High and Low Temperatures Differentially Affect Survival, Reproduction, and Gene Transcription in Male and Female Moths of Spodoptera frugiperda.

In this study, we found that both heat and cold stresses significantly affected the survival and reproduction of both sexes in Spodoptera frugiperda adults, with larvae showing relatively higher extreme temperature tolerance. Further transcriptomic analysis in adults found remarkable differences and similarities between sexes in terms of temperature stress responses. Metabolism-related processes were suppressed in heat stressed females, which did not occur to the same extend in males. Moreover, both heat and cold stress reduced immune activities in both sexes. Heat stress induced the upregulation of many heat shock proteins in both sexes, whereas the response to cold stress was insignificant. More cold tolerance-related genes, such as cuticle proteins, UDP-glucuronosyltransferase, and facilitated trehalose transporter Tret1, were found upregulated in males, whereas most of these genes were downregulated in females. Moreover, a large number of fatty acid-related genes, such as fatty acid synthases and desaturases, were differentially expressed under heat and cold stresses in both sexes. Heat stress in females induced the upregulation of a large number of zinc finger proteins and reproduction-related genes; whereas cold stress induced downregulation in genes linked to reproduction. In addition, TRPA1-like encoding genes (which have functions involved in detecting temperature changes) and sex peptide receptor-like genes were found to be differentially expressed in stressed moths. These results indicate sex-specific heat and cold stress responses and adaptive mechanisms and suggest sex-specific trade-offs between stress-resistant progresses and fundamental metabolic processes as well as between survival and reproduction.

The influence of precipitation timing and amount on soil microbial community in a temperate desert ecosystem.

Introduction: Global climate change may lead to changes in precipitation patterns. This may have a significant impact on the microbial communities present in the soil. However, the way these communities respond to seasonal variations in precipitation, particularly in the context of increased precipitation amounts, is not yet well understood. Methods: To explore this issue, a five-year (2012-2016) field study was conducted at the northeast boundary of the Ulan Buh Desert, examining the effects of increased precipitation during different periods of the growing season on both bacterial and fungal communities. The study included five precipitation pattern treatments: a control group (C), as well as groups receiving 50 and 100% of the local mean annual precipitation amount (145 mm) during either the early growing season (E50 and E100) or the late growing season (L50 and L100). The taxonomic composition of the soil bacterial and fungal communities was analyzed using Illumina sequencing. Results: After 5 years, the bacterial community composition had significantly changed in all treatment groups, with soil bacteria proving to be more sensitive to changes in precipitation timing than to increased precipitation amounts within the desert ecosystem. Specifically, the alpha diversity of bacterial communities in the late growing season plots (L50 and L100) decreased significantly, while no significant changes were observed in the early growing season plots (E50 and E100). In contrast, fungal community composition remained relatively stable in response to changes in precipitation patterns. Predictions of bacterial community function suggested that the potential functional taxa in the bacterial community associated with the cycling of carbon and nitrogen were significantly altered in the late growing season (L50 and L100). Discussion: These findings emphasize the importance of precipitation timing in regulating microbial communities and ecosystem functions in arid regions experiencing increased precipitation amounts.

Preparation of Activated Boron Nitride and Its Adsorption Characteristics for Zn, Cu, and Cd in Flue Gas.

Developing non-carbon-based adsorbents is essential for removing heavy metals from post-incineration flue gas. In this study, a new high-temperature-resistant adsorbent-activated boron nitride (BN) was prepared using precursors combined with a high-temperature activation method. The adsorption characteristics of BN for Zn, Cu, and Cd in simulated flue gas and sludge incineration flue gas were investigated using gas-phase heavy metal adsorption experiments. The results showed that BN prepared at 1350 °C for 4 h had defect structures, abundant pores, functional groups, and a high specific surface area of 658 m2/g. The adsorption capacity of BN in simulated flue gases decreases with increasing adsorption temperature, whereas it is always higher than that of activated carbon (AC). The total adsorption capacities for Zn, Cu, and Cd were the highest at 50 °C with 48.3 mg/g. BN had strong adsorption selectivity for Zn, with a maximum adsorption capacity of 54.45 mg/g, and its adsorption process occurred mainly on the surface. Cu and Cd inhibited Zn adsorption, leading to a decrease in the Zn adsorption capacity. In sludge incineration flue gas, BN can quickly reach adsorption equilibrium. The BN had a synergistic disposal capacity for heavy metals and fine particulate matter. The maximum adsorption capacity was reduced compared to the simulated flue gas adsorption capacity, which was 5.1 mg/g. However, BN still exhibited a strong adsorption selectivity for Zn, and its adsorption capacity was always greater than that of AC. The rich functional groups and high specific surface area enable BN to physically and chemically double-adsorb heavy metals.

Concurrently Fabricating Precision Meso- and Microscale Cross-Scale Arrayed Metal Features and Components by Using Wire-Anode Scanning Electroforming Technique.

In order to improve the thickness uniformity of the electroformed metal layer and components, a new electroforming technique is proposed-wire-anode scanning electroforming (WAS-EF). WAS-EF uses an ultrafine inert anode so that the interelectrode voltage/current is superimposed upon a very narrow ribbon-shaped area at the cathode, thus ensuring better localization of the electric field. The anode of WAS-EF is in constant motion, which reduces the effect of the current edge effect. The stirring paddle of WAS-EF can affect the fluid flow in the microstructure, and improve the mass transfer effect inside the structure. The simulation results show that, when the depth-to-width ratio decreases from 1 to 0.23, the depth of fluid flow in the microstructure can increase from 30% to 100%. Experimental results show that. Compared with the traditional electroforming method, the single metal feature and arrayed metal components prepared by WAS-EF are respectively improved by 15.5% and 11.4%.

Blue Light Exposure Caused Large-Scale Transcriptional Changes in the Abdomen and Reduced the Reproductive Fitness of the Fall Armyworm Spodoptera frugiperda.

In the present study, we found that blue light stress negatively affected the development periods, body weight, survival and reproduction of Spodoptera frugiperda, and it showed a dose-dependent reaction, as longer irradiation caused severer effects. Further transcriptome analysis found blue light stress induced fast and large-scale transcriptional changes in the head, thorax and, particularly, the abdomen of female S. frugiperda adults. A functional enrichment analysis indicated that shorter durations of blue light irradiation induced the upregulation of more stress response- and defense-related genes or pathways, such as abiotic stimuli detection and response, oxidative stress, ion channels and protein-kinase-based signal pathways. In the abdomen, however, different durations of blue-light-exposure treatments all induced the downregulation of a large number genes and pathways related to cellular processes, metabolism, catalysis and reproduction, which may be a trade-off between antistress defense and other processes or a strategy to escape stressful conditions. These results indicate irradiation duration- and tissue-specific blue light stress responses and consequences, as well as suggest that the stress that results in transcriptional alterations is associated with the stress that causes a fitness reduction in S. frugiperda females.

Keystone Taxa and Predictive Functional Analysis of Sphagnum palustre Tank Microbiomes in Erxianyan Peatland, Central China.

Sphagnum is a fundamental ecosystem of engineers, including more than 300 species around the world. These species host diverse microbes, either endosymbiotic or ectosymbiotic, and are key to carbon sequestration in peatland ecosystems. However, the linkages between different types of Sphagnum and the diversity and ecological functions of Sphagnum-associated microbiomes are poorly known, and so are their joint responses to ecological functions. Here, we systematically investigated endophytes in Sphagnum palustre via next-generation sequencing (NGS) techniques in the Erxianyan peatland, central China. The total bacterial microbiome was classified into 38 phyla and 55 classes, 122 orders and 490 genera. The top 8 phyla of Proteobacteria (33.69%), Firmicutes (11.94%), Bacteroidetes (9.42%), Actinobacteria (6.53%), Planctomycetes (6.37%), Gemmatimonadetes (3.05%), Acidobacteria (5.59%) and Cyanobacteria (1.71%) occupied 78.31% of total OTUs. The core microbiome of S. palustre was mainly distributed mainly in 7 phyla, 9 classes, 15 orders, 22 families and 43 known genera. There were many differences in core microbiomes compared to those in the common higher plants. We further demonstrate that the abundant functional groups have a substantial potential for nitrogen fixation, carbon cycle, nitrate metabolism, sulfate respiration and chitinolysis. These results indicate that potential ecological function of Sphagnum palustre in peatlands is partially rooted in its microbiomes, and that incorporating into functional groups of Sphagnum-associated microbiomes can promote mechanistic understanding of Sphagnum ecology in subalpine peatlands.

The Transcription of Flight Energy Metabolism Enzymes Declined with Aging While Enzyme Activity Increased in the Long-Distance Migratory Moth, Spodoptera frugiperda.

Of all the things that can fly, the flight mechanisms of insects are possibly the least understood. By using RNAseq, we studied the aging-associated gene expression changes in the thorax of Spodoptera frugiperda females. Three possible flight energy metabolism pathways were constructed based on 32 key metabolic enzymes found in S. frugiperda. Differential expression analysis revealed up to 2000 DEGs within old females versus young ones. Expression and GO and KEGG enrichment analyses indicated that most genes and pathways related to energy metabolism and other biological processes, such as transport, redox, longevity and signaling pathway, were downregulated with aging. However, activity assay showed that the activities of all the five tested key enzymes increased with age. The age-associated transcriptional decrease and activity increase in these enzymes suggest that these enzymes are stable. S. frugiperda is a long-distance migrator, and a high activity of enzymes may be important to guarantee a high flight capacity. The activity ratio of GAPDH/HOAD ranged from 0.594 to 0.412, suggesting that lipid is the main fuel of this species, particularly in old individuals. Moreover, the expression of enzymes in the proline oxidation pathway increased with age, suggesting that this energy metabolic pathway also is important for this species or linked to some aging-specific processes. In addition, the expression of immunity- and repair-related genes also increased with age. This study established the overall transcriptome framework of the flight muscle and aging-associated expression change trajectories in an insect for the first time.

An Algorithm for Automatic Rib Fracture Recognition Combined with nnU-Net and DenseNet.

Rib fracture is the most common thoracic clinical trauma. Most patients have multiple different types of rib fracture regions, so accurate and rapid identification of all trauma regions is crucial for the treatment of rib fracture patients. In this study, a two-stage rib fracture recognition model based on nnU-Net is proposed. First, a deep learning segmentation model is trained to generate candidate rib fracture regions, and then, a deep learning classification model is trained in the second stage to classify the segmented local fracture regions according to the candidate fracture regions generated in the first stage to determine whether they are fractures or not. The results show that the two-stage deep learning model proposed in this study improves the accuracy of rib fracture recognition and reduces the false-positive and false-negative rates of rib fracture detection, which can better assist doctors in fracture region recognition.

[Research on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) detection method based on depthwise separable DenseNet in chest X-ray images].

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread rapidly around the world. In order to diagnose COVID-19 more quickly, in this paper, a depthwise separable DenseNet was proposed. The paper constructed a deep learning model with 2 905 chest X-ray images as experimental dataset. In order to enhance the contrast, the contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) algorithm was used to preprocess the X-ray image before network training, then the images were put into the training network and the parameters of the network were adjusted to the optimal. Meanwhile, Leaky ReLU was selected as the activation function. VGG16, ResNet18, ResNet34, DenseNet121 and SDenseNet models were used to compare with the model proposed in this paper. Compared with ResNet34, the proposed classification model of pneumonia had improved 2.0%, 2.3% and 1.5% in accuracy, sensitivity and specificity respectively. Compared with the SDenseNet network without depthwise separable convolution, number of parameters of the proposed model was reduced by 43.9%, but the classification effect did not decrease. It can be found that the proposed DWSDenseNet has a good classification effect on the COVID-19 chest X-ray images dataset. Under the condition of ensuring the accuracy as much as possible, the depthwise separable convolution can effectively reduce number of parameters of the model.

[A review on multi-modal human motion representation recognition and its application in orthopedic rehabilitation training].

Human motion recognition (HAR) is the technological base of intelligent medical treatment, sports training, video monitoring and many other fields, and it has been widely concerned by all walks of life. This paper summarized the progress and significance of HAR research, which includes two processes: action capture and action classification based on deep learning. Firstly, the paper introduced in detail three mainstream methods of action capture: video-based, depth camera-based and inertial sensor-based. The commonly used action data sets were also listed. Secondly, the realization of HAR based on deep learning was described in two aspects, including automatic feature extraction and multi-modal feature fusion. The realization of training monitoring and simulative training with HAR in orthopedic rehabilitation training was also introduced. Finally, it discussed precise motion capture and multi-modal feature fusion of HAR, as well as the key points and difficulties of HAR application in orthopedic rehabilitation training. This article summarized the above contents to quickly guide researchers to understand the current status of HAR research and its application in orthopedic rehabilitation training.

Facile Fabrication of Highly Perforated Hollow Metallic Cylinder with Changeable Micro-Orifices by Electroforming-Extrusion Molding Hybrid Process.

A seamless thin-walled hollow metallic cylinder with array of micro-perforations is one of the key components for some products. Normally, these micro-perforations are formed by removing material from the given metallic hollow cylinder (pipe or tube) one by one or row by row. To efficiently and flexibly manufacture such a highly perforated hollow cylinder, this paper proposed a hybrid technique combining extrusion moulding process and electroforming process. In the hybrid technique, the extrusion moulding process was used to create polymer extrusion patterns on the outside surface of the given stainless steel (SS) pipe, and then the electroforming process was carried out using the SS pipe as the mandrel. The formation of the polymer extrusion patterns was simulated and extruding molding experiments were carried out to examine the feasibility of the various mandrels. Electroforming experiments were implemented to verify the achievement of the seamless perforated thin-walled hollow cylinder. It was found that five different types of polymer extrusion pattern were able to be obtained on the same extruding pipe just by adjusting some extruding conditions and parameters, and correspondingly four types of perforated hollow cylinder with different tapered orifices are produced after the electroforming process. The obtainable perforations are: perforation with double conic-orifices, perforation with hemispheric orifice and conic orifice, unidirectionally tapered perforation, and straight-walled perforation. The geometric profile of the extrusion patterns is highly dependent on the processing conditions and parameters. The proposed hybrid process represents a promising alternative process to fabricate seamless thin-walled perforated hollow metallic cylinder efficiently, flexibly, and with low cost.

Ginkgo biloba extract EGb 761-induced upregulation of LincRNA-p21 inhibits colorectal cancer metastasis by associating with EZH2.

EGb 761, the standard ginkgo biloba extract, is frequently prescribed in traditional Chinese medicine. Currently, there is no research focusing on its role in human colorectal cancer progression. In our study, we determined the anti-metastatic effect of EGb 761 on colorectal cancer cells and further explored the potential underlying regulatory mechanism. The cell migration and invasion assay indicated that EGb 761 treatment of colorectal cancer cells induced inhibition of cell migration and invasion ability in a concentration-dependent manner. To further explore the underlying regulatory mechanisms that may account for these findings, we performed quantitative real-time PCR (RT-qPCR), western blotting and immunoprecipitation analysis. The results showed that EGb 761 induced upregulation of LincRNA-p21 expression in a dose- and time-dependent manner. Overexpression of LincRNA-p21 also suppressed colorectal cancer cell metastasis. Furthermore, EGb 761 as well as LincRNA-p21 inhibited the expression of extracellular matrix protein, fibronectin. More importantly, RNA immunoprecipitation (RIP) and Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assays showed that LincRNA-p21 directly interacted with EZH2, and this interaction suppressed the expression of fibronectin. Finally, the gain and loss function assay revealed that EGb 761 inhibited migration, invasion and fibronctin expression by the LincRNA-p21/EZH2 pathway in colorectal cancer cells. Hence, EGb 761 may be a promising treatment regimen for colorectal cancer and restoration of LincRNA-p21 levels may be helpful for enhancing the anti-cancer effect of EGb 761.

[The treatment of trigeminal neuralgia by resecting maxillary nerve and infraorbital nerve under the endoscopy at the pterygopalatofossa through approach to the maxillary sinus].

OBJECTIVE: This paper presents a method for treating maxillary neuralgia, the second division of trigeminal nerve. METHOD: One hundred and thirty six cases with 136 trigeminal neuralgia were treated from 2004 to 2011. All patients were treated with endoscopic surgery at the pterygopalatofossa through approach to the maxillary sinus for resecting maxillary nerve and infraorbital nerve. RESULT: One hundred and eighteen patients were relieved after operation and no recurrence of neuralgia was occurred after 2 to 8 years of follow-up. CONCLUSION: This method had the advantages of avoiding to operate craniotomy with no complications, which was performed easily with valid efficacy.

[Clinical analysis of 23 primary sinonasal malignant melanoma].

OBJECTIVE: To review the pathological and clinical features and treatment of sinonasal malignant melanoma. METHOD: A retrospective analysis of 23 cases of sinonasal malignant melanoma. All the patients were conformed by histopathology, the most common symptoms were nasal obstruction and epistexis. Eight cases were treated with surgery, 8 with surgery and radiotherapy, 5 with surgery and chemotherapy, 2 with surgery and ra- diotherapy plus chemotherapy. RESULT: Twenty patients were followed up, the survival rates of 3 and 5 years were 50% (10/20) and 35% (7/20), respectively. CONCLUSION: Sinonasal malignant melanoma has an aggressive behavior and easy recurrence and poor prognosis. Early diagnosis and reasonable treatment can increase the survival rate of the disease.

[Molecular etiology analysis among students with profound hearing loss in a special education school in Yangzhou].

OBJECTIVE: To study molecular epidemiological basis of non-syndromic hearing loss in Yangzhou area. METHOD: The selected objects were 90 severe non-syndrome deafness students in special education schools in Yangzhou city, Jiangsu province. The deafness gene chip diagnostic kit was used for screening the nine hot spots mutations in four common deafness-related genes in Medical Testing Center of Northern Jiangsu People's Hospital. These nine hot spots gene mutations included GJB2 (35 delG, 176 del16, 235 delC and 299 delAT) GJB3 (538C > T), SLC26A4 (IVS7-2A > G, 2168A > G) and mtDNA 12S rRNA (A > G,1494C > T) mutation detection by line. RESULT: In 90 patients, 64 patients were found to carry deafness mutations by using gene chip diagnostic kit (the rate of mutation was 71.7%) GJB2 gene mutation in 40 cases (44.4%)which included 235 delC homozygous in 20 (22.2%) cases, 235 delC single heterozygous mutation in 4 cases (4.4%)and 235 delC and 299 delAT compound heterozygous mutations in 2 case (2.2%) separately. 299 delAT single heterozygous mutation in 2 case (2.2%), 299 delAT simple mutation in 2 case (2.2%). 176 del16 heterozygous mutations in 2 case, 176 del16 homozygous mutation in 2 case (2.2%). 176 del16 heterozygous mutations, and 235 del C heterozygous mutation in 6 cases (6.7%). SLC26A4 gene mutations in 22 cases (24.4%),which included IVS7-2A > G homozygous in 2 (2.22%) cases, IVS7-2A > G and 2168A > G compound heterozygous mutations in 2 cases (2.2%), IVS7-2A > G single heterozygous mutation in 18 cases (20.2%), and mtDNA 12S rRNA A > G mutation in 2 cases (2.2%), GJB3 mutations were not detected. CONCLUSION: The deafness gene diagnostic techniques is worth applying for screening and diagnosis.