Search

The green and efficient remediation of soil cadmium (Cd) is an urgent task, and plant-microbial joint remediation has become a research hotspot due to its advantages. High-throughput sequencing and metabolomics have technical advantages in analyzing the microbiological mechanism of plant growth-promoting bacteria in improving phytoremediation of soil heavy metal pollution. In this experiment, a pot trial was conducted to investigate the effects of inoculating the plant growth-promoting bacterium Enterobacter sp. VY on the growth and Cd remediation efficiency of the energy plant Hybrid pennisetum. The test strain VY-1 was analyzed using high-throughput sequencing and metabolomics to assess its effects on microbial community composition and metabolic function. The results demonstrated that Enterobacter sp. VY-1 effectively mitigated Cd stress on Hybrid pennisetum, resulting in increased plant biomass, Cd accumulation, and translocation factor, thereby enhancing phytoremediation efficiency. Analysis of soil physical-chemical properties revealed that strain VY-1 could increase soil total nitrogen, total phosphorus, available phosphorus, and available potassium content. Principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) indicated that strain VY-1 significantly influenced bacterial community composition, with Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Chloroflexi, among others, being the main differential taxa. Redundancy analysis (RDA) revealed that available phosphorus, available potassium, and pH were the primary factors affecting bacterial communities. Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA) demonstrated that strain VY-1 modulated the metabolite profile of Hybrid pennisetum rhizosphere soil, with 27 differential metabolites showing significant differences, including 19 up-regulated and eight down-regulated expressions. These differentially expressed metabolites were primarily involved in metabolism and environmental information processing, encompassing pathways such as glutamine and glutamate metabolism, α-linolenic acid metabolism, pyrimidine metabolism, and purine metabolism. This study utilized 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing and metabolomics technology to investigate the impact of the plant growth-promoting bacterium Enterobacter sp. VY-1 on the growth and Cd enrichment of Hybrid pennisetum, providing insights into the regulatory role of plant growth-promoting bacteria in microbial community structure and metabolic function, thereby improving the microbiological mechanisms of phytoremediation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stabilization of a G-quadruplex (G4) in the promotor of the c-MYC proto-oncogene leads to inhibition of gene expression, and it thus represents a potentially attractive new strategy for cancer treatment. However, most G4 stabilizers show little selectivity among the many G4s present in the cellular complement of DNA and RNA. Intriguingly, a crescent-shaped cell-penetrating thiazole peptide, TH3, preferentially stabilizes the c-MYC G4 over other promotor G4s, but the mechanisms leading to this selective binding remain obscure. To investigate these mechanisms at the atomic level, we performed an in silico comparative investigation of the binding of TH3 and its analogue TH1 to the G4s from the promotors of c-MYC, c-KIT1, c-KIT2, and BCL2. Molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulations, combined with in-depth analyses of non-covalent interactions and bulk and per-nucleotide binding free energies, revealed that both TH3 and TH1 can induce the formation of a sandwich-like framework through stacking with both the top and bottom G-tetrads of the c-MYC G4 and the adjacent terminal capping nucleotides. This framework produces enhanced binding affinities for c-MYC G4 relative to other promotor G4s, with TH3 exhibiting an outstanding binding priority. Van der Waals interactions were identified to be the key factor in complex formation in all cases. Collectively, our findings fully agree with available experimental data. Therefore, the identified mechanisms leading to specific binding of TH3 towards c-MYC G4 provide valuable information to guide the development of new selective G4 stabilizers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tinospora sagittata is a columbin-rich medicinal plant, but its columbin levels are reduced under artificial cultivation conditions. The objective of this study was to analyze the effects of inoculations with Diversispora versiformis (Dv), Funneliformis mosseae (Fm), Rhizophagus intraradices (Ri), and mixed inoculation (Dv + Fm + Ri) (Mix) on growth performance, root morphology, leaf photosynthetic physiology, and root columbin levels in T. sagittata. These arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) were able to colonize the roots, as evidenced by a root mycorrhizal colonization rate ranging from 17% to 48% and soil hyphal lengths ranging from 17.51 cm/g to 32.02 cm/g, with the Mix treatment being the greatest. AMF inoculations improved plant height (16–151%), leaf number (119–283%), shoot (37–211%), and root biomass (22–318%) to varying extents, with Ri and Mix treatments being the most prominent. AMF-treated plants presented relatively greater root total length, projected area, surface area, volume, and average diameter, especially those treated with Ri and Mix. AMF inoculations also significantly improved the leaf nitrogen balance index, transpiration rate, and stomatal conductance, while the photosynthesis rate and chlorophyll index varied by AMF species, along with a decrease in intercellular CO2 levels. Root columbin levels ranged from 0.524 mg/g to 5.389 mg/g, and AMF inoculation significantly increased root columbin levels by 228–928%, with Ri being the most significant. Root columbin levels were significantly positively correlated with soil hyphal length, root total length, root projected area, root surface area, root volume, and root average diameter, but not root AMF colonization rate. This study demonstrates for the first time that AMF, especially Ri, can be employed as a biostimulant to promote growth as well as root columbin levels in T. sagittata, where AMF-triggered improvement in root morphology is an important reason for promoting root columbin levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reconstruction of visual stimuli from fMRI signals, which record brain activity, is a challenging task with crucial research value in the fields of neuroscience and machine learning. Previous studies tend to emphasize reconstructing pixel-level features (contours, colors, etc.) or semantic features (object category) of the stimulus image, but typically, these properties are not reconstructed together. In this context, we introduce a novel three-stage visual reconstruction approach called the Dual-guided Brain Diffusion Model (DBDM). Initially, we employ the Very Deep Variational Autoencoder (VDVAE) to reconstruct a coarse image from fMRI data, capturing the underlying details of the original image. Subsequently, the Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training (BLIP) model is utilized to provide a semantic annotation for each image. Finally, the image-to-image generation pipeline of the Versatile Diffusion (VD) model is utilized to recover natural images from the fMRI patterns guided by both visual and semantic information. The experimental results demonstrate that DBDM surpasses previous approaches in both qualitative and quantitative comparisons. In particular, the best performance is achieved by DBDM in reconstructing the semantic details of the original image; the Inception, CLIP and SwAV distances are 0.611, 0.225 and 0.405, respectively. This confirms the efficacy of our model and its potential to advance visual decoding research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cryptographic system is the foundation of blockchain security mechanisms. This paper constructs a blockchain security mechanism based on the Chinese national cryptographic SM2 algorithm, involving the generation of public–private key pairs and the signing of block information using key pairs. However, the original SM2 algorithm has a high computational complexity, which cannot meet the requirements of low on-chain delay in blockchain applications. To solve this problem, this paper optimizes the SM2 digital signature algorithm. The scalar multiplication operation in the digital signature algorithm has a large computational complexity, which affects the efficiency of a digital signature. To reduce its computational complexity, this paper improves the traditional window non-adjacent form (w-NAF) algorithm for the scalar multiplication operation and proposes a low computational complexity Fw-NAF algorithm based on the prime number precomputation window, which greatly reduces its computational complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The NAC (NAM, ATAF1/2 and CUC2) is a large gene family of plant-specific transcription factors that play a pivotal role in various physiological processes and abiotic stresses. Due to the lack of genome-wide characterization, intraspecific and interspecific synteny, and drought-responsive expression pattern of NAC genes in poplar, the functional characterization of drought-related NAC genes have been scarcely reported in Populus species. Here, we identified a total of 170 NAC domain-containing genes in the P. trichocarpa genome, 169 of which were unevenly distributed on its nineteen chromosomes. These NAC genes were phylogenetically divided into twenty subgroups, some of which exhibited a similar pattern of exon–intron architecture. The synteny and Ka/Ks analysis indicated that the expansion of NAC genes in poplar was mainly due to gene duplication events occurring before and after the divergence of Populus and Salix. Ten PdNAC (P. deltoids × P. euramericana cv.'Nanlin895') genes were randomly selected and cloned. Their drought-responsive expression profiles showed a tissue-specific pattern. The transcription factor PdNAC013 was verified to be localized in the nucleus. Our research results provide genomic information for the expansion of NAC genes in the poplar genome, and for further characterizing putative poplar NAC genes associated with water-deficit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current distributed storage solutions are still concentrated in third-party storage service providers, and the stored data are concentrated in a few cloud servers, which inevitably brings the risk of data loss, leakage, and tampering, so it is imperative to study a distributed storage and decentralized storage system. How to maintain the consistency of data in a distributed environment has become a problem in building decentralized applications, until the emergence of blockchain technology, whose decentralized, non-tamperable, and traceable features can solve this problem well. In this paper, we design a decentralized storage system combining Hyperledger Fabric and Inter Planetary File System (IPFS). In addition, from the perspective of security and availability of the decentralized storage system, we study the partitioning and the k-r allocation scheme of the stored data, propose the allocation function about the stored files, derive the mathematical formula of file security and availability based on the allocation function, and discuss the optimal parameter setting of the allocation function based on the formula to guarantee the high security and availability of the stored files. The experimental results show that the performance of the k-r allocation policy based on the minimum number nodes (MNN) is better than that of the k-r allocation policy based on the minimum slices number (MSN); however, with the same security and availability guarantees, the MNN policy will have more copies relative to the MSN policy, which is relatively wasteful of space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brain decoding is to predict the external stimulus information from the collected brain response activities, and visual information is one of the most important sources of external stimulus information. Decoding functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) based on visual stimulation is helpful in understanding the working mechanism of the brain visual function regions. Traditional brain decoding algorithms cannot accurately extract stimuli features from fMRI. To address these shortcomings, this paper proposed a brain decoding algorithm based on a graph convolution network (GCN). Firstly, 11 regions of interest (ROI) were selected according to the human brain visual function regions, which can avoid the noise interference of the non-visual regions of the human brain; then, a deep three-dimensional convolution neural network was specially designed to extract the features of these 11 regions; next, the GCN was used to extract the functional correlation features between the different human brain visual regions. Furthermore, to avoid the problem of gradient disappearance when there were too many layers of graph convolutional neural network, the residual connections were adopted in our algorithm, which helped to integrate different levels of features in order to improve the accuracy of the proposed GCN. The proposed algorithm was tested on the public dataset, and the recognition accuracy reached 98.67%. Compared with the other state-of-the-art algorithms, the proposed algorithm performed the best. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greenway is an important linear public space that meets the diverse needs of the public. With the increasing popularity of greenway construction, the study of different greenway usage behavior in different socio-economic areas is of great value to the detailed design and construction of greenway in the future. Using the theory of environment-behavior studies (EBS), this study selected representative urban greenways and suburban greenways in Beijing, China, and conducted a questionnaire survey. Descriptive statistics and the chi-squared test are used to quantitatively analyze and summarize the behavior of greenway users. It is found that user gender, educational level, and residence (i.e., permanent resident or visitor), as well as season of use, are highly similar for urban greenways and suburban greenways in Beijing. However, due to a close relationship with urban location, modified by temporal, spatial, and personal factors, different behavioral characteristics are evident as follows: (1) Urban greenways are most closely related to daily life, work and education of urban residents, with short travel distances, short single use time, high frequency of use, high social and cultural value, wide distribution of age groups and wide distribution of time periods of use. (2) Suburban greenways are an important choice for residents' outdoor activities on weekends and holidays. It is mainly used for ecological protection and sightseeing, supplemented by sports and fitness functions. It has the characteristics of low use frequency, high income level, wide distribution of time and distance, mainly used by young and middle-aged people, and used for a single time of more than 1 hour. Natural scenery along the trail is the most important attraction factor, and waterfront space and walking space are the main use behavior characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The third-generation epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKIs), osimertinib, aumolertinib, and furmonertinib represent a new treatment option for patients with EGFR p.Thr790 Met (T790 M)-mutated non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Currently, there are no studies reporting the simultaneous quantification of these three drugs. A simple ultra-performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method was developed and validated for the simultaneous quantitative determination of osimertinib, aumolertinib, and furmonertinib concentrations in human plasma, and it was applied for therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM). Plasma samples were processed using the protein precipitation method (acetonitrile). A positive ion monitoring mode was used for detecting analytes. D3-Sorafenib was utilized as the internal standard (IS), and the mobile phases were acetonitrile (containing 0.1% formic acid) and water with gradient elution on an XSelect HSS XP column (2.1 mm × 100.0 mm, 2.5 µm, Waters, Milford, MA, USA) at a flow rate of 0.5 mL·min−1. The method's selectivity, precision (coefficient of variation of intra-day and inter-day ≤ 6.1%), accuracy (95.8–105.2%), matrix effect (92.3–106.0%), extraction recovery, and stability results were acceptable according to the guidelines. The linear ranges were 5–500 ng·mL−1, 2–500 ng·mL−1, and 0.5–200 ng·mL−1 for osimertinib, aumolertinib, and furmonertinib, respectively. The results show that the method was sensitive, reliable, and simple and that it could be successfully applied to simultaneously determine the osimertinib, aumolertinib, and furmonertinib blood concentrations in patients. These findings support using the method for TDM, potentially reducing the incidence of dosing blindness and adverse effects due to empirical dosing and inter-patient differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alkaline phosphatase (ALP) is abundant in raw milk. Because of its high heat resistance, ALP negative is used as an indicator of successful sterilization. However, pasteurized milk loses its immune protection against allergy. Clinically, ALP is also used as an indicator of organ diseases. When the activity of ALP in blood increases, it is considered that diseases occur in viscera and organs. Oral administration or injecting ALP will not cause harm to the body and has a variety of probiotic effects. For infants with low immunity, ALP intake is a good prebiotic for protecting the infant's intestine from potential pathogenic bacteria. In addition, ALP has a variety of probiotic effects for any age group, including prevention and treatment intestinal diseases, allergies, hepatitis, acute kidney injury (AKI), diabetes, and even the prevention of aging. The prebiotic effects of alkaline phosphatase on the health of infants and consumers and the content of ALP in different mammalian raw milk are summarized. The review calls on consumers and manufacturers to pay more attention to ALP, especially for infants with incomplete immune development. ALP supplementation is conducive to the healthy growth of infants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dust aerosols persistently affect nearly all landscapes worldwide, and the saltation activity caused by dusty weather (e.g., dust days) releases considerable amounts of aerosol into the atmosphere. Nevertheless, dust-induced saltation activity may also occur on non-dust days. To date, few studies have investigated the saltation activity characteristics on non-dust days. Moreover, the contribution of non-dust days to the total saltation activity remains ambiguous. This study comprehensively investigates the characteristics of saltation activity on non-dust days. Specifically, we analyze the influence of the saltation activity of non-dust days on dust aerosols by utilizing saltation, atmospheric, soil, dust aerosol (i.e., PM10 and aerosol optical depth), and weather record data obtained from the Taklimakan Desert, China, between 2008 and 2010. Our results show that lower temperature, vapor pressure, and soil moisture on non-dust days reduces the saltation threshold velocity (5.9 m/s) more compared to on dust days (6.5 m/s). Furthermore, regarding wind speed, relatively strong monthly saltation activity occurs from March to August, and daily saltation activity occurs from 9:00 to 16:00. Although non-dust days only contribute 18.5% and 7.7% to saltation time and saltation count, respectively, both significantly influence the dust aerosols. Therefore, the effect of saltation activity on non-dust days cannot be undervalued, particularly while performing dust aerosol studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring of low levels of chlorsulfuron in environmental water samples is important. Although several detection methods have been developed, they all have some drawbacks, such as being time-consuming, requiring expensive instruments and experienced operators, and consuming large volumes of organic solvents. There is an urgent need for a simple, rapid, and inexpensive detection method for chlorsulfuron. Herein, such a method was developed using anti-aggregation of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) in the presence of acetamiprid in agricultural irrigation water samples. Aggregation of the AuNPs was induced by acetamiprid, and this produced a distinct color change from Bordeaux red to blue. However, the strong hydrogen bonding interaction between chlorsulfuron and acetamiprid could inhibit AuNP aggregation. The effect of chlorsulfuron on the anti-agglomeration behavior of AuNPs was monitored by ultraviolet-visiblespectroscopy (UV-Vis) and the naked eye over a concentration range 0.1-100 mg/L. The detection limit for chlorsulfuron was 0.025 mg/L (signal-to-noise ratio of three). This colorimetric method was successfully applied to the determination of chlorsulfuron in spiked tap water and agricultural irrigation water with satisfactory recoveries (76.3%-94.2%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, sequential tests for detecting structural changes in time series have been adapted for deforestation monitoring using satellite data. The input time series of such sequential tests is typically a vegetation index (e.g., NDVI), which uses two or three bands and ignores all other bands. Being limited to a vegetation index will not benefit from the richer spectral information provided by newly launched satellites and will bring two bottle-necks for deforestation monitoring. Firstly, it is hard to select a suitable vegetation index a priori. Secondly, a single vegetation index is typically affected by seasonal signals, noise and other natural dynamics, which decrease its power for deforestation detection. A novel multispectral time series change monitoring method that combines dimension reduction methods with a sequential hypothesis test is proposed to address these limitations. For each location, the proposed method automatically chooses a “suitable” index for deforestation monitoring. To demonstrate our approach, we implemented it in two study areas: a dry tropical forest in Bolivia (time series length: 444) with strong seasonality and a moist tropical forest in Brazil (time series length: 225) with almost no seasonality. Our method significantly improves accuracy in the presence of strong seasonality, in particular the temporal lag between disturbance and its detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adjacency effect and non-uniform responses complicate the precise delimitation of the surface support of remote sensing data and their derived products. Thus, modeling spatial response characteristics (SRCs) prior to using remote sensing information has become important. A point spread function (PSF) is typically used to describe the SRCs of the observation cells from remote sensors and is always estimated in a laboratory before the sensor is launched. However, research on the SRCs of high-order remote sensing products derived from the observations remains insufficient, which is an obstacle to converting between multi-scale remote sensing products and validating coarse-resolution products. This study proposed a method that combines simulation and validation to establish SRC models of coarse-resolution albedo products. Two series of commonly used 500-m/1-km resolution albedo products, which are derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) reflectance data, were investigated using 30-m albedo products that provide the required sub-pixel information. The analysis proves that the size of the surface support of each albedo pixel is larger than the nominal resolution of the pixel and that the response weight is non-uniformly distributed, with an elliptical Gaussian shape. The proposed methodology is generic and applicable for analyzing the SRCs of other advanced remote sensing products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transplantation of olfactory ensheathing cells (OEC) is a promising therapy in spinal cord injury (SCI) treatment. However, the therapeutic efficacy of this method is unstable due to unknown reasons. Considering the alterations in the culture environment that occur during OEC preparation for transplantation, we hypothesize that these changes may cause variations in the curative effects of this method. In this study, we compared OEC cultured in medium containing different types and concentrations of serum. After purification and passage, the OEC were cultured for 7 days in different media containing 5%, 10%, 15% or 20% fetal bovine serum (FBS) or rat serum (RS), or the cells were cultured in FBS-containing medium first, followed by medium containing RS. In another group, the OEC were first cultured in 10% FBS for 3 days and then cultured with rat spinal cord explants with 10% RS for another 4 days. An MTT assay and P75 neurotrophin receptor immunofluorescence staining were used to examine cell viability and OEC numbers, respectively. The concentration of neurotrophin-3 (NT-3), which is secreted by OEC into the culture supernatant, was detected using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). RT-PCR was applied to investigate the NT-3 gene expression in OEC according to different groups. Compared with FBS, RS reduced OEC proliferation in relation to OEC counts (x² = 166.279, df = 1, p < 0.01), the optical density (OD) value in the MTT assay (x² = 34.730, df = 1, p < 0.01), and NT-3 concentration in the supernatant (x² = 242.997, df = 1, p < 0.01). OEC cultured with spinal cord explants secreted less NT-3 than OEC cultured alone (F = 9.611, df = 5.139, p < 0.01). Meanwhile, the order of application of different sera was not influential. There was statistically significant difference in NT-3 gene expression among different groups when the serum concentration was 15% (x² = 64.347, df = 1, p < 0.01). In conclusion, different serum conditions may be responsible for the variations in OEC proliferation and function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A special topography and ultra-high atmospheric boundary layer conditions in the Tarim Basin (TB) lead to the unique spatial–temporal distribution characteristics of dust aerosols. A typical dust storm with persistent floating dust over the TB from 27 April to 1 May 2015 was used to investigate the characteristics of the dust radiative effect using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model with Chemistry (WRF-Chem). Based on reasonable evaluations involving in situ sounding observations, as well as remotely sensed MODIS observations of meteorology, dust aerosols, and the ultra-high atmospheric boundary layer, the simulation characterized the complete characteristics of the dust direct radiative effect (DDRE) during the dust storm outbreak stage and persistent floating dust stage over the TB. During the daytime, the shortwave (SW) radiative effect heated the atmosphere and cooled the land surface (SUR), whereas the longwave (LW) radiative effect had the opposite effect on the TB. Regarding low-level dust, the LW radiative effect was greater than the SW DDRE in the atmosphere, while for high-level dust the situation was reversed. During the nighttime, the LW DDRE at the top of the atmosphere (TOA), at the SUR, and in the atmosphere was less than that during the daytime, when the DDRE at the SUR was the most significant. In contrast to the daytime, the near-surface dust aerosols exerted an LW warming effect in the atmosphere during the nighttime; however, the dust LW radiative effect had a cooling effect from above a 100 m altitude until the top of the dust layer. In contrast, the DDRE heating rate peaked at the top of the dust layer within the TB. The event-averaged net DDRE was 0.53, −5.90, and 6.43 W m−2 at the TOA, at the SUR, and in the atmosphere over the TB, respectively. The dust SW radiative effect was stronger than the dust L4W radiative effect over the TB at the SUR and in the atmosphere. Moreover, the DDRE at the TOA was weaker than that at the SUR. Overall, the study revealed noteworthy radiative effect features of dust aerosols during typical dust storms with persistent floating dust over the TB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thidiazuron (TDZ) is widely used as a defoliant to induce leaf abscission in cotton. However, the underlying molecular mechanism is still unclear. In this study, RNA-seq and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) were performed to reveal the dynamic transcriptome profiling and the change of endogenous phytohormones upon TDZ treatment in leaf, petiole, and abscission zone (AZ). We found that TDZ induced the gene expression of ethylene biosynthesis and signal, and promoted ethylene accumulation earlier in leaf than that in AZ. While TDZ down-regulated indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) biosynthesis genes mainly in leaf and IAA signal and transport genes. Furthermore, the IAA content reduced more sharply in the leaf than that in AZ to change the auxin gradient for abscission. TDZ suppressed CTK biosynthesis genes and induced CTK metabolic genes to reduce the IPA accumulation for the reduction of ethylene sensitivity. Furthermore, TDZ regulated the gene expression of abscisic acid (ABA) biosynthesis and signal and induced ABA accumulation between 12–48 h, which could up-regulate ABA response factor genes and inhibit IAA transporter genes. Our data suggest that TDZ orchestrates metabolism and signal of ethylene, auxin, and cytokinin, and also the transport of auxin in leaf, petiole, and AZ, to control leaf abscission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on observations from the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) together with an environmental particulate matter analyzer (Grimm-180) and Global Positioning System (GPS) sounding balloons, the vertical structure of dust with different particle sizes was explored over the Taklimakan Desert (TD) during an intensive observation from 1 July 2021 to 31 July 2021. The power functions were fitted between the particle counts and particle sizes, indicating negative correlations with an R2 higher than 0.99 under different dust pollution conditions in Tazhong (TZ). The dust concentrations show a sharp vertical increase over the TD during dust pollution; however, more particles with larger sizes are entrained into the air in TZ compared with Minfeng (MF). The total solar radiation during dust pollution days is significantly weakened, accompanied by major modifications in the temperature stratification, which were characterized by low-level cooling (with −2.71 K mean intensity) and high-level heating (with +0.70 K mean intensity). On clear days, the average convective boundary layer (CBL) heights at the TZ and MF are approximately 3.94 and 2.84 km, respectively, and the average stable boundary layer (SBL) height at the TZ and MF are approximately 0.19 and 0.14 km, respectively. With the increasing dust pollution level, the CBL height decreases rapidly while the SBL height shows the opposite trend. The unique ultra-high atmospheric boundary layer structure in daytime provides beneficial conditions for the suspension and vertical transportation of dust over TD. Moreover, a negative correlation between the CBL height and near-surface PM10/PM2.5/PM1.0 concentration in TD is revealed by power function fittings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Taklimakan Desert is a typical arid area. Due to the needs of production and life, a total of 2 km2 of constructed green land (hereinafter referred to as CGL) has been formed in the sand dune, resulting in the uniform underlying surface of the desert having been changed, which has led to the change in the near-surface energy distribution pattern and the formation of a local climate of the CGL that is obviously different from that of the desert climate. Therefore, it is necessary to study the varied interval of the threshold of meteorological factors and the regional climate characteristics of the CGL under the background of desert. The main results are as follows. Firstly, from sunrise to noon, the increasing rate of temperature in natural sandy land (hereafter, NSL) was higher than that in CGL, and the opposite results occurred between noon and sunset. The peak temperature of CGL was 2 h later than that of NSL. At night, the temperature at the boundary of the CGL was generally higher than that of the NSL and the central area of the CGL. In addition, the results show that under the combined influence of underlying conditions, local circulation and small terrain, the CGL (middle) daily range of temperature > NSL (west) > CGL (east) > CGL (west). The positive temperature change period of CGL was significantly shorter than that of NSL in all seasons. However, temperature inversion occurred at night in all seasons. The intensity of the temperature inversion was strongest in winter, with a maximum temperature difference of 12.8 °C, followed by autumn, spring, and summer, with a maximum difference of 6.4 °C. Secondly, the wind speed in the daytime was higher than that at night, and the wind speed in NSL was higher than that in CGL. In summer, if the average wind speed of the NSL was quantified as 1.0 m/s, the wind speed lapse rate reached 30% at the boundary of the CGL. Similarly, in the central area of CGL, the wind speed lapse rate reached 71%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photonic crystal (PC) surfaces have been demonstrated as a compelling platform for improving the sensitivity of surface-based fluorescent assays used in disease diagnostics and life science research. PCs can be engineered to support optical resonances at specific wavelengths at which strong electromagnetic fields are utilized to enhance the intensity of surface-bound fluorophore excitation. Meanwhile, the leaky resonant modes of PCs can be used to direct emitted photons within a narrow range of angles for more efficient collection by a fluorescence detection system. The multiplicative effects of enhanced excitation combined with enhanced photon extraction combine to provide improved signal-to-noise ratios for detection of fluorescent emitters, which in turn can be used to reduce the limits of detection of low concentration analytes, such as disease biomarker proteins. Fabrication of PCs using inexpensive manufacturing methods and materials that include replica molding on plastic, nano-imprint lithography on quartz substrates result in devices that are practical for single-use disposable applications. In this review, we will describe the motivation for implementing high-sensitivity fluorescence detection in the context of molecular diagnosis and gene expression analysis though the use of PC surfaces. Recent efforts to improve the design and fabrication of PCs and their associated detection instrumentation are summarized, including the use of PCs coupled with Fabry-Perot cavities and external cavity lasers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The protein structural entries grew far slower than the sequence entries. This is partly due to the bottleneck in obtaining diffraction quality protein crystals for structural determination using X-ray crystallography. The first step to achieve protein crystallization is to find out suitable chemical reagents. However, it is not an easy task. Exhausting trial and error tests of numerous combinations of different reagents mixed with the protein solution are usually necessary to screen out the pursuing crystallization conditions. Therefore, any attempts to help find suitable reagents for protein crystallization are helpful. In this paper, an analysis of the relationship between the protein sequence similarity and the crystallization reagents according to the information from the existing databases is presented. We extracted information of reagents and sequences from the Biological Macromolecule Crystallization Database (BMCD) and the Protein Data Bank (PDB) database, classified the proteins into different clusters according to the sequence similarity, and statistically analyzed the relationship between the sequence similarity and the crystallization reagents. The results showed that there is a pronounced positive correlation between them. Therefore, according to the correlation, prediction of feasible chemical reagents that are suitable to be used in crystallization screens for a specific protein is possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The liver is an essential metabolic organ of the human body, and malignant liver tumors seriously affect and threaten human life. The segmentation algorithm for liver and liver tumors is one of the essential branches of computer-aided diagnosis. This paper proposed a two-stage liver and tumor segmentation algorithm based on the convolutional neural network (CNN). In the present study, we used two stages to segment the liver and tumors: liver localization and tumor segmentation. In the liver localization stage, the network segments the liver region, adopts the encoding–decoding structure and long-distance feature fusion operation, and utilizes the shallow features' spatial information to improve liver identification. In the tumor segmentation stage, based on the liver segmentation results of the first two steps, a CNN model was designed to accurately identify the liver tumors by using the 2D image features and 3D spatial features of the CT image slices. At the same time, we use the attention mechanism to improve the segmentation performance of small liver tumors. The proposed algorithm was tested on the public data set Liver Tumor Segmentation Challenge (LiTS). The Dice coefficient of liver segmentation was 0.967, and the Dice coefficient of tumor segmentation was 0.725. The proposed algorithm can accurately segment the liver and liver tumors in CT images. Compared with other state-of-the-art algorithms, the segmentation results of the proposed algorithm rank the highest in the Dice coefficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Endotoxin is a complex molecule derived from the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria, and it has strong thermal stability. The processing of infant food can kill pathogenic bacteria but cannot remove endotoxin. Because the intestinal structure of infants is not fully developed, residual endotoxin poses a threat to their health by damaging the intestinal flora and inducing intestinal inflammation, obesity, and sepsis, among others. This paper discusses the sources and contents of endotoxin in infant food and methods for preventing endotoxin from harming infants. However, there is no clear evidence that endotoxin levels in infant food cause significant immune symptoms or even diseases in infants. However, in order to improve the safety level of infant food and reduce the endotoxin content, this issue should not be ignored. The purpose of this review is to provide a theoretical basis for manufacturers and consumers to understand the possible harm of endotoxin content in infant formula milk powder and to explore how to reduce its level in infant formula milk powder. Generally, producers should focus on cleaning the milk source, securing the cold chain, avoiding long-distance transportation, and shortening the storage time of raw milk to reduce the level of bacteria and endotoxin. After production and processing, the endotoxin content should be measured as an important index to test the quality of infant formula milk powder so as to provide high-quality infant products for the healthy growth of newborns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the growing diversity and complexity of diet, humans are at risk of simultaneous exposure to aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) and aflatoxin M1 (AFM1), which are well-known contaminants in dairy and other agricultural products worldwide. The intestine represents the first barrier against external contaminants; however, evidence about the combined effect of AFB1 and AFM1 on intestinal integrity is lacking. In vivo, the serum biochemical parameters related to intestinal barrier function, ratio of villus height/crypt depth, and distribution pattern of claudin-1 and zonula occluden-1 were significantly affected in mice exposed to 0.3 mg/kg b.w. AFB1 and 3.0 mg/kg b.w. AFM1. In vitro results on differentiated Caco-2 cells showed that individual and combined AFB1 (0.5 and 4 μg/mL) and AFM1 (0.5 and 4 μg/mL) decreased cell viability and trans-epithelial electrical resistance values as well as increased paracellular permeability of fluorescein isothiocyanate-dextran in a dose-dependent manner. Furthermore, AFM1 aggravated AFB1-induced compromised intestinal barrier, as demonstrated by the down-regulation of tight junction proteins and their redistribution, particularly internalization. Adding the inhibitor chlorpromazine illustrated that clathrin-mediated endocytosis partially contributed to the compromised intestinal integrity. Synergistic and additive effects were the predominant interactions, suggesting that these toxins are likely to have negative effects on human health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sign language is the most important way of communication for hearing-impaired people. Research on sign language recognition can help normal people understand sign language. We reviewed the classic methods of sign language recognition, and the recognition accuracy is not high enough because of redundant information, human finger occlusion, motion blurring, the diversified signing styles of different people, and so on. To overcome these shortcomings, we propose a multi-scale and dual sign language recognition Network (SLR-Net) based on a graph convolutional network (GCN). The original input data was RGB videos. We first extracted the skeleton data from them and then used the skeleton data for sign language recognition. SLR-Net is mainly composed of three sub-modules: multi-scale attention network (MSA), multi-scale spatiotemporal attention network (MSSTA) and attention enhanced temporal convolution network (ATCN). MSA allows the GCN to learn the dependencies between long-distance vertices; MSSTA can directly learn the spatiotemporal features; ATCN allows the GCN network to better learn the long temporal dependencies. The three different attention mechanisms, multi-scale attention mechanism, spatiotemporal attention mechanism, and temporal attention mechanism, are proposed to further improve the robustness and accuracy. Besides, a keyframe extraction algorithm is proposed, which can greatly improve efficiency by sacrificing a little accuracy. Experimental results showed that our method can reach 98.08% accuracy rate in the CSL-500 dataset with a 500-word vocabulary. Even on the challenging dataset DEVISIGN-L with a 2000-word vocabulary, it also reached a 64.57% accuracy rate, outperforming other state-of-the-art sign language recognition methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: The cost of cow manure treatment and bedding increases the operating cost of the ranch. Many ranches fill out the recycled manure solids (RMS) process to dry manure as bedding material. However, the microbial safety of RMS bedding is still uncertain, and the change of microbial diversity of the feces after each processing step is not clear. In this study, an amplified fragment sequence was utilized to analyze the microbial flora, bacterial phenotype, and metabolic function prediction of the products in the process of RMS processing. At the same time, samples of sand soil bedding material, rice husk bedding material and RMS bedding material were compared and analyzed. The results will be useful to further study the safety of RMS padding to reduce the operation cost of dairy farms and the incidence rate of mastitis. Changes in bacterial community, phenotype, metabolic function, and pathogenic bacteria content in recycled manure solids (RMS) were analyzed by 16S rRNA sequencing, Bugbase, picrost2, and qPCR, respectively. The data from RMS bedding were compared to those of sand bedding and rice husk bedding. The results show that the proportion of potentially pathogenic bacteria among the manure flora of RMS after dry and wet separation, after composting, and after sun-cure storage was 74.00%, 26.03%, and 49.067%, respectively. Compared to RMS bedding, the proportion of potentially pathogenic microorganisms in sand bedding and rice husk bedding was higher. The picrust2 analyses show that the level of lipopolysaccharide biosynthesis changed significantly during RMS processing. In addition, the qPCR results show that composting could effectively reduce the detection and quantification of pathogens, except Streptococcus uberis, in RMS bedding. In general, composting is an essential step to improve the safety of bedding materials in the process of fecal treatment. However, at the same time, RMS bedding may increase the risk of mastitis caused by Streptococcus uberis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Microbiota can enter and persist in raw milk at several stages of the farming chain. The development of culture-independent methods and high-throughput DNA sequencing techniques have improved the approach to study microbiota communities in milk and milk products. This work aimed to determine the effects of farming environments on milk microbiota using the high-throughput DNA sequencing technique, and to elucidate the relationship among the microbiota. The effects of the farming environment on the microbiota in milk can guide farm and management practices to ensure that the milk is not contaminated with bacteria during milking and processing, thereby improving the quality of the milk. The aim of the present study was to determine the effects of farming environments on microbiota in raw milk and to assess the relationship among microbes by 16S rRNA sequencing methods. Samples of raw milk, cow trough water, teat dip cup, teat, teat liner, dairy hall air, cowshed air, feces, feed, and bedding from two farms were collected. The two highest abundant bacterial groups of Moraxellaceae and Staphylococcaceae were found in milk and teat liner samples, respectively, at Zhengzhou farm, Henan Province. Moreover, the two highest abundant bacterial groups of Enterobacteriaceae and Moraxellaceae were found in milk and teat dip cup samples, respectively, at Qiqihar farm, Heilongjiang Province. Source Tracker analysis revealed that the teat liner and teat dip cup were the most important contributors of microbes in milk samples at Zhengzhou farm and Qiqihar farm, respectively, which could be attributed to the management level of the farm. Therefore, disinfection and cleaning procedures should be developed to improve the quality of raw milk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, the spatiotemporal and vertical distributions of ice cloud properties and their association with meteorological variables are analyzed for the period 2007–2016 using the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) and Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research (MERRA-2) reanalysis observations. The distribution of ice cloud fraction (ICF) with its peak does not overlap with that of the ice water content (IWC) peak during daytime and nighttime due to the sampling bias. Moreover, the vertical distributions of mean IWC exhibited a vaguely "sharp thorn" at an altitude of ~4 km in all seasons at the location of about ±40°, which can be caused by the artifacts. Furthermore, it is noted that different ice cloud optical depth (ICOD) presents significant changes observed in their diurnal variations in the heights of peaks. The maximum diurnal difference of ice cloud properties occurs in the tropical regions of the North Hemisphere (NH) during summer. We also investigated the relation between ICOD and the meteorological variables and found that the ICOD values are dependent on the meteorological parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mycotoxins are fungal metabolites that occur in human foods and animal feeds, potentially threatening human and animal health. The intestine is considered as the first barrier against these external contaminants, and it consists of interconnected physical, chemical, immunological, and microbial barriers. In this context, based on in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo models, we summarize the literature for compromised intestinal barrier issues caused by various mycotoxins, and we reviewed events related to disrupted intestinal integrity (physical barrier), thinned mucus layer (chemical barrier), imbalanced inflammatory factors (immunological barrier), and dysfunctional bacterial homeostasis (microbial barrier). We also provide important information on deoxynivalenol, a leading mycotoxin implicated in intestinal dysfunction, and other adverse intestinal effects induced by other mycotoxins, including aflatoxins and ochratoxin A. In addition, intestinal perturbations caused by mycotoxins may also contribute to the development of mycotoxicosis, including human chronic intestinal inflammatory diseases. Therefore, we provide a clear understanding of compromised intestinal barrier induced by mycotoxins, with a view to potentially develop innovative strategies to prevent and treat mycotoxicosis. In addition, because of increased combinatorial interactions between mycotoxins, we explore the interactive effects of multiple mycotoxins in this review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mechanical harvesting has become inevitable for cotton production in China due to the rising labor cost in the country. It usually requires a moderate plant height and compact plant architecture. Correlation and stepwise regression were employed to analyze databases of our 24 field experiments between 2010 and 2017 in Hebei Province. The purpose is to identify the relationships between plant architecture traits and seed cotton yield within natural plant height range (58.6–163.2 cm) or preferred plant height range (80–120 cm) for mechanical harvesting in the Yellow River Valley of China, and define some important factors affecting seed cotton yield. Under natural plant height range across all experiments, there was a significantly negative correlation (r = −0.452) between plant height and yield. On limited plant height range desired for mechanical harvesting, the degree of this negative correlation decreased to r = −0.366. The correlation of plant height with seed cotton yield varied greatly with year, cultivar, plant density and mepiquat chloride (MC) application. Moreover, stepwise regression analysis picked internode length of the 1st (generally including 1st–7th mainstem node from bottom), 2nd (8th–12th node) and 4th (above 17th node) mainstem section and the length of lower fruiting branch (LFB) as significant factors influencing seed cotton yield under plant height range of 80–120 cm. The results have implications for precise control of cotton plant architecture preferred for mechanized harvesting in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herein, the effect of silymarin pretreatment on the pharmacokinetics of simvastatin in rats was evaluated. To ensure the accuracy of the results, a rapid and sensitive UPLC–MS/MS method was established for simultaneous quantification of simvastatin (SV) and its active metabolite simvastatin acid (SVA). This method was applied for studying the pharmacokinetic interactions in rats after oral co-administration of silymarin (45 mg/kg) and different concentrations of SV. The major pharmacokinetic parameters, including Cmax, tmax, t1/2, mean residence time (MRT), elimination rate constant (λz) and area under the concentration-time curve (AUC0–12h), were calculated using the non-compartmental model. The results showed that the co-administration of silymarin and SV significantly increased the Cmax and AUC0–12h of SVA compared with SV alone, while there was no significant difference with regards to Tmax and t1/2. However, SV pharmacokinetic parameters were not significantly affected by silymarin pretreatment. Therefore, these changes indicated that drug-drug interactions may occur after co-administration of silymarin and SV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Osimertinib, a new-generation inhibitor of the epidermal growth factor, has been used for the clinical treatment of advanced T790M mutation-positive tumors. In this research, an original analysis method was established for the quantification of osimertinib by ultra-performance liquid chromatography with time of flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-TOF-MS) in rat plasma. After protein precipitation with acetonitrile and sorafinib (internal standard, IS), they were chromatographed through a Waters XTerra MS C18 column. The mobile phase was acetonitrile and water (including 0.1% ammonia). The relative standard deviation (RSD) of the intra- and inter-day results ranged from 5.38 to 9.76% and from 6.02 to 9.46%, respectively, and the extraction recovery and matrix effects were calculated to range from 84.31 to 96.14% and from 91.46 to 97.18%, respectively. The results illustrated that the analysis method had sufficient specificity, accuracy and precision. Meanwhile, the UPLC-TOF-MS method for osimertinib was successfully applied into the pharmacokinetics of SD rats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-concentration ozonation was developed as a novel technique to control the excess biomass in volatile organic compound (VOC) biofilters. In order to understand the reaction mechanism between ozone and biomass, the changes in properties of ozone exposed extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) were investigated in this study. EPS was sequestered from the biofilm, obtained from a biofilter treating gaseous toluene, and then it was exposed to gaseous ozone at 272 ± 22 ppm continuously for 12 h. The total organic carbon (TOC) results indicated that low concentration ozone could not mineralize the EPS to carbon dioxide (CO2) completely. The excitation-emission matrix fluorescence spectroscopy (EEM) results demonstrated that ozone preferred to attack the benzene ring and specific amino acid residues (such as tryptophan) on the protein chain. High performance size-exclusion chromatography (HPSEC) results confirmed that the protein molecules were depolymerized after ozone attack, while the molecular weight of polysaccharides was not much affected by ozone. During ozonation, few volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as carboxylic acids, aldehydes, ketones, benzaldehyde and by-products of toluene, were generated, which confirms a minor change in the TOC concentration of EPS. Results revealed that low concentration ozone can reduce the molecular weight of biofilter EPS which can be a key reason for controlling biomass accumulation. Additionally, this can be used to study the composition of biofilm EPS from biofilters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]