Summary
From 2014 to 2015, four novel highly pathogenic PRRS virus (HP‐PRRSV) strains named 14LY01‐FJ, 14LY02‐FJ 15LY01‐FJ, and 15LY02‐FJ were isolated from high morbidity (100%) and mortality ...(40%–80%) in piglets and sows in Fujian Province. To further our knowledge about these novel virus strains, we characterized their complete genomes and determined their pathogenicity in piglets. Full‐length genome sequencing analysis showed that these four isolates were closely related to type 2 (North American type, NA‐type) isolates, with 88.1%–96.3% nucleotide similarity, but only 60.6%–60.8% homology to the Lelystad virus (LV) (European type, EU‐type). The full length of the four isolates was determined to be 15017 or 15018 nucleotides (nt), excluding the poly(A) tail. Furthermore, the four isolates had three discontinuous deletions (aa 322–432, aa 483, and aa 504–522) within hypervariable region II (HV‐II) of Nsp2, as compared to the reference strain VR‐2332. This deletion pattern in the four isolates is consistent with strain MN184 and strain NADC30 isolated from America. Phylogenetic and molecular evolutionary analyses indicated that these virulent strains originated from a natural recombination event between the JXA1‐like HP‐PRRSV (JXA‐1 is one of the earliest Chinese HP‐PRRSV strains; sublineage 8.7) and the NADC30‐like (lineage 1) PRRSV. Animal experiments demonstrated that these four strains caused significant weight loss and severe histopathological lung lesions as compared to the negative control group. High mortality rate (40% or 80%) was found in piglets infected with any one of the four strains, similar to that found with other Chinese HP‐PRRSV strains. This study showed that the novel variant PRRSV was HP‐PRRSV, and it is therefore critical to monitor PRRSV evolution in China and develop a method for controlling PRRS.
Temperature is a key operational factor influencing the anammox process kinetics. In particular, at temperatures below 15 °C, the specific anammox activity (SAA) considerably decreases. This study ...aimed to describe the temperature dependence of the anammox process kinetics in the temperature range from 10 to 55 °C, including the specific characteristics of “cold anammox”. The commonly used Arrhenius and extended and modified Ratkowsky equations were examined. The Ratkowsky equations yielded a strong correlation (coefficient of determination, R2 = 0.93–0.96) between the measured and predicted data over the analyzed temperature range (10–55 °C). However, these equations could not correctly reflect the anammox temperature dependence at temperatures below 15 °C (R2 = 0.36–0.48). Therefore, a new generalized temperature model was proposed. The generalized temperature equation (GTE) considered the division of the analyzed temperature range into three temperature ranges: 10–15 °C, 15–35 °C and 35–55 °C. The ranges correspond to “cold anammox”, “(low) mesophilic anammox” and “thermophilic anammox”. The applied approach yielded a strong correlation between the measured and predicted SAA (R2 = 0.97) over the temperature range from 10 to 55 °C and over the low-temperature range from 10 to 15 °C (R2 = 0.99). Overall, the GTE could enhance the predictions of the temperature dependence of the anammox process kinetics. The GTE can help examine anammox-based bioaugmentation systems operating at both high temperatures (sidestream reactors) and low temperatures (mainstream reactors).
Display omitted
•Anammox is strongly temperature dependent process.•The temperature dependence of anammox cannot be described by a single equation.•Ratkowsky equations describe the anammox activity in the entire temperature range.•Ratkowsky equations cannot describe the temperature dependence at lower temperatures.•The generalized temperature equation improves predictions at low temperatures (10–15 °C).
Even though it was not designed as an exoplanetary research mission, the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) has been opportunistically used for a novel experiment in which Earth serves as a ...proxy exoplanet. More than 2 yr of DSCOVR Earth images were employed to produce time series of multiwavelength, single-point light sources in order to extract information on planetary rotation, cloud patterns, surface type, and orbit around the Sun. In what follows, we assume that these properties of the Earth are unknown and instead attempt to derive them from first principles. These conclusions are then compared with known data about our planet. We also used the DSCOVR data to simulate phase-angle changes, as well as the minimum data collection rate needed to determine the rotation period of an exoplanet. This innovative method of using the time evolution of a multiwavelength, reflected single-point light source can be deployed for retrieving a range of intrinsic properties of an exoplanet around a distant star.
Electrically tunable dielectric materials have potential applications as various microwave devices, such as tunable oscillators, phase shifters and varactors. High dielectric tunability, low ...dielectric loss tangent and appropriate level of dielectric constant, are basic requirements for such applications. Ferroelectric materials are the most promising candidates. In general, strontium titanate (SrTiO3 or ST) is used for devices operating at low temperatures, while the devices based on barium strontium titanate (Ba1a degree x Sr x TiO3 or BST) are operated at room temperatures. The modifications of parent ferroelectrics, such as Sr1a degree x Pb x TiO3, BaZr x Ti1a degree x O3 and BaTi1a degree x Sn x O3 etc., have also been widely investigated. In addition, there have been reports on electrically tunable dielectric materials, based on non-ferroelectric compounds, such as microwave dielectrics and carbon nanotube (CNT) composites. Specifically for ferroelectric materials, a critical issue is the reduction of the dielectric losses, because their dielectric loss tangents are relatively high for practical device applications. Recently, many efforts have been made in order to reduce the dielectric losses of BST based ferroelectrics. An efficient way is to dope oxides that have low dielectric losses, such as MgO, ZrO2 and Al2O3, TiO2, LaAlO3, and Bi1.5ZnNb1.5O7 etc., into the ferroelectric materials. In addition to the reduction in dielectric loss tangents, the introduction of oxides would also be able to modify the dielectric constant to be suitable for practical design of various devices. Meanwhile, dielectric and electrical properties of thin films can be improved by chemical doping, substrate adaptation, orientation and anisotropy optimization. This review provides an overall summary on the recent progress in developing electrically tunable dielectric materials, based on ferroelectrics and non-ferroelectrics, with a specific attention to the strategies employed to improve the performances of ferroelectric materials for microwave device applications.
To investigate the association between air pollution and upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) in children aged 0–14 years in Hefei, China in 2014–2015.
An ecological method (i.e. generalised ...additive model GAM) was used to explore the effects of air pollutants on paediatric hospital outpatients with URTI.
GAM was used to evaluate the lag effects (including lag0 to lag6, lag01 and lag06) between daily changes in particulate matter (PM10), fine particulate matter (PM2.5), sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3) and carbon monoxide (CO) and the number of hospital outpatients with URTI in 2014–2015, after controlling for the confounding effects of long-term trends, seasonality, day of the week, public holidays and meteorological factors.
PM10, PM2.5, SO2, NO2 and CO in the single-pollutant models had significant positive effects on the number of paediatric hospital outpatients with URTI. It was found that per 10 μg/m3 increasing in concentrations of PM10 at lag3, PM2.5, SO2, NO2 and CO at lag06 were associated with an increase of Excess risk (ER) with 0.15% (95% CI: 0.07%∼0.23%), 0.38% (95% CI: 0.17%∼0.60%), 2.92% (95% CI: 1.88%∼3.97%), 4.47% (95% CI: 3.69%∼5.25%) and 0.05% (95% CI: 0.02%∼0.08%), respectively. Only NO2 remained significantly positively associated with the number of hospital outpatients with URTI in the full-pollutant models, and ERs were 4.72% (95% CI = 3.76%–5.69%) and 4.70% (95% CI = 3.76%–5.65%) per 10 μg/m3 increase in NO2 in Model 1 (including PM10, SO2, NO2, O3 and CO) and Model 2 (including PM2.5, SO2, NO2, O3 and CO), respectively.
This study showed that short-term exposure to air pollution was associated with increased risk of URTI among paediatric hospital outpatients aged 0–14 years in Hefei. NO2 was the major air pollutant affecting the daily number of paediatric hospital outpatients with URTI.
•Generalised additive model was used to explore effects of air pollutants on child upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) outpatients.•Air pollution is associated with increased risk of child URTI outpatients.•The study addressed a gap by evaluating lag effects of air pollutants on outpatients.•NO2 was the major air pollutant affecting child URTI outpatients in the study.
Gastrointestinal tumors have been widely concerned because of increasing morbidity and mortality. In the process of exploring the therapeutic patterns of gastrointestinal tumors, patients treated ...with neoadjuvant therapies have good effect of tumor regression and favorable prognosis. Thus, neoadjuvant therapy strategies are recommended by major guidelines of gastrointestinal tumors in the world. Meanwhile, they have a great impact on the traditional methods of surgery, the influence mainly involves the reduction of the surgical margin and the scope of lymph node dissection in gastric cancer, while involves performing organ preservation and watch & wait in selective patients with colorectal cancer. These effects and changes were based on effective control of local recurrence by neoadjuvant therapies, and the advantages of neoadjuvant therapy in terms of tumor regression and survival supported by many studies. It is also based on the patient's desire for organ preservation and non-surgical treatment. Meanwhile,
As a serious disease of death and disability, stroke constitutes a serious threat to human health. Because of stroke patients often have high-risk factors of malnutrition such as dysphagia and ...autonomic eating disorder, the hospitalization time, mortality and disability rate of stroke patients increases. Nutritional therapy can effectively improve the malnutrition of patients, which are of great significance for the treatment and rehabilitation of stroke and the prevention of its complications. Nutrients are important components of nutrition therapy, and different ways of nutrition therapy directly affect the effect of treatment. This article summarizes effects of nutrients and different nutritional treatments on stroke prevention, morbidity and treatment, and provides a theoretical basis and new thinking for further reducing the incidence rate of stroke, improving the quality of life in patients and reducing the financial burden of society and family.
Voriconazole is frequently utilized for the prevention and treatment of invasive fungal infections (IFIs), and is extensively metabolized by the cytochrome P450 (CYP) system. The impact of activity ...of the genes encoding CYP3A4, CYP3A5, and CYP2C9 on the pharmacokinetics of voriconazole cannot be ignored because, second to CYP2C19, they are the most important enzymes involved in voriconazole metabolism. The influence of genetic polymorphisms in
CYP3A4
,
CYP3A5
, and
CYP2C9
on the plasma concentrations of voriconazole was evaluated in the present study. The study cohort comprised 158 patients with IFIs in whom 22 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in
CYP3A4
,
CYP3A5
, and
CYP2C9
were genotyped using the Sequenom MassARRAY RS1000 system, and voriconazole plasma concentrations were measured by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). 40, 91, and 27 patients presented with low (<1 mg/L), normal (1–4 mg/L), and high (>4 mg/L) plasma voriconazole concentrations, respectively. Correlation analysis between polymorphisms and the plasma voriconazole concentration revealed an association between the presence of the rs4646437 T allele and a higher plasma voriconazole concentration
p
= 0.033, odds ratio (OR) = 2.832, 95 % confidence interval (CI) = 1.086–7.384. This study has identified a new SNP related to the metabolism of voriconazole, potentially providing novel insight into the influence of CYP3A4 on the pharmacokinetics of this antifungal agent.
Super‐hydrophobic surfaces, with a water contact angle (CA) greater than 150°, have attracted much interest for both fundamental research and practical applications. Recent studies on lotus and rice ...leaves reveal that a super‐hydrophobic surface with both a large CA and small sliding angle (α) needs the cooperation of micro‐ and nanostructures, and the arrangement of the microstructures on this surface can influence the way a water droplet tends to move. These results from the natural world provide a guide for constructing artificial super‐hydrophobic surfaces and designing surfaces with controllable wettability. Accordingly, super‐hydrophobic surfaces of polymer nanofibers and differently patterned aligned carbon nanotube (ACNT) films have been fabricated.
The study of natural lotus leaves reveals that to obtain a super‐hydrophobic surface with both a large contact angle (CA) and small sliding angle (α), cooperation of micro‐ and nanostructures is required. Accordingly, lotus‐like aligned carbon nanotube (ACNT) films with a CA of ∼166° (see Figure) and α of ∼3° have been fabricated. Other super‐hydrophobic surfaces of polymer nanofibers and different patterned ACNT films are also highlighted.
Euphrates poplar (Populus euphratica Oliv.) has heteromorphic leaves including strip, lanceolate, ovate, and broad‐ovate leaves from base to top in the mature canopy.
To clarify how diameter at ...breast height (DBH) and tree height affect the functional characteristics of all kinds of heteromorphic leaves, we measured the morphological anatomical structure and physiological indices of five crown heteromorphic leaves of P. euphratica at 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 m from the same site. We also analysed the relationships between morphological structures and physiological characteristics of heteromorphic leaves and DBH and the height of heteromorphic leaves.
The results showed that the number of abnormalities regarding blade width, leaf area, leaf thickness, leaf mass per area, cuticle layer thickness, palisade tissue thickness, and palisade tissue/sponge tissue ratio increased with size order and sampling height gradient. Net photosynthetic rate, transpiration rate, stomatal conductance, instantaneous water use efficiency, stable delta carbon isotope ratio, proline and malondialdehyde (MDA) content increased with DBH and sampling height. By contrast, blade length, leaf shape index, and intercellular CO2 concentration decreased with the increase in path order and sampling height gradient. Although MDA content and leaf sponge thickness were not correlated with DBH or sampling height, other morphological structure and physiological parameters were significantly correlated with these variables. In addition, correlations were found among leaf morphology, anatomical structure, and physiological index parameters indicating that they changed with path order and tree height gradient.
The differences in the morphology, anatomic structure and physiological characteristics of the heteromorphic leaves ofP. euphratica are related to ontogenesis stage and coronal position.
The differences in the morphological structure and physiological characteristics of the heteromorphic leaves of P. euphratica are related to ontogenesis stage and coronal position.
PDF
