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Bioreduction of Cr(VI) is cost-effective and environmentally friendly, however, the slow bioreduction rate limits its application. In this study, the potential synergistic enhancement of Cr(VI) bioreduction by shewanella oneidensis MR-1 (S. oneidensis) with goethite and riboflavin (RF) was investigated. The results showed that the S. oneidensis reaction system reduce 29.2% of 20 mg/L Cr(VI) after 42 h reaction, while the S. oneidensis/goethite/RF reaction system increased the Cr(VI) reduction rate to 87.74%. RF as an efficient electron shuttle and Fe(II) from goethite bioreduction were identified as the crucial components in Cr(VI) reduction. XPS analysis showed that the final precipitates of Cr(VI) reduction were Cr(CH

Photonic structures with optical resonances beyond a single controllable mode are strongly desired for enhancing light–matter interactions and bringing about advanced photonic devices. However, the realization of effective multimodal photonic structures has been restricted by the limited tunable range of mode manipulation, the spatial dispersions of electric fields or the polarization-dependent excitations. To overcome these limitations, we create a dual-mode metasurface by integrating the plasmonic surface lattice resonance and the gap plasmonic modes; this metasurface offers a widely tunable spectral range, good overlap in the spatial distribution of electric fields, and polarization independence of excitation light. To show that such dual-mode metasurfaces are versatile platforms for enhancing light–matter interactions, we experimentally demonstrate a significant enhancement of second-harmonic generation using our design, with a conversion efficiency of 1–3 orders of magnitude larger than those previously obtained in plasmonic systems. These results may inspire new designs for functional multimodal photonic structures.

In this study, a new multiscale algorithm was proposed to solve the boundary value problems of second order differential equations. A multiscale basis consisting of two sets of multiscale functions was constructed in the reproducing kernel space, and the proposed multiscale basis was proved to be orthonormal. The e− approximate solution was defined, and then it was proved to be the optimal solution. In addition, the stability, convergence and complexity of this algorithm were discussed and illustrated in this study. Numerical examples verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the algorithm, and the results show that the proposed intelligent multiscale algorithm has advantages in accuracy and stability compared with other methods.

Premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) or premature ovarian failure (POF) is known as a state of hypergonadotropic hypogonadism. Stem cell therapy is expected to be used in the treatment of POI. The aim of the present study was to explore the feasibility and effectiveness of umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cell (UCMSC) transplantation for the treatment of POI in a rat model of POI induced by cyclophosphamide (CTX) injection. The ovarian function was examined by evaluating the weight of the ovary and body, estrus cycle, ovarian morphology, hormonal secretion, granulosa cell apoptosis, and fertility. The results showed that the ovarian function indicators of the modeled rats were comparable to those of the control rats after UCMSC transplantation, indicating that the ovarian function of the modeled rats recovered to a satisfactory extent. Our research may provide an experimental clue for the clinical application of UCMSC transplantation in the treatment of POI. Further experiments will focus on the detailed signaling pathway study of the molecular mechanisms of injury and repairment on the treatment with UCMSCs transplantation in the rat POI models.

Radix Astragali is widely used in the traditional Chinese medicine with the effect of antiaging. The purpose of this study is to explore the main active ingredients and targets of Radix Astragali against renal aging by network pharmacology and further to verify the mechanism of the main active ingredients in vitro. TCMSP, ETCM, and TCMID databases were used to screen active ingredients of Radix Astragali. Targets of active ingredients were predicted using BATMAN-TCM and cross validated using kidney aging-related genes obtained from GeneCards and NCBI database. Pathways enrichment and protein-protein interaction (PPI) analysis were performed on core targets. Additionally, a pharmacological network was constructed based on the active ingredients-targets-pathways. HK-2 cell was treated with D-galactose to generate a cell model of senescence. CCK-8 and β-galactosidase were used to detect the effect of Radix Astragali active components on cell proliferation and aging. ELISA was used to detect the expression of senescence-associated secreted protein (TGF-β and IL-6) in the cell culture supernatant. Western blot was used to detect the expression of key proteins in the SIRT1/ p 53 pathway. Five active ingredients (Astragaloside I, II, III, IV and choline) were identified from Radix Astragali, and all these active ingredients target a total of 128 genes. Enrichment analysis showed these genes were implicated in 153 KEGG pathways, including the p 53 , FoxO, and AMPK pathway. 117 proteins and 572 interactions were found in PPI network. TP53 and SIRT1 were two hub genes in PPI network, which interacted with each other. The pharmacological network showed that the five main active ingredients target on some coincident genes, including TP53 and SIRT1. These targeted genes were involved in the p53, FoxO, and AMPK pathway. Proliferation of HK-2 cells was increased by Astragaloside IV treatment compared with that of the D-Gal treatment group. However, the proliferation of the SA-β-gal positive cells were inhibited. The expression of TGF-β and IL-6 in the D-Gal group was higher than that in the normal group, and the treatment of Astragaloside IV could significantly reduce the expression of TGF-β and IL-6. The expression of SIRT1 in the Astragaloside IV group was higher than that in the D-Gal group. However, the expression of p 53 and p 21 was less in the Astragaloside IV group than that in the D-Gal group. This study suggested that Astragaloside IV is an important active ingredient of Radix Astragali in the treatment of kidney aging via the SITR1- p 53 pathway.

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is one of the most common malignant tumors in women and the tripartite motif 66 (TRIM66) is closely associated with the behaviors of wide variety of cancer. Thus, in this study, we aimed to explore the effect of TRIM66 in MDA-MB-468 TNBC cell line. Western blot and RT-PCR assays were used to detect the expression level of TRIM66 in human normal mammary cells and human breast cancer cell lines. We silenced its expression in MDA-MB-468 cells by transient siRNA transfection to ascertain the function of TRIM66 in MDA-MB-468 cells. CCK8 and clonogenicity assays were used to evaluate the ability of cell proliferation. Wound healing and Transwell were used to detect cell invasion and migration. TUNEL was applied to detect the apoptosis level. Western blotting was used to detect the expression of related proteins. TRIM66 was observed markedly elevated in breast cancer cell line. Knockdown of TRIM66 inhibited the expression of EGFR, P-Jak2, P-STAT3, JAK2, and STAT3 in MDA-MB-468 cells through regulating the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) signaling. Knockdown of TRIM66 suppresses proliferation, invasion and migration of MDA-MB-468 cell line and promotes apoptosis in these cells through EGFR signaling.

An intentional or inadvertent mixing of plant materials containing ephedrine alkaloids, especially Ephedra, is illegal. In order to better detect plant materials containing ephedrine alkaloids in export and smuggling, DNA barcoding combined with a TaqMan real-time PCR-based assay were used in this study. We collected 201 samples from 18 species belonging to four genera distributed in three families to amplify two barcoding markers, internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) and psbA-trnH. 175 ITS2 sequences and 136 psbA-trnH sequences were obtained. Alignments and the neighbor-joining tree indicated that ITS2 showed a better discrimination of species than psbA-trnH. In addition, based on the sequence comparison of the ITS2 region from 18 species, three sets of primer/probes were designed using the real-time PCR assay platform. A sensitivity test showed the above primer/probe sets were specific and sensitive (as little as 0.0050 ng/μL target DNA) to identify species containing ephedrine alkaloids. Hence, the combination of novel DNA barcoding and the TaqMan real-time PCR-based technique are promising tools for the identification of plant materials containing ephedrine alkaloids. It is beneficial to standardize market circulation and detection of plant materials containing ephedrine alkaloids.

This present study investigated detoxification mechanisms of leguminous forage Trifolium pratense L. (red clover) seedlings upon exposure to Ag ions (Ag+) on an atomic level. Depressed plant growth (maximum inhibition rate: 46.57%) and significantly altered antioxidase/antioxidant substances levels (maximum inhibition rate: 65.45%/55.41%) revealed that the physiological metabolism was disturbed. Notable lesions were observed in both leaf and root cells at 588 μM Ag+ treatment. All differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were remarkably mapped to biological metabolism related pathways. Red clover seedlings were speculated to initially transform and immobilize Ag+ in the culture medium, then transporting and fixing them inside the cell, mainly as unreduced Ag+ bound to oxygen-, nitrogen-, sulfur-, chloride-containing biological molecules. A portion of Ag+ was reduced to Ag0 and aggregated to form crystalline argentiferous nanoparticles. Effective reducing agents such as alcohols, carboxylic acid, and etc, which are capable of coordinating heavy metals to reduce and stabilize them, were assumed to play a role in Ag+ reduction. The research results are of great value to understand the defense and tolerance mechanisms of red clover to Ag+ and explore the main existing forms of Ag+ in vivo and in vitro, which could indicate contamination condition in regional ecological environment such as mining area and its potential effects.

By distinguishing customer-oriented behaviors into functional and relational ones, this study reveals how different combinations of sales control systems (namely activity control, outcome control, and capability control) affect a salesperson's distinct customer-oriented behaviors, which subsequently influence sales performance. By collecting data from business-to-business salespeople and their managers and using hierarchical linear modeling, we find that the outcome-capability control combination increases functional and relational customer-oriented behaviors. The outcome-activity control combination decreases functional customer-oriented behaviors. The activity-capability control combination increases functional customer-oriented behaviors but reduces relational customer-oriented behaviors. In addition, we find that both customer-oriented behaviors not only boost sales performance individually, but also complement each other to positively affect sales performance. These findings provide important theoretical and practical implications by demonstrating that combinations of control systems have a significant impact on a salesperson's functional and relational customer-oriented behaviors.

Background Currently, FM is a sole subjective index which depends on self-assessment of pregnant women, and it can objectively reflect the well being of intrauterine fetus. It has been the focus of obstetricians' research and attention how to quantify fetal movement (FM) and change it into a relatively objective evaluation index. We sought to predict and evaluate the well being of intrauterine fetal with umbilical cord around the neck (UCAN) by performance of daily fetal movement counting chart (DFMC). Methods To retrospectively select 100-case pregnant women who met the enrolled requirements, and whether the fetal was intrauterine safety or not was predicted by analysis of the DFMC before delivery. According to the different perinatal outcomes after delivery, 100-cases pregnant women were divided into intrauterine safety (IUS) group (44 cases) and intrauterine unsafe (IUNS) group (56 cases). And the independent risk factors of fetal intrauterine safety, including maternal age, gestational week, umbilical artery systolic blood flow to diastolic blood flow ratio (S/D), amniotic fluid index (AFI), modified Fischer score of non stress test (NST), DFMC and mode of delivery were analyzed by multi-factors Binary Logistic Regression. Results Only FM and mode of delivery were independent risk factors affecting fetal safety intrauterine (all p value ). There was no remarkable difference between DFMC prediction and clinical retrospective evaluation of fetal safety in natural delivery and forceps delivery (all P value > 0.05), except in cesarean section (p ). The sensitivity, specificity and Yuden index of DFMC for predicting the intrauterine safety in natural vaginal delivery were 86.5%, 90.0% and 0.77 respectively, and in cesarean section were 66.7%, 94.6% and 0.61, respectively. Abnormal DFMC may account for the highest proportion of emergency cesarean section (87.5%, 35/40). Conclusions DFMC can effectively predict and evaluate the well being of intrauterine fetus with UCAN. At the same time, it can also provide limited clinical proofs for pregnant women with UCAN to choose model of delivery.

A local feature descriptor has gained a lot of interest in many applications, such as image retrieval, texture classification, and face recognition. This paper proposes a novel local feature descriptor: center-symmetric local octonary pattern (CS-LOP) for facial expression recognition. A CS-LOP operator not only considers the difference of the gray value between central pixels and neighboring pixels in all eight directions but also compares the gray value of four pairs of center-symmetric pixels. Besides, this paper used the CS-LOP to extract diverse features from the preprocessed facial image, the feature map of gradient magnitude, and the feature map of Gabor, and also to make extracted features more abundant and detailed. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, experiments on JAFFE and CK facial expression datasets demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the method using the individual descriptor. Compared with other state-of-the-art methods, our approach improves the overall recognition accuracy.

Succinic acid is an important platform chemical that can be used to produce a broad range of compounds with extensive applications. By applying rational metabolic engineering, we had previously developed a series of innovative succinic acid-producing Yarrowia lipolytica strains that could produce succinic acid effectively using glycerol. In the present study, glucose was used for succinic acid production by these engineered strains, without pH control. Strain PGC11505, in which the gene (YlACH1) of acetyl-CoA hydrolase corresponding for acetic acid overflow was deleted, exhibited the ability to utilize glucose for succinic acid production efficiently. Strain PGC202, with a strengthened reductive carboxylation and oxidative tricarboxylic acid cycle by overexpression of ScPCK and endogenous YlSCS2, yielded 23.8 g/L succinic acid. After fermentation optimization, the succinic acid titer reached to 32.6 g/L in flask cultures. In a bench-top fermenter, this strain produced 53.6 g/L succinic acid with a yield of 0.61 g/g-glucose without pH control. In conclusion, through rational metabolic engineering of Y. lipolytica, we have successfully achieved the high-yield production of succinic acid using glucose as the sole carbon source under natural low pH condition. This new Y. lipolytica strain would be highly useful in industrial processes for the production of succinic acid using low-cost glucose.

Cultural education has always been regarded as the most important part of the development of a country and society. Education is a topic that people have been exploring. Mother tongue is the first language that people learn in the world. Learning mother tongue has always been important for learning other subjects. It is an important foundation. Since the 21st century, with the development of the Internet, the study of mother tongue has also developed more and more widely with the support of big data. This article mainly introduces the comparative analysis of Chinese and American native language textbooks based on big data technology. This article uses big data to analyze and compare native language textbooks, combined with big data analysis technology, and uses reading feedback to investigate the comparison of Chinese and American native language textbooks. The experimental results of this article show that the big data analysis of Chinese and American native language textbooks has increased the reading volume by 16% and improved the efficiency of learning. Incorporating modern data collection and learning analysis into Chinese and American mother tongue teaching has improved the quality of teaching.

With the rapid development of Internet technology, more and more consumers rely on the Internet for the products and services of information searching and sharing; Electronic word-of-mouth information has gradually become an important factor of affecting consumer purchase intention. The three aspects of sender characteristics, information characteristics and receiver characteristics of electronic word-of-mouth are regarded as the independent variables, trust as the intermediary variable, involvement as the moderator variable, the article carries on the literature carding of the influence electronic word-of-mouth on consumer purchase intentions, which will provide a reference for scholars both at home and abroad to study the theory of electronic word-of-mouth.

With the popularity of the Internet and smart phones, it is becoming more and more common to use WeChat to maintain human relationship, share information in life, and sell various kinds of agricultural products at the moment. This paper analyzes the characteristics and current situations of operation mode in agricultural supply chain, and points out the disadvantages of modern agricultural product supply chain model, then puts forward a new operation mode of agricultural supply chain which is based on the Internet, and WeChat is regarded as the medium trading platform for the purpose of shortening the length of the supply chain and ensuring the operation efficient of agricultural supply chain.

Allicin is a natural effective organosulfur compound isolated from garlic, which possesses many beneficial properties, such as antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, hypotensive and hypolipidemic. In the present study, we investigated the effects and the underlying mechanisms of allicin on isolated mesenteric arteries (MAs). We examined MAs relaxation induced by allicin on rat-isolated mesenteric artery (MA) rings, the KATP channels with patch, and the expression of Kir6.1 and SUR2B with western blotting and NO production with Diaminofluorescein-FM diacetate (DAF-FMDA) in rat mesenteric artery smooth muscle cells (MASMCs). The results showed that allicin elicited the dose-dependent vasorelaxation effect with phenylephrine (PE) precontracted rat MA rings. The vasorelaxation effect was endothelium and NO independent but could be diminished by inhibition of PKA and KATP channels in the vascular smooth muscle. Allicin activated KATP channels in rat MASMCs, and the activation of KATP channels was inhibited by the inhibitors of PKA and KATP channels. But allicin had no effect on the expression of KATP subtypes Kir6.1 and SUR2B. These observations suggest that allicin exerts vasorelaxation effect through activation of PKA-KATP-signaling pathway.

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to explore the prevalence of type I allergic diseases in patients with breast cancer by carrying out a questionnaire survey and IgE detection in a healthy population and in patients with breast cancer. MATERIAL AND METHODS There were 309 patients enrolled and they were further divided into the type I allergic disease group, the newly diagnosed breast cancer with type I allergic disease group, the re-visit breast cancer with type I allergic disease group, and the re-visit breast cancer without type I allergic disease group, as well as a healthy control group. Serum total IgE level was detected by immunoassay. RESULTS The IgE value in the healthy population with type I allergic diseases (89.3±51.4 IU/ml) was significantly higher than in those without type I allergic diseases (45.6±65.1 IU/ml). There was no significant difference between IgE values in the re-visit breast cancer patients with type I allergic disease (25.1±65.1 IU/ml) and those without type I allergic disease (23.0±45.9 IU/ml). The area under the ROC curve was 0.618±0.04, sensitivity was 78%, specificity was 47.1%, Youden index was 0.251, and IgE threshold was 32.6 IU/ml. CONCLUSIONS The patients with newly diagnosed breast cancer were susceptible to type I allergic disease at about the same levels as in the healthy population. There was no correlation between breast cancer and type I allergic disease.

We successfully overcome the problem of cross-talk in multiplexed metasurface design and realize the multiplexed metasurface with five printing images in both theoretical and experimental aspects, by employing the coherent pixel design considering coherent superposition of all the sub-elements. Compared with most previous studies where the integrated printing images were usually no more than three, our study shows obvious improvement. More importantly, in our approach all the sub-elements, which were crystalline silicon nanobricks with the size of 320 × 80 × 230 nm3, were arranged in a square space of 1.45 × 1.45 μm2 following the closest packing way, enabling our multiplexed metasurface to have a potential of effective physical information capacity of printing image reaching the optical diffraction limit. Our study not only enlarges the information capacity of metasurfaces by expanding the integrated number of printing image in one metasurface, but also can promote metasurface applications in various fields such as information storage and encoding.

The aim of the study was to investigate the effects of protosappanin B on the proliferation and apoptosis of bladder cancer cells. The effects of protosappanin B (12.5, 25, 50, 100, or 200 μg/mL, 48 h) on proliferation of SV-HUC-1, T24 and 5637 cells was assessed using the MTT assay. The effects of protosappanin B (100, 150, 200, 250, or 300 μg/mL, 48 h) on cell apoptosis and cell cycle were analyzed using flow cytometry. T24 and 5637 cells treated with 200 µg/mL protosappanin B showed morphological changes (shrinkage, rounding, membrane abnormalities, and reduced adhesion), but protosappanin B had no proliferation arrest effect on SV-HUC-1 cells. Protosappanin B caused concentration-dependent inhibition of cell growth, with IC50 of 82.78 µg/mL in T24 cells and 113.79 µg/mL in 5637 cells. Protosappanin B caused concentration-dependent increases in T24 and 5637 cell apoptosis (100–300 µg/mL). The effects of protosappanin B on the cell cycle in both cell types was G1 arrest with reductions in the proportion of S-phase cells and proliferation index. A proteomics analysis showed that protosappanin B modulated a number of genes involved in the cell cycle. In conclusion, protosappanin B inhibits the proliferation and promotes the apoptosis of T24 and 5637 human bladder cancer cells in a concentration-dependent manner, possibly via interference with cell cycle regulation, preventing G1-to-S transition.

The aim of the study was to investigate the effects of protosappanin B on the proliferation and apoptosis of bladder cancer cells. The effects of protosappanin B (12.5, 25, 50, 100, or 200 μg/mL, 48 h) on proliferation of SV-HUC-1, T24 and 5637 cells was assessed using the MTT assay. The effects of protosappanin B (100, 150, 200, 250, or 300 μg/mL, 48 h) on cell apoptosis and cell cycle were analyzed using flow cytometry. T24 and 5637 cells treated with 200 µg/mL protosappanin B showed morphological changes (shrinkage, rounding, membrane abnormalities, and reduced adhesion), but protosappanin B had no proliferation arrest effect on SV-HUC-1 cells. Protosappanin B caused concentration-dependent inhibition of cell growth, with IC50 of 82.78 µg/mL in T24 cells and 113.79 µg/mL in 5637 cells. Protosappanin B caused concentration-dependent increases in T24 and 5637 cell apoptosis (100–300 µg/mL). The effects of protosappanin B on the cell cycle in both cell types was G1 arrest with reductions in the proportion of S-phase cells and proliferation index. A proteomics analysis showed that protosappanin B modulated a number of genes involved in the cell cycle. In conclusion, protosappanin B inhibits the proliferation and promotes the apoptosis of T24 and 5637 human bladder cancer cells in a concentration-dependent manner, possibly via interference with cell cycle regulation, preventing G1-to-S transition.

Succinic acid is a high value-added organic acid widely used in food, chemical and pesticide industries. As a new robust non-conventional yeast, Yarrowia lipolytica attracts more and more attention due to its potential for industrial applications. Previously, we obtained a succinic acid-producing strain through gene deletion of succinic acid dehydrogenase subunit encoding gene Ylsdh5, resulting in the strain of PGC01003. However, the recombinant strain produced large amount of acetic acid due to imbalance between glycolysis and TCA cycle which hindered the efficient production of succinic acid. PDH bypass was interfered to decrease the overflow of acetic acid and produce succinic acid under natural pH. Acetic acid was reduced to 4.6 g/L through heterologous expression of acetyl coenzyme A synthase from Salmonella enteric, which was 75.4% of the control strain. Deletion of CoA-transferase gene Ylach1 eliminated acetate formation and improved succinic acid production, and the resulting strain produced as high as 7.0 g/L succinic acid. Our study provides foundation for further construction of efficient cell factory of succinic acid production.琥珀酸是一种高附加值的有机酸，广泛用于食品、化工和农药领域。解脂酵母Yarrowia lipolytica 作为新型强健的非传统酵母，近年来逐渐吸引了研究者的注意。前期通过基因敲除琥珀酸脱氢酶基因构建了一株产琥珀酸的重组解脂酵母PGC01003。由于糖酵解和TCA 循环流量不协调，PGC01003 分泌大量副产物乙酸，限制了琥珀酸产量的进一步提高。为降低乙酸的溢出，实现自然低pH 值发酵生产琥珀酸，首先干扰旁路代谢，异源表达来自鼠沙门氏菌的乙酰辅酶A 合酶，乙酸的产量下降至4.6 g/L，比对照降低了24.6%。而基因敲除乙酰辅酶A水解酶基因得到的重组菌PGC11505，发酵96 h 乙酸分泌量只有0.4 g/L，琥珀酸产量提高到7.0 g/L，琥珀酸的转化率为0.30 g/g，为进一步构建高产琥珀酸的细胞工厂奠定基础。.