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This study evaluates the consumers' views on various security measures in e-commerce platforms and determines their impact on the trusting beliefs of consumers, which may further lead to an intention to use e-commerce platforms. The study also investigates the moderating effects of gender, age, and the frequency of e-commerce platform use on the proposed model. A total of 780 respondents were used for the study. We used structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze the proposed trust-based model. The findings indicate a strong positive impact of information integrity and information confidentiality on the consumers' trusting beliefs. In addition, the study indicates the strong mediating effect of trusting beliefs with the association between information integrity, information confidentiality, and behavioral intention to use e-commerce platforms. A moderating effect of frequency of use on the relationship between perceived information confidentiality and preventing unauthorized secondary data usage on trusting beliefs was found to be significant. This research underwent an in-depth examination of different security aspects that e-commerce firms should consider in order to develop the trusting beliefs of consumers in e-commerce environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a Siamese motion-aware Spatio-temporal network (SiamMAST) for video action recognition. The SiamMAST is designed based on the fusion of four features via processing video frames: spatial features, temporal features, spatial dynamic features, and temporal dynamic features of a moving target. The SiamMAST comprises AlexNets as the backbone, LSTMs, and the spatial motion-awareness and temporal motion-awareness sub-modules. RGB images are fed into the network, where AlexNets extract spatial features. Further, they are fed into LSTMs to generate temporal features. Additionally, spatial motion-awareness and temporal motion-awareness sub-modules are proposed to capture spatial and temporal dynamic features. Finally, all features are fused and fed into the classification layer. The final recognition result is produced by averaging the test label probabilities across a fixed number of RGB frames and selecting the label of the highest probability. The whole network is trained offline using an end-to-end approach with large-scale image datasets using the standard SGD algorithm with back-propagation. The proposed network is evaluated on two challenging datasets UCF101 (93.53%) and HMDB51 (69.36%). The experiments have demonstrated the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed SiamMAST. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Previous studies have observed elevated myeloid cells in the peripheral blood of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), but the causal relationship between them remains to be elucidated. We investigated whether there is a causal relationship between different subtypes of peripheral blood myeloid cells and PD using Mendelian randomization (MR) combined with bioinformatics analysis. Exploring the etiology of PD from the perspective of genetics can remove confounding factors and provide a more reliable theoretical basis for elucidating the pathogenesis of PD. Methods: Comprehensive two-sample MR analysis and sensitivity analyses were conducted to explore the causal associations between 64 myeloid cell signatures and PD risk. The Venn diagram and protein-protein interaction network analysis of instrumental variables (IV) corresponding genes were used to further investigate the potential mechanism of myeloid cells influencing the pathogenesis of PD. Results: We investigated the impact of four immunophenotypes on the risk of PD, including Im MDSC% CD33dim HLA DR− CD66b− (relative count), CD33dim HLA DR+ CD11b+% CD33dim HLA DR+ (relative count), and CD11b on Mo MDSC (MFI) and CD11b on CD33br HLA DR+ CD14dim (MFI), while an immunophenotype's protective effect on PD was observed CD45 on Im MDSC (MFI). The results of bioinformatics analysis showed that CD33, NTRK2, PLD2, GRIK2 and RELN had protein interactions with the risk genes of PD. Conclusions: Our study has demonstrated a close genetic correlation between different subtypes of myeloid cells and PD, providing guidance for early identification and immunotherapeutic development in patients with PD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By introducing the auxiliary variable with respect to the reduced latitude, a new closed-form method for transforming Cartesian to geodetic coordinates has been proposed based on the solution of a special constructed unary quartic equation. The algorithm comes with rigorous and concise procedure of root-finding. Moreover, through theoretical analysis, different approaches with respective pros and cons to determine the geodetic latitude and height have been explored. Besides fast computation, numerical experiments covering the magnitude of the geodetic height from - 6.33 × 10 6 m to 10 10 m have also shown that the new method can be operational with high precision at almost any point including the region near or at the pole, the equator and the center of the reference ellipsoid. Considering the accuracy, efficiency and adaptability simultaneously, it is prospective to be applied into computation and inspection on critical occasions in comparison to existing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the realm of Parkinson's disease (PD) research, NLRP3 inflammasome-mediated pyroptosis has recently garnered significant attention as a potential novel form of dopaminergic neuronal death. Our previous research revealed the activation of innate immune-related genes, such as the TLR4 signaling pathway and interferon regulatory factor 7 (IRF7), although the specific mechanism remains unclear. Our current study shed light on whether the TLR4 signaling pathway and IRF7 can affect the pyroptosis of dopaminergic nerve cells and thus participate in the pathogenesis of PD. The PD model was constructed by MPP+ treatment of PC12 cells or stereotactic injection of the striatum of SD rats, and the expression of genes were detected by RT-qPCR and Western Blotting. Lentivirus, siRNA and (5Z)-7-Oxozeaenol were used to validate the regulation of this pathway on pyroptosis. The expression of TLR4, TAK1, IRF7 and pyroptosis molecular markers was upregulated after MPP+ treatment. IRF7 could affect dopaminergic neural cells pyroptosis by targeted regulation of NLRP3. Furthermore, inhibition of the TLR4/TAK1 signaling pathway led to a decrease in the expression of both IRF7 and NLRP3, while overexpression of IRF7 reversed the reduction in pyroptosis and increase in TH expression. TLR4/TAK1/IRF7 axis can promote PD by influencing pyroptosis through NLRP3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Total electron content (TEC) is one of the most important parameters of the ionosphere, which reflects the main characteristics of the ionosphere. Its accurate prediction plays an important role in improving the accuracy of GNSS navigation and ensuring the remote communication of radio. In order to solve the problems that the current combination of EMD and LSTM has a large amount of computation and insufficient mining of high-level information in TEC time series. This paper proposes an effective ionospheric TEC predicting approach using EEMD-PE-Kmeans and self-attention LSTM (EPKSL). First, ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) is used to stabilize the TEC time series, which solve the problem of endpoint effect and mode aliasing caused by empirical mode decomposition (EMD). Next, an PE-kmeans algorithm is proposed to cluster and reconstruct the intrinsic mode function (IMF) components generated by EEMD with similar complexity, which not only reduces the calculation amount of the prediction model, but also improves the prediction accuracy. Finally, the reconstructed sub-signals are fed into the model we designed for prediction. The experiments on the ionospheric TEC data of Sanya station show that the root mean square error (RMSE) of the proposed model gets 1.23 TEC units (TECUs), the mean absolute error (MAE) obtains 0.93 TECUs, and the R2 achieves 0.982. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed model has higher performance in terms of RMSE, MAE and R2 compared with several typical prediction methods, while the prediction time is reduced by 32.8% compared with EMD-LSTM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the publication requirements of PhD programs in China. It is based on a representative sample of PhD programs from 164 Chinese universities from all fields of science. Our results show that Chinese PhD student significant pressures to publish in order to obtain their degree, with papers indexed in the Science Citation Index often a mandatory requirement for students to obtain their degree. Moreover, it is found that first authorship is also mandatory: only as first authors count towards the degree, which may affect PhD students' collaborative behavior. These findings highlight the role of publications indexed in the Science Citation Index for China's PhD programs and contributes to our understanding of the landscape of research evaluation in China's higher education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a common complication of diabetes and leads to blindness. Anti‐VEGF is a primary treatment for DR. Its therapeutic effect is limited in non‐ or poor responders despite frequent injections. By performing a comprehensive analysis of the semaphorins family, we identified the increased expression of Sema4D during oxygen‐induced retinopathy (OIR) and streptozotocin (STZ)‐induced retinopathy. The levels of soluble Sema4D (sSema4D) were significantly increased in the aqueous fluid of DR patients and correlated negatively with the success of anti‐VEGF therapy during clinical follow‐up. We found that Sema4D/PlexinB1 induced endothelial cell dysfunction via mDIA1, which was mediated through Src‐dependent VE‐cadherin dysfunction. Furthermore, genetic disruption of Sema4D/PlexinB1 or intravitreal injection of anti‐Sema4D antibody reduced pericyte loss and vascular leakage in STZ model as well as alleviated neovascularization in OIR model. Moreover, anti‐Sema4D had a therapeutic advantage over anti‐VEGF on pericyte dysfunction. Anti‐Sema4D and anti‐VEGF also conferred a synergistic therapeutic effect in two DR models. Thus, this study indicates an alternative therapeutic strategy with anti‐Sema4D to complement or improve the current treatment of DR.

Neuroinflammation mediated by brain glial cells is one of the pathological drivers of Parkinson's disease (PD). Recent studies have shown that higher circulating trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO, a gut microbiota-derived metabolite) can induce neuroinflammation and are strongly related to a variety of central nervous system diseases and adverse brain events. Herein, we explored the effect of pre-existing higher circulating TMAO on dopamine system and neuroinflammation in acute PD model mice induced by 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydroxypyridine (MPTP). TMAO pretreatment was given by adding 3% (w/v) TMAO to drinking water of mice for 21 days to induce higher circulating TMAO status, then mice were administered with MPTP (20 mg/kg, i.p) for four times in one day to construct an acute PD model mice and treated with TMAO continuously until the end of the experiment. Results demonstrated that TMAO treatment significantly increased serum TMAO levels. Moreover, high serum TMAO significantly increased activation of microglia and astrocytes both in striatum and in substantia nigra. And strikingly, high serum TMAO significantly promoted the metabolism of striatal dopamine (DA) of PD model mice, although it had no significant effect on the number of dopaminergic neurons or the content of DA. Furthermore, immunofluorescence, ELISA, and RT-qPCR results of the hippocampus also showed that high serum TMAO significantly promoted the activation of microglia and astrocytes in the dentate gyrus, increased the levels of TNF-α and IL-1β, and upregulated gene expression of M1 microglia-related markers (including CD16, CD32, and iNOS) and A2 astrocyte-related markers (including S100a10, Ptx3, and Emp1) in mRNA levels. In summary, we found that pre-existing high serum levels of TMAO worsened the PD-related brain pathology by promoting DA metabolism, aggravating neuroinflammation and regulating glial cell polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multipath TCP (MPTCP) is regarded as a promising solution to aggregate the bandwidth of multiple paths to generate throughput benefits in heterogeneous networks. However, transmitting data over multiple paths simultaneously often leads to out-of-order issues due to the asymmetry of heterogeneous paths. In this paper, we propose a novel packet scheduling mechanism named Adaptive Delay-Aligned Scheduling (ADAS) for multipath transmission in heterogeneous wireless networks. ADAS utilizes the wisdom of the last-hop connected to the receiver to solve the out-of-order problem and improve the overall throughput at the same time. Specifically, ADAS equips a virtual link loop on the last-hop to buffer the out-of-order packets within time threshold and further schedules and sends them to the receiver as sequentially as possible, which looks as if all packets take the same time to travel across the network. In this way, the delay-aligned scheduling is achieved and the out-of-order problem can be effectively addressed. Besides, an adaptive weighting algorithm is proposed to dynamically adjust the time threshold to avoid over scheduling and improve the overall throughput. Extensive experiments demonstrate that ADAS outperforms state-of-the-art mechanisms. Besides, a lower out-of-order rate of 5.73% and a higher overall throughput of 6.76 Mbps can be achieved through combining ADAS with the current scheduling mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of evidence implies that gut microbiota was involved in pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease (PD), but the mechanism is still unclear. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of antibiotics pretreatment on the 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1, 2, 3, 6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP)-induced PD mice. In this study, vancomycin pretreatment was given by gavage once daily with either vancomycin or distilled water for 14 days to mice, then mice were administered with MPTP (20 mg/kg, i.p) for four times in one day to establish an acute PD model. Results show that vancomycin pretreatment significantly improved motor dysfunction of mice in pole and traction tests. Although vancomycin pretreatment had no effect on dopamine (DA) or the process of DA synthesis, it inhibited the metabolism of DA by suppressing the expression of striatal monoamine oxidase B (MAO-B). Furthermore, vancomycin pretreatment reduced the number of astrocytes and microglial cells in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) to alleviate neuroinflammation, decreased the expression of TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB/TNF-α signaling pathway in both brain and gut. Meanwhile, vancomycin pretreatment changed gut microbiome composition and the levels of fecal short chain fatty acids (SCFAs). The abundance of Akkermansia and Blautia increased significantly after vancomycin pretreatment, which might be related to inflammation and inhibition of TLR4 signaling pathway. In summary, these results demonstrate that the variation of gut microbiota and its metabolites induced by vancomycin pretreatment might decrease dopamine metabolic rate and relieve inflammation in both gut and brain via the microbiota-gut-brain axis in MPTP-induced PD mice. The neuroprotection of vancomycin pretreatment on MPTP-induced Parkinson's disease mice The alterations of gut microbiota and SCFAs induced by vancomycin pretreatment might not only improve motor dysfunction, but also decrease dopamine metabolism and relieve inflammation in both brain and gut via TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB/TNF-α pathway in MPTP-induced PD mice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a kidney disease resulting from diabetes. Macrophages and macrophage-mediated inflammation contributed to the development of DN. Tripartite motif containing 23 (TRIM23) is E3 ligase and has been involved in inflammation. Until now, the precise roles of TRIM23 in DN are not described yet. Therefore, we evaluated the functions of TRIM23 in DN. Methods: We generated mice with TRIM23 deficiency in macrophages. We also established diabetic mice model. The expression of TRIM23 was measured in diabetic animals. The DN symptoms were compared between diabetic wild-type (WT) mice and TRIM23 conditional knock out mice. The cytokine expression, ubiquitination of TAB2, and interactions between TAB2 and IKK were compared in oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL) or lipopolysaccharides (LPS)-treated WT and TRIM23-deficient macrophages. Results: Upregulation of TRIM23 was observed in diabetic mice and LPS or oxLDL-treated macrophages. Diabetic mice with TRIM23 deficiency in macrophages had attenuated DN symptoms. TRIM23-deficient macrophages had decreased pro-inflammatory cytokines production after oxLDL or LPS stimulation. TRIM23 was predicted to interact with TAB2. The ubiquitination of TAB2 was abolished in oxLDL-treated TRIM23-deficient macrophages, which correlated with decreased activation of IKK. Conclusion: TRIM23 regulates inflammation in macrophages and plays important role in DN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The buried depth of vertical shaft is large, most of them pass through water rich rock stratum and bear high head internal water pressure. The influence of seepage field on its surrounding stress field and displacement field can't be ignored. Based on the plane stress model, the mechanical model of multi-layer cylinder under steady seepage is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the seepage field of single-layer cylinder and multi-layer cylinder is resolved. Secondly, based on the plane stress model, the general solution and definite solution formula of stress and displacement of single layer cylinder under seepage force are derived. Finally, analytical solutions of stress and displacement of the cylinder under penetrability, internal pressure and external pressure are derived. A general solution for the interlayer radial forces is provided. An example is analyzed with considering fluid flow field. The research shows that the elastic modulus ratio is the most important factor affecting the interlayer force transfer, and the Poisson's ratio has little effect on the change of stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pea (Pisum sativum L.) is an economically important legume crop. Due to the increasingly improved living standards and dietary diversity, there is an increasing demand for pea and pea sprouts every year, making it imperative to screen high-quality pea varieties. In this study, 34 pea varieties were collected for germination treatment, and their sprouting and functional characteristics were investigated. The results showed that the epicotyl length and output ratio of pea sprouts ranged from 3.54–20.66 cm and 0.91–3.03, respectively. The total phenolic content (TPC), total flavonoid content (TFC), 2,2'-azinobis-(3-ethylbenzthiazoline-6-sulfonate) (ABTS) free radical scavenging capacity and ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) varied widely, ranging from 2.33–4.61 mg GAE/g DW, 7.14–13.54 mg RUT/g DW, 46.67–65.65 µM TE/g DW and 14.95–31.26 mM Fe2+/g DW, respectively. Significantly high linear correlation coefficients were reported among the TPC, TFC, ABTS and FRAP of pea sprouts. Compared with non-germinated pea seeds, sprouts had higher TPC and TFC and superior antioxidant capacity. Principal component analysis extracted three principal components with a total cumulative contribution rate of 84.50%. Hierarchical clustering analysis was carried out based on the three extracted principal components, and the obtained dendrogram divided pea varieties into four categories. The best-performing variety was evaluated by gray relational analysis as 9618-2, with an associate degree of 0.819. The high-quality pea varieties selected by cluster and gray relational analyses were basically the same. Overall, the germinated varieties, including 9618-2, Dingwan 4, Dingwan 8, Baiwandou, Taiwanxiaobaihua, Chengduzhushawan, Dingwan 5 and Caoyuan 224, were observed to be superior sources of natural antioxidants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of the devastating impact of neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) on newborns, the research on its intervention is particularly important. Although exosomes from human amniotic fluid stem cells (AFSC) and human breast milk (HBM) can protect against NEC, their mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we intend to compare the intervention effects of two types of exosomes on NEC mouse model and reveal their respective regulatory mechanisms. In general, both AFSC-derived exosomes (AFSC-exos) and HBM-derived exosomes (HBM- exos) can alleviate NEC- associated intestinal injury, significantly reduce NEC score, and reduce systemic and ileal inflammation and NEC related brain injury during experimental NEC. However, the mode and mechanism of action of the two sources of exosomes were not identical. In vivo, the number of ileal crypts was more significantly restored after HBM-exos intervention than AFSC-exos, and in vitro, HBM-exos preferentially inhibited the inflammatory response of intestinal epithelial cells (IECs), whereas AFSC-exos preferentially regulated the migration of IECs. Mechanistically, GO and KEGG analyses revealed the different therapeutic mechanisms of AFSC-exos and HBM-exos in NEC. Taken together, our results illustrate that AFSC-exos and HBM-exos reduce the severity of experimental NEC and intestinal damage through different mechanisms, supporting the potential of cell-free or breast milk free exosome therapy for NEC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pantograph-catenary arcing reflects the health of pantograph-catenary and current collection quality of high-speed railway, so the arc detection is of great significance. However, due to the scene complexity, intra-class polymorphism and inter-class similarity of arcing and the fast running speed of high-speed railway, it is still a huge challenge to achieve fine and robust arcing detection. To overcome these issues, a robust and fast image-based instance segmentation method called ArcMask is proposed to detect pantograph-catenary arcing, which designs a new attention-based multi-scale feature fusion module that combines both top-down and down-up modules to realize arcing pixel-level instance segmentation. The effective combination of instance-level information and bottom-level semantic information balances features representation ability of top-level and bottom-level features. Compared with other instance segmentation methods (e.g., BlendMask), it can effectively learn feature representation with tiny, irregular and complex arc features and speeds up the calculation. In addition, both deformable convolution and depth-wise separable convolution are introduced in ArcMask, which aims to improve the segmentation performance of irregular arcing and efficiency. The ArcMask can distinguish different arcing instances at pixel-level with fine granularity and distinguish inter-class and intra-class features of arcing, instead of just focusing on rectangular bounding box. Experiments on self-collected dataset IVAIS-PCA2021 verify the effectiveness and efficiencies of the ArcMask. Its AP, AP50 and AP75 are 56.61, 94.14 and 64.56, respectively, and the fastest reasoning speed based on MobileNet is 56 FPS. Compared with other state-of-the-art segmentation methods, the proposed ArcMask has better integrity in arcing edge detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that the Sixth Generation (6G) communication system integrating multiple access networks promotes the internet of everything world-widely. However, due to the differentiated underlying network protocols, it is difficult to find a general authentication solution to support various authentication methods in different access networks. Blockchain is a new technology that supports network heterogeneity, which provides a potential solution for differentiated authentication. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based differentiated authentication mechanism for 6G Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets), which can efficiently authenticate user identities through scheduling different authentication methods. Particularly, we analyze the authentication architecture of 6G HetNets and put forward a blockchain-based differentiated authentication framework. Besides, to improve the scalability of user authentication, it is the first time to use various blockchain authentication contracts to represent different authentication methods. Meanwhile, a differentiated authentication management contract is proposed to uniformly manage different authentication contracts to realize differentiated identity authentication. Based on the evaluation of the prototype system, the proposed mechanism can dynamically provide differentiated authentication services (e.g. EAP-MD5, 5G-AKA) with low additional time (milliseconds levels) cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key message: A novel QTL (QSt.nftec-2BL) was mapped to a 0.7 cM interval on chromosome 2B. Plants carrying QSt.nftec-2BL produced higher grain yields by up to 21.4% than otherwise in salinized fields. Wheat yield has been limited by soil salinity in many wheat-growing areas globally. The wheat landrace Hongmangmai (HMM) possesses salt tolerance as it produced higher grain yields than other tested wheat varieties including Early Premium (EP) under salt stresses. To detect QTL underlying this tolerance, wheat cross EP × HMM was chosen to serve as mapping population that was homozygous at Ppd (photoperiod response gene), Rht (reduced plant height gene) and Vrn (vernalization gene); thus, interference with QTL detection by these loci could be minimized. QTL mapping was conducted firstly using 102 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) that were selected from the EP × HMM population (827 RILs) for similarity in grain yield under non-saline condition. Under salt stresses, however, the 102 RILs varied significantly in grain yield. These RILs were genotyped using a 90 K SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) array; consequently, a QTL (QSt.nftec-2BL) was detected on chromosome 2B. Then, using 827 RILs and new simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers developed according to the reference sequence IWGSC RefSeq v1.0, location of QSt.nftec-2BL was refined to a 0.7 cM (6.9 Mb) interval flanked by SSR markers 2B-557.23 and 2B-564.09. Selection for QSt.nftec-2BL was performed based on the flanking markers using two bi-parental wheat populations. Trials for validating effectiveness of the selection were conducted in salinized fields in two geographical areas and two crop seasons, demonstrating that wheat plants with the salt-tolerant allele in homozygous status at QSt.nftec-2BL produced higher grain yields by up to 21.4% than otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The isolation switch is one of the most important pieces of electrical equipment in traction substation, and its state directly reflects the operation of the power system. However, the realization of automatic isolation switch monitoring based on computer vision still faces three problems, i.e., intra-class diversity, inter-class polymorphism of components, and complex backgrounds. To overcome the issues of isolation switch positioning and states recognition in railway traction substation, we propose a state recognition method of isolation switch in traction substation based on key components detection and geometric ranging. This method is divided into two parts, i.e., ISD-Net for isolation switch detection and geometric ranging for state recognition. Firstly, ISD-Net is proposed to realize isolation switch detection. Secondly, an algorithm based on geometric ranging is designed, which utilizes the coordinate information of key components to realize automatic recognition of isolation switch state. To train the model and evaluate the effectiveness of our method, we established a dataset of isolation switch (called IVIS2021). On IVIS2021, isolation switch detection and state recognition accuracy reach 90.88% and 91.12%, respectively. The experimental results indicated that the proposed method accurately realizes isolation switch detection and state recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gut microbiota is critical to human health, such as digesting nutrients, forming the intestinal epithelial barrier, regulating immune function, producing vitamins and hormones, and producing metabolites to interact with the host. Meanwhile, increasing evidence indicates that the gut microbiota has a strong correlation with the occurrence, progression and treatment of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). In patients with CVDs and corresponding risk factors, the composition and ratio of gut microbiota have significant differences compared with their healthy counterparts. Therefore, gut microbiota dysbiosis, gut microbiota-generated metabolites, and the related signaling pathway may serve as explanations for some of the mechanisms about the occurrence and development of CVDs. Several studies have also demonstrated that many traditional and latest therapeutic treatments of CVDs are associated with the gut microbiota and its generated metabolites and related signaling pathways. Given that information, we summarized the latest advances in the current research regarding the effect of gut microbiota on health, the main cardiovascular risk factors, and CVDs, highlighted the roles and mechanisms of several metabolites, and introduced corresponding promising treatments for CVDs regarding the gut microbiota. Therefore, this review mainly focuses on exploring the role of gut microbiota related metabolites and their therapeutic potential in CVDs, which may eventually provide better solutions in the development of therapeutic treatment as well as the prevention of CVDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sharing economy is still transforming the hospitality industry at an exponential speed. The idea of acquiring goods and services through a collaborative approach is becoming a significant part of the world’s overall economy. Many use platforms and social media channels to make purchase decisions while communicating with others. This study, therefore, investigates the socialization factors and values of the sharing economy as driving forces of the rapid growth of the hospitality businesses related to sharing economy. The study also assesses their influence on satisfaction and continuance behavior and explores the role of reciprocity and perceived risk by applying the value-based adoption theory. Using mixed methods, the present research identifies the crucial attributes and validates the proposed theoretical framework. Our findings provide valuable insights for hospitality businesses participating in the sharing economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concurrent multipath transfer (CMT) has been proved to significantly improve the end-to-end throughput with its multihoming property. However, due to the extremely high unpredictability around high-speed railway (HSR) environment, the receive buffer blocking problem seriously degrades the overall transmission reliability. To address this issue, this paper proposes a learning-based fountain coding for CMT (FC-CMT) scheme to mitigate the negative influence of the path diversity of HSR networks. Specifically, we first formulate a multi-dimensional optimal problem to mitigate receive buffer blocking phenomenon and improve the transmission rate with requirement constrains. Then, we transform the data scheduling and redundancy coding rate problem into a Markov decision process, and propose a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based fountain coding algorithm to dynamically adjust data scheduling policy and redundancy coding rate. We conduct the extensive experiments in a P4-based programmable network platform. Experimental results indicate the proposed algorithm mitigates the packet out-of-order problem, and improves the average throughput compared with traditional multipath transmission scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A nomogram for assessing the risk of IgA vasculitis nephritis (originally termed Henoch–Schönlein purpura nephritis, HSPN) in IgA vasculitis (originally termed Henoch–Schönlein purpura, HSP) pediatric patients can effectively improve early diagnosis and prognosis of IgA vasculitis nephritis. However, currently, no nomogram is available. 246 IgA vasculitis and 142 IgA vasculitis nephritis Asian pediatric patients confirmed by renal biopsy were enrolled. Univariate and multivariate logistic regressions were performed to identify the independent risk factors and construct a series of predictive models. The receiver operating characteristic curve, calibration plot, decision curve analysis, net reclassification index and integrated discrimination index were used to screen the best model. Stratification analysis was applied to optimize model's clinical utility. An external validation set was introduced to verify the predictive efficiency. The final predictive model was converted to nomogram for visual use. We identified age, duration of rash (Dor), D-dimer and IgG as independent risk factors and constructed four models as follows: AIDD (Age + IgG + Dor + D-dimer), AIDi (Age + IgG + D-dimer), AIDo (Age + IgG + Dor) and ADD (Age + Dor + D-dimer), which achieved the receiver operator characteristic curve (AUROC) of 0.931, 0.920, 0.856 and 0.907, respectively. Finally, AIDi model with an AUROC of 0.956 and 0.897 in internal and external validating sets was proposed as a novel predictive model. In stratification analysis by gender and histological grade, the AUROC of AIDi was 0.949 in female, 0.926 in male, 0.933 in mild histological grades and 0.939 in severe histological grades, respectively. AIDi nomogram is an effective and visual tool for assessing the risk of nephritis in IgA vasculitis Asian pediatric patients, regardless of IgA vasculitis nephritis histological grades and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) is an essential metabolic enzyme in the tricarboxylic acid cycle (TAC). The high mutation frequency of the IDH gene plays a complicated role in gliomas. In addition to affecting gliomas directly, mutations in IDH can also alter their immune microenvironment and can change immune-cell function in direct and indirect ways. IDH mutations mediate immune-cell infiltration and function by modulating immune-checkpoint gene expression and chemokine secretion. In addition, IDH mutation-derived D2-hydroxyglutarate can be absorbed by surrounding immune cells, also affecting their functioning. In this review, we summarize current knowledge about the effects of IDH mutations as well as other gene mutations on the immune microenvironment of gliomas. We also describe recent preclinical and clinical data related to IDH-mutant inhibitors for the treatment of gliomas. Finally, we discuss different types of immunotherapy and the immunotherapeutic potential of IDH mutations in gliomas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new dynamic model of a variable-length rope, which could be used for the transient analysis of a buoy-rope-generator (BRG) wave energy system, was proposed in this paper. The model started from the basic dynamic equations of variable mass system, and took into account the physical properties such as axial force, shear and bending. According to the principle of D'Alembert-Lagrange, the equivalent integral weak formulation was firstly obtained, and through consistent linearization and isoparametric discretization, the finite element model of the variable-length rope was then derived. The Bathe scheme was employed to solve the model numerically, based on its excellent performance in solving nonlinear dynamic problems, and an automatic time step size algorithm was designed according to the number of iterations of the two substeps of Bathe scheme. The procedures of rope mesh regeneration were also put forward, where only one variable-length element was always located at the top end of the rope, and the rest were all fixed-length elements. The proposed variable-length rope model and solution schemes were verified through comparison with the results of a tank experiment. Finally, the transient dynamics of a kind of BRG system was analyzed and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Glucocerebrosidase (GBA) gene may be a risk factor for dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). However, due to the small number of existing studies and the small sample size of previous investigations, it is necessary to conduct objective and quantitative analyses of the association between GBA variants and DLB. There is no consensus regarding the relationship between GBA and the clinical characteristics of DLB. Therefore, we conducted multiple systematic reviews and meta-analyses with a particular focus on the age of onset, sex, and cognitive impairment.Methods: PubMed, Cochrane, and EMBASE databases were searched to retrieve related studies. The odds ratios and 95% confidence interval were calculated to determine the association between GBA and DLB and between GBA and the clinical characteristics of DLB.Results: Our meta-analysis confirmed that the GBA variant rate was significantly higher in the DLB group than in the control group, as were the variant rates of L444P, N370S, and E326K, whereas the variant rate of T369M showed no significant difference between the groups. Furthermore, the relevant literature was summarised again for meta-analyses. The GBA variant group had a younger age of onset and lower Montreal Cognitive Assessment score than the GBA non-variant group in DLB patients. GBA variants do not differ between sexes in DLB patients.Conclusions: GBA variants increased the risk of DLB, especially N370S, E326K, and L444P which are strongly associated with DLB, but T369M was not. Patients harbouring GBA variants have an earlier age of onset, more severe cognitive impairment, and rapid symptom progression; however, sex is irrelevant in DLB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: While many studies have investigated the associations between fibroblast growth factor 20 (FGF20) rs1721100 (C/G) and rs12720208 (C/T) polymorphisms and susceptibility to Parkinson's disease (PD), their results are controversial. Our present meta-analysis estimated the overall association between FGF20 rs1721100 and rs12720208 polymorphisms and the risk of sporadic PD.Methods: We performed a comprehensive literature search of the PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, and Wanfang Medicine electronic databases, which was updated in April 2021. Based on strict inclusion and exclusion criteria, the analysis included a total of 10 papers involving 14 studies with 5262 cases of PD and 6075 controls. Review Manager 5.4 software was used to assess the available data from each study. The pooled odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to assess the association between the FGF20 rs1721100 and rs12720208 polymorphisms and sporadic PD risk.Results: Our results showed that the FGF20 rs1721100 G allele frequency and genotype distribution did not differ between PD patients and controls. Similarly, the FGF20 rs12720208 T allele frequency and genotype distribution did not differ significantly between the two groups. A subgroup analysis of Asian and Caucasian populations also showed the same results.Conclusions: The results of this meta-analysis indicated that neither the rs1721100 C/G nor the rs12720208 C/T variants were associated with sporadic PD susceptibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We disclose a method to obtain the transverse light-shift along the probe light of a single-axis alkali metal-noble gas co-magnetometer. The relationship between transverse compensating field and light-shift is deduced through the steady-state solution of Bloch equations. The variety of probe light intensity is used to obtain the residual magnetic field, and step modulation tests are applied to acquire the total spin-relaxation rate of electron spins and self-compensation point. The transverse light-shift can be calculated by these parameters, and it is reduced from − 0.115 to − 0.039 nT by optimizing the probe light wavelength. Finally, long-term static test for a K-Rb-21Ne co-magnetometer has been performed. The bias instability of about 0.009 deg/h and rate ramp coefficient of 0.096 (deg/h)/h have been achieved to prove the improvement of stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The objective of the study was to analyze the risk factors for worsening of the disease progression in patients with chronic subdural hematomas (CSDH) during wait-and-observation treatment regimen and conservative treatment with atorvastatin. Methods: A total of 196 patients with CSDH were recruited (98 in the atorvastatin group and 98 in the blank placebo group). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was used to identify the optimal cutoff for the hematoma volume by testing surgical and nonsurgical outcomes. Other measures, including univariate and multivariate analyses, were performed to identify the potential significant factors indicative of the outcome of therapeutic efficacy of conservative treatment through the characteristics of the baseline indicators at enrollment. Results: Over a median treatment duration of 2 months, lower total cholesterol, higher hematoma volume, and more midline shift were independent risk factors for worse outcomes of atorvastatin treatment for CSDH, and only a higher hematoma volume was an independent risk factor for spontaneous absorption in the placebo group. ROC analysis of all of the data showed that the optimal threshold of hematoma volume was 68.5 ml (sensitivity 73.5%, specificity 74%) in response to the greatest chance of switching to surgery. Conclusions: Critical independent predictors of atorvastatin monotherapy treatment success included higher total cholesterol, lower hematoma volume, and less midline shift in atorvastatin monotherapy, and higher hematoma volume was the only independent risk factor in close follow-up observation patients without any pharmacotherapy. Initial hematoma volume more than 68.5 ml may help clinicians to determine individual risk assessments and to make optimal treatment decisions. Trial Registration: http://www.ClinicalTrials.gov. Identifier NCT02024373. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Due to its low computational burden, the affine-projection-like (APL) adaptive filtering algorithm has been extensively studied for colored signal input. Recently, a robust APL algorithm was designed by adopting the M-estimate cost function in impulsive noise environment; however, its convergence rate is very slow for sparse system identification. This paper proposed a proportionate APL M-estimate (PAPLM) algorithm, which is derived by using the proportionate matrix to heighten the convergence rate. To maintain good steady-state performance of the PAPLM algorithm, a time-varying parameter PAPLM (TV-PAPLM) algorithm is proposed, which uses a modified exponential function to adjust the time-varying parameter according to the ratio of the mean square score function to the system noise variance. Moreover, the steady-state excess mean-square error performance of PAPLM algorithm is analyzed and obtained in detail. Simulation results reveal that the proposed PAPLM and TV-PAPLM algorithms achieve fast convergence rate and good steady-state performance in sparse system identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key message: A major QTL (QLr.cau-2BL) for APR to leaf rust was detected on 2BL; an SSR marker was developed to closely link with QLr.cau-2BL and validated for effectiveness of MAS. The wheat landrace Hongmazha (HMZ) possesses adult plant resistance (APR) to leaf rust. To detect and validate quantitative trait locus (QTL) for the APR, four wheat populations were assessed for leaf rust severity in a total of eight field and greenhouse experiments. The mapping population Aquileja × HMZ (120 recombinant inbred lines, RILs) was genotyped using 90 K SNP markers. A major QTL (QLr.cau-2BL) was detected between the markers IWB3854 and IWB21922 on chromosome 2BL. IWB3854 and IWB21922 were positioned at approximately 531.14 Mb and 616.48 Mb, respectively, on 2BL of IWGSC RefSeq v1.0 physical map. Based on the sequences between 531.14 and 616.48 Mb on 2BL of IWGSC RefSeq v1.0, 415 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were developed. These markers and 28 previously published SSR makers were screened; the resulted polymorphic markers were used to genotype the relatively larger population RL6058 × HMZ (371 RILs). QLr.cau-2BL was mapped within a 1.5 cM interval on 2BL map of RL6058 × HMZ, and a marker (Ta2BL_ssr7) was identified to closely link with QLr.cau-2BL. Effectiveness of selection for QLr.cau-2BL based on Ta2BL_ssr7 was validated using two populations (RL6058 × HMZ F2:3 and Jimai22 × HMZ BC4F2:3). In addition, polymorphism at Ta2BL_ssr7 was detected among a panel of 282 commercial wheat cultivars. We believe, therefore, that Ta2BL_ssr7 should be useful for introducing QLr.cau-2BL into commercial wheat cultivars and for accumulating QLr.cau-2BL with other APR QTL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose the multilayer filter fusion network (MFFN) to address the problem of visual object tracking. In MFFN, the convolutional neural network (CNN) is used to extract the multilayer spatial features and then the convolutional long short-term memory (LSTM) to extract the temporal features of images. The object image centered at the target is cropped and fed into MFFN to obtain the correlation filter and the feature map to discriminate the target from background. The correlation filter is convolved with the corresponding feature map for the same layer to produce the probability map, which is then used to estimate the target position by searching its maximum value. The correlation filter corresponds to the tracked object image that is fed into MFFN and thus contains the appearance changes of target. In our multilayer filter fusion tracking (MFFT) framework, we use two MFFNs with different inputs to track the target via coarse-to-fine location approach. The first one is used to estimate the target position from the entire image and the second one to locate the target from the estimated target position. After the networks are trained off-line they do not require online learning during tracking. Experimental results on the CVPR2013 benchmark demonstrate that our tracking algorithm achieves competitive results compared with other tracking methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was designed to investigate the effect of low-temperature laminar flow ward (LTLFW) on the Acinetobacter baumannii pneumonia (MDR-ABP) in neurosurgical intensive care unit (NICU) patients. We evaluated whether patients in a LTLFW had significantly improved clinical outcomes as compared to those in nonconstant-temperature NICU (room temperature). The association of temperature with the prevalence of ABP and A. baumannii isolates (ABI) found in NICU patients was specifically investigated. In vitro microbiological experiments were conducted to measure the proliferation, antibiotic sensitivity, and genomic profiles of A. baumannii (AB) that grew in variable temperatures. MDR-ABP patients in LTLFW had significantly improved outcomes than those in the room temperature NICU. In addition, the numbers of ABI were positively associated with mean ambient outdoor temperatures (P = 0.002), with the incidence of ABP and average numbers of ABI among NICU patients being substantially lower in the winter as compared to other seasons. However, there were no significant seasonal variations in the other strains of the top five bacteria. Consistent with these clinical observations, AB growing at 20°C and 25°C had significantly reduced viability and antibiotic resistance compared to those growing at 35°C. The expression of genes related to AB survival ability, drug resistance, and virulence also differed between AB growing at 20°C and those at 35°C. LTLFW is effective in promoting the recovery of MDR-ABP patients because low temperatures reduced the density and virulence of AB and enhanced the efficacy of antibiotics, likely at the genetic level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the recent tremendous advances of computer graphics rendering and image editing technologies, computergenerated fake images, which in general do not reflect what happens in the reality, can now easily deceive the inspection of human visual system. In this work, we propose a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based model to distinguish computergenerated (CG) images from natural images (NIs) with channel and pixel correlation. The key component of the proposed CNN architecture is a self-coding module that takes the color images as input to extract the correlation between color channels explicitly. Unlike previous approaches that directly apply CNN to solve this problem, we consider the generality of the network (or subnetwork), i.e., the newly introduced hybrid correlation module can be directly combined with existing CNN models for enhancing the discrimination capacity of original networks. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed network outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of classification performance. We also show that the newly introduced hybrid correlation module can improve the classification accuracy of different CNN architectures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tenure provides a permanent position to faculty in higher education institutions. In North America, it is granted to those who have established a record of excellence in research, teaching and services in a limited period. However, in China, research excellence (represented by the number of Web of Science publications) is highly weighted in the tenure assessment compared to excellence in teaching and services, but this has never been systematically investigated. By analyzing the tenure assessment documents from Chinese Universities, this study reveals the role of Web of Science publications in China's tenure system and presents the landscape of the tenure assessment process in Chinese higher education institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chromosome segment substitution lines (CSSLs) are ideal materials for identifying genetic effects. In this study, CSSL MBI7561 with excellent fiber quality that was selected from BC4F3:5 of CCRI45 (Gossypium hirsutum) × Hai1 (Gossypium barbadense) was used to construct 3 secondary segregating populations with 2 generations (BC5F2 and BC5F2:3). Eighty-one polymorphic markers related to 33 chromosome introgressive segments on 18 chromosomes were finally screened using 2292 SSR markers which covered the whole tetraploid cotton genome. A total of 129 quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with fiber quality (103) and yield-related traits (26) were detected on 17 chromosomes, explaining 0.85–30.35% of the phenotypic variation; 39 were stable (30.2%), 53 were common (41.1%), 76 were new (58.9%), and 86 had favorable effects on the related traits. More QTL were distributed in the Dt subgenome than in the At subgenome. Twenty-five stable QTL clusters (with stable or common QTL) were detected on 22 chromosome introgressed segments. Finally, the 6 important chromosome introgressed segments (Seg-A02-1, Seg-A06-1, Seg-A07-2, Seg-A07-3, Seg-D07-3, and Seg-D06-2) were identified as candidate chromosome regions for fiber quality, which should be given more attention in future QTL fine mapping, gene cloning, and marker-assisted selection (MAS) breeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the relationship between leadership, team size, and citation impact in China's international research output from 1980 to 2016, measured in terms of number of authors, institutions, countries, and citations. Distinction is here made between leading and non-leading Chinese international collaborations, which respectively refer to papers whose first or corresponding author is affiliated to a Chinese institution and papers co-authored by researchers from a Chinese institution but whose first and corresponding authors are not. Analysis at the individual, institutional, and country level show that while average team size by paper increases over the period, the main collaboration mode remains bilateral at the country level. We also observe a positive relationship between team size and research impact up to a certain point, but Chinese-led international collaborations tend to imply smaller teams and have lower impact than non-leading collaborations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional monitoring technologies have the limitation to monitor because the extensive arrangement of the sensing system has caused many problems such as the increase of costs, difficult in arrangement, inconvenient maintenance, massive amounts of data, etc. To overcome this limitation, it is necessary to obtain new monitoring technology which is able to quickly analyze crane structure and its vulnerable area (or weakest link), and take the reasonable arrangement to sensing system. Therefore in this paper, we proposed the vulnerability analysis method and implementation of crane health monitoring based on vulnerability theory and methodology, such as the importance and redundancy coefficient, determination of failure mode and search of failure path, indeterminacy of static and kinematic, strain energy and flow potential, etc. Also we evaluated the effectiveness of our proposed method through the numerical example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key message: A QTL on 2AL for reducing yellow rust severity was identified from a Chinese wheat landrace, being more effective than Yr18, with evidence for durable resistance from field observations.Abstract: Utilization of wheat resistance is an important strategy to control yellow rust. The Chinese wheat landrace Hong Qimai (HQM) and the advanced breeding line AQ24788-83 (AQ; a progeny of HQM) can significantly reduce disease severity at the adult-plant growth stage. HQM has maintained adult-plant resistance for a prolonged period of time. To study the inheritance of the resistance, 126 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) derived from the cross Thatcher (TC) × HQM and 138 RILs from Luke × AQ were assessed for disease severity in six field trials. A genetic map of TC × HQM was constructed by genotyping these RILs using the 90 K wheat single-nucleotide polymorphism chip. Luke × AQ map was previously constructed for another disease study and also utilized here. Based on these maps and disease data, a quantitative trait locus (QTL) was detected on the chromosome arm 2AL from both TC × HQM and Luke × AQ and designated as QYr.cau-2AL. The resistance allele at QYr.cau-2AL came from HQM and AQ. QYr.cau-2AL was significantly effective across all the test environments and different genetic backgrounds, with its effect magnitude being higher than that of Yr18. QYr.cau-2AL synergistically acted with Yr18 and a QTL for high-temperature adult-plant resistance on 2BS, resulting in an elevated resistance from the juvenile plant growth stage onward, although QYr.cau-2AL alone displayed no substantial resistance at juvenile stage. Evidence indicates that QYr.cau-2AL is novel and confers durable resistance, and thus, should have high potential value for practical breeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key message: A novel QTL for FHB resistance was mapped on wheat 7DL, being effective in multiple genetic backgrounds and environments, and comparable to Fhb1 in effect magnitude.Abstract: Fusarium head blight (FHB) is one of the major fungal diseases affecting wheat production in many countries. The wheat line AQ24788-83 (AQ) possesses FHB resistance. The American wheat cultivar Luke is FHB susceptible. A Luke × AQ population consisting of 1652 advanced recombinant inbred lines (RILs) was developed, from which 272 RILs were randomly sampled and used to construct a linkage map. Another 154 RILs were selected for homogeneity in plant height (PH) and flowering date (FD). This selection strategy was adopted to reduce possible confounding effects on FHB assessment due to variation in PH and FD. The 272 and 154 RILs were genotyped applying simple sequence repeat (SSR), diversity arrays technology (DArT) and single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. The two sets of RILs were evaluated for FHB resistance applying point inoculation in greenhouses; the 154 RILs were also evaluated applying spray inoculation in multiple field environments. The linkage map consisted of 2088 SSR, DArT, and SNP markers. A FHB resistance quantitative trait locus (QTL), designated as QFhb.cau-7DL, was detected on chromosome arm 7DL; this QTL was closely linked to the SSR marker gwm428 (http://www.wheat.pw.usda.gov/ggpages/SSR/). QFhb.cau-7DL was significantly effective (α = 0.01) in every test trial, and its effectiveness was validated using three additional wheat crosses. Sumai 3 (donor wheat of the FHB resistance gene Fhb1) was used in one of these crosses. QFhb.cau-7DL was comparable to Fhb1 in effect magnitude, providing a great potential for improving FHB resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences in diapause traits can result in the seasonal reproductive isolation of host plant-associated insect populations and thereby facilitate the population divergence. The striped stem borer, Chilo suppressalis, has two host plant-associated populations: rice population and water-oat population. Several studies have found evidence that seasonal reproductive isolation between these populations is at least partially due to interpopulation differences in diapause. However, there still lack unambiguous evidence comparing characteristics of diapause induction for both populations. We compared the photoperiodic response and the age of peak photoperiod sensitivity of these populations and used RNA-Seq to compare the molecular response of diapause induction between populations. The photoperiodic response of the two populations differed at 25 °C; the critical night length of larvae from the rice population was 11 h and 20 min, whereas no obvious critical night length was in those from the water-oat population. In rice population, larvae were most sensitive to photoperiod at 9-12 days of age, whereas in water-oat population, larvae were the most sensitive to photoperiod at 9-10 days of age. The RNA-Seq results indicated that there were several differences in the molecular response of diapause induction and small overlap in differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between populations. Furthermore, GO analysis indicated that both rice and water-oat population’s DEGs were significantly enriched in heme and iron binding. Besides, water-oat population’s DEGs were significantly enriched in metabolizing nutrients but rice population’s DEGs do not. Thus, our results described differences in diapause induction between rice and water-oat populations of C. suppressalis which could affect the timing of diapause and thereby contribute to the seasonal reproductive isolation of these host plant-associated populations. In conclusion, this work suggests that difference in diapause induction could promote the population divergence in insects associated with different host plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In practical decision-making problems, probabilistic linguistic term sets (PLTSs) are a very useful and flexible way to represent the qualitative judgments of experts. The PLTSs also have strong ability to express the information vagueness and uncertainty in the real-world applications. Considering the interrelationship among the input arguments of PLTSs, we extend the geometric Bonferroni mean to the probabilistic linguistic environment and design an approach for the application of multi-criteria group decision-making with PLTSs. First, we develop the probabilistic linguistic geometric Bonferroni mean and the weighted probabilistic linguistic geometric Bonferroni mean (WPLGBM) operators. The properties of these aggregation operators are investigated. Second, we utilize the WPLGBM operators to fuse the information in the probabilistic linguistic multi-criteria group decision-making (PLMCGDM) problem, which can obtain much more information in the process of group decision-making. By introducing the grey relational analysis method, we present its extension and further design a new approach for the PLMCGDM. Finally, an example is given to elaborate our proposed algorithm and successfully validate its performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plutonium is one of the key radionuclides in nuclear decommission. In this study, a rapid method was developed to analyze Pu for concrete samples using total digestion, CaF2/LaF3 coprecipitation, extraction chromatography using TEVA and DGA resins, and ICP-MS measurement. The whole analytical process can be achieved within 2 days, with sufficiently high decontamination factors of interfering elements and high Pu chemical recovery (57-93%). The high throughput (22 samples/2 days) and low LODs (0.008 mBq g−1 for 239Pu and 0.02 mBq g−1 for 240Pu) allow this method to effectively detect low level Pu contamination in concrete samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Excessive inflammation after traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major cause of secondary TBI. Though several inflammatory biomarkers have been postulated as the risk factors of TBI, there has not been any comprehensive description of them. Fingolimod, a new kind of immunomodulatory agent which can diminish various kinds of inflammatory responses, has shown additional therapeutic effects in the treatment of intracranial cerebral hematoma (ICH), ischemia, spinal cord injury (SCI), and many other CNS disorders. However, its therapeutic application has not been confirmed in TBI. Thus, we hypothesized that a 3-day consecutive fingolimod administration could broadly modulate the inflammatory reactions and improve the outcomes of TBI. The TBI models of C57/BL6 mice were established with the controlled cortical impact injury (CCI) system. A 3-day consecutive fingolimod therapy (given at 1, 24, and 48 h post injury) was performed at a dose of 1 mg/kg. The flow cytometry, immunoflourence, cytokine array, and ELISA were all applied to evaluate the immune cells and inflammatory markers in the injured brains. Immunohistochemical staining with anti-APP antibody was performed to assess the axonal damage. The neurological functions of these TBI models were assessed by mNSS/Rota-rod and Morris water maze (MWM). The brain water content and integrity of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) were also observed. On the 3rd day after TBI, the accumulation of inflammatory cytokines and chemokines reached the peak and administration of fingolimod reduced as many as 20 kinds of cytokines and chemokines. Fingolimod decreased infiltrated T lymphocytes and NK cells but increased the percentage of regulatory T (Treg) cells, and the concentration of IL-10 on the 3rd day after TBI. Fingolimod also notably attenuated the general activated microglia but augmented the M2/M1 ratio accompanied by decreased axonal damage. The neurological functions were improved after the fingolimod treatment accompanied with alleviation of the brain edema and BBB damage. This study suggests that the 3-day consecutive fingolimod administration extensively modulates multiple immuno-inflammatory responses and improves the neurological deficits after TBI, and therefore, it may be a new approach to the treatment of secondary TBI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A tracking method based on adaptive relay detection using primary and auxiliary detectors is proposed. In this framework, the tracking problem is formulated as the continuous relay detection, where primary detector and auxiliary detectors collaborate to locate the target and are updated online. Each of the detectors corresponds to one of the appearances of target that have appeared. Primary detector that always corresponds to the current appearance of target is set to conduct object detection, while auxiliary detectors that correspond to the previous appearances of target are used to re-detect the target when it shows a previous appearance. To achieve better classification with less features and ferns, the detectors are constructed based on the feature selection by the mutual information. As the previous appearances of target are recorded by the detectors correspondingly and only primary detector needs to update, our tracker can achieve long-term real-time object tracking in unconstrained environments. Experimental results on challenging real-world video sequences demonstrate that our tracker outperforms most of the state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atherosclerotic plaque vulnerability is the major cause for acute stroke and could be regulated by macrophage polarization. MicroRNA-181b (miR-181b) was involved in macrophage differential. Here, we explore whether miR-181b could regulate atherosclerotic plaque vulnerability by modulating macrophage polarization and the underline mechanisms. In acute stroke patients with atherosclerotic plaque, we found that the serum level of miR-181b was decreased. Eight-week apolipoprotein E knockout (ApoE) mice were randomly divided into three groups ( N = 10): mice fed with normal saline (Ctrl), mice fed with high-fat diet, and tail vein injection with miRNA agomir negative control (AG-NC)/miR-181b agomir (181b-AG, a synthetic miR-181b agonist). We found that the serum level of miR-181b in AG-NC group was lower than that in Ctrl group. Moreover, 181b-AG could upregulate miR-181b expression, reduce artery burden and attenuate atherosclerotic plaque vulnerability by modulating macrophage polarization. In RAW264.7 cells treated with oxidized low-density lipoprotein (ox-LDL), we found miR-181b could reverse the function of ox-LDL on M1/M2 markers at both mRNA and protein levels. Furthermore, by employing luciferase reporter assay, we found that Notch1 was a direct target of miR-181b and could be regulated by miR-181b in vivo and in vitro. Finally, inhibition of Notch1 could abolish the function of downregulating miR-181b on increasing M2 phenotype macrophages. Our study demonstrates that administration of miR-181b could reduce atherosclerotic plaque vulnerability partially through modulating macrophage phenotype by directly targeting Notch1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]