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Wheat dwarf virus (WDV, genus Mastrevirus, family Geminiviridae) is one of the causal agents of wheat viral disease, which severely impacts wheat production in most wheat-growing regions in the world. Currently, there is little information about natural resistance against WDV in common wheat germplasms. CRISPR/Cas9 technology is being utilized to manufacture transgenic plants resistant to different diseases. In the present study, we used the CRISPR/Cas9 system targeting overlapping regions of coat protein (CP) and movement protein (MP) (referred to as CP/MP) or large intergenic region (LIR) in the wheat variety ‘Fielder’ to develop resistance against WDV. WDV-inoculated T1 progenies expressing Cas9 and sgRNA for CP/MP and LIR showed complete resistance against WDV and no accumulation of viral DNA compared with control plants. Mutation analysis revealed that the CP/MP and LIR targeting sites have small indels in the corresponding Cas9-positive plants. Additionally, virus inhibition and indel mutations occurred in T2 homozygous lines. Together, our work gives efficient results of the engineering of CRISPR/Cas9-mediated WDV resistance in common wheat plants, and the specific sgRNAs identified in this study can be extended to utilize the CRISPR/Cas9 system to confer resistance to WDV in other cereal crops such as barley, oats, and rye.

Chronic stress has become a major problem that endangers people’s physical and mental health. Studies have shown that chronic stress impairs female reproduction. However, the related mechanism is not fully understood. P2X7 receptor (P2X7R) is involved in a variety of pathological changes induced by chronic stress. Whether P2X7R is involved in the effect of chronic stress on female reproduction has not been studied. In this study, we established a chronic restraint stress mouse model and chronic cold stress mouse model. We found that the number of corpora lutea was significantly reduced in the two chronic stress models. The number of corpora lutea indirectly reflects the ovulation, suggesting that chronic stress influences ovulation. P2X7R expression was significantly increased in ovaries of the two chronic stress models. A superovulation experiment showed that P2X7R inhibitor A-438079 HCL partially rescued the ovulation rate of the two chronic stress models. Further studies showed that activation of P2X7R signaling inhibited the cumulus expansion and promoted the expression of NPPC in granulosa cells, one key negative factor of cumulus expansion. Moreover, sirius red staining showed that the ovarian fibrosis was increased in the two chronic stress models. For the fibrosis-related factors, TGF-β1 was increased and MMP2 was decreased. In vitro studies also showed that activation of P2X7R signaling upregulated the expression of TGF-β1 and downregulated the expression of MMP2 in granulosa cells. In conclusion, P2X7R expression was increased in the ovaries of the chronic restraint-stress and chronic cold-stress mouse models. Activation of P2X7R signaling promoted NPPC expression and cumulus expansion disorder, which contributed to the abnormal ovulation of the chronic stress model. Activation of P2X7R signaling is also associated with the ovarian fibrosis changes in the chronic stress model.

Vacuolar (H+)-ATPases (V-ATPases) are ATP-driven proton pumps that play multifaceted roles across various organisms. Despite their widespread significance, the functional implications of V-ATPase genes in Hyphantria cunea, an invasive forest pest with a global presence, have yet to be elucidated. In this study, two specific V-ATPase genes from H. cunea were identified and analyzed, namely HcV-ATPase A (accession number: OR217451) and HcV-ATPase C (accession number: OR217452). Phylogenetic analysis and multiple sequence alignment reveal that HcV-ATPase A shares the highest amino acid sequence similarity with SfV-ATPase A, while HcV-ATPase C is most similar to HaV-ATPase C. Spatiotemporal expression profiles, determined via RT-qPCR, demonstrate that both HcV-ATPase A and HcV-ATPase C are expressed throughout all larval developmental stages, with HcV-ATPase A predominantly expressed in the midgut and HcV-ATPase C showing high expression in the epidermis. RNA interference (RNAi) targeting of these genes significantly suppressed their expression by 62.7% and 71.0% 120 h post-injection, leading to halted larval growth and increased mortality rates of 61.7% and 46.7%, respectively. Further investigations using immunohistochemistry, hematoxylin and eosin (HE) staining, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) revealed that gene silencing induced vesiculation and subsequent losses or sloughing of intestinal parietal cells, alongside an increase in the number of autophagic cells. Additionally, the silencing of HcV-ATPase A and C genes resulted in a reduced gut epidermal cell layer thickness and further increases in goblet cell numbers. Importantly, RNAi of HcV-ATPase A and C did not affect the expression levels of one another, suggesting independent functional pathways. This study provides foundational insights into the role of V-ATPase in H. cunea and identifies potential targets for the biocontrol of its larvae, contributing to the understanding of V-ATPase mechanisms and their application in pest management strategies.

Task-oriented dialogue systems (TODs) enable users to complete specific goals and are widely used in practice. Although existing models have achieved delightful performance for single-domain dialogues, scalability to new domains is far from well explored. Traditional dialogue systems rely on domain-specific information like dialogue state and database (DB), which limits the scalability of such systems. In this paper, we propose a Scalable Task-Oriented Dialogue modeling framework (STOD). Instead of labeling multiple dialogue components, which have been adopted by previous work, we only predict structured API queries to interact with DB and generate responses based on the complete DB results. Further, we construct a new API-schema-based TOD dataset MultiWOZ-API with API query and DB result annotation based on MultiWOZ 2.1. We then propose MSTOD and CSTOD for multi-domain and cross-domain TOD systems, respectively. We perform extensive qualitative experiments to verify the effectiveness of our proposed framework. We find the following. (1) Scalability across multiple domains: MSTOD achieves 2% improvements than the previous state-of-the-art in the multi-domain TOD. (2) Scalability to new domains: our framework enables satisfying generalization capability to new domains, a significant margin of 10% to existing baselines.

Context modeling has always been the groundwork for the dialogue response generation task, yet it presents challenges due to the loose context relations among open-domain dialogue sentences. Introducing simulated dialogue futures has been proposed as a solution to mitigate the problem of low history–response relevance. However, these approaches simply assume that the history and future of a dialogue have the same effect on response generation. In reality, the coherence between dialogue sentences varies, and thus, history and the future are not uniformly helpful in response prediction. Consequently, determining and leveraging the relevance between history–response and response–future to aid in response prediction emerges as a pivotal concern. This paper addresses this concern by initially establishing three context relations of response and its context (history and future), reflecting the relevance between the response and preceding and following sentences. Subsequently, we annotate response contextual relation labels on a large-scale dataset, DailyDialog (DD). Leveraging these relation labels, we propose a response generation model that adaptively integrates contributions from preceding and succeeding sentences guided by explicit relation labels. This approach mitigates the impact in cases of lower relevance and amplifies contributions in cases of higher relevance, thus improving the capability of context modeling. Experimental results on public dataset DD demonstrate that our response generation model significantly enhances coherence by 3.02% in long sequences (4-gram) and augments bi-gram diversity by 17.67%, surpassing the performance of previous models.

The input of fresh organic carbon into soils can stimulate organic carbon mineralization via priming effects (PEs). However, little is known about the characterization of PEs in coastal wetlands. We investigated the PEs of two salt marshes (Suaeda salsa and Phragmites australis) in the Yellow River Delta by adding 13C-labeled glucose to soils collected from the 0–10 cm and 20–30 cm layers of both salt marshes. The addition of glucose produced a significant positive PE in both soil layers for both vegetation types. There were no differences in the PE of the topsoil layer between the two vegetation types (p > 0.05), whereas the PE of S. salsa was 19.5% higher than that of P. australis in the subsoil layer (p < 0.05). In addition, the topsoil layer showed a higher average PE of 29.1% compared to that of the subsoil layer for both vegetation types (p < 0.05). The differences in the PEs between the two vegetation types and the two layers could be associated with a differential soil salinity, substrate availability, and microbial community structure. Our findings highlight the important role of PEs in regulating the soil carbon storage of coastal salt marshes, which should be considered when assessing and modeling the soil carbon cycling of coastal wetlands.

In order to improve the performance of white rot fungi, especially the model species Phanerochaete chrysosporium in tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA) degradation, the strategy of synergizing Phanerochaete chrysosporium with nano iron oxides was considered; however, the effects of different nano iron oxides on Phanerochaete chrysosporium are still unknown. In this study, 20 nm γ-Fe2O3, 30 nm α-Fe2O3, 20 nm Fe3O4, and 200 nm Fe3O4 were used, and the fungal growth, oxidative stress, and ability to degrade TBBPA were monitored. The results showed that the addition of four nano iron oxides did not inhibit the growth of Phanerochaete chrysosporium. The effective antioxidant defense system of Phanerochaete chrysosporium could cope with almost all oxidative pressure induced by 200 nm Fe3O4. But when the size of nano iron oxide became significantly smaller or when the type of iron oxide changed from Fe3O4 to Fe2O3, a higher intracellular hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) content, lower intracellular superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) activities and higher extracellular lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity were induced. When nano iron oxides synergized with Phanerochaete chrysosporium, the removal of TBBPA in all groups was slightly improved and mostly due to the degradation of TBBPA, with smaller iron oxides showing more enhancement for the degradation of TBBPA, while 200 nm Fe3O4 only enhanced the adsorption of TBBPA. The enhanced degradation of TBBPA showed no significant correlation with lignin-degrading enzyme activities but was closely correlated with the intracellular H2O2 concentration.

Mechanical ball milling is a prevalent technology for material preparation and also serves as a post-treatment method to modify electrode materials, thus enhancing electrochemical performances. This study explores the microstructure modification of commercial activated carbon through mechanical ball milling, proving its efficacy in increasing sodium-ion energy storage. The evolution of activated carbon’s physical and chemical properties during ball milling was systematically examined. It was observed that the quantity of closed pores and the graphitization degree in activated carbon increased with extended ball milling duration. The sodium storage mechanism in activated carbon transitions to an insertion-pore filling process, significantly elevating platform capacity. Additionally, ball-milled activated carbon demonstrates remarkable long-term cycling stability (92% capacity retention over 200 cycles at 200 mA g−1) and rate performance. This research offers a novel approach to developing advanced anode materials for sodium-ion batteries.

Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici is an obligate biotrophic fungus that causes destructive stripe rust disease in wheat. During infection, Pst secretes virulence effectors via a specific infection structure—the haustorium—inside host cells to disturb host immunity and promote fungal colonization and expansion. Hence, the identification and functional analyses of Pst effectors are of great significance in deciphering the Pst pathogenicity mechanism. Here, we identified one candidate Pst effector Pst_9302 that could suppress Bax-triggered cell death in Nicotiana benthamiana. qRT-PCR analyses showed that the transcript levels of Pst_9302 were highly increased during the early infection stages of Pst. The transient expression of Pst_9302 in wheat via the type-three secretion system (T3SS) significantly inhibited the callose deposition induced by Pseudomonas syringae EtHAn. During wheat–Pst interaction, Pst_9302 overexpression suppressed reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation and cell death caused by the avirulent Pst race CYR23. The host-induced gene silencing (HIGS) of Pst_9302 resulted in decreased Pst pathogenicity with reduced infection area. The results suggest that Pst_9302 plays a virulence role in suppressing plant immunity and promoting Pst pathogenicity. Moreover, wheat voltage-dependent anion channel 1 protein (TaVDAC1) was identified as candidate Pst_9302-interacting proteins by yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) screening. Pull-down assays using the His-Pst_9302 and GST-TaVDAC1 protein verified their interactions. These results suggest that Pst_9302 may modulate wheat TaVDAC1 to regulate plant immunity.

Limited evidence is available regarding the association between acute exposure to ambient air pollutants and the risk of urticaria, even though the skin is an organ with direct contact with the external environment. This study utilized generalized additive models to investigate the association between particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter smaller than 10 μm (PM10) and 2.5 μm (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and sulfur dioxide (SO2), and daily outpatient visits for urticaria in Guangzhou, China from 2013 to 2017. We also estimated the attributable fraction of urticaria outpatient visits due to air pollution. A total of 216,648 outpatient visits due to urticaria occurred during the study period. All air pollutants were significantly associated with an increased excess risk of urticaria. Each 10 μg/m3 increase in PM2.5, PM10, NO2, and SO2 was associated with an increase of 1.23% (95% CI: 0.42%, 2.06%), 0.88% (95% CI: 0.28%, 1.49%), 3.09% (95% CI: 2.16%, 4.03%), and 2.82% (95% CI: 0.93%, 4.74%) in hospital visits for urticaria at lag05, respectively. It was estimated that 3.77% (95% CI: 1.26%, 6.38%), 1.91% (95% CI: 0.60%, 3.26%), 6.36% (95% CI: 4.38%, 8.41%), and 0.08% (95% CI: 0.03%, 0.14%) of urticaria outpatient visits were attributable to PM2.5, PM10, NO2, and SO2 using the World Health Organization’s air quality guideline as the reference. Relatively stronger associations were observed during the cold season. This study indicates that short-term air pollution may play a significant role in outpatient visits for urticaria, and that such relationships could be modified by season.

Background: To date, there is no licensed vaccine for preventing herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2). The current treatment to address the infection and prevent its transmission is not always satisfactory. Methods: We constructed two recombinant vectors, one encoding HSV-2 glycoprotein D (gD, SeV-dF/HSV-2-gD) and one encoding HSV-2-infected cell protein 27 (ICP27, SeV-dF/HSV-2-ICP27), based on a replication-defective Sendai virus through reverse genetics, collectively comprising a combinatorial HSV-2 therapeutic vaccine candidate. The immunogenicity and proper immunization procedure for this vaccine were explored in a murine model. The therapeutic effect that helps prevent recurrent HSV-2 disease was evaluated in HSV-2-infected guinea pigs. Results: Both a robust humoral immune response and a cellular immune response, characterized by the neutralizing antibody titer and the IFN-γ level, respectively, were elicited in BALB/c mice. A further study of cellular immunogenicity in mice revealed that T lymphocytes were successfully enhanced with the desirable secretion of several cytokines. In HSV-2-seropositive guinea pigs, vaccination could reduce the severity of HSV-2 in terms of recurrent lesions, duration of recurrent outbreak, and frequency of recurrence by 58.66%, 45.34%, and 45.09%, respectively, while viral shedding was also significantly inhibited in the vaccine-treated group compared to the group treated with phosphate-buffered saline. Conclusions: The replication-defective recombinant Sendai viruses conveying HSV-2-gD and ICP27 proteins showed great immunogenicity and potential for preventing recurrent HSV-2 disease.

An air-coupled transducer was developed in this study, utilizing hollow glass microsphere-organosilicon composites as an acoustically matching layer, which demonstrated outstanding acoustic performance. Firstly, a comparison and analysis of the properties and advantages of different substrates was carried out to determine the potential application value of organosilicon substrates. Immediately after, the effect of hollow glass microspheres with different particle sizes and mass fractions on the acoustic properties of the matching layer was analyzed. It also evaluated the mechanical properties of the matching layer before and after optimization. The findings indicate that the optimized composite material attained a characteristic acoustic impedance of 1.04 MRayl and an acoustic attenuation of 0.43 dB/mm, displaying exceptional acoustic performance. After encapsulating the ultrasonic transducer using a 3D-printed shell, we analyzed and compared its emission and reception characteristics to the commercial transducer and found that its emission acoustic pressure amplitude and reception voltage amplitude were 34% and 26% higher, respectively. Finally, the transducer was installed onto a homemade ultrasonic flow meter for practical application verification, resulting in an accuracy rate of 97.4%.

Soft robotic gloves have attracted significant interest in hand rehabilitation in the past decade. However, current solutions are still heavy and lack finger-state monitoring and versatile treatment options. To address this, we present a lightweight soft robotic glove actuated by twisted string actuators (TSA) that provides whole-hand finger motion tracking. We have developed a virtual reality environment for hand rehabilitation training, allowing users to interact with various virtual objects. Fifteen small inertial measurement units are placed on the glove to predict finger joint angles and track whole-hand finger motion. We performed TSA experiments to identify design and control rules, by understanding how their response varies with input load and voltages. Grasping experiments were conducted to determine the grasping force and range of motion. Finally, we showcase an application of the rehabilitation glove in a Unity-based VR interface, which can actuate the operator’s fingers to grasp different virtual objects.

Heavy metal pollution in agricultural fields is a serious health concern because of the high bioavailability and persistent toxicity of heavy metals. Much progress has recently been made with respect to elucidating the impacts of climate change (e.g., elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations) on the environmental behavior of heavy metal pollutants and the associated ecological and health risks. The microbiological responses to elevated CO2 levels are primarily mediated by the C balance in agricultural activities; however, the underlying mechanisms involved in plant–soil–microbe interactions under heavy metal stress are still unclear. Thus, in this study, the challenges and perspectives with regard to controlling heavy metal pollution and optimizing crop yields while reducing greenhouse emissions in agricultural ecosystems responsive to elevated CO2 levels are discussed. Considering the integrated benefits of intensive agriculture and food security under a future changing climate, the summarized findings provided in this study may help to develop applicable remediation approaches for sustainably managing heavy metal polluted soils.

Applying the Skip-gram to graph representation learning has become a widely researched topic in recent years. Prior works usually focus on the migration application of the Skip-gram model, while Skip-gram in graph representation learning, initially applied to word embedding, is left insufficiently explored. To compensate for the shortcoming, we analyze the difference between word embedding and graph embedding and reveal the principle of graph representation learning through a case study to explain the essential idea of graph embedding intuitively. Through the case study and in-depth understanding of graph embeddings, we propose Graph Skip-gram, an extension of the Skip-gram model using graph structure information. Graph Skip-gram can be combined with a variety of algorithms for excellent adaptability. Inspired by word embeddings in natural language processing, we design a novel feature fusion algorithm to fuse node vectors based on node vector similarity. We fully articulate the ideas of our approach on a small network and provide extensive experimental comparisons, including multiple classification tasks and link prediction tasks, demonstrating that our proposed approach is more applicable to graph representation learning.

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is an endocrine disorder and metabolic syndrome. Ovarian fibrosis pathological change in PCOS has gradually attracted people’s attention. In this study, we constructed a PCOS mouse model through the use of dehydroepiandrosterone. Sirius red staining showed that the ovarian tissues in PCOS mice had obvious fibrosis. Prolyl oligopeptidase (POP) is a serine protease and N-acetyl-seryl-aspartyl-lysyl-proline (Ac-SDKP) is its catalytic product. Studies show that abnormal expression and activity of POP and Ac-SDKP are closely related to tissue fibrosis. It was found that the expression of POP and Ac-SDKP was decreased in the ovaries of PCOS mice. Further studies showed that POP and Ac-SDKP promoted the expression of matrix metalloproteinases 2 (MMP-2) expression and decreased the expression of transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGF-β1) in granulosa cells. Hyperandrogenemia is a typical symptom of PCOS. We found that testosterone induced the low expression of POP and MMP2 and high expression of TGF-β1 in granulosa cells. POP overexpression and Ac-SDKP treatment inhibited the effect of testosterone on TGF-β1 and MMP2 in vitro and inhibited ovarian fibrosis in the PCOS mouse model. In conclusion, PCOS ovarian tissue showed obvious fibrosis. Low expression of POP and Ac-SDKP and changes in fibrotic factors contribute to the ovarian pathological fibrosis induced by androgen.

Aiming to solve the partial discharge problem caused by defects in composite insulators, most existing live detection methods are limited by the subjectivity of human judgment, the difficulty of effective quantification, and the use of a single detection method. Therefore, a composite insulator defect diagnosis model based on acoustic–electric feature fusion and a multi-scale perception multi-input of stacked auto-encoder (MMSAE) network is proposed in this paper. Initially, during the withstanding voltage experiment, the electromagnetic wave spectrometer and ultrasonic detector were used to collect and process the data of six types of composite insulator samples with artificial defects. The electromagnetic wave spectrum, ultrasonic power spectral density, and n-S map were then obtained. Then, the network architecture of MMSAE was built by integrating a stacked auto-encoder and multi-scale perception module; the feature extraction and fusion methods of the electromagnetic wave spectrum and ultrasonic signal were investigated. The proposed method was used to diagnose test samples, and the diagnostic results were compared to those obtained using a single input source and the artificial neural network (ANN) method. The results demonstrate that the detection accuracy of acoustic–electric feature fusion is greater than that of a single feature; the accuracy of the proposed method is 99.17%, which is significantly higher than the accuracy of the conventional ANN method. Finally, composite insulator defect diagnosis software based on PYQT5 and Keras was developed. Ten 500 kV aging composite insulators were used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method and design software.

Salidroside has been widely used in anti-tumor, cardiovascular, and cerebrovascular protection. However, there are few reports of its use for wound repair. Herein, salidroside inflammation-targeted emulsion gel and non-targeted emulsion gel were developed for wound repair. The inflammation-targeted emulsion gels showed an overall trend of better transdermal penetration and lower potential than non-targeted emulsion gels (−58.7 mV and −1.6 mV, respectively). The apparent improvement of the trauma surface was significant in each administration group. There was a significant difference in the rate of wound healing of the rats between each administration group and the model group at days 7 and 14. Pathological tissue sections showed that inflammatory cells in the epidermis, dermis, and basal layer were significantly reduced, and the granulation tissue was proliferated in the inflammation-targeted emulsion gel group and the non-targeted emulsion gel group. Regarding the expressions of EGF and bFGF, the expressions of bFGF and EGF in the tissues of the inflammation-targeted group at days 7, 14, or 21 were significantly higher than that of the non-targeted emulsion gel group and the model group, both of which were statistically significant compared with the model group (p < 0.05). These results demonstrated that salidroside has the potential as an alternative drug for wound repair.

Endophytic fungi are a remarkably diverse group of microorganisms that have imperceptible associations with their hosts for at least a part of their life cycle. The enormous biological diversity and the capability of producing bioactive secondary metabolites such as alkaloids, terpenoids, and polyketides have attracted the attention of different scientific communities, resulting in numerous investigations on these fungal endophytes. During our surveys of plant-root-based fungi in the mountain areas of Qingzhen, Guizhou Province, several isolates of endophytic fungi were identified. In this study, a novel endophytic fungus was discovered in the roots of a medicinal plant (Orixa japonica) in Southern China and introduced as a new species (Amphisphaeria orixae) based on morphological evidence and molecular phylogenetic analysis (combined ITS and LSU sequence data). To the best of our knowledge, A. orixae is the first reported endophyte as well as the first hyphomycetous asexual morph in Amphisphaeria. A new isocoumarin, (R)-4,6,8-trihydroxy-5-methylisochroman-1-one (1), and 12 known compounds (2–13) were isolated from the rice fermentation products of this fungus. Using 1D- and 2D-NMR, mass spectrometry, and ECD studies, their structures were identified. The antitumor activity of these compounds was tested. Unfortunately, none of the compounds tested showed significant antitumor activity.

A higher dietary diversity score (DDS) and a lower energy-adjusted dietary inflammatory index (E-DII) may be associated with lower risks of type 2 diabetes (T2D) and mortality. This cohort study aimed to investigate the associations of DDS and E-DII with all-cause mortality, incidence of T2D, and mortality of T2D, as well as the joint effects of these two dietary factors. A total of 181,360 participants without all types of diabetes at baseline from the UK Biobank and 42,139 participants from the US NHANES were included. Cox proportional hazards models were used to assess the associations of DDS and E-DII with outcomes. In the UK Biobank data, 8338 deaths, 3416 incident T2D cases, and 353 T2D deaths occurred during a median follow-up of 12.5 years. In the US NHANES data, 6803 all-cause deaths and 248 T2D-specific deaths were recorded during a median follow-up of 9.6 years. We observed that higher DDS and lower E-DII were significantly associated with lower risks of total mortality and incident T2D. Compared with low DDS, the hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of high DDS were 0.69 (0.64, 0.74) for all-cause mortality, 0.79 (0.70, 0.88) for incident T2D in the UK Biobank, and 0.69 (0.61, 0.78) for all-cause mortality in the US NHANES. Compared with participants in tertile 3 of E-DII, those in tertile 1 had a lower risk of overall death [HR 0.86 (95% CI: 0.81, 0.91) in UK Biobank; 0.83 (0.77, 0.88) in US NHANES] and incident T2D [0.86 (0.79, 0.94)] in UK Biobank. No evidence was observed of the interactive effects of DDS and E-DII on either all-cause mortality or the incidence and mortality of T2D. There was no significant association found between any exposure and T2D mortality in this study. In conclusion, our results revealed that higher DDS and lower E-DII were associated with both total mortality and incident T2D in UK and US adults.

Plant cell surface-localized receptor-like kinases (RLKs) recognize invading pathogens and transduce the immune signals inside host cells, subsequently triggering immune responses to fight off pathogen invasion. Nonetheless, our understanding of the role of RLKs in wheat resistance to the biotrophic fungus Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici (Pst) remains limited. During the differentially expressed genes in Pst infected wheat leaves, a Leucine-repeat receptor-like kinase (LRR-RLK) gene TaBIR1 was significantly upregulated in the incompatible wheat-Pst interaction. qRT-PCR verified that TaBIR1 is induced at the early infection stage of Pst. The transient expression of TaBIR1-GFP protein in N. bentamiana cells and wheat mesophyll protoplasts revealed its plasma membrane location. The knockdown of TaBIR1 expression by VIGS (virus induced gene silencing) declined wheat resistance to stripe rust, resulting in reduced reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, callose deposition, and transcripts of pathogenesis-related genes TaPR1 and TaPR2, along with increased Pst infection area. Ectopic overexpression of TaBIR1 in N. benthamiana triggered constitutive immune responses with significant cell death, callose accumulation, and ROS production. Moreover, TaBIR1 triggered immunity is dependent on NbBAK1, the silencing of which significantly attenuated the defense response triggered by TaBIR1. TaBIR1 interacted with the NbBAK1 homologues in wheat, co-receptor TaSERK2 and TaSERK5, the transient expression of which could restore the impaired defense due to NbBAK1 silencing. Taken together, TaBIR1 is a cell surface RLK that contributes to wheat stripe rust resistance, probably as a positive regulator of plant immunity in a BAK1-dependent manner.

Aging affects the structure and function of the liver. Hydroxysafflor yellow A (HSYA) effectively improves liver aging (LA) in mice, but the potential mechanisms require further exploration. In this study, an integrated approach combining network pharmacology and transcriptomics was used to elucidate the potential mechanisms of HSYA delay of LA. The targets of HSYA were predicted using the PharmMapper, SwissTargetPrediction, and CTD databases, and the targets of LA were collected from the GeneCards database. An ontology (GO) analysis and a Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway annotation of genes related to HSYA delay of LA were performed using the DAVID database, and Cytoscape software was used to construct an HSYA target pathway network. The BMKCloud platform was used to sequence mRNA from mouse liver tissue, screen differentially expressed genes (DEGs) that were altered by HSYA, and enrich their biological functions and signaling pathways through the OmicShare database. The results of the network pharmacology and transcriptomic analyses were combined. Then, quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) and Western blot experiments were used to further verify the prediction results. Finally, the interactions between HSYA and key targets were assessed by molecular docking. The results showed that 199 potentially targeted genes according to network pharmacology and 480 DEGs according to transcriptomics were involved in the effects of HSYA against LA. An integrated analysis revealed that four key targets, including HSP90AA1, ATP2A1, NOS1 and CRAT, as well as their three related pathways (the calcium signaling pathway, estrogen signaling pathway and cGMP–PKG signaling pathway), were closely related to the therapeutic effects of HSYA. A gene and protein expression analysis revealed that HSYA significantly inhibited the expressions of HSP90AA1, ATP2A1 and NOS1 in the liver tissue of aging mice. The molecular docking results showed that HSYA had high affinities with the HSP90AA1, ATP2A1 and NOS1 targets. Our data demonstrate that HSYA may delay LA in mice by inhibiting the expressions of HSP90AA1, ATP2A1 and NOS1 and regulating the calcium signaling pathway, the estrogen signaling pathway, and the cGMP–PKG signaling pathway.

The mechanism of dracorhodin perchlorate for the repair of rat skin wounds was investigated. In order to screen a more favorable drug delivery system for wound repair, the therapeutic effect of dracorhodin perchlorate inflammation-targeted emulsion gel was compared with that of non-targeted emulsion gel on rat wounds. Compared with non-targeted emulsion gels, inflammation-targeted emulsion gels had a better transdermal penetration and lower potentials (−51.6 mV and −17.1 mV, respectively). The recovery of the wound from the dracorhodin perchlorate inflammation targeted emulsion gel group was better than that of the dracorhodin perchlorate inflammation non-targeted emulsion gel group and the positive drug group. Compared with the no-target emulsion gel group, the bFGF expression on day 7 and the EGF expression on day 14 in the targeted emulsion group showed 45.5% and 49.9% improvement, respectively. Pathological tissue slices showed that the epidermis, dermis, and basal layer inflammatory cells in the inflammation-targeted emulsion gel group and non-targeted emulsion gel group were significantly reduced, the granulation tissue proliferation was obvious, and the inflammation-targeted emulsion gel group was more effective. The results proved that dracorhodin perchlorate had a repairing effect on rat skin wounds, and its mechanism might be related to the promotion of the expression of EGF and bFGF in tissues.

A visual dialog task entails an agent engaging in a multiple round conversation about an image. Notably, one of the main issues is capturing the semantic associations of multiple inputs, such as the questions, dialog history, and image features. Many of the techniques use a token or a sentence granularity semantic representation of the question and dialog history to model semantic associations; however, they do not perform collaborative modeling, which limits their efficacy. To overcome this limitation, we propose a multi-granularity semantic collaborative reasoning network to properly support a visual dialog. It employs different granularity semantic representations of the question and dialog history to collaboratively identify the relevant information from multiple inputs based on attention mechanisms. Specifically, the proposed method collaboratively reasons the question-related information from the dialog history based on its granular semantic representations. Then, it collaboratively locates the question-related visual objects in the image by leveraging refined question representations. The experimental results conducted on the VisDial v.1.0 dataset verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, showing the improvements of the best normalized discounted cumulative gain score from 59.37 to 60.98 with a single model, from 60.92 to 62.25 with ensemble models, and from 63.15 to 64.13 with performing multitask learning.

CRISPR-Cas systems empower prokaryotes with adaptive immunity against invasive mobile genetic elements. At the first step of CRISPR immunity adaptation, short DNA fragments from the invaders are integrated into CRISPR arrays at the leader-proximal end. To date, the mechanism of recognition of the leader-proximal end remains largely unknown. Here, in the Sulfolobus islandicus subtype I-A system, we show that mutations destroying the proximal region reduce CRISPR adaptation in vivo. We identify that a stem-loop structure is present on the leader-proximal end, and we demonstrate that Cas1 preferentially binds the stem-loop structure in vitro. Moreover, we demonstrate that the integrase activity of Cas1 is modulated by interacting with a CRISPR-associated factor Csa3a. When translocated to the CRISPR array, the Csa3a-Cas1 complex is separated by Csa3a binding to the leader-distal motif and Cas1 binding to the leader-proximal end. Mutation at the leader-distal motif reduces CRISPR adaptation efficiency, further confirming the in vivo function of leader-distal motif. Together, our results suggest a general model for binding of Cas1 protein to a leader motif and modulation of integrase activity by an accessory factor.

Taking Shandong Province as the research area, we explored the willingness of farmers to grow grain and the influencing factors. By constructing the evaluation system of their willingness with 6 levels and 15 indicators based on field investigation, and quantitatively analyzing the influence degree and impact assessment of factors through a logistic regression model, the regional differences in farmers’ willingness were summarized, and the influencing factors were recognized. This study indicates that there were obvious regional differences in farmers’ willingness, which were the highest in the western region, the second in the eastern region, and the lowest in the central region. Specifically, the willingness varies significantly among cities, among which Laiwu has the highest willingness (0.76), while Tai’an has the lowest (0.41). The level of urbanization in different regions and the main influencing factors are different, and the same factor has different degrees of influence on cities, leading to regional differences. In terms of urbanization level, the main influencing factors in areas with high urbanization levels are the proportion of grain income and grain expenditure. However, in areas with a low urbanization level, it is the farmers’ planting attitude. From the perspective of influence mode, different factors have positive and negative differences in the willingness. Additionally, farmers’ willingness is becoming more and more rational, and more consideration is given to economic benefits. Among the influencing factors, the land planting mode, the proportion of grain income, and the proportion of grain expenditure are the most important factors, and 82% (11) of the cities are affected by the above three factors. Finally, the corresponding incentive measures are proposed by the regional differences in the influencing factors in various cities.

Neurogenesis plays an important role in the prognosis of stroke patients and is known to be promoted by the activation of the Notch1 signaling pathway. Studies on the airway epithelium have shown that miR-449b represses the Notch pathway. The study aimed to investigate whether limb remote ischemic conditioning (LRIC) was able to promote neurogenesis in cerebral ischemic mice, and to investigate the role of the miR-449b/Notch1 pathway in LRIC-induced neuroprotection. Male C57BL/6 mice (22–25 g) were subjected to transient middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO), and LRIC was performed in the bilateral lower limbs immediately after MCA occlusion. Immunofluorescence staining was performed to assess neurogenesis. The cell line NE-4C was used to elucidate the proliferation of neuronal stem cells in 8% O2. After LRIC treatment on day 28, mice recovered neurological function. Neuronal precursor proliferation was enhanced in the SVZ, and neuronal precursor migration was enhanced in the basal ganglia on day 7. LRIC promoted the improvement of neurological function in mice on day 28, promoted neuronal precursor proliferation in the SVZ, and enhanced neuronal precursor migration in the basal ganglia on day 7. The neurological function score was negatively correlated with the number of BrdU-positive/DCX-positive cells in the SVZ and striatum. LRIC promoted activated Notch1 protein expression in the SVZ and substantially downregulated miR-449b levels in the SVZ and plasma. In vitro, miR-449b was found to target Notch1. Lentivirus-mediated miR-449b knockdown increased Notch1 levels in NE-4C cells and increased proliferation in the cells. The effects of miR-449b inhibition on neurogenesis were ablated by the application of Notch1 shRNA. Our study showed that LRIC promoted the proliferation and migration of neural stem cells after MCAO, and these effects were modulated by the miR-449b/Notch1 pathway.

Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are known to be practical and cost-effective devices for storing electric energy. LIBs have a low energy density, which calls for the development of new anode materials. The Prussian blue analog (PBA) is identified as being a candidate electrode material due to its facile synthesis, open framework structures, high specific surface areas, tunable composition, designable topologies and rich redox couples. However, its poor electrical conductivity and mechanical properties are the main factors limiting its use. The present study loaded PBA (Co3[Fe(CN)6]·10H2O) on graphene oxide (Co-Fe-PBA@rGO) and then conducted calcination at 300 °C under the protection of nitrogen, which reduced the crystal water and provided more ion diffusion pathways. As a result, Co-Fe-PBA@rGO showed excellent performance when utilized as an anode in LIBs, and its specific capacities were 546.3 and 333.2 mAh g−1 at 0.1 and 1.0 A g−1, respectively. In addition, the electrode also showed excellent performance in the long-term cycle, and its capacity reached up to 909.7 mAh g−1 at 0.1 A g−1 following 100 cycles.

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common and severe problem associated with high morbidity, mortality, and healthcare costs. There are no reliable therapeutic interventions except dialysis that could improve survival, limit injury, or speed up recovery. Thus, it is essential to develop new therapies to treat AKI. Previous studies revealed that histone deacetylase inhibitor (HDACi) could attenuate renal injury and enhance kidney recovery in AKI. However, the hydrophobic nature of HDACi, such as vorinostat (SAHA), requires organic solvents to promote its dissolution, leading to inevitable detrimental effects. Herein, calcium alginate microspheres (CAM) were prepared by the microfluidic method as HDACi carriers to treat AKI by intravenous injection. First, we designed the structure of the microfluidic channel for the fabrication of the PDMS microfluidic chip in which the emulsion state of droplets was analyzed. As the flow rate increases, the continuous phase changed from laminar flow to the dripping pattern in the microfluidic device. Then, the CAM was fabricated by a W/O microfluidic emulsion template and the size of the microspheres was adjusted from 3 to 7 μm by the concentration of alginate and the flow rate of the continuous phase and dispersal phase. The higher degree of cross-linking of sodium alginate with calcium ions would lead to longer drug release time but lower swelling rates. Furthermore, we selected CAM with suitable sizes as the HDACi carrier and delivered the HDACi-loaded CAM to the AKI mice by intravenous tail injection. The in vivo results showed that the HDACi-loaded CAM could effectively reduce the renal regional inflammatory response and attenuate renal injury.

Answering different multi-choice machine reading comprehension (MRC) questions generally requires different information due to the abundant diversity of the questions, options and passages. Recently, pre-trained language models which provide rich information have been widely used to address MRC tasks. Most of the existing work only focuses on the output representation at the top layer of the models; the subtle and beneficial information provided by the intermediate layers is ignored. This paper therefore proposes a multi-decision based transformer model that builds multiple decision modules by utilizing the outputs at different layers to confront the various questions and passages. To avoid the information diversity in different layers being damaged during fine-tuning, we also propose a learning rate decaying method to control the updating speed of the parameters in different blocks. Experimental results on multiple publicly available datasets show that our model can answer different questions by utilizing the representation in different layers and speed up the inference procedure with considerable accuracy.

This work investigates the mechanical properties, microstructures, and water-swelling behavior of a novel hydrogel filled with magnetic particles. The nanoparticles of magnetite (Fe3O4) and the micro-particles of carbonyl iron (CI) were selected and filled into a polyacrylamide (PAAM) hydrogel matrix to create two types of magnetic hydrogels. The isotropy and anisotropy of magnetic hydrogels are also presented in this study. The isotropic samples were cured without applying a magnetic field (MF), and the anisotropic samples were cured by applying an MF in the direction perpendicular to the thickness of the samples. The effects of the size, content, and inner structures of magnetic particles on the magneto-responsive and swelling properties of magnetic hydrogels were investigated. It was found that the magnetorheological (MR) effect of anisotropic samples was apparently higher than that of isotropic samples, and the hydrogels with CI exhibited a noticeable MR effect than those with Fe3O4. The storage modulus can be enhanced by increasing the filler content and size, forming an anisotropic structure, and applying an external MF. In addition, the magnetic hydrogels also have a swelling ability that can be tuned by varying the content and size of the particle fillers.

Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF), named for its role in inhibiting macrophage/monocyte migration, has multiple functions in modulation of inflammation, cell proliferation, angiogenesis, and tumorigenesis in vertebrates. Although homologs of this gene can be found in plants, the function of MIF in plants remains obscure. Here, we characterized TaMIF1 in Triticum aestivum resembling the MIF secreted from Homo sapiens. Transcript analysis revealed that TaMIF1 responded to stripe rust infection of wheat and was upregulated during the infection stage. TaMIF1 was localized to both the cytosol and nuclei in wheat mesophyll protoplast. Additionally, TaMIF1 possessed significant tautomerase activity, indicating conservation of MIFs across kingdoms. Agrobacterium tumefaciens infiltration assay demonstrated that TaMIF1 was capable of suppressing programmed cell death hinting its role in plant immunity. Heterologous expression of TaMIF1 increased fission yeast sensitivity to oxidative stress. Silencing TaMIF1 decreased the susceptibility of wheat to Pst seemingly through increasing reactive oxygen species accumulation. In conclusion, functions of the TaMIF1 were investigated in this study, which provides significant insight into understanding the role of MIFs across kingdoms.

As an anisotropic material, the unique optoelectronic properties of black phosphorus are obviously anisotropic. Therefore, non-destructive and fast identification of its crystalline orientation is an important condition for its application in optoelectronics research field. Identifying the crystalline orientation of black phosphorus through Ag1 and Ag2 modes under the parallel polarization has high requirements on the Raman system, while in the nonanalyzer configuration, the crystalline orientation of the thick black phosphorus may not be identified through Ag1 and Ag2 modes. This work proposes a new method to identify the crystalline orientation of black phosphorus of different thicknesses. This method is conducted under the nonanalyzer configuration by B2g mode. The results show that B2g mode has a good consistency in the identification of crystalline orientations. In this paper, a theoretical model is established to study the angle-resolved Raman results of B2g mode. The new method can accurately identify the crystalline orientation with different layers of black phosphorus without misidentification.

Light use efficiency (LUE) models are widely used to estimate gross primary productivity (GPP), a dominant component of the terrestrial carbon cycle. Their outputs are very sensitive to LUE. Proper determination of this parameter is a prerequisite for LUE models to simulate GPP at regional and global scales. This study was devoted to investigating the ability of the photochemical reflectance index (PRI) to track LUE variations for a sub-tropical planted coniferous forest in southern China using tower-based PRI and GPP measurements over the period from day 101 to 275 in 2013. Both half-hourly PRI and LUE exhibited detectable diurnal and seasonal variations, and decreased with increases of vapor pressure deficit (VPD), air temperature (Ta), and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR). Generally, PRI is able to capture diurnal and seasonal changes in LUE. However, correlations of PRI with LUE varied dramatically throughout the growing season. The correlation was the strongest (R2 = 0.6427, p < 0.001) in July and the poorest in May. Over the entire growing season, PRI relates better to LUE under clear or partially cloudy skies (clearness index, CI > 0.3) with moderate to high VPD (>20 hPa) and high temperatures (>31 C). Overall, we found that PRI is most sensitive to variations in LUE under stressed conditions, and the sensitivity decreases as the growing conditions become favorable when atmosphere water vapor, temperature and soil moisture are near the optimum conditions.

Brachypodium distachyon, as an effective model of cereal grains, is susceptible to most destructive cereal pathogens. Senescence associated gene 101 (SAG101) has been studied extensively in Arabidopsis. SAG101 is one of the important regulators of plant immunity. However, no homologous genes of AtSAG101 were found in B. distachyon. In this study, the AtSAG101 gene was transformed into B. distachyon. Three transgenic plant lines containing the AtSAG101 gene were confirmed by PCR and GUS gene activity. There were fewer Puccinia brachypodii urediospores in the AtSAG101-overexpressing plants compared to wild type plants. P. brachypodii biomass was obviously decreased in AtSAG101 transgenic plants. The length of infection hyphae and infection unit areas of P. brachypodii were significantly limited in transgenic plants. Moreover, there were small lesions in AtSAG101 transgenic plants challenged by Magnaporthe oryzae. Salicylic acid accumulation was significantly increased, which led to elevated pathogenesis-related gene expression in transgenic B. distachyon inoculated by P. brachypodii or M. oryzae compared to wild type plants. These results were consistent with infected phenotypes. Overexpression of AtSAG101 in B. distachyon caused resistance to M. oryzae and P. brachypodii. These results suggest that AtSAG101 could regulate plant resistance in B. distachyon.

We proposed a two-step poling technique to fabricate nanoscale domains based on the anti-parallel polarization reversal effect in lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI). The anti-parallel polarization reversal is observed when lithium niobate thin film in LNOI is poled by applying a high voltage pulse through the conductive probe tip of atomic force microscope, which generates a donut-shaped domain structure with its domain polarization at the center being anti-parallel to the poling field. The donut-shaped domain is unstable and decays with a time scale of hours. With the two-step poling technique, the polarization of the donut-shaped domain can be reversed entirely, producing a stable dot domain with a size of tens of nanometers. Dot domains with diameter of the order of ∼30 nm were fabricated through the two-step poling technique. The results may be beneficial to domain-based applications such as ferroelectric domain memory.

Dialogue management plays a vital role in task-oriented dialogue systems, which has become an active area of research in recent years. Despite the promising results brought from deep reinforcement learning, most of the studies need to develop a manual user simulator additionally. To address the time-consuming development of simulator policy, we propose a multi-agent dialogue model where an end-to-end dialogue manager and a user simulator are optimized simultaneously. Different from prior work, we optimize the two-agents from scratch and apply the reward shaping technology based on adjacency pairs constraints in conversational analysis to speed up learning and to avoid the derivation from normal human-human conversation. In addition, we generalize the one-to-one learning strategy to one-to-many learning strategy, where a dialogue manager can be concurrently optimized with various user simulators, to improve the performance of trained dialogue manager. The experimental results show that one-to-one agents trained with adjacency pairs constraints can converge faster and avoid derivation. In cross-model evaluation with human users involved, the dialogue manager trained in one-to-many strategy achieves the best performance.

We present a simple and effective way to improve the thermal stability of nano-domains written with an atomic force microscope (AFM)-tip voltage in a lithium niobate film on insulator (LNOI). We show that nano-domains in LNOI (whether in the form of stripe domains or dot domains) degraded, or even disappeared, after a post-poling thermal annealing treatment at a temperature on the order of ∼100 ∘ C. We experimentally confirmed that the thermal stability of nano-domains in LNOI is greatly improved if a pre-heat treatment is carried out for LNOI before the nano-domains are written. This thermal stability improvement of nano-domains is mainly attributed to the generation of a compensating space charge field parallel to the spontaneous polarization of written nano-domains during the pre-heat treatment process.

Mesocarbon microbead−silicon carbide (MCMB−SiC) composites with 0−30 wt % MCMBs were prepared by pressureless sintering (PLS) method at 2200 °C in Ar. The microstructure and tribological properties of the prepared composites were investigated. The results show that there was a finer grain size of SiC with the increase in MCMB content because MCMBs hinder the growth of SiC grains. The hardness of the composites decreased with increasing MCMB content, whereas the fracture toughness fluctuated showing a complex trend. The tribological properties of the composites under dry friction conditions were evaluated using the pin-on-disk method against a SiC counterpart. We found that the tribological properties of the samples were influenced by the oxide film or lubricating film that formed during the wear process on wear surfaces. Different wear mechanisms were found to be associated with differing MCMB contents.

Epidemic source localization is one of the most meaningful areas of research in complex networks, which helps solve the problem of infectious disease spread. Limited by incomplete information of nodes and inevitable randomness of the spread process, locating the epidemic source becomes a little difficult. In this paper, we propose an efficient algorithm via Bayesian Estimation to locate the epidemic source and find the initial time in complex networks with sparse observers. By modeling the infected time of observers, we put forward a valid epidemic source localization method for tree network and further extend it to the general network via maximum spanning tree. The numerical analyses in synthetic networks and empirical networks show that our algorithm has a higher source localization accuracy than other comparison algorithms. In particular, when the randomness of the spread path enhances, our algorithm has a better performance. We believe that our method can provide an effective reference for epidemic spread and source localization in complex networks.

Locating the source that undergoes a diffusion-like process is a fundamental and challenging problem in complex network, which can help inhibit the outbreak of epidemics among humans, suppress the spread of rumors on the Internet, prevent cascading failures of power grids, etc. However, our ability to accurately locate the diffusion source is strictly limited by incomplete information of nodes and inevitable randomness of diffusion process. In this paper, we propose an efficient optimization approach via maximum likelihood estimation to locate the diffusion source in complex networks with limited observations. By modeling the informed times of the observers, we derive an optimal source localization solution for arbitrary trees and then extend it to general graphs via proper approximations. The numerical analyses on synthetic networks and real networks all indicate that our method is superior to several benchmark methods in terms of the average localization accuracy, high-precision localization and approximate area localization. In addition, low computational cost enables our method to be widely applied for the source localization problem in large-scale networks. We believe that our work can provide valuable insights on the interplay between information diffusion and source localization in complex networks.

Fatty acids (FAs) are of interest to the areas of food science and medicine because they are important dietary sources of fuel for animals and play important roles in many biological processes. The health effects of FAs are different due to the diversity of olefinic bonds in the alkyl chains including number, position and configuration. However, the discrimination of FAs is difficult from a chemical sensing perspective due to the lack of diversity in terms of functional groups. Until now, only a few chemosensors have been developed for selective sensing of FAs based on their overall shape, however they are still limited in discrimination of FAs with subtle structural differences, moreover, they cannot be used for rapid and in situ inspections. Herein, for the first time, we designed a test paper for in situ colorimetric inspection for FAs based on the combination of the highly selective binding of Ag+ to olefinic bonds and Ag+ mediated color variation of 3,3′,5,5′,-tetramethylbenzidine. As a result, the sensor exhibited high sensitivity and good selectivity for five FAs with subtle structural differences. Furthermore, our method described herein was successfully applied to monitor the structural variations of FAs and quality changes in mixture edible hot pot oils with heat treatment in time course. Hence, the test paper presented herein holds great potential in the inspection of fats and edible oils in food industries.

Fibroblast growth factor (FGF) belongs to a large family of growth factors. FGFs use paracrine or endocrine signaling to mediate a myriad of biological and pathophysiological process, including angiogenesis, wound healing, embryonic development, and metabolism regulation. FGF drugs for the treatment of burn and ulcer wounds are now available. The recent discovery of the crucial roles of the endocrine-acting FGF19 subfamily in maintaining homeostasis of bile acid, glucose, and phosphate further extended the activity profile of this family. Here, the applications of recombinant FGFs for the treatment of wounds, diabetes, hypophosphatemia, the development of FGF receptor inhibitors as anti-neoplastic drugs, and the achievements of basic research and applications of FGFs in China are reviewed.

Autophagy-related 8 (ATG8) protein has been reported to be involved in plant’s innate immune response, but it is not clear whether such genes play a similar role in cereal crops against obligate biotrophic fungal pathogens. Here, we reported an ATG8 gene from wheat (Triticum aestivum), designated TaATG8j. This gene has three copies located in chromosomes 2AS, 2BS, and 2DS. The transcriptions of all three copies were upregulated in plants of the wheat cultivar Suwon 11, inoculated with an avirulent race (CYR23) of Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici (Pst), the causal fungal pathogen of stripe rust. The transient expression of TaATG8j in Nicotiana benthamiana showed that TaATG8j proteins were distributed throughout the cytoplasm, but mainly in the nucleus and plasma membrane. The overexpression of TaATG8j in N. benthamiana slightly delayed the cell death caused by the mouse apoptotic protein BAX (BCL2-associated X protein). However, the expression of TaATG8j in yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe) induced cell death. The virus-induced gene silencing of all TaATG8j copies rendered Suwon 11 susceptible to the avirulent Pst race CYR23, accompanied by an increased fungal biomass and a decreased necrotic area per infection site. These results indicate that TaATG8j contributes to wheat resistance against stripe rust fungus by regulating cell death, providing information for the understanding of the mechanisms of wheat resistance to the stripe rust pathogen.

For high-power and high-performance speed control system, speed feedback signals are generally required. The employment of sensorless control technology makes the installation of the system easier and lower-cost, while its reliability needs to be improved. The robustness of the improved instantaneous reactive power based on the quadrature model reference adaptive system (MRAS) with respect to the variation of the motor inductance parameter is improved by selecting the appropriate reference model and adjustable model. The improved instantaneous reactive power (Q) based on model reference adaptive system (Q-MRAS) algorithm is studied by small signal analysis, and the stability of the control system is verified by the Routh Stability Criterion. The simulation models and experimental platform for the proposed control are built in the laboratory. The feasibility and superiority are verified by the corresponding simulation and experimental results.

β-glucan (BG) and mulberry have received increasing attention for their benefits as natural sources of metabolic health. In the current study, we investigated the synergetic beneficial effects of BG and mulberry leaf extract (MLE) in mice fed a high-fat diet (HFD). Male C57BL6 mice were fed a HFD for twelve weeks to induce significant obesity and insulin resistance. BG and MLE were administrated orally throughout the feeding period. The administration of BG resulted in a significant reduction in body weight gain, perirenal fat mass, fasting insulin, serum lipids, serum inflammation markers, and fatty liver, showing systemic health improvement. Likewise, the administration of MLE showed benefits similar to BG, with the exception of body weight gain. In addition to the systemic benefits, the combination of BG and MLE resulted in a synergetic improvement in insulin sensitivity. Meanwhile, only the combination of BG and MLE significantly enhanced liver GST (Glutathione S-Transferase) activity and CuZn–SOD (Superoxide dismutase (Cu-Zn)) activity, resulting in a significant reduction in GSH/GSSG (Glutathione disulfide) and reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels in the liver. These results further confirm the beneficial effects of BG and MLE on metabolic disorders and show that the combination of BG and MLE has synergetic effects.

As a key technology in smart healthcare monitoring systems, wireless body area networks (WBANs) can pre-embed sensors and sinks on body surface or inside bodies for collecting different vital signs parameters, such as human Electrocardiograph (ECG), Electroencephalograph (EEG), Electromyogram (EMG), body temperature, blood pressure, blood sugar, blood oxygen, etc. Using real-time online healthcare, patients can be tracked and monitored in normal or emergency conditions at their homes, hospital rooms, and in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). In particular, the reliability and effectiveness of the packets transmission will be directly related to the timely rescue of critically ill patients with life-threatening injuries. However, traditional fault-tolerant schemes either have the deficiency of underutilised resources or react too slowly to failures. In future healthcare systems, the medical Internet of Things (IoT) for real-time monitoring can integrate sensor networks, cloud computing, and big data techniques to address these problems. It can collect and send patient’s vital parameter signal and safety monitoring information to intelligent terminals and enhance transmission reliability and efficiency. Therefore, this paper presents a design in healthcare monitoring systems for a proactive reliable data transmission mechanism with resilience requirements in a many-to-one stream model. This Network Coding-based Fault-tolerant Mechanism (NCFM) first proposes a greedy grouping algorithm to divide the topology into small logical units; it then constructs a spanning tree based on random linear network coding to generate linearly independent coding combinations. Numerical results indicate that this transmission scheme works better than traditional methods in reducing the probability of packet loss, the resource redundant rate, and average delay, and can increase the effective throughput rate.

Amino acids have an important role in the pre and post implantation of placenta and embryo development. l-type amino-acid transporter 1 (lat1) is responsible for the transportation of large neutral amino acids and is mainly expressed in human fetal liver, placenta, brain, etc. This study is the first to investigate the expression of lat1 in the early pregnancy of mouse uteri and its role in the process of decidualization. Endometrial stromal cells of a mouse model were used to evaluate decidualization from Day 4–8 of pregnancy in vitro followed by lat1 knock down by small interfering RNA and by a competitive inhibitor of Leucine transport 2-aminobicyclo-(2,2,1)-heptane-2-carboxylic acid (BCH). The effects of lat1 on decidualization in vivo were assessed by injecting BCH into the uterine horns. The mRNA and protein expressions of lat1 in the implantation sites were higher than that in the inter-implantation sites and were localized in the luminal and gland epithelium, stromal and decidual cells. Its increased expression (p < 0.05) was associated with artificial decidualization as well as activation of prl expression. Down-regulation of lat1 expression in these cells by siRNA and BCH inhibited the decidual progression in vitro. Inhibition of lat1 transportation by BCH controlled decidual progression in vivo also accompanied the down-regulation of prl, lat1 expression in the decidual area and embryo size on Day 8 of pregnancy. In conclusion, these results revealed that lat1 might play an important role in the decidual progression both in vitro and in vivo.

This paper studies contrastive divergence (CD) learning algorithm and proposes a new algorithm for training restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs). We derive that CD is a biased estimator of the log-likelihood gradient method and make an analysis of the bias. Meanwhile, we propose a new learning algorithm called average contrastive divergence (ACD) for training RBMs. It is an improved CD algorithm, and it is different from the traditional CD algorithm. Finally, we obtain some experimental results. The results show that the new algorithm is a better approximation of the log-likelihood gradient method and outperforms the traditional CD algorithm.