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Since the first discovery of dinosaur eggs announced by the American Museum of Natural History (central Asiatic expeditions to Mongolia) in 1923, these fossils became widely recognised from Mesozoic strata in Asia and elsewhere. In the 1920s, and actually before 1923, dinosaur eggs had been collected from another part of Asia, specifically Liaoning Province in northeastern China. From 1921 to the late 1920s, five eggs were collected from the Cenomanian Quantou Formation during construction, and thus represent an important historic collection as some of the earliest dinosaur eggs discovered in Asia. Here, we describe one egg from this collection and assign it to Paraspheroolithus irenensis, an egg taxon that likely belonged to hadrosaur dinosaurs. The egg is approximately 7 × 8 cm in diameter, with eggshell that displays typical spheroolithid microstructure and is just over a millimetre in thickness. Paraspheroolithus irenensis is shown to be the most widespread spheroolithid oospecies in China, and our comparative work extends its geographic range to northeastern most China. The Quantou Formation thus has yielded at least three spheroolithid oospecies, indicating the potential for a diversity of hadrosaur or related ornithopod species in the region at that time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Morinda officinalis F.C. How. (MO) (Rubiaceae) can strengthen bone function. Objective: To examine the functional mechanism and effect of MO polysaccharides (MOPs) in rats with glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis (GIOP). Materials and methods: Rats with GIOP were treated with 5, 15 or 45 mL/kg of MOP [n=15 for each dose, intraperitoneal (i.p.) injection every other day for 8 weeks]. The body weight of rats and histomorphology of bone tissues were examined. Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs)-derived exosomes (Exo) were collected and identified. Bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMMs) were induced to differentiate into osteoclasts and treated with BMSC-Exo for in vitro studies. Results: MOP reduced the body weight (5, 15, or 45 mg/kg MOP vs. phosphate-buffered saline: 8%, 15% and 25%, p<0.01), elevated the bone volume to tissue volume (BV/TV), mean trabecular thickness (Tb.Th), mean trabecular number (Tb.N) and mean connectivity density (Conn.D) (40-86%, p<0.01), decreased the mean trabecular separation/spacing (Tb.Sp) (22-37%, p<0.01), increased the cortical bone continuity (35-90%, p<0.01) and elevated RUNX family transcription factor 2 and RANK levels (5-12%, p<0.01), but suppressed matrix metallopeptidase 9 and cathepsin K levels (9-20%, p<0.01) in femur tissues. BMSC-Exo from MOP-treated rats (MOP-Exo) suppressed osteoclastic differentiation and proliferation of BMMs. The downregulation of microRNA-101-3p (miR-101-3p) or the upregulation of prostaglandinendoperoxide synthase 2 (PTGS2) blocked the functions of MOP-Exo. Discussion and conclusions: MOP inhibits osteoclastic differentiation and could potentially be used for osteoporosis management. This suppression may be enhanced by the upregulation of miR-101-3p or the inhibition of PTGS2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The morphological characteristic of Dendrobium moschatum (Buch.-Ham.) Sw. 1805 is very distinctive among Dendrobium Sw. 1799, and it has high medicinal and ornamental values. Here, we reported the first complete chloroplast genome of D. moschatum. The complete genome of D. moschatum was 159,701 bp in length with 130 genes, including 38 tRNA, 8 rRNA, and 84 protein-coding genes. Phylogenetic analysis showed that D. moschatum was strongly allied with D. denneanum Kerr. 1933. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A modified power spectrum of biological tissues involving upper length-scale and bottom length-scale was introduced. In addition, the analytical expression of Hermite–Gaussian rectangular vortex beam with the parameter ( n = 2) in free space was derived. By this modified power spectrum, we established the normalized probability model of orbital angular momentum (OAM) states for Hermite–Gaussian rectangular vortex beams propagation in biological tissues. The results revealed that Hermite–Gaussian rectangular vortex beam exhibits a better anti-interference performance than Laguerre–Gaussian beam under the same conditions. The Hermite–Gaussian rectangular vortex beam propagates through a biological tissue with large bottom length-scale, small upper length-scale, small characteristic length of heterogeneity, low the fractal dimensions, and weak fluctuation strength, which produces a large normalized probability of signal OAM states. These results are fundamental to improving light propagation in tissue and provide a quantitative guidance for medical imaging and diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant research on the negative effects of corporate brand image crisis and corresponding strategies on brand image restoration have received wide academic attention. This research predominantly values employee participation as a critical bridge to obtain consumer forgiveness and subsequently contributes to repairing corporate brand image in a crisis. Through undertaking a positivist study, the findings indicate that employee participation positively influences the restoration of corporate brand image. Consumer forgiveness (both individual and group level) plays the mediation role in predicting corporate brand image. Last, employee's cognitive capital moderates the relationship between group forgiveness and the restoration of corporate brand image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The partial substitution of mineral phosphorus (P) fertilizer by crop straw can mitigate its consumption and losing risk to the environment. However, the changes in soil P availability, acid phosphatase (AcP) activity, and grain yield under mineral P fertilizer reduction and crop straw incorporation remain poorly understood. This study evaluated the effects of a 20% reduction in mineral P fertilizer plus maize straw addition on soil P availability, AcP activity, and maize grain yield, as well as their relationships in a 5-year continually planted maize field in northeast China. Results showed that five years of continuous 20% of mineral P fertilizer reduction and maize straw incorporation significantly increased soil NaHCO3-Po and NaOH I-Pi concentrations, and did not decrease soil labile inorganic P concentration and grain yield compared to the treatment where 100% mineral P fertilizer was applied without straw addition. Additionally, there were significant positive correlations between soil AcP activity, labile inorganic P concentration, and grain yield, indicating AcP might play an important role in maintaining soil P availability and grain yield. Overall, the addition of maize straw can effectively replace 20% of the mineral P fertilizer and could be used as an appropriate fertilization practice in northeast China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Talaromyces marneffei is the only dimorphic species in its genus and causes a fatal systemic mycosis named talaromycosis. Our previous study indicated that knockdown of AcuD gene (encodes isocitrate lyase of glyoxylate bypass) of T. marneffei by RNA interference approach attenuated the virulence of T. marneffei, while the virulence of the AcuD knockout strains was not studied. In this study, T. marneffei-zebrafish infection model was successfully established through hindbrain microinjection with different amounts of T. marneffei yeast cells. After co-incubated at 28°C, the increasing T. marneffei inoculum doses result in greater larval mortality; and hyphae generation might be one virulence factor involved in T. marneffei-zebrafish infection. Moreover, the results demonstrated that the virulence of the ΔAcuD was significantly attenuated in this Zebrafish infection model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focussing on the problem that redundant nodes in the kernel incremental extreme learning machine (KI-ELM) which leads to ineffective iteration increase and reduce the learning efficiency, a novel improved hybrid intelligent deep kernel incremental extreme learning machine (HI-DKIELM) based on a hybrid intelligent algorithms and kernel incremental extreme learning machine is proposed. At first, hybrid intelligent algorithms are proposed based on differential evolution (DE) and multiple population grey wolf optimization (MPGWO) methods which used to optimize the hidden layer neuron parameters and then to determine the effective hidden layer neurons number. The learning efficiency of the algorithm is improved by reducing the network complexity. Then, we bring in the deep network structure to the kernel incremental extreme learning machine to extract the original input data layer by layer gradually. The experiment results show that the HI-DKIELM methods proposed in this paper with more compact network structure have higher prediction accuracy and better ability of generation compared with other ELM methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physiological (metabolite analysis) and molecular (gene expression) approaches were used to understand the mechanism underlying russet formation in response to the application of GA3 and CPPU (Forchlorfenuron) in a Japanese table grape cultivar 'Shine Muscat'. Several different concentrations of GA3 and GA3 + CPPU [25 mg L−1 GA3 (A), 25 mg L−1 GA3 + 5 mg L−1 CPPU (B), 25 mg L−1 GA3 + 10 mg L−1 CPPU (C), and 25 mg L−1 GA3 + 15 mg L−1 CPPU (D)] were applied to grape berry clusters at two weeks after flowering (WAF). No russet was observed on the berries treated with the 'C' combination. Lower levels of phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL) activity was observed in the treated samples, relative to the untreated material. Reduced peroxide (POD) activity was also observed in response to different treatments, while the expression of Peroxidase 17 and Phenylalanine ammonia-lyase G1 genes mirrored lignin content. Increased activity of 4-coenzyme A ligase (4CL) may contribute to decreasing the level of russet and help to improve grape berry quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cronobacter sakazakii 505108 was isolated from a sputum specimen of a neonate with severe pneumonia. C. sakazakii 505108 co-harbors 3 resistance plasmids of the IncHI2, IncX3, and IncFIB incomparability groups, respectively. These 3 plasmids have acquired several accessory modules, which carry an extremely large number of resistance genes, especially including those involved in resistance to carbapenems, aminoglycoside, tetracyclines, and phenicols and sulphonamide/trimethoprim. These plasmid-borne antibiotic resistance genes were associated with insertion sequences, integrons, and transposons, indicating that the assembly and mobilization of the corresponding accessory modules with complex chimera structures are facilitated by transposition and/or homologous recombination. This is the first report of fully sequence plasmids in clinical Cronobacter, which provides a deeper insight into plasmid-mediated multi-drug resistance in Cronobacter from hospital settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the delay-dependent stability problem of recurrent neural networks with interval time-varying delays. An appropriate Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional is constructed and the combination method of Wirtinger inequality and reciprocally convex optimization technique is employed. Combing a new activation function segmentation method of the boundary condition and the orthogonal complement lemma, three further improved delay-dependent stability criteria are established. Finally, two numerical examples show the effectiveness of our proposed method by comparison with the recent existing works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The melt strength (MS) and extensional viscosity of low-density polyethylene/poly(butylene succinate) (LDPE/PBS) blends were measured using a melt-spinning technique to investigate the effects of extrusion conditions and mixing ratios on the extensional flow. The experimental results indicated that maximal extensional length and MS of the LDPE/PBS blends decreased with an increase of PBS content. The response of the MS to the extrusion rate depended on the components of the blends. The extensional viscosity of the LDPE/PBS blends decreased with the increases of PBS content, extrusion rate, and extensional strain rate. Extensional master curves were suitable for the LDPE/PBS blends, and the scaling factor decreased with the increase of extrusion rate according to a power law. When the PBS content was not more than 40%, with the further increase of the PBS content, the sensitivity of the scaling factor to the extrusion rate decreased. However, when the PBS content was 60%, the sensitivity of the scaling factor to the extrusion rate increased, and was close to the sensitivity of the LDPE melt. Based on the extensional master curve and the back propagation (BP) neural network model, predicted extensional viscosities were compared with the experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: We recently reported that F2, an oligomer procyanidin fraction isolated from grape seeds, triggered an original form of cell death in U-87 human glioblastoma cells with a phenotype resembling morphological characteristics of paraptosis. However, the specific death mode induced by F2 and the mechanism of its action have not been assessed so far. Objective: In the present work, we therefore further investigated the death mode of human glioblastma cells induced by F2 and gained insight into the nature of the signaling pathways activated by F2 in glioblastoma cells. Materials and methods: Cell viability assay using MTT, (AO/EB) double staining, Western blot analysis, and Ca2+ assay using fura-2. Results: Morphology studies revealed extensive cytoplasmic vacuolization in dying cells and no apoptotic body formation, membrane bleb formation, or nuclear fragmentation, though some was accompanied by MAPK activation and new protein synthesis, and was independent of caspase activation. Moreover, we demonstrated the involvement of calcium mobilization in F2-induced U-87 cell signaling. Discussion and conclusion: Altogether we showed that F2 induced a kind of cell death resembling paraptosis in U-87 cells. The current report complements previous studies on the characterization of F2-induced U-87 cell death, enhances our understanding of the action mechanism of F2 on glioma, and helps in the development of novel antitumor therapeutics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mucosally induced tolerance is an attractive strategy for immunotherapy of autoimmune diseases. Treatment of nonobese diabetic (NOD) mice with a mixture of autoantigen peptides is better geared toward slowing the progression of late stage type 1 diabetes (T1D) than treatment with any of the peptides alone. In this study, we constructed a fusion protein CTB-GADIII. It contains cholera toxin B subunit (CTB) and three tandem peptides derived from glutamic acid decarboxylase 65 (GAD65), p217-236, p524-538 and p290-306. The purified renatured pentamer fusion protein was effective in inhibiting the development of diabetes in NOD mice when the mice were nasally immunized three times (8w, 10w and 12w). Prevention of diabetes was associated with special humoral immune tolerance against tandem peptides GADIII. These data indicate that using CTB as a vaccine carrier, tandem GAD65 peptides can prevent T1D in NOD mice at the late stage of disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]