Association of marine PUFAs intakes with cardiovascular disease, all-cause mortality, and cardiovascular mortality in American adult male patients with dyslipidemia: the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2001 to 2016.

BACKGROUND: The relationship between marine polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) intake and cardiovascular disease and mortality in dyslipidemic patients is unclear. Men with dyslipidemia have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease than women, and PUFA supplementation may be more beneficial in men. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship between different types of marine polyunsaturated fatty acids intakes and cardiovascular disease, all-cause mortality, and cardiovascular mortality in adult U.S. males with dyslipidemia. METHODS: The study ultimately included 11,848 adult men with dyslipidemia who were screened from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 2001 and 2016. This was linked to the 2019 National Death Index (NDI) records to establish a prospective cohort. In the study, a logistic regression model was established to assess the relationship between PUFA intake and prevalent CVD, and a Cox proportional hazards regression model was established to assess the relationship between PUFA intake and death. RESULTS: In the fully adjusted models, compared with participants in the lowest tertile, participants with the highest DPA intake were associated with a lower risk of CVD (CVD: OR = 0.71, 95%CI: 0.55, 0.91; angina: OR = 0.54, 95%CI: 0.38, 0.79; stroke: OR = 0.62, 95%CI: 0.43, 0.89), but not with three subtypes of congestive heart failure, coronary heart disease, and myocardial infarction. And the highest tertile level of DPA intake can reduce all-cause mortality (HR = 0.77, 95%CI: 0.64, 0.91) and CVD mortality (HR = 0.68, 95%CI: 0.52, 0.90). CONCLUSIONS: Cardiovascular disease risk, all-cause mortality, and CVD mortality were inversely associated with dietary DPA intake but not EPA and DHA intakes in U.S. male participants with dyslipidemia.

Exogenous Melatonin Improves Pear Resistance to Botryosphaeria dothidea by Increasing Autophagic Activity and Sugar/Organic Acid Levels.

Pear is an important fruit tree worldwide, but it is often infected by the pathogen Botryosphaeria dothidea, which causes pear ring rot disease. To explore the effect of exogenous melatonin on the disease resistance of pear, we treated inoculated pear fruits with different concentrations of melatonin. The results showed that 100 µΜ of melatonin had the most significant effect with resistance to B. dothidea. In addition, melatonin treatment significantly reduced the diameter of disease lesions and enhanced the endogenous melatonin content in pears inoculated with B. dothidea. Compared with the control treatment, melatonin treatment suppressed increases in reactive oxygen species (ROS) and activated ROS-scavenging enzymes. Treatment with exogenous melatonin maintained ascorbic acid-glutathione at more reductive status. The expression levels of core autophagic genes and autophagosome formation were elevated by melatonin treatment in pear fruits. Silencing of PbrATG5 in Pyrus pyrifolia conferred sensitivity to inoculation that was only slightly attenuated by melatonin treatment. After inoculation with B. dothidea, exogenous melatonin treatment led to higher levels of soluble sugars and organic acids in pear fruits than H2O treatment. Overall, our results demonstrate that melatonin enhances resistance to B. dothidea by increasing autophagic activity and soluble sugar/organic acid accumulation.

FEA-Swin: Foreground Enhancement Attention Swin Transformer Network for Accurate UAV-Based Dense Object Detection.

UAV-based object detection has recently attracted a lot of attention due to its diverse applications. Most of the existing convolution neural network based object detection models can perform well in common object detection cases. However, due to the fact that objects in UAV images are spatially distributed in a very dense manner, these methods have limited performance for UAV-based object detection. In this paper, we propose a novel transformer-based object detection model to improve the accuracy of object detection in UAV images. To detect dense objects competently, an advanced foreground enhancement attention Swin Transformer (FEA-Swin) framework is designed by integrating context information into the original backbone of a Swin Transformer. Moreover, to avoid the loss of information of small objects, an improved weighted bidirectional feature pyramid network (BiFPN) is presented by designing the skip connection operation. The proposed method aggregates feature maps from four stages and keeps abundant information of small objects. Specifically, to balance the detection accuracy and efficiency, we introduce an efficient neck of the BiFPN network by removing a redundant network layer. Experimental results on both public datasets and a self-made dataset demonstrate the performance of our method compared to the state-of-the-art methods in terms of detection accuracy.

Genome-wide identification and expression analysis of the pear autophagy-related gene PbrATG8 and functional verification of PbrATG8c in Pyrus bretschneideri Rehd.

MAIN CONCLUSION: Genome-wide identification, tissue-specific and stress expression analyses and functional characterization of PbrATG8s genes were conducted and the role of PbrATG8c in Botryosphaeria dothidea resistance was further investigated. Autophagy plays an important role in plant growth, development and stress tolerance. ATG8 has been reported to be an autophagy marker in many species. However, there is little information regarding ATG8 family members in pear (Pyrus bretschneideri Rehd). We performed a genome-wide analysis and identified nine PbrATG8 gene family members in pear. Phylogenetic analysis showed that PbrATG8 genes clustered into four major groups (Groups I-IV). Eight PbrATG8 genes were successfully mapped to 6 of the 17 chromosomes of the pear genome. The synteny results showed that two pairs are collinear. Gene expression data showed that all genes were differentially expressed in a range of pear tissues. Transcript analysis of PbrATG8 genes under dehydration, salt and pathogen infection stresses revealed that PbrATG8c responded to all test stresses. The PbrATG8c protein was localized in the nucleus and membrane. The silencing of PbrATG8c decreased the resistance to Botryosphaeria dothidea in pear. This study provides insights and rich resources for subsequent investigations of autophagy in pear.

Discovery of new tranylcypromine derivatives as highly potent LSD1 inhibitors.

Tranylcypromine (TCP)-based structural modifications lead to the discovery of new LSD1 inhibitors, of which compounds 26b and 29b effectively inhibit LSD1 with the IC50 values of 17 and 11 nM, respectively and also show good selectivity over MAO-B. Mechanistic studies showed that compound 29b concentration-dependently induced H3K4me1/2 accumulation in LSD1 overexpressed MGC-803 cells and also inhibited metastasis of MGC-803 cells. Collectively, both compounds could be promising lead compounds for further investigation.

Transcriptome Analysis of Pear Leaves in Response to Calcium Treatment During Botryosphaeria dothidea Infection.

Pear (Pyrus bretschneideri), one of the most widely planted fruit trees in the world, is infected by pear ring rot disease, which is triggered by Botryosphaeria dothidea. Previous research has shown that exogenous calcium enhanced pear resistance to B. dothidea. To explore the molecular mechanism of calcium in pear pathogen resistance, we searched the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between calcium and H2O treatment with B. dothidea inoculation in pear by using RNA-seq data. On the basis of the standard of a proportion of calcium/H2O fold change >2, and the false discovery rate (FDR) <0.05, 2,812 and 572 genes with significant differential expression were identified between the H2O and calcium treatments under B. dothidea inoculation at 2 days postinoculation (dpi) (D2) and 8 dpi (D8), respectively, indicating that significantly more genes in D2 responded to calcium treatment. Results of the gene annotation showed that DEGs were focused on plant-pathogen interactions, hormone signal transduction, and phenylpropanoid biosynthesis in D2. Moreover, transient silencing of PbrCML30 (pear calmodulin-like proteins 30), which had significantly higher expression in response to calcium than H2O treatments, conferred compromised resistance to B. dothidea. Exogenous calcium treatment slightly alleviated the symptoms of TRV2-PbrCML30 leaves compared with TRV2 leaves under inoculation, supporting its key role in pear resistance to B. dothidea. Overall, the information obtained in this study provides a possible mechanism of calcium in regulating pear resistance to B. dothidea.

Exogenous Calcium Improved Resistance to Botryosphaeria dothidea by Increasing Autophagy Activity and Salicylic Acid Level in Pear.

Pear ring rot, caused by Botryosphaeria dothidea, is one of the most serious diseases in pear. Calcium (Ca2+) was reported to play a key role in the plant defense response. Here, we found that exogenous calcium could enhance resistance to B. dothidea in pear leaves. Less H2O2 and O2- but more activated reactive oxygen species scavenge enzymes accumulated in calcium-treated leaves than in H2O-treated leaves. Moreover, the increased level of more ascorbic acid-glutathione was maintained by Ca2+ treatment under pathogen infection. The expression of core autophagy-related genes and autophagosome formations were enhanced in Ca2+-treated leaves. Silencing of PbrATG5 in Pyrus betulaefolia conferred sensitivity to inoculation, which was only slightly recovered by Ca2+ treatment. Moreover, the salicylic acid (SA) level and SA-related gene expression were induced more strongly by B. dothidea in Ca2+-treated leaves than in H2O-treated leaves. Taken together, these results demonstrated that exogenous Ca2+ enhanced resistance to B. dothidea by increasing autophagic activity and SA accumulation. Our findings reveal a new mechanism of Ca2+ in increasing the tolerance of pear to B. dothidea infection.

Suppression of the nonlinear phase error in phase shifting profilometry: considering non-smooth reflectivity and fractional period.

Hilbert transform (HT) has been employed to compensate phase error arising from the nonlinear effect in phase shifting profilometry (PSP). However, in most common situations, pure HT may lead to a significant system error, which has a negative impact on subsequent phase error compensation. In this paper, system error from HT of non-stationary and non-continuous fringe is analyzed, and then a novel phase error suppression approach is presented. The cosine fringe without direct current (DC) component is reconstructed to eliminate the influence of non-smooth reflectivity, and the fractional periods at both ends of the reconstructed fringe are extended to generate fringe with integer number of periods. And then the HT is applied to the reconstructed and extended fringe. Finally, a revised phase-shifting algorithm is employed to calculate the phase with the fringe after HT. The proposed approach is suitable for PSP of the surface with non-smooth reflectivity (e.g. texture of complex colors), which is demonstrated in a series of experiments.

Privacy-Preserving Authentication Using a Double Pseudonym for Internet of Vehicles.

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) plays an important role in smart transportation to reduce the drivers’s risk of having an accident and help them manage small emergencies. Therefore, security and privacy issues of the message in the tamper proof device (TPD) broadcasted to other vehicles and roadside units (RSUs) have become an important research subject in the field of smart transportation. Many authentication schemes are proposed to tackle the challenges above and most of them are heavy in computation and communication. In this paper, we propose a novel authentication scheme that utilizes the double pseudonym method to hide the real identity of vehicles and adopts the dynamic update technology to periodically update the information (such as member secret, authentication key, internal pseudo-identity) stored in the tamper-proof device to prevent the side-channel attack. Because of not using bilinear pairing, our scheme yields a better performance in terms of computation overhead and communication overhead, and is more suitable to be applied in the Internet of Vehicles.

[Analysis of Correlation between Surface Electromyography and Spasticity after Stroke].

To quantitatively evaluate the upper-limb spasticity of stroke patients in recovery stage, the relationship between surface electromyography (sEMG) characteristic indexes from biceps brachii and triceps brachii and the spasticity were explored, which provides the electrophysiological basis for clinical rehabilitation. Ten patients with spasticity after stroke were selected to be estimated by modified Ashworth (MAS) assessment and a passive elbow sinusoidal motion experiment was carried out. At the same time, the sEMG of biceps and triceps were recorded. The results shows that the reflex electromyographic threshold could reflect the physiological mechanism of spasticity and had significant correlation with MAS scale which showed that sEMG could be prosperous for the clinical quantitative evaluation of spasticity of stroke patients.

The Influence of Manganese Slag on the Properties of Ultra-High-Performance Concrete.

Manganese slag (MS) is a kind of chemical waste, which may pollute the environment if conventional handling methods (stacking and landfill) are applied. Ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC)-with considerably high compactness and strength-can be used not only as a special concrete material, but also to solidify the toxic substances in solid waste. This study proposes the addition of MS to UHPC, where the mass ratio of MS varies from 0% to 40% in the total mass of MS and silica fume. The effects of MS on the fluidity, plastic viscosity, and yield shear stress are investigated, and the flexural strength, compressive strength, and dry shrinkage rate of UHPC with MS are measured. X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectrum and energy spectrum analysis (EDS) diagrams are obtained to analyze the performance mechanism of the UHPC. A rheological study confirms that the slump flow increases with the increasing rate of 0-14.3%, while the yield shear stress and plastic viscosity decrease with the rates of 0-29.6% and 0-22.2%, respectively. The initial setting time increases with the mass ratio of MS by 0-14.3%, and MS has a positive effect on the flexural and compressive strengths of UHPC. In the early curing stage (less than 14 days), the increasing rate in the specimens increases with the curing age; meanwhile, when the curing age reaches 14 days or higher, the increasing rate decreases with increasing curing age. The compactness of UHPC is increased by adding MS. Furthermore, MS can increase the elements of Al and decrease crystals of Ca(OH)2 and calcium silicate hydrate in UHPC.

Halogen-powered static conversion chemistry.

Halogen-powered static conversion batteries (HSCBs) thrive in energy storage applications. They fall into the category of secondary non-flow batteries and operate by reversibly changing the chemical valence of halogens in the electrodes or/and electrolytes to transfer electrons, distinguishing them from the classic rocking-chair batteries. The active halide chemicals developed for these purposes include organic halides, halide salts, halogenated inorganics, organic-inorganic halides and the most widely studied elemental halogens. Aside from this, various redox mechanisms have been discovered based on multi-electron transfer and effective reaction pathways, contributing to improved electrochemical performances and stabilities of HSCBs. In this Review, we discuss the status of HSCBs and their electrochemical mechanism-performance correlations. We first provide a detailed exposition of the fundamental redox mechanisms, thermodynamics, conversion and catalysis chemistry, and mass or electron transfer modes involved in HSCBs. We conclude with a perspective on the challenges faced by the community and opportunities towards practical applications of high-energy halogen cathodes in energy-storage devices.

Effects of the periodic fasting-mimicking diet on health, lifespan, and multiple diseases: a narrative review and clinical implications.

Dietary restriction and fasting have been recognized for their beneficial effects on health and lifespan and their potential application in managing chronic metabolic diseases. However, long-term adherence to strict dietary restrictions and prolonged fasting poses challenges for most individuals and may lead to unhealthy rebound eating habits, negatively affecting overall health. As a result, a periodic fasting-mimicking diet (PFMD), involving cycles of fasting for 2 or more days while ensuring basic nutritional needs are met within a restricted caloric intake, has gained widespread acceptance. Current research indicates that a PFMD can promote stem cell regeneration, suppress inflammation, extend the health span of rodents, and improve metabolic health, among other effects. In various disease populations such as patients with diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis, and Alzheimer's disease, a PFMD has shown efficacy in alleviating disease symptoms and improving relevant markers. After conducting an extensive analysis of available research on the PFMD, it is evident that its advantages and potential applications are comparable to other fasting methods. Consequently, it is proposed in this review that a PFMD has the potential to fully replace water-only or very-low-energy fasting regimens and holds promise for application across multiple diseases.

Prenatal detection and molecular cytogenetic characterization of Xp deletion and Xq duplication: a case report and literature review.

BACKGROUND: Copy number variation (CNV) of X chromosome can lead to a variety of neonatal abnormalities, especially for male fetuses. In recent years, due to the high sensitivity and high specificity of NIPS, its application has gradually expanded from chromosome aneuploidy to CNV. Few prenatal cases involving the detection of Xq duplication and deletion by NIPS have been reported, but it is of great significance for genetic counseling. CASE PRESENTATION: A 36-year-old woman was referred for prenatal diagnosis and genetic counseling at 17 weeks of gestation because of abnormal result of noninvasive prenatal screening (NIPS). Multiple congenital malformations, hydrocephalus, and enlarged gallbladder were observed by prenatal ultrasound. Amniocentesis revealed the karyotype of the fetus as 46, XN, add(X) (p22.2) and the result of chromosomal microarray analysis was arr[hg19] Xq27.1q28(138,506,454-154896094) × 2 and arr[hg19] Xp22.33p22.32(168,551-5,616,964) × 1. CNV-seq showed that the mother shares a 16.42 Mb duplication in the Xq27.1-q28 region and a 2.97 Mb deletion in the Xp22.33-p22.32 region. After genetic counseling, the couple chose to terminate the pregnancy. CONCLUSION: The combination of NIPS and CMA would be of values in detection of subchromosomal duplications and/or deletions at fetal stage. The detection of X chromosome aberration in a male fetus should give suspicion of the possibility of maternal inheritance.

Plants recruit insecticidal bacteria to defend against herbivore attacks.

Pest feeding affects the rhizobacteria community. The rhizomicrobiota activates salicylic acid and jasmonic acid signaling pathways to help plants deal with pest infestation. However, whether plants can recruit special pesticidal microorganisms to deal with attack from herbivores is unclear. A system composed of peanuts and first-instar larvae of Holotrichia parallela were used to analyze whether peanuts truly enrich the insecticidal bacteria after feeding by larvae, and whether inoculation of the enriched bacteria promotes the resistance of plants to herbivore. In this study, high-throughput sequencing of 16 S rRNA gene amplicons was used to demonstrate that infestation of the subterranean pest H. parallela quickly changed the rhizosphere bacterial community structure within 24 h, and the abundance of Enterobacteriaceae, especially Enterobacter, was manifestly enriched. Root feeding induced rhizobacteria to form a more complex co-occurrence network than the control. Rhizosphere bacteria were isolated, and 4 isolates with high toxicity against H. parallela larvae were obtained by random forest analysis. In a back-inoculation experiment using a split-root system, green fluorescent protein (GFP)-labeled Enterobacter sp. IPPBiotE33 was observed to be enriched in uneaten peanut roots. Additionally, supplementation with IPPBiotE33 alleviated the adverse effects of H. parallela on peanuts. Our findings indicated that herbivore infestation could induce plants to assemble bacteria with specific larvicidal activity to address threats.

The Effect of Secondary Aluminum Ash on the Properties of Reactive Powder Concrete.

Secondary aluminum ash is a kind of common solid waste which will pollute the environment without any treatment. In this study, the influence of secondary aluminum ash on the rheological properties and the initial setting time of fresh reactive powder concrete (RPC) are researched. Meanwhile, the mechanical properties and the drying shrinkage rates of RPC with the secondary aluminum ash are determined. The electrical parameters of RPC with the secondary aluminum ash are measured. Scanning electron microscopy is obtained to reflect the internal structure of RPC. Results show that the addition of secondary aluminum ash can lead to decreasing the fluidity and increase the yield shear stress of fresh RPC paste by varying rates of 16.1% and 58.3%, respectively. The addition of secondary aluminum ash can decrease the flexural and compressive strengths of RPC cured for 1 day by the decreasing rates of 0~18.7% and 0~19.3%. When the curing age is 28 days, the flexural and compressive strengths of RPC are increased by 0~9.1% and 0~19.1% with adding the secondary aluminum ash. The secondary aluminum ash can promote the condensation of RPC. The addition of the secondary aluminum ash can decrease the electrical resistance of RPC by an order of magnitude. The relationship between the electrical resistance and the electrical reactance fits the quadratic function equation. The electrical resistance of the pore solution increases in the form of a quadratic function with the mass ratio of the secondary aluminum ash. The dry shrinkage rates of RPC cured for 1 day and 28 days are decreased by 0~36.4% and 0~41.3% with the increasing dosages of secondary aluminum ash. As obtained from the microscopic testing results, the secondary aluminum ash can improve the compactness of hydration products.

Development of wrinkled reduced graphene oxide wrapped polymer-derived carbon microspheres as viable microwave absorbents via a charge-driven self-assembly strategy.

It is widely recognized that designing a special micro/nanostructure of microwave absorption materials for enhancing interface polarization benefits dielectric loss capability. In this work, a facile charge-driven self-assembly strategy is reported to prepare wrinkled reduced graphene oxide wrapped polymer-derived carbon (CS@rGO) microspheres. Noticeably, the unique three-dimensional (3D) multi-interface structure imparts CS@rGO microspheres with promoted microwave absorption capability. Adjusting the charge-driven self-assembly cycle times, the dielectric properties and impedance matching characteristics of the CS@rGO microspheres can be optimized. The minimum reflection loss (RLmin) of the sample can reach up to -55.24 dB at 13.75 GHz and the effective absorption bandwidth (RL ≤ -10 dB) is 4.30 GHz (11.55-15.85 GHz) at only a thickness of 1.85 mm. This research provides a pathway to explore the high-performance microwave absorber through the construction of the unique 3D multi-interface structure.

Pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, safety and immunogenicity of recombinant, fully human anti-RANKL monoclonal antibody (MW031) versus denosumab in Chinese healthy subjects: a single-center, randomized, double-blind, single-dose, parallel-controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: MW031 is a biosimilar candidate of denosumab (Prolia®). This study aimed to compare the pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, safety and immunogenicity of MW031 to denosumab in healthy Chinese participants. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: In this single-center, randomized, double-blind, parallel-controlled, single-dose trial, participants were given 60 mg MW031 (N = 58) or denosumab (N = 61) by subcutaneous injection and observed for 140 days. The primary endpoint was the bioequivalence of PK parameters (Cmax, AUC0-∞), and secondary endpoints including PD parameter, safety, and immunogenicity. RESULTS: A comparison of main PK parameters showed that the geometric mean ratios (GMR) (90% confidence intervals [CIs]) of AUC0-∞ and Cmax for MW031 over denosumab were 105.48% (98.96%, 112.43%) and 98.58% (92.78%, 104.75%), respectively. The inter-CV values of AUC0-∞ and Cmax for MW031 ranged from 19.9% to 23.1%. PD parameter (sCTX) in the MW031 and denosumab groups were similar, and the positivity rates of immunogenicity were 0% in both groups. This study also showed similar safety profiles in both groups, and there were no drug-related, high-incidence and previously unreported adverse reactions. CONCLUSION: This trial confirmed similar pharmacokinetic profiles of MW031 and denosumab in healthy male participants, and pharmacodynamic profile, immunogenicity and safety were comparable for both drugs. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT04798313; CTR20201149.

Recent progress in the development of ursolic acid derivatives as anti-diabetes and anti-cardiovascular agents.

Ursolic acid (UA) is a pentacyclic triterpenoid, which exhibits many biological activities, particularly in anti-cardiovascular and anti-diabetes. The further application of UA is greatly limited due to its low bioavailability and poor water solubility. Up to date, various UA derivatives have been designed to overcome these shortcomings. In this paper, the authors reviewed the development of UA derivatives as the anti-diabetes anti-cardiovascular reagents.

Interlayer Structure and Chemistry Engineering of MXene-Based Anode for Effective Capture of Chloride Anions in Asymmetric Capacitive Deionization.

Negatively charged surfaces and readily oxidizabile characteristics fundamentally restrict the use of MXene building blocks as anodes for anion intercalation. Herein, by embedding bacterial cellulose nanofibers with conformal polypyrrole coating (BC@PPy) and populating them between MXene (Ti3C2Tx) interlayers, we enable the fabricated MXene/BC@PPy (MBP) composite films to be highly efficient anodes for Cl--capturing in asymmetric capacitive deionization (CDI) systems. Performance gains are realized due to the surface electronegativity of MXene nanosheets becoming compensated by positively charged BC@PPy nanofibers, alleviating electrostatic repulsion, thus realizing reversible Cl- intercalation. More crucially, the anodization voltage of MBP is effectively enhanced as a result of the increase of the Ti valence state in MXene nanosheets with the addition of the BC@PPy spacer. Furthermore, BC@PPy nanopillars effectively enlarge the interlayer space for facile Cl- de-/intercalation, improve the vertical electron transfer between loosely deposited MXene nanosheets, and perform as additional active materials for Cl--capturing. Consequently, the MBP anode exhibits a promising desalination capacity of up to 17.56 mg g-1 at 1.2 V with a high capacity retention of 94.6% after 30 cycles in an asymmetric CDI system. This work offers a simple and effective strategy to unlock the application potential of MXene building blocks as anodes for Cl--capturing in electrochemical desalination.