys oligospora from China on larvae of trichostrongylides ( Trichostrongylus colubriformis and Haemonchus contortus ) in feces of sheep were assessed. The results showed that 135 of tested isolates of A. oligospora reduced the development of trichostrongylide larvae in feces by 90–99.99%, 11 isolates by 80–89.46% and 11 isolates by 14.58–78.82%. To understand their capacity of passing through gastrointestinal tract of sheep, 50 native isolates of A. oligospora were selected and assessed in sheep. Among these isolates, 16 isolates significantly reduced the number of larvae developing in the feces (P < 0.05); their percentage reduction of L3 ranged from 42.87% to 99.51% and the isolates tested were harvested in 5 g sub-samples of from sheep in each treatment group, indicating that these isolates had the capacity of preying larvae of trichostrongylides after the passage through gastrointestinal tract of sheep. The remaining isolates of A. oligospora were not able to survive after passage through gastrointestinal tract of sheep. In the following, the 16 isolates that presented more or less viability after sheep gastrointestinal passage were selected and assessed in goats. The results showed that the 11 isolates out of them could be able to pass through the digestive tract of goats without loss of ability of preying larvae of trichostrongylides in feces and their efficacies ranged from 53.88% to 94.28%, and that the isolates tested were harvested in 5 g sub-samples of feces from goats in each treatment group. In the current study, these isolates which demonstrated outstanding properties in vitro and could survive in the passage through the alimentary tract of sheep and goat should be potential candidates as a possible feed additive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]