Trematodes of the genus Ogmocotyle are intestinal flukes that can infect a variety of definitive hosts, resulting in significant economic losses worldwide. However, there are few studies on molecular data of these trematodes. In this study, the mitochondrial (mt) genome of Ogmocotyle ailuri isolated from red panda (Ailurus fulgens) was determined and compared with those from Pronocephalata to investigate the mt genome content, genetic distance, gene rearrangements and phylogeny. The complete mt genome of O. ailuri is a typical closed circular molecule of 14 642 base pairs, comprising 12 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNA genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes and 2 non-coding regions. All genes are transcribed in the same direction. In addition, 23 intergenic spacers and 2 locations with gene overlaps were determined. Sequence identities and sliding window analysis indicated that cox1 is the most conserved gene among 12 PCGs in O. ailuri mt genome. The sequenced mt genomes of the 48 Plagiorchiida trematodes showed 5 types of gene arrangement based on all mt genome genes, with the gene arrangement of O. ailuri being type I. Phylogenetic analysis using concatenated amino acid sequences of 12 PCGs revealed that O. ailuri was closer to Ogmocotyle sikae than to Notocotylus intestinalis. These data enhance the Ogmocotyle mt genome database and provide molecular resources for further studies of Pronocephalata taxonomy, population genetics and systematics.

As intense, ultrashort, kHz-repetition-rate laser systems become commercially available, pulse cumulative effects are critical for laser filament-based applications. In this work, the pulse repetition-rate effect on femtosecond laser filamentation in air was investigated both numerically and experimentally. The pulse repetition-rate effect has negligible influence at the leading edge of the filament. Clear intensity enhancement from a high-repetition pulse is observed at the peak and tailing edge of the laser filament. As the repetition rate of the laser pulses increases from 100 to 1000 Hz, the length of the filament extends and the intensity inside the filament increases. A physical picture based on the pulse repetition-rate dependent ‘low-density hole’ effect on filamentation is proposed to explain the obtained results well.

The resurgence and outbreaks of mumps occur frequently in many countries worldwide in recent years, even in countries with high vaccination coverage. In this study, a descriptive and spatiotemporal clustering analysis at the township level was conducted to explore the dynamic spatiotemporal aggregation and epidemiological characteristics of mumps in Wuhan. During 2005 and 2019, there were 40 685 cases reported in Wuhan, with an average annual morbidity of 28.11 per 100 000 populations. The morbidity showed a fluctuating tendency, and peaked in 2010 and 2018. Bimodal seasonality was found, with a large peak between May and July, and a mild peak from November to January in the following year. Male students aged 5–9-year-old were the main risk group of mumps infection. Significant global spatial auto-correlation was detected except in 2007, 2009 and 2015. The spatial and temporal scan statistics indicated that the hot-spots mainly located at the western and southern areas of Wuhan with variations almost every year. Our findings could assist the public health authorities to develop and improve targeted health strategies, and allocate health resources rationally.

The Palaeo-Mesozoic geodynamic evolution of the Tangjia–Sumdo accretionary complex belt, which separates the North and South Lhasa Terrane, remains controversial. Moreover, the lack of geological records restricts the understanding of the evolution of the Sumdo Palaeo-Tethys Ocean from the middle Permian until the middle Triassic. Here we present zircon U–Pb geochronology, whole-rock geochemistry and Sr–Nd–Hf isotopic compositions of the Yeqing gabbro. Zircon U–Pb geochronology yields ages from 254 ± 1 to 249 ± 1 Ma. In situ Hf isotopic analyses yield ϵ Hf(t) values of −0.2 to +6.3. These samples have high TiO2 (3.69 wt %) and P2O5 (0.78 wt %) contents, with typical patterns like ocean island basalt (OIB). Besides, they are classified as high-Nb basalts (HNBs) based on the high content of Nb (45.3–113.5 ppm). Whole-rock Sr–Nd isotopic compositions are similar to OIB, with initial 87Sr/86Sr of 0.7047–0.7054, 143Nd/144Nd of 0.512526–0.512647 and ϵ Nd(t) of 0.3–2.7. These signatures suggest that the Yeqing gabbro is mainly derived from low-degree melting of the garnet lherzolite mantle. Based on field observations of HNBs intruding into the continental margin and their geochemical characteristics, we infer that the Yeqing gabbro was generated in a subduction environment. Combined with the regional geology of the subduction environment and the evolution of oceanic islands in the Sumdo Palaeo-Tethys Ocean, we propose that the Yeqing gabbro may represent a product of the asthenosphere upwelling through a slab window produced by subduction of seismic ridge in the Sumdo Palaeo-Tethys Ocean, called plume – subduction-zone interaction, during the late Permian to early Triassic.

Shame leads to devaluation of the social self, and thus to a desire to improve self-esteem. Money, which is related to the notion of one’s ability, may help people demonstrate competence and gain self-esteem and respect from others. Based on the perspectives of feelings-as-information and threatened ego, we tested the hypothesis that a sense of shame heightens the desire for money, prompting self-interested behaviors as reflected by monetary donations and social value orientation. The results showed that subjects in the shame condition donated less money (Experiment 1) and exhibited more self-interested choices in the modified decomposed game (Experiment 2). The desire for money as reflected in overestimated coin sizes mediated the effect of shame on self-interested behavior. Our findings suggest that shame elicits the desire to acquire money to amend the threatened social self and improve self-esteem; however, it may induce a self-interested inclination that could harm social relationships.

Industrial robots are widely used in the painting industry, such as automobile manufacturing and solid wood furniture industry. An important problem is how to improve the efficiency of robot programming, especially in the current furniture industry with multiple products, small batches and increasingly high demand for customization. In this work, we propose an outer loop adaptive control scheme, which allow users to realize the practical application of the zero-moment lead-through teaching method based on dynamic model without opening the inner torque control interface of robots. In order to accurately estimate the influence of joint friction, a friction model is established based on static, Coulomb and viscous friction characteristics, and the Sigmoid function is used to represent the transition between motion states. An identification method is used to quickly identify the dynamic parameters of the robot. The joint position/speed command of the robot’s inner joint servo loop is dynamically generated based on the user-designed adaptive control law. In addition, the zero-moment lead-through teaching scheme based on the dynamic model is applied to a spray-painting robot with closed control system. In order to verify our method, CMA GR630ST is used to conduct experiments. We identified the parameters of the dynamic model and carried out the zero-moment lead-through teaching experiment to track the target trajectory. The results show that the proposed method can realize the application of modern control methods in industrial robot with closed control systems, and achieve a preliminary exploration to improve the application scenarios of spray-painting robots.

The terminal Ediacaran Shibantan biota (~550–543 Ma) from the Dengying Formation in the Yangtze Gorges area of South China represents one of the rare examples of carbonate-hosted Ediacara-type macrofossil assemblages. In addition to the numerically dominant taxa—the non-biomineralizing tubular fossil Wutubus and discoidal fossils Aspidella and Hiemalora, the Shibantan biota also bears a moderate diversity of frondose fossils, including Pteridinium, Rangea, Arborea, and Charnia. In this paper, we report two species of the rangeomorph genus Charnia, including the type species Charnia masoni Ford, 1958 emend. and Charnia gracilis new species, from the Shibantan biota. Most of the Shibantan Charnia specimens preserve only the petalodium, with a few bearing the holdfast and stem. Despite overall architectural similarities to other Charnia species, the Shibantan specimens of Charnia gracilis n. sp. are distinct in their relatively straight, slender, and more acutely angled first-order branches. They also show evidence that may support a two-stage growth model and a epibenthic sessile lifestyle. Charnia fossils described herein represent one of the youngest occurrences of this genus and extend its paleogeographic and stratigraphic distributions. Our discovery also highlights the notable diversity of the Shibantan biota, which contains examples of a wide range of Ediacaran morphogroups.

UUID: http://zoobank.org/837216cd-4a4a-4e13-89e2-ee354ba48a4c

Many protected areas worldwide have been established to protect the last natural refuges of flagship animal species. However, long-established protected areas do not always match the current distributions of target species under changing environmental conditions. Here we present a case study of the Asian elephant Elephas maximus in Xishuangbanna, south-west China, to evaluate whether the established protected areas match the species’ current distribution and to identify key habitat patches for Asian elephant conservation. Our results show that currently only 24.5% of the predicted Asian elephant distribution in Xishuangbanna is located within Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve, which was established for elephant conservation. Based on the predicted Asian elephant distribution, we identified the most important habitat patches for elephant conservation in Xishuangbanna. The three most important patches were outside Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve and together they contained 43.3% of the estimated food resources for Asian elephants in all patches in Xishuangbanna. Thus, we identified a spatial mismatch between immobile protected areas and mobile animals. We recommend the inclusion of the three identified key habitat patches in a new national park currently being planned by the Chinese authorities for the conservation of the Asian elephant.

The new mineral, gysinite-(La), with the ideal formula PbLa(CO3)2(OH)⋅H2O, has been discovered in lujavrite from the Saima alkaline complex, Liaoning Province, China. It commonly occurs as subhedral to anhedral, granular and platy crystals of 5 to 50 μm in size, in interstices or enclosed in microcline, aegirine and nepheline. Associated minerals include nepheline, aegirine, microcline, natrolite, eudialyte, lamprophyllite, bastnäsite-(Ce), parasite-(Ce), ancylite-(La), ancylite-(Ce), bobtraillite, britholite-(Ce), thorite, calcite and galena. The crystallisation of gysinite-(La) may be related to the post-magmatic carbonation event. Gysinite-(La) crystals are generally transparent, colourless, or pale yellow, with a vitreous lustre and white streak. It is brittle with an uneven fracture, and the estimated Mohs hardness is 3½ to 4. The calculated density is 5.007 g/cm3. Optically, gysinite-(La) is biaxial (–), α= 1.832(2), β= 1.849(4), γ = 1.862(5) in white light and 2Vmeas = 81.6°. The empirical formula of gysinite-(La) is (La0.93Pb0.61Nd0.23Pr0.14Sr0.04Gd0.02Sm0.01Eu0.01Ca0.01)Σ2(CO3)2(OH)1.34⋅0.66H2O, which is calculated on the basis of general formula (REExM2+2–x)(CO3)2(OH)x⋅(2–x)H2O. The strongest eight lines of its powder X-ray diffraction pattern [d, Å (I, %) (hkl)] are: 5.596 (21) (011), 4.349 (100) (110), 3.732 (68) (111), 2.984 (61) (121), 2.667 (21) (031), 2.363 (48) (131), 2.090 (29) (221) and 2.028 (21) (212). Gysinite-(La) is orthorhombic, in the space group Pmcn, and unit-cell parameters refined from single-crystal X-ray diffraction data are: a = 5.0655(2) Å, b = 8.5990(3) Å, c = 7.3901(4) Å, V = 321.90(2) Å3 and Z = 2. It is a new member of the ancylite group and isostructural with gysinite-(Nd), but with La and Pb dominant in the metal cation sites in the structure.

We presented the first photometric and orbital period investigations for four W Ursae Majoris-type binaries: V473 And, V805 And, LQ Com, and EG CVn. The photometric solutions suggested that V805 And and LQ Com are two total-eclipse contact binaries, while V473 And and EG CVn are partial-eclipse ones. V473 And and LQ Com belong to the A-subtype contact binaries, while V805 And and EG CVn belong to the W subtype. The O’Connell effects found in the light curves of V805 And, LQ Com, and EG CVn can be interpreted as a result of a cool spot on the surface of their less massive and hotter primary components. Based on two different methods, the absolute physical parameters were properly determined. Combining the eclipse timings derived from our observations and survey’s data with those collected from literature, we investigated their orbital period variations. The results show that the orbital periods of V473 And, V805 And, and EG CVn are undergoing a secular decrease/increase superposed a periodic variation, while LQ Com exhibits a possible cyclic period variation with a small amplitude. The secular period changes are caused mainly by the mass transfer between two components, while the cyclic period oscillations may be interpreted as the results of either the light-time effect due to the third body or the cyclic magnetic activity. Finally, we made a statistical investigation for nearly 200 contact binaries with reliable physical parameters. The statistical results suggested that the W-subtype systems are more evolved than the A-subtype ones. Furthermore, the evolutionary direction of A-subtype into W-subtype systems is also discussed. The opposite evolutionary direction seems to be unlikely because it requires an increase of the total mass, the orbital angular momentum, and the temperature differences between two components of a binary system.

A pilot project has been proceeded to map $1\, \textrm{deg}^2$ on the Galactic plane for radio recombination lines (RRLs) using the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). The motivation is to verify the techniques and reliabilities for a large-scale Galactic plane RRL survey with FAST aiming to investigate the ionised environment in the Galaxy. The data shows that the bandpass of the FAST 19 beam L-band is severely affected by radio frequency interferences and standing wave ripples, which can hardly be corrected by traditional low order polynomials. In this paper, we investigate a series of penalised least square (PLS) based baseline correction methods for radio astronomical spectra that usually contain weak signals with high level of noise. Three promising penalised least squares based methods, AsLS, arPLS, and asPLS are evaluated. Adopting their advantages, a modified method named rrlPLS is developed to optimise the baseline fitting to our RRL spectra. To check their effectiveness, the four methods are tested by simulations and further verified using observed data sets. It turns out that the rrlPLS method, with optimised parameter $\lambda=2\times10^8$ , reveals the most sensitive and reliable emission features in the RRL map. By injecting artificial line profiles into the real data cube, a further evaluation of profile distortion is conducted for rrlPLS. Comparing to simulated signals, the processed lines with low signal-to-noise ratio are less affected, of which the uncertainties are mainly caused by the rms noise. The rrlPLS method will be applied for baseline correction in future data processing pipeline of FAST RRL survey. Configured with proper parameters, the rrlPLS technique verified in this work may also be used for other spectroscopy projects.

Fluorsigaiite, ideally Ca2Sr3(PO4)3F, is a new Sr analogue of fluorphosphohedyphane and a new member of the apatite supergroup. It was discovered in lujavrite from the Saima alkaline complex, Liaoning Province, China. Fluorsigaiite commonly occurs as individual prismatic, columnar and platy crystals of 10 to 50 μm in size, associated with microcline, nepheline, aegirine, natrolite, eudialyte, fluorapatite, a fluorstrophite-like mineral, stronadelphite and calcite. Occasionally, crystals of fluorsigaiite form prismatic aggregates in the interstices of lujavrite. Fluorsigaiite is translucent to transparent, colourless to yellowish white with a vitreous lustre and without fluorescence. The estimated Mohs hardness is 5, and the tenacity is brittle with uneven fractures. The calculated density is 3.842 g/cm3. Optically, fluorsigaiite is uniaxial (–) with ω = 1.64(1) and ɛ = 1.63(1) in white light and without dispersion. The mean chemical composition (in wt.%) of fluorsigaiite is Na2O 0.75, CaO 15.17, SrO 44.44, La2O3 3.64, Ce2O3 2.22, Pr2O3 0.19, Nd2O3 0.13, Sm2O3 0.05, Gd2O3 0.23, P2O5 31.87, F 1.91, H2O 0.46, sum 100.26, giving the empirical formula (Sr2.82Ca1.79Na0.16La0.15Ce0.09Pr0.01Nd0.01Gd0.01)Σ5.04P2.97O12[F0.66(OH)0.34]Σ1, which is calculated on the basis of 13 total anions and F+(OH) = 1. The strongest eight lines of its powder X-ray diffraction pattern [d, Å (I, %) (hkl)] are: 3.563 (15) (002), 3.275 (15) (102), 3.144 (19) (120), 2.876 (100) (121), 2.861 (96) (112), 2.772 (27) (300), 1.991 (17) (222) and 1.895 (23) (213). Fluorsigaiite is hexagonal, in the space group P63/m and unit-cell parameters refined from single-crystal X-ray diffraction data are: a = 9.6101(2) Å, c = 7.1311(1) Å, V = 570.35(3) Å3 and Z = 2. It is isostructural with hedyphane-group minerals, and contains different prevailing (species-defining) Ca and Sr cations at the Ca1 and Ca2 sites, respectively. Fluorsigaiite was probably formed from Sr-rich fluids at late-magmatic or hydrothermal stage of the Saima lujavrite.

To investigate the effect of maternal hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) carrier status during pregnancy on pregnancy outcomes in a population of patients in Hangzhou, China. A retrospective cohort study was conducted to analyse data from 20 753 pregnant women who delivered at Hangzhou Women's Hospital between January 2015 and March 2020. Of these, 18 693 were normal pregnant women (the non-exposed group) and 735 were HBsAg carriers (the exposed group). We then analysed by binary multivariate logistic regression to determine the association between maternal HBsAg-positive and adverse pregnancy outcomes. The prevalence of HBsAg carriers was 3.78% and the odds ratio (OR) for maternal age in the exposed group was 1.081. Pregnant women who are HBsAg-positive in Hangzhou, China, are at higher risk of a range of adverse pregnancy outcomes, including intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP) (adjusted OR (aOR) 3.169), low birth weight (aOR 2.337), thrombocytopenia (aOR 2.226), fallopian cysts (aOR 1.610), caesarean scar pregnancy (aOR 1.283), foetal distress (aOR 1.414). Therefore, the obstetricians should pay particular attention to ICP, low birth weight, thrombocytopenia, fallopian cysts, caesarean scar, foetal distress in HBsAg-positive pregnant women.