•Examines how gentrification could serve as an analytic lens for rural changes in China.•Expands the analysis of ‘marginalized’ groups from the household level to the individual level.•Calls for a ...lived-experience approach to capture the dynamics and complexities of the gentrification process.•Adds evidence to the diversification and abstraction of displacement.
After decades of scholarship, gentrification as a concept has gone global, spreading to diverse geographic and socio-cultural contexts. Drawing upon discussion and debate about this concept, this paper seeks to explain how local villagers in Dali, in southwest China, have been engaged in bringing about ‘gentrification.’ I refer to gentrification in quotation marks because the process analyzed in this paper is not the same as the one typically written about in most of the gentrification literature, in the sense that some villagers are not displaced victims but ‘assistant gentrifiers’ actively pushing forward ‘gentrification’ in the countryside. This paper argues that, though the gentrification framework enables researchers to investigate the cause, outcome, and everyday character of a similar process in a non-western context, it has to be applied with caution, without overlooking contextual specificities and other processes that are mingled with gentrification. Besides noting the spatiality and temporality of the rural gentrification process, this paper expands the discussion of displacement by recognizing its variegated nature within a household and making it explicit that displacement is more than eviction from original housing and includes sociocultural impacts.
Polyester elastomers are highly flexible and elastic materials that have demonstrated considerable potential in various biomedical applications including cardiac, vascular, neural, and bone tissue ...engineering and bioelectronics. Polyesters are desirable candidates for future commercial implants due to their biocompatibility, biodegradability, tunable mechanical properties, and facile synthesis and fabrication methods. The incorporation of bioactive components further improves the therapeutic effects of polyester elastomers in biomedical applications. In this review, novel structural modification methods that contribute to outstanding mechanical behaviors of polyester elastomers are discussed. Recent advances in the application of polyester elastomers in tissue engineering and bioelectronics are outlined and analyzed. A prospective of the future research and development on polyester elastomers is also provided.
The effects of the evolution of the lamellar alpha microstructure on the impact toughness of Ti-17 alloy are investigated. For this purpose, the beta-processed material is isothermally forged at ...820°C and subsequently heat treated using the combination of solid solution and aging treatment. Then the impact tests are carried out at room temperature. The corresponding microstructure and fracture surface are examined by scanning electron microscope (SEM). Microstructural observations reveal that globularization behavior is the main feature of microstructure evolution and the globularization fraction increases with the increasing of prestrain. However, globularization behavior has a negative influence on the impact toughness of Ti-17 alloy. In this work, the impact toughness have been obtained in the range of 29–55J/cm2 via varying globularization fraction of alpha phase. A linear relationship between the impact toughness and globularization fraction can be observed though the quantitative analysis. The linear equation is expressed as A=−0.3232f+59.885. The two major reasons can be used to explain the effect of globularization fraction on the impact property of Ti-17 alloy. One explanation is that the lamellar structure can provide excellent interfacial strengthening effect, which can improve the toughness of material, and makes it not easy to fracture. On the other hand, the fracture surface of specimen with the lamellar structure has larger amplitude of ups and downs. A long crack path length will be generated during fracture process. By contrast, the fracture of specimen with the equiaxed structure presents more flat surface and shorter crack path.
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is widely applied to the field of ocean remote sensing. Clear SAR images are the basis for ocean information acquisitions, such as parameter retrieval of ocean waves ...and wind field inversion of the ocean surface. However, the SAR ocean images are usually blurred, which seriously affects the acquisition of ocean information. The reasons for the wave blurring in SAR images mainly include the following two aspects. One is that when SAR observes the ocean, the motion of ocean waves will have a greater impact on imaging quality. The other is that the ocean's surface is seriously decorrelated within the integration time. In order to obtain clear SAR images of ocean waves, a SAR imaging algorithm of ocean waves based on the optimum subaperture is proposed, aiming at the above two aspects. The optimum focus setting of the ocean waves is calculated, drawing support from the azimuth phase velocity of the dominant wave. The optimum subaperture is further calculated according to the proposed new evaluation, namely,
. Finally, according to the optimum focus setting and the optimum subaperture, the dominant wave is refocused, and a clear SAR image of the dominant wave can be obtained. The proposed algorithm was applied to airborne L-band and P-band SAR data. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm was compared with present methods, and the results sufficiently demonstrated the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed algorithm.
Sea surface currents (SSCs) are of great importance in monitoring the evolving dynamics of oceans and can be effectively obtained from sequential remote sensing images. However, the absence of ...traceable feature patterns in sequential remote sensing images constrains the capabilities for retrieving SSCs. In this article, an approach was presented to retrieve SSCs by merging currents derived from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and ocean color (OC) images computed using the maximum cross-correlation (MCC) method. For different OC product performances in retrieving the surface currents, an evaluation criterion was used to select the optimal OC-derived currents before merging. The complete current field was obtained by merging SAR and optimal OC-derived currents based on the correlation coefficient weighted model. Statistical comparisons were performed between the merged and geostrophic currents obtained from the altimetry over the northern Tyrrhenian Sea. The two current fields were in good agreement, with a complex correlation coefficient of 0.65 in magnitude and 2.23° in phase. The oceanic eddy kinematic parameters were successfully calculated based on the complete current field obtained and used to analyze spatio-temporal evolution characteristics.
PTHrP exerts its effects by binding to its receptor, PTH1R, a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR), activating the downstream cAMP signaling pathway. As an autocrine, paracrine, or intracrine factor, ...PTHrP has been found to stimulate cancer cell proliferation, inhibit apoptosis, and promote tumor-induced osteolysis of bone. Despite these findings, attempts to develop PTHrP and PTH1R as drug targets have not produced successful results in the clinic. Nevertheless, the efficacy of blocking PTHrP and PTH1R has been shown in various types of cancer, suggesting its potential for therapeutic applications. In light of these conflicting data, we conducted a comprehensive review of the studies of PTHrP/PTH1R in cancer progression and metastasis and highlighted the strengths and limitations of targeting PTHrP or PTH1R in cancer therapy. This review also offers our perspectives for future research in this field.
In the condition of ocean observation for high-resolution airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR), sea spikes will cause serious interference to SAR image interpretation and marine target detection. ...In order to improve the ability of target detection, it is necessary to suppress sea spikes in SAR images. However, there is no report on sea spike suppression methods in SAR images. As a step forward, a sea spike suppression method based on optimum polarization ratio in airborne SAR images is proposed in this paper. This method is only applicable to the situation where VV and HH dual-polarized SAR data containing sea spikes are acquired at the same time. By calculating the optimum polarization ratio, this method further obtains the difference image of the panoramic area accomplishing sea spike suppression. This method is applied to a field airborne X-band SAR data, including ocean waves, oil spills and ships. The results show that the sea spikes are well suppressed, the contrast of ocean waves and the contrast of oil spills are improved, and the false alarm rate of ship detection is reduced. The discussions on these results demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively suppress sea spikes and improve the interpretability of SAR images.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common human cancers, its prevalence and severity need us to discover novel early diagnostic biomarkers and new therapeutic strategies. MicroRNA-122 ...is the most abundant microRNA in the liver, and acts as a tumor suppressor and represses HCC development. In our study we showed that HNF-4α and MiR-122 were down-regulated significantly in hepatocellular carcinoma. Over-expression of HNF-4α inhibit hepatocellular carcinoma cells proliferation. And miR-122 is one of the downstream effector of HNF-4α. Up-regulated miR-122 inhibited hepatocellular carcinoma cells proliferation through regulating ADAM17. Collectively, our results suggested that HNF-4α could inhibit hepatocellular carcinoma proliferation with miR-122 being a downstream target of it. And miR-122 would inhibit hepatocellular carcinoma proliferation by regulating ADAM17 signal pathway.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Introduction
A growing body of evidence suggests that stress is an important factor in depression, and pro‐inflammatory cytokines contribute to the occurrence and development of depression in both ...animal models and human patients. Toll‐like receptor 4 (TLR4) has been shown to be a key innate immune pattern recognition receptor involved in the regulation of stress responses and inflammation. However, the exact effects of TLR4 on depressive‐like behaviors induced by chronic social defeat stress (CSDS) are not known.
Methods
In this study, the effects of TLR4 on depressive‐like behaviors were investigated in an animal model of depression induced by CSDS. The depressive‐like behaviors were assessed by forced swimming test (FST), social interaction test (SIT), and light–dark box test (LDT). The protein expressions of TLR4 and tumor necrosis factor‐α (TNF‐α) in the hippocampus were measured using Western blotting.
Results
We found that CSDS increased TLR4 protein levels in the hippocampus and induced behavioral despair in FST, social avoidance in SIT, and anxiety‐like behavior in LDT. Fluoxetine normalized the increased expression of TLR4 and reversed behavioral despair, social avoidance, as well as anxiety‐like behavior induced by CSDS. However, directly blocking TLR4, by using either TLR4 inhibitor TAK‐242 or knockout of TLR4, only inhibited behavioral despair, but not social avoidance or anxiety‐like behavior induced by CSDS.
Conclusions
These results demonstrate a specific modulating role of TLR4 in behavioral despair induced by CSDS and suggest that TAK‐242 may be a beneficial treatment for patients with behavioral despair.
These results demonstrate a specific modulating role of Toll‐like receptor 4 (TLR4) in behavioral despair induced by chronic social defeat stress.
The genome of
encodes a high number of natural product (NP) biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). Most of these BGCs are not expressed or are poorly expressed (commonly called silent BGCs) under ...traditional laboratory experimental conditions. These NP BGCs represent an unexplored rich reservoir of natural compounds, which can be used to discover novel chemical compounds. To activate silent BGCs for NP discovery, two main strategies, including the induction of BGCs expression in native hosts and heterologous expression of BGCs in surrogate
hosts, have been adopted, which normally requires genetic manipulation. So far, various genome editing technologies have been developed, which has markedly facilitated the activation of BGCs and NP overproduction in their native hosts, as well as in heterologous
hosts. In this review, we summarize the challenges and recent advances in genome editing tools for
genetic manipulation with a focus on editing tools based on clustered regularly interspaced short palindrome repeat (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein (Cas) systems. Additionally, we discuss the future research focus, especially the development of endogenous CRISPR/Cas-based genome editing technologies in
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