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Abstract Previous observational investigations suggest that structural and diffusion imaging-derived phenotypes (IDPs) are associated with major neurodegenerative diseases; however, whether these associations are causal remains largely uncertain. Herein we conducted bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization analyses to infer the causal relationships between structural and diffusion IDPs and major neurodegenerative diseases using common genetic variants-single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) as instrumental variables. Summary statistics of genome-wide association study (GWAS) for structural and diffusion IDPs were obtained from 33,224 individuals in the UK Biobank cohort. Summary statistics of GWAS for seven major neurodegenerative diseases were obtained from the largest GWAS for each disease to date. The forward MR analyses identified significant or suggestively statistical causal effects of genetically predicted three structural IDPs on Alzheimer’s disease (AD), frontotemporal dementia (FTD), and multiple sclerosis. For example, the reduction in the surface area of the left superior temporal gyrus was associated with a higher risk of AD. The reverse MR analyses identified significantly or suggestively statistical causal effects of genetically predicted AD, Lewy body dementia (LBD), and FTD on nine structural and diffusion IDPs. For example, LBD was associated with increased mean diffusivity in the right superior longitudinal fasciculus and AD was associated with decreased gray matter volume in the right ventral striatum. Our findings might contribute to shedding light on the prediction and therapeutic intervention for the major neurodegenerative diseases at the neuroimaging level.

Abstract Cuttage is a common plant cultivation method, and the key to its survival is the restoration of water refilling, which remains unclear up to now. We report 3D dynamic imaging of water refilling of cuttage without resorting to any contrast agent. Hydrodynamics of the refilled water flow over time reveals the existence of a unit mass force field with a gradient along the refilling direction, which means that cutting plants also have a gradient force field to drive the recovery of water refilling, as predicted by Cohesion-Tension theory in normal plants. We found that force fields of different functional regions are isolated and independently distributed, which is conducive to ensure the safety of water transmission. At the same time, we also found that there is a so-called "inchworm effect" in the mass force field, which contributes to the force transfer inside the cutting through local force accumulation. Results of this paper demonstrate that the developed method for the measurement of mass force field in-vivo is applicable to help decipher the mechanism of plant water refilling.

Abstract Spontaneous reversion from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to normal cognition (NC) is little known. Based on the data of the Genetics of Personality Consortium and MCI participants from Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, the authors investigate the effect of polygenic scores (PGS) for personality traits on the reversion of MCI to NC and its underlying neurobiology. PGS analysis reveals that PGS for conscientiousness (PGS‐C) is a protective factor that supports the reversion from MCI to NC. Gene ontology enrichment analysis and tissue‐specific enrichment analysis indicate that the protective effect of PGS‐C may be attributed to affecting the glutamatergic synapses of subcortical structures, such as hippocampus, amygdala, nucleus accumbens, and caudate nucleus. The structural covariance network (SCN) analysis suggests that the left whole hippocampus and its subfields, and the left whole amygdala and its subnuclei show significantly stronger covariance with several high‐cognition relevant brain regions in the MCI reverters compared to the stable MCI participants, which may help illustrate the underlying neural mechanism of the protective effect of PGS‐C.

A multi-objective pedestrian tracking method based on you only look once-v8 (YOLOv8) and the improved simple online and real time tracking with a deep association metric (DeepSORT) was proposed with the purpose of coping with the issues of local occlusion and ID dynamic transformation that frequently arise when tracking target pedestrians in real complex traffic scenarios. To begin with, in order to enhance the feature extraction network's capacity to learn target feature information in busy traffic situations, the detector implemented the YOLOv8 method with a high level of small-scale feature expression. In addition, the omni-scale network (OSNet) feature extraction network was then put on top of DeepSORT in order to accomplish real-time synchronized target tracking. This increases the effectiveness of picture edge recognition by dynamically fusing the collected feature information at various scales. Furthermore, a new adaptive forgetting smoothing Kalman filtering algorithm (FSA) was created to adapt to the nonlinear condition of the pedestrian trajectory in the traffic scene in order to address the issue of poor prediction attributed to the linear state equation of Kalman filtering once more. Afterward, the original intersection over union (IOU) association matching algorithm of DeepSORT was replaced by the complete-intersection over union (CIOU) association matching algorithm to fundamentally reduce the target pedestrians' omission and misdetection situation and to improve the accuracy of data matching. Eventually, the generalized trajectory feature extractor model (GFModel) was developed to tightly merge the local and global information through the average pooling operation in order to get precise tracking results and further decrease the impact of numerous disturbances on target tracking. The fusion algorithm of YOLOv8 and improved DeepSORT method based on OSNet, FSA and GFModel was named YOFGD. According to the experimental findings, YOFGD's ultimate accuracy can reach 77.9% and its speed can reach 55.8 frames per second (FPS), which is more than enough to fulfill the demands of real-world scenarios.

S-metolachlor is a selective pre-emergence herbicide used in dryland. However, it is challenging to employ in paddy fields due to its phytotoxic effects on rice. As a common phytohormone, Gibberellin-3 (GA3) is inferred to have the ability to alleviate herbicide phytotoxicity. This study first quantitatively verified the phytotoxicity of s-metolachlor to rice and then demonstrated the mitigative effect of GA3 on these adverse reactions. Furthermore, a transcriptome of rice seedlings subjected to different treatments was constructed to assemble the reference genes, followed by comparative metabolomics and proteomics analyses. Metabolomics revealed an enrichment of flavonoid metabolites in the group of adding GA3, and these flavonoids can eliminate ROS in plants. Proteomics analysis indicated that differential proteins were enriched in the phenylpropanoid biosynthesis pathway responsible for the synthesis of flavonoids and that the functions of most differential proteins are associated with peroxidase. The proteome, combined with the transcriptome, revealed that the expressions of proteins and genes was related to the POD activity in the group of adding GA3. It was speculated that the elimination of ROS is key to alleviating the stress of s-metolachlor on rice growth. It was inferred that the mechanism of GA3 in alleviating the phytotoxicity of the substance s-metolachlor is by increasing the activity of the POD and influencing the growth of rice seedlings through the restoration of flavonoid synthesis. In this study, we screened GA3 as a safener to alleviate the phytotoxicity of s-metolachlor on rice. On this basis, the mechanism of alleviating phytotoxicity was studied. The application range of s-metolachlor might be expanded, providing a new supplementary method for weed control and herbicide resistance management.

As a layered material with single/multi-atom thickness, two-dimensional transition metal sulfide WS2 has attracted extensive attention in the field of science for its excellent physical, chemical, optical, and electrical properties. The photoelectric properties of WS2 are even more promising than graphene. However, there are many existing preparation methods for WS2, but few reports on its direct growth on tungsten films. Therefore, this paper studies its preparation method and proposes an innovative two-dimensional material preparation method to grow large-sized WS2 with higher quality on metal film. In this experiment, it was found that the reaction temperature could regulate the growth direction of WS2. When the temperature was below 950 °C, the film showed horizontal growth, while when the temperature was above 1000 °C, the film showed vertical growth. At the same time, through Raman and band gap measurements, it is found that the different thicknesses of precursor film will lead to a difference in the number of layers of WS2. The number of layers of WS2 can be controlled by adjusting the thickness of the precursor.

Freshwater aquaculture in Jianghan Plain plays a key role in the whole industry of China. It was expanding rapidly to meet the fast-growing demand of consumption in these decades. The spatial distribution change of aquaculture in Jianghan Plain has attracted many researchers in recent years and it is worth further investigating. However, the accuracy and the quality of inland aquaculture classification and mapping still have space to be improved. Our study attempts to use Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data to classify aquaculture areas, nonaquaculture water, and nonwater areas. We applied image segmentation and pixel-based feature computation to obtain candidate datasets. Recursive feature elimination (RFE) was used to find the optimal datasets which were then imported into a modified UNet for classification. This workflow was then applied to the annual datasets for better observation of the spatial change of aquaculture areas. In total, 12 indices and features were found most influential and preserved after RFE. The overall classification accuracy reached 96.83%, while the precision and recall of aquaculture areas reached 84.47% and 90.48%, respectively. The combination of object-based and pixel-based image analysis showed its advantage in inland aquaculture classification compared to other studies. Integrated rice–crawfish farming was found a key factor motivating the rapid development of aquaculture. Policies about the fishing ban and ecosystem restoration were also found deeply affecting the spatial change of aquaculture in Jianghan Plain.

In recent years, the problem of Cd pollution in paddy fields has become more and more serious, which seriously threatens the safe production of food crops and human health. Using microorganisms to reduce cadmium pollution in rice fields is a green, safe and efficient method, the complicated interactions between the microbes in rice roots throughout the process of cadmium absorption by rice roots are poorly understood. In this investigation, a hydroponic pot experiment was used to examine the effects of bacteria R3 (Herbaspirillum sp) and T4 (Bacillus cereus) on cadmium uptake and the endophytic bacterial community in rice roots. The results showed that compared with CK (Uninoculated bacterial liquid), the two strains had significant inhibitory or promotive effects on cadmium uptake in rice plant, respectively. Among them, the decrease of cadmium content in rice plants by R3 strain reached 78.57-79.39%, and the increase of cadmium content in rice plants by T4 strain reached 140.49-158.19%. Further investigation showed that the cadmium content and root cadmium enrichment coefficient of rice plants were significantly negatively correlated with the relative abundances of Burkholderia and Acidovorax, and significantly positively correlated with the relative abundances of Achromobacter, Agromyces and Acidocella. Moreover, a more complex network of microbes in rice roots inhibited rice plants from absorbing cadmium. These results suggest that cadmium uptake by rice plants is closely related to the endophytic bacterial community of roots. This study provides a reference scheme for the safe production of crops in cadmium contaminated paddies and lays a solid theoretical foundation for subsequent field applications.

Cuttage is a widely used technique for plant propagation, whose success relies on the refilling for water transport recovery. However, requirements for refilling characterization studies, including large penetration depth, fast temporal resolution and high spatial resolution, cannot be reached simultaneously via conventional imaging techniques. So far, the dynamic process of water refilling along the vessels at the initial stage of cuttage, as well as its characteristics, remains unclear. Hereby, we developed a move contrast X-ray microtomography method which achieves 3D dynamic non-destructive imaging of water refilling at the initial stage of willow branch cuttage, without the aid of any contrast agent. Experimental results indicate three primary refilling modalities in vessels: 1) the osmosis type, mainly manifested by the osmosis of tissue through the vessel wall into the cavity; 2) the linear type, revealed as the tissue permeates to a certain extent where the liquid column in the vessels is completely formed; and 3) an osmosis-linear mixed type refilling as an intermediate state. Further analysis also exhibits a “temporal-spatial relay” mode of refilling between adjacent vessels. Since the vessel length is quite limited, the cavitation and the relay refilling mode of vessels can be an important way to achieve long-distance water transport.

BackgroundBilateral carotid body tumors with a concomitant skull-base paraganglioma are extremely rare, of which only one case has been reported in the literature to date.Case presentationWe present the case of a 35-year-old male with 1 year of hypertension and high levels of dopamine and 3-methoxytyramine. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans demonstrated three separate masses at the left middle cranial fossa floor and bilateral carotid bifurcation. Genetic testing showed succinate dehydrogenase complex subunit D mutation. The patient underwent the resection of the left skull base mass. Histopathology and immunohistochemistry confirmed the presence of a skull-base paraganglioma.ConclusionsSuccinate dehydrogenase complex subunit D mutation-associated bilateral carotid body tumors with a concomitant skull-base paraganglioma accompanied by abnormal dopamine and hypertension are extremely rare, which not only provides ideas for considering the association of gene mutations, biochemical abnormalities and clinical symptoms but also provides an expanded diagnostic spectrum for paraganglioma in atypical locations.

Woody debris flows (i.e., debris flows carrying wood) are common in mountainous and forested areas. They can cause more severe hazards due to the effects of LW (woody debris larger than 1 m in length and 10 cm in width) compared to debris flows without LW. Mitigation structures for debris flows have considered little of the regulating effect on LW and the influence of LW on the regulation effect of sediment. Thus, model tests were conducted to discuss the regulation effects of slit-check dams on woody debris flow. Research results demonstrated that slit-check dams can effectively regulate woody debris flows without overflows. Once overflow occurs, sediment trapping efficiency and the wood retention rate dramatically decrease. The sediment trapping efficiency of slit-check dams on debris flows without LW shared a linear relationship with the relative opening width, the height-to-width ratio of the opening, and the opening density. However, this was also influenced by the wood retention rate for woody debris flow. A logarithmic relationship between the sediment trapping rate and wood retention rate was obtained. The wood retention rate is mainly determined by the ratio of the LW length to the opening width, the ratio of the LW length to the channel width and the opening density of the slit-check dam. Three draining patterns of woody debris flows at the slit-check dam and three clogging types of LW at the openings of the slit-check dam were observed. Some design criteria for the structure parameters of the slit-check dam were proposed. These research results promote a better understanding of the regulation effect of slit-check dams on woody debris flows and provide a basis for the optimal design of slit-check dams.

Bone age is the chronological age of human bones, which serves as a key indicator of the maturity of bone development and can more objectively reflect the extent of human growth and development. The prevalent viewpoint and research development direction now favor the employment of deep learning-based bone age detection algorithms to determine bone age. Although bone age detection accuracy has increased when compared to more established methods, more work needs to be conducted to raise it because bone age detection is primarily used in clinical medicine, forensic identification, and other critical and rigorous fields. Due to the symmetry of human hand bones, bone age detection can be performed on either the left hand or the right hand, and the results are the same. In other words, the bone age detection results of both hands are universal. In this regard, the left hand is chosen as the target of bone age detection in this paper. To accomplish this, the You Only Look Once-v5 (YOLOv5) and Residual Network-34 (ResNet34) integration techniques are combined in this paper to create an innovative bone age detection model (YARN), which is then combined with the RUS-CHN scoring method that applies to Chinese adolescent children to comprehensively assess bone age at multiple levels. In this study, the images in the hand bone dataset are first preprocessed with number enhancement, then YOLOv5 is used to train the hand bone dataset to identify and filter out the main 13 joints in the hand bone, and finally, ResNet34 is used to complete the classification of local joints and achieve the determination of the developmental level of the detected region, followed by the calculation of the bone age by combining with the RUS-CHN method. The bone age detection model based on YOLOv5 and ResNet34 can significantly improve the accuracy and efficiency of bone age detection, and the model has significant advantages in the deep feature extraction of key regions of hand bone joints, which can efficiently complete the task of bone age detection. This was discovered through experiments on the public dataset of Flying Paddle AI Studio.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are a group of heterogeneous neurodevelopmental disorders that are highly heritable and are associated with impaired dynamic functional connectivity (DFC). However, the molecular mechanisms behind DFC alterations remain largely unknown. Eighty-eight patients with ASDs and 87 demographically matched typical controls (TCs) from the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange II database were included in this study. A seed-based sliding window approach was then performed to investigate the DFC changes in each of the 29 seeds in 10 classic resting-state functional networks and the whole brain. Subsequently, the relationships between DFC alterations in patients with ASDs and their symptom severity were assessed. Finally, transcription-neuroimaging association analyses were conducted to explore the molecular mechanisms of DFC disruptions in patients with ASDs. Compared with TCs, patients with ASDs showed significantly increased DFC between the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and left fusiform/lingual gyrus, between the DLPFC and the superior temporal gyrus, between the right frontal eye field (FEF) and left middle frontal gyrus, between the FEF and the right angular gyrus, and between the left intraparietal sulcus and the right middle temporal gyrus. Moreover, significant relationships between DFC alterations and symptom severity were observed. Furthermore, the genes associated with DFC changes in ASDs were identified by performing gene-wise across-sample spatial correlation analysis between gene expression extracted from six donors’ brain of the Allen Human Brain Atlas and case-control DFC difference. In enrichment analysis, these genes were enriched for processes associated with synaptic signaling and voltage-gated ion channels and calcium pathways; also, these genes were highly expressed in autistic disorder, chronic alcoholic intoxication and several disorders related to depression. These results not only demonstrated higher DFC in patients with ASDs but also provided novel insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying these alterations.

BackgroundHypersensitivity pneumonia (HP) is an interstitial lung disease (ILD) mainly involving small airways and lung parenchyma that is caused by the inhalation of antigens in susceptible people to stimulate the body's immune response.MethodsA total of 6 Chinese children with HP treated in our center from July 2017 to July 2021 were included in our study.ResultsAmong the children, there were 4 males and 2 females, ranging in age from 4 to 14 years. Three cases had chest tightness and shortness of breath, 2 cases had cough, 1 case had chest pain, and 1 case had fever. Two cases of children had a history of close contact with pet dogs, 1 case had a history of contact with pigeons, 2 cases lived in a moldy house recently, and 1 case recently played a saxophone that had been idle for more than 2 years. The parents of two cases also had similar symptoms recently. The specific signs of chest HRCT of 6 cases all were in line with the characteristics of HP. After avoiding the sensitization environment, 2 children quickly recovered, 4 patients received low-dose glucocorticoid oral treatment, and after symptom control the dose was gradually reduced. The course of treatment was about 3–6 months.ConclusionsExposure to a potential antigen has been found in all 6 HP children. The clinical manifestations are heterogeneous and easy to confuse with other diseases. A clear history of exposure to the antigens, respiratory symptoms associated with HP, signs of HP on HRCT, and improvement after removal from the antigenic environment constitute the cornerstone of the diagnosis of HP children in our unit. Avoiding exposure to antigenic environment is the first step in treatment, and glucocorticoid use is necessary in children with persistent symptoms.

Abstract Background It is well known that peptides play a vital role in the nutrition and health of dairy cows. Bovine oligopeptide transporter 1 (bPepT1) is involved in the peptide transport process in the gastrointestinal tracts of dairy cows. However, little information is known in the characteristics of bPepT1. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to characterize bPepT1 functionally using a mammalian cell expression system. The uptake of radiolabeled dipeptide glycyl-sarcosine ([3H]-Gly-Sar) into the bPepT1-transfected Chinese hamster ovary cells was measured at various pH and substrate concentrations and with or without 15 other small peptides that contained Met or Lys. Results Western blot results showed that the abundance of bPepT1 protein in the jejunum and ileum are the highest in the gastrointestinal tract of dairy cows. The uptake of [3H]-Gly-Sar by bPepT1-Chinese hamster ovary cells was dependent on time, pH, and substrate concentration, with a low Km value of 0.94 ± 0.06 mmol/L and a maximum velocity of 20.80 ± 1.74 nmol/(mg protein • 5 min). Most of the di- and tripeptides were the substrates of bPepT1, based on substrate-competitive studies. However, bPepT1 has a higher affinity to the peptides with shorter chains, greater hydrophobicity, and negative or neutral charges. Conclusions These results demonstrated for the first time the functional characteristics of bPepT1, and they provide a new insight and better understanding into its vital role in absorbing a wide range of peptides from the digestive tract of dairy cows.

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the regional synchronization of brain in patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME). Methods. Resting-state fMRI data were acquired from twenty-one patients with JME and twenty-two healthy subjects. Regional homogeneity (ReHo) was used to analyze the spontaneous activity in whole brain. Two-sample t-test was performed to detect the ReHo difference between two groups. Correlations between the ReHo values and features of seizures were calculated further. Key Findings. Compared with healthy controls, patients showed significantly increased ReHo in bilateral thalami and motor-related cortex regions and a substantial reduction of ReHo in cerebellum and occipitoparietal lobe. In addition, greater ReHo value in the left paracentral lobule was linked to the older age of onset in patients. Significance. These findings implicated the abnormality of thalamomotor cortical network in JME which were associated with the genesis and propagation of epileptiform activity. Moreover, our study supported that the local brain spontaneous activity is a potential tool to investigate the epileptic activity and provided important insights into understanding the pathophysiological mechanisms of JME.