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Chronic metabolic disease is a serious global health issue, which is accompanied by impaired insulin resistance. Tomato pectin (TP) is a naturally soluble complex hetero-polysaccharide with various biological functions. However, the impact of TP on hepatic insulin resistance in a high-fat diet (HFD) and its potential mechanism remains largely unknown. The results revealed that TP treatment significantly decreased the liver weight, hepatic fat accumulation and hepatic injury in HFD-fed mice. TP also improved fasting blood glucose levels and glucose tolerance in HFD-fed mice. The underlying mechanisms involved in the inflammation, oxidative stress and insulin signaling in the liver were also investigated by RT-qPCR and western blot, which indicated that TP ameliorated hepatic insulin resistance by regulating the PI3K/AKT/GSK-3β pathway, increasing the expression of GLUT4, decreasing the expression of PECK and G6P as well as restoring antioxidant activities and suppressing the inflammation statues in HFD-fed mice. Our data showed that dietary TP has profound effects on hepatic insulin resistance, inflammation and oxidative stress, demonstrating that TP might be a promising therapeutic agent against insulin resistance and related chronic metabolic disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blueberry is a high-quality fruit tree with significant nutritional and economic value, but the intricate mechanism of sugar accumulation in its fruit remains unclear. In this study, the ripe fruits of blueberry cultivars 'Anna' and 'Misty' were utilized as experimental materials, and physiological and multi-omics methodologies were applied to analyze the regulatory mechanisms of the difference in sugar content between them. The results demonstrated that the 'Anna' fruit was smaller and had less hardness than the 'Misty' fruit, as well as higher sugar content, antioxidant capability, and lower active substance content. A total of 7067 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) (3674 up-regulated and 3393 down-regulated) and 140 differentially abundant metabolites (DAMs) (82 up-regulated and 58 down-regulated) were identified between the fruits of the two cultivars. According to KEGG analysis, DEGs were primarily abundant in phenylpropanoid synthesis and hormone signal transduction pathways, whereas DAMs were primarily enriched in ascorbate and aldarate metabolism, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, and the pentose phosphate pathway. A combined multi-omics study showed that 116 DEGs and 3 DAMs in starch and sucrose metabolism (48 DEGs and 1 DAM), glycolysis and gluconeogenesis (54 DEGs and 1 DAM), and the pentose phosphate pathway (14 DEGs and 1 DAM) were significantly enriched. These findings suggest that blueberries predominantly increase sugar accumulation by activating carbon metabolism network pathways. Moreover, we identified critical transcription factors linked to the sugar response. This study presents new understandings regarding the molecular mechanisms underlying blueberry sugar accumulation and will be helpful in improving blueberry fruit quality through breeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forest ecological security is related to national ecological security. Yunnan Province has a significantly stereoscopic climate characterized by diverse and complex vegetation. Therefore, the ecological security of Yunnan Province's forests, which span multiple climate zones, must be carefully considered. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the forest ecological security situation and influencing factors in Yunnan Province in 2017. Utilizing data from remote sensing, the Yunnan Province Yearbooks, socioeconomic statistical data, and better pressure-state-response modeling, this work produced an index system containing state and societal pressure. The evaluation indicators were weighted using a combination of entropy weighting and expert weighting, using 16 prefectures in Yunnan Province as samples. Using the fuzzy matter-element technique, the forest ecological security situation in Yunnan Province in 2017 was assessed, and the contributing causes were examined. Results indicate that there are spatial distribution differences in ecological security in various regions of Yunnan Province. The regions with the greatest indices of forest ecological security were found in Xishuangbanna in the south and Nujiang and Diqing in the northwest of Yunnan Province, while those areas with the lowest indices were distributed in Qujing and Zhaotong in the northeast and Baoshan in the west. Results of the grey relation analysis show that those factors that influence forest ecological security across different prefectures showed significant diversity. In Yunnan Province, the main influencing factors include days when the air quality reaches Level 2 or higher, the percentage of natural forest acreage and accumulation, the value of forest ecological service function per unit area, the annual average temperature, and forest coverage. The influence of the forest status index was greater than that of the forest pressure index. The findings of this work can guide decisions related to regional forest ecological security construction across multiple climate zones. In view of the differences in ecological security status and influencing factors in different regions, ecological environment governance should be adapted to local conditions to ensure the coordinated development of nature, the economy, and the ecological environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ellagic acid (EA) is present at relatively high concentrations in many berries and has many beneficial health effects, including anticancer properties. To improve the development and utilization of blackberry fruit nutrients, we divided Hull blackberry fruits into five growth periods according to color and determined the EA content in the fruits in each period. The EA content in the green fruit stage was the highest at 5.67 mg/g FW. Single-factor tests and response surface methodology were used to optimize the extraction process, while macroporous resin adsorption and alkali dissolution, acid precipitation, and solvent recrystallization were used for purification. The highest purity of the final EA powder was 90%. The anticancer assessment results determined by MTT assay showed that EA inhibited HeLa cells with an IC50 of 35 μg/mL, and the apoptosis rate of the cells increased in a dose-dependent manner, with the highest rate of about 67%. We evaluated the changes in the mRNA levels of genes related to the EA-mediated inhibition of cancer cell growth and initially verified the PI3K/PTEN/AKT/mTOR pathway as the pathway by which EA inhibits HeLa cell growth. We hope to provide a theoretical basis for the deep exploration and utilization of this functional food. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring, analyzing, and managing public sentiment surrounding urban emergencies hold significant importance for city governments in executing effective response strategies and maintaining social stability. In this study, we present a study which was conducted regarding the self-built house collapse incident in Changsha, China, that occurred on 29 April 2022, with a focus on leveraging Sina Weibo (a Twitter-like microblogging system in China) comment data. By employing the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model, we identified key discussion themes within the comments and explored the emotional and spatio-temporal characteristics of the discourse. Furthermore, utilizing geographic detectors, we investigated the factors influencing the spatial variations in comment data. Our research findings indicate that the comments can be categorized into three main themes: "Rest in Peace for the Deceased", "Wishing for Safety", and "Thorough Investigation of Self-Built Houses". Regarding emotional features, the overall sentiment expressed in the public discourse displayed positivity, albeit with significant fluctuations during different stages of the incident, including the initial occurrence, rescue efforts, and the establishment of accountability and investigative committees. These fluctuations were closely associated with the emotional polarity of the specific topics. In terms of temporal distribution, the peak in the number of comments occurred approximately one hour after the topic was published. Concerning spatial distribution, a positive sentiment prevailed across various provinces. The comment distribution exhibited a stair-like pattern, which correlated with interregional population migration and per capita GDP. Our study provides valuable insights for city governments and relevant departments in conducting sentiment analysis and guiding public opinion trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blueberry is a nutrient-rich berry, and its taste and flavor directly determine the consumer preference. Until now, few studies have focused on the comparison of fresh food quality and the key metabolites in superior fresh-eating blueberry cultivars. Herein, fruit quality indicators of 10 highbush blueberry cultivars were evaluated using 'Bluerain' as the control. Appearance quality analysis of fruits showed that 'Brigitta' had a larger fruit size and 'Anna' was the smallest. 'Anna' fruits, followed by 'O′Neal', had the highest ratio of soluble solids to acidity because of their lowest titratable acidity content. Despite the high soluble sugar content, the antioxidants in 'Anna' fruits such as total flavonoids, anthocyanins and vitamin C were lowest among all cultivars, while 'Duke' seemed to have opposite patterns. Furthermore, a total of 553 and 557 metabolites were identified by non-targeted metabolomics liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) in positive and negative ion mode, respectively. Particularly, the numbers of differentially accumulated metabolites (DAMs) were the most between the 'O′Neal' vs. 'Bluerain' group. The DAMs involved in the metabolic pathways, sesquiterpenoid and triterpenoid biosynthesis, monoterpenoid biosynthesis, galactose metabolism, starch and sucrose metabolism, may be mainly related to the synthesis of flavor and carbohydrate substances. Moreover, the expression patterns of genes involved in sugar metabolism were verified by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis in different cultivars. Therefore, the systematical comparison of the quality characteristics, metabolites and expression profiles of related genes in highbush blueberries with good flavor could provide some basis for further research on fresh fruit breeding of blueberries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid progress of 6G mobile communication technologies has sparked a great deal research interests. The 6G core network architecture faces formidable challenges due to the escalating complexity of network service demands and diverse application scenarios. In response, our research endeavors to tackle these challenges by proposing a self-evolving architecture based on intelligent decision making. Inspired by the principles of biological morphological evolution, our architecture empowers the core network to dynamically adapt and reshape itself in order to effectively address the evolving communication environments. To facilitate this self-evolutionary process, we introduce a comprehensive framework encompassing mechanisms, architecture, agents, and algorithms that enable the network to autonomously generate and optimize its own structure, thereby ensuring adaptability to a wide range of application scenarios. By conducting concept proof simulation experiments, we have demonstrated the effectiveness of our self-evolution algorithm, which enables the 6G core network to make rational evolving decisions and exhibit remarkable adaptability to various application scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluated the electronic structure and optical properties of Fe-doped, Ni-doped, and (Fe,Ni)-co-doped Cu2ZnSnS4 through the first-principles pseudopotential plane-wave method based on density functional theory. The results indicated that Fe single-doping and Ni single-doping Cu2ZnSnS4 can reduce the charge transfer number of adjacent S atoms, enhancing covalent bonding in Fe–S and Ni–S bonds and reducing the bond length, lattice constants a and c, and unit cell volume v. The formation energies for Fe-doping, Ni-doping, and (Fe,Ni)-co-doping were 1.0 eV, 0.58 eV, and 0.78 eV, respectively. Both Fe and Ni-doping introduced 3d electrons near the Fermi level, resulting in new impurity levels and a gradual decrease in the band gap of Cu2ZnSnS4 from 0.16 eV. The conduction band density of Cu2ZnSnS4 was primarilycontributed by Sn 5s, Sn 5p, and a portion of S 3p orbital electrons, whereas the valence band density mainly stemmed from Cu 3d, Sn 5p, and S 3p orbital electrons. Fe and Ni-doping also partly contributed to the 3d layer electrons. In the case of (Fe,Ni)-co-doping, the maximum static dielectric constant was 100.49, and the dielectric peak shifted toward the low-energy direction in the presence of both Fe and Ni. Within the visible light range, Fe-doping, Ni-doping, and (Fe,Ni)-co-doping in Cu2ZnSnS4 exhibited absorption coefficients greater than 104 cm−1, with the maximum absorption coefficient being 1.6 × 105 cm−1 in the case of (Fe,Ni)-co-doping. In the energy range from 1.5 to 6.3 eV, the reflectivity of Cu2ZnSnS4 doped with Fe, Ni, or both was lower than 30%. Notably, a high conductivity peak at 1.9 eV indicated that Cu2ZnSnS4 possesses good photoconductivity in the visible range. Fe-doping and Ni-doping resulted in a slight shift of the conductance peak position towardthe low-energy direction, accompanied by an increase in the peak value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thornless blackberry cultivar 'Ningzhi 4' was developed by the Institute of Botany, Jiangsu Province and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Nanjing Botanical Garden Mem. Sun Yat-Sen). The new blackberry cultivar was selected from the 'Kiowa' (female parent) and 'Hull Thornless' (male parent) F1 hybrid. 'Ningzhi 4' had excellent plant characteristics, including thornlessness, semi-erect to erect canes, vigorous growth and good disease resistance. 'Ningzhi 4' had large fruit and high yield. In addition, the parents of the superior hybrid plant were further identified by SSR markers, which provided the basis for the fingerprint of the new blackberry cultivar 'Ningzhi 4'. This is a commercial cultivar to be grown for fruit production for either shipping or local sales. It also has value as a home-garden plant. This unique type of blackberry fruit was a traditional summer fruit. This new cultivar has thornless semi-erect to erect canes and produces high-quality berries with large size, good firmness, excellent flavor, and potential for shipping and postharvest storage. The new blackberry cultivar 'Ningzhi 4' is adapted to all areas of southern China and is expected to replace or complement 'Kiowa', 'Hull Thornless', 'Chester Thornless' and 'Triple Crown'. A local cultivar patent has been approved by the Jiangsu Variety Approval Committee as 'Rubus spp. Ningzhi 4′ in 2020 (S-SV-RS-014-2020). In the future, 'Ningzhi 4' could be promoted as an advantageous thornless blackberry cultivar in the main production regions of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language as an abstraction for hierarchical agents is promising to solve compositional long-time horizon decision-making tasks. The learning of the agent poses significant challenges, as it typically requires plenty of trajectories annotated with languages. This paper addresses the challenge of learning such an agent under the scarcity of language annotations. One approach for leveraging unannotated data is to generate pseudo-labels for unannotated trajectories using sparse seed annotations. However, as the scenes of the environment and tasks assigned to the agent are diverse, the inference of language instructions is sometimes incorrect, causing the policy to learn to ground incorrect instructions to actions. In this work, we propose a self-supervised language-conditioned hierarchical skill policy (SLHSP) which utilizes unannotated data to learn reusable and general task-related skills to facilitate learning from sparse annotations. We demonstrate that the SLHSP that learned with less than 10% of annotated trajectories has a comparable performance to one that learned with 100% of annotated data. Our approach to the challenging ALFRED benchmark leads to a notable improvement in the success rate over a strong baseline also optimized for sparsely annotated data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The excessive and unreasonable use of pesticides has adversely affected the environment and human health. The soil, one of the most critical natural resources supporting human survival and development, accumulates large amounts of pesticide residues. Compared to traditional spectrophotometry analytical methods, nanoparticle-based sensors stand out for their simplicity of operation as well as their high sensitivity and low detection limits. In this review, we focus primarily on the functions that various nanoparticles have and how they can be used to detect various pesticide residues in soil. A detailed discussion was conducted on the properties of nanoparticles, including their color changeability, Raman enhancement, fluorescence enhancement and quenching, and catalysis. We have also systematically reviewed the methodology for detecting insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides in soil by using nanoparticles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of ultrasound combined with sodium hypochlorite (US-NaClO) treatment on microorganisms and quality of fresh-cut cucumber during storage were investigated. Ultrasound (400 W, 40 kHz, US: 5, 10 and 15 min) and sodium hypochlorite (NaClO: 50, 75, 100 ppm) were used to treat fresh-cut cucumber in a single or combined treatment and stored at 4 °C for 8 days and analyzed for texture, color and flavor. The results showed that US-NaClO treatment had a synergistic effect on the inhibition of microorganisms during storage. It could significantly reduce (p < 0.05) the number of microorganisms by 1.73 to 2.17 log CFU/g. In addition, US-NaClO treatment reduced the accumulation of malondialdehyde (MDA) during storage (4.42 nmol/g) and water mobility, and maintained the integrity of the cell membrane, delayed the increase of weight loss (3.21%), reduced water loss, thus slowing down the decline of firmness (9.20%) of fresh-cut cucumber during storage. The degradation of chlorophyll (6.41%) was reduced to maintain the color of freshly cut cucumbers. At the same time, US-NaClO could maintain the content of aldehydes, the main aromatic substance of cucumber, and reduced the content of alcohols and ketones during storage. Combined with the electronic nose results, it could maintain the cucumber flavor at the end of the storage period and reduce the odor produced by microorganisms. Overall, US-NaClO was helpful to inhibit the growth of microorganisms during storage, improve the quality of fresh-cut cucumber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With improving living standards, traditional blueberry planting modes cannot meet commercial demands, and blueberry cultivation with soilless substrate has become a popular solution in the blueberry industry. In this study, different soilless substrate treatments were found to markedly influence fruit appearance and intrinsic quality. The fruit in the 50:50 peat/pine bark (v/v) (FPB) treatment group had the maximum single fruit weight, largest vertical diameter, and brightest color, as well as the highest 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) value, solid-acid ratio and anthocyanin content. The fruit in the 50:50 pine bark/rice husk (v/v) (FBR) treatment group had the highest total phenol and flavonoid levels, largest drip loss value, and lowest total pectin content and firmness value. Metabolomic analysis showed that flavonoid, carbohydrate, and carbohydrate conjugate, and amino acid, peptide, and analog levels were significantly different between groups. Fruit in the FPB group had the highest sucrose, D-fructose 1,6-bisphosphate, salidroside, tectorigenin, naringenin chalcone, trifolirhizin, and galangin contents. The increase in the relative expression of phenylalanine (Phe) promoted the synthesis of fruit polyphenols in the FBR group. Our results provide new insights into the effects of different substrates on the quality of blueberries and a reference for the soilless substrate cultivation of blueberries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gas-containing conditioning technology (GCT) employs mild sterilization methods to preserve the original qualities and nutrients of foods and is particularly suitable for processing various cooked foods or food ingredients. In this study, five kinds of dishes from daily life were processed with GCT. Thermal penetration detection technology was utilized to monitor the internal temperature of food and ambient temperature in real-time, and the optimal scheduled processes of each food were summarized. Additionally, foods were processed after GCT, and the total number of bacteria (<102 cfu/g) and coliform colonies (<50 MPN/100 g) were significantly reduced. Moreover, to detect the preservation effect of GCT, the processed foods were stored at 37 °C for 14 days, and the total number of colonies remained low (<10 cfu/g). These results revealed the multistage mild sterilization process, confirmed the excellent sterilization and preservation effects of GCT, and provided important experimental data for further applications of GCT in special environment foods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we used four drying methods (hot air, freezing, infrared, and radio frequency) to dry fresh jujube and its polysaccharide extracts by a two-step drying method, and the effects of the drying methods on the physical and chemical properties, structural properties, and antioxidant activity of jujube polysaccharides were studied. The results showed significant differences in the yield, drying time, monosaccharide content, molecular weight, apparent viscosity, thermal stability, and microstructure of the polysaccharides treated under the different drying methods. In contrast, no significant differences in the monosaccharide composition and functional groups of the polysaccharide samples obtained from the different drying methods were observed. Among all the tested methods, the freeze-drying extraction rate was the highest, reaching 4.52 ± 0.19%, while its drying time was the longest. Although the extraction rate of radio frequency drying was only 3.55 ± 0.21%, the drying time was the shortest, compared with hot air drying, the drying time was reduced by 76.67–83.29%, and the obtained polysaccharides exerted good antioxidant activity. Therefore, radio frequency drying is a potential polysaccharide extraction and drying technique, and this study can provide a theoretical basis for its industrial production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By using the pseudopotential plane-wave method of first principles based on density functional theory, the band structure, density of states and optical properties of Cu2ZnSnS4 under isotropic stress are calculated and analyzed. The results show that Cu2ZnSnS4 is a direct band gap semiconductor under isotropic stress, the lattice is tetragonal, and the band gap of Cu2ZnSnS4 is 0.16 eV at 0 GPa. Stretching the lattice causes the bottom of the conduction band of Cu2ZnSnS4 to move toward lower energies, while the top of the valence band remains unchanged and the band gap gradually narrows. Squeezing the lattice causes the bottom of the conduction band to move toward the high-energy direction, while the top of the valence band moves downward toward the low-energy direction, and the Cu2ZnSnS4 band gap becomes larger. The static permittivity, absorption coefficient, reflectivity, refractive index, electrical conductivity, and energy loss function all decrease when the lattice is stretched, and the above optical parameters increase when the lattice is compressed. When the lattice is stretched, the optical characteristic peaks such as the dielectric function shift to the lower-energy direction, while the optical characteristic peak position shifts to the higher-energy direction when the lattice is compressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An aggregation or assembly of Ag triangular nanoplates (Ag TNPs) can cause dramatic changes in their optical properties, which is widely used in applications in the field of sensing. The assembly forms of nanoparticles are crucial for obtaining sensitive sensing signals, but it is unknown what kind of assembly dominates the aggregated Ag TNPs in aqueous solutions. Herein, using thiram-induced Ag TNP aggregation as a model, six different assembly models were established, including three planar (side-by-side, side-to-tip, and tip-to-tip) assemblies and three tridimensional (plane-to-plane, plane-to-tip, and plane-to-side) assemblies. The corresponding optical properties were then investigated. Both theoretical and experimental findings indicate that three-dimensional assemblies, especially plane-to-plane assembly, dominate the Ag TNPs aggregation solution, causing a blue shift of the absorption spectrum. Analysis of charge distribution patterns in Ag TNPs indicates that such a blue shift is caused by the electrostatic repulsive force in plane-to-plane assembly. Thus, we propose a simple colorimetric method for thiram detection using Ag TNPs as an indicator. The method exhibits a selective and sensitive response to thiram with a limit of detection of 0.13 μM in the range of 0.2–0.5 μM, as well as excellent performance in real samples like wheat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design and control of baby chairs have attracted great interest due to children's increasing consumption market. As a human-robot interface, the features of baby chairs, such as their flexibility, comfortableness, safety, etc., are important factors that should be considered. Therefore, in this paper, to provide competent assistance to parents in taking care of their children, we propose a novel design and control scheme for improving children's living goods and easing parents' burden. Firstly, a novel modularization design method is introduced to redesign the shape and structure of the baby chair to cater to multifunctional demands. Flexible materials are chosen to adapt to different body shapes for the sake of safety and comfortableness. Moreover, a Cartesian impedance controller enhanced by a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) is proposed to achieve a safe, smooth and accurate control of the baby chair with children sitting on it in various uncertain situations using integrated actuators. Both target posture control and periodic control of the chair are implemented to meet different practical requirements. The feasibility of both the chair design and its control is verified in the MATLAB simulation environment through reference tracking tasks. The experimental results demonstrate that our controller can achieve satisfactory performance by controlling the position error in a reasonable range and keeping the manipulation stable and smooth. With the increasing demand for baby chairs in the global children's consumption market, we believe that the methodology proposed in this paper will attract more research and industry interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amino sugars are key microbial biomarkers for determining the contribution of microbial residues in soil organic matter (SOM). However, it remains largely unclear as to what extent inorganic nitrogen (N) fertilization can lead to the significant degradation of SOM in alkaline agricultural soils. A six-year field experiment was conducted from 2013 to 2018 to evaluate the effects of chronic N enrichment on microbial residues, amino sugars, and soil biochemical properties under four nitrogen (urea, 46% N) fertilization scenarios: 0 (no-N, control), 75 (low-N), 225 (medium-N), and 375 (high-N) kg N ha−1. The results showed that chronic N enrichment stimulated microbial residues and amino sugar accumulation over time. The medium-N treatment increased the concentration of muramic acid (15.77%), glucosamine (13.55%), galactosamine (18.84%), bacterial residues (16.88%), fungal residues (11.31%), and total microbial residues (12.57%) compared to the control in 2018; however, these concentrations were comparable to the high-N treatment concentrations. The ratio of glucosamine to galactosamine and of glucosamine to muramic acid decreased over time due to a larger increase in bacterial residues as compared to fungal residues. Microbial biomass, soil organic carbon, and aboveground plant biomass positively correlated with microbial residues and amino sugar components. Chronic N enrichment improved the soil biochemical properties and aboveground plant biomass, which stimulated microbial residues and amino sugar accumulation over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blueberry belongs to the genus Vaccinium L. in the Ericaceae and is an economically important shrub that produces small berries that are rich in nutrients. There were differences in the appearance of blueberry leaves under different shade treatments. To explore the differences in metabolites in blueberry leaves under different shading treatments, nontargeted liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) metabonomic analysis was performed. Different shade intensities resulted in significant differences in the contents of metabolites. A total of 6879 known metabolites were detected, including 750 significantly differentially expressed metabolites, including mainly lipids and lipid-like molecules and phenylpropanoid and polyketide superclass members. Based on a Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis, the flavone and flavonol biosynthesis pathways were the most significantly enriched. The results of this study provide a reference and scientific basis for the establishment of a high-quality and high-yield shaded blueberry cultivation system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the lack of effective and stable reference genes, studies on functional genes in Rubus, a genus of economically important small berry crops, have been greatly limited. To select the best internal reference genes of different types, we selected four representative cultivars of blackberry and raspberry (red raspberry, yellow raspberry, and black raspberry) as the research material and used RT-qPCR technology combined with three internal stability analysis software programs (geNorm, NormFinder, and BestKeeper) to analyze 12 candidate reference genes for the stability of their expression. The number of most suitable internal reference genes for different cultivars, tissues, and fruit developmental stages of Rubus was calculated by geNorm software to be two. Based on the results obtained with the three software programs, the most stable genes in the different cultivars were RuEEF1A and Ru18S. Finally, to validate the reliability of selected reference genes, the expression pattern of the RuCYP73A gene was analyzed, and the results highlighted the importance of appropriate reference gene selection. RuEEF1A and Ru18S were screened as reference genes for their relatively stable expression, providing a reference for the further study of key functional genes in blackberry and raspberry and an effective tool for the analysis of differential gene expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With increasing environmental pollution, China has instituted corresponding environmental regulations to address environmental challenges. Estimating the costs of such environmental regulations can help governments to formulate rational environmental policies. This review estimates the costs of environmental regulations based on a novel perspective of energy consumption. Using panel data for Chinese provincial regions in 2006–2015, we developed a non-parametric directional distance function and estimated different optimal energy inputs based on data envelopment analysis under two scenarios, namely, those with and without emission reduction constraints. The gap between the two groups of optimal energy inputs facilitated the estimation of the energy costs associated with reducing SO2 (sulfur dioxide) emissions in China's industrial sectors. The results suggest that approximately 13.40 tons of standard coal were required to reduce SO2 emissions by 1 ton, highlighting the discrepancy between energy savings and emission reduction. The energy costs of SO2 emission reduction were the highest in West China (18.63), followed by those in Central and Northeast China; meanwhile, those in East China were the lowest (9.91). The large differences between the energy costs of emission reduction in different regions indicated that economically underdeveloped areas have scope for improvement with respect to energy structures and innovation in the green technology field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The average yield of fresh potato tubers per hectare is relatively low in China, partly due to poor nutrient management. Chronic inorganic N enrichment leads to soil acidification, which deteriorates soil fertility. Straw residues are removed from the field or burnt during land preparation, resulting in nutrient depletion and air pollution. However, these residues can be returned to the soil to improve its fertility. Therefore, a two–year experiment was conducted in an existing field with five years of different inorganic nitrogen (N) rate to determine the effects of straw return and N rate on potato growth, tuber yield, and quality, profit margin, and soil physicochemical properties. The experiment consisted of four N rates: 0 (control, CK), 75 (low N rate, LN), 150 (medium N rate, MN), and 300 (high N rate, HN) kg N ha−1 with and without straw (9 t ha−1) return. The results showed that straw with N enrichment improved soil fertility, which increased tuber yield and quality. Compared to the control, MN + straw treatment stimulated economic tuber yield (34.73% and 38.34%), profit margin (55.51% and 63.03%), and protein content (20.04% and 25.46%) in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Nitrogen enrichment after straw return is a sustainable practice for stimulating potato tuber yield, profit margin, and improving soil fertility to promote sustainable agriculture development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alkaloids are nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compounds typically isolated from plants. They represent one of the most important types of natural products because of their large number and structural diversity and complexity. Based on their chemical core structures, alkaloids are classified as isoquinolines, quinolines, indoles, piperidine alkaloids, etc. In-depth analyses of alkaloids have revealed their antibacterial activities. To date, due to the widespread use of antibiotics, the problem of drug-resistant bacterial infections has been gradually increasing, which severely affects the clinical efficacy of antibacterial therapies and patient safety. Therefore, significant research efforts are focused on alkaloids because they represent a potentially new type of natural antibiotic with a wide antibacterial spectrum, rare adverse reactions, and a low tendency to produce drug resistance. Their main antibacterial mechanisms include inhibition of bacterial cell wall synthesis, change in cell membrane permeability, inhibition of bacterial metabolism, and inhibition of nucleic acid and protein synthesis. This article reviews recent reports about the chemical structures and the antibacterial activities and mechanisms of alkaloids. The purpose is to solve the problem of bacterial resistance and to provide a certain theoretical basis and research ideas for the development of new antibacterial drugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iridoids are a class of active compounds that widely exist in the plant kingdom. In recent years, with advances in phytochemical research, many compounds with novel structure and outstanding activity have been identified. Iridoid compounds have been confirmed to mainly exist as the prototype and aglycone and Ι and II metabolites, by biological transformation. These metabolites have been shown to have neuroprotective, hepatoprotective, anti-inflammatory, antitumor, hypoglycemic, and hypolipidemic activities. This review summarizes the new structures and activities of iridoids identified locally and globally, and explains their pharmacokinetics from the aspects of absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion according to the differences in their structures, thus providing a theoretical basis for further rational development and utilization of iridoids and their metabolites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Salvia species find widespread application in food and pharmaceutical products owing to their large polyphenol content. The main polyphenols in Chinese Salvia species are phenolic acids and flavonoids, which exhibit anti-oxygenation, anti-ischemia-reperfusion injury, anti-thrombosis, anti-tumour, and other therapeutic effects. However, there are few peer-reviewed studies on polyphenols in Chinese Salvia species, especially flavonoids. This review is a systematic, comprehensive collation of available information on the biosynthesis, chemistry, and pharmacology of Chinese Salvia species. We believe that our study makes a significant contribution to the literature because this review provides a detailed literary resource on the currently available information on various polyphenolic components of Chinese Salvia species, including their bioactivities and structures. In addition, the study provides information that would encourage further investigation of this plant material as a natural resource with potential for a broad range of applications in various industries, such as the food and pharmaceutical industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate electrical load forecasting is of great significance to help power companies in better scheduling and efficient management. Since high levels of uncertainties exist in the load time series, it is a challenging task to make accurate short-term load forecast (STLF). In recent years, deep learning approaches provide better performance to predict electrical load in real world cases. The convolutional neural network (CNN) can extract the local trend and capture the same pattern, and the long short-term memory (LSTM) is proposed to learn the relationship in time steps. In this paper, a new deep neural network framework that integrates the hidden feature of the CNN model and the LSTM model is proposed to improve the forecasting accuracy. The proposed model was tested in a real-world case, and detailed experiments were conducted to validate its practicality and stability. The forecasting performance of the proposed model was compared with the LSTM model and the CNN model. The Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) were used as the evaluation indexes. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model can achieve better and stable performance in STLF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blueberry is a high-quality fruit tree with significant nutritional and economic value, but the intricate mechanism of sugar accumulation in its fruit remains unclear. In this study, the ripe fruits of blueberry cultivars 'Anna' and 'Misty' were utilized as experimental materials, and physiological and multi-omics methodologies were applied to analyze the regulatory mechanisms of the difference in sugar content between them. The results demonstrated that the 'Anna' fruit was smaller and had less hardness than the 'Misty' fruit, as well as higher sugar content, antioxidant capability, and lower active substance content. A total of 7067 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) (3674 up-regulated and 3393 down-regulated) and 140 differentially abundant metabolites (DAMs) (82 up-regulated and 58 down-regulated) were identified between the fruits of the two cultivars. According to KEGG analysis, DEGs were primarily abundant in phenylpropanoid synthesis and hormone signal transduction pathways, whereas DAMs were primarily enriched in ascorbate and aldarate metabolism, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, and the pentose phosphate pathway. A combined multi-omics study showed that 116 DEGs and 3 DAMs in starch and sucrose metabolism (48 DEGs and 1 DAM), glycolysis and gluconeogenesis (54 DEGs and 1 DAM), and the pentose phosphate pathway (14 DEGs and 1 DAM) were significantly enriched. These findings suggest that blueberries predominantly increase sugar accumulation by activating carbon metabolism network pathways. Moreover, we identified critical transcription factors linked to the sugar response. This study presents new understandings regarding the molecular mechanisms underlying blueberry sugar accumulation and will be helpful in improving blueberry fruit quality through breeding.

Resveratrol oligomers (REVs), a major class of stilbenoids, are biosynthesized by regioselective oxidative coupling of two to eight units of resveratrol monomer. Due to their unique structures and pleiotropic biological activities, natural product chemists are increasingly focusing on REVs in the last few decades. This study presents a detailed and thorough examination of REVs, including chemical structures, natural resources, and biological activities, during the period of 2010-2017. Ninety-two new REVs compounds, including 39 dimers, 23 trimers, 13 tetramers, six resveratrol monomers, six hexamers, four pentamers, and one octamer, have been reported from the families of Dipterocarpaceae, Paeoniaceae, Vitaceae, Leguminosae, Gnetaceae, Cyperaceae, Polygonaceae Gramineae, and Poaceae. Amongst these families, Dipterocarpaceae, with 50 REVs, accounts for the majority, and seven genera of Dipterocarpaceae are involved, including Vatica , Vateria , Shorea , Hopea , Neobalanocarpus , Dipterocarpus , and Dryobalanops . These REVs have shown a wide range of bioactivities. Pharmacological studies have mainly focused on potential efficacy on tumors, bacteria, Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular diseases, and others. The information updated in this review might assist further research and development of novel REVs as potential therapeutic agents., Competing Interests: No conflict of interest exists in the submission of this manuscript, and the manuscript is performed by all authors for publication and has not been published previously, or not under consideration for publication elsewhere, in whole or in part.

Web of Things (WoT) facilitates the discovery and interoperability of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in a cyber-physical system (CPS). Moreover, a uniform knowledge representation of physical resources is quite necessary for further composition, collaboration, and decision-making process in CPS. Though several efforts have integrated semantics with WoT, such as knowledge engineering methods based on semantic sensor networks (SSN), it still could not represent the complex relationships between devices when dynamic composition and collaboration occur, and it totally depends on manual construction of a knowledge base with low scalability. In this paper, to addresses these limitations, we propose the semantic Web of Things (SWoT) framework for CPS (SWoT4CPS). SWoT4CPS provides a hybrid solution with both ontological engineering methods by extending SSN and machine learning methods based on an entity linking (EL) model. To testify to the feasibility and performance, we demonstrate the framework by implementing a temperature anomaly diagnosis and automatic control use case in a building automation system. Evaluation results on the EL method show that linking domain knowledge to DBpedia has a relative high accuracy and the time complexity is at a tolerant level. Advantages and disadvantages of SWoT4CPS with future work are also discussed.

A phenylacetylene containing the l-valine ethyl ester pendant (PAA-Val) was synthesized and polymerized by an organorhodium catalyst (Rh(nbd)BPh₄) to produce the corresponding one-handed helical cis -poly(phenylacetylene) (PPAA-Val). PPAA-Val showed a unique temperature-triggered switchable helix-sense in chloroform, while it was not observed in highly polar solvents, such as N , N '-dimethylformamide (DMF). By heating the solution of PPAA-Val in chloroform, the sign of the CD absorption became reversed, but recovered after cooling the solution to room temperature. Even after six cycles of the heating-cooling treatment, the helix sense of the PPAA-Val's backbone was still switchable without loss of the CD intensity. The PPAA-Val was then coated on silica gel particles to produce novel chiral stationary phases (CSPs) for high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). These novel PPAA-Val based CSPs showed a high chiral recognition ability for racemic mandelonitrile ( α = 2.18) and racemic trans - N , N '-diphenylcyclohexane-1,2-dicarboxamide ( α = 2.60). Additionally, the one-handed helical cis -polyene backbone of PPAA-Val was irreversibly destroyed to afford PPAA-Val-H by heating in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) accompanied by the complete disappearance of the Cotton effect. Although PPAA-Val-H had the same l-valine ethyl ester pendants as its cis -isomer PPAA-Val, it showed no chiral recognition. It was concluded that the one-handed helical cis -polyene backbone of PPAA-Val plays an important role in the chiral recognition ability.