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This paper proposes a rolling bearing fault diagnosis method based on the enhanced channel attention network. The vibration signals are collected via a wireless sensor node, which are input to the neural network, and channel attention block is used to strengthen the assignment of important features, so that the attention of network is paid onto the critical fault information. Furthermore, channel attention block and residual convolution block are combined to form an enhanced channel attention network to extract the detail features. Experiment results show that the model can achieve 100% recognition accuracy for rolling bearings in various working conditions. It is also shown that the proposed new learning algorithm can provide a higher diagnosis accuracy than those state-of-the-arts in a strong disturbance environment, which reflects better robustness and generalisation ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qingyi granules can be used to effectively treat patients with severe acute pancreatitis (SAP). To elucidate the role of gut microbiota-mediated metabolism in the therapeutic effects of Qingyi granules. Sprague–Dawley rats were grouped into the sham operation, SAP model, Qingyi granule intervention (Q, 1.8 g/kg) and emodin intervention (E, 50 mg/kg) groups and observed for 24 h. H&E staining and ELISA were used for histopathological analysis and serum enzyme and cytokine assays. 16S rDNA sequencing and UHPLC-HRMS were used for gut microbiota analysis and untargeted metabolomics. In SAP rats, Qingyi granules decreased the pancreatic pathological score (Q, 7.4 ± 1.14; SAP, 11.6 ± 1.14, p < 0.01); serum amylase (Q, 121.2 ± 6.7; SAP, 144.3 ± 8.86, p < 0.05), lipase (Q, 566 ± 20.34; SAP, 656.7 ± 29.32, p < 0.01), and diamineoxidase (Q, 492.8 ± 26.08; SAP, 566.1 ± 26.83, p < 0.05) activities; and IL-1β (Q, 29.48 ± 0.88; SAP, 36.17 ± 1.88, p < 0.01), IL-6 (Q, 112.2 ± 3.57; SAP, 128.9 ± 9.09, p < 0.05) and TNF-α (Q, 215.3 ± 8.67; SAP, 266.4 ± 28.03, p < 0.05) levels. SAP induced Helicobacter and Lactobacillus overgrowth and suppressed Romboutsia and Allobaculum growth and caused aberrations in bacterial metabolites, which were partly reversed by Qingyi granules. Qingyi granules can modulate the gut microbiota and metabolic abnormalities to ameliorate SAP. Multi-omics approaches allow systematic study of the pharmacological mechanisms of compound prescriptions for critical illnesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the convolutional neural network (CNN) has been widely applied to hyperspectral image classification because of its powerful feature capture ability. Nevertheless, the performance of most convolutional operations is limited by the fixed shape and size of the convolutional kernel, which causes CNN cannot fully extract global features. To address this issue, this article proposes a novel classification architecture named spatial-spectral hierarchical Vision Permutator (S2HViP). It contains a spectral module and a spatial module. In the spectral module, we divide the data into groups along the spectral dimension and treat each pixel within the group as a spectral token. Spectral long-range dependencies are obtained by fusing intra- and inter-group spectral correlations captured by multi-layer perceptrons (MLPs). In the spatial module, we first model spatial information via morphological methods and divide the resulting spatial feature maps into spatial tokens of uniform size. Then, the global spatial information is extracted through MLPs. Finally, the extracted spectral and spatial features are combined for classification. Particularly, the proposed MLP structure is an improved Vision Permutator, which presents a hierarchical fusion strategy aiming at generating discriminative features. Experimental results show that S2HViP can provide competitive performance compared to several state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To accommodate the diverse users demands for consumer products, enterprises need to design and develop different lines of products according to different groups of users. Dynamic internet data, including product reviews, user attributes, and product configurations, are utilised to model users' stochastic product choice behaviours and mine the product design requirements of features, performance levels, and quantity. First, the web crawler is applied to collect internet data, and then the data are structured and the demand information is retrieved. Second, a product choice model is employed to capture the heterogeneity and correlation of user demands on product features. In particular, users' implicit requirements in terms of product function and performance are elicited from the text mining of product reviews. Third, incorporating various user requirements mined from dynamic internet data, graph theory analysis is introduced into design generation, product improvement, and market analysis. A case study on Chinese smartphones is presented, where the results show that the proposed method is practical and suitable for product-design analysis using the large volume of dynamic internet data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let H be a subgroup of a finite group G. We say that H satisfies Φ - Π -property in G if for any non-Frattini chief factor L/K of G, | G / K : N G / K (H K / K ∩ L / K) | is a π (H K / K ∩ L / K) -number. In this paper, we study the influence of some subgroups of G satisfying Φ - Π -property on the structure of G, and obtain some interesting results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) has numerous functions in adjusting the organic health and pragmatic value in medicine and food field. In this study, we compared glycerol and glucose as the only carbon source for DHA production by Aurantiochytrium. When the glycerol concentration was 120 g/L, the maximum DHA yield was 11.08 g/L, and the DHA yield increased significantly, reaching 47.67% of the total lipid content. When the cells grew in glucose, the DHA proportion was 37.39%. Transcriptome data showed that the glycolysis pathway and tricarboxylic acid cycle in Aurantiochytrium were significantly inhibited during glycerol culture, which promoted the tricarboxylic acid transport system and was conducive to the synthesis of fatty acids by acetyl coenzyme A; glucose as substrate activated fatty acid synthesis (FAS)pathway and produced more saturated fatty acids, while glycerol as substrate activated polyketide synthase (PKS)pathway and produced more long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids. This laid a foundation for fermentation metabolism regulation and molecular transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hyperspectral image fusion aims to generate a high-resolution hyperspectral image by utilizing a low-resolution hyperspectral image and a high-resolution multispectral image. Inspired by model-based image fusion method, we propose a new image fusion network which use deep prior information as spatial guide information. Our fusion network is mainly obtained by the following steps: First, we propose a fusion model which use spatial information as regularization term. Second, we use half splitting quadratic method to solve the improved fusion model. Third, we interpret the model with a network structure. In the network, we use encoding-decoding structure to construct the spatial regularization term. Finally, in order to ensure both spectral and spatial information contained in each iteration can be fully utilized, an aggregation module is added at the end of the network. Experimental results on three simulation data sets demonstrate that the proposed method performs well in solving the fusion problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this work was to study the changes of bacterial cell growth, acetion formation and glucose consumption with fermentation time during batch cultivation. A mathematical model of cell growth, product synthesis, and substrate consumption changes with time during the batch cultivation of acetion was established. By analyzing the fitting curve of the kinetic model, it is found that the calculated value of the model fits well with the experimental value, and the fitting model R2 is greater than 0.98. The kinetic model established in this experiment can better reflect the batch cultivation process of acetion [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective treatment to prevent or arrest the advance of Alzheimer disease (AD) has yet to be discovered. We investigated whether OligonolR, an FDA-approved flavanol-rich extract prepared from lychee fruit and green tea, exerted beneficial effects relevant to AD in a triple transgenic male mouse model of AD (3×Tg-AD). At 9 months of age, untreated 3×Tg-AD mice vs. wild-type (WT) controls displayed cognitive deficits in behavioral assays and, at 12 months, elevated levels of hippocampal amyloid beta-protein (Aβ), amyloid precursor protein (APP), tau phosphorylation, and pro-inflammatory cytokines. 3×Tg-AD mice given Oligonol showed fewer cognitive deficits and attenuated pathological indices at 12 months. Oligonol treatment of 3×Tg-AD mice modulated expression of some critical brain proteins that involve multiple pathways relevant to mitochondrial dysfunction, proteasomal failure, endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and synaptic impairment. Together, these results demonstrate that continuous Oligonol treatment attenuates AD-like pathology and cognitive impairment of 3×Tg-AD mice and set the stage for clinical trials of this flavanol-rich plant extract in patients with early AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The small sample problem has always been a serious challenge in hyperspectral image (HSI) classification. In order to obtain satisfactory results when the training samples are insufficient, the information around the training samples should be fully utilized. In this paper, we focus on small sample learning and propose a novel composite kernel learning network (CKLNet) for HSI classification. First, principal component analysis and extended morphological analysis are utilized to extract features. Then, we introduce generalized kernel method into deep learning technology. The spatial-spectral composite kernel learning (SSCKL) module is developed to construct discriminative and robust spatial-spectral generalized kernel features. In the process of constructing kernel features, the deep correlation information between samples is extracted simultaneously. The kernel hyperparameters in SSCKL are automatically learnt through backpropagation, thus avoiding the need to spend a lot of time on cross-validation. Finally, inspired by U-Net, a global-local feature extraction (GLFE) module is designed to extract spatial features of different scales. A set of classification probability maps can be obtained by the 1 × 1 convolutional layer in the GLFE module. Experimental results on three widely used datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed CKLNet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microbial fermentation has become the main method to produce target compound. In this study, a 2-Keto-D-gluconic acid (2-KGA) producing mutant strain was obtained by mutation with rational screening methods. Meanwhile, prodigiosin was produced when the nitrogen source in the medium was changed to peptone and its fermentation conditions were evaluated to achieve high-efficient accumulation. The mutant strain SDSPY-136 was firstly identified as Serratia marcescens by morphological observation and 16S rDNA sequencing. The 2-KGA synthetic capacity of S. marcescens SDSPY-136 was evaluated by shake fermentation with 110 g/L glucose as substrates. For fermentation, 2-KGA yield, conversation rate and purity of SDSPY-136 reached 104.60 g/L, 95.10%, 99.11% in 72 h. The red pigment was extracted from the fermentation broth using acidic methanol and identified as prodigiosin by FT-IR. The optimal conditions were as follows: glycerol 20 g/L, peptone 20 g/L, MgSO415 g/L, pH 6.0, a 2% (v/v) inoculum, 30 °C and 200 rpm of shaking culture. Eventually, prodigiosin reached a yield of 9.89 g/Lafter shake culturing for 50 h under this condition. The mutant S. marcescens SDSPY-136 was shown to be promising for 2-KGA and prodigiosin production and a suitable object for prodigiosin metabolism research of S. marcescens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractLet H be a subgroup of a finite group G. We say that H satisfies the partial Π -property in G if there exists a chief series ΓG:1=G0G such that for every G-chief factor Gi/Gi−1 (1≤i≤n) of ΓG, |G/Gi−1:NG/Gi−1(HGi−1/Gi−1∩Gi/Gi−1)| is a π(HGi−1/Gi−1∩Gi/Gi−1) -number. In this paper, we study the influence of some second minimal or second maximal subgroups of a Sylow subgroup satisfying the partial Π -property on the structure of a finite group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are widely used in various fields, and have shown good performance in hyperspectral image (HSI) classification. Recently, utilizing deep networks to learn spatial-spectral features has become of great interest. However, excessively increasing the depth of network may result in overfitting. Moreover, in HSI classification, the existing network models ignore the strong complementary yet correlated spatial-spectral information among different hierarchical layers. In order to address these two problems, a novel CNN-based method for HSI classification is proposed. Firstly, it considers fusing the outputs of recurrent two layers in each large convolutional block and thereby using the fusion result as the input of next layer, which facilitates the extraction of discriminative features. Next, the spectral-spatial features are extracted by cascading spectral features to four-scale spatial features from shallow to deep layers. Finally, a 1 × 1 convolution layer is used to interact and integrate information across channels. Without increasing the number of training samples and the size of pixel patches at the training stage, the proposed approach achieves the state-of-the-art results in the experiment on three well-known hyperspectral images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We collected PM2.5 samples in the cities of Jinan and Baotou, North China. Concentrations of 9 heavy metals (HMs) (Cr, As, Cd, Sb, Pb, Ni, Cu, Zn, Mn) and 2 persistent organic pollutants [polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) and dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls, (DL-PCBs)] (POPs), were determined. The concentrations of PM2.5-bound HMs exhibited apparent seasonal characteristics in both cities. In Jinan, the highest levels of As, Cd, Sb, Pb, Cu, Zn occurred in the heating season, while, the levels of Cr, Ni, Mn peaked in the windy season. In Baotou, The order of concentrations of HMs in PM2.5 was as follows: heating season > non-heating season > windy season. In both cities, the heating season had the highest concentrations of 17 PCDD/Fs and 12 DL-PCBs. Only a small amount of them occurred in the windy season. In Baotou, ΣPCDD/Fs and ΣDL-PCBs levels were much higher than in Jinan, except in the non-heating season. The health risk of carcinogenic metal concentrations for adults was approximately twice than that for children. Notably, the Cr risk for adults slightly exceeded the critical value in Baotou. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This letter presents an improved method of composite kernel framework for hyperspectral image (HSI) classification where we apply canonical correlation analysis (CCA) in the process of combining the spectral and spatial information. This method exploits the potential correlation between the spectral and spatial information since the latter is always extracted from the former. To demonstrate a good performance of the proposed method, support vector machine (SVM) is adopted for evaluation purposes. Experiments on two real HSIs datasets demonstrate: 1) enhanced classification accuracy and robustness compared to the approaches without CCA; and 2) a low cost of calculation since the employment of CCA reduces dimensions effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combination chemotherapy is a potentially promising approach to enhance anticancer activity, overcome drug resistance, and improve disease-free and overall survival. The current study investigates the antitumor activity of sodium dichloroacetic acid (DCA) in combination with SIRT2 inhibitor Sirtinol and AGK2. We found that combining DCA with Sirtinol produced a synergistic therapeutic benefit in A549 and H1299 NSCLC cells in vitro and in a mouse A549 xenograft model. Synergistic potentiation of oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) was observed, including decreased glucose consumption, decreased lactate production, increased OCR and increased ROS generation, possibly via co-targeting pyruvate dehydrogenase alpha 1(PDHA1). Mechanically, AGK2 and Sirtinol were found to increase the lysine-acetylation and decrease the serine-phosphorylation of PDHA1, which enabled the two inhibitors to synergize with DCA to further activate PDHA1. Besides, a AMPKα-ROS feed-forward loop was notably activated after the combined treatments compared with mono-therapy. Our results indicate that the combination of DCA and SIRT2 inhibitor may provide a promising therapeutic strategy to effectively kill cancer cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potent neurotoxin saxitoxin produced by both marine and freshwater phytoplankton causes paralytic shellfish poisoning syndrome. The toxicity and mode of action of the acute exposure of high-dose saxitoxin have been intensively studied for decades; however, the potential risk of exposure of low-dose saxitoxin remained to be uncovered. Here we present a proteomics study of murine neuroblastoma N2A cell with low-dose saxitoxin exposure (1 nM and 10 nM, 24-h intoxication). Differential proteins were profiled by two-dimensional fluorescence difference gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE) coupled with matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS). A total of 9 proteins, including 14-3-3 beta (1433B), alpha enolase (ENO1) and cofilin 2 (CFL2), were altered by the low-dose saxitoxin exposure. We further validated the expressions of 1433B, ENO1 and CFL2 by Western blot analysis and the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. These 9 proteins involve cell apoptotic pathways, cell skeleton maintenance, membrane potentials and mitochondrial functions. Modulation of these 9 proteins by low-dose saxitoxin exposure could correlate to the reports on genotoxicity and neurotoxicity induced by saxitoxin. This study also suggested other potential risks of saxitoxin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Li-ion batteries are a key technology for addressing the global challenge of clean renewable energy and environment pollution. Their contemporary applications, for portable electronic devices, electric vehicles, and large-scale power grids, stimulate the development of high-performance battery materials with high energy density, high power, good safety, and long lifetime. High-throughput calculations provide a practical strategy to discover new battery materials and optimize currently known material performances. Most cathode materials screened by the previous high-throughput calculations cannot meet the requirement of practical applications because only capacity, voltage and volume change of bulk were considered. It is important to include more structure-property relationships, such as point defects, surface and interface, doping and metal-mixture and nanosize effects, in high-throughput calculations. In this review, we established quantitative description of structure-property relationships in Li-ion battery materials by the intrinsic bulk parameters, which can be applied in future high-throughput calculations to screen Li-ion battery materials. Based on these parameterized structure-property relationships, a possible high-throughput computational screening flow path is proposed to obtain high-performance battery materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work aims to block 2,3-butanediol synthesis in acetoin fermentation ofBacillus subtilis. First, we constructed a recombinant strain BS168D by deleting the 2,3-butanediol dehydrogenase gene bdhA of theB. subtilis168, and there was almost no 2,3-butanediol production in 20 g/L of glucose media. The acetoin yield of BS168D reached 6.61 g/L, which was about 1.5 times higher than that of the controlB. subtilis168(4.47 g/L). Then, when the glucose concentration was increased to 100 g/L, the acetoin yield reached 24.6 g/L, but 2.4 g/L of 2,3-butanediol was detected at the end of fermentation. The analysis of 2,3-butanediol chiral structure indicated that the main 2,3-butanediol production of BS168D was meso-2,3-butanediol, and the bdhA gene was only responsible for (2R,3R)-2,3-butanediol synthesis. Therefore, we speculated that there may exit another pathway relating to the meso-2,3-butanediol synthesis in theB. subtilis. In addition, the results of low oxygen condition fermentation showed that deletion of bdhA gene successfully blocked the reversible transformation between acetoin and 2,3-butanediol and eliminated the effect of dissolved oxygen on the transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The detonation of mixtures of organics with long carbon chains and explosives has been found to yield carbon onions without use of any catalyst. Octadecanoic acid, hexadecylic acid, behenic acid and CTAB (cetyltrimethylammonium bromide) have been used as raw materials. The recovered products were characterized using various techniques such as scanning electron microscope, transmission electron microscope, Raman spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction. The prepared carbon onions consist of concentric-shell graphitic layers with a narrow size distribution of 60 to 70 nm, which aggregated to form a chain-like structure. Formation mechanism of the carbon onions was proposed as that the organics with long chains broke their functional groups and self-assembled into carbon onions due to low free energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a superpixel-guided multiscale kernel collaborative representation method for robust classification of hyperspectral images. This novel method first exploits the spatial multiscale information of hyperspectral images by extending a superpixel segmentation algorithm, and then proposes a spatial-spectral information fusion technique to encode the spatial multiscale similarities and the spectral similarities between the pixels in the framework of kernel collaborative representation classification. The advantages of it mainly consist in (1) avoiding choosing empirical parameters in the spatial feature extraction process of superpixels and (2) enhanced classification accuracy as compared to traditional spatial-spectral kernel techniques. Experimental results with two widely used hyperspectral images demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes the construction and selection of a high-producing mutant, Bacillus subtilis HB-32, with enhanced acetoin yield and productivity. The mutant was obtained by the protoplast fusion of a Bacillus subtilis mutant TH-49 (Val−) producing acetoin and Bacillus licheniformis AD-30 producing α-acetolactate decarboxylase, with the fusogen polyethylene glycol and after the regeneration and selection, etc. of the fusant. The acetoin production reached 49.64 g/L, which is an increase of 61.8% compared to that of B. subtilis strain TH-49. Random amplified polymorphic DNA analysis was performed to determine the mutagenic and protoplast fusion effects and the genomic changes in the acetoin high-producing strain compared to the parent strains at the molecular level. The constructed strain was shown to be promising for large-scale acetoin production. Future studies should focus on the application of the mutant strain in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imaging characteristics of germanium cylinder-based decagonal photonic quasicrystal flat lens have been analyzed with respect to width. The results show that the complex near-field scattering effects and the short-range interactions do not determine the occurrence of the imaging phenomenon but affect imaging characteristics. Changing the width will affect the imaging characteristics of the flat lens. As the width increases, the image power, the image quality, and the summed object–image distance change non-monotonically but stabilize gradually. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The high temperature corrosion performance of Q235 steel in sulfur-bearing solutions as a function of temperature, test time, and sulfur content was investigated by weight loss measurements in this study. The results indicate that the corrosion behavior of Q235 steel in sulfur-bearing solution is directly related to the experimental temperature, immersion time and sulfur content. Higher temperature leads to a higher corrosion rate of the steel. The corrosion rate increases during the initial test time and then decreases with increasing the test time. As the sulfur content increases in the solution, the corrosion rate increases, and further increasing the sulfur content leads to a decreased corrosion rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon-encapsulated iron-based nanoparticles were produced by detonation of mixtures of high explosive and iron tristearate in a vacuum chamber. The collected products were analyzed by HRTEM, XRD, Raman spectroscopy and magnetic measurement. The results indicate that a core–shell structure is formed, in which iron/iron carbide cores are encapsulated with graphitic shells with a thickness of 3–10 nm. The mass ratio of high explosive to iron tristearate, leading to different detonation pressures and temperatures, has played an important role in the formation of carbon encapsulated nanoparticles. With the increase of the mass ratio, the number of the graphitic coating layers and the size of carbon encapsulated nanoparticles decreases. Different mass ratios create different core compositions. The carbon encapsulated nanoparticles exhibit ferromagntic behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Trichloroethylene (TCE) is an environmental and occupational toxicant that has been shown to cause serious hepatotoxicity. However, the mechanisms underlying the hepatotoxicity of TCE remain unclear. Previously, we identified several apoptosis-related proteins in TCE-induced hepatic cytotoxicity. This study is aimed to analyze the changes in phosphoproteins in L-02 liver cells exposed to TCE using iTRAQ labeling, IMAC enrichment and LC–MS/MS. We identified 1878 phosphorylation sites in 107 proteins and found that 20 sites in 16 phosphoproteins were differentially phosphorylated in L-02 cells after TCE treatment. Among these phosphoproteins, 20% were protein localization and formation processes-related proteins, 38% were metabolism-related proteins and 42% were cellular process-related proteins, including transcriptional regulation and biogenesis. Moreover, two phosphoproteins, 4E-BP1 (37T) and MCM2 (139S), were validated as TCE-induced alteration of phosphorylation at specific sites by Western-blot analysis. Taken together, our study demonstrated that TCE exposure changed the levels of multiple phosphoproteins in L-02 liver cells, and the functional analysis suggested that these differentially expressed phosphoproteins might be involved in TCE-induced hepatic cytotoxicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To compare the efficacy of intense pulsed light (IPL) (540-950nm) in treating different erythema associated with rosacea. Methods : Thirty-two patients with erythematotelangiectatic rosacea (ETR) ( n = 16) and papulopustular rosacea (PPR, n = 16) were recruited. Three treatments of IPL (540-950nm) were administered on the face at 3-week intervals. Clinical improvement in erythema was independently assessed by two dermatologists using a quartile grading scale [0, ≤ 25% improvement (poor); 1, 26-50% improvement (fair); 2, 51-75% improvement (good); and 3, 76-100% improvement (excellent)]. Patient satisfaction was evaluated using a 10-point visual analog scale (VAS: 0, lowest; and 10, highest). Results: Thirty patients were involved in this study. All patients showed improvement in erythema after three sessions of IPL (540-950nm) treatment. Based on physician's assessment, the overall clinical improvement in PPR group was significantly higher (mean ± SD of PPR group, 2.167 ± 0.748 vs. ETR group, 1.400 ± 0.541; P = 0.003) and patient satisfaction was also higher in PPR group (mean ± SD of PPR group, 6.867 ± 1.457 vs. ETR group, 5.600 ± 1.502; P = 0.026). The proportion of patients showing > 75% clinical improvement among PPR group was also higher than that among ETR group (5/15 and 0/15, respectively; P = 0.021). Side effects were minimal and transient (erythema and/or edema) for patients. Conclusions: IPL (540-950nm) is a safe and effective treatment for rosacea-associated erythema, especially for perilesional erythema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we characterize finite groupsGsatisfying that, for every prime power divisorpnof the order ofG, there exists a subgroupHof indexpn(of orderpn) inGsuch thatHis normal or abnormal inG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In vitro MMP-2 inhibition assays and ultrafiltration liquid chromatography coupled to electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (ultrafiltration LC-ESI-MSn) were combined to screen MMP-2 inhibitors fromCarthamus tinctoriusL. As a result, two compounds were identified as MMP-2 inhibitors inC. tinctoriusextract, and their structures were confirmed to be hydroxyl safflower yellow A (HSYA) and anhydrosafflor yellow B (SYB) by their retention times, and LC–ESI-MS in the negative ion mode. The inhibitions of HSYA and SYB by 5 mg/mL flavonoids are 48.69 and 79.00(%). Our screening results have confirmed that SYB is a good MMP-2 inhibitor. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this work, the esterification of free fatty acids (FFA) in Zanthoxylum bungeanum seed oil (ZSO) with ethanol was performed and the effects of ethanol-to-oil molar ratio (8:1–32:1), catalyst amount (0.3–3.5% wt. of oil), reaction temperature (30–65°C), and reaction time (20–180 min) on the esterification of FFA were investigated. The acid value could not be reduced from beyond 40 mg KOH/g to less than 2 mg KOH/g by two-step sulfuric acid-catalyzed esterification with ethanol. Our results revealed that water formation during esterification was not a crucial factor inhibiting the completion of esterification. A novel technique to reduce acid value from above 40 mg KOH/g to less than 2 mg KOH/g was developed by using a second-step esterification with methanol. During the second-step esterification with methanol, some fatty acid ethyl esters were transformed into fatty acid methyl esters, which was confirmed by1H NMR. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hyperspectral unmixing (HU) is a popular tool in remotely sensed hyperspectral data interpretation, and it is used to estimate the number of reference spectra (end-members), their spectral signatures, and their fractional abundances. However, it can also be assumed that the observed image signatures can be expressed in the form of linear combinations of a large number of pure spectral signatures known in advance (e.g. spectra collected on the ground by a field spectro-radiometer, called a spectral library). Under this assumption, the solution of the fractional abundances of each spectrum can be seen as sparse, and the HU problem can be modelled as a constrained sparse regression (CSR) problem used to compute the fractional abundances in a sparse (i.e. with a small number of terms) linear mixture of spectra, selected from large libraries. In this article, we use thel1/2regularizer with the properties of unbiasedness and sparsity to enforce the sparsity of the fractional abundances instead of thel0andl1regularizers in CSR unmixing models, as thel1/2regularizer is much easier to be solved than thel0regularizer and has stronger sparsity than thel1regularizer (Xu et al. 2010). A reweighted iterative algorithm is introduced to convert thel1/2problem into thel1problem; we then use the Split Bregman iterative algorithm to solve this reweightedl1problem by a linear transformation. The experiments on simulated and real data both show that thel1/2regularized sparse regression method is effective and accurate on linear hyperspectral unmixing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this study,Bacillusstrains with an ability to produce acetoin were isolated from a Japanese traditional food, natto, on the basis of the Voges–Proskauer (VP) reaction, and strain SF4-3 was shown to be a predominant strain in acetoin production. Based on a variety of morphological, physiological, and biochemical characteristics as well as the nucleotide sequence analysis of 16S rDNA, the strain SF4-3 was identified asBacillus subtilis. When it was incubated at 37°C with a speed of 180 rpm for 96 hr in the flasks, the maximum acetoin concentration was up to 33.90 g/L. The fermentation broths were determined by gas chromatography (GC) and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analyses; the results showed that the major metabolite was acetoin, and the purity could reach more than 95% without butanedione and 2,3-butanediol, which were usually produced together with acetoin in other strains. A novel aqueous two-phase system (ATPS) composed of hydrophilic solvents and inorganic salts was developed for the extraction of acetoin from fermentation broths. The ethanol and dipotassium hydrogen phosphate system could be used to extract acetoin from fermentation broths. The influences of phase composition on partition of acetoin were investigated. The maximum partition coefficient (9.68) and recovery (94.6%) of acetoin were obtained, when 25% (w/w) dipotassium hydrogen phosphate and 24% (w/w) ethanol were used. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A subgroup H of a group G is called a CAP*-subgroup of G, if H either covers or avoids every non-Frattini chief factor of G. In this article, we give some interesting properties of CAP*-subgroups. Furthermore, we determine the structure of finite groups based on the assumption that some subgroups are CAP*-subgroups and generalize some known results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydroquinone (HQ), a major metabolite of benzene, is used widely as a reagent in photographic developers, as an antioxidant in the manufacture of rubber, as a polymerization inhibitor for acrylic and vinyl acetate monomers, and in cosmetic products as a skin-lightening agent. But the mechanism of its effect on human cells is far from clear. In the present work, we studied the cellular response induced by HQ using proteomic approaches. Human embryonic lung fibroblasts (HLFs) were treated with 100 μ M HQ for 24 h. This dose of HQ was found in assays to significantly decrease cell viability. After treatment, two-dimensional electrophoresis was performed using the Amersham Bioscience 2DE system following the manufacturer's instructions. Proteins were visualized by staining with colloidal coomassie blue. Fifteen protein spots showed significant changes after HQ treatment. Eleven protein spots were identified by peptide mass fingerprinting using MALDI-TOF or by peptide sequence tagging using MALDI-TOF-TOF. Among them are transaldolase, growth factor receptor-bound protein 2, mutant β -actin, γ -actin, Lasp-1, TAR DNA-binding protein, and a protein similar to neural precursor cell-expressed protein. These include proteins involved in oxidative stress, cellular signaling, RNA splicing, and cytoskeleton reconstruction. Most of their involvements in the cellular responses to HQ have not been reported. Therefore, our findings may offer new insights into the mechanisms of HQ cytotoxicity and these proteins may serve as new biomarkers for detecting exposure of human populations to HQ. It is suggested that proteomic approaches may provide new strategies to evaluate the toxicity of xenobiotics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complete mitochondrial genome of Geochelone sulcata was determined using PCR, Long-PCR with length of 16,692 bp. The genome organization, gene order, and base composition was similar to typical vertebrate. Gene content included 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, two rRNA genes, and one control region. Otherwise, the lack of C, as same as in the other species of Testudinidae, was detected in arms of tRNALys gene in G. sulcata. In addition, an extra nucleotide A was discovered in ND3 gene in G. sulcata. The complete mitogenome of G. sulcata provides the basic data to research molecular systematics of Testudinidae. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIn order to improve the utilization value of the erythritol mother liquor, the separation and purification of the erythritol mother liquor was selected in this study. The selected chromatographic separation programme for erythritol crystallizing mother liquor is as follows: Firstly, erythritol is resolved from mannitol and arabitol with DTF-01Ca (Suqing Group) resin and then mannitol is resolved from arabitol with 99Ca/320 (Dowex) resin. At the same time, the chromatographic conditions of the DTF-01Ca (Suqing Group) and 99Ca/320 (Dowex) resins were optimized, resulting in an optimal separation temperature and mobile phase flow rate of 70 °C, 10 ml/min. On this basis, a single-column chromatographic model was used to calculate the TD model parameter (N) and the mass transfer coefficient (km ) of the separation of erythritol mother liquor by DTF-01Ca (Suqing Group) and 99Ca/320 (Dowex) resins. The adsorption isotherms, TD model parameter (N) and the mass transfer coefficient (km ) provides data references for the design and operation of the simulated moving beds (SMB) separation system for the industrial-scale separation of erythritol crystallizing mother liquor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]