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Abstract Context Granulosa cells (GCs) that surround oocytes in mammalian reproduction play an active role in oocyte differentiation through proliferation and energy production. Aims This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of the energy metabolism of ovarian GCs and the influence of GCs on the early embryonic development in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Methods The clinical characteristics and in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer treatment outcomes of 39 patients with PCOS and 68 patients with simple tubal factor infertility who underwent controlled ovarian hyperstimulation were analyzed and summarized. The mitochondrial function and glucose metabolism level of the GCs were determined, as well as the content of oxidative stress markers in the follicular fluid (FF) of patients with and without PCOS. Key results When compared to the non-PCOS group, patients with PCOS had a significantly increased number of retrieved oocytes but a significantly decreased number of high-quality embryos, available embryos, and high-quality blastocyst formation (P

Objective To investigate the expression and function of protein tyrosine phosphatase 4A3(PTP4A3) in terminal erythroid differentiation and underlying molecular mechanism. Methods RT-qPCR was used to detect the expression of Ptp4a3 during terminal differentiation. Knockdown of Ptp4a3 expression in mouse fetal liver induced erythroid differentiation system by short hairpin RNA(shRNA) interference, the knockdown efficiency was verified by RT-qPCR after GFP positive cells were sorted by flow cytometry, and the effect of Ptp4a3 knockdown on erythroid differentiation and enucleation was detected by flow cytometry. Transcriptional profiling was performed to explore the potential downstream pathways of Ptp4a3. Results Ptp4a3 was among the top 100 ranked expressing genes during mouse terminal erythroid differentiation, and its expression gradually increased following the differentiation process. In mouse fetal liver-derived erythroid cells, Ptp4a3 was successfully knocked down by shRNA interference. Flow cytometry analysis showed that Ptp4a3 knockdown significantly decreased the proportion of enucleated erythrocytes(P＜0.05). Transcriptome analysis revealed that Ptp4a3 knockdown resulted in upregulation of cell cycle-related genes. Conclusions PTP4A3 is highly expressed in late stage of terminal erythroid differentiation. Knockdown Ptp4a3 significantly reduces enucleation erythroid of cells.

In this paper, we present research results that extend and supplement our article recently published by MDPI. We derive the closed-form relations among the queue-length probabilities observed in the pre-arrival, random, and post-departure epochs for a complex, bulk-service, multi-server queueing system GI/M a , b /c. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gossypol is a yellow polyphenol naturally produced by Malvaceae plants such as cotton, which mainly exists in roots, stems, leaves, and seeds of cotton. Gossypol has animal toxicity, and long-term intake of gossypol will accumulate in livestock and cause poisoning, resulting in decreased fecundity, organ lesions, and even death of animals. The cotton output in Xinjiang is huge, accounting for more than 80% of the whole country. After cotton harvest, most of the waste cotton straws are directly crushed and returned to the field, resulting in great waste of resources. Cotton straw is rich in crude protein, cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin, which is equivalent to common crop straw in nutritional components. However, its gossypol content exceeded the standard, which limited the application of cotton straw feed. How to achieve efficient and low-cost detoxification of gossypol has become the key factor to determining the fodder of cotton straw. The structure, properties, toxicity, detoxification technology, and detoxification mechanism of gossypol were summarized in this paper, which provided a reference for feed utilization of cotton straw. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the mechanism of ion rejection in the separation process remains a major hurdle in designing new membrane materials for seawater desalination. Here, we investigate the effects of water and aromatic polyamide (PA) membrane on the rejection of salt ions, such as [Fe.sup.2+], [Na.sup.+], and [Cl.sup.-], by molecular dynamic simulations. Results demonstrate that water plays a key role in salt ion rejection because salt ions preferentially interact with water molecules to form hydrates with multishell structures, which aids the rejection of various salt ions. For Fe[Cl.sub.2] aqueous solution, the innermost shell water molecules of a [Fe.sup.2+] hydrate can hardly be replaced by other substances in their molecular dynamics simulations, so ions would be highly rejected if the effective diameter of a water channel (EDC) in the membrane is smaller than that of the innermost shell of a hydrate. However, the water molecules in the second water shell can be replaced by the atoms of the membrane when the EDC is smaller than the size of the second shell (about 9 A). Besides, although the sizes of these ions approximate to those of water molecules, the rejection level of PA membrane to salt ions is higher than that to water, which is accounted for by the formation of hydrate. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 55:466-473, 2015. © 2014 Society of Plastics Engineers, INTRODUCTION Ion separation from aqueous solution has gained considerable attention in recent years due to its extensive applications in obtaining freshwater, sewage treatment, preparation of high-purity water, etc. [1-5]. Desalinations [...]

Temperature window effect has been used to extrude polyethylene blends 5000s/TR-571 and bimodal polyethylene GC100s with low extrusion temperatures and pressures. Rheological results indicate that the temperature window effect occurs during the extrusions of the GC100s and blends 5000s/TR-571. For the blends 5000s/TR-571, both the temperature window and the minimum extrusion pressure dramatically decreases with increasing content of 5000s. For bimodal polyethylene GC100s, successive self-nucleation and annealing (SSA) fractionation results suggest that the pick at high temperature on the SSA curve of the extrudates obtained inside the temperature window is remarkably lower than those of the extrudates obtained outside the temperature window. This indicates that the lamellae of the extrudates obtained in the window are thinner than those obtained outside the window, which is attributed to the fact that the well-aligned chains as the result of structure memory effect can act as nucleating agent in the crystallization process. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 54:303-309, 2014. © 2013 Society of Plastics Engineers, INTRODUCTION Effectively processing polymer with low pressure and temperature is very beneficial in reducing the degradation, decreasing the energy consumption, and improving the product quality. For polyethylene, the conventional processing [...]

Bulk-service queueing systems have been widely applied in many areas in real life. While single-server queueing systems work in some cases, multi-servers can efficiently handle most complex applications. Bulk-service, multi-server queueing systems (compared to well-developed single-server queueing systems) are more complex and harder to deal with, especially when the inter-arrival time distributions are arbitrary. This paper deals with analytic and computational analyses of queue-length distributions for a complex bulk-service, multi-server queueing system GI/M a , b /c, wherein inter-arrival times follow an arbitrary distribution, a is the quorum, and b is the capacity of each server; service times follow exponential distributions. The introduction of quorum a further increases the complexity of the model. In view of this, a two-dimensional Markov chain has to be involved. Currently, it appears that this system has not been addressed so far. An elegant analytic closed-form solution and an efficient algorithm to obtain the queue-length distributions at three different epochs, i.e., pre-arrival epoch (p.a.e.), random epoch (r.e.), and post-departure epoch (p.d.e.) are presented, when the servers are in busy and idle states, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The common neglect of the prominent bacterial growth and accumulation on polymer‐based thermal conductive materials used in medical electronic devices will hurt the functionality and lifetime of medical devices, and sometimes even lead to medical accidents. In this study, we developed a novel ternary composite with excellent antimicrobial and thermal conductive properties to solve this problem. This composite was composed of antimicrobial functionalized hexagonal boron nitride (AB@h‐BN) nanoplatelets, low melt alloys (LMAs), and epoxy. Antimicrobial testing showed that the AB@h‐BN/LMAs/epoxy composites were 100% against both Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus; their antibacterial mechanism was contact killing and was harmless to the environment. Besides enhancing the antimicrobial property, the AB@h‐BN nanoplatelets connected the mutually independent LMAs, forming the continuous network for heat conduction in the epoxy. Benefited from this distinctive structure, the thermal conductivity of AB@h‐BN/LMAs/epoxy can reach 2.66 Wm−1 k−1, which represented an enhancement of about 1141% over the pure epoxy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]