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Genetic predisposition and disruption of host gut microbiota and immune system can result in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Here, we show that miRNA-149-5p (miR-149-5p) and miRNA-149-3p (miR-149-3p) play crucial roles in IBD. Mice lacking miR-149-3p were considerably more susceptible to dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced colitis than wild-type (WT) mice, accompanied by more serious inflammatory symptoms and increased gene expression of certain inflammatory cytokines. Both miR-149-5p and miR-149-3p suppressed colon inflammatory response

N-glycosylation, an important post-translational modification of proteins in all eukaryotes, has been clearly shown to be involved in numerous diseases in mammalian systems. In contrast, little is known regarding the role of protein N-glycosylation in plant defensive responses to pathogen infection. We identified, for the first time, glycoproteins related to systemic acquired resistance (SAR) in an Arabidopsis thaliana model, using a glycoproteomics platform based on high-resolution mass spectrometry. 407 glycosylation sites corresponding to 378 glycopeptides and 273 unique glycoproteins were identified. 65 significantly changed glycoproteins with 80 N-glycosylation sites were detected in systemic leaves of SAR-induced plants, including numerous GDSL-like lipases, thioglucoside glucohydrolases, kinases, and glycosidases. Functional enrichment analysis revealed that significantly changed glycoproteins were involved mainly in N-glycan biosynthesis and degradation, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, cutin and wax biosynthesis, and plant-pathogen interactions. Comparative analysis of glycoproteomics and proteomics data indicated that glycoproteomics analysis is an efficient method for screening proteins associated with SAR. The present findings clarify glycosylation status and sites of A. thaliana proteins, and will facilitate further research on roles of glycoproteins in SAR induction.

Unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) algorithms aim to transfer the knowledge learned from the labeled source domain to the unlabeled target domain. To tackle this issue, domain-alignment models based on different representation space levels were used to extract knowledge relevant to the ultimate task. Although they achieved remarkable performance, domain shift that poses an evident challenge for adapting the model trained on one domain to another one was ignored. Pseudo labels learning for UDA is therefore proposed to reduce the impact of domain shifts. However, the inevitable label noise severely weakens the model’s capability of feature representations. Inspired by recent studies on deep learning with noisy labels, we propose a Mutual Constraint Network for multi-level UDA (M2N), to mitigate the effects of noisy pseudo labels and learn better feature representation from different space levels. Extensive experimental results on Digits, Office-31, and VisDA-2017, show that our methods can achieve new state-of-the-art performance on three benchmark tasks and improve significantly over prior single-level UDA.

Organic semiconductors have been recognized as a new generation of photocatalysts for pollutants degradation and energy production. Herein, organic heterojunction (TpMa/CN) consisting of carbon nitride and β-ketoenamine-based covalent organic framework is fabricated via a controllable self-assembly approach. The as-prepared TpMa/CN heterojunctions show enlarged visible-light absorption. The optimum TpMa/CN-5 photocatalyst achieves the highest photocatalytic activity towards tetracycline degradation, and its photocatalytic degradation rate is improved by 2.3 and 4.3 times than TpMa and CN, respectively. As a multifunctional photocatalyst, TpMa/CN-5 sample also shows remarkable photocatalytic activity for hydrogen peroxide production (880.494 μM h−1), which is 49 times higher than that of CN. Experimental and theoretical investigations indicate that a built-in electric field is formed at the interface of composite, which enables an accelerated charge transfer and separation. This work develops an effective strategy to design difunctional photocatalyst and deciphers the electronic properties and mechanisms of g-C3N4-based organic photocatalysts, which spurs further interests for organic heterojunction photocatalysts in the future.

The maximum reflectance of vitrinite or graphite microcrystals in Yongan Coalfield, Fujian Province, China, ranges from 5.33% to 10.21%, comprising meta-anthracite, semi-graphite, and graphite. The morphological characteristics of aromatic fringes during different evolution stages were quantitatively analyzed using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and image processing techniques. The results show that a nonlinear evolution of aromatic fringe morphology in the process of coal graphitization is manifested in four aspects, involving the rapid connection and growth, enhancement of ordering alignment, increase of stacking and development of straightening. In meta-anthracite samples, 3 × 3 aromatic rings representing short aromatic fringes are dominated, a majority of aromatic fringes were curved, disjoint or separate, and show a turbostratic layers, with poorly aligned. The spacing between adjacent aromatic fringes exceeded the range of graphitized carbon, and structural defects, such as nanopores were generally visible. In semi-graphite samples, in addition to 3 × 3 aromatic rings, the proportion of >8 × 8 aromatic rings represented longer aromatic fringes increasing significantly, along with ordering alignment and straightening. Stacking with two more layers increased and the spacing between adjacent aromatic fringes decreased to the range of graphitized carbon, and the structural defects decreased considerably. In graphite sample, the proportion of >8 × 8 aromatic rings increase significantly, the length, stacking, and ordering alignment of aromatic fringes increased abruptly, the spacing between adjacent aromatic fringes remained within the range of natural graphite, and a rapid graphite-like structure with flat aromatic fringes formed. A stage evolution of aromatic fringe morphology, whereas remaining almost constant of mainly organic elements, which imply the evolution of aromatic fringes in meta-anthracite originated from ring condensation dominated by late coalification, graphitization starts at semi-graphite stage and enhanced during graphite stage. The making up, originating from linkup and pileup, considered as a special mechanism for the graphitization of aromatic fringes.

Methyltetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) is a key enzyme in folate metabolism, and its single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) site C677T may be associated with gastrointestinal cancer. However, the relationship between MTHFR C677T polymorphism and gastrointestinal tumor markers carcinoma embryonic antigen (CEA), carbohydrate antigen 199 (CA199) and carbohydrate antigen 724 (CA724) in Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection is not specified. This study aims to identify the association between MTHFR C677T polymorphism and gastrointestinal tumor markers (CEA, CA199 and CA724) in H. pylori infection. The relationship between MTHFR C677T polymorphism and gastrointestinal tumor markers in 58 patients with H. pylori infection and 94 non-infected patients was studied. We found that TT genotype was a susceptibility factor of H. pylori infection, which was also associated with increased CEA and CA724 levels. Moreover, there was a negative additive interaction between MTHFR gene C677T polymorphism and CEA levels in H.pylori infection. Meanwhile, there were significant differences in CEA levels between MTHFR C677T polymorphism and H.pylori infection. The presence of T allele led to a decrease in CEA levels when 13C urea breath test (13C-UBT) was positive, while the presence of T allele led to an increase in CEA levels when 13C-UBT was negative. Therefore, we suggest that healthy people should take MTHFR C677T polymorphism screening, combined with 13C-UBT and gastrointestinal tumor markers detection, which can screen out the susceptible population of H. pylori, and help to detect gastrointestinal cancer in the early stage.

Intestinal cancers are developed from intestinal epithelial stem cells (ISCs) in intestinal crypts through a multi-step process involved in genetic mutations of oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. ISCs play a key role in maintaining the homeostasis of gut epithelium. In 2009, Sato et al established a three-dimensional culture system, which mimicked the niche microenvironment by employing the niche factors, and successfully grew crypt ISCs into organoids or Mini-guts in vitro. Since then, the intestinal organoid technology has been used to delineate cellular signaling in ISC biology. However, the cultured organoids consist of heterogeneous cell populations, and it was technically challenging to introduce genomic changes into three-dimensional organoids. Thus, there was a technical necessity to develop a two-dimensional ISC culture system for effective genomic manipulations. In this study, we established a conditionally immortalized mouse intestinal crypt (ciMIC) cell line by using a piggyBac transposon-based SV40 T antigen expression system. We showed that the ciMICs maintained long-term proliferative activity under two-dimensional niche factor-containing culture condition, retained the biological characteristics of intestinal epithelial stem cells, and could form intestinal organoids in three-dimensional culture. While in vivo cell implantation tests indicated that the ciMICs were non-tumorigenic, the ciMICs overexpressing oncogenic β-catenin and/or KRAS exhibited high proliferative activity and developed intestinal adenoma-like pathological features in vivo. Collectively, these findings strongly suggested that the engineered ciMICs should be used as a valuable tool cell line to dissect the genetic and/or epigenetic underpinnings of intestinal tumorigenesis.

Motivated by social learning and social network theories, we argue that firms learn from failures in their director interlocked firms. Empirical results show that enforcement for violations in errant firms inhibit misconduct commitments in focal firms (i.e., firms interlocked with errant firms). We investigate the role of interlocking directors in facilitating the inhibition of misconduct. Empirical results evidence that information transmission by interlocking directors plays a crucial role in the process of inhibitive learning. Besides information transmission, we also find that interlocking directors react with higher diligence in focal firms. Further, overall diligence of independent directors in focal firms is heightened. Additionally, we test several factors that influence the significance of this inhibition, including characteristics of interlocking directors, firm features, and industry characters. Finally, the enforcement can deter more than one form of misconduct in focal firms. Overall, we thoroughly investigate the reactions of focal firms and their directors. Our study focuses on inhibitive learning, which has received limited attention in corporate finance literature.

Multiple-seam gas coproduction is a technology with potential to achieve economic targets. Physical experiments could replicate gas flow dynamics in two seams. In this study, numerical simulation was conducted based on physical experiments. Through calibration, the simulated results agreed with the experimental results. Three findings were obtained. First, the pressure distribution intrinsically depends on the depressurization effectiveness in each coal seam. The gas pressure difference and interval distance influence the pressure distribution by inhibiting depressurization in the top seams and bottom seams, respectively. Second, the production contribution shows a logarithmic relationship with the permeability ratio. The range of the production contribution difference grows from 11.24% to 99.99% when the permeability ratio increases 50 times. By comparison, reservoir pressure has a limited influence, with a maximum of 13.64%. Third, the interlayer interference of the top seams and bottom seams can be intensified by the reservoir pressure difference and the interval distance, respectively. The proposed model has been calibrated and verified and can be directly applied to engineering, serving as a reference for reservoir combination optimization. In summary, coal seams with a permeability ratio within 10, reservoir pressure difference within 1.50 MPa, and interval distances within 50 m are recommended to coproduce together.

OBJECTIVE Few studies are available on birth asphyxia risks in twin neonates. This retrospective multi-center cross-sectional study determined the birthweight percentiles of 5337twins and birth asphyxia incidence of the twin population. METHODS We retrieved sociodemographic and obstetric data from the electronic records systems of participating centers. Neonate birthweight was measured within 24 h of birth. Perinatal asphyxia was diagnosed if 5-minute Apgar score was ≤5, or resuscitation was required 10 min after birth. The primary outcome was the incidence of birth asphyxia. RESULTS Totally 5337 neonates were eligible. The mean neonatal birthweight was 2227.1 ± 608.99 g and the 5th, 50th, and 95th percentiles of birthweight were 970, 2400, and 3080 g, respectively. The mean Apgar score was 9.06 ± 1.73 at 1 min and 8.99 ± 1.74 at 5 min. Totally 13.5 % (705/5222) twins had asphyxia and 9.35 % and 4.16 % twins had moderate and severe asphyxia, respectively. Twins with a birthweight< 1500 g had the highest asphyxia rate (64.8 %) and twins with a birthweight between 2500 and 3000 g had the lowest asphyxia rate (3.6 %). Stepwise logistic regression analysis revealed that higher birthweight was associated with a significantly reduced risk of asphyxia [OR 0.772 (95 %CI 0.755, 0.789), P < 0.001]. The AUROC for mean twin birthweight was 0.86±0.01 (95 %CI 0.84, 0.88) using a cutoff of 1950 g, with a sensitivity of 0.84 and a specificity of 0.78. CONCLUSION Twins have lower birthweight versus singletons and a significant proportion of twins, especially twins with lower birthweight, are at risk of birth asphyxia. Birthweight is an independent predictor of asphyxia and should be further explored as a predictive marker for stratifying asphyxia risks in twin neonates.

Heavy metal pollution of soils has become a serious environmental problem. Soil washing with degradable reagents is an effective remediation technique of heavy metal pollution, and the generated leachate must be appropriately treated before discharge. However, the existing methods usually have the problems of large consumption of regents, high cost, and secondary pollution. This study proposed a reagent-free electrochemical precipitation method to remove mixed heavy metal ions extracted from soils by citrate using inert electrodes (IrO

Cadmium (Cd) is a common environmental pollutant that can damage multiple organs, including the kidney. To prevent renal effects, international authorities have set health-based guidance values of Cd from epidemiological studies. To explore the health risk of Cd exposure and whether human equivalent doses (HEDs) derived from in vitro tests match the current guidance values, we integrated renal tubular epithelial cell-based assays with a physiologically based toxicokinetic model combined with the Monte Carlo method. For females, the HEDs (μg/kg/week) derived from KE2 (DNA damage), KE3 (cell cycle arrest), and KE4 (apoptosis) were 0.20 (2.5th-97.5th percentiles: 0.09-0.48), 0.52 (0.24-1.26), and 2.73 (1.27-6.57), respectively; for males the respective HEDs were 0.23 (0.10-0.49), 0.60 (0.27-1.30), and 3.11 (1.39-6.78). Among them, HED