The low maturation rate of oocytes is an important reason for female infertility and failure of assisted pregnancy. The germinal vesicle breakdown (GVBD) is a landmark event of oocyte maturation. In our previous studies, we found that zona pellucida 3 (ZP3) was strongly concentrated in the nuclear region of germinal vesicle (GV) oocytes and interacted with aryl hydrocarbon receptor-interacting protein-like 1 (AIPL1) and lamin A to promote GVBD. In the current study, we found that lamin A is mainly concentrated in the nuclear membrane. When ZP3 is knocked down, lamin A will be partially transferred to the nucleus of oocytes. The prelamin A is increased in both the nuclear membrane and nucleus, while phosphorylated lamin A (p-lamin A) is significantly reduced. AIPL1 was also proved to accumulate in the GV region of oocytes, and ZP3 deletion can significantly inhibit the aggregation of AIPL1 in the nuclear region. Similar to ZP3 knockdown, the absence of AIPL1 resulted in a decrease in the occurrence of GVBD, an increase in the amount of prelamin A, and a significant decrease in p-lamin A in oocytes developed in vitro. Finally, we propose the hypothesis that ZP3 can stabilize farnesylated prelamin A on the nuclear membrane of AIPL1, and promote its further processing into mature lamin A, therefore promoting the occurrence of GVBD. This study may be an important supplement for the mechanism of oocyte meiotic resumption and provide new diagnostic targets and treatment clues for infertility patients with oocyte maturation disorder.

Instrument delivery is critical part in vascular intervention surgery. Due to the soft-body structure of instruments, the relationship between manipulation commands and instrument motion is non-linear, making instrument delivery challenging and time-consuming. Reinforcement learning has the potential to learn manipulation skills and automate instrument delivery with enhanced success rates and reduced workload of physicians. However, due to the sample inefficiency when using high-dimensional images, existing reinforcement learning algorithms are limited on realistic vascular robotic systems. To alleviate this problem, this paper proposes discrete soft actor-critic with auto-encoder (DSAC-AE) that augments SAC-discrete with an auxiliary reconstruction task. The algorithm is applied with distributed sample collection and parameter update in a robot-assisted preclinical environment. Experimental results indicate that guidewire delivery can be automatically implemented after 50k sampling steps in less than 15 h, demonstrating the proposed algorithm has the great potential to learn manipulation skill for vascular robotic systems.

Nicotine 2,6-dihydroxybenzoate is a nicotine salt that can be used as the nicotine source in tobacco products. X-ray powder diffraction data, unit-cell parameters, and space group for nicotine 2,6-dihydroxybenzoate, C10H15N2⋅C7H5O4, are reported [a = 7.726(8) Å, b = 11.724(3) Å, c = 9.437(1) Å, α = 90°, β = 109.081(3)°, γ = 90°, unit-cell volume V = 802.902 Å3, Z = 2, ρcal = 1.309 g cm−3, and space group P21] at room temperature. All measured lines were indexed and were consistent with the P21 space group.

Chronic inflammation exerts pleiotropic effects in the aetiology and progression of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Glucosamine is widely used in many countries and may have anti-inflammatory properties. We aimed to prospectively evaluate the association of regular glucosamine use with incident COPD risk and explore whether such association could be modified by smoking in the UK Biobank cohort, which recruited more than half a million participants aged 40–69 years from across the UK between 2006 and 2010. Cox proportional hazards models with adjustment for potential confounding factors were used to calculate hazard ratios (HR) as well as 95 % CI for the risk of incident COPD. During a median follow-up of 8·96 years (interquartile range 8·29–9·53 years), 9016 new-onset events of COPD were documented. We found that the regular use of glucosamine was associated with a significantly lower risk of incident COPD with multivariable adjusted HR of 0·80 (95 % CI, 0·75, 0·85; P < 0·001). When subgroup analyses were performed by smoking status, the adjusted HR for the association of regular glucosamine use with incident COPD were 0·84 (0·73, 0·96), 0·84 (0·77, 0·92) and 0·71 (0·62, 0·80) among never smokers, former smokers and current smokers, respectively. No significant interaction was observed between glucosamine use and smoking status (P for interaction = 0·078). Incident COPD could be reduced by 14 % to 84 % through a combination of regular glucosamine use and smoking cessation.

Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is a common adverse drug reaction leading to the interruption of tuberculosis (TB) therapy. We aimed to identify whether the hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection would increase the risk of DILI during first-line TB treatment. A meta-analysis of cohort studies searched in PubMed, Web of Science and China National Knowledge Infrastructure was conducted. Effect sizes were reported as risk ratios (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) and calculated by R software. Sixteen studies with 3960 TB patients were eligible for analysis. The risk of DILI appeared to be higher in TB patients co-infected with HBV (RR 2.66; 95% CI 2.13–3.32) than those without HBV infection. Moreover, patients with positive hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) were more likely to develop DILI (RR 3.42; 95% CI 1.95–5.98) compared to those with negative HBeAg (RR 2.30; 95% CI 1.66–3.18). Co-infection with HBV was not associated with a higher rate of anti-TB DILI in latent TB patients (RR 4.48; 95% CI 0.80–24.99). The effect of HBV infection on aggravating anti-TB DILI was independent of study participants, whether they were newly diagnosed with TB or not. Besides, TB and HBV co-infection patients had a longer duration of recovery from DILI compared to non-co-infected patients (SMD 2.26; 95% CI 1.87–2.66). To conclude, the results demonstrate that HBV infection would increase the risk of DILI during TB therapy, especially in patients with positive HBeAg, and close liver function monitoring is needed for TB and HBV co-infection patients.

A high-carbohydrate diet could achieve a protein-sparing effect, but it may cause negative impacts on the growth condition of fish due to their poor utilisation ability of carbohydrate. How to reduce the adverse effects caused by a high-carbohydrate diet is important for the development of aquaculture. In the present study, we aimed to identify whether inulin could attenuate the metabolic syndrome caused by a high-carbohydrate diet in fish. Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) (1·19 (sd 0·01) g) were supplied with 35 % carbohydrate (CON), 45 % carbohydrate (HC) and 45 % carbohydrate + 5 g/kg inulin (HCI) diets for 10 weeks. The results showed that addition of inulin improved the survival rate when fish were challenged with Aeromonas hydrophila, indicating that inulin had an immunostimulatory effect. Compared with the HC group, the HCI group had lower lipid accumulation in liver and the gene expression analyses indicated that addition of inulin down-regulated genes related to lipogenesis and up-regulated genes relevant to β-oxidation significantly (P < 0·05). Higher liver glycogen and glucose tolerance were found in the HCI group compared with the HC group (P < 0·05). These results indicated that inulin could alleviate the metabolic syndrome induced by a high-carbohydrate diet. Furthermore, addition of inulin to a high-carbohydrate diet changed the intestinal bacterial composition and significantly increased the concentration of acetic acid and propionic acid in fish gut which have the potential to increase pathogen resistance and regulate metabolic characteristics in fish. Collectively, our results demonstrated a possible causal role for the gut microbiome in metabolic improvements induced by inulin in fish.

Rare earth elements (REE) in marine minerals have been widely used as proxies for the redox status of depositional and/or diagenetic environments. Phosphate nodules, which are thought to grow within decimetres below the sediment–water interface and to be able to scavenge REE from the ambient pore water, are potential archives of subtle changes in REE compositions. Whether their REE signals represent specific redox conditions or they can be used to track the overlying water chemistry is worth exploring. Through in situ laser ablation – inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), we investigate the REE compositions of a drill-core-preserved phosphate nodule from the lower Cambrian Niutitang Formation in the Daotuo area, northeastern Guizhou Province, South China. REE distributions of the nodule show concentric layers with systematic decreases in Ce anomalies (Ce/Ce*) from the core to the rim. The lowest Ce/Ce* appears in the outer rim where REE concentrations are relatively high. These results are interpreted to reflect REE exchange with pore water at a very early stage or bathymetric variation during apatite precipitation. The origin of the shale-normalized middle REE (MREE) enrichment in our sample is less constrained. Possible driving factors include preferential MREE substitution for Ca in the apatite lattice, degradation of organic matter and deposition beneath a ferruginous zone. Although speculative, the last possibility is consistent with the chemically stratified model for early Cambrian oceans, in which dynamic fluctuations of the chemocline provided an ideal depositional context for phosphogenesis.

The present study investigated the effects of condensed tannins (CT) on intestinal immune function in on-growing grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella). A total of 540 healthy grass carp were fed six diets containing different levels of CT (0, 10·00, 20·00, 30·00, 40·00 and 50·00 g/kg diet) for 70 d and then challenged with Aeromonas hydrophila for 14 d. The results showed that, compared with the control group, dietary CT (1) induced intestinal histopathological lesions and aggravated enteritis; (2) decreased lysozyme and acid phosphatase activities, complement 3 (C3), C4 and IgM contents and down-regulated the Hepcidin, liver-expressed antimicrobial peptide (LEAP)-2A, LEAP-2B, Mucin2 and β-defensin-1 mRNA levels in the proximal intestine (PI), mid intestine (MI) and distal intestine (DI) (P < 0·05); (3) down-regulated the mRNA levels of anti-inflammatory cytokines transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1, TGF-β2 (not in MI and DI), IL-4/13A (not IL-4/13B), IL-10 and IL-11 partly correlated with target of rapamycin (TOR) signalling; and (4) up-regulated the mRNA levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines interferon-γ2, IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8 (not in PI), IL-12p35, IL-12p40, IL-15 and IL-17D partly related to NF-κB signalling in the intestine of on-growing grass carp. Overall, the results indicated that CT could impair the intestinal immune function, and its potential regulation mechanisms were partly associated with the TOR and NF-κB signalling pathways. Finally, based on the percentage weight gain and enteritis morbidity, the maximum allowable levels of CT for on-growing grass carp (232·22–890·11 g) were estimated to be 18·6 and 17·4 g/kg diet, respectively.

Fatigue performance of metallic nanolayered composites (NLCs) has been gaining more and more attention due to the rapid development in the field of both micro-electro-mechanical systems and high-performance engineering structure materials and the increasing demand for long-term fatigue reliability. Metallic NLCs have exhibited different damage behaviors due to the effect of high-density heterogeneous interface compared with bulk materials and thin metal films. In this review paper, the cyclic deformation damage behavior, fatigue cracking feature, and fatigue properties of some metallic NLCs are reviewed. Effects of length scales, including layer thickness and grain size, on fatigue damage behaviors of the NLCs are revealed, and the transition of the fatigue cracking behavior and the corresponding damage mechanism are discussed. Then, the fatigue properties of some typical metallic NLCs are presented and compared with that of bulk materials and metal thin films. The effect of interface type and grain boundary alignment is also discussed to correlate with fatigue cracking resistance of the NLCs. Finally, some prospective research topics on fatigue performance of metallic NLCs are addressed.

Maternal dietary patterns and macronutrients intake have been shown to affect the development of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), but the findings are inconsistent. We aimed to identify maternal dietary patterns and examine their associations with GDM risk, and to evaluate the contributions of macronutrients intake to these associations. We included 2755 Chinese pregnant women from the Tongji Maternal and Child Health Cohort. Dietary intakes were assessed using a validated semi-quantitative FFQ 2 weeks before the diagnosis of GDM. GDM (n 248) was diagnosed based on the results of a 75-g, 2-h oral glucose tolerance test at 24–28 weeks gestation. We derived five different dietary patterns from a principal component analysis. The results showed that high fish–meat–eggs scores, which were positively related to protein intake and inversely related to carbohydrate intake, were associated with a higher risk of GDM (adjusted OR for quartile 4 v. quartile 1: 1·83; 95 % CI 1·21, 2·79; Ptrend=0·007) and higher plasma glucose levels. In contrast, high rice–wheat–fruits scores, which were positively related to carbohydrate intake and inversely related to protein intake, were associated with lower risk of GDM (adjusted OR for quartile 3 v. quartile 1: 0·54; 95 % CI 0·36, 0·83; Ptrend=0·010) and lower plasma glucose levels. In addition, dietary protein and carbohydrate intake significantly contributed to the associations between dietary patterns and GDM risk or glucose levels. These findings suggest that a dietary pattern characterised by high protein and low carbohydrate intake in pregnancy was associated with a higher risk of GDM, which may provide important clues for dietary guidance during pregnancy to prevent GDM.

Introduction: To investigate the effects of paroxetine (PAR) on motor and cognitive function recovery in patients with non-depressed ischemic stroke (nD-AIS).

Methods: One hundred sixty-seven patients hospitalized for non-depressed acute ischemic stroke were selected and divided into treatment (T) and control (C) groups using a random number table. All patients received conventional secondary ischemic stroke prevention and rehabilitation training; patients in Group T additionally received treatment with PAR (10 mg/day during week 1 and 20 mg/day thereafter) for 3 months. The follow-up observation lasted 6 months. The Fugl–Meyer motor scale (FMMS), Montreal cognitive assessment (MoCA), and Hamilton depression scale (HAMD) were used on D0, D15, D90, and D180 (T0, 1, 2, and 3, respectively; D180 = 90 days after treatment cessation) after study initiation, and scores were compared between the groups.

Results: The FMMS and MoCA scores differed significantly between Groups T and C at T2 and T3 (p < .05); by contrast, these scores did not differ significantly between the groups at T1 (p > .05). Furthermore, the HAMD scores differed significantly between the two groups at T3 (p < .05), but not at T1 and T2 (p > .05).

Conclusions: PAR treatment may improve motor and cognitive function recovery in patients with nD-AIS. Moreover, PAR may reduce the occurrence of depression after stroke.

The novel visible-light-responsive direct solid-state Z-scheme g-C3N4/BiOI heterojunction has been synthesized successfully by means of a solid phase calcination method and used for the degradation of microcystin-LR (MC-LR). The layered g-C3N4 disperses on the surface of BiOI microspheres. The samples are characterized by FESEM, HRTEM, XRD, FT-IR, UV-vis spectroscopy, XPS, BET, PL, and Mott–Sckottky. The photocatalytic activity and photodegradation mechanism of the as-prepared g-C3N4/BiOI microsphere photocatalysts are conducted under visible light irradiation using MC-LR as the target pollutant. The g-C3N4/BiOI material exhibits superior photocatalytic performance when compared with pure BiOI, the possible reason is the efficient separation of photogenerated carriers at the interface between g-C3N4 and BiOI. The heterostructure is responsible for the improved separation efficiency of photogenerated electron–hole pairs and thus the higher photocatalytic activity. The possible photocatalytic mechanism is proposed based on relative band positions of these two semiconductors.

A comprehensive geochronological and geochemical study was carried out on the gneissic monzogranites, porphyritic granodiorites and charnockites in the Gaozhou complex of the Yunkai massif in the southern part of the South China block to better understand the Early Palaeozoic tectonic regime of the South China block. Laser ablation – inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) U–Pb dating of zircons indicates an age of 453.2 ± 5.1 Ma to the formation of the gneissic monzogranites, whereas the porphyritic granodiorites and charnockites were generated at 437.0 ± 1.5 Ma and 435.2 ± 2.2 Ma, respectively. The gneissic monzogranites show geochemical features consistent with the high-K, calc-alkaline rock series and are strongly peraluminous. They have SiO2 contents ranging from 67.75 to 69.65 wt. % and relatively low CaO contents (1.66–1.94 wt. %). Their REE patterns are fractionated with enriched LREEs and negative Eu anomalies. The samples also show enrichment in LILEs (e.g. Rb and K) and Pb, and depletion in Sr, Ba and HFSEs (e.g. Nb, Ta, Ti and P). They have εNd(t) values of −8.2 to −7.7. Conversely, the porphyritic granodiorites and charnockites are characterized as medium-K, calc-alkaline rock series and weakly to strongly peraluminous. They exhibit pronounced depletions in HFSEs and positive Pb anomalies. Compared to the earlier gneissic monzogranites, these rocks have relatively lower SiO2 (65.50–69.36 wt. %), but higher CaO contents (3.34–4.05 wt. %), and have slightly lower εNd(t) values (−9.1 to −8.4). Petrography and geochemical compositions of the gneissic monzogranites indicate that they are S-type granite and likely formed by partial melting of Neoproterozoic to Early Palaeozoic immature metagreywackes; whereas The porphyritic granodiorites and charnockites are A-type granite and likely derived from low degrees of partial melting of the dry, granulitic residue depleted by prior extraction of granitic melt. The new data for the Caledonian granitoids in the Yunkai massif suggest that they were formed in a post-collisional tectonic setting. They represent the earliest post-collisional alkaline magmatism reported so far in the Yunkai massif, and thus indicate a tectonic regime switch, from compression to extension, as early as the Late Ordovician to Early Silurian (~450–435 Ma).

We examined the in vitro developmental competence of parthenogenetic activation (PA) oocytes activated by an electric pulse (EP) and treated with various concentrations of AZD5438 for 4 h. Treatment with 10 µM AZD5438 for 4 h significantly improved the blastocyst formation rate of PA oocytes in comparison with 0, 20, or 50 µM AZD5438 treatment (46.4% vs. 34.5%, 32.3%, and 24.0%, respectively; P < 0.05). The blastocyst formation rate was higher in the group treated with AZD5438 for 4 h than in the groups treated with AZD5438 for 2 or 6 h (42.8% vs. 38.6% and 37.2%, respectively; P > 0.05). Furthermore, 66.67% of blastocysts derived from these AZD5438-treated PA oocytes had a diploid karyotype. The blastocyst formation rate of PA and somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) embryos was similar between oocytes activated by an EP and treated with 2 mM 6-dimethylaminopurine for 4 h and those activated by an EP and treated with 10 µM AZD5438 for 4 h (11.11% vs. 13.40%, P > 0.05). In addition, the level of maturation-promoting factor (MPF) was significantly decreased in oocytes activated by an EP and treated with 10 µM AZD5438 for 4 h. Finally, the mRNA expression levels of apoptosis-related genes (Bax and Bcl-2) and pluripotency-related genes (Oct4, Nanog, and Sox2) were checked by RT-PCR; however, there were no differences between the AZD5438-treated and non-treated control groups. Our results demonstrate that porcine oocyte activation via an EP in combination with AZD5438 treatment can lead to a high blastocyst formation rate in PA and SCNT experiments.