Broomcorn millet and foxtail millet were first cultivated in Neolithic China then the process spread west across Asia during the Bronze Age. But the distinctive ceramic, and later bronze, vessels utilised in East Asian cuisines for boiling and steaming grains did not move west alongside these crops. Here, the authors use measurements of 3876 charred millet grains to evaluate regional variations and implications for food preparation. In contrast to wheat grains, which became smaller as their cultivation moved east, millet grains became larger as they spread from northern China into Inner Asia and Tibet. This indicates the decoupling of millets from associated cooking techniques as they reached geographical and cultural areas.

Microplastics (MPs) are carbon-rich polymers that are ubiquitous in the environment. With the increase of plastic production, microplastic pollution may be exacerbated and result in significant changes in microbial communities and biogeochemical processes such as carbon cycling, eventually impacting greenhouse gas emission and carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems. However, current research on the effect of MPs on soil carbon cycling is still limited, and there is a lack of systematic review of the scattered information obtained from previous studies. Accordingly, this review provides a systematic overview of the current knowledge on the effects of MPs on soil carbon cycling and gives future research suggestions. Emerging evidence indicates that MPs could affect soil carbon stability and CO2 and CH4 emission by modifying soil physicochemical and microbiological properties; though biodegradable MPs often exhibit a greater effect than nonbiodegradable ones, the specific effects are highly dependent on plastic type, size and concentration. The specific mechanisms of MPs’ impact on soil carbon cycles remain elusive, which are discussed mainly from the perspective of microbial changes, including microbial biomass, microbial community composition, and key enzymes and functional genes associated with carbon metabolism. Further research is needed to elucidate whether MPs have a positive priming effect on soil carbon decomposition and the biotic and abiotic mechanisms involved. This review paper helps researchers gain a clearer picture of how and through which way MPs impact carbon cycling in soil ecosystems.

The numerical investigation focuses on the flow patterns around a rectangular cylinder with three aspect ratios ($L/D=5$, $10$, $15$) at a Reynolds number of $1000$. The study delves into the dynamics of vortices, their associated frequencies, the evolution of the boundary layer and the decay of the wake. Kelvin–Helmholtz (KH) vortices originate from the leading edge (LE) shear layer and transform into hairpin vortices. Specifically, at $L/D=5$, three KH vortices merge into a single LE vortex. However, at $L/D=10$ and $15$, two KH vortices combine to form a LE vortex, with the rapid formation of hairpin vortex packets. A fractional harmonic arises due to feedback from the split LE shear layer moving upstream, triggering interaction with the reverse flow. Trailing edge (TE) vortices shed, creating a Kármán-like street in the wake. The intensity of wake oscillation at $L/D=5$ surpasses that in the other two cases. Boundary layer transition occurs after the saturation of disturbance energy for $L/D=10$ and $15$, but not for $L/D=5$. The low-frequency disturbances are selected to generate streaks inside the boundary layer. The TE vortex shedding induces the formation of a favourable pressure gradient, accelerating the flow and fostering boundary layer relaminarization. The self-similarity of the velocity defect is observed in all three wakes, accompanied by the decay of disturbance energy. Importantly, the decrease in the shedding frequency of LE (TE) vortices significantly contributes to the overall decay of disturbance energy. This comprehensive exploration provides insights into complex flow phenomena and their underlying dynamics.

Organo-montmorillonite (OMnt) has wide applications in paints, clay-polymer nanocomposites, biomaterials, etc. In most cases, the dispersibility and swellability of OMnt dictate the performance of OMnt in the target products. Previous studies have revealed that the properties can be improved when multiple organic species are co-introduced into the interlayer space of montmorillonite (Mnt). In the present study, single surfactant erucylamide (EA), dual-surfactants cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) and octadecyltrimethyl ammonium chloride (OTAC), and ternary-surfactants EA, CTAB, and OTAC were co-introduced into Mnt by solution intercalation. The resulting OMnts were characterized by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, thermogravimetry-differential thermogravimetry (TG-DTG), water contact-angle tests, scanning electronic microscopy (SEM), laser particle-size analysis, and swelling indices. Mnt co-modified by ternary CTAB, OTAC, and EA led to a large d001 value (4.20 nm), surface hydrophobicity with a contact angle of 95.6°, swellability (50 mL/g) with small average particle sizes (2.1−2.8 μm) in xylene, and >99% of the OMnt particles were kept as <5 μm in deionized water. The formation of EA-modified-Mnt was proposed according to hydrophobic affinity, hydrogen bonding, and van der Waals forces. The nanoplatelets of the CTA+, OTA+, and EA co-modified OMnts in xylene were assembled into a house-of-cards structure by face-to-edge and edge-to-edge associations. The electrostatic attractions, electrostatic and steric repulsions, and hydrophobic interactions were responsible for the good dispersibility of OMnt in xylene. The ternary surfactant co-modified OMnt with high dispersion and swellability will make OMnt better suited for real-world applications.

Background. Marfan syndrome (MFS) is a connective tissue disease involving multiple systems, with thoracic aortic aneurysm (TAA) as the most common life-threatening manifestation. Method. A pedigree with TAA was investigated, and peripheral venous blood was extracted from six family members. After whole exome sequencing (WES) and chromosomal microarray analysis (CMA) in these individuals, bioinformatics and inheritance analyses were performed. Result. WES revealed a novel, small, 0.76 Mb microdeletion in 15q21.1, which cosegregated with the disease phenotype in the family and led to the haploinsufficiency of the fibrillin 1 (FBN1) gene, which is associated with MFS. This small copy number variant (CNV) was confirmed by CMA. Conclusion. Our study expands the phenotypic spectrum of the pathogenic CNV associated with MFS, thereby facilitating clinical genetic diagnosis and future genetic counseling for this family.

Schistosomiasis, a parasite infectious disease caused by Schistosoma japonicum, often leads to egg granuloma and fibrosis due to the inflammatory reaction triggered by egg antigens released in the host liver. This study focuses on the role of the egg antigens CP1412 protein of S. japonicum (SjCP1412) with RNase activity in promoting liver fibrosis. In this study, the recombinant egg ribonuclease SjCP1412, which had RNase activity, was successfully prepared. By analysing the serum of the population, it has been proven that the anti-SjCP1412 IgG in the serum of patients with advanced schistosomiasis was moderately correlated with liver fibrosis, and SjCP1412 may be an important antigen associated with liver fibrosis in schistosomiasis. In vitro, the rSjCP1412 protein induced the human liver cancer cell line Hep G2 and liver sinusoidal endothelial cells apoptosis and necrosis and the release of proinflammatory damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs). In mice infected with schistosomes, rSjCP1412 immunization or antibody neutralization of SjCP1412 activity significantly reduced cell apoptosis and necroptosis in liver tissue, thereby reducing inflammation and liver fibrosis. In summary, the SjCP1412 protein plays a crucial role in promoting liver fibrosis during schistosomiasis through mediating the liver cells apoptosis and necroptosis to release DAMPs inducing an inflammatory reaction. Blocking SjCP1412 activity could inhibit its proapoptotic and necrotic effects and alleviate hepatic fibrosis. These findings suggest that SjCP1412 may be served as a promising drug target for managing liver fibrosis in schistosomiasis japonica.

The Hamiltonian of a conventional quantum system is Hermitian, which ensures real spectra of the Hamiltonian and unitary evolution of the system. However, real spectra are just the necessary conditions for a Hamiltonian to be Hermitian. In this paper, we discuss the metric operators for pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonian which is similar to its adjoint. We first present some properties of the metric operators for pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonians and obtain a sufficient and necessary condition for an invertible operator to be a metric operator for a given pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonian. When the pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonian has real spectra, we provide a new method such that any given metric operator can be transformed into the same positive-definite one and the new inner product with respect to the positive-definite metric operator is well defined. Finally, we illustrate the results obtained with an example.

With the increasing power of fiber lasers, single chirped and tilted fiber Bragg gratings (CTFBGs) cannot completely mitigate continuously enhanced system-excited stimulated Raman scattering (SRS). Although improving the loss rate of a single CTFBG or cascading multiple CTFBGs can provide better suppression of the stronger SRS, excessive insertion loss may cause significant attenuation of the output power. Confronting the challenge, we firstly present an SRS mitigation method based on a dual-structure fiber grating in this paper. The dual-structure fiber grating comprises a CTFBG and a fiber Bragg grating structure, which were designed and fabricated on a passive 25/400 double-clad fiber. To evaluate the performance of the grating, a 3 kW fiber master oscillator power amplifier laser is established. The experimental results demonstrate that the SRS mitigation rate of the grating is greater than 30 dB (99.9%), whereas the insertion loss is only approximately 3%, thus allowing for minimal deterioration of the output power. This solves the contradiction between high suppression rate and high insertion loss faced by CTFBGs, which in turn makes dual-structure fiber gratings particularly suitable for mitigating SRS in 3–5 kW high-power fiber lasers.

Aging plays a crucial role in the mechanisms of the impacts of genetic and environmental factors on blood pressure and serum lipids. However, to our knowledge, how the influence of genetic and environmental factors on the correlation between blood pressure and serum lipids changes with age remains to be determined. In this study, data from the Chinese National Twin Registry (CNTR) were used. Resting blood pressure, including systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP), and fasting serum lipids, including total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and triglycerides (TGs) were measured in 2378 participants (1189 twin pairs). Univariate and bivariate structural equation models examined the genetic and environmental influences on blood pressure and serum lipids among three age groups. All phenotypes showed moderate to high heritability (0.37–0.59) and moderate unique environmental variance (0.30–0.44). The heritability of all phenotypes showed a decreasing trend with age. Among all phenotypes, SBP and DBP showed a significant monotonic decreasing trend. For phenotype-phenotype pairs, the phenotypic correlation (Rph) of each pair ranged from −0.04 to 0.23, and the additive genetic correlation (Ra) ranged from 0.00 to 0.36. For TC&SBP, TC&DBP, TG&SBP and TGs&DBP, both the Rph and Ra declined with age, and the Ra difference between the young group and the older adult group is statistically significant (p < .05). The unique environmental correlation (Re) of each pair did not follow any pattern with age and remained relatively stable with age. In summary, we observed that the heritability of blood pressure was affected by age. Moreover, blood pressure and serum lipids shared common genetic backgrounds, and age had an impact on the phenotypic correlation and genetic correlations.

Mammalian oocytes not fertilized immediately after ovulation can undergo ageing and a rapid decline in quality. The addition of antioxidants can be an efficient approach to delaying the oocyte ageing process. Onion peel extract (OPE) contains quercetin and other flavonoids with natural antioxidant activities. In this study, we investigated the effect of OPE on mouse oocyte ageing and its mechanism of action. The oocytes were aged in vitro in M16 medium for 16 h after adding OPE at different concentrations (0, 50, 100, 200, and 500 μg/ml). The addition of 100 μg/ml OPE reduced the oocyte fragmentation rate, decreased the reactive oxygen species (ROS) level, increased the glutathione (GSH) level, and improved the mitochondrial membrane potential compared with the control group. The addition of OPE also increased the expression of SOD1, CAT, and GPX3 genes, and the caspase-3 activity in OPE-treated aged oocytes was significantly lower than that in untreated aged oocytes and similar to that in fresh oocytes. These results indicated that OPE delayed mouse oocyte ageing by reducing oxidative stress and apoptosis and enhancing mitochondrial function.

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Childhood psychiatric symptoms are highly comorbid. Their co-occurrence and association with negative life outcomes is partially explained by deficits in executive control, or processes enabling self-regulation. Here, we test a novel executive neural target in three fMRI tasks and its relevance to shared psychopathology. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: We studied 60 children [15 F/45 M; mean age (SD)=11.6 years (1.62)] with diverse diagnoses including attention deficit disorder (n=26) and autism spectrum disorder (n=22). We extracted a latent general factor of psychopathology using principal component analyses applied to parent-report Child Behavior Checklist syndrome scores. Subjects completed 3 executive control fMRI probes, tapping adaptive control, working memory, and inhibition. Correlational psychophysiological interaction (cPPI) analysis measured correlations between executive control-related modulations of activity in 414 network-affiliated parcels. We selected parcels exhibiting control-related cross-network correlations as well as control-related activity across all tasks and tested them for association with psychopathology. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: cPPI connectivity matrices were thresholded and graphs were identified using the Network-Based Statistic toolbox (p90th percentile PC) as well as control-related activation (>10% activated voxels; p DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results examine cross-network interactions between brain regions during 3 fMRI tasks and their role in explaining individual variation in psychopathology. As executive control links to both comorbidity and life outcomes, identifying the clinically-relevant neural correlates of controlled behavior may lead to transdiagnostic treatments.