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Objective: Most mental disorders, when examined individually, are associated with an increased risk of cardiometabolic complications. However, these associations might be attributed to a general liability to psychopathology or confounded by unmeasured familial factors. The authors investigated the association between psychiatric conditions in young adulthood and the risk of cardiometabolic complications in middle adulthood, up to 40 years later. Methods: This cohort study (N=672,823) identified all individuals and their siblings born in Sweden between 1955 and 1962 and followed the cohort through 2013. Logistic regression models were used to estimate the bivariate associations between 10 psychiatric conditions or criminal convictions and five cardiometabolic complications in individuals. A general factor model was used to identify general, internalizing, externalizing, and psychotic factors based on the comorbidity among psychiatric conditions and criminal convictions. The cardiometabolic complications were then regressed on the latent general factor and three uncorrelated specific factors within a structural equation modeling framework in individuals and across sibling pairs. Results: Each psychiatric condition significantly increased the risk of cardiometabolic complications. These associations appeared nonspecific, as multivariate models indicated that most were attributable to the general factor of psychopathology, rather than to specific psychiatric conditions. There were no or only small associations between individuals' general psychopathology and their siblings' cardiometabolic complications. The same pattern was evident for the specific internalizing and psychotic factors. Conclusions: Associations between mental disorders in early life and later long-term risk of cardiometabolic complications appeared to be attributable to a general liability to psychopathology. Familial coaggregation analyses suggested that the elevated risk could not be attributed to confounders shared within families. One possibility is that lifestyle-based interventions may reduce the risk of later cardiometabolic complications for patients with several mental disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs) have a scale of applications linking to the industrial machines. As these machines often work in a wide temperature range, the PMSM quality consistency is threatened by the temperature fluctuate. In fact, at the start of the production of the PMSMs, the quality consistency distribution already exist due to the manufacturing dispersion. However, traditional experiment‐based consistency analysis method is inadequate for the PMSM, due to its inevitable destructive measurement for the magnetic properties. To deal with the problem, this paper proposed a model‐based quality consistency analysis method. In this paper, mechanism analysis of the temperature influence on PMSMs is carried out by the finite element analysis and the digital modeling method, so that the impact of dispersion can be depicted by model rather than destructive measurement. The relationship between the temperature and PMSM cogging torque as well as other features is quantitatively revealed. To obtain the NdFeB temperature coefficient, magnetic samples were prepared and measured. Then, the temperature characteristics of the sensitive components of PMSM are established, and the PMSM temperature characteristics can be simulated by integrating temperature coefficients into the PMSM digital model. The qualitative and quantitative temperature characteristics of cogging torque are verified by experiments with a batch of PMSMs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Magnetic molecularly imprinted polymers (MMIPs) were prepared by surface precipitation polymerisation, which used xylazine as its template molecule and Fe3O4 as its support. The characterisation analysis and adsorption experiments of MMIPs were carried out. At the same time, promethazine, chlorpromazine, trifluoperazine, acepromazine and perphenazine were selected as structural analogues for selective experiments. The results showed MMIPs were successfully prepared with small particle size, excellent magnetic and thermal stability, high adsorption capacity and selectivity for xylazine. The maximum adsorption capacity of MMIPs for xylazine was 4.2017 mg g−1, and the adsorption reached binding equilibrium within 30 min. The magnetic solid phase extraction (MSPE) based on MMIPs and traditional solid phase extraction (SPE) based on SPE column for xylazine in milk samples were compared and xylazine was analysed by HPLC. Although the difference between the two SPE methods was not significant, the MSPE method procedure took only about 35 min, which was faster than the traditional SPE method (>100 min), and the MSPE method had lower LOD (2.62 ng mL−1). MSPE has the advantages of simple operation, short extraction time, low cost and friendly to the environment, it has good application potential in the detection of xylazine in milk samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tellurium was successfully incorporated into proteins and applied to protein structure determination through X-ray crystallography. However, studies on tellurium modification of DNA and RNA are limited. This review highlights the recent development of Te-modified nucleosides, nucleotides, and nucleic acids, and summarizes the main synthetic approaches for the preparation of 5-PhTe, 2′-MeTe, and 2′-PhTe modifications. Those modifications are compatible with solid-phase synthesis and stable during Te-oligonucleotide purification. Moreover, the ideal electronic and atomic properties of tellurium for generating clear isomorphous signals give Te-modified DNA and RNA great potential applications in 3D crystal structure determination through X-ray diffraction. STM study also shows that Te-modified DNA has strong topographic and current peaks, which immediately suggests potential applications in nucleic acid direct imaging, nanomaterials, molecular electronics, and diagnostics. Theoretical studies indicate the potential application of Te-modified nucleosides in cancer therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although polygenic risk scores (PRS) predict psychiatric problems, these associations might be attributable to indirect pathways including population stratification, assortative mating, or dynastic effects (mediation via parental environments). The goal of this study was to examine whether PRS‐psychiatric symptom associations were attributable to indirect versus direct pathways. Methods: The sample consisted of 3,907 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs. In childhood, their parents rated them on 98 symptoms. In adolescence (n = 2,393 DZ pairs), both the parents and the twins rated themselves on 20 symptoms. We extracted one general and seven specific factors from the childhood data, and one general and three specific factors from the adolescent data. We then regressed each general factor model onto ten psychiatric PRS simultaneously. We first conducted the regressions between individuals (β) and then within DZ twin pairs (βw), which controls for indirect pathways. Results: In childhood, the PRS for ADHD predicted general psychopathology (β = 0.09, 95% CI: [0.06, 0.12]; βw = 0.07 [0.01, 0.12]). Furthermore, the PRS for ADHD predicted specific inattention (β = 0.04 [0.00, 0.08]; βw = 0.09 [0.01, 0.17]) and specific hyperactivity (β = 0.07 [0.04, 0.11]; βw = 0.09 [0.01, 0.16]); the PRS for schizophrenia predicted specific learning (β = 0.08 [0.03, 0.13]; βw = 0.19 [0.08, 0.30]) and specific inattention problems (β = 0.05 [0.01, 0.09]; βw = 0.10 [0.02, 0.19]); and the PRS for neuroticism predicted specific anxiety (β = 0.06 [0.02, 0.10]; βw = 0.06 [0.00, 0.12]). Overall, the PRS‐general factor associations were similar between individuals and within twin pairs, whereas the PRS‐specific factors associations amplified by 84% within pairs. Conclusions: This implies that PRS‐psychiatric symptom associations did not appear attributable to indirect pathways such as population stratification, assortative mating, or mediation via parental environments. Rather, genetics appeared to directly influence symptomatology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the relationships among motor function, physical activity, and the characteristics of chronic pain (the number of pain sites, pain intensity, and pain-type).Cross-sectional study.An ongoing community-based prospective study conducted in Itoshima, Japan.Community-dwelling Japanese aged 65-75 years (n = 805; 401 men, 404 women).Chronic pain subtypes were examined in terms of the number of pain sites, pain intensity, and pain type. Motor function was evaluated by handgrip strength, walking speed, and the 5 Times Stand-up and Sit Test (FTSST). Locomotive activity, non-locomotive activity, and sedentary time were evaluated by a tri-axial accelerometer as physical-activity parameters.Multiple regression model adjusting for age, sex, education level, employment status, subjective economic status, body mass index, cognitive function, comorbidity, current tobacco use, current alcohol consumption, and regular exercise.In a multivariate analysis, the subjects’ walking speed was negatively associated with multisite, moderate-to-severe, and neuropathic-like pain. The FTSST was positively associated with single-site, moderate-to-severe, and neuropathic-like pain. There was no significant association between handgrip strength and any chronic pain subtypes. Locomotive activity was negatively related to multisite, moderate-to-severe, and neuropathic-like pain, but there was no clear association between the amount of non-locomotive activity, sedentary time, and chronic pain subtypes.Severe chronic pain was associated with decreased locomotion-related motor function and physical activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fluid charging and formation pressure evolution are of great significance for shale gas exploration and development. Taking the Longmaxi formation shale in southeast Chongqing as the research object, the fluid activity and pressure evolution process were studied by means of thin section observation, fluid inclusion analysis and testing, and basin numerical simulation. The results show that the area of the southeast of Chongqing, the Longmaxi formation of dike filling minerals, is mainly quartz vein and calcite part of the veins and arteries, and vein body captures the rich organic inclusions in minerals, sees fgas-liquid two-phase brine inclusions and methane inclusions, combining with the temperature and salinity of brine inclusions, and shows that the area has experienced two phases of oil and gas filling, the first period of gas-liquid fluid. The second stage is gas fluid. Combined with burial history and thermal maturation history, it is found that the filling time of oil and gas is late Cretaceous and Paleocene, respectively. In the Cretaceous, the pressure coefficient of Longmaxi formation reached the maximum value of 2.2 and remained above 1.5 overpressure after pressure unloading in the later period. In terms of the frequency of inclusions, the charging amount of the first stage is relatively large, and the charging time corresponds to the peak period of the palaeo-formation pressure. At the same time, fluid charging can timely supplement the pressure after unloading, which is conducive to high and stable production of shale gas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) is a highly contagious pathogen that has caused significant economic losses in the livestock industry. Peptide vaccines engineered with the protective epitopes of FMDV have provided a safer alternative for disease prevention than the traditional inactivated vaccines. However, the immunogenicity of the peptide is usually poor and therefore an adjuvant is required. Here, we showed that recombinant T4 phages displaying the B-cell epitope of the FMDV VP1 protein (VP1 130–158), without additional adjuvants, induced similar levels of antigen-specific IgG1 but higher levels of IgG2a compared to the peptide vaccine. Incorporation of a CD4+ T cell epitope, either 3A 21–35 of FMDV 3A protein or P2 830–844 of tetanus toxoid, further enhanced the immunogenicity of VP1-T4 phage nanoparticles. Interestingly, the extrinsic adjuvant cannot enhance the immunogenicity of the nanoparticles, indicating the intrinsic adjuvant activities of T4 phage. Furthermore, the recombinant T4 phage can be produced on a large scale within a short period of time at a relatively low-cost using Escherichia coli , heralding its potential in the development of a safe and effective FMDV vaccine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent graph neural network (GNN) based methods for few-shot learning (FSL) represent the samples of interest as a fully-connected graph and conduct reasoning on the nodes flatly, which ignores the hierarchical correlations among nodes. However, real-world categories may have hierarchical structures, and for FSL, it is important to extract the distinguishing features of the categories from individual samples. To explore this, we propose a novel hierarchical graph neural network (HGNN) for FSL, which consists of three parts, i.e., bottom-up reasoning, top-down reasoning, and skip connections, to enable the efficient learning of multi-level relationships. For the bottom-up reasoning, we design intra-class k-nearest neighbor pooling (intra-class knnPool) and inter-class knnPool layers, to conduct hierarchical learning for both the intra- and inter-class nodes. For the top-down reasoning, we propose to utilize graph unpooling (gUnpool) layers to restore the down-sampled graph into its original size. Skip connections are proposed to fuse multi-level features for the final node classification. The parameters of HGNN are learned by episodic training with the signal of node losses, which aims to train a well-generalizable model for recognizing unseen classes with few labeled data. Experimental results on benchmark datasets have demonstrated that HGNN outperforms other state-of-the-art GNN based methods significantly, for both transductive and non-transductive FSL tasks. The dataset as well as the source code can be downloaded online [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations will inevitably develop drug resistance after being treated with the third-generation EGFR-tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), osimertinib. Recently, the drug resistance information transmitted by exosomal miRNAs has attracted much attention. However, the mechanism of exosome-derived miRNAs in osimertinib resistance remains unexplored. Methods: We extracted and sequenced exosomes from the supernatant of the osimertinib-resistant cell line, H1975-OR, and the sensitive cell line, H1975. The results were compared with plasma exosome sequencing before and after the appearance of drug resistance in three NSCLC clinical patients treated with oral osimertinib. Exosome-derived miRNAs that had significantly increased expression levels after osimertinib resistance were screened for expanded validation in other 64 NSCLC patients. Results: Cluster analysis of the target genes revealed that exosomal miRNAs participate in osimertinib resistance mechanisms through the activation of bypass pathways (RAS-MAPK pathway abnormality and PI3K pathway activation). Exosome-derived miR-184 and miR-3913-5p expression levels increased significantly after the onset of osimertinib resistance. Exosomal miR-3913-5p was associated with TNM stage, platelet count, tumor marker carcinoembryonic antigen, and distant metastases. In patients with EGFR exon 21 L858R mutation, the increased expression levels of miR-184 and miR-3913-5p derived from serum exosomes indicated osimertinib resistance. Similarly, for T790M-positive patients, the level of exosome-derived miR-3913-5p can be used as a predictive marker for osimertinib resistance. Conclusions: The expression levels of miR-184 and miR-3913-5p derived from exosomes in the peripheral blood of NSCLC patients could be used as biomarkers to indicate osimertinib resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strain rate and temperature effects on the deformation behavior of crystalline metal materials have always been a research hotspot. In this paper, a strain rate dependent thermo-elasto-plastic constitutive model was established to investigate the deformation behavior of crystalline metal materials. Firstly, the deformation gradient was re-decomposed into three parts: thermal part, elastic part and plastic part. Then, the thermal strain was introduced into the total strain and the thermo-elastic constitutive equation was established. For the plastic behavior, a new relation between stress and plastic strain was proposed to describe the strain rate and temperature effects on the flow stress and work-hardening. The stress–strain curves were calculated over wide ranges of strain rates (10–6–6000 s−1) and temperatures (233–730 K) for three kinds of crystalline metal materials with different crystal structure: oxygen free high conductivity copper for face centered cubic metals, Tantalum for body centered cubic metals and Ti–6Al–4V alloy for two phase crystal metals. The comparisons between the calculation and experimental results reveal that the present model describes the deformation behavior of crystalline metal materials well. Also, it is concise and efficient for the practical application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have witnessed the proliferation of mobile computing and Internet-of-Things (IoT), where billions of mobile and IoT devices are connected to the Internet, generating zillions bytes of data at the network edge. Driving by this trend and the development of wireless communication, edge computing, an emerging computing paradigm, has received tremendous amount of interest. By pushing data storage, computing, and control closer to the network edge, edge computing has been widely recognized as a promising solution to meet the requirements of low latency, high scalability, prompt response, and energy efficiency. In the meanwhile, with the development of neural networks, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been applied to a variety of disciplines and proved highly successful in a vast class of intelligent applications cross many domains. Edge intelligence, aiming to facilitate the deployment of neural networks on edge computing, has received significant attention. However, there are many challenges existing for a novel design of edge computing architecture to AI applications, and their co-optimization. For instance, conventional neural networks techniques usually entail powerful computing facilities (e.g., cloud computing platforms), while the entities at the edge may have only limited resources for computations and communications. This suggests that AI algorithms should be revisited for edge computing to AI models into the edge device for efficient processing. On the other hand, the adapted deployments of neural networks at the edge empower the efficient learning systems that can provide the "smartification" across different layers, e.g., from network communications to applications, and also involve collaborations across edge to cloud. Finally, designing algorithms for small-scale edge devices in a learning ambience is all the challenging as there are several conflicting issues to account for. These include, memory management, power management, and compute capability of a node, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of incorporating varying proportions of nutraceutical-rich mushroom (Cordycepes militaris) flour (1%, 3% and 5%) on the physicochemical, antioxidant and sensory properties of cookies. Results showed that the contents of crude protein, ash and fiber of supplemented coo kies were higher than that of control cookies. Spread ratio and hardness decreased as the C.militaris flour incorporation level increased. The color values of cookies also varied with the increasing levels of C. militaris flour. Furthermore, fortification of C. militaris flour improved the functional quality of cookies by significantly enhancing the phenolic contents and antioxidant activities (P < 0.05). Sensory evaluation of cookies indicated that the addition of 3% C. militaris flour was more acceptable. Overall, enriched cookies have more functional components and effective antioxidant capacity than plain wheat cookies. Their supplementation could provide the consumers a novel cereal-based product with health-promoting benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a by-claim risk model with a constant rate of interest force, in which the main claims and the by-claims form a sequence of pTQAI nonnegative random variables and all their distributions belong to the dominatedly-varying heavy-tailed subclass. We obtain the asymptotically upper and lower bound formulas of the ultimate ruin probability for such a by-claim risk model. As its by-products, some interesting properties for pTQAI structure are also investigated. The results extend some existing ones in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consider a non standard continuous-time renewal risk model with a constant force of interest, in which the claim sizes are assumed to be conditionally linearly wide dependent (CLWD) and belong to the intersection of dominatedly varying tailed and long tailed class, and inter-arrival times are assumed to be a sequence of independent and identically distributed random variables independent of the claim sizes. Under some technical conditions, we obtain an asymptotic formula for the tail probability of discounted aggregate claims, which holds locally uniform for all time horizon within a finite interval. When the claim sizes are further restricted to be consistently varying tailed, we show that this asymptotic formula is globally uniform for all time horizon within an infinite interval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vaccines that trigger mucosal immune responses at the entry portals of pathogens are highly desired. Here, we showed that antigen-decorated nanoparticle generated through CRISPR engineering of T4 bacteriophage can serve as a universal platform for the rapid development of mucosal vaccines. Insertion of Flu viral M2e into phage T4 genome through fusion to Soc (Small Outer Capsid protein) generated a recombinant phage, and the Soc-M2e proteins self-assembled onto phage capsids to form 3M2e-T4 nanoparticles during propagation of T4 in E. coli. Intranasal administration of 3M2e-T4 nanoparticles maintains antigen persistence in the lungs, resulting in increased uptake and presentation by antigen-presenting cells. M2e-specific secretory IgA, effector (T EM), central (T CM), and tissue-resident memory CD4+ T cells (T RM) were efficiently induced in the local mucosal sites, which mediated protections against divergent influenza viruses. Our studies demonstrated the mechanisms of immune protection following 3M2e-T4 nanoparticles vaccination and provide a versatile T4 platform that can be customized to rapidly develop mucosal vaccines against future emerging epidemics. [Display omitted] • A CRISPR/Cas-engineered universal T4 phage platform for mucosal vaccine development. • Antigen-decorated T4 phage nanoparticles mediate antigen persistence in the lung. • Influenza viral M2e-T4 nanoparticles promote antigen presentation in the lung. • Intranasal delivery of M2e-T4 nanoparticles elicits robust mucosal immune responses. • A M2e-T4 mucosal vaccine confers mice full protection against divergent flu viruses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphical abstract Highlights • MeJA promotes anthocyanin accumulation in strawberry fruit. • The optimum concentration of MeJA induction fruit ripening is 230 μM. • MeJA induced anthocyanin, suncrose, cell wall, JA and ABA metabolism related gene expression. • MeJA promotes strawberry fruit sucrose accumulation. • Overexpression of FaAOS and FaAOC promotes strawberry fruit ripening process. Abstract In this study we analyzed changes in jasmonic acid (JA) content during the development of the octoploid strawberry cultivar (Fragaria × ananassa Duch. "Benihoppe"). Here, strawberry fruits were treated with different concentrations of methyl jasmonic acid (MeJA, 50 μM, 100μM, 230 μM, 400 μM), respectively, to identify the optimal concentration of MeJA in promotion fruit maturation. We also examined the expression of genes linked to fruit ripening, as well as physiological changes that occurred after MeJA treatment. Using transient gene expression analyses, we performed that key genes in the jasmonic acid biosynthesis pathway, including FaAOC and FaAOS , were overexpressed in fruit, and we further studied their effects on fruit maturation. The results showed that endogenous JA content in the strawberry fruit increased sharply from the small fruit stage to the white fruit stage, but declined after the fruit had ripened, reaching a minimum when fully ripened. MeJA treatment can promote the development and maturation of strawberry fruit, and we found that the optimal concentration to promote maturation was 230 μM. MeJA treatment was associated with increased expression of genes involved in pigment metabolism, sugar metabolism, fruit softening, and hormone metabolism, as well as increases in JA, anthocyanin, and sugar content. Moreover, MeJA treatment was associated with decreased fruit hardness. Overexpression of FaAOC and FaAOS were also found to accelerate strawberry fruit maturation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on in-memory big data management and processing has been prompted by the increase in main memory capacity and the explosion in big data. By offering an efficient in-memory distributed execution model, existing in-memory cluster computing platforms such as Flink and Spark have been proven to be outstanding for processing big data. This paper proposes FlinkCL, an in-memory computing architecture on heterogeneous CPU-GPU clusters based on OpenCL that enables Flink to utilize GPU's massive parallel processing ability. Our proposed architecture utilizes four techniques: a heterogeneous distributed abstract model (HDST), a Just-In-Time (JIT) compiling schema, a hierarchical partial reduction (HPR) and a heterogeneous task management strategy. Using FlinkCL, programmers only need to write Java code with simple interfaces. The Java code can be compiled to OpenCL kernels and executed on CPUs and GPUs automatically. In the HDST, a novel memory mapping scheme is proposed to avoid serialization or deserialization between Java Virtual Machine (JVM) objects and OpenCL structs. We have comprehensively evaluated FlinkCL with a set of representative workloads to show its effectiveness. Our results show that FlinkCL improve the performance by up to $11 \times$ for some computationally heavy algorithms and maintains minor performance improvements for a I/O bound algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing main memory capacity and the explosion of big data have fueled the development of in-memory big data management and processing. By offering an efficient in-memory parallel execution model which can eliminate disk I/O bottleneck, existing in-memory cluster computing platforms (e.g., Flink and Spark) have already been proven to be outstanding platforms for big data processing. However, these platforms are merely CPU-based systems. This paper proposes GFlink, an in-memory computing architecture on heterogeneous CPU-GPU clusters for big data. Our proposed architecture extends the original Flink from CPU clusters to heterogeneous CPU-GPU clusters, greatly improving the computational power of Flink. Furthermore, we have proposed a programming framework based on Flink's abstract model, i.e., DataSet (DST), hiding the programming complexity of GPUs behind the simple and familiar high-level interfaces. To achieve high performance and good load-balance, an efficient JVM-GPU communication strategy, a GPU cache scheme, and an adaptive locality-aware scheduling scheme for three-stage pipelining execution are proposed. Extensive experiment results indicate that the high computational power of GPUs can be efficiently utilized, and the implementation on GFlink outperforms that on the original CPU-based Flink. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we investigate effective ways of utilizing crowdworkers in providing various urban services. The task recommendation platform that we design can match tasks to crowdworkers based on workers&#x02019; historical trajectories and time budget limits, thus making recommendations personal and efficient. One major challenge we manage to address is the handling of crowdworker&#x02019;s trajectory uncertainties. In this article, we explicitly allow multiple routine routes to be probabilistically associated with each worker. We formulate this problem as an integer linear program whose goal is to maximize the expected total utility achieved by all workers. We further exploit the separable structures of the formulation and apply the Lagrangian relaxation technique to scale up computation. Numerical experiments have been performed over the instances generated using the realistic public transit dataset in Singapore. The results show that we can find significantly better solutions than the deterministic formulation, and in most cases we can find solutions that are very close to the theoretical performance limit. To demonstrate the practicality of our approach, we deployed our recommendation engine to a campus-scale field trial, and we demonstrate that workers receiving our recommendations incur fewer detours and complete more tasks, and are more efficient against workers relying on their own planning (25% more for top workers who receive recommendations). This is achieved despite having highly uncertain worker trajectories. We also demonstrate how to further improve the robustness of the system by using a simple multi-coverage mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context:Corydalis yanhusuoW.T. Wang (Papaveraceae) (Rhizoma Corydalis) showed inhibitory effects on rabbit platelet aggregation induced by ADP, thrombin (THR) or arachidonic acid (AA). Objective:This study separates and identifies the possible target-related platelet proteins and suggests possible signal cascades of RC antiplatelet aggregation. Materials and methods:Based on comparative proteomics, the differentially expressed platelet proteins treated before and after with 50 mg/mL RC 90% ethanol extract (for 15 min at 37 °C) were analyzed and identified by two dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) and MALDI-TOF-MS/MS. To further verify the possible signalling pathways of RC antiplatelet aggregation function, the concentration of calcium (Ca2+) was measured by Fura-2/AM fluorescence (Ex 340/380 nm, Em 500 nm) (RC final concentrations of 0.0156–0.1563 mg/mL), the levels of P-selectin and cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) were quantified by ELISA (OD. 450 nm) (RC final concentrations of 0.0156–1.5625 mg/mL), and the 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) level was measured usingortho-phthalaldehyde (OPT) fluorescence (Ex 340 nm, Em 470 nm) (RC final concentrations of 0.3125–1.5625 mg/mL). Results:The expression of 52 proteins were altered in rabbit platelets after the treatment and the MALDI-TOF-MS analysis indicated that those proteins include 12 cytoskeleton proteins, 7 cell signalling proteins, 3 molecular chaperone proteins, 6 proteins related to platelet function, 16 enzymes and 7 other related proteins. Furthermore, RC extract could decrease the levels of 5-HT [inhibition rate of 96.80% (p < 0.05,vs. THR-activated group) treated with 0.7813 mg/mL of RC], Ca2+ [172.73 ± 5.07 to 113.56 ± 5.46 nM (p < 0.001,vs. THR-activated group) treated with 0.0313 mg/mL of RC] and P-selectin [13.48 ± 0.96 ng/3 × 108to 11.64 ± 0.17 ng/3 × 108(p < 0.05,vs. THR-activated group) treated with 0.0156 mg/mL of RC], and increase in cGMP level [38.93 ± 0.57 to 50.26 ± 4.05 ng/3 × 108(p <0.05,vs. THR-activated group) treated with 1.5165 mg/mL of RC] in ADP (10 μmol/L), THR (0.25 u/mL) or AA-(0.205 mmol/L) activated rabbit platelets. Discussion and conclusion:The present study indicated that P2Y12 receptor might be one of the direct target proteins of RC in platelets. The signal cascades network of RC after binding with P2Y12 receptor is mediating Gαi proteins to activate downstream signalling pathways (AC and/or PI3K signalling pathways) for the inhibition of platelet aggregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Defoliation reduces the growth and survival of trees, but this influence can be difficult to evaluate largely because of its interplay with various stand and site factors, especially for the highly dynamic defoliation of spruce-fir ( Picea- Abies) forests caused by spruce budworm (SBW; Choristoneura fumiferana (Clem.)), the primary tree defoliator in North America. In this study, we developed statistical models to evaluate the influence of SBW defoliation, while considering its interaction with various stand and site factors, on spruce-fir stand dynamics of annual volume net growth, mortality, and ingrowth. The data were collected at intervals of 1 to 3 years from 560 permanent sample plots during the last SBW outbreak (1970s-1980s) in Maine, USA, and New Brunswick, Canada. These data comprise a wide range of observations of cumulative defoliation, especially at relatively low levels, that have been largely overlooked in previous studies. Our results strongly demonstrated that even relatively low levels of cumulative defoliation were significantly related to stand-level mortality and ingrowth, while net growth was more competition driven. Additionally, these stand dynamics were found to be not significantly affected by any of the site factors evaluated. These findings were consistent for Maine and New Brunswick despite their differences in forest management and SBW outbreak histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) algorithm not only has gained much attention of many scholars and researchers, but also has been widely applied in recent years especially when dealing with big data because of its better generalization performance and learning speed. The proposal of SS-ELM (semi-supervised Extreme Learning Machine) extends ELM algorithm to the area of semi-supervised learning which is an important issue of machine learning on big data. However, the original SS-ELM algorithm needs to store the data in the memory before processing it, so that it could not handle large and web-scale data sets which are of frequent appearance in the era of big data. To solve this problem, this paper firstly proposes an efficient parallel SS-ELM (PSS-ELM) algorithm on MapReduce model, adopting a series of optimizations to improve its performance. Then, a parallel approximate SS-ELM Algorithm based on MapReduce (PASS-ELM) is proposed. PASS-ELM is based on the approximate adjacent similarity matrix (AASM) algorithm, which leverages the Locality-Sensitive Hashing (LSH) scheme to calculate the approximate adjacent similarity matrix, thus greatly reducing the complexity and occupied memory. The proposed AASM algorithm is general, because the calculation of the adjacent similarity matrix is the key operation in many other machine learning algorithms. The experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed PASS-ELM algorithm can efficiently process very large-scale data sets with a good performance, without significantly impacting the accuracy of the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extreme learning machine (ELM) has become one of the most important and popular algorithms of machine learning, because of its extremely fast training speed, good generalization, and universal approximation/classification capability. The proposal of hierarchical ELM (H-ELM) extends ELM from single hidden layer feedforward networks to multilayer perceptron, greatly strengthening the applicability of ELM. Generally speaking, during training H-ELM, large-scale datasets (DSTs) are needed. Therefore, how to make use of H-ELM framework in processing big data is worth further exploration. This paper proposes a parallel H-ELM algorithm based on Flink, which is one of the in-memory cluster computing platforms, and graphics processing units (GPUs). Several optimizations are adopted to improve the performance, such as cache-based scheme, reasonable partitioning strategy, memory mapping scheme for mapping specific Java virtual machine objects to buffers. Most importantly, our proposed framework for utilizing GPUs to accelerate Flink for big data is general. This framework can be utilized to accelerate many other variants of ELM and other machine learning algorithms. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first kind of library, which combines in-memory cluster computing with GPUs to parallelize H-ELM. The experimental results have demonstrated that our proposed GPU-accelerated parallel H-ELM named as GPH-ELM can efficiently process large-scale DSTs with good performance of speedup and scalability, leveraging the computing power of both CPUs and GPUs in the cluster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we obtain some novel results on pairwise quasi-asymptotically independent (pQAI) random variables. Concretely speaking, letX1, …,Xnbenreal-valued pQAI random variables, andW1, …,Wnbe anothernnon negative and arbitrarily dependent random variables, but independent ofX1, …,Xn. Under some mild conditions, we prove thatW1X1, …,WnXnare still pQAI as well. Our result is in a general setting whether the primary random variablesX1, …,Xnare heavy-tailed or not. Finally, a special case of above result is applied to risk theory for investigating the finite-time ruin probability for a discrete-time risk model with a wide type of dependence structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The condition monitoring problem of power devices is significant for diagnostics and prognostics of a switched-mode power supply (SMPS) system. For power mosfet, the gate oxide degradation often occurs in various applications. However, there is no online condition monitoring method for gate oxide degradation so far. In this paper, a new precursor that can be used for online condition monitoring of power mosfet gate oxide degradation is proposed. Gate oxide degradation mechanisms and effect are summarized, and the mosfet turn-on process is analyzed. Then, a theoretical model is established to describe the relationship between miller platform voltage and two types of gate oxide defects, and miller platform voltage is identified as a new precursor. The precursor can be extracted without impacting system operation, thus online condition monitoring can be accomplished. The accelerated degradation test is carried out for power mosfets with both high electric field and gamma irradiation methods, and the degraded devices injection and in situ monitoring of miller platform voltage are conducted on a BOOST circuit to verify the feasibility of the new precursor. Experimental results demonstrate that the new precursor can be applied to online condition monitoring of power mosfet gate oxide degradation in the SMPS system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, sirolimus (SRL) was loaded within biomimetic apatite formed on cobalt-chromium (Co-Cr) alloy, which has been reported for the first time, to inhibit the in-stent restenosis. Two different groups of loading SRL within biomimetic apatite were prepared: Group A (mono-layer of apatite/SRL) and Group B (bi-layer of apatite/SRL). Group A and Group B showed the biphasic pattern of SRL release up to 40 and 90 days, respectively. The attachment of human artery smooth muscle cell (HASMC) for both Group A and Group B was significantly inhibited, and proliferation dramatically decreased with the release of SRL. Noteworthily, biomimetic apatite alone also suppressed the SMC proliferation. The porous biomimetic apatite uniformly covered Co-Cr stent without crack or webbings. After balloon expansion, the integrity of biomimetic apatite was sufficient to resist delamination or destruction. Thus, this study demonstrated that biomimetic apatite is a promising drug carrier for potential use in stents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context:The rising problem of atherosclerosis and ischemic heart disease emphasizes the need to look for new antithrombotic components with effective modes of action.Corydalis yanhusuo(Y.H. Chou & Chun C. Hsu) W.T. Wang ex Z.Y. Su & C.Y. Wu (Papaveraceae) (Rhizoma Corydalis) has been used in the traditional medicines for the treatment of cardiovascular disease. Objective:The antiplatelet aggregation compounds in Rhizoma Corydalis were screened to validate its traditional medicinal use. Material and methods:Total alkaloid extract (TAE) of Rhizoma Corydalis was obtained by refluxing 100 g Rhizoma Corydalis powder with 600 mL 70% ethanol, and purified by acidification (20% HCl) and alkalization (5 M NaOH) process. Potential antiplatelet aggregation compounds in TAE were screened by a method involving platelet bio-specific extraction and HPLC-DAD/LC–MS analysis. Furtherin vitroantiplatelet aggregation activity confirmation of TAE and seven main alkaloids were achieved by turbidimetry method within 3 h after blood collection from rabbit carotid artery, and all the test drugs were at the concentration range of 25–350 μg/mL. Finally, HPLC-DAD was employed for the quantitative determination of seven main components in TAE. Results:Five alkaloids, identified as glaucine, dehydrocorydaline, canadine, tetrahydrocoptisine and corydaline, can be specifically extracted with platelets. The results indicated that all these five alkaloids can inhibit thrombin-induced platelet aggregation in a low dose (IC50of glaucine, dehydrocorydaline, canadine, tetrahydrocoptisine and corydaline were 49.057, 34.914, 33.547, 84.261 and 54.164 μg/mL, respectively) as compared to TAE (IC50 = 175.426 μg/mL) and aspirin (IC50 = 300.340 μg/mL), while the unbound compounds (palmatine and tetrahydropalmatine) had a very weak antiplatelet effect (IC50 > 200 μg/mL). Discussion and conclusion:This study is the first reported work for antiplatelet components screening in Rhizoma Corydalis. Seven compounds were detected and identified by HPLC-DAD/LC–MS, of which five platelet-targeted compounds were discovered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to clarify the cytotoxicity of hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) diastereoisomers, and to investigate the correlation of cytotoxicity and biotransformation of HBCDs, the immortalized human liver cells L02 and human hepatoma cells HepG2 were exposed to individual HBCD diastereoisomer (α-, β- and γ-HBCD). Cytotoxicity was assayed in terms of cell viability, reactive oxygen species (ROS) level and DNA damage. Metabolic rate, bioisomerization and enantiomer fractions were analyzed using the liquid chromatograph coupled to triple quadrupole mass spectrometer (LC-MS/MS). The α-, β- and γ-HBCD all had cytotoxicity in L02 and HepG2 cells with the toxicity order β-HBCD ≥ γ-HBCD > α-HBCD according to the results of proliferation assay. The cytotoxicity mechanism between the two cells seemed different: a) the stability of intracellular redox state plays an important role in inducing cell toxicity in HepG2 cells. b) DNA damage status is central to inhibit proliferation in L02 cells. The metabolic capability of HepG2 was superior to L02 for HBCD diastereoisomers, which may explain the greater toxicity of HBCDs in HepG2 cells. The bioisomerization and enantiomer enrichment were also detected in this study, although the results were inconsistent with other reports, which might result from species-specific differences in HBCDs metabolism or experimental conditions. The cytotoxicity and metabolic mechanism of individual enantiomers must be further investigated to evaluate the health risks of HBCDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Random effects are ubiquitous in the degradation processes of multiple performance characteristics (PCs) of a complex system, and these PCs are not commonly independent. Neglecting either of the above features will lead to bias in system reliability estimation. Therefore, this study develops a reliability estimation method for the complex systems with multiple PC degradations considering both of the features. First, a Wiener process-based marginal degradation model with random effects (including the random initial PC, unit-to-unit variability, temporal uncertainty, and measurement errors) is proposed to track the degradation path of each PC. A model based on D-vine copulas is put forward to describe the correlation among multiple PCs. Then, a system reliability function is derived based on the two models. Furthermore, a two-step statistical inference is developed to estimate the unknown parameters in the system reliability function. Finally, using a practical case, the effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated. • A reliability estimation method is proposed for complex systems. • A marginal Wiener process-based degradation model with random effects is proposed. • The correlation among multiple performance characteristics is modeled by D-vine copulas. • A two-step statistical inference is developed to perform the parameter estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A dispatching first and paying later framework for EVs in restoration is presented. • The EV clustering model is proposed to solve the restoration problem efficiently. • An incentive mechanism for EVs based on the Nash bargaining theory is designed. Electric vehicles (EVs) are high-quality mobile power sources that can enhance the resilient restoration of distribution systems (DSs). However, incentivizing and dispatching the orderly participation of EVs in DS restoration has not been studied yet. This paper proposes a resilient restoration strategy for DS utilizing EVs and an EV-oriented incentive mechanism to address the problem. Firstly, a dispatching first and paying later framework for utilizing EVs in restoration is proposed. The problem of restoration utilizing EVs is divided into an EV-based restoration problem and an incentive problem. Secondly, EVs' clustering time–space model and power model are constructed from the clustering perspective via EV's energy discretization. Then, the DS's robust restoration model is developed to obtain the dispatch strategy. Thirdly, an incentive mechanism based on the asymmetric Nash bargaining theory is designed to compensate EVs financially, using the amount of restored load by EVs as the contribution indicator. Finally, numerical simulations are performed with modified IEEE 33-node and 118-node DS. The results show that the proposed EV-based strategy can restore more critical loads and save more than 90% of economic losses in the presence of sufficient renewable energy. The solution efficiency of the proposed strategy is also significantly improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• L. plantarum CM-3 suppresses the postharvest development of gray mold on grapes. • The transcriptomic response of grapes to L. plantarum CM-3 was revealed. • Genes with altered expression in treated grapes are related to defense activation. • Molecular mechanism underlying induced resistance in grapes by CM-3 was established. Biological control by microbial antagonists has been proposed as a viable strategy for the control of postharvest diseases in fruit. In the present study, biocontrol efficacy of the bacterial antagonist Lactobacillus plantarum CM-3 against gray mold infection on harvested grapes was documented along with the underlying physiological and molecular mechanisms responsible for biocontrol activity. In this regard, a transcriptomic analysis of the response of grapes to L. plantarum CM3 was conducted. Results indicated that L. plantarum CM-3 significantly decreased the level of natural postharvest decay in grapes without causing any adverse effects on quality traits. Treatment of grapes with L. plantarum CM-3 (1 × 109 CFU mL−1) resulted in a 55 % reduction in disease incidence caused by Botrytis cinerea. Meanwhile, L. plantarum CM-3 enhanced the activity of several enzymes in grapes that are closely associated with defense, including POD, PPO, CAT, APX, PAL, and GLU. RNA-seq analysis indicated extensive changes in the gene expression profile of grape berries in response to being treated with L. plantarum CM-3. In total, 1,327 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified, among which 78.1 % (1,037) were upregulated and 21.9 % (2 9 0) were downregulated. Numerous pathways were strongly influenced by the L. plantarum CM-3 treatment, including signal perception and transduction, maintenance of reactive oxygen species (ROS) homeostasis, transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation, primary metabolic pathways, and secondary metabolism. Additionally, the expression of 22 DEGs linked to enhancing disease resistance was analyzed by RT-qPCR and their expression levels were found to well correspond with the results obtained in the analysis of the RNA-seq data. Our data indicate that L. plantarum CM-3 can enhance host resistance by altering the expression of defense genes and their corresponding proteins, including PR1 , WRKY33 , WRKY22 , PTI6 and peroxidase isoenzyme. Collectively, results of our study indicate that L. plantarum CM-3 treatment enhances the disease resistance of harvested grapes through a comprehensive and complex regulatory network. These findings provide new information on the molecular mechanism responsible for the enhancement of host disease resistance in grapes by L. plantarum CM-3. It also demonstrates a biocontrol strategy that can be used to elicit defense responses in fruit against fungal pathogens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Porous hollow hydroxyapatite microspheres (PHHMs) are the promising biomaterials, owing to their excellent biocompatibility, biodegradability and bioactivity. PHHMs have been used as drug controlled carriers due to their advantages such as large drug loading capacity, nanochannels for drug loading and release and high specific surface area. In this study, PHHMs were prepared successfully in Na 2 HPO 4 solution by an anion-exchange process using vaterite CaCO 3 through a hydrothermal method. The previous vaterite CaCO 3 was synthesized by a polymer-templated method in the poly(styrene sulfonic acid) sodium salt (PSS) aqueous solutions. The PHHMs have a size distribution from 0.8 to 2.0 μm, with an average pore size of about 24.3 nm. The wall of PHHMs is constructed with building units of hydroxyapatite nanofibers with an average length of 300 nm and an average width of 20 nm. The PHHMs displayed a high drug loading capacity and pH-responsive sustained–controlled drug release behavior when we used doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX) as a loading drug. Moreover, the controlled drug release system showed a high ability to kill cancer cells and less damage to normal cells. These results indicated that PHHMs are promising for applications in various biomedical fields such as drug delivery system and oncotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a method coupling turbulent flow chromatography with online solid-phase extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry was developed for analyzing the lignans in Magnoliae Flos. By the online pretreatment of turbulent flow chromatography solid-phase extraction, the impurities removal and analytes concentration were automatically processed, and the lignans were separated rapidly and well. Seven lignans of Magnoliae Flos including epieudesmin, magnolin, 1-irioresinol-B-dimethyl ether, epi-magnolin, fargesin aschantin, and demethoxyaschantin were identified by comparing their retention behavior, UV spectra, and mass spectra with those of reference substances or literature data. The developed method was validated, and the good results showed that the method was not only automatic and rapid, but also accurate and reliable. The turbulent flow chromatography with online solid-phase extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry method holds a high potential to become an effective method for the quality control of lignans in Magnoliae Flos and a useful tool for the analysis of other complex mixtures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chemically modified antisense oligonucleotides (ASO) currently in pre‐clinical and clinical experiments mainly focus on the 2′‐position derivatizations to enhance stability and targeting affinity. Considering the possible incompatibility of 2′‐modifications with RNase H stimulation and activity, we have hypothesized that the atom specific modifications on nucleobases can retain the complex structure and RNase H activity, while enhancing ASO's binding affinity, specificity, and stability against nucleases. Herein we report a novel strategy to explore our hypothesis by synthesizing the deoxynucleoside phosphoramidite building block with the seleno‐modification at 5‐position of thymidine, as well as its Se‐oligonucleotides. Via X‐ray crystal structural study, we found that the Se‐modification was located in the major groove of nucleic acid duplex and didn't cause the thermal and structural perturbations. Surprisingly, our nucleobase‐modified Se‐DNAs were exceptionally resistant to nuclease digestion, while compatible with RNase H activity. This affords a novel avenue for potential anti‐sense modification in the form of Se‐antisense oligonucleotides (Se‐ASO). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 8# coal seam in the Benxi Formation of the southeastern margin of the Ordos Basin is a deep coal seam with abundant coalbed methane resources. Calcite veins are commonly developed within the 8# coal seam, and their formation processes and mechanisms have significant implications for the enrichment of deep coalbed methane. Genesis of the calcite veins was analyzed to reveal the impact of the calcite veins formation on coalbed methane accumulation, with an integrated application of petrographic study by thin section, cathodoluminescence analysis, carbon-oxygen isotope analysis, and homogeneous temperature measurements of fluid inclusions. The research findings indicate that the calcite veins in the 8# coal seam can be classified into three stages: C1, C2, and C3. The diagenetic fluids of C1 primarily originated from contemporaneous seawater. The fluids responsible for the formation of C2 primarily consist of organic fluids enriched in biogenic gas, whereas the fluids contributing to the formation of C3 are primarily associated with liquid hydrocarbons originated form decarboxylation of organic matter. Furthermore, the development of both C2 and C3 is influenced by deep hydrothermal fluids resulting from tectonic heating events during the Early Cretaceous. By combining analysis of the hydrocarbon accumulation history and burial history in the study area, it has been established that C2 formation occurred during the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, while C3 formation took place during the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous. The exploration and production practices in the study area have firmly established the crucial significance of the formation and evolution of calcite veins within the 8# coal seam for the migration and accumulation of coalbed methane. The research outcomes provide valuable insights for the exploration of deep coalbed methane enrichment areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between pancreatic fat infiltration (PFI) and glucose metabolism disorder, β-cell function and insulin resistance in patients with obesity.Methods: Pancreatic fat fraction (PFF) was quantified by MRI IDEAL-IQ technique. PFF greater than 6.2 % was defined as PFI, and 34 obese patients were divided into PFI and non-PFI groups. The 5-point plasma glucose and insulin values during oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) were recorded. OGTT-derived indices of insulin resistance and β-cell function were calculated.Results: Glucose values levels at 0-120 min during OGTT were significantly higher and β-cell function variables were lower in PFI group than non-PFI group. While indices of insulin resistance were not significantly different between two groups. Correlation analysis showed that PFF was positively correlated with glucose levels at 0, 30 and 60 min, negatively correlated with β-cell function variables and not significantly correlated with indices of insulin resistance. However, these associations of PFF with β-cell function and glucose levels were only present in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) group but not in non-T2DM group.Conclusion: There is an association between PFI and impaired β-cell function, and increased pancreatic fat may be a potential risk factor for the development of T2DM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the behavior of polycrystalline metals at different temperatures is investigated by a new thermo-elasto-plasticity constitutive theory. Based on solid mechanical and interatomic potential, the constitutive equation is established using a new decomposition of the deformation gradient. For polycrystalline copper and magnesium, the stress-strain curves from 77 to 764 K (copper), and 77 to 870 K (magnesium) under quasi-static uniaxial loading are calculated, and then the calculated results are compared with the experiment results. Also, it is determined that the present model has the capacity to describe the decrease of the elastic modulus and yield stress with the increasing temperature, as well as the change of hardening behaviors of the polycrystalline metals. The calculation process is simple and explicit, which makes it easy to implement into the applications. Graphical abstract: The new decomposition of deformation gradient offers the key basis for the establishment of the thermo-elasto-plasticity constitutive theory in this article. And the proposed model can accurately reflect the behavior of the polycrystalline metals at different temperatures with a concise and clear calculation process. [Figure not available: see fulltext.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thrombosis is considered to be closely related to several diseases such as atherosclerosis, ischemic heart disease and stroke, as well as rheumatoid arthritis, hyperuricemia, and various inflammatory conditions. More and more studies have been focused on understanding the mechanism of molecular and cellular basis of thrombus formation as well as preventing thrombosis for the treatment of thrombotic diseases. In reality, there is considerable interest in the role of natural products and their bioactive components in the prevention and treatment of thrombosis related disorders. This paper briefly describes the mechanisms of thrombus formation on three aspects, including coagulation system, platelet activation, and aggregation, and change of blood flow conditions. Furthermore, the natural products for antithrombosis by anticoagulation, antiplatelet aggregation, and fibrinolysis were summarized, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nanocomposite layers of mineral/osteogenic growth peptide (OGP) were synthesized on calcium phosphate coated titanium substrates by immersing in calcium-phosphate buffer solution containing OGP. Peptide incorporated mineral was characterized by determining quantity loaded, effects on mineral morphology and structure. Also, the biological activity was investigated by cell adhesion, proliferation assay, and measurement of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and micro-bicinchoninic acid (BCA) assay revealed that OGP was successfully incorporated with mineral and the amount was increased with immersion time. Incorporated OGP changed the mineral morphology from sharp plate-like shape to more rounded one, and the octacalcium phosphate structure of the mineral was gradually transformed into apatite. With confocal microscopy to examine the incorporation of fluorescently labeled peptide, OGP was evenly distributed throughout mineral layers. Mineral/OGP nanocomposites promoted cell adhesion and proliferation, and also increased ALP activity of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). Results presented here indicated that the mineral/OGP nanocomposites formed on titanium substrates had the potential for applications in dental implants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we formulate and study the Multi-agent Orienteering Problem with Time-dependent Capacity Constraints (MOPTCC). MOPTCC is similar to the classical orienteering problem at the single-agent level: given a limited time budget, an agent travels around the network and collects rewards by visiting different nodes, with the objective of maximizing the sum of his collected rewards. The most important feature we introduce in MOPTCC is the inclusion of multiple competing and interacting agents. All agents in MOPTCC are assumed to be self-interested, and they interact with each other when arrive at the same nodes simultaneously. As all nodes are capacitated, if a particular node receives more agents than its capacity, all agents at that node will be made to wait and agents suffer collectively as a result (in terms of extra time needed for queueing). Due to the decentralized nature of the problem, MOPTCC cannot be solved in a centralized manner; instead, we need to seek out equilibrium solutions; and if this is not possible, at least approximated equilibrium solutions. The major contribution of this paper is the formulation of the problem, and our first attempt in identifying an efficient and effective equilibrium-seeking procedure for MOPTCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bacteriocinogenic Weissella hellenica D1501 was originally isolated from Chinese Dong fermented meat, showing a relatively good growth and sufficient acid development in soymilk. Investigation of the antagonistic activities of W. hellenica D1501 was conducted by co-culturing with spoilage and pathogenic bacteria (i.e. Kurthia gibsonii, Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli) in soymilk. The proliferations of the three undesired strains were suppressed and the bacterial populations decreased to undetectable level after 36 h of co-cultures. An innovative tofu (designated as LAB tofu) was a novel type of tofu coagulated by both acid and enzyme together through the using of W. hellenica D1501 combined with MTGase (microbial transglutaminase). Compared with tofu prepared with traditional coagulants, W. hellenica D1501 in LAB tofu could significantly suppress the microbial spoilage and extend the shelf-life based on microbiological analyses. During the storage periods at different temperatures, LAB tofu was observed bacteriocin activities and significantly increased amounts of various antimicrobial volatile compounds, which might be in partly responsible for spoilage retardation and shelf-life extension. In conclusion, W. hellenica D1501 can be used as bioprotective cultures for extending shelf-life and improving the safety of tofu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A new strain D1501, isolated from Chinese traditional Dong fermented meat (Nanx Wudl) and identified as Weissella hellenica, produced a bacteriocin (designated as weissellicin D) in de Man–Rogosa–Sharpe (MRS) broth at the early stationary phase. The bacteriocin was purified to homogeneity by ammonium sulfate precipitation, gel permeation and Mono-Q anion-exchange chromatography. Weissellicin D had a molecular weight of 62.42 kDa by Tricine–SDS-PAGE and mass spectrometry, which was the largest among all known bacteriocins from Weissella. Weissellicin D exhibited a broad range of antimicrobial activity against food-borne spoilage and pathogenic bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria monocytogenes, Escherichia coli, as well as some yeasts and molds. Weissellicin D showed strong pH and thermal stabilities. It was sensitive to protease, but resistant to catalase, lipase, α-amylase, lysozyme, and glucoamylase. The Edman degradation results implied that amino acid sequences of weissellicin D were belonged to N-terminal blocking group. Peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF) analyses after trypsin digestion indicated weissellicin D had no homology with any known bacteriocins or antimicrobial proteins. This was the first description of W. hellenica strain associated with Chinese Dong fermented meat as well as the high molecular weight of bacteriocin produced by this strain. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Energy efficiency is a significant issue in heterogeneous edge computing systems for a large number of latency-sensitive applications. This article presents an efficient technique to minimize energy overhead of time-constrained applications modeled by DAGs in heterogeneous edge computing. The technique is divided into three stages. First, we design a new method to compute task priority and propose the ant-colony based energy-aware scheduling algorithm to get a preliminary scheduling result. Second, taking the slack time between tasks and their deadlines into consideration, we propose the downward proportionally reclaiming slack algorithm to further cut down energy overhead by the DVFS technique. Third, taking the slack time between tasks into consideration, we propose the upward and downward proportionally reclaiming slack algorithm to cut down energy overhead by the DVFS technique again. Simulated results indicate that the presented technique is highly efficient in reducing energy overhead compared with state-of-the-art techniques using benchmarks of distinct characteristics. • We design a new method of computing task priority. • We make good use of the slack time to reduce energy consumption by DVFS. • We propose the DUPRS algorithm to reduce energy consumption via DVFS. • Simulated results indicate that DUPRS is highly efficient in reducing energy overhead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] HBCD induced obvious oxidative damage in HepG2 cells. [•] OPCs could effectively protect cells against HBCD-induced cytotoxicity. [•] ROS formation, mitochondrial pathway, and Ca2+ level are involved in OPCs effect regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Searching for bioactive compounds from natural resources such as plant materials has become a focus for study. Several models, such as animal (biofluid, organ and tissue) and cellular (several kinds of cell lines), have traditionally been used for this purpose. As a fast, economic and effective way to identify or predict bioactive compounds in complex matrices, biochromatography has developed rapidly during the past years. Combing the properties of traditional chromatography and biomaterials, biochromatographic analysis possesses features of simultaneous screening, separation and structural identification for active compounds in a complex matrix. According to the process, biochromatography can be divided into offline and online approaches. For offline bioextraction, the biomaterials are used as the extraction phase and followed by routine chromatographic analysis. For online biochromatography, the biomaterials are directly used as the stationary phase for chromatographic analysis. This paper reviews the applications of offline bioextraction followed by chromatographic analysis and online biochromatography, including molecular, cell membrane and cell, and artificial biomembrane chromatography in the screening or predicting active compounds from natural sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A SSADT optimal design method is developed. • A generalized Wiener process-based model considering the distribution feature is proposed. • An optimization criterion for products' degradation distribution is proposed. • Statistical inference of the proposed generalized Wiener process-based model is studied. • A set of metal-film resistor data is applied to illustrate the proposed method The Step-stress accelerated degradation test (SSADT) is an efficient tool to assess the reliability of products. To ensure an accurate evaluation of reliability-related indexes with limited cost, the optimal design for SSADTs is widely applied. Conventional optimal design methods ideally assume the degradation process to be linear and distribution-free, which may cause the designed test plans to be drastically different from the optimal one. To overcome the drawbacks of the unreasonable assumption, this paper develops a new optimal design method for SSADTs, including a generalized Wiener process-based degradation model (GWPDM) considering the distribution feature and a corresponding optimization criterion aiming at accurate prediction of degradation distributions. The GWPDM is first discussed, where the influence of the nonlinearity, unit-to-unit variability, measurement error and stress-related temporal variability on the degradation process is clarified. The statistical inference of the developed GWPDM is conducted to deduce the proposed optimization criterion. Thus, the optimization model is established to determine the optimal SSADT plan. The proposed method is used to design a SSADT plan for the metal-film resistor. Finally, the necessity and the robustness of the proposed method are verified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: To explore how fermented barley extracts could affect obesity‐associated inflammatory responses to ameliorate high‐fat diet (HFD)‐induced obesity, and investigate whether their anti‐inflammatory properties were affected by modulating the gut microbiota. Methods and Results: Twenty‐four male rats were assigned randomly to three groups for 8 weeks. Inflammatory status and gut microbiota in HFD‐induced obese rats were measured by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay and 16sRNA sequencing technology. The dietary supplementation of Extract of fermented barley with L. plantarum JDM1 (LFBE) reduced HFD‐induced obesity and improved insulin sensitivity. LFBE significantly decreased the levels of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and pro‐inflammatory cytokines (tumour necrosis factor‐α, interleukin [IL]‐6, IL‐1β, monocyte chemotactic protein‐1), and increased anti‐inflammatory cytokines (IL‐10) in serum. In addition, LFBE suppressed the activation of nuclear factor‐κB (NF‐κB) by inhibiting the inhibitor of NF‐κB alpha degradation and phosphorylation of JNK/p38 mitogen‐activated protein kinases in adipose tissue. Combined with changes in gut microbiota, these results illustrated that LFBE treatment markedly decreased the proportion of the LPS‐producing opportunistic pathogens and increased the proportion of Bifidobacterium. Conclusions: Administration of LFBE has beneficial effects on ameliorating HFD‐induced obesity and insulin resistance, lessening HFD‐induced gut microbiota dysbiosis and pro‐inflammatory cytokines secretion. Significance and Impact of this Study: The results suggest that fermented barley extracts may be a useful functional compound and beneficial to improve inflammatory status and gut microflora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]