Seasonal influenza virus epidemics have a major impact on healthcare systems. Data on population susceptibility to emerging influenza virus strains during the interepidemic period can guide planning for resource allocation of an upcoming influenza season. This study sought to assess the population susceptibility to representative emerging influenza virus strains collected during the interepidemic period. The microneutralisation antibody titers (MN titers) of a human serum panel against representative emerging influenza strains collected during the interepidemic period before the 2018/2019 winter influenza season (H1N1-inter and H3N2-inter) were compared with those against influenza strains representative of previous epidemics (H1N1-pre and H3N2-pre). A multifaceted approach, incorporating both genetic and antigenic data, was used in selecting these representative influenza virus strains for the MN assay. A significantly higher proportion of individuals had a ⩾four-fold reduction in MN titers between H1N1-inter and H1N1-pre than that between H3N2-inter and H3N2-pre (28.5% (127/445) vs. 4.9% (22/445), P < 0.001). The geometric mean titer (GMT) of H1N1-inter was significantly lower than that of H1N1-pre (381 (95% CI 339–428) vs. 713 (95% CI 641–792), P < 0.001), while there was no significant difference in the GMT between H3N2-inter and H3N2-pre. Since A(H1N1) predominated the 2018–2019 winter influenza epidemic, our results corroborated the epidemic subtype.

Hepatitis E is an important zoonosis that is prevalent in China. Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a pathogen that affects humans and animals and endangers public health in China. In this study, the detection of HEV epidemics in swine in Sichuan Province, China, was carried out by nested real-time PCR. A total of 174 stool samples and 160 bile samples from swine in Sichuan Province were examined. In addition, software was used to analyse the biological evolution of HEV. The results showed that within 2 years of swine HEV (SHEV) infection in China, SHEV was first detected in Sichuan Province. HEV was endemic in Sichuan; the positive rate for pig farms was 11.1%, and the total positive sample rate was 10.5%. The age of swine with the highest positive rate (17.9%) was 5–9 weeks. The examined swine species in order of highest to lowest HEV infection rates were Chenghua pig, Large White, Duroc, Pietrain, Landrace and Hampshire. Nucleotide and amino acid sequence analysis showed that the HEV epidemic in swine in Sichuan Province was related to genotype IV, which had the highest homology to HEV in Beijing. Sichuan strains have greater variation than Chinese representative strains, which may indicate the presence of new HEV strains.

Piglets are characteristically cold intolerant and thus susceptible to high mortality. However, browning of white adipose tissue (WAT) can induce non-shivering thermogenesis as a potential strategy to facilitate the animal’s response to cold. Whether cold exposure can induce browning of subcutaneous WAT (sWAT) in piglets in a similar manner as it can in humans remains largely unknown. In this study, piglets were exposed to acute cold (4°C, 10 h) or chronic cold exposure (8°C, 15 days), and the genes and proteins of uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1)-dependent and independent thermogenesis, mitochondrial biogenesis, lipogenic and lipolytic processes were analysed. Interestingly, acute cold exposure induced browning of porcine sWAT, smaller adipocytes and the upregulated expression of UCP1, PGC1α, PGC1β, C/EBPβ, Cidea, UCP3, CKMT1 and PM20D1. Conversely, chronic cold exposure impaired the browning process, reduced mitochondrial numbers and the expression of browning markers, including UCP1, PGC1α and PRDM16. The present study demonstrated that acute cold exposure (but not chronic cold exposure) induces porcine sWAT browning. Thus, browning of porcine sWAT could be a novel strategy to balance the body temperature of piglets, and thus could be protective against cold exposure.

Previous studies showed that spermine could protect the organism from oxidative damage in vivo. However, in vivo information on the antioxidant-related underlying molecular mechanism of spermine is limited. In this experiment, we further evaluated the effects of spermine supplementation and extended spermine administration on the antioxidant status and antioxidant-related signaling molecules gene expression in the liver and longissimus dorsi of piglets. A total of 80 piglets were randomly distributed to two groups, that is, those with adequate nutrient intake administrated with spermine (0.4 mmol/kg BW) or those with restricted nutrient intake supplemented by saline. The piglets were fed in pairs for 7 h or 3, 6, or 9 days. The results are as follows: (1) spermine can promote the antioxidant capacity by increasing enzymatic antioxidant capacity, glutathione content and clearance of oxygen radicals; (2) spermine significantly increased the mRNA levels of enzymatic antioxidant substances, NF-E2-related nuclear factor 2, Kelch-like ECH-associated protein 1, and the mammalian target of rapamycin but decreased the mRNA levels of ribosomal p70 S6 kinase in the liver and longissimus dorsi of the piglets.

The musk deer (Moschus berezovskii) is an economically important species from which musk is extracted and used in perfumes and medicines. Cestodes (parasitic flatworms) of the genus Moniezia are important parasites that infect this endangered species and can cause high mortality in young deer. In 1982, Moniezia (S.) sichuanensis sp. nov. was described from a specimen obtained from wild musk deer. The new species was distinct from the other described species of Moniezia by the sawtooth-shaped interproglottidal glands, the thick vagina and the absence of a cirrus spine. In the present study, 12 cestodes collected from musk deer were examined morphologically and confirmed to be M. sichuanensis. Molecular characterization was performed by amplifying and comparing the internal transcribed spacer 1 (ITS1) and 5.8S rRNA gene (ITS1–5.8S) of ribosomal DNA with available sequences from other Moniezia species. The amplified sequences ranged from 761 to 764 bp and similarity ranged from 98.7–100%, compared to 67.8–92.4% with other Moniezia spp. Construction of a phylogenetic tree using the neighbour-joining method indicated that all 12 ITS1–5.8S sequences formed a single clade, confirming M. sichuanensis as a separate species. This study provides novel molecular insight into M. sichuanensis that could prove useful for future diagnosis and control of monieziasis in musk deer.

A new method, called Cloud of Points (COP) Reconstruction, is proposed in the present work to extend the meshfree method to simulate viscous flows. With the characters of viscous flows, the anisotropic COP structure is distributed in boundary layer. The proposed method can improve the anisotropic COP structure to isotropic COP structure and reduce the condition number of the least square coefficient matrix for conventional meshfree method. The values of the new reconstructed points are calculated by the Lagrange interpolation. The accuracy and the robustness of the presented meshfree solver are demonstrated on a number of standard test cases, including the functions with analytical gradients and the viscous flows past NACA0012 airfoil. The comparison of the simulation results with the experimental data and other numerical simulation data are also investigated.

Cattleyak (hybrid of cattle and yak) exhibit higher capability in adaptability and production than cattle and yak, while the infertility of F1 males greatly restricts the effective utilization of this hybrid and little progress has been made on investigating the mechanisms of the cattleyak infertility. Cattleyak individuals at three development stages (10, 12 and 14-month old) were sampled in this work and the isobaric tag for relative and absolute quantification method was employed to identify differences between their testicular proteomes. The proteomic analysis identified 318 proteins differentially expressed with significance at 12-month stage and 327 at 14-month compared with 10-month stage, respectively. Compared with the testicular proteome from 10-month cattleyak, the gene ontology (GO) annotations of the differentially expressed proteins at 12 months did not indicate significant differences from those at 14 months, which confirmed the histological observation that germ cell reduction was more obvious and spermatogenic arrest may become more serious in 12-month-old cattleyak. On the other hand, 56 differentially expressed proteins were coexpressed at 12 and 14-month stage compared with 10-month stage, in which 32 proteins were upregulated and 24 downregulated. GO analysis revealed that most of the differently expressed proteins were involved in the molecular function of catalytic activity, transporter activity, oxidoreductase activity and protein binding. Further analysis indicated that the differently expressed proteins including testis-expressed protein 101 precursor, RNA-binding motif protein, X chromosome, putative RNA-binding protein 3, heparin-binding proteins, tudor domain-containing protein 1, glutathione S-transferases (GSTA2, GSTP1), heat shock-related 70 kDa protein 2, estradiol 17-β-dehydrogenase11, 2,4-dienoyl-CoA reductase and peroxiredoxin-2 were possibly associated with testis development and spermatogenesis, which could be selected as candidate proteins in future study to examine the mechanisms of cattleyak infertility.

Variability is one of the extreme observational properties of BL Lacertae objects. AO 0235+164 is a well studied BL Lac through the whole electro-magnetic wavebands, it is violently variable in the optical bands. In the present work, we show its optical R band photometric observations carried out during the period of Nov. 2006 to Dec. 2012 using the Ap6E CCD camera attached to the primary focus of the 70 cm meniscus telescope at Abastumani Observatory, Georgia. It shows a large variation of ΔR = 4.88 mag (14.20 - 19.08 mag) during our monitoring period. When periodicity analysis methods are adopted to its R observations from our Abastumani monitoring programme and those in the literature, the signs of some periods, P1 = 8.26 yr, P2 = 0.55 yr, P3 = 0.85 yr, P4 = 1.99 yr are found.

In this talk, we will show the beaming effect for Fermi/LAT blazars, then we discuss the correlations between γ-ray luminosity and other parameters, such as radio Doppler factors, superluminal motions, and core-dominance parameters. We also compare the Doppler factors determined from the γ-ray luminosity, X-ray emissions, and the short-term time scales with those from other methods. Our discussions suggest that γ-ray emissions may be strongly beamed.

The survival behaviour of Vibrio cholerae in cholera epidemics, together with its attributes of virulence-associated genes and molecular fingerprints, are significant for managing cholera epidemics. Here, we selected five strains representative of V. cholerae O1 and O139 involved in cholera events, examined their survival capacity in large volumes of water sampled from epidemic sites of a 2005 cholera outbreak, and determined virulence-associated genes and molecular subtype changes of the surviving isolates recovered. The five strains exhibited different survival capacities varying from 17 to 38 days. The virulence-associated genes of the surviving isolates remained unchanged, while their pulsotypes underwent slight variation. In particular, one waterway-isolated strain maintained virulence-associated genes and evolved to share the same pulsotype as patient strains, highlighting its role in the cholera outbreak. The strong survival capacity and molecular attributes of V. cholerae might account for its persistence in environmental waters and the long duration of the cholera outbreak, allowing effective control measures.

We investigated and quantified the factors which may affect the prevalence of cystic echinococcosis caused by Echinococcus granulosus in Rangtang County using a multidisciplinary approach. From a previously performed field survey, epidemiological data were linked with environmental data. Altitude and land surface temperature were extracted from remote-sensing images. Cumulative logistic regression models were used to identify and quantify the potential risk factors. The multiple regression models confirmed that yaks (χ2 = 4·0447, P = 0·0443), dogs (χ2 = 8·3455, P = 0·0039) and altitude (χ2 = 7·6223, P = 0·0058) were positively correlated with the prevalence of cystic echinococcosis, while land surface temperature may have a negative association. The findings showed that dogs and yaks play the most important role in the transmission of cystic echinococcosis, while altitude and land surface temperature may also be involved in the transmission.

Crystal structure of a new compound KBaB5O9 has been investigated from X-ray powder diffraction data. This compound is isostructural with KSrB5O9 and crystallizes in the monoclinic system with space group P21/c. Unit-cell parameters are a=6.7200(2) Å, b=8.3256(2) Å, c=14.3674(4) Å, and β=92.6103(3) deg. Its structure contains both B3O7 and B3O8 rings, which share a common B atom to form a complex two dimensional network constituting the basic B5O9 unit in the formula. Adjacent networks are bound together by Ba and K atoms, which have eight- and nine-coordinate sites, respectively. In addition, DTA and TGA curves reveal that KBaB5O9 decomposes at 798 °C. Photoluminescence (PL) characteristics of KBaB5O9:Eu3+ have been studied. The PL spectra show the strongest emission at 618 nm and the quench concentration of Eu3+ is 4 at. %.

The high molecular weight glutenin subunits (HMW-GS) and glutenin macropolymer (GMP) in wheat grain are important characteristics that affect the quality of wheat products. Light intensity, as one of the environmental factors affecting grain yield and quality, has been studied extensively; however, little is known about its impact on HMW-GS and distribution of GMP granules in wheat grain. In the present study, two strong-gluten winter wheat cultivars with different subunit compositions were used to evaluate the effect of shading at different grain-filling stages on changes in HMW-GS and distribution of GMP granules in wheat grains. No effects of shading on initial formation time of each individual subunit were found; they responded similarly to shading with an increase in relative content, though the accumulation amount per grain of each individual subunit was decreased due to a decrease in grain weight induced by shading. Shading at different grain-filling stages, especially at the middle grain-filling stage, led to a significant increase in GMP content during grain filling; however, the proportions (by volume, number and surface area) of the larger GMP granules were increased by shading at middle and late grain-filling stages and decreased by shading at early grain-filling stage. It was also found that the content of total HMW-GS was positively correlated with volume proportions of larger GMP granules and negatively correlated with volume proportions of small GMP granules, which indicated that the pattern of response of distribution of GMP granules to shading was closely related to the regulatory effect of shading on the HMW-GS.

A novel borate compound Ba3ScB9O18 has been synthesized by solid-state reaction and its structure has been determined and refined from powder X-ray diffraction data. This compound crystallizes in a hexagonal cell (space group P63/m) with lattice parameters a=7.1360(4) Å and c=16.5420(9) Å, and each unit cell contains two formulas. Its crystal structure is made up of planar B3O6 groups parallel to each other along the [001] direction, regular ScO6 octahedra, irregular BaO6 hexagons, and BaO9 polyhedra to form an analogue structure of Ba3YB9O18. DTA and TGA curves for Ba3ScB9O18 show that it is a chemically stable and congruent melting compound. Luminescence properties for Ba3ScB9O18 were investigated using fluorescence spectroscopy and X-ray excited luminescence measurements. Its emission spectrum upon UV excitation (330 nm) has exhibited a prominent blue-green emission band at about 490 nm, and its XEL spectra show an intense emission band in the range of 360 to 500 nm with peak center at 400 nm. The light yield of Ba3ScB9O18 powders is about 23% as large as that of BGO powders under the same measurement conditions. There seems to be a certain relationship between the scintillation properties and the structural features of Ba3ScB9O18.