Licorice extract is widely used in medicine, food, pasture, and cosmetic industries. Its growing demand and limited wild licorice resources will create a huge gap between supply and demand. In the ...context of Belt and Road Initiative, a new pattern of international trade in licorice extracts has been formed. This paper analyzes the current situation of global trade of licorice extracts, and uses the latest available trade data to analyze the international trade competitiveness of major licorice extracts exporters in three aspects: market share (MS), trade competitiveness (TC), and revealed symmetric comparative advantage (RSCA). It is found that three categories of international competitive advantages can be categorized into three factors, which are the consumer market advantage, processing technology advantage and resource advantage of licorice. In addition, based on the research perspective of China, the current situation of Chinese licorice resources and international trade is analyzed to provide an early warning to prevent the tragedy of decreasing global licorice resources spreading around the world. Meanwhile, it also provides suggestions to ensure the sustainable development of licorice resources.
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•The status of licorice extracts trade of the Belt and Road Initiative is explored.•The trade competitiveness of the exporters of licorice extracts are analyzed.•The changes and reasons in the trade competitiveness of exporters are analyzed.•Advices for the conservation and sustainability of licorice are provided.
Superhydrophobic surface has attracted significant attention since their potentiality to industrial and academic applications. Moreover, superhydrophobic surface wettability at non-ambient ...temperature, especially at high temperature (but not boiling) was of great importance in many industrial processes. In this paper, we designed and fabricated 4 series superhydrophobic micro-pillar surfaces on the Silicon wafers to investigate wettability at different temperatures. These micro-pillar surfaces were fabricated by photolithography and ICP etching technologies. The temperature-dependent wettability of DI water droplets was characterized using contact angle measurements. The wetting behavior was observed to be different on the surfaces, and the wetting transition occurred at a specific temperature.
Vascular endothelial injury is a contributing factor to the development of atherosclerosis and the resulting cardiovascular diseases. One particular factor involved in endothelial cell apoptosis and ...atherosclerosis is palmitic acid (PA), which is a long-chain saturated fatty acid. In addition, transient receptor potential melastatin 4 (TRPM4), a non-selective cation channel, plays a significant role in endothelial dysfunction caused by various factors related to cardiovascular diseases. Despite this, the specific role and mechanisms of TRPM4 in atherosclerosis have not been fully understood.
The protein and mRNA expressions of TRPM4, apoptosis - and inflammation-related factors were measured after PA treatment. The effect of TRPM4 knockout on the protein and mRNA expression of apoptosis and inflammation-related factors was detected. The changes of intracellular Ca
, mitochondrial membrane potential, and reactive oxygen species were detected by Fluo-4 AM, JC-1, and DCFH-DA probes, respectively. To confirm the binding of miR-133a-3p to TRPM4, a dual luciferase reporter gene assay was conducted. Finally, the effects of miR-133a-3p and TRPM4 on intracellular Ca
, mitochondrial membrane potential, and reactive oxygen species were examined.
Following PA treatment, the expression of TRPM4 increases, leading to calcium overload in endothelial cells. This calcium influx causes the assemblage of Bcl-2, resulting in the opening of mitochondrial calcium channels and mitochondrial damage, ultimately triggering apoptosis. Throughout this process, the mRNA and protein levels of IL-1β, ICAM-1, and VCAM1 significantly increase. Database screenings and luciferase assays have shown that miR-133a-3p preferentially binds to the 3'UTR region of TRPM4 mRNA, suppressing TRPM4 expression. During PA-induced endothelial injury, miR-133a-3p is significantly decreased, but overexpression of miR-133a-3p can attenuate the progression of endothelial injury. On the other hand, overexpression of TRPM4 counteracts the aforementioned changes.
TRPM4 participates in vascular endothelial injury caused by PA. Therefore, targeting TRPM4 or miR-133a-3p may offer a novel pharmacological approach to preventing endothelial injury.
This paper studies three-dimensional transient flow characteristics of a medical air-compressing nebulizer which is widely used to treat respiratory diseases in the medical field. The transient ...atomization process of air and water was numerically simulated and reproduced by solving Navier-Stokes equations, turbulent transport equations, the volume of fluid (VOF) model, and discrete phase model (DPM). The water volume fraction inside the nebulizer was simulated and demonstrated under different time. Besides, to better the working performance of the nebulizer, the effects of different working parameters such as different orifice diameters, length of the outflow pipe, and air velocity on the secondary atomization were also studied and discussed. It was found that the most suitable diameter of the orifice for this air-compressing nebulizer is 1.0 mm. Most suitable length of the outflow pipe and the air velocity for producing small air-water bubbles are 10 mm and 4 m/s, respectively.
The problem of multi-view transformation is associated with transforming available source views of a given object into unknown target views. To solve this problem, a Mutual-Encoding InfoGenerative ...Adversarial Networks (MEIGANs)-based algorithm is proposed in this paper. A mutual-encoding representation learning network is proposed to obtain multi-view representations, i.e., it guarantees through encoders different views of the same object are mapped to the common representation, which carries enough information with respect to the object itself. An InfoGenerative Adversarial Networks-based transformation network is proposed to transform multi-views of the given object, which carries the representation information in the generative models and discriminative models, guaranteeing the synthetic transformed view matches the source view. The advantages of the MEIGAN are that it bypasses direct mappings among different views, and can solve the problem of missing views in training data and the problem of mapping between transformed views and source views. Finally, experiments on incomplete data to complete data restoration tasks on MNIST, CelebA, and multi-view angle transformation tasks on 3-D rendered chairs and multi-view clothing show the proposed algorithm yields satisfactory transformation results.
A safe and effective vaccine is urgently needed to control the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. Four adenovirus-vectored vaccines expressing spike (S) protein have been approved for use. Here, we ...generated several recombinant chimpanzee adenovirus (AdC7) vaccines expressing S, receptor-binding domain (RBD), or tandem-repeat dimeric RBD (RBD-tr2). We found vaccination via either intramuscular or intranasal route was highly immunogenic in mice to elicit both humoral and cellular immune responses. AdC7-RBD-tr2 showed higher antibody responses compared to either AdC7-S or AdC7-RBD. Intranasal administration of AdC7-RBD-tr2 additionally induced mucosal immunity with neutralizing activity in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. Either single-dose or two-dose mucosal administration of AdC7-RBD-tr2 protected mice against SARS-CoV-2 challenge, with undetectable subgenomic RNA in lung and relieved lung injury. AdC7-RBD-tr2-elicted sera preserved the neutralizing activity against the circulating variants, especially the Delta variant. These results support AdC7-RBD-tr2 as a promising COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
Subsoil (0.2–1 m) organic carbon (C) accounts for the majority of soil organic carbon (SOC), and SOC turnover time (τ, year) is an important index of soil C stability and sequestration capacity. ...However, the estimation of subsoil τ and the identification of its dominant environmental factors at a regional scale is lacking in regards to forest ecosystems. Therefore, we compiled a dataset with 630 observations to investigate subsoil τ and its influencing factors in forest ecosystems across China using the structural equation model (SEM). The results showed a large variability of subsoil τ from 2.3 to 896.2 years, with a mean (± standard deviation) subsoil τ of 72.4 ± 68.6 years; however, the results of one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that subsoil τ differed significantly with forest types (p = 0.01), with the slowest subsoil τ obtained in deciduous-broadleaf forests (82.9 ± 68.7 years), followed by evergreen-needleleaf forests (77.6 ± 60.8 years), deciduous-needleleaf forests (75.3 ± 78.6 years), and needleleaf and broadleaf mixed forests (71.3 ± 80.9 years), while the fastest subsoil τ appeared in evergreen-broadleaf forests (59.9 ± 40.7 years). Subsoil τ negatively correlated with the mean annul temperature, occurring about three years faster with a one degree increase in temperature, indicating a faster subsoil SOC turnover under a warming climate. Subsoil τ significantly and positively correlated with microbial activities (indicated by microbial C and nitrogen), highlighting the importance of microbial communities in regulating subsoil C dynamics. Climate, forest types, forest origins, vegetation, and soil variables explained 37% of the variations in subsoil τ, as indicated by the SEM, and the soil property was the most important factor affecting subsoil τ. This finding challenged previous perception that climate was the most important factor driving subsoil C dynamics, and that dominant drivers varied according to climate zones. Therefore, recognizing different dominant factors in predicting subsoil C dynamics across climate zones would improve our understanding and reduce the uncertainties regarding subsoil C dynamics in biogeochemical models under ongoing climate change.
Purpose
Electrode bending observed after stereotactic interventions is typically not accounted for in either computer-assisted planning algorithms, where straight trajectories are assumed, or in ...quality assessment, where only metrics related to entry and target points are reported. Our aim is to provide a fully automated and validated pipeline for the prediction of stereo-electroencephalography (SEEG) electrode bending.
Methods
We transform electrodes of 86 cases into a common space and compare features-based and image-based neural networks on their ability to regress local displacement (
lu
) or electrode bending (
eb
^
). Electrodes were stratified into six groups based on brain structures at the entry and target point. Models, both with and without Monte Carlo (MC) dropout, were trained and validated using tenfold cross-validation.
Results
mage-based models outperformed features-based models for all groups, and models that predicted
lu
performed better than for
eb
^
. Image-based model prediction with MC dropout resulted in lower mean squared error (MSE) with improvements up to 12.9% (
lu
) and 39.9% (
eb
^
), compared to no dropout. Using an image of brain tissue types (cortex, white and deep grey matter) resulted in similar, and sometimes better performance, compared to using a T1-weighted MRI when predicting
lu
. When inferring trajectories of image-based models (brain tissue types), 86.9% of trajectories had an MSE
≤
1
mm.
Conclusion
An image-based approach regressing local displacement with an image of brain tissue types resulted in more accurate electrode bending predictions compared to other approaches, inputs, and outputs. Future work will investigate the integration of electrode bending into planning and quality assessment algorithms.
•Scientific questions: The continuous mutation of SARS-CoV-2 leads to severe escape that gradually renders the vaccines based on prototype SARS-CoV-2 ineffective, which urges the development of a new ...generation of broad-spectrum vaccines for boosting vaccination.•Evidence before this study: Previously, we developed the COVID-19 protein subunit vaccine ZF2001® based on the RBD-dimer of prototype SARS-CoV-2, which has been approved for use in China, Uzbekistan, Indonesia and Columbia. To broaden the cross-protection efficacy, we upgraded the antigen into a hetero-chimeric prototype (PT)-Beta or Delta-BA.1 RBD-dimer, and proved its efficiency with protein subunit and mRNA vaccine platforms.•New findings: In this study, the designs of hetero-chimeric RBD-dimer mRNA vaccines were further explored, and their broad-spectrum activities as booster jabs following two doses of inactivated vaccine in mice were evaluated. The results demonstrated that the chimeric vaccines greatly boosted neutralizing antibody levels and specific T-cell responses against the variants, and PT-Beta was superior to Delta-BA.1 RBD as a booster in mice.•Significance of the study: These results provide basis for choosing effective antigens for booster jabs.
With continuous mutations of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the severe immune escape of Omicron sub-variants urges the development of next-generation broad-spectrum vaccines, especially as booster jabs after high-level vaccination coverage of inactivated vaccines in China and many other countries. Previously, we developed a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) protein subunit vaccine ZF2001® based on the tandem homo-prototype receptor-binding domain (RBD)-dimer of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. We upgraded the antigen into a hetero-chimeric prototype (PT)-Beta or Delta-BA.1 RBD-dimer to broaden the cross-protection efficacy and prove its efficiency with protein subunit and mRNA vaccine platforms. Herein, we further explored the hetero-chimeric RBD-dimer mRNA vaccines and evaluated their broad-spectrum activities as booster jabs following two doses of inactivated vaccine (IV) in mice. Our data demonstrated that the chimeric vaccines significantly boosted neutralizing antibody levels and specific T-cell responses against the variants, and PT-Beta was superior to Delta-BA.1 RBD as a booster in mice, shedding light on the antigen design for the next-generation COVID-19 vaccines.
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