Alignment technology based on a central small aperture for the AIMS telescope.

The accurate infrared solar magnetic field measurement system (AIMS) is a 1 m off-axis Gregorian alt-azimuth solar telescope and will be dedicated to measuring the solar magnetic field in mid-infrared. How to align the large-aperture off-axis system is a significant issue. Sub-aperture stitching with the small-aperture standard flat mirror can be applied to the alignment of the large-aperture off-axis system. However, this method is time-consuming and inefficient. We propose an alignment method based on the Zernike polynomials of the central small aperture to solve the low efficiency of sub-aperture stitching. Theoretical simulation shows that the RMS residual error of the system after using the central small-aperture alignment method will be less than 4.5∗10-6λ at 632.8 nm. Practical alignment suggests that our method can make the RMS value of full-aperture wave aberration quickly converge to 0.12λ at 632.8 nm. Compared with the sub-aperture stitching method, our method can significantly reduce the times of sub-aperture stitching and save the alignment time.

Advances in Studies on the Pharmacological Activities of Fucoxanthin.

Fucoxanthin is a natural carotenoid derived mostly from many species of marine brown algae. It is characterized by small molecular weight, is chemically active, can be easily oxidized, and has diverse biological activities, thus protecting cell components from ROS. Fucoxanthin inhibits the proliferation of a variety of cancer cells, promotes weight loss, acts as an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agent, interacts with the intestinal flora to protect intestinal health, prevents organ fibrosis, and exerts a multitude of other beneficial effects. Thus, fucoxanthin has a wide range of applications and broad prospects. This review focuses primarily on the latest progress in research on its pharmacological activity and underlying mechanisms.

Neurovascular decoupling in type 2 diabetes mellitus without mild cognitive impairment: Potential biomarker for early cognitive impairment.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a significant risk factor for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and the acceleration of MCI to dementia. The high glucose level induce disturbance of neurovascular (NV) coupling is suggested to be one potential mechanism, however, the neuroimaging evidence is still lacking. To assess the NV decoupling pattern in early diabetic status, 33 T2DM without MCI patients and 33 healthy control subjects were prospectively enrolled. Then, they underwent resting state functional MRI and arterial spin labeling imaging to explore the hub-based networks and to estimate the coupling of voxel-wise cerebral blood flow (CBF)-degree centrality (DC), CBF-mean amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (mALFF) and CBF- mean regional homogeneity (mReHo). We further evaluated the relationship between NV coupling pattern and cognitive performance (false discovery rate corrected). T2DM without MCI patients displayed significant decrease in the absolute CBF-mALFF, CBF-mReHo coupling of CBFnetwork and in the CBF-DC coupling of DCnetwork. Besides, networks which involved CBF and DC hubs mainly located in the default mode network (DMN). Furthermore, less severe disease and better cognitive performance in T2DM patients were significantly correlated with higher coupling of CBF-DC, CBF-mALFF or CBF-mReHo, especially for the cognitive dimensions of general function and executive function. Thus, coupling of CBF-DC, CBF-mALFF and CBF-mReHo may serve as promising indicators to reflect NV coupling state and to explain the T2DM related early cognitive impairment.

Quantitative analysis of the grain amyloplast proteome reveals differences in metabolism between two wheat cultivars at two stages of grain development.

BACKGROUND: Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the world's most important grain crops. The amyloplast, a specialized organelle, is the major site for starch synthesis and storage in wheat grain. Understanding the metabolism in amyloplast during grain development in wheat cultivars with different quality traits will provide useful information for potential yield and quality improvement. RESULTS: Two wheat cultivars, ZM366 and YM49-198 that differ in kernel hardness and starch characteristics, were used to examine the metabolic changes in amyloplasts at 10 and 15 days after anthesis (DAA) using label-free-based proteome analysis. We identified 523 differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) between 10 DAA and 15 DAA, and 229 DEPs between ZM366 and YM49-198. These DEPs mainly participate in eight biochemical processes: carbohydrate metabolism, nitrogen metabolism, stress/defense, transport, energetics-related, signal transduction, protein synthesis/assembly/degradation, and nucleic acid-related processes. Among these proteins, the DEPs showing higher expression levels at 10 DAA are mainly involved in carbohydrate metabolism, stress/defense, and nucleic acid related processes, whereas DEPs with higher expression levels at 15 DAA are mainly carbohydrate metabolism, energetics-related, and transport-related proteins. Among the DEPs between the two cultivars, ZM366 had more up-regulated proteins than YM49-198, and these are mainly involved in carbohydrate metabolism, nucleic acid-related processes, and transport. CONCLUSIONS: The results of our study indicate that wheat grain amyloplast has the broad metabolic capability. The DEPs involved in carbohydrate metabolism, nucleic acids, stress/defense, and transport processes, with grain development and cultivar differences, are possibly responsible for different grain characteristics, especially with respect to yield and quality-related traits.

Design and analysis of a five-mirror derotator with minimal instrumental polarization in astronomical telescopes.

It is well known that derotator is commonly used to compensate for image rotation in astronomical telescopes. The classical derotator, consisting of three mirrors, is named K-mirror. The main disadvantage of the K-mirror is that it has high instrumental polarization, causing a larger polarization measurement error in polarimetry. In the paper, we proposed a new design of the derotator based on the Mueller matrix transformation theory of mirrors in polarized light. The new designed derotator contains five mirrors and is called five-mirror derotator. It has a very small instrumental polarization, overcoming the shortcomings of the classical K-mirror. A novel method is applied to compensate for the beam shift induced by the thickness of the reflector. From the result of numerical polarization analysis, it is showed that the five-mirror derotator has a significant advantage for the telescopes with a small field of view, especially in polarimetry at longer wavelengths.

[Determination of H2S in Rat Intestinal Perfusion Solution Based on Fluorescence Analysis].

Under alkaline conditions, Fluorescein mercury has strong fluorescence, however, when it met S(2-), its fluorescence would quench, in view of the above, a fluorescence method for determination of H2S in biological samples was established. In the 0.1 mol · L(-1) NaOH dilution, when the concentration of fluorescein Mercury and Na2S was 5.0 × 10(-5) and 1.0 × 10(-5) mol · L(-1) respectively, the fluorescence intensity of system was determined at 522 nm. The results showed that, at the range of 4.0 × 10(-7)~2.0 × 10(-6) mol · L(-1), the concentration decreasing of H2S and fluorescence intensity had good linear relationship, r=0.9980, the RSD of precision test was 4.59% (n=7), the detection limit was 3.5 × 10(-8) mol · L(-1), the content of H2S in the sample were 1.01 × 10(-6) and 1.15 × 10(-6) mol · L(-1), and the recovery rate was 95.8%~101.0%, the method has the advantages of simple operation, high sensitivity, good selectivity, can accurately determine of H2S in intestinal perfused solution, and provides the basis for the determination of endogenous H2S.

Sensitivity limits and scaling of bioelectronic graphene transducers.

Semiconducting nanomaterials are being intensively studied as active elements in bioelectronic devices, with the aim of improving spatial resolution. Yet, the consequences of size-reduction on fundamental noise limits, or minimum resolvable signals, and their impact on device design considerations have not been defined. Here, we address these key issues by quantifying the size-dependent performance and limiting factors of graphene (Gra) transducers under physiological conditions. We show that suspended Gra devices represent the optimal configuration for cardiac extracellular electrophysiology in terms of both transducer sensitivity, systematically ~5× higher than substrate-supported devices, and forming tight bioelectronic interfaces. Significantly, noise measurements on free-standing Gra together with theoretical calculations yield a direct relationship between low-frequency 1/f noise and water dipole-induced disorders, which sets fundamental sensitivity limits for Gra devices in physiological media. As a consequence, a square-root-of-area scaling of Gra transducer sensitivity was experimentally revealed to provide a critical design rule for their implementation in bioelectronics.

PA-Net: A phase attention network fusing venous and arterial phase features of CT images for liver tumor segmentation.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Liver cancer seriously threatens human health. In clinical diagnosis, contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CECT) images provide important supplementary information for accurate liver tumor segmentation. However, most of the existing methods of liver tumor automatic segmentation focus only on single-phase image features. And the existing multi-modal methods have limited segmentation effect due to the redundancy of fusion features. In addition, the spatial misalignment of multi-phase images causes feature interference. METHODS: In this paper, we propose a phase attention network (PA-Net) to adequately aggregate multi-phase information of CT images and improve segmentation performance for liver tumors. Specifically, we design a PA module to generate attention weight maps voxel by voxel to efficiently fuse multi-phase CT images features to avoid feature redundancy. In order to solve the problem of feature interference in the multi-phase image segmentation task, we design a new learning strategy and prove its effectiveness experimentally. RESULTS: We conduct comparative experiments on the in-house clinical dataset and achieve the SOTA segmentation performance on multi-phase methods. In addition, our method has improved the mean dice score by 3.3% compared with the single-phase method based on nnUNet, and our learning strategy has improved the mean dice score by 1.51% compared with the ML strategy. CONCLUSION: The experimental results show that our method is superior to the existing multi-phase liver tumor segmentation method, and provides a scheme for dealing with missing modalities in multi-modal tasks. In addition, our proposed learning strategy makes more effective use of arterial phase image information and is proven to be the most effective in liver tumor segmentation tasks using thick-layer CT images. The source code is released on (https://github.com/Houjunfeng203934/PA-Net).

"Reservoir-law" synergistic reinforcement of electrostatic spun polylactic acid composites with cellulose nanocrystals and 2-hydroxypropyl-ß-cyclodextrin for intelligent bioactive food packaging.

Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) were obtained from the extraction and bleaching of jute cellulose as the enhancer, 2-hydroxypropyl-ß-cyclodextrin (HP-ß-CD) as the carrier, the flavonoids-anthocyanidins and cinnamaldehyde as the bioactive agent, and finally a novel kind of polylactic acid (PLA)-based composite membrane was derived by electrostatic spun method. With the increasing concentration, HP-ß-CDs cooperated with CNCs to regulate or control the release rate of bioactive compounds, which had a synergistic effect on the performance of the PLA matrix. The mechanical strength of PLA-3.2 composite with tannic acid (TA) surface cross-linking was 29.6 % higher than neat PLA, and could also continuously protect cells from oxidative stress and free radicals. In addition, excellent cell biocompatibility was found, and attributed to the interaction between bioactive compounds and cell membrane. In addition, we also found two excellent properties from our experimental results: obvious intelligent color reaction and good antibacterial ability. Finally, PLA-3.2 composites could be degraded by soil and are conducive to plant root growth. Hence, this work could solve many of the current problems of biodegradability and functionality of biopolymers for potential applications in areas such as intelligent bioactive food packaging.

Study on the regulatory effect of leech peptide HE-D on macrophages in atherosclerosis by transcriptome sequencing.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: The incidence of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease is a serious threat to human health. Leeches are used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat cardiovascular diseases. HE-D is an active peptide extracted and isolated from leeches, which can inhibit the migration of RAW264.7 macrophages. AIM: This study shows the effects of HE-D on macrophages in atherosclerosis and the mechanism of inhibition on the migration of macrophages based on transcriptome sequencing (RNA-Seq). MATERIALS AND METHODS: The transwell method was used to detect the activity of HE-D in inhibiting the migration of macrophages. Macrophages were divided into control group, lipopolysaccharide group, and HE-D group. Samples were collected and RNA-Seq performed. The DEseq2 method detected significantly differentially expressed genes (DEGs), GO and KEGG Pathway databases were used to analyze the functions and pathway enrichment of DEGs. Finally, qRT-PCR and Western blotting were used to verify the genes screened by RNA-Seq analyses. RESULTS: Cell experiments showed that HE-D can inhibit the migration of RAW264.7 macrophages induced by LPS. DEseq2 analyses showed that there were 363 DEGs after HE-D administration in the result of RNA-Seq. The GO function of DEGs was significantly enriched in cell migration and inflammation, and the DEGs related to cell migration were significantly enriched in the NF-κB signaling pathway. qRT-PCR and Western blot analyses, showed that when compared with the LPS group, the related genes IKKα, IKKγ, TRAF6, TLR4, and TRAF5 in the NF-κB pathway were significantly down-regulated in the HE-D group. In addition, it was found that the inflammatory factors iNOS and TNF-α were significantly down-regulated, and Arg-1 and IL-10 were up-regulated. CONCLUSION: HE-D can inhibit the migration of macrophages by inhibiting IKKα and IKKγ in the NF-κB signaling pathway, and promote the transformation of macrophages from M1to M2 subtypes. Therefore, HE-D can potentially be used as a drug for the treatment of atherosclerosis.

Control of Maize Sheath Blight and Elicit Induced Systemic Resistance Using Paenibacillus polymyxa Strain SF05.

Maize (Zea mays L.) is an important crop in the world and maize sheath blight damages the yield and quality greatly. In this study, an antagonist strain, which exhibited antagonism against pathogenic fungi of maize and controlled maize banded leaf sheath blight in the field, was effectively isolated and named Paenibacillus polymyxa strain SF05. High cellulase and chitinase activity of the strain were detected in this study, which might contribute to degrading the cell wall of fungi. Furthermore, different resistant genes such as ZmPR1a, OPR1 and OPR7 were elicited differently by the strain in the leaves and stems of maize. In order to explain the biocontrol mechanism of P. polymyxa strain SF05, the genome was sequenced and then the genes involving the biocontrol mechanism including biofilm formation pathways genes, cell wall degradation enzymes, secondary metabolite biosynthesis gene clusters and volatile organic compounds biosynthesis genes were predicted. The study revealed the biocontrol mechanism of P. polymyxa strain SF05 preliminary and laid a foundation for further research of biocontrol mechanism of P. polymyxa.

Soiltesting formula fertilization with organic fertilizer addition for target yield cannot stand long due to stem lodging of rice.

Introduction: Soil testing formula fertilization using organic fertilizer (STFFOF)could increase grain yields and protect the ecological environment but the potential risks of STFFOF remains unclear. Methods: In order to assess the risk on rice stem lodging, a STFFOF field experiment is conducted continuously for 11 years. Results: After 11 years of continuous STFFOF treatment, the stem lodging rate of rice substantially increases by 81.1%*, which completely overweigh its increase in yield. Further research found that STFFOF greatly decreases the concentration of Ca, SiO2, K, Mg, and non-structural carbohydrates in basal internodes, dramatically increases that of N, P, and weight per ear, but slightly affects the structural carbohydrates. The strong correlations imply the increasement in weight per ear, N, and P concentrations, and the significant decrease in starch in the basal internodes might directly increase the brittleness of stem internodes and further cause severe stem lodging and yield loss of rice. Discussion: Results suggest that the potential risks of rice production including stem lodging must be considered when adopting the excessive exploration mode of productivity technology of paddy fields.

Genome-Wide Transcriptome Analysis Revealing the Genes Related to Sugar Metabolism in Kernels of Sweet Corn.

Sugar metabolism influences the quality of sweet corn (Zea mays var. saccharate Sturt) kernels, which is a major goal for maize breeding. In this study, the genome-wide transcriptomes from two supersweet corn cultivars (cv. Xuetian 7401 and Zhetian 11) with a nearly two-fold difference in kernel sugar content were carried out to explore the genes related to kernel sugar metabolism. In total, 45,748 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in kernels and 596 DEGs in leaves were identified. PsbS, photosynthetic system II subunit S, showed two isoforms with different expression levels in leaf tissue between two cultivars, indicating that this gene might influence sugar accumulation in the kernel. On the other hand, hexokinases and beta-glucosidase genes involved in glycolysis, starch and sucrose metabolism were found in developing kernels with a genome-wide transcriptome analysis of developing kernels, which might contribute to the overaccumulation of water-soluble polysaccharides and an increase in the sweetness in the kernels of Xuetian 7401. These results indicated that kernel sugar accumulation in sweet corn might be influenced by both photosynthesis efficiency and the sugar metabolism rate. Our study supplied a new insight for breeding new cultivars with high sugar content and laid the foundation for exploring the regulatory mechanisms of kernel sugar content in corn.

Pentoxifylline inhibits intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) and lung injury in experimental phosgene-exposure rats.

Phosgene inhalation results in acute lung injury (ALI) mostly, pulmonary edema and even acute respiratory distress syndrome, but there is no specific antidote. Inflammatory cells play an important role in the ALI caused by phosgene. Intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) is a critical factor for inflammatory organ injury. We hypothesized that pentoxifylline (PTX), an inhibitor of leukocyte activation, would have a protective effect on experimental phosgene-induced lung injury rats by inhibiting ICAM-1. To prove this hypothesis, we used rat models of phosgene (400 ppm x 1 min)-induced injury to investigate: (1) the time course of lung injury (control 1, 3, 6, 12, 24, and 48 h group), including pathological changes in hematoxylin and eosin staining and transmission electron microscope, myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity by colorimetric method and ICAM-1 protein level detected by western blot, (2) At 3 h after phosgene exposure, protective effects of different dosages of PTX (50 mg/kg and 100 mg/kg) administration were evaluated by MPO activity, ICAM-1 differential expression and WBC count in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. The results showed that inflammatory cells emerged out of lung blood vessels at 3 h after phosgene exposure. The MPO activity of lung tissue increased significantly from 3 to 48 h after phosgene exposure (P < 0.05) and ICAM-1 expression presented a similar change, especially at 3 h and 24 h (P < 0.05). After pretreatment and treatment with PTX (100 mg/kg), significant protective effects were shown (P < 0.05). These data supported our hypothesis that PTX reduced phosgene-induced lung injury, possibly by inhibiting ICAM-1 differential expression.

Evaluating the comprehensive influences of heat treatment and polydimethylsiloxane on integrated performance of bamboo timber.

The main objective of this work is to analyse the influence of heat treatment with polydimethylsiloxane on integrated performance of bamboo timber. Bamboo timber was heat treated using polydimethylsiloxane as a medium at 120, 150, 180 and 210 °C for 3 h in this study. Results revealed that the equilibrium moisture content (EMC) and linear swelling ratio of heat-treated bamboo specimens was remarkable decreased with increasing heat treatment temperature. The surface contact angle of water on the bamboo specimens was observed to increase with the increasing heat treatment temperature, indicating the reduction of wettability with water. Additionally, the modulus of rupture (MOR) and modulus of elasticity (MOE) was decreased with the increasing heat treatment temperature and lower than that of untreated specimens. Cellulose crystallinity of bamboo specimens was slightly decreased with the increase of heat treatment temperature. TG-DTG results illustrated a reduction in relative content of hemicellulose, and increase in relative content of lignin and cellulose of bamboo specimens with the increase of heat treatment temperature. Presence of the stretching vibration Si-C in Si-CH3 indicated the bonding of siloxane to bamboo timber by forming covalent bonds. The colour of the heat-treated bamboo timber was even deepened after heat treatment, endowing the bamboo timber with better surface decoration performance.

Reduced Turn-On Voltage and Boosted Mobility in Monolayer WS2 Transistors by Mild Ar+ Plasma Treatment.

Monolayer two-dimensional transition-metal dichalcogenides, such as tungsten disulfide (WS2), are regarded as promising candidates for optoelectronic and electronic applications. Although theoretical calculations have predicted outstanding electronic properties of WS2, the performance of WS2-based electronic devices is still limited by the relatively high Schottky barrier and low carrier mobility. In this work, low-energy argon (Ar+) plasma treatment was used as a nondestructive preconditioning technique to tailor the electrical properties of the WS2 monolayer grown by chemical vapor deposition. Photoluminescence and Raman spectroscopy were used to monitor the modified optical properties of WS2 with increasing plasma treatment time. An improved electrical conductivity was observed after a short-time plasma treatment. The physical mechanism was further revealed by a comparative study between top-electrode and bottom-electrode devices and simulation based on the density functional theory. It is concluded that mild Ar+ plasma treatment can effectively lower the Schottky barrier height and the effective mass of carriers, which reduces the turn-on voltage and enhances the mobility, respectively. However, if the processing time is too long, the WS2 lattice structure will be destroyed. This work has provided an effective method for manipulating the Schottky barrier and mobility of monolayer WS2 transistors and paves the way for developing high-performance electronic devices based on 2D semiconductors.

Coordination of carbon and nitrogen accumulation and translocation of winter wheat plant to improve grain yield and processing quality.

The objective of this work was to characterize the accumulation of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N), and the translocation of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars to achieve both high-quality and high-yield. Twenty-four wheat cultivars, including 12 cultivars containing high-quality gluten subunit 5 + 10 at Glu-D1, and 12 cultivars with no Glu-D1 5 + 10, were planted at Yuanyang and Xuchang in Henan Province, during 2016-2017, and 2017-2018 cropping seasons. Wheat cultivars containing Glu-D1 5 + 10 had an advantage in grain quality traits. Significant difference (P < 0.05) was observed for grain protein concentration (GPC) between 5 + 10 group and no 5 + 10 group. Grain yield (GY) was significantly correlated with kernel number (KN) (r = 0.778, P < 0.01), thousand-kernel weight (TKW) (r = 0.559, P < 0.01), dry matter accumulation at post-anthesis (r = 0.443, P < 0.05), and stem water-soluble carbohydrate (WSC) accumulation (r = 0.487, P < 0.05) and translocation amount (r = 0.490, P < 0.05). GPC, dough stability time (DST) and nitrogen agronomic efficiency (NAE) were significantly correlated with nitrogen accumulation (NAA) at maturity stage (r = 0.524, = 0.404, = 0.418, P < 0.01, < 0.05, < 0.05, respectively), and nitrogen translocation amount (r = 0.512, = 0.471, = 0.405, P < 0.05, < 0.05, < 0.05, respectively). These results suggest that good-quality, high-yield, and high-efficiency could achieve through the selection of high-quality wheat cultivars and coordination of C and N accumulation and translocation. High-quality gluten subunit gene Glu-D1 5 + 10 and stem WSC could be used as a selection index for breeding and production of high-quality and high-yield wheat.

Tunicamycin promotes metastasis through upregulating endoplasmic reticulum stress induced GRP78 expression in thyroid carcinoma.

BACKGROUND: Thyroid cancer (TC) is the most common type of endocrine malignancy and its incidence is increasing over years. Conventional surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy are difficult to improve the significant effects of it due to aggression and metastasis of poorly differentiated thyroid cancer (PDTC) and anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC), and these are regarded as the most malignant types of TC. Glucose-regulated protein (GRP78) is the key molecule of tumor growth, apoptosis and metastasis. However, the underlying mechanisms of GRP78 in TC still require discussion. This study aimed to explore the role of GRP78 and its potential mechanism in TC. RESULTS: GRP78 expression was increased in TC tissues when compared with adjacent normal tissues. Besides, down-regulation of GRP78 significantly inhibited the metastatic and proliferative ability of ATC cells in in vitro studies. In addition, tunicamycin-induced ER stress up-regulated the expression of GRP78, PERK and XBP1 as well as reversed the metastatic ability of GRP78 in ATC cells. Bioinformatics and statistical analysis of gene ontology (GO) enrichment and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways for RNA-sequencing data with regard to si-GRP78 and si-control showed that GRP78 might regulate the ability of metastasis through extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling in ATC cells, as well as the expression of ECM components such as COL1A1 and MMP13, which were highly relevant to ATC cells. The analysis of GEPIA database confirmed that high genomic amplification of MMP13 and COL1A1 in TC tissues showed correlation with TNM stage. Further western blotting analysis showed that MMP13 might be the target of GRP78 in ATC cells and ER stress could activate the expression of MMP13 that is suppressed by GRP78 depletion. CONCLUSIONS: GRP78 acts as an important regulator of metastasis under ER stress. In addition, the function of GRP78 might be mediated by ECM remodeling in ATC cells, implicating it as a therapeutic target in TC.

Imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory amino acids at spinal level is associated with maintenance of persistent pain-related behaviors.

Although the postsynaptic events responsible for development of pathological pain have been intensively studied, the relative contribution of presynaptic neurotransmitters to the whole process remains less elucidated. In the present investigation, we sought to measure temporal changes in spinal release of both excitatory amino acids (EAAs, glutamate and aspartate) and inhibitory amino acids (IAAs, glycine, ?-aminobutyric acid and taurine) in response to peripheral inflammatory pain state. The results showed that following peripheral chemical insult induced by subcutaneous bee venom (BV) injection, there was an initial, parallel increase in spinal release of both EAAs and IAAs, however, the balance between them was gradually disrupted when pain persisted longer, with EAAs remaining at higher level but IAAs at a level below the baseline. Moreover, the EAAs-IAAs imbalance at the spinal level was dependent upon the ongoing activity from the peripheral injury site. Intrathecal blockade of ionotropic (NMDA and non-NMDA) and metabotropic (mGluRI, II, III) glutamate receptors, respectively, resulted in a differential inhibition of BV-induced different types of pain (persistent nociception vs. hyperalgesia, or thermal vs. mechanical hyperalgesia), implicating that spinal antagonism of any specific glutamate receptor subtype fails to block all types of pain-related behaviors. This result provides a new line of evidence emphasizing an importance of restoration of EAAs-IAAs balance at the spinal level to prevent persistence or chronicity of pain.

Structural parameters for X-ray micro-computed tomography (µCT) and their relationship with the breakage rate of maize varieties.

BACKGROUND: High grain breakage rate is the main limiting factor encountered in the mechanical harvest of maize grain. X-ray micro-computed tomography (µCT) scanning technology could be used to obtain the three-dimensional structure of maize grain. Currently, the effect of maize grain structure on the grain breakage rate, determined using X-ray µCT scanning technology, has not been reported. Therefore, the objectives of this study are: (i) to obtain the shape, geometry, and structural parameters related to the breakage rate using X-ray µCT scanning technology; (ii) to explore relationships between these parameters and grain breakage rate. RESULT: In this study, 28 parameters were determined using X-ray µCT scanning technology. The maize breakage rate was mainly influenced by the grain specific surface area, subcutaneous cavity volume, sphericity, and density. In particular, the breakage rate was directly affected by the subcutaneous cavity volume and density. The maize variety with high density and low subcutaneous cavity volume had a low breakage rate. The specific surface area (r = 0.758*), embryo specific surface area (r = 0.927**), subcutaneous cavity volume ratio (0.581*), and subcutaneous cavity volume (0.589*) of maize grain significantly and positively correlated with breakage rate. The cavity specific surface area (- 0.628*) and grain density (- 0.934**) of maize grain significantly and negatively correlated with grain breakage rates. Grain shape (length, width, thickness, and aspect ratio) positively correlated with grain breakage rate but the correlation did not reach statistical significance. The susceptibility of grain breakage increased when kernel weight decreased (- 0.371), but the effect was not significant. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that X-ray µCT scanning technology could be effectively used to evaluate maize grain breakage rate. X-ray µCT scanning technology provided a more precise and comprehensive acquisition method to evaluate the shape, geometry, and structure of maize grain. Thus, data gained by X-ray µCT can be used as a guideline for breeding resistant breakage maize varieties. Grain density and subcutaneous cavity volume are two of the most important factors affecting grain breakage rate. Grain density, in particular, plays a vital role in grain breakage and this parameter can be used to predict the breakage rate of maize varieties.