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Ticks are obligate blood-feeding arthropods that cause significant economic losses in domestic animal husbandry and threaten public health. However, information about soft ticks (Acari: Argasidae) and tick-borne pathogens in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of China is scarce.

In recent years, research on the intention to adopt solar photovoltaic technology has yielded rich results. However, controversy still exists regarding the key antecedents of households' intention to adopt solar photovoltaic technologies. To clarify the critical factors influencing the intention to adopt solar photovoltaic technology and potential moderating variables, this study utilized meta-analysis to perform a quantitative literature analysis on 29 empirical articles. It identified eight key influencing factors and tested the moderating effects of two variables: sample size and research area. The results show that "Attitude" and "Government Incentive" are moderately correlated with the intention to adopt. "Social Influence", "Product Knowledge", "Effort Expectancy", "Perceived Cost-benefit", "Performance Expectancy", and "Perceived Behavioral Control" are weakly correlated with the adoption intention. The study also found that using the sample size and research area as moderating variables can partly reveal differences between various studies. Overall, the findings of this study offer theoretical guidance for subsequent in-depth studies and support for the practical promotion of solar photovoltaic technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linear rolling guideway (LRG) is an important part of the precision machine tool, which affects the machining accuracy of the whole machine tool. In this paper, based on the fundamental characteristic parameters obtained from experiments and mechanical impedance method, a novel contact model of the ball-raceway joint surface and the LRG is proposed. The HJG-DA35C LRG is tested and the corresponding experimental platform is established. The measured results under different working conditions are close to the predicted results of the model. The research results can be used to analyze and predict the static and dynamic characteristics of the LRG, provide a basis for rational design and performance improvement, and also lay a foundation for the performance prediction of the whole machine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Hyperglycemia‐induced neuroinflammation significantly contributes to diabetic neuropathic pain (DNP), but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Objective: To investigate the role of Sirt3, a mitochondrial deacetylase, in hyperglycemia‐induced neuroinflammation and DNP and to explore potential therapeutic interventions. Method and Results: Here, we found that Sirt3 was downregulated in spinal dorsal horn (SDH) of diabetic mice by RNA‐sequencing, which was further confirmed at the mRNA and protein level. Sirt3 deficiency exacerbated hyperglycemia‐induced neuroinflammation and DNP by enhancing microglial aerobic glycolysis in vivo and in vitro. Overexpression of Sirt3 in microglia alleviated inflammation by reducing aerobic glycolysis. Mechanistically, high‐glucose stimulation activated Akt, which phosphorylates and inactivates FoxO1. The inactivation of FoxO1 diminished the transcription of Sirt3. Besides that, we also found that hyperglycemia induced Sirt3 degradation via the mitophagy‐lysosomal pathway. Blocking Akt activation by GSK69093 or metformin rescued the degradation of Sirt3 protein and transcription inhibition of Sirt3 mRNA, which substantially diminished hyperglycemia‐induced inflammation. Metformin in vivo treatment alleviated neuroinflammation and diabetic neuropathic pain by rescuing hyperglycemia‐induced Sirt3 downregulation. Conclusion: Hyperglycemia induces metabolic reprogramming and inflammatory activation in microglia through the regulation of Sirt3 transcription and degradation. This novel mechanism identifies Sirt3 as a potential drug target for treating DNP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sparse representation has been applied to realize an accurate description of the sound field from limited set of measurements. The prerequisite of this application is that sound field can be sparsely represented in a specific basis. However, most of the sparse bases are constructed by using the physical models of sound field, and are only effective for a specific category of sound sources. In this paper, the data-driven dictionary learning approach is exploited to obtain a sparse basis of sound field. Meanwhile, to reduce the difficulty and workload of the collection of data sample, the equivalent source method is utilized to collect data samples by means of simulations and thus the data samples can be generated by taking advantage of sound field properties. The performance of the sound field recovery with sparse sampling based on learned dictionary is examined and is compared with those based on other sparse bases. The result indicates that numerical data-driven model is more flexible and is not limited to a specific category of sound sources. The advantage of the proposal is presented by the results of numerical simulation and experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang) borders eight countries and has a complex geographic environment. There are almost 45.696 million herded sheep in Xinjiang, which occupies 13.80% of China's sheep farming industry. However, there is a scarcity of reports investigating the role of sheep or ticks in Xinjiang in transmitting tick-borne diseases (TBDs). A total of 894 ticks (298 tick pools) were collected from sheep in southern Xinjiang. Out of the 298 tick pools investigated in this study, Rhipicephalus turanicus (Rh. turanicus) and Hyalomma anatolicum (H. anatolicum) were identified through morphological and molecular sequencing. In the southern part of Xinjiang, 142 (47.65%), 86 (28.86%), and 60 (20.13%) tick pools were positive for Rickettsia spp., Theileria spp., and Anaplasma spp., respectively. Interestingly, the infection rate of Rickettsia spp. (73%, 35.10%, and 28.56–41.64%) was higher in Rh. turanicus pools than in H. anatolicum pools (4%, 4.44%, and 0.10–8.79%) in this study. Fifty-one tick pools were found to harbor two pathogens, while nineteen tick pools were detected to have the three pathogens. Our findings indicate the presence of Rickettsia spp., Theileria spp., and Anaplasma spp. potentially transmitted by H. anatolicum and Rh. turanicus in sheep in southern Xinjiang, China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronic varicella zoster virus (VZV) infection induced neuroinflammatory condition is the critical pathology of post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN). The immune escape mechanism of VZV remains elusive. As to mice have no VZV infection receptor, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) infection is a well established PHN mice model. Transcriptional expression analysis identified that the protein arginine methyltransferases 6 (Prmt6) was upregulated upon HSV-1 infection, which was further confirmed by immunofluorescence staining in spinal dorsal horn. Prmt6 deficiency decreased HSV-1-induced neuroinflammation and PHN by enhancing antiviral innate immunity and decreasing HSV-1 load in vivo and in vitro. Overexpression of Prmt6 in microglia dampened antiviral innate immunity and increased HSV-1 load. Mechanistically, Prmt6 methylated and inactivated STING, resulting in reduced phosphorylation of TANK binding kinase-1 (TBK1) and interferon regulatory factor 3 (IRF3), diminished production of type I interferon (IFN-I) and antiviral innate immunity. Furthermore, intrathecal or intraperitoneal administration of the Prmt6 inhibitor EPZ020411 decreased HSV-1-induced neuroinflammation and PHN by enhancing antiviral innate immunity and decreasing HSV-1 load. Our findings revealed that HSV-1 escapes antiviral innate immunity and results in PHN by upregulating Prmt6 expression and inhibiting the cGAS-STING pathway, providing novel insights and a potential therapeutic target for PHN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sparse regularization has been successfully applied to equivalent source method (ESM) in order to improve the acoustic imaging resolution. However, the application is not always feasible, especially at low frequencies. To overcome the problem, this paper proposes a high-resolution acoustic imaging method. In this method, reweighted l 1 minimization is introduced to ESM to deal with the ill-posed inverse problems. Then the obtained equivalent source strengths are used to locate the sound sources. Compared to the sparse regularization-based ESM, the proposed method can provide a low side lobe and higher spatial resolution of acoustic imaging. Meanwhile, by arranging equivalent sources in three-dimensional space, the proposed method can also realize the acoustic imaging in three-dimensional sound field with high resolution. The results of the simulation and experiment demonstrate the validations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]