ADPN Regulates Oxidative Stress-Induced Follicular Atresia in Geese by Modulating Granulosa Cell Apoptosis and Autophagy.

Geese are susceptible to oxidative stress during reproduction, which can lead to follicular atresia and impact egg production. Follicular atresia is directly triggered by the apoptosis and autophagy of granulosa cells (GCs). Adiponectin (ADPN), which is secreted by adipose tissue, has good antioxidant and anti-apoptotic capacity, but its role in regulating the apoptosis of GCs in geese is unclear. To investigate this, this study examined the levels of oxidative stress, apoptosis, and autophagy in follicular tissues and GCs using RT-qPCR, Western blotting, immunofluorescence, flow cytometry, transcriptomics and other methods. Atretic follicles exhibited high levels of oxidative stress and apoptosis, and autophagic flux was obstructed. Stimulating GCs with H2O2 produced results similar to those of atretic follicles. The effects of ADPN overexpression and knockdown on oxidative stress, apoptosis and autophagy in GCs were investigated. ADPN was found to modulate autophagy and reduced oxidative stress and apoptosis in GCs, in addition to protecting them from H2O2-induced damage. These results may provide a reasonable reference for improving egg-laying performance of geese.

YOLOC-tiny: a generalized lightweight real-time detection model for multiripeness fruits of large non-green-ripe citrus in unstructured environments.

This study addresses the challenges of low detection precision and limited generalization across various ripeness levels and varieties for large non-green-ripe citrus fruits in complex scenarios. We present a high-precision and lightweight model, YOLOC-tiny, built upon YOLOv7, which utilizes EfficientNet-B0 as the feature extraction backbone network. To augment sensing capabilities and improve detection accuracy, we embed a spatial and channel composite attention mechanism, the convolutional block attention module (CBAM), into the head's efficient aggregation network. Additionally, we introduce an adaptive and complete intersection over union regression loss function, designed by integrating the phenotypic features of large non-green-ripe citrus, to mitigate the impact of data noise and efficiently calculate detection loss. Finally, a layer-based adaptive magnitude pruning strategy is employed to further eliminate redundant connections and parameters in the model. Targeting three types of citrus widely planted in Sichuan Province-navel orange, Ehime Jelly orange, and Harumi tangerine-YOLOC-tiny achieves an impressive mean average precision (mAP) of 83.0%, surpassing most other state-of-the-art (SOTA) detectors in the same class. Compared with YOLOv7 and YOLOv8x, its mAP improved by 1.7% and 1.9%, respectively, with a parameter count of only 4.2M. In picking robot deployment applications, YOLOC-tiny attains an accuracy of 92.8% at a rate of 59 frames per second. This study provides a theoretical foundation and technical reference for upgrading and optimizing low-computing-power ground-based robots, such as those used for fruit picking and orchard inspection.

Acupressure versus parecoxib sodium in acute renal colic: A prospective cohort study.

Background: Here provides a complementary treatment, acupressure at the Qiu acupoint, a novel acupoint, which potentially alleviates renal colic. Materials and methods: 90 patients were included in this study. Acupressure-group patients (n = 46) were administered acupressure at the Qiu acupoint following a preset protocol. Parecoxib sodium-group patients (n = 44) were administered parecoxib sodium (40 mg) (via the direct intravenous route). The visual analog scale (VAS) was used to evaluate pain intensity at baseline and at 1, 5, 10, 20, 30, and 120 min after initiating the intervention. Linear mixed effects model was performed to detect the rate of decrease of VAS per time and their covariant effect on the efficacy of acupressure. Results: No significant statistical differences in baseline data and VAS scores were observed. The acupressure group obtained lower VAS scores at the 1st, 5th, 10th, and 20th minute than the parecoxib sodium group after initiating the intervention (mean: 4.33 vs. 7.61, mean difference (MD): 3.29, 95% CI: 0.23, 2.84; mean: 2.65 vs. 7.61, MD: 4.96, 95% CI: 4.44, 5.49; mean: 1.63 vs. 6.59, MD: 4.96, 95% CI: 4.48, 5.44; mean: 1.26 vs. 3.64 MD: 2.38, 95% CI: 1.87, 2.88; P < 0.05). The markedly effective rate was similar between the two groups. The linear mixed effects model demonstrated that acupressure at the Qiu point was significantly faster than parecoxib sodium in decreasing VAS scores with an estimate of -2.05 (95% CI: -2.51, -1.59, p = 0.000), especially within 10 minutes with an estimate of 0.18 (95% CI: 0.12, 0.25, p = 0.000). Conclusion: Acupressure at the Qiu acupoint is significantly faster than parecoxib sodium in decreasing VAS scores within 10 minutes. Clinical trial registration: http://www.chictr.org.cn/, identifier 2100047168.

Protective effects of AdipoRon on the liver of Huoyan goose fed a high-fat diet.

Adiponectin can participate in the regulation of glucose and lipid metabolism, energy regulation, immune response, resistance to inflammation, oxidative stress, and apoptosis. Studies in rodents demonstrated that the small molecule compound adiponectin receptor agonist AdipoRon could activate the adiponectin receptor and played the same biological role as adiponectin. To explore the influence and regulation of AdipoRon on lipid metabolism disorder in Huoyan goose liver, in this study, goslings were fed a high-fat diet and then administered different dosages of AdipoRon. Subsequently, goose body weight, liver index, liver histopathological changes, blood glucose, blood and liver lipid, biochemical indexes related to liver function and oxidative stress, and the expression levels of genes related to lipid metabolism, inflammation, apoptosis, and autophagy, adiponectin and its receptors, key molecules of adiponectin involved signal pathway, and transcription factors in the liver, were detected using H&E and Oil red O staining, ELISA, and qRT-PCR methods. The results indicated that AdipoRon could alter the expression of lipid metabolism-related genes, inflammatory factors, apoptosis and autophagy genes, and adiponectin and its receptor genes in liver tissues through signaling pathways such as AMPK and p38 MAPK, as well as the involvement of transcription factors such as PPARα, PPARγ, SIRT1, and FOXO1, reduce the lipid content in blood and liver tissues of geese fed high-fat diets, improve liver antioxidant capacity, regulate apoptosis and autophagy of hepatocytes, and reduce liver inflammatory injury. Our study suggests that AdipoRon has a protective effect on fatty liver injury in goslings fed a high-fat diet.

Impact of age on the cancer-specific survival of patients with localized renal cell carcinoma: martingale residual and competing risks analysis.

BACKGROUND: Age at diagnosis has been shown to be an independent prognostic factor of localized renal cell carcinoma (RCC) in several studies. We used contemporary statistical methods to reevaluate the effect of age on the cancer-specific survival (CSS) of localized RCC. METHODS AND FINDINGS: 1,147 patients with localized RCC who underwent radical nephrectomy between 1993 and 2009 were identified in our four institutions. The association between age and CSS was estimated, and the potential threshold was identified by a univariate Cox model and by martingale residual analysis. Competing risks regression was used to identify the independent impact of age on CSS. The median age was 52 years (range, 19-84 years). The median follow-up was 61 months (range, 6-144 months) for survivors. A steep increasing smoothed martingale residual plot indicated an adverse prognostic effect of age on CSS. The age cut-off of 45 years was most predictive of CSS on univariate Cox analysis and martingale residual analysis (p = 0.005). Age ≤45 years was independently associated with a higher CSS rate in the multivariate Cox regression model (HR = 1.59, 95% CI = 1.05-2.40, p = 0.027) as well as in competing risks regression (HR = 3.60, 95% CI = 1.93-6.71, p = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Increasing age was associated with a higher incidence of cancer-specific mortality of localized RCC. Age dichotomized at 45 years would maximize the predictive value of age on CSS, and independently predict the CSS of patients with localized RCC.