Current cancer prevention recommendations advise limiting red meat intake to <500g/week and avoiding consumption of processed meat, but do not differentiate the source of processed meat. We examined the associations of processed meat derived from red vs. non-red meats with cancer risk in a prospective cohort of 26,218 adults who reported dietary intake using the Canadian Diet History Questionnaire. Incidence of cancer was obtained through data linkage with Alberta Cancer Registry with median (IQR) follow-up of 13.3 (5.1) years. Multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression models were adjusted for covariates and stratified by age and gender. The median (IQR) consumption (g/week) of red meat, processed meat from red meat and processed meat from non-red meat were 267.9 (269.9), 53.6 (83.3), and 11.9 (31.8), respectively. High intakes (4th Quartile) of processed meat from red meat was associated with increased risk of gastro-intestinal cancer Adjusted Hazard Ratio (AHR) (95% CI): 1.68 (1.09 – 2.57) and colorectal cancers AHR (95% CI): 1.90 (1.12 – 3.22), respectively in women. No statistically significant associations were observed for intakes of red meat or processed meat from non-red meat. Results suggests that the carcinogenic effect associated with processed meat intake may be limited to processed meat derived from red meats. The findings provide preliminary evidence toward refining cancer prevention recommendations for red and processed meat intake.

A disruption database characterizing the current quench of disruptions with ITER-like tungsten divertor has been developed on EAST. It provides a large number of plasma parameters describing the predisruptive plasma, current quench time, eddy current, and mitigation by massive impurity injection, which shows that the current quench time strongly depends on magnetic energy and post-disruption electron temperature. Further, the energy balance and magnetic energy dissipation during the current quench phase has been well analysed. Magnetic energy is also demonstrated to be dissipated mainly by ohmic reheating and inductive coupling, and both of the two channels have great effects on current quench time. Also, massive gas injection is an efficient method to speed up the current quench and increase the fraction of impurity radiation.

The present study was designed to detect three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) located on 22q11 that was thought as being of particularly importance for genetic research into schizophrenia. We recruited a total of 176 Chinese family trios of Han descent, consisting of mothers, fathers and affected offspring with schizophrenia for the genetic analysis. The transmission disequilibrium test (TDT) showed that of three SNPs, rs10314 in the 3′-untranslated region of the CLDN5 locus was associated with schizophrenia (χ2 = 4.75, P = 0.029). The other two SNPs, rs1548359 present in the CDC45L locus centromeric of rs10314 and rs739371 in the 5′-flanking region of the CLDN5 locus, did not show such an association. The global chi-square (χ2) test showed that the 3-SNP haplotype system was not associated with schizophrenia although the 1-df test for individual haplotypes showed that the rs1548359(C)-rs10314(G)-rs739371(C) haplotype was excessively non-transmitted (χ2 = 5.32, P = 0.02). Because the claudin proteins are a major component for barrier-forming tight junctions that could play a crucial role in response to changing natural, physiological and pathological conditions, the CLDN5 association with schizophrenia may be an important clue leading to look into a meeting point of genetic and environmental factors.

In the 2016 election, foreign policy may have played a critically important role in swinging an important constituency to Donald Trump: voters in high-casualty communities that had abandoned Republican candidates in the mid-2000s. Trump’s iconoclastic campaign rhetoric promised a foreign policy that would simultaneously be more muscular and restrained. He promised to rebuild and refocus the military while avoiding the “stupid wars” and costly entanglements of his predecessors. At both the state and county levels, we find significant and substantively meaningful relationships between local casualty rates and support for Trump. Trump made significant electoral gains among constituencies that were exhausted and politically alienated by 18 years of fighting. Trump’s foreign policy shows a president beset by competing militaristic and isolationist impulses. Our results suggest that giving into the former may come at a significant electoral cost.

Enhancing the supply of arginine (Arg), a semi-essential amino acid, has positive effects on immune function in dairy cattle experiencing metabolic stress during early lactation. Our objective was to determine the effects of Arg supplementation on biomarkers of liver damage and inflammation in cows during early lactation. Six Chinese Holstein lactating cows with similar BW (508 ± 14 kg), body condition score (3.0), parity (4.0 ± 0), milk yield (30.6 ± 1.8 kg) and days in milk (20 ± days) were randomly assigned to three treatments in a replicated 3 × 3 Latin square design balanced for carryover effects. Each period was 21 days with 7 days for infusion and 14 days for washout. Treatments were (1) Control: saline; (2) Arg group: saline + 0.216 mol/day l-Arg; and (3) Alanine (Ala) group: saline + 0.868 mol/day l-Ala (iso-nitrogenous to the Arg group). Blood and milk samples from the experimental cows were collected on the last day of each infusion period and analyzed for indices of liver damage and inflammation, and the count and composition of somatic cells in milk. Compared with the Control, the infusion of Arg led to greater concentrations of total protein, immunoglobulin M and high density lipoprotein cholesterol coupled with lower concentrations of haptoglobin and tumor necrosis factor-α, and activity of aspartate aminotransferase in serum. Infusion of Ala had no effect on those biomarkers compared with the Control. Although milk somatic cell count was not affected, the concentration of granulocytes was lower in response to Arg infusion compared with the Control or Ala group. Overall, the biomarker analyses indicated that the supplementation of Arg via the jugular vein during early lactation alleviated inflammation and metabolic stress.

This paper considers the integrated guidance and control (IGC) problem for impact angle constrained interception against manoeuvring targets with actuator saturation constraint. Based on the backstepping technique, an adaptive IGC law is presented to address this problem, where a fixed-time differentiator is proposed to estimate the derivatives of virtual control inputs to avoid the inherent problem of “explosion of complexity” suffered by the typical backstepping. Furthermore, an auxiliary first-order filter is introduced into the IGC law to cope with the actuator saturation constraint. The stability of the closed-loop system is strictly proved. Finally, the superiority of the proposed IGC law is verified by comparison simulations.

We show that when a solid plasma foil with a density gradient on the front surface is irradiated by an intense laser pulse at a grazing angle, ${\sim}80^{\circ }$ , a relativistic electron vortex is excited in the near-critical-density layer after the laser pulse depletion. The vortex structure and dynamics are studied using particle-in-cell simulations. Due to the asymmetry introduced by non-uniform background density, the vortex drifts at a constant velocity, typically $0.2{-}0.3$ times the speed of light. The strong magnetic field inside the vortex leads to significant charge separation; in the corresponding electric field initially stationary protons can be captured and accelerated to twice the velocity of the vortex (100–200 MeV). A representative scenario – with laser intensity of $10^{21}~\text{W}~\text{cm}^{-2}$ – is discussed: two-dimensional simulations suggest that a quasi-monoenergetic proton beam can be obtained with a mean energy 140 MeV and an energy spread of ${\sim}10\,\%$ . We derive an analytical estimate for the vortex velocity in terms of laser and plasma parameters, demonstrating that the maximum proton energy can be controlled by the incidence angle of the laser and the plasma density gradient.

While child poverty is a significant risk factor for poor mental health, the developmental pathways involved with these associations are poorly understood. To advance knowledge about these important linkages, the present study examined the developmental sequelae of childhood exposure to poverty in a multiyear longitudinal study. Here, we focused on exposure to poverty, neurobiological circuitry connected to emotion dysregulation, later exposure to stressful life events, and symptoms of psychopathology. We grounded our work in a biopsychosocial perspective, with a specific interest in “stress sensitization” and emotion dysregulation. Motivated by past work, we first tested whether exposure to poverty was related to changes in the resting-state coupling between two brain structures centrally involved with emotion processing and regulation (the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex; vmPFC). As predicted, we found lower household income at age 10 was related to lower resting-state coupling between these areas at age 15. We then tested if variations in amygdala–vmPFC connectivity interacted with more contemporaneous stressors to predict challenges with mental health at age 16. In line with past reports showing risk for poor mental health is greatest in those exposed to early and then later, more contemporaneous stress, we predicted and found that lower vmPFC–amygdala coupling in the context of greater contemporaneous stress was related to higher levels of internalizing and externalizing symptoms. We believe these important interactions between neurobiology and life history are an additional vantage point for understanding risk and resiliency, and suggest avenues for prediction of psychopathology related to early life challenge.

A new generation of high power laser facilities will provide laser pulses with extremely high powers of 10 petawatt (PW) and even 100 PW, capable of reaching intensities of $10^{23}~\text{W}/\text{cm}^{2}$ in the laser focus. These ultra-high intensities are nevertheless lower than the Schwinger intensity $I_{S}=2.3\times 10^{29}~\text{W}/\text{cm}^{2}$ at which the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED) predicts that a large part of the energy of the laser photons will be transformed to hard Gamma-ray photons and even to matter, via electron–positron pair production. To enable the investigation of this physics at the intensities achievable with the next generation of high power laser facilities, an approach involving the interaction of two colliding PW laser pulses is being adopted. Theoretical simulations predict strong QED effects with colliding laser pulses of ${\geqslant}10~\text{PW}$ focused to intensities ${\geqslant}10^{22}~\text{W}/\text{cm}^{2}$ .

The aim of our study was twofold: to examine (a) whether the link between racial discrimination and adjustment showed age-related changes across early to late adolescence for Chinese-heritage youth and (b) whether the age-related associations of the discrimination–adjustment link differed by gender, nativity, and geographical region. We pooled two independently collected longitudinal data sets in the United States and Canada (N = 498, ages 12–19 at Wave 1) and used time-varying effect modeling to show that discrimination is consistently associated with poorer adjustment across all ages. These associations were stronger at certain ages, but for males and females, first- and second-generation adolescents, and US and Canadian adolescents they differed. There were stronger relations between discrimination and adjustment in early adolescence for males compared to females, in middle adolescence for first-generation compared to second-generation adolescents, and in early adolescence for US adolescents compared to Canadian adolescents. In general, negative implications for adjustment associated with discrimination diminished across the span of adolescence for females, second-generation, and US and Canadian adolescents, but not for males or first-generation adolescents. The results show that the discrimination–adjustment link must be considered with regard to age, gender, nativity, and region, and that attention to discrimination in early adolescence may be especially important.

Vessel flexure can be triggered naturally by surgical operation, heart pulsation and body movement. It may affect the mechanical behavior of the stent and the existence of a stent may in turn cause vessel injury. In the present study, the finite element method is employed to study the interaction between stent and vessel during vessel flexure. Two- and four-link stents made of stainless steel 316L and magnesium alloy WE43 are considered. Results indicate that longitudinal deformation of the stent can be caused by vessel flexure, and the higher levels of stress exist in the link struts. The existence of the stent could induce significant stress concentration and straightened deformation on vessel wall in the course of vessel flexure. Stents with more links or made of harder materials show greater anti-deformation capability, thus inducing a more severe stress concentration and straightened deformation on the vessel wall. The bending direction also affects the mechanical performance of the vessel-stent system. The results obtained could provide useful information for better stent designs and clinical decisions.

Extensive insecticide use has led to the resistance of mosquitoes to these insecticides, posing a major barrier to mosquito control. Previous Solexa high-throughput sequencing of Culex pipiens pallens in the laboratory has revealed that the abundance of a novel microRNA (miRNA), miR-13664, was higher in a deltamethrin-sensitive (DS) strain than a deltamethrin-resistant (DR) strain. Real-time quantitative PCR revealed that the miR-13664 transcript level was lower in the DR strain than in the DS strain. MiR-13664 oversupply in the DR strain increased the susceptibility of these mosquitoes to deltamethrin, whereas inhibition of miR-13664 made the DS strain more resistant to deltamethrin. Results of bioinformatic analysis, quantitative reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction, luciferase assay and miR mimic/inhibitor microinjection revealed CpCYP314A1 to be a target of miR-13664. In addition, downregulation of CpCYP314A1 expression in the DR strain reduced the resistance of mosquitoes to deltamethrin. Taken together, our results indicate that miR-13664 could regulate deltamethrin resistance by interacting with CpCYP314A1, providing new insights into mosquito resistance mechanisms.

Cereal grains treated with organic acids were proved to increase ruminal resistant starch and can relieve the risk of ruminal acidosis. However, previous study mainly focussed on acid-treated barley, the effects of organic acid-treated corn is still unknown. The objectives of this study were to evaluate whether feeding ground corn steeped in citric acid (CA) would affect ruminal pH and fermentation patterns, milk production and innate immunity responses in dairy goats. Eight ruminally cannulated Saanen dairy goats were used in a crossover designed experiment. Each experimental period was 21 day long including 14 days for adaption to new diet and 7 days for sampling and data collection. The goats were fed high-grain diet contained 30% hay and 70% corn-based concentrate. The corn was steeped either in water (control) or in 0.5% (wt/vol) CA solution for 48 h. Goats fed CA diet showed improved ruminal pH status with greater mean and minimum ruminal pH, and shorter (P<0.05) duration of ruminal pH<5.6 and less area of ruminal pH<5.6, 5.8 and 6.0. Concentration of total volatile fatty acid and molar proportion of propionate were less but the molar proportion of acetate was greater (P<0.05) in goats fed the CA diet than the control diet. Concentration of ruminal lipopolysaccharide (LPS) was lower (P<0.05) and that of lactic acid also tended (P<0.10) to be lower in goats fed CA than the control. Although dry matter intake, actual milk yield, yield and content of milk protein and lactose were not affected, the milk fat content and 4% fat-corrected milk tended (P<0.10) to be greater in goats fed CA diet. For the inflammatory responses, peripheral LPS did not differ, whereas the concentration of LPS binding protein and serum amyloid A tended (P<0.10) to be less in goats fed CA diet. Similarly, goats fed CA diet had less (P<0.05) concentration of haptoglobin and tumour necrosis factor. These results indicated that feeding ground corn treated with CA effectively improved ruminal pH status, thus alleviated the risk of ruminal acidosis, reduced inflammatory response, and tend to improve milk yield and milk fat test.