A comprehensive review on asphalt fume suppression and energy saving technologies in asphalt pavement industry.

Based on the environmental issues of high energy consumption and high emissions of asphalt fumes that are associated with hot mixing asphalt pavement construction, especially with modified asphalt mixtures such as waste rubber modified asphalt (WRMA) mixtures, significant environmentally-friendly new technologies have been successfully applied in the field of asphalt pavement materials. These include fume purification equipment, fume suppression or flame-retarding asphalt mixture, and warm mixing or cold mixing asphalt mixture. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the latest technology in this area regarding both asphalt fume suppression and energy conservation within the last six years. Firstly, asphalt fume suppression technologies in production, laying, and combustion scenarios of an asphalt mixture are identified, and asphalt fume purification equipment utilized in the production process is thoroughly examined. The impacts and mechanisms of various fume suppressants and flame retardants of asphalt fumes regarding their influence on the performance of asphalt pavement are discussed. Secondly, from the perspective of reducing asphalt mixture temperature, different mixing techniques such as cold mixing asphalt (CMA), warm mixing asphalt (WMA), and warm mixing based retarding viscosity asphalt (WM-RVA) are introduced and evaluated utilizing energy consumption and carbon emission evaluation models. These results show that the combination of advanced oxidation and traditional purification methods is critical for promoting the green production of asphalt mixtures. In-depth research on nanomaterials and composite-type asphalt fume suppression materials, WM-RVA, and effective combinations of high-performance modification, recycled materials, fume suppression functional materials, and WMA or CMA hold great promise for future development in this field.

PsNRT2.3 interacts with PsNAR to promote high-affinity nitrate uptake in pea (Pisum sativum L.).

Nitrate, the primary form of nitrogen absorbed by plants, supplies essential compounds for plant growth and development. Peas are frequently used as rotation crops to improve and stabilize soil fertility. However, the determinants of nitrate uptake and transport in peas remain largely unclear, primarily due to the pea genome's complexity and size. In this study, we utilized the complete genomic information of peas to identify three PsNRT2 family genes within the pea genome. We conducted a comprehensive examination of their protein conserved domains, physicochemical properties, gene structure, and phylogenetic evolution, revealing PsNRT2.3 as the potential key gene for high-affinity nitrate transport in peas. Subcellular localization studies indicated that PsNRT2.3 resides on the plasma membrane. Using hairy root transformation, we noted the predominant expression of PsNRT2.3 in the root stele, which is inducible by nitrate. Our experiments involving overexpression and silencing methods further confirmed that PsNRT2.3 plays a key role in enhancing nitrate uptake in peas. Additionally, our work showed that PsNAR could interact with PsNRT2.3, modulating pea nitrate uptake. After silencing PsNAR, even with the normal expression of PsNRT2.3, the ability of peas to absorb nitrate was significantly reduced. In conclusion, this study identifies the high-affinity nitrate transport gene PsNRT2.3 in peas and clarifies its critical role and regulatory network in nitrate transport, contributing to a new understanding of nitrate utilization in peas.

Plant genome resequencing and population genomics: Current status and future prospects.

Advances in DNA sequencing technology have sparked a genomics revolution, driving breakthroughs in plant genetics and crop breeding. Recently, the focus has shifted from cataloging genetic diversity in plants to exploring their functional significance and delivering beneficial alleles for crop improvement. This transformation has been facilitated by the increasing adoption of whole-genome resequencing. In this review, we summarize the current progress of population-based genome resequencing studies and how these studies affect crop breeding. A total of 187 land plants from 163 countries have been resequenced, comprising 54 413 accessions. As part of resequencing efforts 367 traits have been surveyed and 86 genome-wide association studies have been conducted. Economically important crops, particularly cereals, vegetables, and legumes, have dominated the resequencing efforts, leaving a gap in 49 orders, including Lycopodiales, Liliales, Acorales, Austrobaileyales, and Commelinales. The resequenced germplasm is distributed across diverse geographic locations, providing a global perspective on plant genomics. We highlight genes that have been selected during domestication, or associated with agronomic traits, and form a repository of candidate genes for future research and application. Despite the opportunities for cross-species comparative genomics, many population genomic datasets are not accessible, impeding secondary analyses. We call for a more open and collaborative approach to population genomics that promotes data sharing and encourages contribution-based credit policy. The number of plant genome resequencing studies will continue to rise with the decreasing DNA sequencing costs, coupled with advances in analysis and computational technologies. This expansion, in terms of both scale and quality, holds promise for deeper insights into plant trait genetics and breeding design.

HAPPE: A Tool for Population Haplotype Analysis and Visualization in Editable Excel Tables.

Haplotype identification, characterization and visualization are important for large-scale analysis and use in population genomics. Many tools have been developed to visualize haplotypes, but it is challenging to display both the pattern of haplotypes and the genotypes for each single SNP in the context of a large amount of genomic data. Here, we describe the tool HAPPE, which uses the agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithm to characterize and visualize the genotypes and haplotypes in a phylogenetic context. The tool displays the plots by coloring the cells and/or their borders in Excel tables for any given gene and genomic region of interest. HAPPE facilitates informative displays wherein data in plots are easy to read and access. It allows parallel display of several lines of values, such as phylogenetic trees, P values of GWAS, the entry of genes or SNPs, and the sequencing depth at each position. These features are informative for the detection of insertion/deletions or copy number variations. Overall, HAPPE provides editable plots consisting of cells in Excel tables, which are user-friendly to non-programmers. This pipeline is coded in Python and is available at https://github.com/fengcong3/HAPPE.

Three-nucleotide periodicity of nucleotide diversity in a population enables the identification of open reading frames.

Accurate prediction of open reading frames (ORFs) is important for studying and using genome sequences. Ribosomes move along mRNA strands with a step of three nucleotides and datasets carrying this information can be used to predict ORFs. The ribosome-protected footprints (RPFs) feature a significant 3-nt periodicity on mRNAs and are powerful in predicting translating ORFs, including small ORFs (sORFs), but the application of RPFs is limited because they are too short to be accurately mapped in complex genomes. In this study, we found a significant 3-nt periodicity in the datasets of populational genomic variants in coding sequences, in which the nucleotide diversity increases every three nucleotides. We suggest that this feature can be used to predict ORFs and develop the Python package 'OrfPP', which recovers ~83% of the annotated ORFs in the tested genomes on average, independent of the population sizes and the complexity of the genomes. The novel ORFs, including sORFs, identified from single-nucleotide polymorphisms are supported by protein mass spectrometry evidence comparable to that of the annotated ORFs. The application of OrfPP to tetraploid cotton and hexaploid wheat genomes successfully identified 76.17% and 87.43% of the annotated ORFs in the genomes, respectively, as well as 4704 sORFs, including 1182 upstream and 2110 downstream ORFs in cotton and 5025 sORFs, including 232 upstream and 234 downstream ORFs in wheat. Overall, we propose an alternative and supplementary approach for ORF prediction that can extend the studies of sORFs to more complex genomes.

Oxidation and polymer degradation characteristics of high viscosity modified asphalts under various aging environments.

High viscosity modified asphalt (HVMA) was the core material to build ecological permeable pavement, while it was prone to aging, which limited its applications for urban sustainability. This study focused on the oxidation and polymer degradation characteristics of the high-content styrene-butadiene-styrene modified asphalt, high-viscosity composite particle modified asphalt and high-elastic modified asphalt under the simulated aging environments of thermal oxidation and weather. Gel permeation chromatography results showed that the increase percent of large molecular size percent and the decrease percent of polymer weight could characterize the oxidation degree and polymer degradation degree, respectively. The degrees of oxidation and polymer degradation in all HVMAs increased synchronously with aging, and reached the highest after the weather aging. The polymer molecular distribution of HVMA would become more uniform with aging from the proposed ratio of polymer weight to polymer content. Dynamic shear rheometer tests reflected that there existed the dual effects of coupling and parallelism during aging of HVMA, i.e. the oxidation-induced hardening effect and degradation-induced softening effect. Furthermore, the change percent of rheological indicators was proposed as the net aging degree. Considering the rheological properties of aged HVMA were the coupling results of dual effects, the net aging degree could represent the oxidation dominance degree or polymer degradation dominance degree of HVMA. Due to the differences of dual effects and polymer molecular distribution, various HVMAs showed the totally different net aging degree ranking, depending on the aging states and rheological indicators. Notably, the high-elastic modified asphalt showed the greatest aging resistance at all aging states as a result of its weak dual effects and most uniform polymer molecular distribution.

Effects of the modified electric convulsive treatment (MECT) on cell factors of schizophrenia.

The expression of cell factors of schizophrenia and the effect of the modified electric convulsive treatment (MECT) were studied. In total, 156 patients with schizophrenia were selected, and divided into the drug group (70 cases) and the drug combined with MECT group (combined group) (86 cases) according to the treatment methods. In addition, 70 cases of healthy volunteers (control group) were selected according to the closest matching method based on 1:1 of age and gender. The drug treatment, consisted of anti-psychotic drugs, such as risperidone 2-8, quetiapine 300-750, ziprasidone 80-160 or aripiprazole 10-30 mg/day, and for the control group, we used the electric spasm therapeutic instrument, Thymatron®IV Systems up to 6 times, 3 times a week. The levels of interleukin (IL)-10, IL-4, IL-6 and IL-1 were detected before and after treatment by ELISA. The positive and negative symptom scale (PANSS) was used to evaluate the efficiency. Before the treatment, IL-1 and IL-6 levels of drug and combined groups were significantly higher than those of the control group (P<0.05), while IL-4 and IL-10 had no difference with the control group. There was no significant difference of each factor between the drug and combined groups. After treatment, IL-1, IL-6 and IL-10 of the drug group did not change compared to the levels before treatment, but IL-4 increased significantly; IL-1 and IL-10 of the combined group did not change, while IL-4 and IL-6 increased significantly; IL-1, IL-4 and IL-6 of the drug and combined groups were significantly (P<0.05) higher than those in the control group, but not IL-10. IL-1, IL-4 and IL-6 levels of the combined group were significantly higher (P<0.05) than those of the drug group. After treatment, the PANSS scores of the two groups decreased and the combined group decreased more significantly (P<0.05). The reduction rate of the combined group was significantly higher (P<0.05) than that of the drug group. The total efficiency of the combined group was significantly higher than that of the drug group, and after comparing these levels, there was statistical significance (P<0.05). IL-1, IL-4, IL-6 and IL-10 levels of the drug and combined groups before treatment were not associated with PANSS scores and the variation of IL-1, IL-4, IL-6 and IL-10 of the drug and combined groups had no correlation with the reduction rate of the PANSS. The results showed that, cell factors of schizophrenia had an abnormal expression, and medication and MECT can affect the expression level. In addition, MECT can improve the effect in the treatment of schizophrenia, but had no obvious correlation with the change of cell factors.

Low-Dose Versus Standard-Dose Tissue Plasminogen Activator in Acute Ischemic Stroke in Asian Populations: A Meta-Analysis.

Recent studies have investigated the most efficacious dose of intravenous tissue plasminogen activator (IV-tPA) for acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients. There remains no definitive consensus concerning the superior efficacious IV-tPA dose (standard- vs. low-dose), prompting us to perform a meta-analysis comparing the efficacy and safety profile of standard- versus low-dose IV-tPA.We identified relevant studies pertaining to the specific aim of our meta-analysis by searching PubMed and EMBASE (January 1990-September 2015) Either a fixed- or random-effects model was employed (dependent upon data heterogeneity) to analyze the efficacy and safety outcome.Ten cohort studies involving 4389 sum patients were included in the meta-analysis. By using the random-effects model, the meta-analysis indicated no statistically significant difference in favorable functional outcome (modified Rankin scale 0-1) at 3 months (heterogeneity: χ = 17.45, P = 0.04, I = 48%; OR: 0.88 [95% CI: 0.71-1.11]; P = 0.28) and incidence of symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage (SICH) (heterogeneity: χ = 14.41, P = 0.11, I = 38%; OR: 1.19 [95% CI: 0.76 to 1.87]; P = 0.45) between the standard- and low-dose groups. The fixed-effects model demonstrated no significant difference in mortality within 3 months (heterogeneity: χ = 6.73, P = 0.57, I = 0%; OR: 0.91 [95% CI: 0.73-1.12]; P = 0.37) between the standard- and low-dose groups.Low-dose IV-tPA is comparable to standard-dose IV-tPA in both efficacy (favorable functional outcome) and safety (SICH and mortality). Confirmation of these findings through randomized trials is warranted.

Intraperitoneal administration of thioredoxin decreases brain damage from ischemic stroke.

Recent studies demonstrate that Thioredixin (Trx) possesses a neuronal protective effect and closely relates to oxidative stress and apoptosis of cerebral ischemia injury. The present study was conducted to validate the neuroprotective effect of recombinant human Trx-1 (rhTrx-1) and its potential mechanisms against ischemia injury at middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) in mice. rhTrx-1 was administrated intraperitoneally at a dose of 5, 10 and 20mg/kg 30 min before MCAO in mice, and its neuronal protective effect was evaluated by neurological deficit score, brain dry-wet weight, 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC) staining. The protein carbonyl content and HO-1 were detected to investigate its potential anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory property, and the anti-apoptotic ability of rhTrx-1 was assessed by casepase-3 and TUNEL staining. The results demonstrated that rhTrx-1 significantly improved neurological functions and reduced cerebral infarction and apoptotic cell death at 24h after MCAO. Moreover, rhTrx-1 resulted in a significant decrease in carbonyl contents and HO-1 against oxidative stress, which turned to be fast reduction during the first 24h and tended to be stable from 24h to 72h after MCAO. The study shows that rhTrx-1 exerts an neuroprotective effect in cerebral ischemia injury. The anti-oxidative, anti-apoptotic and anti-inflammatory properties of rhTrx-1 are more likely to succeed as a therapeutic approach to diminish oxidative stress-induced neuronal apoptotic cell death in acute ischemic stroke.

Activation of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor ß/δ attenuates acute ischemic stroke on middle cerebral ischemia occlusion in rats.

BACKGROUND: Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR)-ß/δ is a transcription factor that belongs to the nuclear hormone receptor family. There is little information about the effects of the immediate administration of specific ligands of PPAR-ß/δ (GW0742) in animal models of acute ischemic stroke. Using a rat model of middle cerebral ischemia occlusion (MCAO) in vivo, we have investigated the effect of pretreatment with GW0742 before MCAO. METHODS: The neuroprotective effect of GW0742 against acute ischemic stroke was evaluated by the neurologic deficit score (NDS), dry-wet weight, and 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride staining. The levels of interleukin (IL)-1ß, nuclear factor (NF)-κB, and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α were detected by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The expressions of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), Bax, and Bcl-2 were detected by Western blot. The apoptotic cells were counted by in situ terminal deoxyribonucleotidyl transferase-mediated deoxyuridine triphosphate-biotin nick end labeling assay. RESULTS: The pretreatment with GW0742 significantly increased the expression of Bcl-2, and significantly decreased in the volume of infarction, NDS, edema, expressions of IL-1ß, NF-κB, TNFα, and Bax, contents of iNOS and the apoptotic cells in infarct cerebral hemisphere compared with rats in the vehicle group at 24 hours after MCAO. CONCLUSIONS: The study suggests the neuroprotective effect of the PPAR-ß/δ ligand GW0742 in acute ischemic stroke by a mechanism that may involve its anti-inflammatory and antiapoptotic action.

Up-regulation of heme oxygenase-1 attenuates brain damage after cerebral ischemia via simultaneous inhibition of superoxide production and preservation of NO bioavailability.

Cerebral ischemia exacerbates neuronal death and neurological dysfunction. Evidence supports the involvement of oxidative/nitrative stress in the pathophysiology of cerebral ischemia. Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) is a rate-limiting enzyme in heme catabolism, possessing potent anti-oxidant and anti-apoptosis effects. In transgenic mice, HO-1 overproduction is neuroprotective against cerebral ischemia injury, but by unclear mechanisms. The present study determined whether treatment with adenoviral vector overexpressing HO-1 (Ad-HO-1) attenuates post-ischemic brain damage via reduction of oxidative/nitrative stress. After focal cerebral ischemia, Ad-HO-1 reduced lipid peroxidation and protein nitration, decreased infarct volume, and attenuated neurologic deficits. Zinc protoporphyrin IX (ZnPP IX, a specific HO-1 inhibitor) blocked Ad-HO-1 mediated effects against ischemic brain damage. Although Ad-HO-1 slightly reduced ischemic brain NO concentrations, Ad-HO-1 treatment significantly inhibited cerebral expression of iNOS protein expression, without significant effect upon nNOS or eNOS expression compared to vehicle after focal cerebral ischemia. Ad-HO-1 preserved NO bioavailability by increasing eNOS phosphorylation during ischemia compared to vehicle. Together, our results suggest that Ad-HO-1 attenuates post-ischemic brain damage via simultaneous reduction of oxidative/nitrative stress and preservation of NO bioavailability.