The rapid population growth in China has increased the demand for limited water, energy and food resources. Because the resource supply is constrained by future uncertainties such as climate change, ...it is necessary to examine the connections among water, energy and food resources from the perspective of the relevant final demands. Based on an input-output model and structural path analysis, this study aims to explore the hidden connections among water, energy and food resources by identifying important final demands and examine how these resources are embodied in upstream production and downstream consumption processes along the supply chain. The water-energy-food nexus approach in this research identifies where and how these resources intersect in economic sectors. By simultaneously considering the water, energy and food footprints, synergistic effects can be maximized among these resource systems. The results reveal that urban household consumption and fixed capital formation have large impacts on water-energy-food resources. Besides, agriculture, construction and service sectors have the largest water-energy-food footprints. For each resource, we rank the top-20 supply chain paths from the final demands to the upstream production sectors, and six critical supply chain paths are identified as important contributors to the consumption of all these resources. Compared with independent approach to manage water, energy and food resources, the nexus approach identifies the critical linkages of the water, energy and food systems and helps to formulate integrated policies to effectively manage these resources across sectors and actors. Synergistic strategies for conserving water, energy, and food resources can be achieved through avoiding unnecessary waste in end uses and improving resource use efficiency along critical supply chains. This research can help consumers, industries and the government make responsible consumption and production decisions to conserve water, energy and food resources.
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•The hidden connections among water, energy and food consumptions are examined.•Maximizing the synergy of the water-energy-food nexus management.•Urban household consumption and fixed capital formation have large resource impacts.•Agriculture, construction and service sectors have the largest resource footprints.•Six key supply chains that consume these resources simultaneously are recognized.
Herein, we report a nondirected para‐selective C−H alkynylation of aniline derivatives by a Pd/S,O‐ligand‐based catalyst. The reaction proceeds under mild conditions and is compatible with a variety ...of substituted anilines. The scalability and further derivatizations of the alkynylated products have been also demonstrated.
para‐Alkynylated aromatic amines are obtained without the need to prefunctionalize the starting aniline by Pd/S,O‐ligand catalyzed C−H alkynylation reactions.
Abstract
Objective
The purpose of this study was to comprehensively evaluate the lipid profiles in patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA).
Methods
The literature and relevant reviews were ...searched for published clinical studies on the relationship between JIA and blood lipid levels. The Newcastle–Ottawa scale (NOS) was applied to evaluate the risk and methodological value of the included case‒control and cohort studies. Standardized mean differences (SMDs) and 95% confidence intervals were derived for all variables with adequate unprocessed data. This meta-analysis followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines.
Results
In total, 16 studies were incorporated through screening. The analysis findings revealed that the levels of very low-density lipoprotein cholesterol SMD=-0.411, 95% CI (-0.774~-0.048),
P
= 0.026, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol SMD=-0.528, 95% CI (-0.976~-0.079),
P
= 0.021, and apolipoprotein A1 SMD=-1.050, 95% CI (-1.452~-0.647),
P
= 0.000 in JIA patients were statistically lower than those observed in healthy controls. The level of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol SMD = 0.202, 95% CI (0.003 ~ 0.400),
P
= 0.046 was significantly higher in JIA patients than in healthy controls. In JIA patients, body mass index SMD=-0.189, 95% CI (-0.690 ~ 0.311),
P
= 0.459, high-density lipoprotein SMD =-1.235, 95% CI (-2.845 ~ 0.374),
P
= 0.133), low-density lipoprotein SMD = 0.616, 95% CI (-0.813 ~ 2.046),
P
= 0.398), triglycerides (SMD = 0.278, 95% CI (-0.182 ~ 0.738),
P
= 0.236, total cholesterol SMD=-0.073, 95% CI (-0.438 ~ 0.293),
P
= 0.696 and apolipoprotein B levels SMD = 0.226, 95% CI (-0.133 ~ 0.585),
P
= 0.217 were not significantly different from those in healthy controls.
Conclusions
The outcomes of this meta-analysis suggest that dyslipidemia is common in JIA patients compared to healthy controls. Patients with JIA have a significantly increased risk of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease later in life.
Increasing evidence has shown that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) yield a favorable therapeutic benefit for thermal burn skin wounds. Human amniotic MSCs (hAMSCs) derived from amniotic membrane have ...multilineage differentiation, immunosuppressive, and anti-inflammatory potential which makes them suitable for treating skin wounds. However, the exact effects of hAMSCs on the healing of thermal burn skin wounds and their potential mechanisms are not explored.
hAMSCs were isolated from amniotic membrane and characterized by RT-PCR, flow cytometry, immunofluorescence, and tumorigenicity test. We assessed the effects of hAMSCs and hAMSC conditional medium (CM) on wound healing in a deep second-degree burn injury model of mice. We then investigated the biological effects of hAMSCs and hAMSC-CM on the apoptosis and proliferation of heat stress-injured human keratinocytes HaCAT and dermal fibroblasts (DFL) both in vivo and in vitro. Next, we explored the underlying mechanisms by assessing PI3K/AKT and GSK3β/β-catenin signaling pathways in heat injured HaCAT and DFL cells after hAMSCs and hAMSC-CM treatments using PI3K inhibitor LY294002 and β-catenin inhibitor ICG001. Antibody array assay was used to identify the cytokines secreted by hAMSCs that may activate PI3K/AKT signaling pathway.
Our results showed that hAMSCs expressed various markers of embryonic stem cells and mesenchymal stem cells and have low immunogenicity and no tumorigenicity. hAMSC and hAMSC-CM transplantation significantly promoted thermal burn wound healing by accelerating re-epithelialization with increased expression of CK19 and PCNA in vivo. hAMSCs and hAMSC-CM markedly inhibited heat stress-induced apoptosis in HaCAT and DFL cells in vitro through activation of PI3K/AKT signaling and promoted their proliferation by activating GSK3β/β-catenin signaling. Furthermore, we demonstrated that hAMSC-mediated activation of GSK3β/β-catenin signaling was dependent on PI3K/AKT signaling pathway. Antibody array assay showed that a panel of cytokines including PAI-1, C-GSF, periostin, and TIMP-1 delivered from hAMSCs may contribute to the improvement of the wound healing through activating PI3K/AKT signaling pathway.
Our results demonstrated that hAMSCs and hAMSC-CM efficiently cure heat stress-induced skin injury by inhibiting apoptosis of skin cells and promoting their proliferation through activating PI3K/AKT signaling pathway, suggesting that hAMSCs and hAMSC-CM may provide an alternative therapeutic approach for the treatment of skin injury.
Georgi. (SB) is a common heat-clearing medicine in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). It has been used for thousands of years in China and its neighboring countries. Clinically, it is mostly used to ...treat diseases such as cold and cough. SB has different harvesting periods and processed products for different clinical symptoms. Botanical researches proved that SB included in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia (1st, 2020) was consistent with the medicinal SB described in ancient books. Modern phytochemical analysis had found that SB contains hundreds of active ingredients, of which flavonoids are its major components. These chemical components are the material basis for SB to exert pharmacological effects. Pharmacological studies had shown that SB has a wide range of pharmacological activities such as antiinflammatory, antibacterial, antiviral, anticancer, liver protection, etc. The active ingredients of SB were mostly distributed in liver and kidney, and couldn't be absorbed into brain via oral absorption. SB's toxicity was mostly manifested in liver fibrosis and allergic reactions, mainly caused by baicalin. The non-medicinal application prospects of SB were broad, such as antibacterial plastics, UV-resistant silk, animal feed, etc. In response to the Coronavirus Disease In 2019 (COVID-19), based on the network pharmacology research, SB's active ingredients may have potential therapeutic effects, such as baicalin and baicalein. Therefore, the exact therapeutic effects are still need to be determined in clinical trials. SB has been reviewed in the past 2 years, but the content of these articles were not comprehensive and accurate. In view of the above, we made a comprehensive overview of the research progress of SB, and expect to provide ideas for the follow-up study of SB.
The development of highly sensitive and selective detection techniques for the discrimination of relevant toxic benzenethiols and biologically active aliphatic thiols is of considerable importance in ...the fields of chemical, biological, and environmental sciences. In this article, we describe a new design of reaction-based fluorescent probe for discrimination of thiophenols over aliphaticthiols through intramolecular charge transfer pathways using N-butyl-4-amino-1,8-naphthalimide as a fluorophore, the strongly electron-withdrawing 2,4-dinitrobenzenesulfonamide group as a recognition unit, and 2,3-dihydroimidazo-1,2-a pyridine moiety as a linker. This rational design not only affords finely tunable spectroscopic properties by adding 2,3-dihydroimidazo-1,2-a pyridine moiety but also provides the chance to regulate the selectivity and sensitivity of the probe due to the formation of a new type of potentially reversible sulfonamide bond through 4-dimethylaminopyridine-like resonance. The developed probe displayed high off/on signal ratios, good selectivity, and sensitivity with a detection limit of 20 nM and a relative standard deviation of 1.7% for 11 replicate detections of 0.33 μM thiophenol and was successfully applied to the determination of thiophenols in water samples with quantitative recovery (from 94% to 97%) demonstrating its application prospect for thiophenols sensing in environmental and biological sciences.
Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic, recurrent inflammatory disease characterized by itching. The gut microbiome can help maintain skin immune homeostasis by regulating innate and adaptive immunity. ...Here, we report a case of AD in a 15-year-old adolescent boy who benefited from washed microbiota transplantation (WMT). WMT was performed for three courses, with each course lasting for three consecutive days and an interval of one month between two courses. Clinical assessments were conducted at each WMT course, and skin, blood, and stool samples were collected for microbial analysis. After three months of WMT treatment, the boy's itchiness was effectively controlled: his skin showed noticeable improvement, with reduced
in the skin lesions. The scores of SCORAD (SCORing Atopic Dermatitis), EASI (Eczema Area and Severity Index), NRS (Numerical Rating Scale), and DLQI (Dermatology Life Quality Index) significantly decreased compared to the baseline. Serum levels of eosinophil ratio, tumor necrotic factor-α, and interleukin-6 also reduced to the normal levels. There was a significant decrease in
in the skin lesions. Additionally, the intestinal flora became more diverse, and the abundance of
species, significantly increased after WMT. No adverse events were reported during the treatment and the 1-year follow-up period. This case report provides direct clinical evidence for WMT as a novel promising treatment strategy for AD, and preliminary experimental data suggests the existence of an intestinal-skin axis in terms of the gut microbiota and the skin immune homeostasis.
Yield loss due to low precipitation use efficiency (PUE) occurs frequently in dryland crop production. PUE is determined by a complicated process of precipitation use in farmland, which includes ...several sequential steps: precipitation infiltrates into the soil, the infiltrated precipitation is stored in soil, the soil-stored precipitation is consumed through transpiration or evaporation, transpired precipitation is used to produce dry-matter, and finally dry-matter is re-allocated to grains. These steps can be quantified by six ratios: precipitation infiltration ratio (SW/SWe; SW, total available water; SWe, available soil water storage at the end of a specific period), precipitation storage ratio (SWe/P; P, effective precipitation), precipitation consumption ratio (ET/SW; ET, evapotranspiration), ratio of crop transpiration to evapotranspiration (T/ET; T, crop transpiration), transpiration efficiency (B/T; B, the increment of shoot biomass) and harvest index (Y/B; Y, grain yield). The final efficiency is then calculated as: PUE=SWeP×SWSWe×ETSW×TET×BT×YB. Quantifying each of those ratios is crucial for the planning and execution of PUE improvements and for optimizing the corresponding agronomic practices in a specific agricultural system. In this study, those ratios were quantified and evaluated under four integrated agronomic management systems. Our study revealed that PUE and wheat yield were significantly increased by 8–31% under manure (MIS) or biochar (BIS) integrated systems compared to either conventional farmers’ (CF) or high N (HN) integrated systems. In the infiltration and storage steps, MIS and BIS resulted in lower SWe/P but higher SW/SWe compared with CF and HN. Regarding the consumption step, the annual ET/SW under MIS and BIS did not increase due to the higher ET after regreening and the lower ET before regreening compared with CF or HN. The T/ET was significantly higher under MIS and BIS than under CF or HN. In the last two steps, transpiration efficiency and harvest index were less strongly affected by the agronomic management system, although both values varied considerably across the different experimental years. Therefore, attempts to achieve higher PUE and yields in rainfed wheat through agronomic management should focus on increasing the T/ET and SW/SWe, while maintaining ET/SW throughout the year and keeping SWe/P relatively low at harvest time.
In mammals, female fecundity is determined by the size of the primordial follicle (PF) pool, which is established during the perinatal period. As a non-renewable resource, the preservation of dormant ...PFs is crucial for sustaining female reproduction throughout life. Although studies have revealed that several oocyte-derived functional genes and pathways, such as newborn ovary homeobox (NOBOX) and 3-phosphoinositide-dependent protein kinase-1, participate in maintaining the PF pool, our understanding of the underlying molecular mechanisms is still incomplete. Here, we demonstrate that E-cadherin (E-cad) plays a crucial role in the maintenance of PFs in mice. E-cad is specifically localized to the cytomembrane of oocytes in PFs. Knockdown of E-cad in neonatal ovaries resulted in significant PF loss owing to oocyte apoptosis. In addition, the expression pattern of NOBOX is similar to that of E-cad. Knockdown of E-cad resulted in a decreased NOBOX level, whereas overexpression of Nobox partially rescued the follicle loss induced by silencing E-cad. Furthermore, E-cad governed NOBOX expression by regulating the shuttle protein, β-catenin, which acts as a transcriptional co-activator. Notably, E-cad, which is a transmembrane protein expressed in the oocytes, was also responsible for maintaining the PF structure by facilitating cell-cell adhesive contacts with surrounding pregranulosa cells. In conclusion, E-cad in oocytes of PFs plays an indispensable role in the maintenance of the PF pool by facilitating follicular structural stability and regulating NOBOX expression. These findings shed light on the physiology of sustaining female reproduction.
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