Effects of narrow-wide row planting patterns on canopy photosynthetic characteristics, bending resistance and yield of soybean in maize‒soybean intercropping systems.

With the improvements in mechanization levels, it is difficult for the traditional intercropping planting patterns to meet the needs of mechanization. In the traditional maize‒soybean intercropping, maize has a shading effect on soybean, which leads to a decrease in soybean photosynthetic capacity and stem bend resistance, resulting in severe lodging, which greatly affects soybean yield. In this study, we investigated the effects of three intercropping ratios (four rows of maize and four rows of soybean; four rows of maize and six rows of soybean; six rows of maize and six rows of soybean) and two planting patterns (narrow-wide row planting pattern of 80-50 cm and uniform-ridges planting pattern of 65 cm) on soybean canopy photosynthesis, stem bending resistance, cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin and related enzyme activities. Compared with the uniform-ridge planting pattern, the narrow-wide row planting pattern significantly increased the LAI, PAR, light transmittance and compound yield by 6.06%, 2.49%, 5.68% and 5.95%, respectively. The stem bending resistance and cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin and PAL, TAL and CAD activities were also significantly increased. Compared with those under the uniform-ridge planting pattern, these values increased by 7.74%, 3.04%, 8.42%, 9.76%, 7.39%, 10.54% and 8.73% respectively. Under the three intercropping ratios, the stem bending resistance, cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin content and PAL, TAL, and CAD activities in the M4S6 treatment were significantly greater than those in the M4S4 and M6S6 treatments. Compared with the M4S4 treatment, these variables increased by 12.05%, 11.09%, 21.56%, 11.91%, 18.46%, 16.1%, and 16.84%, respectively, and compared with the M6S6 treatment, they increased by 2.06%, 2.53%, 2.78%, 2.98%, 8.81%, 4.59%, and 4.36%, respectively. The D-M4S6 treatment significantly improved the lodging resistance of soybean and weakened the negative impact of intercropping on soybean yield. Therefore, based on the planting pattern of narrow-wide row maize‒soybean intercropping planting pattern, four rows of maize and six rows of soybean were more effective at improving the lodging resistance of soybean in the semiarid region of western China.

Antimicrobial polysaccharide hydrogels embedded with methyl-ß-cyclodextrin/thyme oil inclusion complexes for exceptional mechanical performance and chilled chicken breast preservation.

While hydrogels have potential for food packaging, limited research on hydrogels with excellent mechanical performance and antibacterial activity for preserving chicken breasts. Herein, we created antibacterial hydrogels by embedding methyl-ß-cyclodextrin/thyme oil inclusion complexes (MCD/TO-ICs) into a polyvinyl alcohol matrix containing dendrobium polysaccharides and guar gum in varying ratios using freeze-thaw cycling method. The resulting hydrogels exhibited a more compact structure than those without MCD/TO-ICs, enhancing thermal stability and increasing glass transition temperature due to additional intermolecular interactions between polymer chains that inhibited chain movement. XRD analysis showed no significant changes in crystalline phase, enabling formation of a 3D network through abundant hydrogen bonding. Moreover, the hydrogel demonstrated exceptional durability, with a toughness of 350 ± 25 kJ/m3 and adequate tearing resistance of 340 ± 30 J/m2, capable of lifting 3 kg weight, 1200 times greater than the hydrogel itself. Additionally, the hydrogels displayed excellent antimicrobial activity and antioxidant properties. Importantly, the hydrogels effectively maintained TVB-N levels and microbial counts within acceptable ranges, preserving sensory properties and extending the shelf life of chilled chicken breasts by four days. This study highlights the potential of MCD/TO-IC-incorporated polysaccharide hydrogels as safe and effective active packaging solutions for preserving chilled chicken in food industry.

Co-Occurrence, Predictors, and Related Aggressive Behaviors of Cognitive and Emotional Relative Deprivation Based on Latent Class Analysis.

Given the frequent occurrence of relative deprivation among adolescents and its negative effects, this study investigated relative deprivation among adolescents using a person-centered statistical technique (n = 1196; 565 girls). Latent class analysis identified three groups: low cognitive and emotional relative deprivation (Class 1, 33.78% of adolescents), high cognitive and low emotional relative deprivation (Class 2, 37.79% of adolescents), and high cognitive and emotional relative deprivation (Class 3, 28.43% of adolescents). Adolescents with low income and without parental accompaniment were more likely to be assigned to Classes 3 and 2. Compared with Class 1, Classes 3 and 2 had significant positive predictive effects on physical aggression, relational aggression, and overall aggressive behavior. The classes of relative deprivation influenced both physical and relational aggression, but not verbal aggression. Based on these findings, demographic characteristics and latent classes of relative deprivation should be considered together when developing interventions for aggressive behaviors.

The relationship between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension: A meta-analysis.

The study aimed to examine the cohesive tie effect on reading comprehension through the grammatical knowledge cognition process. The present meta-analysis examined the correlation between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension based on empirical results published between 1998 and 2021. This study selected 86 studies with a total of 14,852 readers whose grades were grouped from primary school to university. The results showed that the overall correlation effect size between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension was large, and the significant interaction effect of the grade group was confirmed through moderator analysis. The results suggested that the grammatical knowledge's function of the cohesive tie has a transfer effect across different text comprehension scripts.

Genome-Wide Identification and Expression Analysis of the Cytochrome P450 Gene Family in Bemisia tabaci MED and Their Roles in the Insecticide Resistance.

The whitefly, Bemisia tabaci MED (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae), is an omnivorous agricultural pest, which causes huge economic losses to agriculture and is highly resistant to many pesticides. The overexpression of cytochrome P450 may play an important role in host adaptation and insecticide resistance in B. tabaci MED. Therefore, the present study systematically analyzed the cytochrome P450 gene family at the genome-wide level to understand its function in B. tabaci MED. Our analysis identified 58 cytochrome P450 genes in B. tabaci MED, among which 24 were novel. Phylogenetic analysis revealed broad functional and species-specific diversification in B. tabaci MED P450, suggesting the role of multiple P450 genes in detoxifying. Reverse transcription-real time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) showed that CYP4CS2, CYP4CS5, CYP4CS6, CYP4CS8, CYP6DW4, CYP6DW5, CYP6DW6, CYP6DZ8, and CYP6EN1 genes increased significantly after two days of exposure to imidacloprid. Interestingly, all nine genes belonged to the CYP4 and CYP6 families. A decrease in the expression of five genes (CYP6DW4, CYP6DW5, CYP6DW6, CYP6DZ8, and CYP4CS6) via RNA interference (RNAi) resulted in a significant increase in the mortalities of whiteflies when exposed to imidacloprid. These results indicate that the overexpression of the P450 genes may play an essential role in imidacloprid tolerance of B. tabaci MED. Thus, the present study provides basic information on P450 genes in B. tabaci MED, which will further help elucidate the insecticide resistance mechanism in the agricultural pest whitefly.

Impacts of cognitive flexibility on central word identification: evidence from poor comprehenders' discourse comprehension of first graders with ADHD.

Cognitive flexibility (CF) is an executive function component related to the ability to flexibly shift amongst multiple incompatible perspectives or descriptions of an object task. However, whether CF enhances the narrative discourse comprehension of students with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) during surface semantic meaning identification remains unclear. This study aimed to examine the impacts of CF on central word (CW) identification amongst primary school students with ADHD and reading comprehension difficulties (i.e. scores in the ≤ 25th percentile of discourse comprehension but with adequate decoding skills and average decoding performance score within one standard deviation). In addition, the association of CF with CW identification performance, when the CW was located in either the first or second half of sentences, was tested with and without the interference of playing music. This study recruited 104 low-CF and 103 high-CF first grade students with ADHD and reading difficulties. Participants received measures of nonverbal intelligence, working memory, Chinese receptive vocabulary, Chinese word reading, CF and a music preference questionnaire. Additionally, participants completed the entire CW identification experiment (about 7 min) individually in a silent classroom located within the school campus. After controlling nonverbal intelligence, working memory, music preference, Chinese receptive vocabulary and Chinese word reading, the results showed that high-CF students had similar poetry discourse comprehension performance with low-CF students when the CWs were at the second half of a sentence. Moreover, high-CF students showed significantly better performance than low-CF students when the CWs were at the first half of the poetry sentences in both conditions with and without music, especially if the poetry sentence structure was more complicated than the typical 'subject-verb-object' sequence. All students with ADHD performed significantly worse in poetry discourse comprehension with music interference than without it. The results highlight the importance of CF in poetry discourse comprehension tasks, particularly when a poetry sentence uses a non-typical structure format. The possible effects of CF on poetry discourse comprehension are also discussed.

Dialogic reading with attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) kindergarteners: Does reading with parents or siblings enhance their language development?

Dialogic reading (DR) is an interactive reading approach that enhances the language development of children. This study aims to extend DR to the shared reading context involving children with attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and their older siblings and to examine the effects of DR with parents/siblings on the language development of Chinese children with ADHD. This study included 850 Chinese kindergarteners with ADHD and their parents/older siblings. These children were pretested on their Chinese receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, character reading, listening comprehension, and reading interest and were randomly assigned to four groups, namely, dialogic reading with parents (PR-DR), dialogic reading with siblings (SR-DR), parent reading control (PR-C), and sibling reading control (SR-C). After a 12-week intervention period, they were posttested on the same measures. Results show that both DR with parents and siblings effectively enhanced language skills and reading interest in children with ADHD. In addition, those children who read with their older siblings demonstrated greater improvements in their expressive vocabulary, character reading skills, morphological awareness, phonological awareness, and reading interest yet achieved a smaller growth in their listening comprehension compared with those who read with their parents. These findings showed the positive effects of DR on the language development of children with ADHD and highlight the importance of involving siblings in home literacy activities to facilitate the language development of these children. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Two alternative splicing variants of a wheat gene TaNAK1, TaNAK1.1 and TaNAK1.2, differentially regulate flowering time and plant architecture leading to differences in seed yield of transgenic Arabidopsis.

In wheat production, appropriate flowering time and ideal plant architecture are the prerequisites for high grain yield. Alternative splicing (AS) is a vital process that regulates gene expression at the post-transcriptional level, and AS events in wheat have been found to be closely related to grain-related traits and abiotic stress tolerance. However, AS events and their biological roles in regulating flowering time and plant architecture in wheat remain unclear. In this study, we report that TaNAK1 undergoes AS, producing three splicing variants. Molecular characterization of TaNAK1 and its splicing variants demonstrated that all three protein isoforms have a conserved NB-ARC domain and a protein kinase domain, but the positions of these two domains and the length of the protein kinase domains are different among them, implying that they may have different three-dimensional structures and therefore have different functions. Further investigations showed that the two splicing variants of TaNAK1, TaNAK1.1 and TaNAK1.2, exhibited different expression patterns during wheat growth and development, while the other one, TaNAK1.3, was not detected. Subcellular localization demonstrated that TaNAK1.1 was mainly localized in the cytoplasm, while TaNAK1.2 was localized in the nucleus and cytoplasm. Both TaNAK1.1 and TaNAK1.2 exhibit protein kinase activity in vitro. Ectopic expression of TaNAK1.1 and TaNAK1.2 in Arabidopsis demonstrated that these two splicing variants play opposite roles in regulating flowering time and plant architecture, resulting in different seed yields. TaNAK1.2 positive regulates the transition from vegetative to reproductive growth, plant height, branching number, seed size, and seed yield of Arabidopsis, while TaNAK1.1 negatively regulates these traits. Our findings provide new gene resource for regulating flowering time and plant architecture in crop breeding for high grain yield.

Genome-Wide Identification and Analysis of the Heat-Shock Protein Gene Superfamily in Bemisia tabaci and Expression Pattern Analysis under Heat Shock.

The thermal tolerance of Bemisia tabaci MED, an invasive whitefly species with worldwide distribution, plays an important role in its ecological adaptation during the invasion process. Heat-shock proteins (HSPs) are closely related to heat resistance. In this study, 33 Hsps (BtaHsps) were identified based on sequenced genome of B. tabaci MED belonging to six HSP families, among which 22 Hsps were newly identified. The secondary structures of a further 22 BtaHsps were also predicted. The results of RT-qPCR showed that heat shock could affect the expression of 14 of the 22 Hsps newly identified in this study. Among them, the expression level of six Hsps increased under 42 °C treatment. As the unstudied gene, BtaHsp90A3 had the highest increase rate. Therefore, BtaHsp90A3 was chosen for the RNAi test, and silencing BtaHsp90A3 by RNAi decreased the survival rate of adult B. tabaci at 42 °C. The results indicated that only a few Hsps were involved in the thermal tolerance of host whitefly although many Hsps would response under heat stress. This study conducted a more in-depth and comprehensive identification that demonstrates the evolutionary relationship of BtaHsps and illustrates the response of BtaHsps under the influence of thermal stress in B. tabaci MED.

The Relationship Between Reading Strategy and Reading Comprehension: A Meta-Analysis.

This study synthesized the correlation between reading strategy and reading comprehension of four categories based on Weinstein and Mayer's reading strategy model. The current meta-analysis obtained 57 effect sizes that represented 21,548 readers, and all selected materials came from empirical studies published from 1998 to 2019. Results showed that reading strategies in all the four categories had a similar correlation effect size with reading comprehension. The correlation between monitoring strategy and reading comprehension was significantly larger in first language scripts than second language scripts. Affective strategy and elaboration strategy had an independent effect on reading comprehension, which was not significantly moderated by selected moderators. Results suggested that the reading strategies of all the four categories may have a similar contribution to text comprehension activities.

Three Previously Undescribed Chlorophenyl Glycosides from the Bulbs of Lilium regale.

Three previously undescribed chlorophenyl glycosides, (2,4,6-trichloro-3-hydroxy-5-methoxyphenyl)methyl ß-D-glucopyranoside (1), (2,4-dichloro-3,5-dimethoxyphenyl)methyl 6-O-ß-D-glucopyranosyl-ß-D-glucopyranoside (2) and 4-chloro-3-methoxy-5-methylphenyl 6-O-(6-deoxy-ß-L-mannopyranosyl)-ß-D-glucopyranoside (3) were obtained from Lilium regale. The absolute configurations of these new finds were elucidated by comprehensive analyses of spectroscopic data combined with acid hydrolysis derivatization. (2,4-dichloro-3,5-dimethoxyphenyl)methyl 6-O-ß-D-glucopyranosyl-ß-D-glucopyranoside (2) can inhibit the proliferation of lung carcinoma A549 cells with an IC50 value of 29 µΜ.

circSnx12 Is Involved in Ferroptosis During Heart Failure by Targeting miR-224-5p.

Circular RNA (circRNA) is a subclass of non-coding RNAs that enables the circular transcripts resistant to the exonuclease digestion. Iron homeostasis is essential for the body to maintain normal physiological functions. At present, the relationship among circRNA, iron metabolism and heart failure remains largely unknown. This study aimed to explore the regulatory mechanism of circRNA and iron metabolism in heart failure. We obtained circRNA, miRNA and mRNA data from public databases and built a ceRNA network. The prediction results were verified in the myocardial tissues of pressure overload-induced heart failure mice through the use of histopathological staining methods, iron and malondialdehyde (MDA) measurement tests, quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR), Western blot analysis and luciferase reporter assay. A total of 4 genes related to iron metabolism and oxidative stress were identified, and a ceRNA network involving 7 circRNAs, 7 miRNAs, and 4 mRNAs was constructed using bioinformatics tools. The results of qRT-PCR and Western blot analyses indicated that the expression level of FTH1 was similar with that predicted by bioinformatics analysis. Echocardiographic measurement showed that heart failure mice have lower fractional shortening and ejection fraction. Moreover, the myocardium of heart failure mice displayed obvious fibrosis as well as increased levels of iron and MDA compared to control mice. Besides, circSnx12 could act as an endogenous sponge to bind with miR-224-5p, and the 3'UTR region of FTH1 also had miRNA binding sites. A circRNA-miRNA-mRNA regulatory network was successfully constructed by identifying differentially expressed genes related to iron metabolism. This new approach reveals potential circRNA targets for the treatment of heart failure.

Effectiveness of Metacognitive Regulation Intervention on Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder Students' Scientific Ability and Motivation.

This study investigated the effect of metacognitive regulation (McR) intervention on attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) students' astronomy knowledge acquisition and learning motivation. Through a cognitive-behavioural treatment design, this study selected 97 ADHD learners who had poor academic performance. This study divided ADHD students randomly into one experimental group and one control group. After 15 weeks of intervention, results showed that the experimental group students performed significantly better than the control group in scientific abilities, learning motivation, and metacognition. Results suggested that the McR intervention is an effective approach for improving the ADHD students' science knowledge learning abilities.

The Evidence of Different Learning Environment Learning Effects on Vocabulary Size and Reading Comprehension.

The nature of the effect of learning environments' language setting on second language receptive vocabulary acquisition in both adolescent receptive vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension performance was explored in a continuous 10-month longitudinal study. The current study divided 170 adolescents into four groups. Their reading comprehension ability and receptive vocabulary size were each measured in two different periods. The results showed that single Chinese instructional learning and single English instructional learning contributed more to students' receptive vocabulary size than bilingual instructional language materials. The results imply that the immersion hypothesis has more positive impact on improving second language receptive vocabulary size acquisition and reading comprehension performance than the depth of processing hypothesis.