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Moisture plays a pivotal role in the establishment of vegetation in sandy areas, underscoring the need to comprehend the water utilization strategies employed by established trees for the judicious use of water resources. Despite this significance, there exists a research gap concerning the water uptake patterns and consumption disparities between the dominant trees, namely the dry willow (Salix matsudana) and small-leafed poplar (Populus simonii), in the Mu Us sandy region. Consequently, our study sought to investigate the water utilization patterns and transpiration water consumption of these two plants. This was achieved through the analysis of hydrogen and oxygen isotope compositions in xylem water, soil water, and groundwater, coupled with the assessment of stem flow rates of tree trunks. The findings reveal that both Salix matsudana and Populus simonii exhibited variations in soil water content with soil depth, characterized by an initial increase followed by a subsequent decrease. During the months of July, August, and September, both species demonstrated the ability to absorb water from multiple sources concurrently. Specifically, Salix matsudana and Populus simonii predominantly utilized middle and shallow soil water sources in July and September, respectively. However, in August, both species primarily relied on shallow soil water for absorption. Over the period from July to September, the sap flow rate of Salix matsudana surpassed that of Populus simonii by 1888.2 mL·h−1 to 2499.04 mL·h−1, representing a 1.5 to 2.2 times increase. This underscores the necessity for Salix matsudana to draw water from middle and deep soil layers to compensate for shallow water deficits. In summary, schemes for the establishment of vegetation in sandy areas should consider the dynamic nature of water uptake and evapotranspiration, emphasizing the importance of regulating these processes for efficient water conservation and utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tea is one of the most popular drinks in the world. Dark tea is a kind of post-fermented tea with unique sensory characteristics that is produced by the special fermentation of microorganisms. It contains many bioactive substances, such as tea polyphenols, theabrownin, tea polysaccharides, etc., which have been reported to be beneficial to human health. This paper reviewed the latest research on dark tea's potential in preventing and managing cancer, and the mechanisms mainly involved anti-oxidation, anti-inflammation, inhibiting cancer cell proliferation, inducing cancer cell apoptosis, inhibiting tumor metastasis, and regulating intestinal flora. The purpose of this review is to accumulate evidence on the anti-cancer effects of dark tea, the corresponding mechanisms and limitations of dark tea for cancer prevention and management, the future prospects, and demanding questions about dark tea's possible contributions as an anti-cancer adjuvant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dark tea has great potential in regulating glycolipid metabolism, and theabrownin (TB) is considered to be the characteristic and bioactive constituent of dark tea. This study evaluated the ability of TB1 (fermented for 7 days) and TB2 (fermented for 14 days) isolated from dark tea to reverse insulin resistance (IR) in HepG2 cells. The results indicated that TB significantly ameliorated oxidative stress by improving mitochondrial function. In addition, TB improved glycogen synthesis and glucose consumption, and inhibited gluconeogenesis and fatty acid synthesis, by regulating GSK3β (Glycogen synthase kinase 3β), G6Pase (Glucose-6-phosphatase), GCK (Glucokinase), PEPCK1 (Phosphoenolpyruvate carboxy kinase 1), SREBP-1C (sterol regulatory element-binding protein 1C), FASN (fatty acid synthase), and ACC (Acetyl-CoA carboxylase). Additionally, the results of Western blot and real-time PCR experiments demonstrated that TB modulated glucolipid metabolism through the IRS-1 (Insulin receptor substrate 1)/PI3K (phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase)/Akt (protein kinase B) signaling pathway. Treatment with the PI3K inhibitor demonstrated a favorable correlation between PI3K activation and TB action on glycolipid metabolism. Notably, we observed that TB2 had a greater effect on improving insulin resistance compared with TB1, which, due to its prolonged fermentation time, increased the degree of oxidative polymerization of TB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the dynamically optimal consumption, investment and life-insurance strategies for a wage earners under inside information and inflation. Assume that the wage earner can invest in a risk-free asset, a risky asset and an inflation-indexed bond and that the wage earner can obtain some additional information on the risky asset from the financial market. By maximizing the expected utility of the wage earner's consumption, inheritance and terminal wealth, we obtain the dynamically optimal consumption, investment and life-insurance strategies for the wage earner. The method of this paper is mainly based on (dynamical) stochastic control theory and the technique of enlargement of filtrations. Moreover, sensitivity analysis is carried out, which reveals that a wage earner with inside information tends to increase his/her consumption and investment, while reducing his/her purchase of life insurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a control method was designed based on particle swarm optimization (PSO)–fuzzy PID (PSO-Fuzzy PID). In order to address the issues of significant nonlinearity and extensive hysteresis in the vapor temperature of litchi hot vapor preservation treatment equipment, as well as the inadequacy of traditional control schemes, a PSO-Fuzzy PID controller was developed through the integration of particle swarm optimization and fuzzy logic algorithms. This controller incorporates a scale factor and quantization factor, building upon the foundation of the Fuzzy PID controller. Additionally, a transfer function model was established for both the heating and disturbance links, utilizing a combination of test data modeling methods and relevant theory. Thirdly, a system simulation model was built to compare and verify PID, Fuzzy PID, and PSO-Fuzzy PID control methods, which were carried out on the MATLAB/Simulink simulation platform. Finally, the litchi load test was conducted to further verify the control performance of the PSO-Fuzzy PID method, where the litchi variety was "Jinggang Hongnuo". The simulation results showed that the overshoot of the optimized control system was reduced by 93.5% and 42.9% compared with the traditional PID control and Fuzzy PID, and the regulation time was shortened by 46% and 31%, which indicates a better control effect. The test results showed that PSO-Fuzzy PID showed better system stability and accuracy than the fuzzy PID control method in different processing temperature and processing time for litchi's hot vapor treatment. The maximum temperature difference decreased by 0.56 °C on average and the interference adjustment time was reduced by 7.5 s on average. PSO-Fuzzy PID has a good control effect on the temperature of litchi hot vapor treatment, which can provide a reference for model building and temperature control of other similar fruit and vegetable heat treatment equipment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accurate detection of pineapples of different maturity levels in a complex field environment is the key step to achieving the early yield estimation and mechanized picking of pineapple. This study proposes a target detection model based on the improved YOLOv7 to achieve the accurate detection and maturity classification of pineapples in the field. First, the attention mechanism SimAM is inserted into the structure of the original YOLOv7 network to improve the feature extraction ability of the model. Then, the max-pooling convolution (MPConv) structure is improved to reduce the feature loss in the downsampling process. Finally, the non-maximum suppression (NMS) algorithm is replaced by the soft-NMS algorithm, with a better effect at improving the detection effect when pineapple is in occlusion or overlaps. According to the test, the mean average precision (mAP) and recall of the model proposed in this paper are 95.82% and 89.83%, which are 2.71% and 3.41% higher than those of the original YOLOv7, respectively. The maturity classification accuracy of the model and the detection performance under six different field scenarios were analyzed quantitatively. This method provides an effective scheme for the vision system of the field pineapple picking robot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pyranoanthocyanins have been reported to possess better chemical stability and bioactivities than monomeric anthocyanins in some aspects. The hypocholesterolemic activity of pyranoanthocyanins is unclear. In view of this, this study was conducted to compare the cholesterol-lowering activities of Vitisin A with the anthocyanin counterpart Cyanidin-3-O-glucoside(C3G) in HepG2 cells and to investigate the interaction of Vitisin A with the expression of genes and proteins associated with cholesterol metabolism. HepG2 cells were incubated with 40 μM cholesterol and 4 μM 25-hydroxycholeterol with various concentrations of Vitisin A or C3G for 24 h. It was found that Vitisin A decreased the cholesterol levels at the concentrations of 100 μM and 200 μM with a dose–response relationship, while C3G exhibited no significant effect on cellular cholesterol. Furthermore, Vitisin A could down-regulate 3-hydroxy-3-methyl-glutaryl coenzyme A reductase (HMGCR) to inhibit cholesterol biosynthesis through a sterol regulatory element-binding protein 2 (SREBP2)-dependent mechanism, and up-regulate low-density lipoprotein receptor (LDLR) and blunt the secretion of proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9) protein to promote intracellular LDL uptake without LDLR degradation. In conclusion, Vitisin A demonstrated hypocholesterolemic activity, by inhibiting cholesterol biosynthesis and enhancing LDL uptake in HepG2 cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taxon delimitation and identification are important in many areas of biology, especially in taxonomy and conservation. Taxonomic treatment is required to establish and justify recommendations in conservation biology for the group being considered. Imperfect and controversial taxonomy can undermine conservation assessment. We studied 71 populations; 665 individuals corresponding to the morphology of the Rosa sericea complex (including six taxa, one of which has extremely narrow distributions) were collected from sympatric, parapatric, and allopatric populations distributed in China. This study aims to investigate whether the complex species are macromorphologically different species and evaluate the rare taxa of the complex for conservation priority. The morphological characters and principal component analysis (PCA) of the R. sericea complex showed that the complex species have overlapping characters but can distinguish morphologically. The species of R. sericea complex systematics status based on previous DNA sequencing is controversial. The ecological habitat's current morphological characters only delimit the R. morrisonensis (in Taiwan). To evade mistakes in species conservation, we recommend that taxonomical knowledge be needed to ensure success in protecting target species. Thus, the complementarity of systemic and conservation assurance makes conservation actions more necessary for the complex's rare taxa. The ecological niche modelling (ENM) results showed that habitats of these conspecific taxa would be shrunken. With the presence of snapshots in time, the geography of taxa might decrease rapidly in representative entirely of the Geographic space (G-space) and Environmental space (E-space) that such taxa are bright to inhabit. So far, the significant inferences meant for the niche occupy the most incredible comparative research, taking the impermanent nature of taxa distributions and undertaking that such species are at a state of stability. If the artificially identified species (rarely distributed) are based on morphological identification, they must be conserved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]