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Green infrastructure (Gl) is ecological supporting system for the sustainable development of urban construction, and plays an important role in promoting the urban ecological economic and social development. In this paper, Suzhou Dushu Lake Higher Education District is taken as an example, and landscape ecological resources in Dushu Lake Higher Education District are analyzed on the basis of field investigation. Combining with the relevant theory of green infrastructure, structure of GI in Suzhou Dushu Take Higher Education District is analyzed and evaluated from hubs, links and sites, and the corresponding optimization strategy is put forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, tactile ground surface indicators have been vigorously constructed in all cities and towns in China, and the length of tactile ground surface indicators has been regarded as one of the standards for measuring urban civilization construction. However, there are many problems in the actual use of tactile ground surface indicators, and the construction of a large number of tactile ground surface indicators has not had a positive impact on the travel of the visually impaired. With the sidewalk of Ninghai Road in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China as the object of study, this study constructed an evaluation system of tactile ground surface indicators installed on the sidewalk beside a road and determined its weight, evaluated the tactile ground surface indicators installed on sidewalks beside Ninghai Road from the perspective of the visually impaired, using fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, and obtained the satisfaction of each indicator and analyzed the reasons of the indicator results. This set of evaluation system can provide basic ideas for the taigeted evaluation of tactile ground surface indicators installed on the sidewalk beside a road based on different urban districts, different urban road grades, and different urban environmental conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban color planning will not only excavate historical context to strengthen urban difference and highlight urban individuality, thereby forming urban style and features that are easy to identify and perceive, but integrate natural landscape and control urban color, open space, green space system and architectural elements to crate a splendid visual space. Adhering to the concept of inheriting the historical context and culture, urban color planning of Xuzhou Qty fully taps the cultural potential of the historical and cultural resources, natural landscape resources and local customs and practices and carries out a practical exploration of urban color and urban style and features as well as the heritage and development of local culture through the urban color planning of "one centre, two axes, two belts, three sections", so as to provide a constructive reference for urban color planning of other cities in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Architectural emotion, to a large extent, is reflected in the emotionalization of building materials. The exploration of the vitality and spiritual connotation of the building materials is a new direction of expressing architectural feelings. This paper explores the visual features and connotation of various building materials fiom the perspective of public art, with a view to understanding the characteristics of building materials and creating unique buildings with a strong character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To interpret spiritual language of architectural public art, architectural form was analyzed. Visual art space is based on spatial vision, artistic forms of point, line, surface and body are major visual elements of spatial form. Visual elements can be demonstrated in various forms, and even more diversified in the context of spatial design, interact with each other according to the form principle of beauty, and construct artistic forms of the space. Manifestation of the nature of public art also relies on visual elements, and the public aesthetic experience and feelings about architectural public art are expressed by visual elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To compare the effect of patient-controlled intravenous analgesia(PCIA) and superior inguinal ligament iliac fascia block combined with PCIA after hip replacement in the elderly., Methods: Total of 82 elderly patients were treated with hip arthroplasty from June 2019 to June 2021 and randomly divided into observation group and control group. There were 42 patients in control group, including 18 males and 24 females, aged from 60 to 78 years old with an average of (70.43±3.67) years old, 28 femoral neck fractures and 14 femoral head necrosis, who received PCIA. The study group consisted of 42 cases, including 20 males and 22 females, aged from 61 to 76 years old with an average of (69.68±3.74) years old, 25 femoral neck fractures and 17 femoral head necrosis, who received superior inguinal ligament iliac fascia block combined with PCIA. Pain visual analogue scale (VAS) and Ramesay sedation scores at 2 h, 6 h, 12 h, 24 h and 48 h after operation were evaluated. In addition, the follow-up results of the total consumption of sufentanil and the total number of PCIA compressions at 48 hours after operation, the first time of landing after surgery, the time of hospital stay, the incidence of adverse reactions, the satisfaction with analgesia of two groups were observed., Results: All patients were followed up for 9 to 24 months with an average of(13.85±2.67) months. There was no significant difference in operation time and intraoperative bleeding between two groups ( P >0.05). There was no difference in VAS between two groups at 2 hours after operation ( P >0.05), and the VAS of the study group at 6 h, 12 h, 24 h and 48 h after operation were lower than those of the control group( P <0.05). The Ramesay sedation scores of the study group at 2 h, 6 h and 12 h after operation were higher than those of the control group( P <0.05), and there were no differences in Ramesay score between two groups at 24 h and 48 h after operation ( P >0.05). The consumption of sufentanil in the study group within 48 hours after operation was lower than that in the control group ( P <0.05), and PCIA compression times were lower than those in the control group( P <0.05), and the time of first landing was earlier than that in the control group( P <0.05). There was no significant difference in hospital stay, adverse reaction rate, complications between two groups ( P >0.05). The satisfaction of analgesia in the study group was higher than that in the control group ( P <0.05)., Conclusion: Superior iliac fascia block of inguinal ligament combined with PCIA has significant analgesic and sedative effects after hip arthroplasty in the elderly. It can reduce the amount of sufentanil used and the total number of PCIA compressions, which is conducive to the early activity of patients out of bed, improve the satisfaction of analgesia.

Ultraviolet (UV) light is widely used for wastewater disinfection. Traditional electrode-excited UV lamps, such as low-pressure mercy lamps (LPUV), encounter drawbacks like electrode aging and rapid light attenuation. A novel UV source of microwave discharge electrodeless lamp (MDEL) has aroused attention, yet its disinfection performance is unclear and still far from practical application. Here, we successfully developed a complete piece of equipment based on MDELs and achieved the application for disinfection in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). The light emitted by an MDEL (MWUV) shared a spectrum similar to that of LPUV, with the main emission wavelength at 254 nm. The inactivation rate of Gram-negative E. coli by MWUV reached 4.5 log at an intensity of 1.6 mW/cm 2 and a dose of 20 mJ/cm 2 . For Gram-positive B. subtilis, an MWUV dose of 50 mJ/cm 2 and a light intensity of 1.2 mW/cm 2 reached an inactivation rate of 3.4 log. A higher MWUV intensity led to a better disinfection effect and a lower photoreactivation rate of E. coli. When inactivated by MWUV with an intensity of 1.2 mW/cm 2 and a dose of 16 mJ/cm 2 , the maximum photoreactivation rate and reactivation rate constant K max of E. coli were 0.63 % and 0.11 % h -1 respectively. Compared with the photoreactivation, the dark repair of E. coli was insignificant. The full-scale application of the MDEL equipment was conducted in two WWTPs (10,000 m 3 /d and 15,000 m 3 /d). Generally 2-3 log inactivation rates of fecal coliforms in secondary effluent were achieved within 5-6 s contact time, and the disinfected effluent met the emission standard (1000 CFU/L). This study successfully applied MDEL for disinfection in WWTPs for the first time and demonstrated that MDEL has broad application prospects., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Ye Du reports financial support was provided by Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: To investigate potential differences in clinical and computed tomography (CT) features between patients with the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant and the original strain., Patients and Methods: This retrospective study included 69 hospitalized patients infected with Omicron variant from November to December 2022, and 96 hospitalized patients infected with the original strain from February to March 2020 in Chongqing, China. The clinical features, CT manifestations, degrees of lung involvement in different stages on CT, and imaging changes after the reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) results turned negative were compared between the two groups., Results: For clinical features, patients with Omicron were predominantly old people and females, without manifestation of any clinical symptoms, who had low serum levels of C-reactive protein and procalcitonin. Shorter interval from symptoms onset to initial CT scan was observed in Omicron patients compared to patients with the original strain (all P < 0.05). For CT features, patients with Omicron were more likely to present with round-like opacities and tree-in-bud pattern (all P < 0.05), but less likely to exhibit a diffuse distribution, patchy and linear opacities, as well as vascular enlargement pattern (all P < 0.05). The Omicron group was more susceptible to exhibiting lower CT involvement scores in each stage (all P < 0.05) and imaging progression after the RT-PCR results turned negative ( P < 0.001)., Conclusion: Patients infected with the Omicron variant exhibited less severe changes on chest CT compared to those infected with the original strain. Furthermore, imaging progression under low viral load conditions was more common in patients with Omicron than in those with the original strain., Competing Interests: The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work., (© 2024 Zhang et al.)

Microwave discharge electrodeless lamp (MDEL) is a novel ultraviolet (UV) light source. Synergistic disinfection using UV light emitted by MDEL (MWUV) coupled with ozone (O 3 ) at an ultra-low dose was investigated. Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis were deactivated more effectively by MWUV/O 3 than by either MWUV or O 3 alone. MWUV/O 3 treatment using an O 3 concentration of 0.4 mg/L gave an E. coli inactivation rate of 5.52 log. The photoreactivation degree and rate of E. coli were lower after inactivation by MWUV/O 3 treatment than after MWUV treatment alone. The maximum photoreactivation rates after the MWUV/O 3 and MWUV treatments were 2.90% and 16.08%, respectively. MWUV/O 3 disinfection also inhibited dark resurrection of E. coli and gave a maximum dark resurrection rate of 0.0036%. Electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy indicated that more hydroxyl radicals were generated during MWUV/O 3 treatment. Scanning electron microscopy and laser confocal scanning microscopy observations indicated that O 3 played a key role in breaking down the cell structure. MWUV/O 3 treatment gave a good disinfection effect on fecal coliform bacteria in actual domestic wastewater. The results indicated that inactivation of bacteria can be more effectively achieved by MWUV treatment with O 3 ., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Ye Du reports financial support was provided by National Natural Science Foundation of China., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Ultraviolet (UV) irradiation is widely used for wastewater disinfection but suffers from low inactivation rates and can cause photoreactivation of microorganisms. Synergistic disinfection with UV and oxidants is promising for enhancing the inactivation performance. This review summarizes the inactivation effects on representative microorganisms by UV/hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ), UV/ozone (O 3 ), UV/persulfate (PS), UV/chlorine, and UV/chlorine dioxide (ClO 2 ). UV synergistic processes perform better than UV or an oxidant alone. UV mainly attacks the DNA or RNA in microorganisms; the oxidants H 2 O 2 and O 3 mainly attack the cell walls, cell membranes, and other external structures; and HOCl and ClO 2 enter cells and oxidize proteins and enzymes. Free radicals can have strong oxidation effects on cell walls, cell membranes, proteins, enzymes, and even DNA. At similar UV doses, the inactivation rates of Escherichia coli with UV alone, UV/H 2 O 2 , UV/O 3 , UV/PS (peroxydisulfate or peroxymonosulfate), and UV/chlorinated oxidant (chlorine, ClO 2 , and NH 2 Cl) range from 2.03 to 3.84 log, 2.62-4.30 log, 4.02-6.08 log, 2.93-5.07 log, and 3.78-6.55 log, respectively. The E. coli inactivation rates are in the order of UV/O 3 ≈ UV/Cl 2 > UV/PS > UV/H 2 O 2 . This order is closely related to the redox potentials of the oxidants and quantum yields of the radicals. UV synergistic disinfection processes inhibit photoreactivation of E. coli in the order of UV/O 3 > UV/PS > UV/H 2 O 2 . The activation mechanisms and formation pathways of free radicals with different UV-based synergistic processes are presented. In addition to generating HO·, O 3 can reduce the turbidity and chroma of wastewater to increase UV penetration, which improves the disinfection performance of UV/O 3 . This knowledge will be useful for further development of the UV-based synergistic disinfection processes., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests. Ye Du reports financial support was provided by National Natural Science Foundation of China., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

In December 2019, the corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in Wuhan, China and rapidly spread worldwide. Few information on clinical features and immunological profile of COVID-19 in paediatrics. The clinical features and treatment outcomes of twelve paediatric patients confirmed as COVID-19 were analyzed. The immunological features of children patients was investigated and compared with twenty adult patients. The median age was 14.5-years (range from 0.64 to 17), and six of the patients were male. The average incubation period was 8 days. Clinically, cough (9/12, 75%) and fever (7/12, 58.3%) were the most common symptoms. Four patients (33.3%) had diarrhea during the disease. As to the immune profile, children had higher amount of total T cell, CD8+ T cell and B cell but lower CRP levels than adults ( P  < 0.05). Ground-glass opacity (GGO) and local patchy shadowing were the typical radiological findings on chest CT scan. All patients received antiviral and symptomatic treatment and the symptom relieved in 3-4 days after admitted to hospital. The paediatric patients showed mild symptom but with longer incubation period. Children infected with SARS-CoV-2 had different immune profile with higher T cell amount and low inflammatory factors level, which might ascribed to the mild clinical symptom. We advise that nucleic acid test or examination of serum IgM/IgG antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 should be taken for children with exposure history regardless of clinical symptom., (© 2020 Chongqing Medical University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.)

The phonemic merger is a unique phenomenon which is referred to as acoustically very different phonemes are recognized as the same phoneme. In our previous study, we demonstrated that the merged speakers had lost the ability to discriminate the merged phonemes pre-attentively, as revealed by their failure in mismatch negativity (MMN) elicitation in the oddball stream of the merged phonemes /n/-/l/. In this study, we investigated the recovery of the discrimination ability via phonemic training and found that the merged speakers regained the ability of discriminating merged phonemes pre-attentively, after a 7-day /n/-/l/ phonemic training, as revealed by the reactivation of MMN brain response to the /n/-/l/ phoneme categories. Our finding indicates that separate memory traces of merged phonemes could be rebuilt during the training process., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a novel β-coronavirus, causes severe pneumonia and has spread throughout the globe rapidly. The disease associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection is named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). To date, real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is the only test able to confirm this infection. However, the accuracy of RT-PCR depends on several factors; variations in these factors might significantly lower the sensitivity of detection., Methods: In this study, we developed a peptide-based luminescent immunoassay that detected immunoglobulin (Ig)G and IgM. The assay cutoff value was determined by evaluating the sera from healthy and infected patients for pathogens other than SARS-CoV-2., Results: To evaluate assay performance, we detected IgG and IgM in the sera from confirmed patients. The positive rate of IgG and IgM was 71.4% and 57.2%, respectively., Conclusions: Therefore, combining our immunoassay with real-time RT-PCR might enhance the diagnostic accuracy of COVID-19., (© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

We report acute antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 in 285 patients with COVID-19. Within 19 days after symptom onset, 100% of patients tested positive for antiviral immunoglobulin-G (IgG). Seroconversion for IgG and IgM occurred simultaneously or sequentially. Both IgG and IgM titers plateaued within 6 days after seroconversion. Serological testing may be helpful for the diagnosis of suspected patients with negative RT-PCR results and for the identification of asymptomatic infections.

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is a prevalent aggressive malignant tumor with poor prognosis. Investigations into the molecular changes that occur as a result of the disease, as well as identification of novel biomarkers for its diagnosis and prognosis, are urgently required. Long non‑coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been reported to play a critical role in tumor progression. The present study performed data mining analyses for ESCC via an integrated study of accumulated datasets and identification of the differentially expressed lncRNAs from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) databases. The identified intersection of differentially expressed genes (lncRNAs, miRNAs and mRNAs) in ESCC tissues between the GEO and TCGA datasets was investigated. Based on these intersected lncRNAs, the present study constructed a competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) network of lncRNAs in ESCC. A total of 81 intersection lncRNAs were identified; 67 of these were included in the ceRNA network. Functional analyses revealed that these 67 key lncRNAs primarily dominated cellular biological processes. The present study then analyzed the associations between the expression levels of these 67 key lncRNAs and the clinicopathological characteristics of the ESCC patients, as well as their survival time using TCGA. The results revealed that 31 of these lncRNAs were associated with tumor grade, tumor‑node‑metastasis (TNM) stage and lymphatic metastasis status (P<0.05). In addition, 15 key lncRNAs were demonstrated to be associated with survival time (P<0.05). Finally, 5 key lncRNAs were selected for validation of their expression levels in 30 patients newly diagnosed with ESCC via reverse transcription‑quantitative PCR (RT‑qPCR). The results suggested that the fold changes in the trends of up‑ and downregulation between GEO, TCGA and RT‑qPCR were consistent. In addition, it was also demonstrated that a select few of these 5 key lncRNAs were significantly associated with TNM stage and lymph node metastasis (P<0.05). The results of the clinically relevant analysis and the aforementioned bioinformatics were similar, hence proving that the bioinformatics analysis used in the present study is credible. Overall, the results from the present study may provide further insight into the functional characteristics of lncRNAs in ESCC through bioinformatics integrative analysis of the GEO and TCGA datasets, and reveal potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for ESCC.

Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have played important roles in the regulation of gene expression in many cancers, but their roles in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) are still unclear. The aim of this study was to determine the potential ESCC-specific key miRNAs from a large sample dataset in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)., Methods: Integrative bioinformatics analysis was used to identify key ESCC-specific miRNAs related to the ESCC patients' tumor histological grade and lymphatic metastasis from TCGA. Next, these key miRNA potential gene regulatory functions and relationships with ESCC patients' clinical characteristics and overall survival were analyzed. Finally, three key miRNAs were selected randomly and quantificational real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was used to validate in 51 newly diagnosed ESCC patients' tissues samples (collected from Nov. 2017 to Feb. 2019, in Wuwei, China) whether the bioinformatics analyses results were reliable and valid. Two-tailed Student's t test, Pearson Chi-squared test and Kaplan-Meier survival analysis were used in this study., Results: Thirty-five ESCC-specific miRNAs from TCGA database were investigated (fold-change > 2.0, P < 0.05), and 28 participated in the miRNAs-mRNAs co-expression network construction, while 17 were related with ESCC patients' tumor histological grade, TNM stage, and lymphatic metastasis (P < 0.05). Meanwhile, six miRNAs (including miR-200b-3p, miR-31-5p, miR-15b-5p, miR-141-3p, miR-135b-5p, and miR-195-5p) were correlated with overall survival of ESCC patients (log-rank, P < 0.05). MiR-135b-5p, miR-15b-5p, and miR-195-5p were selected for verification of the expression levels in 51 ESCC patients' tissue samples by using qRT-PCR. We found that the fold-changes between qRT-PCR and TCGA were completely consistent. The results also suggested that miR-135b-5p, miR-15b-5p, and miR-195-5p were significantly correlated with tumor differentiation degrees (P < 0.05), miR-195-5p was significantly correlated with tumor TNM stage (P < 0.05), and miR-135b-5p was significantly correlated with lymph-node metastasis (P < 0.05). MiR-135b-5p, miR-15b-5p, and miR-195-5p expression levels, ESCC patient clinical features association analysis results and the aforementioned TCGA bioinformatics analyses were similar., Conclusion: This study identified key ESCC-related miRNAs. The key miRNAs are worthy of further investigation as potential novel biomarkers for diagnosis, classification, and prognosis of ESCC.

The aim of the study is to explore exogenous S3307 on alleviating low-temperature stress of coix seedlings. The coix cultivar, "No 5 Yiliao", was selected as the plant material, through nutrient solution cultivating in greenhouse, the effect of different S3307 concentrations(1, 3, 5, 7, 9 mg·L~(-1)) on coix seedlings traits and physiological indicators were explored under low-temperature stress. The results showed, under low-temperature 5 mg·L~(-1) S3307 could significantly increase coix seedlings stem diameter and biomass, which stem diameter and above-ground biomass, low-ground biomass separately were enhanced 11.90%, 13.59%, 10.99%. Leaf width and lateral root number separately were enhanced 7.63%, 37.52%. Meanwhile, addition of 5 mg·L~(-1) S3307 could significantly reduce relative conductivity and MDA, separately being reduced 23.33%, 17.42% compared to CKL. S3307 could also significantly increase soluble sugar and proline content, which leaf soluble sugar and proline content separately were enhanced 17.16%, 11.87%, which root soluble sugar and proline content separately were enhanced 20.00%, 33.42%. Additionally, S3307 could alleviate the cells destroy in ultra-structure level by improving cell membrane structure and chloroplast capsule layer structure. 5 mg·L~(-1) S3307 could enhance the low temperature tolerance of coix seedlings by regulating the growth and physiological indexes, and thus alleviate the damage caused by low-temperature to the coix seedlings.

Background: Population-based cancer registry collects the data on cancer incidence and mortality deaths from covered population to describe and survey the epidemics in certain areas. The aim of this study was to estimate the cancer incidence and mortality in Wuwei, Gansu province, Northwestern China from 2003 to 2012. The goal is to better understand cancer distribution and long-term development of cancer prevention and treatment in Wuwei., Methods: Data were collected from the Wuwei Cancer Registry between 2003 and 2012. In this registry, data from 46 cancer report centers were included in this analysis. Incidence/mortality rates, age-specific incidence/mortality rates, age-standardized incidence/mortality rates, and cumulative incidence/mortality rates were calculated. Totally, 9,836,740 person-years (5,110,342 for males and 4,726,398 for females) had been monitored over this time period. The gender ratio of male/female was 1.08:1. The number of new cancer cases and related deaths was 24,705 and 17,287 from 2003 to 2012, respectively., Results: The proportion of morphological verification was 74.43%. The incidence of cases identified through death certification only was 1.21%, and the mortality to incidence ratio was 0.70. The average crude incidence was 251.15/100,000 persons (310.61 and 186.87 for males and females per 100,000 persons, respectively). The age-standardized rates by Chinese standard population (ASR-China) and by world standard population (ASR-world) were 207.76 and 245.42 per 100,000 persons, respectively. The crude cancer mortality was 175.74/100,000 persons (228.34 and 118.86 for males and females per 100,000 persons). ASR for China and the world was 149.57 and 175.13/100,000 persons, respectively. The most common cancers and leading causes of cancer-related deaths in Wuwei were as follows: cancers of stomach, esophagus, liver, lung, colorectum, breast, cervix, lymphoma, blood (leukemia), brain, and central nervous system. In Wuwei, during 2003 and 2012, cancer incidence and mortality rates increased by 1.32% and 1.31%/year, respectively. During this time, colorectum cancer incidence and mortality rates increased by 2.69% and 7.54%/year, respectively, in Wuwei. The incidence and mortality of other gastric, esophageal, liver, and lung cancers also all increased., Conclusions: The results of this study report a more accurate cancer burden among the population of Wuwei, China. Active research of cancers etiology and effective prevention should be established to reduce the incidence and mortality associated with cancers.

Objective: To establish a rapid, sensitive and efficient detection method for tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), and provide technical support of TMV detection of Rehmannia glutinosa f. hueichingensis. The virus-free plantlets could be produced on a large scale to ameliorate breed degeneration caused by viral disease., Method: Specific primers were designed based on the conserved region of coat protein(CP) gene of TMV. Immunocapture RT-PCR (IC-RT-PCR) was employed to detect TMV and the sequence of the products was detected., Result: The expected nucleotide acid fragments were amplified by IC-RT-PCR. The homology of nucleotide acid sequence and amino acid sequence were 95.29% and 96.7% between the PCR products and the CP gene of TMV (accession number AY555269)., Conclusion: The method was established for the detection of TMV in R. glutinosa f. hueichingensis by IC-RT-PCR. This detection combined molecular biology technology with immunology, was convenient for a quick, sensitive and simple detection of TMV.

Strain M(438), deposited as CGMCC3917 and isolated from inoculums of bacterial cellulose (BC) producing strain screened in homemade vinegar and then induced by high hydrostatic pressure treatment (HHP), has strong ability to produce BC more than three times as that of its initial strain. It is the highest yield BC-producing strain ever reported. In this paper, M(438) was identidied as Gluconacetobacter hansenii subsp. nov. on the basis of the results obtained by examining it phylogenetically, phenotypically, and physiologically-biochemically. Furthermore, the genetic diversity of strain M(438) and its initial strain was examined by amplified fragment length polymorphism. The results indicated that strain M(438) was a deletion mutant induced by HHP, and the only deleted sequence showed 99% identity with 24,917-24,723 bp in the genome sequence of Ga. hansenii ATCC23769, and the complement gene sequence was at 24,699-25,019 bp with local tag GXY&#95;15142, which codes small multidrug resistance (SMR) protein. It can be inferred that SMR might be related to inhibiting BC production to a certain extent.

Somatostatin and its analog octreotide have been used successfully to treat postoperative chylothorax, and it has been shown that octreotide binds with high affinity to somatostatin receptor (SSTR) subtypes 2 and 5. Therefore, we investigated expression of SSTR2 and SSTR5 in the human thoracic duct by immunohistochemistry. Normal rat pancreas was used as a positive control for antibodies against SSTR2 and SSTR5, and Factor VIII-related antigen, SMA, actin, elastin, or collagen type II, III, IV or V antibodies were used to identify cell types and structures within the human thoracic duct. The antibodies against SSTR2 and SSTR5 worked well and yielded positive staining in control rat islets. In the human thoracic duct, SSTR2 was present in smooth muscle cells and some scattered structures which were stained by antibodies against Factor VIII-related antigen, SMA, actin, elastin or collagen type II, III, IV or V. SSTR5 was also present in smooth muscle cells. The presence of SSTR2 and SSTR5 in the human thoracic duct sheds light on the mechanism of somatostatin and octreotide use in the successful treatment of chylothorax and offers new molecular pathways to explore for potential future therapies.

Protein kinases are important signaling molecules that are known constituents of cellular pathways critical for normal cellular growth and development. We have recently identified a new protein kinase, p58, which contains a large domain that is highly homologous to the cell division control p34cdc2 protein kinase. This new cell division control-related protein kinase was originally identified as a component of semipurified galactosyltransferase; thus, it has been denoted galactosyltransferase-associated protein kinase. In vitro, this protein kinase has been shown to phosphorylate a number of substrates, including histone H1, casein, and galactosyltransferase. In vivo, we have found that this protein kinase affects galactosyltransferase enzyme activity and that it is apparently involved in some aspect of normal cell cycle regulation. In this report, we find that the p58 gene is evolutionarily well conserved and expressed ubiquitously, but to varying extents, in adult tissues. In developmentally staged embryos, p58 expression was elevated early in embryogenesis and then decreased dramatically. In the murine submandibular gland, p58 expression was elevated between day 14 and day 16 post coitus. Expression in the submandibular gland appeared to parallel the proliferation and differentiation of specific cell types as judged by in situ hybridization. These studies indicate that the p58 protein kinase may have a critical function during normal embryonic development and that this protein kinase continues to be expressed in differentiated adult tissues.