An analysis of the role of college students' core self-evaluation in the relationship between extracurricular physical exercise and academic stress.

Objective: To explore the role of college students' core self-evaluation in the association between extracurricular physical exercise and academic stress, and to provide a reference and basis for effectively alleviating current college students' academic stress. Methods: A stratified cluster random sampling method was used to conduct an online survey using the China College Student Mental Health Screening Scale, the Core Self-Esteem Scale, and a self-developed questionnaire for 1,249 college students from 8 junior colleges in Jiangsu Province, China, in January 2023, and analyses were conducted using bivariate correlation and mediation effect tests. Results: More than half of the students were worried about lagging behind other students in their studies and worrying about exams, as well as more than half of the students had <2 h of extracurricular physical exercise per week in terms of academic stress. Significant correlations were found between extracurricular physical exercise time and core self-evaluation (r = 0.225, p < 0.01), academic stress (r = -0.317, p < 0.01), and between core self-evaluation and academic stress (r =-0.371, p < 0.01). Extracurricular physical exercise had a negative predictive effect on academic stress (effect = -0.306, 95%CI: -0.361~-0.251) and partially through the mediating path of core self-evaluation, (effect = -0.067, 95%CI: -0.091~-0.046), with a mediating effect of 21.9%. Among them, the mediating effect of core self-evaluation was highest in "worrying about lagging behind other students in their studies" and "worrying about exams", which accounted for 24.4% and 24.3% respectively. Conclusion: Currently, college students have different degrees of academic stress; extracurricular physical exercise can reduce academic stress through direct effects, and also through the indirect effect of improving the level of core self-evaluation, and active extracurricular physical exercise has become an important way to promote students' physical and mental health.

The impact of physical activity on electronic media use among chinese adolescents and urban-rural differences.

OBJECTIVE: With the prevalence of electronic media use among Chinese adolescents and concerns regarding its potential negative consequences on their health and development, this study investigated the relationship between physical exercise and electronic media use. Utilizing data from the China Education Panel Survey, we examine the impact of physical activity on adolescents' electronic media use. METHODS: A simultaneous equation model, including two-stage least square and three-stage least square, was employed to estimate the impact of physical activity on electronic media use among adolescents. Self-control theory and media addiction theory were also used to analyze electronic media use in adolescents. Descriptive statistics were used to analyzed the data. RESULTS: Chinese adolescents dedicated a substantial amount of time, averaging 2.95 hours per day, to electronic media activities. Increasing physical activity demonstrated an effective means to reduce electronic media use. Furthermore, the impact of physical activity on electronic media use exhibited urban-rural stratification, with family factors related to social class status primarily influencing electronic media use among urban students, while physical activity has a more pronounced influence among rural students. CONCLUSIONS: Promoting physical activity represents a compelling and effective strategy for curbing excessive electronic media use among Chinese adolescents, particularly in rural areas where physical activity has a stronger influence. In addition, controlling media entertainment and recreation time and enhancing social cohesion can help to weaken media interest. While changing the social class status of families in urban areas may be difficult in the short term, parents should be aware that physical exercise is an effective way to reduce their children's use of electronic media. Our findings suggested that promoting physical activity may be a promising strategy for reducing excessive electronic media use among Chinese adolescents, particularly in rural areas where physical activity has a stronger influence.

Synthetic biology and bioelectrochemical tools for electrogenetic system engineering.

Synthetic biology research and its industrial applications rely on deterministic spatiotemporal control of gene expression. Recently, electrochemical control of gene expression has been demonstrated in electrogenetic systems (redox-responsive promoters used alongside redox inducers and electrodes), allowing for the direct integration of electronics with biological processes. However, the use of electrogenetic systems is limited by poor activity, tunability, and standardization. In this work, we developed a strong, unidirectional, redox-responsive promoter before deriving a mutant promoter library with a spectrum of strengths. We constructed genetic circuits with these parts and demonstrated their activation by multiple classes of redox molecules. Last, we demonstrated electrochemical activation of gene expression under aerobic conditions using a novel, modular bioelectrochemical device. These genetic and electrochemical tools facilitate the design and improve the performance of electrogenetic systems. Furthermore, the genetic design strategies used can be applied to other redox-responsive promoters to further expand the available tools for electrogenetics.

Reprogramming Synthetic Cells for Targeted Cancer Therapy.

Advances in synthetic biology enable the reprogramming of bacteria as smart agents to specifically target tumors and locally release anticancer drugs in a highly controlled manner. However, the bench-to-bedside translation of engineered bacteria is often impeded by genetic instability and the potential risk of uncontrollable replication of engineered bacteria inside the patient. SimCells (simple cells) are chromosome-free bacteria controlled by designed gene circuits, which can bypass the interference of the native gene network in bacteria and eliminate the risk of bacterial uncontrolled growth. Here, we describe the reprogramming of SimCells and mini-SimCells to serve as "safe and live drugs" for targeted cancer therapy. We engineer SimCells to display nanobodies on the surface for the binding of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), which is an important biomarker found commonly in colorectal cancer cells. We show that SimCells and mini-SimCells with surface display of anti-CEA nanobody can specifically bind CEA-expressing Caco2 cancer cells in vitro while leaving the non-CEA-expressing SW80 cancer cells untouched. These cancer-targeting SimCells and mini-SimCells induced cancer cell death in vitro by compromising the plasma membrane of cancer cells. The cancer-killing effect can be further enhanced by an aspirin/salicylate inducible gene circuit that converts salicylate into catechol, a potent anticancer. This work highlights the potential of SimCells and mini-SimCells for targeted cancer therapy and lays the foundation for the application of synthetic biology to medicine.

Adaptive intelligent-estimation-based tracking controller design strategy for switched nonlinear systems with unmodeled dynamics and an output constraint.

This paper focuses on the intelligent-estimation-based tracking controller design problem for a class of switched non-lower triangular nonlinear systems with unmodeled dynamics and an output constraint. It should be pointed out that the design process of controller is quite difficult due to the existence of unmodeled dynamics and switched events in the system, hence some sophisticated and delicate mathematical theories and design techniques need to be adopted. In our proposed design procedure, the structural feature of Gaussian functions is utilized to conquer the obstruction of nonstrict-feedback form. Furthermore, the difficulties resulted from the unmodeled dynamics are solved by the established dynamic signal Based on the above technical algorithm, the results can be obtained as follows: (a) All signals in the switched closed-loop system are bounded. (b) The output of the system fluctuates in a small neighborhood near the reference signal without the violation of the output constraint. Finally, the simulation results are provided to verify the potency of the developed approach.

Roles of microRNAs during glioma tumorigenesis and progression.

Glioma is the most common and aggressive type of brain tumor. It has a poor prognosis and a high recurrence rate. Despite continued advances in surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the clinical outcomes remain dismal. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play important roles in the initiation and progression of a multitude of tumors. Until now, the molecular mechanism that is responsible for glioma tumorigenesis and progression remains unclear. Increasing evidence has shown that miRNAs play an important role in glioma. In this review, we focus on the current advances in determining the role of miRNAs in regulating tumorigenesis and the progression of glioma. In addition, the relevant roles of miRNAs about the diagnosis and target therapy have been clarified.

Plasma miR-18 Screens Acute Myocardial Infarction from Healthy Controls by Targeting Hypoxia Inducible Factor 1α.

BACKGROUND: This study aims to evaluate the expression of plasma miR-18, thereby evaluating its potential use as a biomarker to screen acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients from healthy controls. METHODS: Real time PCR was carried out to evaluate the level of miR-18 in AMI patients and healthy controls. ROC analysis was performed to evaluate whether miR-18 could be used as a potential biomarker. Dual luciferase assay was used to identify the potential target of miR-18. RESULTS: We showed novel data that plasma miR-18 was significantly greater in AMI patients than in healthy controls. ROC analysis indicated that plasma miR-18 could screen AMI patients from healthy controls with high sensitivity and specificity. Further study demonstrated that plasma miR-18 was positively correlated with serum cardiac troponin I (cTnI) and creatine phosphokinase-MB (CK-MB) concentrations. Additionally, plasma miR-18 was increased in AMI patients with more stenosed coronary vessels. More importantly, plasma miR-18 was decreased in AMI patients after receiving percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Dual luciferase reporter assay indicated that overexpression of miR-18 significantly suppressed the relative luciferase activity of pmirGLO- HIF1α-3´UTR. CONCLUSIONS: In summary, enhanced plasma miR-18 could be used as a potential biomarker to screen AMI patients from healthy controls via targeting HIF1α.

enoLOGOS: a versatile web tool for energy normalized sequence logos.

enoLOGOS is a web-based tool that generates sequence logos from various input sources. Sequence logos have become a popular way to graphically represent DNA and amino acid sequence patterns from a set of aligned sequences. Each position of the alignment is represented by a column of stacked symbols with its total height reflecting the information content in this position. Currently, the available web servers are able to create logo images from a set of aligned sequences, but none of them generates weighted sequence logos directly from energy measurements or other sources. With the advent of high-throughput technologies for estimating the contact energy of different DNA sequences, tools that can create logos directly from binding affinity data are useful to researchers. enoLOGOS generates sequence logos from a variety of input data, including energy measurements, probability matrices, alignment matrices, count matrices and aligned sequences. Furthermore, enoLOGOS can represent the mutual information of different positions of the consensus sequence, a unique feature of this tool. Another web interface for our software, C2H2-enoLOGOS, generates logos for the DNA-binding preferences of the C2H2 zinc-finger transcription factor family members. enoLOGOS and C2H2-enoLOGOS are accessible over the web at http://biodev.hgen.pitt.edu/enologos/.