Search

BackgroundPer- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of emerging persistent organic pollutants, and their negative health impacts have been widely concerned. There is a lack of epidemiological studies on the associations of PFAS exposure with lipid homeostasis. ObjectiveTo investigate the associations of perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) exposure with blood lipid levels and dyslipidemia in middle-aged and elderly women. MethodsThis study was based on 795 middle-aged and elderly women from a female sub-cohort of the Dongfeng-Tongji cohort study, excluding the participants without blood lipid measurements and/or reported use of lipid-lowering drugs at baseline. The concentrations of plasma PFOS and PFOA were measured by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS). The concentrations of serum total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) were measured using an automatic analyzer. The normally distributed continuous variables were presented as mean ± standard deviation (\begin{document}$ \bar{x}\pm s) $\end{document}, while the skewedly distributed continuous variables were presented as median (M) and the 25th and 75th percentiles (P25, P75). Generalized linear models (GLM), generalized additive models (GAM), and logistic regression models were applied to evaluate the associations of PFOS and PFOA exposure with blood lipid levels and the risk of dyslipidemia. Stratified analyses were also implemented to explore potential modification effects of sociodemographic characteristics, lifestyles, and menopause on associations of PFOS and PFOA exposure and blood lipids. ResultsThe \begin{document}$ \bar{x}\pm s $\end{document} of baseline age for the study participants was (59.4±8.6) years old, and their baseline body mass index (BMI) was (24.3±3.4) kg·m−2. The M (P25, P75) of baseline plasma concentrations for PFOS and PFOA were 9.96 (6.24, 15.09) μg·L−1 and 1.20 (0.84, 1.80) μg·L−1 respectively. The GLM analysis showed that plasma concentration of PFOS was positively associated with serum HDL-C [b (95%CI): 0.04 (0.01, 0.07)]. The plasma concentration of PFOA was also positively associated with serum TC [b (95%CI): 0.05 (0.02, 0.08)] and serum LDL-C [b (95%CI): 0.05 (0.01, 0.09)]. No significant association was observed between plasma PFOS and serum TC, TG, or LDL-C, nor between plasma PFOA and serum TG or HDL-C. The stratified analyses showed that the association between PFOA and LDL-C was significant among the participants aged

Abstract In eukaryotes, the nuclear membrane that encapsulates genomic DNA is composed of an inner nuclear membrane (INM), an outer nuclear membrane (ONM), and a perinuclear space. SUN proteins located in the INM and KASH proteins in the ONM form the SUN-KASH NM-bridge, which functions as the junction of the nucleocytoplasmic complex junction. Proteins containing the SUN domain showed the highest correlation with differentially accumulated proteins (DAPs) in the wheat response to fungal stress. To understand the characteristics of SUN and its associated proteins in wheat responding to pathogen stress, here we investigated and comprehensive analyzed SUN- and KASH-related proteins among the DAPs under fungi infection based on their conserved motifs. In total, four SUN proteins, one WPP domain-interacting protein (WIP), four WPP domain-interacting tail-anchored proteins (WIT), two WPP proteins and one Ran GTPase activating protein (RanGAP) were identified. Following transient expression of Nicotiana benthamiana, TaSUN2, TaRanGAP2, TaWIT1 and TaWIP1 were identified as nuclear membrane proteins, while TaWPP1 and TaWPP2 were expressed in both the nucleus and cell membrane. RT-qPCR analysis demonstrated that the transcription of TaSUN2, TaRanGAP2 and TaWPP1 were strongly upregulated in response to fungal infection. Furthermore, using the bimolecular fluorescence complementation, the luciferase complementation and a nuclear and split-ubiquitin-based membrane yeast two-hybrid systems, we substantiated the interaction between TaSUN2 and TaWIP1, as well as TaWIP1/WIT1 and TaWPP1/WPP2. Silencing of TaSUN2, TaRanGAP2 and TaWPP1 in wheat leaves promoted powdery mildew infection and hyphal growth, and reduced the expression of TaBRI1, TaBAK1 and Ta14-3–3, indicating that these NM proteins play a positive role in resistance to fungal stress. Our study reveals the characteristics of NM proteins and propose the preliminary construction of SUN-WIP-WPP-RanGAP complex in wheat, which represents a foundation for detail elucidating their functions in wheat in future.

Summary: Symmetry analysis is a cutting-edge research approach in physics, yet its application in macroscopic energy systems remains limited. This study demonstrates its potential to provide valuable insights for a deeper understanding and development of thermodynamic cycles. This article first studies the symmetry of the proposed C-P diagrams and finds rich symmetries including reflection symmetry, translation symmetry, and rotational symmetry within Carnot cycles. Then, it emphasizes that one can use symmetry alone to prove that the highest efficiency for any cycle operating in a certain temperature range is the Carnot efficiency, without relying on the entropy concept in the second law of thermodynamics. Lastly, it is found that this symmetry analysis framework can also be used for thermal cycles with phase transitions, as exemplified by applying in Rankine cycles. This research not only contributes groundbreaking insights into unraveling the symmetry inherent in thermodynamic cycles, but also promotes symmetry analysis to be an alternative analysis mean.

Objective: Dementia is an important disease burden among the elderly, and its occurrence may be profoundly affected by environmental factors. Evidence of the relationship between air pollution and dementia is emerging, but the extent to which this can be offset by lifestyle factors remains ambiguous. Methods: This study comprised 155,828 elder adults aged 60 years and above in the UK Biobank who were dementia-free at baseline. Cox proportional hazard models were conducted to examine the associations of annual average levels of air pollutants in 2010, including nitrogen dioxide (NO2), nitrogen oxides (NOX), particulate matter (PM2.5, PM10, and PMcoarse) and lifestyle factors recorded at baseline [physical activity (PA), sleep patterns, or smoking status] with incident risk of dementia, and their interactions on both multiplicative and additive scales. Results: During a 12-year period of follow-up, 4,389 incidents of all-cause dementia were identified. For each standard deviation increase in ambient NO2, NOX or PM2.5, all-cause dementia risk increases by 1.07-fold [hazard ratio (HR) and 95 % confidence interval (CI) = 1.07 (1.04, 1.10)], 1.05-fold (95 % CI: 1.02, 1.08) and 1.07-fold (95 % CI: 1.04, 1.10), whereas low levels of PA, poor sleep patterns, and smoking are associated with an elevated risk of dementia [HR (95 % CI) = 1.17 (1.09, 1.26), 1.13 (1.00, 1.27), and 1.14 (1.07, 1.21), respectively]. Furthermore, these air pollutants show joint effects with low PA, poor sleep patterns, and smoking on the onset of dementia. The moderate to high levels of PA could significantly or marginally significantly modify the associations between NO2, NOX or PM2.5 (P-int = 0.067, 0.036, and 0.067, respectively) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but no significant modification effects are found for sleep patterns or smoking status. Conclusion: The increased exposures of NO2, NOX, or PM2.5 are associated with elevated risk of dementia among elderly UK Biobank population. These air pollutants take joint effects with low PA, poor sleep patterns, and smoking on the development of dementia. In addition, moderate to high levels of PA could attenuate the incident risk of AD caused by air pollution. Further prospective researches among other cohort populations are warranted to validate these findings.

Decarbonization of the electric power sector is essential for sustainable development. Low-carbon generation technologies, such as solar and wind energy, can replace the CO2-emitting energy sources (coal and natural gas plants). As a sustainable engineering practice, long-duration energy storage technologies must be employed to manage imbalances in the variable renewable energy supply and electricity demand. Compressed air energy storage (CAES) is an effective solution for balancing this mismatch and therefore is suitable for use in future electrical systems to achieve a high penetration of renewable energy generation. This study introduces recent progress in CAES, mainly advanced CAES, which is a clean energy technology that eliminates the use of fossil fuels, compared with two commercial CAES plants at Huntorf and McIntosh which are conventional ones utilizing fossil fuels. Advanced CAES include adiabatic CAES, isothermal CAES, liquid air energy storage, supercritical CAES, underwater CAES, and CAES coupled with other technologies. The principles and configurations of these advanced CAES technologies are briefly discussed and a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art technologies is presented, including theoretical studies, experiments, demonstrations, and applications. The comparison and discussion of these CAES technologies are summarized with a focus on technical maturity, power sizing, storage capacity, operation pressure, round-trip efficiency, efficiency of the components, operation duration, and investment cost. Potential application trends were compiled. This paper presents a comprehensive reference for developing novel CAES systems and makes recommendations for future research and development to facilitate their application in several areas, ranging from fundamentals to applications.

This paper studied the numerical approximation of the stochastic differential equations driven by non-global Lipschitz drift coefficient and multiplicative noise. An efficient data-driven method, called extended continuous latent process flow, was proposed for the underlying problem. Compared with the piecewise construction of a variational posterior process used in the classical continuous latent process flow developed by Deng et al. [13], the principle idea of our method was to derive a variational lower bound by constructing a posterior latent process conditional on all information over the whole time interval to maximize the log-likelihood generated by the observations, which reduces the computational cost and, thus, provides a convenient way to approximate the considered equation. Particularly, our new method showed a better approximation to the underlying equation than the classical drift-$ \theta $ discretization scheme through numerical error comparison. Numerical experiments were finally reported to demonstrate the effectiveness and generalization performance of the proposed method.

The introduction of alleles into commercial crop breeding pipelines is both time consuming and costly. Two technologies that are disrupting traditional breeding processes are doubled haploid (DH) breeding and genome editing (GE). Recently, these techniques were combined into a GE trait delivery system called HI-Edit (Haploid Inducer-Edit) [1]. In HI-Edit, the pollen of a haploid inducer line is reprogrammed to deliver GE traits to any variety, obviating recurrent selection. For HI-Edit to operate at scale, an efficient transformable HI line is needed, but most maize varieties are recalcitrant to transformation, and haploid inducers are especially difficult to transform given their aberrant reproductive behaviors. Leveraging marker assisted selection and a three-tiered testing scheme, we report the development of new Iodent and Stiff Stalk maize germplasm that are transformable, have high haploid induction rates, and exhibit a robust, genetically-dominant anthocyanin native trait that may be used for rapid haploid identification. We show that transformation of these elite “HI-Edit” lines is enhanced using the BABYBOOM and WUSCHEL morphogenetic factors. Finally, we evaluate the HI-Edit performance of one of the lines against both Stiff Stalk and non-Stiff Stalk testers. The strategy and results of this study should facilitate the development of commercially scalable HI-Edit systems in diverse crops.

Polymethoxyflavones (PMFs) are a type of uncommon dietary flavonoids, characterized by more than one methoxy group, which exist in limited plant species, like Citrus species and Kaempferia parviflora. In addition, different PMFs, such as nobiletin, sinensetin, tangeretin, and casticin, have been isolated from these natural sources. PMFs have received increasing attention due to their multiple bioactivities, such as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, metabolic regulatory, immunoregulatory, neuroprotective, and skin protective effects. These bioactivities of PMFs should be associated with the regulation of critical molecular targets and the interaction with gut microbiota. In order to provide a comprehensive and updated review of PMFs, their natural sources, refined extraction, biosynthesis, metabolism, and bioactivities are summarised and discussed, with the emphasis on the molecular mechanisms of PMFs on regulating different chronic diseases. Overall, PMFs may be promising flavonoids to the forefront of nutraceuticals for the prevention and/or treatment of certain human chronic diseases.

The concept of passenger-centric design has become increasingly significant in the intelligent automotive industry. Enhancing in-cabin thermal comfort while maintaining energy efficiency is crucial, and to this end, we leverage real-time passenger thermal sensation as a basis for HVAC control strategies. This study introduces a non-invasive, dual-phase prediction model that evaluates passenger thermal comfort by utilizing facial thermal imaging and environmental factors. The proposed model employs a deep learning neural network to extract pertinent features from the facial thermal images for an initial prediction. Then this prediction is refined by integrating it with environmental data through a machine learning algorithm, facilitating real-time personal thermal comfort assessment. Data collection for the model was performed across two distinct seasons, with 22 participants in summer and 18 in winter, gathering facial thermal images, environmental parameters, and thermal sensation votes to construct a comprehensive dataset. Analysis revealed a set of critical environmental factors that correlate strongly with thermal sensation votes, which were used as auxiliary features in the model. The performance of the proposed dual-phase approach, combining deep learning and machine learning techniques, demonstrated robust effectiveness on both summer and winter datasets. This substantiates the method's practicality for real-world application within vehicle environments.

Summary: Various energy storage systems (ESS) can be derived from the Brayton cycle, with the most representative being compressed air energy storage and pumped thermal electricity storage systems. Although some important studies on above ESS are reported, the topological structure behind those systems (i.e., derivations of the Brayton cycle) has not been studied, and the underlying thermodynamic ideas still need to be further explored. This paper first introduces the topological structure and the symmetry of ESS and their based Brayton cycles. The formation method of ESS based on paths and separation points is specified. It is found that round-trip path can form ESS directly. Then various ESS formed are compared. Finally, the synergistic effect and gain principle of thermal cycle and ESS are revealed. This work helps to reveal the intrinsic relationship between thermal cycles and ESS, understand the general laws behind ESS, and guide the combination of thermal cycles and ESS.

Sweet sorghum is an important sugar crop and forage with a strong tolerance to soil salinity. We have previously analyzed the ion accumulation traits and transcriptome of a sweet sorghum cultivar under NaCl treatments. However, the mechanisms underlying Na+, K+, Cl−, and NO3− transports and the osmotic adjustment of sweet sorghum under salt stresses need further investigations. In this study, the growth, photosynthesis, inorganic ion and organic solute contents, and leaf osmotic adjustment ability of the sweet sorghum cultivars “Lvjuren” and “Fengtian” under NaCl treatments were determined; meanwhile, the expressions of key genes associated with the Na+, K+, Cl−, and NO3− transport were analyzed using the qRT-PCR method. The results showed that NaCl treatments more severely inhibited the growth and photosynthesis of “Lvjuren” than those of “Fengtian”. After NaCl treatments, “Fengtian” could more efficiently restrict the overaccumulation of Na+ and Cl− in leaf blades than “Lvjuren” by withholding large amounts of Na+ in the roots or reserving high quantities of Cl− in the leaf sheaths, which could be attributed to the upregulated expressions of SbNHX2, SbHKT1;4, SbHKT1;5, SbCLCc, and SbCLCg or the downregulated expression of SbNPF6.4. “Fengtian” exhibited significantly lower leaf osmotic potential but higher leaf water potential and turgor pressure under NaCl treatments, suggesting that the former possessed a stronger osmotic ability than the latter. The contents of K+, NO3−, soluble sugar, and betaine in leaf blades, as well as the contributions of these osmolytes to the leaf osmotic potential, in “Fengtian” were significantly higher than those in “Lvjuren”. In addition, the upregulated expressions of SbAKT1, SbHAK5, SbSKOR, SbNPF3.1, SbNPF6.3, and SbNPF7.3 should be responsible for maintaining K+ and NO3− homeostasis under NaCl treatment. These results lay a foundation for uncovering the salt tolerance mechanisms of sweet sorghum and large-scale cultivation of this species in saline areas.

Water scarcity is a major environmental constraint on plant growth in arid regions. Soluble sugars and amino acids are essential osmolytes for plants to cope with osmotic stresses. Sweet sorghum is an important bioenergy crop and forage with strong adaptabilities to adverse environments; however, the accumulation pattern and biosynthesis basis of soluble sugars and amino acids in this species under osmotic stresses remain elusive. Here, we investigated the physiological responses of a sweet sorghum cultivar to PEG-induced osmotic stresses, analyzed differentially accumulated soluble sugars and amino acids after 20% PEG treatment using metabolome profiling, and identified key genes involved in the biosynthesis pathways of soluble sugars and amino acids using transcriptome sequencing. The results showed that the growth and photosynthesis of sweet sorghum seedlings were significantly inhibited by more than 20% PEG. After PEG treatments, the leaf osmotic adjustment ability was strengthened, while the contents of major inorganic osmolytes, including K+ and NO3−, remained stable. After 20% PEG treatment, a total of 119 and 188 differentially accumulated metabolites were identified in the stems and leaves, respectively, and the accumulations of soluble sugars such as raffinose, trehalose, glucose, sucrose, and melibiose, as well as amino acids such as proline, leucine, valine, serine, and arginine were significantly increased, suggesting that these metabolites should play key roles in osmotic adjustment of sweet sorghum. The transcriptome sequencing identified 1711 and 4978 DEGs in the stems, as well as 2061 and 6596 DEGs in the leaves after 20% PEG treatment for 6 and 48 h, respectively, among which the expressions of genes involved in biosynthesis pathways of sucrose (such as SUS1, SUS2, etc.), trehalose (including TPS6), raffinose (such as RAFS2 and GOLS2, etc.), proline (such as P5CS2 and P5CR), leucine and valine (including BCAT2), and arginine (such as ASS and ASL) were significantly upregulated. These genes should be responsible for the large accumulation of soluble sugars and amino acids under osmotic stresses. This study deepens our understanding of the important roles of individual soluble sugars and amino acids in the adaptation of sweet sorghum to water scarcity.

Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis L.), a widely used cool-season turfgrass, shows a high sensitivity to soil salinity. Clarifying the adaptative mechanisms of Kentucky bluegrass that serve to improve its salt tolerance in saline environments is urgent for the application of this turfgrass in salt-affected regions. In this study, physiological responses of the Kentucky bluegrass cultivars “Explorer” and “Blue Best” to NaCl treatment, as well as gene expressions related to photosynthesis, ion transport, and ROS degradation, were analyzed. The results showed that the growth of “Explorer” was obviously better compared to “Blue Best” under 400 mM NaCl treatment. “Explorer” exhibited a much stronger photosynthetic capacity than “Blue Best” under NaCl treatment, and the expression of key genes involved in chlorophyll biosynthesis, photosystem II, and the Calvin cycle in “Explorer” was greatly induced by salt treatment. Compared with “Blue Best”, “Explorer” could effectively maintain Na+/K+ homeostasis in its leaves under NaCl treatment, which can be attributed to upregulated expression of genes, such as HKT1;5, HAK5, and SKOR. The relative membrane permeability and contents of O2− and H2O2 in “Explorer” were significantly lower than those in “Blue Best” under NaCl treatment, and, correspondingly, the activities of SOD and POD in the former were significantly higher than in the latter. Moreover, the expression of genes involved in the biosynthesis of enzymes in the ROS-scavenging system of “Explorer” was immediately upregulated after NaCl treatment. Additionally, free proline and betaine are important organic osmolytes for maintaining hydration status in Kentucky bluegrass under NaCl treatment, as the contents of these metabolites in “Explorer” were significantly higher than in “Blue Best”. This work lays a theoretical basis for the improvement of salt tolerance in Kentucky bluegrass.

Epidemiologic studies have reported the positive relationship of benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) exposure with the risk of lung cancer. However, the mechanisms underlying the relationship is still unclear. Plasma microRNA (miRNA) is a typical epigenetic biomarker that was linked to environment exposure and lung cancer development. We aimed to reveal the mediation effect of plasma miRNAs on BaP-related lung cancer. We designed a lung cancer case-control study including 136 lung cancer patients and 136 controls, and measured the adducts of benzo[a]pyrene diol epoxide-albumin (BPDE-Alb) and sequenced miRNA profiles in plasma. The relationships between BPDE-Alb adducts, normalized miRNA levels and the risk of lung cancer were assessed by linear regression models. The mediation effects of miRNAs on BaP-related lung cancer were investigated. A total of 190 plasma miRNAs were significantly related to lung cancer status at Bonferroni adjusted P 2 between plasma samples before and after tumor resection surgery at Bonferroni adjusted P

Plants have evolved interconnected regulatory pathways which enable them to respond and adapt to their environments. In plants, stress memory enhances stress tolerance through the molecular retention of prior stressful experiences, fostering rapid and robust responses to subsequent challenges. Mounting evidence suggests a close link between the formation of stress memories and effective future stress responses. However, the mechanism by which environmental stressors trigger stress memory formation is poorly understood. Here, we review the current state of knowledge regarding the RNA-based regulation on stress memory formation in plants and discuss research challenges and future directions. Specifically, we focus on the involvement of microRNAs (miRNAs), small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), and alternative splicing (AS) in stress memory formation. miRNAs regulate target genes via post-transcriptional silencing, while siRNAs trigger stress memory formation through RNA-directed DNA methylation (RdDM). lncRNAs guide protein complexes for epigenetic regulation, and AS of pre-mRNAs is crucial to plant stress memory. Unraveling the mechanisms underpinning RNA-mediated stress memory formation not only advances our knowledge of plant biology but also aids in the development of improved stress tolerance in crops, enhancing crop performance and global food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Purpose: In this study, we investigate the longitudinal measurement invariance of the Chinese version of the mini-mental state examination (CMMSE). Methods: The factor structure and longitudinal equivalence of the CMMSE were examined by confirmatory factor analysis. Four CMMSE measurements of 13,132 participants from the China Longitudinal Health and Longevity Study between 2008 and 2018 were included. The nested model of longitudinal invariance proves the existence of strict longitudinal invariance. Results: It showed that the factor structure, factor loadings, intercept error variance, and latent factor means of the CMMSE were invariant across four measurements. Conclusion: These findings indicate that the changes in CMMSE scores can be attributed to real structural change, indicating that the CMMSE is a reliable measurement tool for the study of cognitive aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of alleles into commercial crop breeding pipelines is both time consuming and costly. Two technologies that are disrupting traditional breeding processes are doubled haploid (DH) breeding and genome editing (GE). Recently, these techniques were combined into a GE trait delivery system called HI-Edit (Haploid Inducer-Edit) [1]. In HI-Edit, the pollen of a haploid inducer line is reprogrammed to deliver GE traits to any variety, obviating recurrent selection. For HI-Edit to operate at scale, an efficient transformable HI line is needed, but most maize varieties are recalcitrant to transformation, and haploid inducers are especially difficult to transform given their aberrant reproductive behaviors. Leveraging marker assisted selection and a three-tiered testing scheme, we report the development of new Iodent and Stiff Stalk maize germplasm that are transformable, have high haploid induction rates, and exhibit a robust, genetically-dominant anthocyanin native trait that may be used for rapid haploid identification. We show that transformation of these elite ‘‘HI-Edit” lines is enhanced using the BABYBOOM and WUSCHEL morphogenetic factors. Finally, we evaluate the HI-Edit performance of one of the lines against both Stiff Stalk and non-Stiff Stalk testers. The strategy and results of this study should facilitate the development of commercially scalable HI-Edit systems in diverse crops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]