The incidence of scarlet fever has increased dramatically in recent years in Chongqing, China, but there has no effective method to forecast it. This study aimed to develop a forecasting model of the incidence of scarlet fever using a seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) model. Monthly scarlet fever data between 2011 and 2019 in Chongqing, China were retrieved from the Notifiable Infectious Disease Surveillance System. From 2011 to 2019, a total of 5073 scarlet fever cases were reported in Chongqing, the male-to-female ratio was 1.44:1, children aged 3–9 years old accounted for 81.86% of the cases, while 42.70 and 42.58% of the reported cases were students and kindergarten children, respectively. The data from 2011 to 2018 were used to fit a SARIMA model and data in 2019 were used to validate the model. The normalised Bayesian information criterion (BIC), the coefficient of determination (R2) and the root mean squared error (RMSE) were used to evaluate the goodness-of-fit of the fitted model. The optimal SARIMA model was identified as (3, 1, 3) (3, 1, 0)12. The RMSE and mean absolute per cent error (MAPE) were used to assess the accuracy of the model. The RMSE and MAPE of the predicted values were 19.40 and 0.25 respectively, indicating that the predicted values matched the observed values reasonably well. Taken together, the SARIMA model could be employed to forecast scarlet fever incidence trend, providing support for scarlet fever control and prevention.

We examined whether physical activity (PA) explains the association between dietary inflammatory potential and osteoarthritis (OA) in the elderly. A total of 1249 elderly people (≥65 years) were eligible for this study from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2011 to 2016. The semi-quantitative Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) and Global PA Questionnaire (GPAQ) were used to evaluate the diet and PA of the elderly, respectively. The multivariable logistic regression model estimated the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) between Energy-adjusted Dietary Inflammatory Index (E-DII) and OA. The interaction of E-DII and PA on depressive events was tested, and the mediation analysis of PA was performed. The average E-DII in this study was +0.68 (SE 0.08), and the score ranges from -5.32 (most anti-inflammatory) to +4.26 (most pro-inflammatory). In comparison with the first quartile, the elderly from the second quartile (OR: 1.16 [95% CI: 1.06, 1.68]) to the fourth quartile (OR: 1.64 [95% CI: 1.13, 2.37]) had a higher risk of OA before adjustment for PA. An interaction was observed between E-DII and PA in terms of the risk of OA (PInteraction < 0.001). The whole related part was mediated by PA (20.08%). Our findings indicated that the higher pro-inflammatory potential of diet was associated with a higher risk of OA, and low PA was an important part of the mediating factor in the relationship between systemic low-grade dietary inflammation and the risk of OA.

Using frequency-modulated continuous wave radar data from the 32nd Chinese Antarctic Research Expedition in 2015/16, subsurface profiles were obtained along an East Antarctic inland traverse from Zhongshan station to Dome A, and four distinct regions were selected to analyze the spatiotemporal variability in historical surface mass balance (SMB). Based on depth, density, and age data from ice cores along the traverse, the radar data were calibrated to yield average SMB data. The zone 49–195 km from the coast has the highest SMB (235 kg m−2 a−1). The 780–892 km zone was most affected by the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, and the SMB during ad 1454–1836 (71 kg m−2 a−1) was only one-quarter of that in the 20th century. The SMB in the 1080–1157 km zone fluctuates the most, possibly due to erosion or irregular deposition of snow by katabatic winds in low SMB areas with surface elevation fluctuations. Dome A (1157–1236 km) has the lowest SMB (29 kg m−2 a−1) and did not decrease during Little Ice Age. Understanding the spatiotemporal variability of SMB in a larger space can help us understand the complex climate history of Antarctica.

Mineral particles in bone are interlaced with collagen fibrils, hindering the investigation of bioapatite crystallites (BAp). This study utilized a special whale rostrum (the most highly mineralized bone ever recorded) to measure the crystallites of bone BAp via long-term dissolution in water. The BAp in the rostrum has a low solubility (6.7 ppm Ca and 3.8 ppm P after 150 days dissolution) as well as in normal bones, which leads to its Ksp value of ~10−53. Atomic force microscopy results show tightly compacted mineral crystallites and confirm the low amount of collagen in the rostrum. Additionally, the mineral crystallites demonstrate irregular plate-like shapes with variable sizes. The small crystallites (~11 × 24 nm) are easily detached from BAp prisms, compared with the large crystallites (~50 nm). Moreover, various orientations of crystallites are observed on the edge of the prisms, which suggest a random direction of mineral growth. Furthermore, these plate-like crystallites prefer to be stacked layer by layer under weak regulation from collagen. The morphology of rostrum after dissolution provides new insights into the actual morphology of BAp crystallites.

Underground Nuclear Astrophysics in China (JUNA) will take the advantage of the ultra-low background in Jinping underground lab. High current accelerator with an ECR source and detectors were commissioned. JUNA plans to study directly a number of nuclear reactions important to hydrostatic stellar evolution at their relevant stellar energies. At the first period, JUNA aims at the direct measurements of 25Mg(p,γ)26 Al, 19F(p,α) 16 O, 13C(α, n) 16O and 12C(α,γ) 16O near the Gamow window. The current progress of JUNA will be given.

Chinese jiaotou is an economically important crop that is widely cultivated in East Asia. The lack of simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers has been a major obstacle for genetic studies of this crop. In the present study, SSR markers were developed for Chinese jiaotou on a large scale, based on the crop's transcriptome assembled de novo by a previous study. A search for SSR loci in the transcriptome's expressed sequence tags (ESTs) revealed 2157 SSRs, of which primer pairs could be developed for 1494. Among these resulting SSRs, trinucleotide repeat motifs were the most abundant type, with GAA/TTC motifs occurring most frequently. Analysing the annotated function of SSR-containing ESTs revealed that they enriched into the GO categories involved in transcription regulation, oxidation–reduction, transport, etc. The quality and transferability of these markers were also assessed using 100 randomly selected EST–SSRs, and the result showed that these markers were of good quality and possessed high cross-species transferability. In addition, the developed SSR markers were used to analyse the genetic diversity of 19 cultivated and four wild accessions, resulting in three distinct groups, cluster I, II and III. Interestingly, all four wild accessions were assigned to cluster III, and two local varieties from northern Hunan, China, were closely related to the wild genotypes. These results provide new insights into the origin of Chinese jiaotou. The EST–SSRs developed herein represent the first large-scale development of SSR markers in Chinese jiaotou, and they can be widely used for genetic studies of the crop.

Fenoxaprop-P-ethyl, a phenoxy herbicide of the aryloxy–phenoxy–propionic acid group, had a strong control effect when applied POST to weedy rice in this study, with the effective concentrations of 294 μM and 218 μM of herbicide causing 50% inhibition (IC50) in plant height and fresh weight values, respectively. However, fenoxaprop-P-ethyl caused phytotoxicity in cultivated rice. Isoxadifen-ethyl, a widely used herbicide safener in rice, can decrease the phytotoxicity caused by fenoxaprop-P-ethyl. Owing to the extremely similar morphological features and physiological properties of weedy and cultivated rice, it is not practical to spray isoxadifen-ethyl directly on cultivated rice plants to safen them. Applying the safener directly to cultivated rice seeds may be a practical alternative method. To improve the biological activity of isoxadifen-ethyl seed treatments, novel compounds were designed by splicing other groups, including amines, amino acids, and 2- methoxy-5-nitrophenol sodium salt, to the parental structure of isoxadifen-ethyl. Through hydrolysis, acyl chlorination, acyl amination, and esterification, a series of isoxadifen-ethyl derivatives were synthesized and their structures were determined by mass spectrometry and 1H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The biological activities of five of the isoxadifen-ethyl derivatives, which possessed recovery effects similar to isoxadifen-ethyl, were able to relieve herbicide phytotoxicity. In pot experiments, isoxadifen-ethyl showed almost no activity as a seed treatment, while three derivative compounds, when used independently as seed treatments, were able to prevent the damage caused by fenoxaprop-P-ethyl. The results will help to develop a new control method for weedy rice, thereby decreasing production costs and increasing farmers’ incomes.

The Shan-Chen multiphase lattice Boltzmann model (LBM) coupled with Carnahan-Starling real-gas equation of state (C-S EOS)was proposed to simulate three-dimensional (3D) cavitation bubbles. Firstly, phase separation processes were predicted and the inter-phase large density ratio over 2×104 was captured successfully. The liquid-vapor density ratio at lower temperature is larger. Secondly, bubble surface tensions were computed and decreased with temperature increasing. Thirdly, the evolution of creation and condensation of cavitation bubbles were obtained. The effectiveness and reliability of present method were verified by energy barrier theory. The influences of temperature, pressure difference and critical bubble radius on cavitation bubbles were analyzed systematically. Only when the bubble radius is larger than the critical value will the cavitation occur, otherwise, cavitation bubbles will dissipate due to condensation. According to the analyses of radius change against time and the variation ratio of bubble radius, critical radius is larger under lower temperature and smaller pressure difference condition, thus bigger seed bubbles are needed to invoke cavitation. Under higher temperature and larger pressure difference, smaller seed bubbles can invoke cavitation and the expanding velocity of cavitation bubbles are faster. The cavitation bubble evolution including formation, developing and collapse was captured successfully under various pressure conditions.

A seawater salinity sensor based on microring resonator with weak temperature dependence is proposed, which is coated by MgF2 film with positive thermo-optic coefficient. Temperature dependences of the sensor on fiber diameter, probing wavelength and coating thickness are theoretically investigated and ranges of microfiber diameters for weak temperature dependence are obtained. Under the temperature insensitive condition, sensitivity and detection limit of salinity sensing are studied. By optimizing the parameters of the sensing system, salinity sensitivity and detection limit can reach 0.03 nm/‰ and 0.13‰, respectively. The model presented here may be helpful for developing weak temperature dependence sensors for salinity sensing with high sensitivity, low detection limit and miniaturized sizes.

Deposition of extracellular amyloid-β (Aβ) peptide is one of the pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Accumulation of Aβ is thought to associate with cognition deficits, neuroinflammation and apoptosis observed in AD. However, effective neuroprotective approaches against Aβ neurotoxicity are unavailable. In the present study, we analysed the effects of pranlukast, a selective cysteinyl leukotriene receptor 1 (CysLT1R) antagonist, on the impairment of learning and memory formation induced by Aβ and the probable underlying electrophysiological and molecular mechanisms. We found that bilateral intrahippocampal injection of Aβ1–42 resulted in a significant decline of spatial learning and memory of mice in the Morris water maze (MWM) and Y-maze tests, together with a serious depression of in vivo hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP) in the CA1 region of the mice. Importantly, this treatment caused significant increases in CysLT1R expression and subsequent NF-κB signaling, caspase-3 activation and Bcl-2 downregulation in the hippocampus or prefrontal cortex. Oral administration of pranlukast at 0.4 or 0.8 mg/kg for 4 wk significantly reversed Aβ1–42-induced impairments of cognitive function and hippocampal LTP in mice. Furthermore, pranlukast reversed Aβ1–42-induced CysLT1R upregulation, and markedly suppressed the Aβ1–42-triggered NF-κB pathway, caspase-3 activation and Bcl-2 downregulation in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex in mice. Liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) assay confirmed its presence in the brain after oral administration of pranlukast in mice. These data disclose novel findings about the therapeutic potential of pranlukast, revealing a previously unknown therapeutic possibility to treat memory deficits associated with AD.

An investigation with computational fluid dynamics of the ground effect on a small bird revealed quantitatively the obstruction of the vortex expansion resulting from the presence of the ground at varied distance. Preceding authors focused mainly on the bird's wings, generally neglecting the bird's body; we discuss specifically the distinction of the aerodynamic effect between cases with and without the presence of the bird's body. The results of simulation show that, considering only two wings, for a distance between the wing model and the ground smaller than a semi-span, the smaller is the ground clearance, the more significant is the ground effect. At clearance 0.37 times a semi-span, the drag is decreased 11%, and the lift is increased 5.6%. The ground effect for an intact bird model composed of both wings and body is less effective than that for a simplified model with body omitted, because a suction was observed on the lower surface of the intact bird's trunk at clearance 0.37 times a semi-span; for this reason the intact bird model benefits less from the ground effect than the model with body excluded, but increased lift and decreased drag remain observable. This research treating the ground effect on a gliding bird reveals the importance of the presence of the bird's body in both computational and experimental models.

An unusual, lichenoporid-like bryozoan colony from Mid-Silurian strata on Gotland is described as a new cystoporate, Inconobotopora lichenoporoides new genus and species; a poorly known form from the same area and approximate horizon is reclassified as Inconobotopora silurica (Hennig, 1906). Similarities in overall morphology, particularly flagged by the distinctive radial-disk construction, combine with geochronologic sequence to suggest the possibility of an evolutionary lineage from Ordovician Constellaria, through Silurian Inconobotopora, to Devonian Botryllopora, and perhaps even on to Cretaceous-Cenozoic-Recent Lichenopora (although this last extension is extremely difficult to demonstrate in the present state of knowledge).

We studied the optical nonlinearities of modified 3,3′-diethylthiadicarbocyanine iodides (X-DTDCI) in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) solutions (X = H, Cl, Br at meso position) by a pump-probe technique with crossed polarized chirped laser pulses at room temperature. Reverse-saturable-absorption (RSA) with monoexponential lifetimes is observed at 532 nm in all the samples studied. We determined the effective excited-state absorption cross-sections and their lifetimes for all the samples investigated and found that they clearly correlate to the substituent X at the meso position. Empowered by the chirped pulses, a much faster nonlinearity with a decay time of ˜3.1 ps that is much shorter than the laser pulses used, is unveiled in Cl-DTDCI. We expressed both the absorptive and the refractive part of this fast nonlinearity as the equivalent molecular hyperpolarizability γ1212 and found γ1212 = (8.1 + i9.8) × 10−32erg−1.

We report semi-empirical calculations of modified 3,3'-diethylthiacyanine iodide (DTC1), 3,3'-diethylthiacarbocyanine iodide (DTC3) and 3,3'-diethylthiadicarbocyanine iodide (DTC5), particularly with halogen substitution at the meso position in the polymethine bridge. Primarily we investigate geometrical changes and infer spectral trends from the molecular orbital levels. The semi-empirical calculations for the unsubstituted DTC3 agree well with an ab initio Hartree-Fock result. In all molecules multiple conformations are examined. Significant changes in dipole moments are noted between the cis and trans forms. Calculated electronic spectra at the CI singles level are compared to the measured spectra with reasonable agreement. Halogenation effects show a rotation of the benzthiazole groups out of planarity. We draw conclusions about consequent effects on solubility and excited state spectral changes.

We present preliminary results of two monitoring projects on AGNs and BL Lacs with four intermediate-band optical filters at Lick Observatory, South African Astronomical Observatory, and Siding Spring Observatory. We applied differential photometry between the target and non-variable field stars to derive the variability amplitudes. All the AGNs varied in all wavebands, with amplitudes from 30% to 90%. The variations in shorter wavelength filters are always larger than in longer wavelength filters. We did not observe significant continuum slope changes. Continuum variations of BL Lacs up to 0.2 mag in 20 minutes were observed. Interestingly, we found a time lag of 6–8 minutes between two seemingly correlated variations observed in the intermediate U band with the 1-m telescope and in broad V band with the 24-in. telescope at SSO.