Choline plays a crucial role in hepatic lipid homeostasis by acting as a major methyl-group donor. However, despite this well-accepted fact, no study has yet explored how choline’s methyl-donor function contributes to preventing hepatic lipid dysregulation. Moreover, the potential regulatory role of Ire-1α, an ER-transmembrane transducer for the unfolded protein response (UPRer), in choline-mediated hepatic lipid homeostasis remains unexplored. Thus, this study investigated the mechanism by which choline prevents hepatic lipid dysregulation, focusing on its role as a methyl-donor and the involvement of Ire-1α in this process. To this end, a model animal for lipid metabolism, yellow catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidraco) were fed two different diets (adequate or deficient choline diets) in vivo for 10 weeks. The key findings of studies are as follows: 1. Dietary choline, upregulated selected lipolytic and fatty acid β-oxidation transcripts promoting hepatic lipid homeostasis. 2. Dietary choline ameliorated UPRer and prevented hepatic lipid dysregulation mainly through ire-1α signalling, not perk or atf-6α signalling. 3. Choline inhibited the transcriptional expression level of ire-1α by activating site-specific DNA methylations in the promoter of ire-1α. 4. Choline-mediated ire-1α methylations reduced Ire-1α/Fas interactions, thereby further inhibiting Fas activity and reducing lipid droplet deposition. These results offer a novel insight into the direct and indirect regulation of choline on lipid metabolism genes and suggests a potential crosstalk between ire-1α signalling and choline-deficiency-induced hepatic lipid dysregulation, highlighting the critical contribution of choline as a methyl-donor in maintaining hepatic lipid homeostasis.

Using the Dirac–Heisenberg–Wigner formalism, effects of the asymmetric pulse shape on the generation of electron-positron pairs in three typical polarized fields, i.e., linear, middle elliptical and circular fields, are investigated. Two kinds of asymmetries for the falling pulse length, short and elongated, are studied. We find that the interference effect disappears with the shorter pulse length and that the peak value of the momentum spectrum is concentrated in the center of the momentum space. In the case of the extending falling pulse length, a multiring structure without interference appears in the momentum spectrum. Research results show that the momentum spectrum is very sensitive to the asymmetry of the pulse as well as to the polarization of the fields. We also find that the number density of electron-positron pairs under different polarizations is sensitive to the asymmetry of the electric field. For the short falling pulse, the number density can be significantly enhanced by over two orders of magnitude. These results could be useful in planning high-power and/or high-intensity laser experiments.

Limited literatures report the management of congenital left atrial appendage aneurysm (LAAA) which is extremely rare. Chest X-ray firstly showed an enlarged left cardiac silhouette for a 3-year-old patient with pneumonia. Echocardiography and magnetic resonance imaging confirmed a large cyst attached to the left atrium. Aneurysmectomy was performed through lateral thoracotomy using step-by-step method and under the guidance of transoesophageal echocardiography. We aim to show the safety and efficacy of this approach applied to children associated with congenital LAAA.

Blockchain technology has rapidly emerged as a decentralized trusted network to replace the traditional centralized intermediator. Especially, the smart contracts that are based on blockchain allow users to define the agreed behaviour among them, the execution of which will be enforced by the smart contracts. Based on this, we propose a decentralized booking system that uses the blockchain as the intermediator between hoteliers and travellers. The system enjoys the trustworthiness of blockchain, improves efficiency and reduces the cost of the traditional booking agencies. The design of the system has been formally modelled using the CSP# language and verified using the model checker Process Analysis Toolkit. We have implemented a prototype decentralized booking system based on the Ethereum ecosystem.

An experiment was conducted to determine the effects of supplementing different amounts of daidzein in a diet on the growth performance, blood biochemical parameters and meat quality of finishing beef cattle. Thirty finishing Xianan steers were distributed in three groups equilibrated by weight and fed three different dietary treatments (concentrate ratio = 80%): (1) control; (2) 500 mg/kg daidzein and (3) 1000 mg/kg daidzein, respectively. Steers were slaughtered after an 80-day feeding trial. Results showed that daidzein supplementation had no effect on the final body weight, average daily gain and feed conversion rate of steers. Steers fed with 1000 mg/kg daidzein had greater dry matter intake than those fed with control diets. Compared with the control group, the 1000 mg/kg daidzein group had a higher fat thickness, lower shear force and lightness. The pH, drip loss, cooking loss, redness (a*), yellowness (b*), moisture, ash, crude protein and intramuscular fat of the Longissimus dorsi muscle were unaffected by daidzein supplementation. Compared with the control group, the 1000 mg/kg daidzein group significantly increased the serum concentrations of insulin, free fatty acid and Glutamic-pyruvic transaminase. The 500 mg/kg daidzein group significantly increased the serum concentration of tetraiodothyronine compared with the control group. Supplemental daidzein did not affect the blood antioxidant ability and blood immune parameters in serum. In conclusion, daidzein supplementation above 500 mg/day modifies feed intake and metabolic and hormonal profile, with positive and negative effects on meat quality.

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is an important technique for life science research. However, most SCNT embryos fail to develop to term due to undefined reprogramming defects. Here, we show that abnormal Xi occurs in somatic cell NT blastocysts, whereas in female blastocysts derived from cumulus cell nuclear transfer, both X chromosomes were inactive. H3K27me3 removal by Kdm6a mRNA overexpression could significantly improve preimplantation development of NT embryos, and even reached a 70.2% blastocyst rate of cleaved embryos compared with the 38.5% rate of the control. H3K27me3 levels were significantly reduced in blastomeres from cloned blastocysts after overexpression of Kdm6a. qPCR indicated that rDNA transcription increased in both NT embryos and 293T cells after overexpression of Kdm6a. Our findings demonstrate that overexpression of Kdm6a improved the development of cloned mouse embryos by reducing H3K27me3 and increasing rDNA transcription.

This article outlines the evolution of a rescue team in responding to adenovirus prevention with a deployable field hospital. The local governments mobilized a shelter hospital and a rescue team consisting of 59 members to assist with rescue and response efforts after an epidemic outbreak of adenovirus. We describe and evaluate the challenges of preparing for deployment, field hospital maintenance, treatment mode, and primary treatment methods. The field hospital established at the rescue scene consisted of a medical command vehicle, a computed tomography shelter, an X-ray shelter, a special laboratory shelter, an oxygen and electricity supply vehicle, and epidemic prevention and protection equipment. The rescue team comprised paramedics, physicians, X-ray technicians, respiratory therapists, and logistical personnel. In 22 days, more than 3000 patients with suspected adenovirus infection underwent initial examinations. All patients were properly treated, and no deaths occurred. After emergency measures were implemented, the spread of adenovirus was eventually controlled. An emergency involving infectious diseases in less-developed regions demands the rapid development of a field facility with specialized medical personnel when local hospital facilities are either unavailable or unusable. An appropriate and detailed prearranged action plan is important for infectious diseases prevention. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2018;12:109–114)

In recent years, with the increasingly frequent variety of large-scale disasters that have happened in China, the Chinese People’s Armed Police Forces (PAP) has undertaken increasingly frequent and diversified tasks, which has led to greater requirements for the construction of emergency medical rescue equipment. Therefore, as determined by the characteristics of the PAP’s tasks and based on the construction of special boxes and frame tent equipment, a new PAP mobile rescue hospital system was successfully developed, and all PAP provincial-level medical rescue teams have been equipped with this system. In the present article, we describe this mobile rescue hospital system, which is mainly composed of professional emergency vehicles, frame-type tents, and advanced medical equipment. The system has the following characteristics: significant integration, a fast response, flexibility, and practicability. The mobile rescue system is generally used as the army’s own health service support system and to provide certain emergency medical rescue services to disaster-stricken people. The successful construction and further application of this system have significance in terms of accelerating the response of rescue teams and the emergency treatment ability of the PAP’s provincial-level emergency medical rescue teams. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2018;12:455–459)

A novel and efficient photocatalyst of three dimensional (3D) Ba5Ta4O15 flower-like microsphere was synthesized via an alkaline etch under hydrothermal condition. The influence of reaction temperature, reaction time, and alkaline concentration on the morphology were investigated for the 3D Ba5Ta4O15 flower-like microsphere photocatalyst. The morphology and structure of the 3D Ba5Ta4O15 were characterized using x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, transmission electron microscope, and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. The results show that the elegant flower-like structure was composed of Ba5Ta4O15 nanosheets. The 3D Ba5Ta4O15 flower-like microspheres show a higher photocatalytic activity in the degradation of methylene blue under ultraviolet light than the bulk Ba5Ta4O15 microcrystal by the solid-state-reacted synthesized. The UV–vis diffuse reflectance spectra, photoluminescence spectra, volumetric adsorption method, and photocurrent response of the Ba5Ta4O15 photocatalyst were characterized indicated that the higher photocatalytic activity of flower-like Ba5Ta4O15 microspheres was due to the high crystallinity, large surface area and the effective charge separation.

The present study investigated the effects of different levels of urea nitrogen (N) fertilizer on nutrient accumulation, in vitro rumen gas production and fermentation characteristics of forage oat straw (FOS) from oats (Avena sativa L. ‘Qinghai 444’) grown in the Tibet region of China. Fertilizer, applied at seeding (day 1), stem elongation (days 52–54) and heading (days 63–67), increased plant height and prolonged the maturity stage of the plant by 4–11 days compared with the non-fertilized control. Oat plants were harvested at maturity at the node 3–4 cm above ground, and then separated into grains and FOS. Both FOS and grain yields increased quadratically with increasing N fertilization, and their theoretical maximums occurred at the N fertilizing rates of 439 and 385 kg/ha, respectively. Increases in N fertilization did not affect the hemicellulose content of FOS, but substantially promoted the accumulation of crude protein, cellulose and lignin, resulting in a decrease in the energy content available for metabolism. A 72-h incubation of FOS with rumen fluids from lactating cows showed that increasing N resulted in FOS that showed a slower fermentation rate, decreased in vitro dry matter disappearance and lower cumulative gas production, but unchanged fermentation gas composition. Nitrogen fertilization increased the final pH in culture fluids and decreased the microbial volatile fatty acid (VFA) production. The molar proportions of acetate and propionate were not affected, but molar propionate proportion decreased linearly with increasing urea fertilization, and consequently, the ratio of lipogenic (e.g., acetate and butyrate)-to-glucogenic acids (propionate) tended to increase. In brief, increasing urea N fertilization promoted the growth of forage oats and increased the biomass yield as well as the crude protein and cellulose content of FOS. Considering the negative effect of increased lignin content on nutrient digestibility and total VFA production, the suggested range of urea N fertilization is 156–363 kg N/ha for forage oats planted in Tibet to retain the nutritive value of FOS in the rumen.

A completely randomized experiment for planting highland barley in 36 field plots of the Lhasa Agricultural Experiment Station was applied to investigate the effect of urea nitrogen (N) fertilization levels of 0 (control), 156, 258, 363, 465 and 570 kg/ha on nutrient accumulation, in vitro rumen gas production and fermentation characteristics of highland barley straw (HBS). Each urea application was divided into three portions of 0.4, 0.3 and 0.3 and sequentially fertilized at seeding (growth stage (GS) 0), stem elongation (GS 32) and heading (GS 49), respectively. The maturity stage lasted 5–13 days longer in response to the urea N fertilization compared with the control. After removing grains, HBS biomass was harvested at maturity. The biomass yields of leaf, stem, straw and grain were increased quadratically with increasing urea N fertilization, and HBS and grain yields peaked at the estimated urea N fertilization levels of 385 and 428 kg/ha, respectively. The increase of urea N fertilization increased the accumulation of crude protein, cellulose and lignin, and decreased the content of ash and hemicellulose in HBS, resulting in a decrease of the energy content available to be metabolized. After incubating HBS for 72 h with rumen fluids from lactating cows, the urea N fertilization decreased in vitro dry matter disappearance and cumulative gas production, and slightly altered fermentation end-gas composition. Urea N fertilization decreased microbial volatile fatty acid production, but did not alter the ratio of lipogenic acetate and butyrate to glucogenic propionate. In a brief, the current urea N fertilization strategy promoted the growth of the highland barley and increased biomass yield, protein and cellulose accumulation of HBS. A urea N fertilization level ⩽385 kg/ha could be sufficient for growth of highland barley in Tibet without a consequent nutritive reduction in ruminal digestion.

By solving the coupled equations of the electromagnetic field and electrostatic potential, we investigate solitary waves in an asymmetric electron–positron plasma and/or electron–positron–ion plasmas with delicate features. It is found that the solutions of the coupled equations can capture multipeak structures of solitary waves in the case of cold plasma, which are left out by using the long-wavelength approximation. By considering the effect of ion motion with respect to non-relativistic and ultra-relativistic temperature plasmas, we find that the ions’ mobility can lead to larger-amplitude solitary waves; especially, this becomes more obvious for a high-temperature plasma. The effects of asymmetric temperature between electrons and positrons and the ion fraction on the solitary waves are also studied and presented. It is shown that the amplitudes of solitary waves decrease with positron temperature in asymmetric temperature electron–positron plasmas and decrease also with ion concentration.

Three-dimensional transmission electron microscopy (3D-TEM) is a powerful technology that provides 3D characterization of the internal details of a material. In this work, for the first time, 3D-TEM was used to characterize a laser-sintered polymer nanocomposite. The dispersion of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in the laser-sintered polyamide 12 (PA12)-CNT nanocomposite parts was evaluated. At first, to prepare 3D-TEM samples at specific locations, a focused ion beam technique was used. Then, high quality two-dimensional (2D)-TEM images were achieved at various scanning angles for the PA12-CNT laser-sintered sample. After that, 3D-TEM images were reconstructed by combining all the 2D-TEM images. Results revealed that the CNTs were agglomerate-free in the PA12-CNT parts after laser sintering, which helps to explain previously reported improvement in mechanical properties of laser-sintered PA12-CNT parts.

There are three data pipelines for LAMOST survey. The raw data is reduced to one dimension spectra by the data reduction pipeline(2D pipeline), the extracted spectra are classified and measured by the spectral analysis pipeline(1D pipeline), while stellar parameters are measured by LASP pipeline.

(a) The data reduction pipeline. The main tasks of the data reduction pipeline include bias calibration, flat field, spectra extraction, sky subtraction, wavelength calibration, exposure merging and wavelength band connection.

(b) The spectra analysis pipeline. This pipeline is designed to classify and identify objects from the extracted spectra and to measure their redshift (or radial velocity). The PCAZ (Glazebrook et al. 1998) method is applied to do the classification and redshift measurement.

(c) Stellar parameters LASP. Stellar parameters pipeline (LASP) is to estimate stellar atmospheric parameters, e.g. effective temperature Teff, surface gravity log g, and metallicity [Fe/H], for F, G and K type stars. To effectively determine those fundamental stellar measurements, three steps with different methods are employed. The first step utilizes the line indices to approximately define the effective temperature range of the analyzed star. Secondly, a set of the initial approximate values of the three parameters are given based on template fitting method. Finally, we exploit ULySS (Koleva et al. 2009) to give the final values of parameters through minimizing the χ 2 value between the observed spectrum and a multidimensional grid of model spectra which is generated by an interpolating of ELODIE library. There are two other classification for A type star and M type star. For A type star, standard MK system is employed (Gray et al. 2009) to give each object temperature class and luminosity type. For M type star, they are classified into subclasses by an improved Hammer method, and metallicity of each objects is also given.

During the pilot survey, algorithms were improved and the pipelines were tested. The products of LAMOST survey will include extracted and calibrated spectra in FITS format, a catalog of FGK stars with stellar parameters, a catalog of M dwarf with subclass and metallicity, and a catalog of A type star with MK classification. A part of the pilot survey data, including about 319 000 high quality spectra with SNR > 10, a catalog of stellar parameters of FGK stars and another catalog of a subclass of M type stars have been released to the public in August 2012 (Luo et al. 2012). The general survey started from October 2012, and completed the first year survey. The formal data release one (DR1) is being prepared, which will include both pilot survey and first year general survey, and planed to be released under the LAMOST data policy.

The reversible switching between the amorphous and crystalline phases of Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) is investigated with ab initio molecular dynamics. We apply different quench rates (-16 K/ps, -5 K/ps, -2 K/ps, and -0.45 K/ps) and different annealing temperatures (500 K, 600 K, 700 K, and 800 K) to amorphize and crystallize GST respectively. Results show that the generated amorphous is strongly dependent on the quench rate. For -16 K/ps and -5 K/ps, generated amorphous samples have different density of crystal seeds, higher in the later. The amorphous structure formed at -2 K/ps contains a single crystalline cluster, while that formed at the quench rate of -0.45 K/ps had sufficient time to completely crystallize the amorphous phase. Annealing the amorphous systems formed at different rates shows that crystallization depends both on the annealing temperature and on the structure of the initial system (i.e., whether or not it contains crystalline clusters or crystal seeds). At 500 K, formation of crystalline clusters occurs readily within a few ps while the rate at which they grow is slow, taking 0.9 ns to complete the crystallization. In contrast, crystalline cluster formation is inhibited at 800 K. In the intermediate temperature range, both crystalline cluster formation and growth occur within a few hundred ps indicating that these temperatures leads to the fastest crystallization. The crystallization of a 63-atom at ∼900 K resulted in a highly relaxed crystal structure showing a clear tendency for separation of Ge and Sb species in layers. This model also indicates a tendency of segregation of vacancies, suggesting that vacancy layering may play a key role in the crystallization process.

Kashin-Beck disease (KBD) is a chronic endemic osteoarthropathy, which mainly occurs in West and Northeast China. Epidemiological studies suggest that Se deficiency is an important environmental factor for the incidence of KBD. Glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPx4) belongs to the glutathione peroxidase family, which is crucial for optimal antioxidant defences. Our purpose is to investigate the putative association between GPx4 polymorphisms and the risk of KBD. Restriction fragment length polymorphism-PCR was used to detect two SNP (rs713041, rs4807542) in 219 cases and 194 controls in Han Chinese subjects, and quantitative analysis for the GPx4 mRNA level was performed by the real-time PCR method. The results revealed that linkage disequilibrium existed in the two SNP. A significant difference was observed in the haplotype A-T (P = 0·0066) of GPx4, which was obviously lower in the KBD cases (0·006 v. 0·032 %). Correlation analysis based on a single locus showed no association between each SNP and KBD risk. Furthermore, the GPx4 mRNA level was dramatically lower in the blood of KBD patients. Overall, our finding indicated GPx4 polymorphisms and decreased mRNA level may be related to the development of KBD in the Chinese population, suggesting GPx4 as a possible candidate susceptibility gene for KBD.

In this paper, the ion jet generation from the interaction of an ultraintense laser pulse and a rear-side concave target is investigated analytically using a simple fluid model. We find that the ion expanding surface at the rear-side is distorted due to a strong charge-separation field, and that this distortion becomes dramatic with a singular cusp shown on the central axis at a critical time. The variation of the transverse ion velocity and the relative ion density diverge on the cusp, signaling the emergence of an on-axis ion jet. We have obtained analytical expressions for the critical time and the maximum velocity of the ion jet, and suggested an optimum shape for generating a collimated energetic ion jet. The above theoretical analysis has been verified by particle-in-cell (PIC) numerical simulations.