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Purpose: To study the influence of citric acid pre-exposure on apoptosis and heart tissue ischemia-reperfusion lesion, and the involvement of PI3K/Akt signal route in this process. Methods: Eighty-four male Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were randomly divided into a sham group, model group, pretreatment group, and inhibitor group, with 21 rats in each group. Changes in myocardial infarction area were determined using TCC staining, while TUNEL assay was performed to assess apoptosis of cardiomyocytes in the rats. Expression levels of p-Akt, ppi3k, Bcl-2, Bax, and caspase-3 were assayed by Western blotting. Results: The levels of Bax and caspase-3 were higher in model rats than in sham group, while concentrations of Bcl-2, p-Akt, and p-pi3k were significantly reduced. In pre-treated and inhibitor-exposed rats, caspase-3 and Bax levels were significantly down-regulated, relative to corresponding levels in model rats, but Bcl-2, p-pi3k, and p-Akt were significantly up-regulated (p < 0.05). In inhibitor-exposed rats, Bax and caspase-3 were higher than levels in pretreatment rats, but p-pi3k, Bcl-2, and p-Akt concentrations were significantly decreased (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Citric acid pretreatment in rats activates PI3K/Akt signal pathway, inhibits cardiomyocyte apoptosis, protects the myocardium from ischemia-reperfusion injury, and improves cardiac function. The potential of citric acid pretreatment for its protective effect against myocardial injury due to ischemia-reperfusion should be further investigated.

In this study, we aimed to use voxel-level degree centrality (DC) features in combination with machine learning methods to distinguish obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) patients with and without mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Ninety-nine OSA patients were recruited for rs-MRI scanning, including 51 MCI patients and 48 participants with no mild cognitive impairment. Based on the Automated Anatomical Labeling (AAL) brain atlas, the DC features of all participants were calculated and extracted. Ten DC features were screened out by deleting variables with high pin-correlation and minimum absolute contraction and performing selective operator lasso regression. Finally, three machine learning methods were used to establish classification models. The support vector machine method had the best classification efficiency (AUC = 0.78), followed by random forest (AUC = 0.71) and logistic regression (AUC = 0.77). These findings demonstrate an effective machine learning approach for differentiating OSA patients with and without MCI and provide potential neuroimaging evidence for cognitive impairment caused by OSA.

The “green” production of bitumen has raised increasing interest in recent years to reduce the environmental, energy and petro-based concerns. Bio-oil, prepared by biomass pyrolysis, can be used as substitute for petro-based bitumen in bitumen or bitumen-based coatings, for its similar properties of good adhesion and anti-corrosion characteristics. Although biomass is a renewable and widespread chemicals resource, its value-added utilization is still difficult. Several studies have qualitatively demonstrated the use of bio-bitumen in practical applications. The present study investigates the effects and properties and the incorporation of bio-bitumen shown to improve the performance of traditional petro-bitumen to some extent. Bio-bitumen was prepared from biomass pyrolysis oil and applied to self-adhesive and doped hot-melt sheets. Resulting physical properties demonstrate that bio-bitumen is a potential substitute in bitumen coating sheet.IMPLICATIONSThis paper is intended to verify the effect of pyrolyzed bio-oil from wheat straw on the performance of bitumen, as well as the feasibility of application in the coating sheet. Up to now, the research on bio-bitumen is mainly in pavement bitumen. In the present research, bio-bitumen was applied to the coating sheet in different proportions. Interestingly, the prepared coating sheet exhibited higher adhesion. Other performances, such as temperature stability, mechanical strength and temperature flexibility of coating sheet showed improvement in the presence of bio- oil, which indicated the suitability of bio-oil in coating sheet bitumen.

Strains of Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis (BAL) are the most commonly added probiotic strains in infant formulas on the Chinese market. In this study, four genotyping methods, 16S rRNA sequencing, multilocus sequence typing, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and single nucleotide polymorphism-insertion deletion polymorphism were used to determine the 30 isolates from 20 commercial products at the species and strain levels. A combination of the label analysis, quantification and identification results showed that the label claims from the 20 samples had an overall accuracy of 80%. This study was the first to use molecular techniques to identify bifidobacteria strains in probiotic infant formulas on the Chinese market. The results demonstrated that the combination of genotyping methods can effectively identify commonly used commercial BAL strains with similar genetic backgrounds and highlight the importance of accurate strain identification by manufacturers to ensure product legitimacy and to avoid potential health risks.

Plenty of studies showed the probiotics can promote health. The number of probiotic bacteria in probiotic dairy products has become an important criterion for evaluating the produces' quality. Therefore,it is necessary to establish a simple and rapid method for quantitative determination of the probiotics in dairy products. In this paper,the research status and development trend of quantitative determination method of probiotics in dairy products are summarized.

In today′s society,as people′s demand for food increases,the problem of food safety is getting more and more concerns.Therefore it is very necessary to seek and to establish the rapid method detection of food microorganisms.This paper presents several new technologies for rapid detection of food microorganism and their application in the practical detection.

The active numbers of probiotics in 20 powdered formula products for infants and young children in China were assessed, 18 of which met the international and national standards. The survival rate of Bifidobacteria under various storage conditions after the product is opened was measured. Storage at 37 °C resulted in a significantly higher decay rate than at 4 °C and 25 °C for 14 and 28 days. Results suggest that the probiotic survival rate in powdered formula is negatively correlated with temperature and storage time, whereas the brand and model of the formula have little impact.