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Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) increases the risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and metabolic diseases. The pancreas of fetuses with IUGR is usually characterized by pancreatic dysplasia and reduced levels of insulin secretion caused by the diminished replication of β-cells. Previous studies showed that a low dose of ouabain could reduce the apoptosis of embryonic nephric cells during IUGR and partially restore the number of nephrons at birth. The rescued kidneys functioned well and decreased the prevalence of hypertension. Thus, we hypothesized that ouabain could rescue pancreatic development during IUGR and reduce the morbidity of T2DM and metabolic diseases. Maternal malnutrition was used to induce the IUGR model, and then a low dose of ouabain was administered to rats with IUGR during pregnancy. Throughout the experiment, we monitored the pattern of weight increase and evaluated the metabolic parameters in the offspring in different stages. Male, but not female, offspring in the IUGR group presented catch-up growth. Ouabain could benefit the impaired glucose tolerance of male offspring; however, this desirable effect was eliminated by aging. The insulin sensitivity was significantly impaired in male offspring with IUGR, but it was improved by ouabain, even during old age. However, in the female offspring, low birth weight appeared to be a beneficial factor even in old age; administering ouabain exacerbated these favorable effects. Our data suggested that IUGR influenced glucose metabolism in a sex-specific manner and ouabain treatment during pregnancy exerted strongly contrasting effects in male and female rats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mites from the Acaroidea (Sarcoptiformes: Astigmatina) are important pests of various stored products, posing potential threats to preserved foods. In addition, mites can cause allergic diseases. Complete mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) are valuable resources for different research fields, including comparative genomics, molecular evolutionary analysis, and phylogenetic inference. We sequenced and annotated the complete mitogenomes of Thyreophagus entomophagus and Acarus siro. A comparative analysis was made between mitogenomic sequences from 10 species representing nine genera within Acaroidea. The mitogenomes of T. entomophagus and A. siro contained 37 genes, including 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNAs (tRNAs), two ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs), and one control region. In Acaroidea species, mitogenomes have highly conserved gene size and order, and codon usage. Among Acaroidea mites, most PCGs were found to be under purifying selection, implying that most PCGs might have evolved slowly. Our findings showed that nad4 evolved most rapidly, whereas cox1 and cox3 evolved most slowly. The evolutionary rates of Acaroidea vary considerably across families. In addition, selection analyses were also performed in 23 astigmatid mite species, and the evolutionary rate of the same genes in different superfamilies exhibited large differences. Phylogenetic results are mostly consistent with those identified by previous phylogenetic studies on astigmatid mites. The monophyly of Acaroidea was rejected, and the Suidasiidae and Lardoglyphidae appeared to deviate from the Acaroidea branch. Our research proposed a review of the current Acaroidea classification system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the boundedness and Hölder continuity of local weak solutions to the following nonhomogeneous equation ∂ t u (x , t) + P. V. ∫ R N K (x , y , t) | u (x , t) - u (y , t) | p - 2 (u (x , t) - u (y , t)) d y = f (x , t , u) in Q T = Ω × (0 , T) , where the symmetric kernel K(x, y, t) has a generalized form of the fractional p-Laplace operator of s-order. We impose some structural conditions on the function f and use the De Giorgi-Nash-Moser iteration to establish the boundedness of local weak solutions in the a priori way. Based on the boundedness result, we also obtain Hölder continuity of bounded solutions in the superquadratic case. These results can be regarded as a counterpart to the elliptic case due to Di Castro et al. (Ann Inst H Poincaré Anal Non Linéaire, 2016). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) is, in general, accompanied by a reduction of the nephron number, which increases the risk of hypertension and renal dysfunction. Studies have revealed that ouabain can partially restore the number of nephrons during IUGR. However, there is limited information regarding the melioration of nephric structure and function. We used maternal malnutrition to induce an IUGR model in rats. Subsequently, we used a mini-pump to administer ouabain to IUGR rats during pregnancy. Male offspring were divided randomly into two groups. One group was fed a normal diet, whereas the other was fed an isocaloric 8% high-salt diet. Maternal malnutrition led to a reduction in the birth weight and number of nephrons in offspring. At the end of a 40-week follow-up period, offspring from the IUGR group had high blood pressure and abnormal excretion of urinary protein; these parameters were exacerbated in offspring fed a high-salt diet. However, ouabain administration during pregnancy could partially restore the number of nephrons in IUGR offspring, normalize blood pressure, and reduce urinary protein excretion, even when challenged with a high-salt diet. Pathology findings revealed that IUGR, particularly following feeding of a high-salt diet, damaged the ultrastructure of glomeruli, but these harmful effects were ameliorated in offspring treated with ouabain. Collectively, our data suggest that ouabain could rescue nephrogenesis in IUGR newborns and protect (at least in part) the structure and function of the kidney during adulthood even when encountering unfavorable environmental challenges in subsequent life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a necessary and sufficient condition to guarantee that the extended function of the solution for Poisson's equation in a smaller domain by zero extension is still the solution of the corresponding extension problem in a larger domain. We prove the results under the frameworks of classical solutions, strong solutions and weak solutions. Furthermore, we give some observations for the nonlinear p-Laplace equation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study a class of non-homogeneous quasilinear elliptic equations with measure data to obtain an optimal regularity estimate. We prove that the gradient of a weak solution to the problem is as integrable as the first order maximal function of the associated measure in the Orlicz spaces up to a correct power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we prove the existence and uniqueness of both nonnegative renormalized and entropy solutions for the fractional p-Laplacian evolution problems with nonnegative L 1 data. In addition, we obtain the equivalence of renormalized and entropy solutions and establish a comparison result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work gives a rigorous proof of the existence of propagating traveling waves of a nonlinear reaction-diffusion system which is a general Gray-Scott model of the pre-mixed isothermal autocatalytic chemical reaction of order m (m>1) between two chemical species, a reactant A and an auto-catalyst B, A+mB→(m+1)B, and a super-linear decay of order n>1, B→C, where 1

We study the blow-up and/or global existence of the following p-Laplacian evolution equation with variable source power where Ω is either a bounded domain or the whole space ℝ, q( x) is a positive and continuous function defined in Ω with 0 < q = inf q( x) ⩽ q( x) ⩽ sup q( x) = q+ < ∞. It is demonstrated that the equation with variable source power has much richer dynamics with interesting phenomena which depends on the interplay of q( x) and the structure of spatial domain Ω, compared with the case of constant source power. For the case that Ω is a bounded domain, the exponent p − 1 plays a crucial role. If q+ > p − 1, there exist blow-up solutions, while if q < p − 1, all the solutions are global. If q > p − 1, there exist global solutions, while for given q < p − 1 < q , there exist some function q( x) and Ω such that all nontrivial solutions will blow up, which is called the Fujita phenomenon. For the case Ω = ℝ, the Fujita phenomenon occurs if 1 < q ⩽ q ⩽ p − 1 + p/ N, while if q > p − 1 + p/ N, there exist global solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urothelial cancer associated 1 (UCA1) is an example of functional long noncoding RNAs involved in many biologic processes. However, little is known about the association between UCA1 expression and metastasis in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). Findings of this study confirmed that not only UCA1 was aberrantly upregulated in EOC tissues and cells, but also correlated with status of lymph node metastasis and FIGO stage. Furthermore, univariate and multivariate analyses showed that UCA1 was a prognostic factor for overall survival in EOC patients. In vitro, knockdown of UCA1 reduced the invasion and migration ability of EOC cells. The results showed that UCA1 could function as an endogenous sponge by directly binding to miR-485-5p. Depletion of UCA1 was involved in the downregulation of matrix metallopeptidase 14 (MMP14) expression, a target gene of miR-485-5p. In conclusion, our work indicates that UCA1 is a new prognostic biomarker for EOC, establishing a novel connection among UCA1, miR-485-5p, and MMP14 in EOC metastasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In actuarial science, Panjer recursion (1981) is used in insurance to compute the loss distribution of the compound risk models. When the severity distribution is continuous with density function, numerical calculation for the compound distribution by applying Panjer recursion will involve an approximation of the integration. In order to simplify the numerical algorithms, we apply Bernstein approximation for the continuous severity distribution function and obtain approximated recursive equations, which are used for computing the approximated values of the compound distribution. The theoretical error bound for the approximation is also obtained. Numerical results show that our algorithm provides reliable results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we study the existence and uniqueness of both weak solutions and entropy solutions for the Dirichlet boundary value problem of a class of non-uniformly elliptic equations. A comparison result is also discussed. Some well-known elliptic equations are the special cases of this equation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current responses of a generation/collection (G/C) system based on dual micropipettes are simulated by the boundary element (BE) method, from which the collection efficiencies for various pipettes with different geometries are calculated. The influence of the shape of a dual micropipette on the collection efficiency, such as curvature and symmetry of the pipette, as well as the thickness of glassy band between generator and collector, is presented and discussed in detail. Moreover, the simulation results have been tested using the experiments of potassium and sodium ions transfers facilitated by dibenzo-18-crown-6 (DB18C6) at the water/1,2-dichloroethane (W/DCE) interface. These results demonstrate that the BE method is an efficient and useful approach for the simulation of collection efficiency of symmetric geometries of dual micropipettes operating in the G/C mode under transport conditions of diffusion control. However, there are still some problems for the cases of asymmetric dual micropipettes, which show rather large differences between the values of simulated and experimental ones. This work also indicates that such an ionic G/C technique should have advantages in applications when the dual pipettes have symmetric geometries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we obtain local L p estimates for the parabolic polyharmonic equations by a straightforward approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]