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To determine the effects of castration on growth performance, serum hormone levels, cecal microbiota composition, and metabolites in cattle. A total of 18 Holstein bulls and steers were divided into bull and steer groups and randomly assigned to 3 pens (3 cattle per pen, and each cattle were separated by a fence) to determine the average daily gain (ADG), daily dry matter intake (DMI), and feed efficiency (G/F). After the finishing trial, six cattle per group were randomly slaughtered. Serum was collected to measure the hormone concentration, and the cecal content was collected to measure the pH, short-chain fatty acids, and digestive enzyme activities. Metagenome sequencing and untargeted metabolomics were used to investigate the microbiota composition, functional profiles, and differential metabolites of the cecal contents. We found that castration significantly decreased ADG, DMI, and G/F in cattle (P0.05). The serum testosterone, thyroxine, growth hormone (P0.05), and triiodothyronine (P0.01) concentrations significantly decreased in the steer group when compared to those of the bull group. The activities of cellulase, xylanase, pectinase, and β-glucosidase (P0.05) significantly decreased in the steer group, whereas the activities of lipase and α-amylase significantly increased. Moreover, castration significantly decreased the relative abundance of Ruminococcaceae_bacterium, Treponema_porcinum, Oscillibacter_sp. (P0.05), and Alistipes_senegalensis (P0.01), whereas the relative abundance of Phocaeicola_plebeius (P0.05) was significantly increased. Also, the relative abundance of Phocaeicola_plebeius was negatively correlated with testosterone levels, and the function of the cecal microbiota was enriched in the GH29 and GH97 families in the steer group. Metabolomic analysis indicated that castration increased the levels of L-valine, L-phenylalanine, L-aspartic acid, L-isoleucine, L-lysine, methionine, L-glutamic acid, and L-leucine, while decreasing the levels of α-ketoglutaric acid through the 2-oxocarboxylic acid metabolism pathway. In addition, α-ketoglutaric acid was negatively correlated with Oscillibacter_sp. (P0.01). Overall, castration can inhibit cattle growth by altering the composition of the cecal microbiota. Therefore, this study provides a theoretical and practical basis for improving the growth performance of steers.The castration of male cattle is a routine management practice in the United States. It improves the quality grade and tenderness of beef, and steers have a more desirable meat quality than intact males. Thus, it is conducted to meet the human demand for quality meat. However, castration reduces the body and carcass weights of steers, resulting in increased feeding costs. Therefore, it is important to study the mechanisms of weight loss in steers to provide a theoretical basis for improving their growth in the future. Our results found that castration reduced the testosterone and growth hormone concentrations in serum, changed the cecal microbial composition and function, and decreased the relative abundance of Ruminococcaceae_bacterium and Oscillibacter_sp especially. These changes in the cecal microbiota decreased the activities of digestive enzymes that degrade cellulose and hemicellulose and decreased the levels of the metabolite α-ketoglutaric acid, thus, inhibiting steer growth. Therefore, the cecal microbiota may affect the growth performance of steers and provide a theoretical and practical basis for improving their growth.

Aim: To characterize and summarize the studies regarding the influence of post-rewarming fever on neurological outcome and mortality in cardiac arrest patients. Methods: Two investigators separately screened relevant articles in EMBASE, PubMed, and Cochrane Central databases. Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) and cohort studies that evaluated the influence of post-rewarming fever (PRF) and normothermia in cardiac arrest patients were included. The meta-analysis was performed using a random effects model or a fixed effects model to calculate the pooled odds ratios (ORs) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs). The primary outcome was the unfavorable neurological outcome and the secondary outcome was the mortality. Results: The meta-analysis included 12 studies involving 2,991 patients. Results of quantitative analysis suggested that PRF (body temperature >37.5°C) did not affect the unfavorable neurological outcome of patients with cardiac arrest (OR, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.54-1.25; I2, 81%). Also, PRF (body temperature >37.8°C) was not related to higher mortality of patients with cardiac arrest (OR, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.55-1.34; I2, 74%). However, PRF with higher body temperature (>38.5℃) was associated with higher mortality (OR, 2.22; 95%CI, 1.40- 3.35; I2, 0%). Conclusions: This study suggests that PRF (body temperature >37.5°C) is not related to neurological outcome. And no significant association is found between PRF (body temperature >37.8°C) and mortality. However, PRF is associated with higher mortality when PRF was defined as >38.5℃.

This work studied the mix mode-I/II fracture behaviour of an aerospace-grade carbon fibre/epoxy composite that was interlayer-toughened by Polyamide-12 (PA), Polyphenylene-sulphide (PPS), Polyimide (PI), Polyethersulfone (PES) and Polyethylenimine (PEI) fibres. During the laminate curing process, the PA fibres melted, the PPS and PI fibres kept in their original form and the PES and PEI fibres dissolved in the epoxy matrix. This resulted in different toughening mechanisms of the veils for the mix mode-I/II fracture of the laminates, which was studied using a cracked lap-shear test. The main toughening mechanisms were observed to be plastic deformation and failure of the thermoplastic resin for the meltable PA veils, thermoplastic fibre debonding and bridging for the intact PPS and PI veils, and thermoplastic particle debonding and plastic void growth for the dissolvable PES and PEI veils. The experimental results revealed that the fibre debonding and bridging mechanism was superior for toughness enhancement, followed by the thermoplastic particle debonding and plastic void growth mechanism. For instance, interleaving the PPS and PEI veils increased the mix-mode fracture propagation energy of the laminates by 345% and 171%, respectively. However, the toughening performance of the PA and PI veils was poor, since the crack mainly propagated at the vicinity around the interlayer/laminate interface.

To explore the effects and underlying mechanism of vitamin A on beef marbling fat development, angus steers were injected vitamin A at birth and 1 month of age and in vitro experiments were performed to investigate the effects of retinoic acid (RA) on angiogenesis and adipogenesis of intramuscular stromal vascular (SVF) cells. Results showed that vitamin A administration increased the intramuscular PDGFRα

As chemical composition distribution (CCD) is a crucial microstructural quality index of copolymers, optimization of operating policies using CCD is of great importance. Monte Carlo simulation is an efficient method to calculate the CCD that cannot be easily determined by traditional equation-based methods But this method is computationally expensive. In this project, we first propose a parallel technique to conduct the Monte Carlo simulation on the graphics processing unit (GPU) platform. Additionally, an adaptive simulation algorithm is proposed to reduce computational cost based on error estimation of the Monte Carlo simulation. Considering the uncertainties in the Monte Carlo simulation, derivative-free method is applied for the CCD-target optimization. A successive boundary shrinkage (SBS) formulation is developed to improve the convergence of problem solving. The above-mentioned methods are successfully integrated and implemented on the optimization of a copolymerization process with high efficiency and good performance.

The equation-oriented (EO) approach is widely used for process simulation and optimization. Nevertheless, large-scale EO models consist of a huge number of nonlinear equations and make the solution procedure a challenging and time-consuming task. For most gradient-based numerical algorithms, function evaluations are the dominant step during the solution procedure. Here, a parallel computation method is developed for function evaluations within EO optimization strategies. After dividing the equations into several groups, function evaluations are calculated by using multiple threads on a parallel hardware platform simultaneously. Theoretical analysis for the speedup ratio is conducted. The implementation of the proposed method on a multi-core processor platform as well as a graphics processing unit (GPU) platform is then presented with several case studies. Numerical results are compared and discussed to show that the multi-core processor implementation has good computational performance, whereas the GPU implementation only achieves computational acceleration under relatively specific conditions.

In this study, we used high-throughput RNA sequencing to identify mRNAs, long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and circular RNAs (circRNAs) that are differentially expressed in the Substantia Nigra (SN) of aged and young rats. Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway analyses were used to perform functional annotation of mRNAs that were either differentially expressed themselves (DEMs), targeted by differentially expressed lncRNAs (DELs), or the parents of differentially expressed circRNAs (DECs). A total of 112 DEMs, 163 DELs, and 98 DECs were found in the SN of aged rats. The down-regulated lncRNA NONRATT010417.2 targeted the down-regulated mRNA Myh1, while the down-regulated lncRNA NONRATT015586.2 and the up-regulated lncRNAs NONRATT000490.2 and NONRATT007029.2 all targeted the down-regulated mRNAs Casr and Mis18a. Western blots and RT-qPCR revealed that Myh1, Casr, and Mis18a protein and mRNA expression were significantly reduced in aged rats compared to young rats. This study improves our understanding of the transcriptional alterations underlying aging-related changes in the SN and provides a foundation for future studies of associated molecular mechanisms.

Activated carbon (AC) is a multifunctional material. On the one hand, it is used as adsorbent to remove pollutants in wastewater, on the other hand, it is a preferred electrode for supercapacitors. Herein, we fabricate a hybrid electrode based on Co(OH)2 and waste AC which is supposed to discard after removing methylene blue (MB) from water. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy demonstrate AC/MB/Co(OH)2 nanocomposites are successfully synthesized via precipitation method. Furthermore, the specific surface area of AC/MB/Co(OH)2 is dramatically improved compared to Co(OH)2. Cyclic voltammetry (CV), galvanostatic charge-discharge (GCD), and electrochemical impedance spectrum (EIS) tests suggest that the specific capacity of AC/MB/Co(OH)2 is 447 C g-1 at a current density of 1 A g-1 in 3M KOH, which is higher than that of Co(OH)2 (329 C g-1) or AC/Co(OH)2 (347 C g-1). The result indicates that MB adsorbed on AC can provide pseudo-capacity for the hybrid electrode. The assembled asymmetric supercapacitor has a power density of 400 W kg-1 at an energy density of 18 Wh kg-1 and can power a light emitting diodes (LED) easily. Thus, this strategy makes it possible to further use waste AC as the electrode of supercapacitor, which avoids secondary pollution that comes from the adsorbents.

Chronic wounds represent a major and rising health and economic burden worldwide. There is a continued search toward more effective wound therapy. We found significantly reduced microRNA-132 (miR-132) expression in human diabetic ulcers compared with normal skin wounds and also in skin wounds of leptin receptor-deficient (db/db) diabetic mice compared with wild-type mice. Local replenishment of miR-132 in the wounds of db/db mice accelerated wound closure effectively, which was accompanied by increased proliferation of wound edge keratinocytes and reduced inflammation. The pro-healing effect of miR-132 was further supported by global transcriptome analysis, which showed that several inflammation-related signaling pathways (e.g., NF-κB, NOD-like receptor, toll-like receptor, and tumor necrosis factor signaling pathways) were the top ones regulated by miR-132 in vivo. Moreover, we topically applied liposome-formulated miR-132 mimics mixed with pluronic F-127 gel on human ex vivo skin wounds, which promoted re-epithelialization. Together, our study showed the therapeutic potential of miR-132 in chronic wounds, which warrants further evaluation in controlled clinical trials.

Boron-doped ZnO films were prepared by pulsed laser deposition technique. Magnetic, electrical, and optical properties of Zn1−x B x O films have been studied. It is found that the magnetic properties of the Zn1−x B x O films are sensitive to growth oxygen partial pressure. The films deposited under a high oxygen partial pressure of about 10 Pa appear to be ferromagnetic insulators at room temperature (RT). However, when the oxygen partial pressure decreases to 1.2 Pa, the films are non-ferromagnetic conductors at RT. Zn vacancies, which can be controlled by the oxygen partial pressure, are shown to be essential for realizing ferromagnetism (FM); on the other hand, the n-type nature of ZnO has no contribution to the FM observed in the B-doped ZnO films.

Equation-oriented approach (EO) is an important method for process simulation and optimization. A large scale EO model consists of a very large number of nonlinear equations, resulting in the solving process a challenging and time-consuming task. In this project, a parallel computation method for solving EO model is proposed and discussed. During the solving process, function evaluation of residual errors at each iteration is an essential step. With the EO feature, this step can be parallelized in a natural way. By dividing the equations into several groups, the function evaluation can be conducted by using multiple threads on a parallel hardware platform simultaneously. In this paper, the theoretical analysis on speedup ratio is first discussed. The implementation of the proposed method on the NVIDIA GPU platform and multi-core processor platform is presented with a number of numerical examples. The results are compared and discussed to show that how the hardware platform can greatly affect the performance of the proposed method.

According to the weakness of standard particle swarm optimization in dealing with vehicle routing problem (VRP), based on the definition of particle swarm optimization, this paper introduce the average information of individual and the global information to the standard PSO. A new hybrid form of PSO (AVGPSO), which is based on the mean information of individual optimal information and the global optimal information, is brought forward. This proposed algorithm is applied to VRP and compared with standard particle swarm optimization. The result shows that the proposed algorithm has better probability for solving VRP.

Fifty-four simulated tooth roots made of polymethacrylate (PMMA) were divided into six groups according to the root canal convergence angles of 0 degrees, 3.93 degrees, 5.71 degrees, 7.48 degrees, 11.31 degrees, 14.71 degrees. Cast post and cores were manufactured and cemented with Zinc phosphate cement (ZP). The retention capacities of the posts were tested. The bonding strength of ZP at different convergence angles were tested with some casted wafers, and linear regression was made. So the effect of interlocking and the proportion could be calculated. With these results, we made some curvilinear regressions. The results showed that the retention of cast post declined and the bonding strength of ZP fell with the increase of convergence angles. There were significant differences in the bonding strength and retention among groups, P0.05. The experiment indicates that the dentists should reduce the convergence angles of posts as much as possible to obtain greater retention.