To explore whether plasma microRNA-16-5p, -17-5p and -20a-5p can be used as diagnostic biomarkers in gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and to investigate the relationship between those microRNAs ...and the risk factors of GDM (body mass index BMI, insulin resistance IR and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α)).
A total of 85 pregnant women with GDM and 72 pregnant women without GDM were enrolled in this study. The plasma concentration of microRNAs (microRNA-16-5p, -17-5p, -19a-3p, -19b-3p, -20a-5p) was measured using quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Spearman's correlation analysis was used to evaluate the correlation between those microRNAs and the risk factors of GDM, and receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was used to evaluate diagnostic sensitivity and specificity.
Compared with non-GDM women, the relative and absolute expression of plasma microRNA-16-5p, -17-5p, -20a-5p from GDM women were significantly upregulated, when those women were diagnosed as GDM. During pregnancy, the expression of those microRNAs from GDM women also were significantly upregulated. The expression of those microRNAs was also positively correlated with IR, a risk factor of GDM. Plasma microRNA-16-5p, -17-5p, -20a-5p reflected an obvious separation between GDM women and non-GDM women, with areas under the curve of 0.92 (95%CI: 0.871-0.984), 0.88 (95%CI: 0.798-0.962), and 0.74 (95%CI: 0.618-0.870), respectively, cut-offs >2554, 1820, 3886 copies/μL, respectively; sensitivity 41.6%, 21.4% and 17.8%, respectively; and specificity 95.8%, 95.4% and 95.4%, respectively.
Plasma microRNA-16-5p, -17-5p and -20a-5p are potential diagnostic biomarkers in GDM.
•The 3PF strategy is always better than the BF strategy.•RF is more likely to be better than 3PF as the channel competition increases.•3PF is more likely to be preferred as the revenue sharing rate ...or unit production cost increases.•Financing behavior affects the revenue sharing rate’s impact on retail price.
The third-party platform channel has been widely used in addition to the traditional retail channel to sell products. In practice, some third-party platforms provide financing services to small businesses that sell products on them. However, few studies addressed the capital constraint problem faced by a manufacturer who sells products through both retailers and third-party platforms, especially when considering the third-party platform’s lending service behavior. This research establishes a model where a capital-constrained manufacturer sells products through a retailer and a third-party platform and may pursue a financing strategy by borrowing from the third-party platform (3PF), the retailer (RF), or the bank (BF). We investigate the impact of the third-party platform’s or retailer’s dual role—lending provider and channel participant—on dual-channel operational management and study the manufacturer’s financing strategy choices by comparing profits under different financing strategies. The results of our analysis show that for the manufacturer, the 3PF strategy is always better than the BF strategy. Furthermore, the manufacturer is more likely to prefer the RF strategy to the 3PF strategy as the channel competition increases or as the revenue sharing rate or unit production cost decreases. We also find that the retailer’s retail price increases as the revenue sharing rate increases if there is no capital constraint, but it decreases under the BF and 3PF strategies. This indicates that the manufacturer’s financing behavior has a significant impact on the retailer’s retail price decision. We extend our model by considering random demand and find that these findings continue to hold when the potential demand equals its expected value.
Chlorine disinfection to drinking water plays an important role in preventing and controlling waterborne disease outbreaks globally. Nevertheless, little is known about why it enriches the antibiotic ...resistance genes (ARGs) in bacteria after chlorination. Here, ARGs released from killed antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB), and culturable chlorine-injured bacteria produced in the chlorination process as the recipient, were investigated to determine their contribution to the horizontal transfer of ARGs during disinfection treatment. We discovered Escherichia coli, Salmonella aberdeen, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterococcus faecalis showed diverse resistance to sodium hypochlorite, and transferable RP4 could be released from killed sensitive donor consistently. Meanwhile, the survival of chlorine-tolerant injured bacteria with enhanced cell membrane permeabilisation and a strong oxidative stress-response demonstrated that a physiologically competent cell could be transferred by RP4 with an improved transformation frequency of up to 550 times compared with the corresponding untreated bacteria. Furthermore, the water quality factors involving chemical oxygen demand (COD
), ammonium nitrogen and metal ions (Ca
and K
) could significantly promote above transformation frequency of released RP4 into injured E. faecalis. Our findings demonstrated that the chlorination process promoted the horizontal transfer of plasmids by natural transformation, which resulted in the exchange of ARGs across bacterial genera and the emergence of new ARB, as well as the transfer of chlorine-injured opportunistic pathogen from non-ARB to ARB. Considering that the transfer elements were quite resistant to degradation through disinfection, this situation poses a potential risk to public health.
Ferns are primitive vascular plants with diverse morphologies and structures. Plant anatomical traits and their linkages can reflect adaptation to the environment; however, these remain are still ...poorly understood in ferns. The main objective of this study was to explore whether there was structural coordination among and within organs in fern species. We measured 16 hydraulically related anatomical traits of pinnae, petioles, and roots of 24 representative fern species from the tropical and subtropical forest understory and analyzed trait correlation networks. In addition, we examined phylogenetic signals for the anatomical traits and analyzed co‐evolutionary relationships. These results indicated that stomatal density and all petiole anatomical traits exhibited significant phylogenetic signals. Evolutionary correlations were observed between the tracheid diameter and wall thickness of the petiole and between the water transport capacity of the petiole and stomatal density. Conversely, anatomical traits of roots (e.g., root diameter) showed no phylogenetic signals and were not significantly correlated with those of the pinnae and petioles, indicating a lack of structural coordination between the below‐ and above‐ground organs. Unlike angiosperms, vein density is unrelated to stomatal density or pinna thickness in ferns. As root diameter decreased, the cortex‐to‐stele diameter ratio decreased significantly (enhanced water absorption) in angiosperms but remained unchanged in ferns. These differences lead to different responses of ferns to climate change and improve our knowledge of the water adaptation strategies of ferns.
Xylem resistance to drought‐induced embolism is an important trait determining plant distribution. In the karst hills of Southwest China, with a relatively small variation in altitude, soil depth and ...water availability strongly decrease from the foot towards the top, and woody plant species display distinct spatial distribution.
For testing the hypothesis that embolism resistance of leaf and stem xylem reflects the spatial distribution across species along a topographical gradient of the karst hills, we measured the xylem water potential in the dry season, vulnerability to drought‐induced embolism in stems and leaves, and relevant anatomical traits in 17 evergreen species with a different topographical distribution.
We found that from the foot towards the hill top, plant water potential sharply decreased, and both stem and leaf xylem showed increasing resistance to hydraulic dysfunction and drought‐resistant anatomical characteristics, but non‐significant variation in specific hydraulic conductivity. Also, hydraulic safety margins increased with relative altitude and thus increasing hydraulic safety. Hydraulic safety underlies the local distribution of the species, but does not come at the cost of hydraulic efficiency.
Our results demonstrate that plant hydraulic safety largely shape the niche differentiation and hence community assembly in highly heterogeneous and water‐limited landscapes.
A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has separated China's evolving principal social contradictions into four different stages. Based on ...the assessment of principal social contradictions at different points in time, the CPC enacted different economic policies. During 1949-1956, based on the recognition of class struggle as China 's principal social contradiction, the Party focused its economic policies on socialist transformation and established the foundation for the public sector of the economy. During 1956-1978, amid flip-flops in the Party's assessment of whether class struggle or backward productive forces were the principal contradiction, China's economic development suffered some setbacks, but the vision for building an industrial country remained unchanged, and resources were focused on developing major national industrial projects. During 1978-2019, the Party focused on economic development and reform and opening up in pursuit of the realization of grand economic development goals based on the assessment that China's principal social contradiction was between people's ever-growing material and cultural needs and China's relatively backward social productive forces. In 2017, the 19th CPC National Congress made the important political assessment that China's principal social contradiction had transformed into the contradiction between people's ever-growing need for a better life and China's unbalanced and inadequate development, and proposed new development concepts to lead the Chinese people on a new journey towards the second centennial goal. The most important experience of the CPC's economic work is analyzing and solving problems based on Marxist ideology and methodology.
Nanoparticles with unique properties have potential applications in food, medicine, pharmacology, and agriculture industries. Accordingly, many significant researches have been conducted to develop ...novel nanoparticles using chemical and biological techniques. This review focuses on the synthesis of selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs) using polysaccharides as templates. Various instrumental techniques being used to confirm the formation of polysaccharide-SeNPs conjugates and characterize the properties of nanoparticles are also introduced. Finally, the biological activities of the synthesized SeNPs and the influence of structural factors of polysaccharides on the property of synthetic nanocomposites are highlighted. In general, the polysaccharides functionalized SeNPs can be easily obtained using sodium selenite as precursor and ascorbic acid as reductant. The final products having different particle size, morphology, and selenium content exhibit abundant physiological activities. Structural factors of polysacchairdes involving molecular weights, substitution of functional groups, and chain conformation play determinant roles on the properties of nanocomposites, resulting in different biological performances. The review on the achievements and current status of polysaccharides conjugated SeNPs provides insights into this exciting research topic for further studies in the future.
Aiming at a series of problems such as detection accuracy, calculation blocking, display delay, and so on in the ship detection of surveillance video, an improved YOLOv5 algorithm is proposed in this ...paper. First, to improve the detection performance, it is proposed to optimize the anchor box algorithm in the YOLOv5 network according to the ship target characteristics. Then, the t‐SNE algorithm is used to reduce and visualize the data set label information and perform weighted analysis on the processed features for low‐dimensional data. The mapped kernel k‐means clustering algorithm adaptively selects a more appropriate anchor box and considers the detection performance of large and small ship targets. Secondly, to improve the problem of computational blocking and delay, the BN scaling factor γ is used to compress the YOLOv5 network, so that the model can be reduced without reducing the detection performance. The optimized YOLOv5 framework is trained on the self‐integrated data set. The accuracy of the algorithm is increased by 2.34%, and the ship detection speed reaches 98 fps and 20 fps in the server environment and the low computing power version (Jetson nano), respectively.
Lithium is a national strategic resource, and the high-efficiency separation of lithium and magnesium in Salt Lake is the key to ensure the sustainable utilization of lithium resources in China. It ...is vital important to develop a highly stable lithium ion adsorbent. In this work, Li2TiO3 is synthesized by calcination TiO2 and Li2CO3, then which is ion-exchanged with HCl solution to obtain H2TiO3. The experimental results show that hollow structure H2TiO3 has a large pore volume (2.67 cm3/g) and specific surface area (111.57 m2/g). The lithium adsorption performance is systematically investigated by using it as an adsorbent to recover of Li+ from aqueous solution. The adsorption experiments results show that high solution pH environment is more beneficial to adsorb of Li+, and the maximum adsorption capacity of 36.2 mg/g is obtained at pH=13. The results of kinetic experiments indicate that the adsorption behavior of Li+ conforms to the pseudo-second-order model, demonstrating the adsorption process is chemosorption. Additionally, Li+ adsorption conforms to the Langmuir model, indicating adsorption behavior is monolayer adsorption. The thermodynamic experimental results show that the higher temperature is beneficial to Li+ adsorption, and the Gibbs free energy ΔGϴ of the adsorption process is negative, indicating that the adsorption process is spontaneous. Meanwhile, ΔHϴ is greater than zero, indicating the process is endothermic. The results of ion selectivity experiments show that H2TiO3 has a high selectivity for Li+ (2.91 mmol·g−1) in a mixed solution contains of Li+, Na+, K+, Rb+ and Cs+. The sorption capacity of H2TiO3 also maintained at 27.55 mg/g after 5 adsorption/desorption cycles, and the dissolution loss rate of titanium is only 0.06 %, indicating the hollow H2TiO3 had a strong structure stability in the process of Li+ adsorption. Therefore, the hollow structure H2TiO3 lithium ion sieve with large adsorption capacity and high stability is a promising adsorbent in the application of lithium extraction from Salt Lake brine.
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•H2TiO3 hollow structure with large BET surface area was prepared by using TiO2 hollow sphere.•The maximum adsorption capacity of Li+ on hollow H2TiO3 is 47 mg/g at 298 K.•The dissolution loss rate of Ti4+ is only 0.06 % after 5 adsorption/desorption cycles.
ABSTRACT
It is important to understand the ecophysiological characters of plants when exploring mechanisms underlying species substitution in the process of plant succession. In the present study, we ...selected 34 woody species from different stages of secondary succession in subtropical forests of southern China, and measured their hydraulic conductivity, gas exchange rates, leaf nutrients and drought‐tolerance traits such as xylem resistance to cavitation, turgor loss point and carbon isotope ratio. Principal component analysis revealed that early‐, mid‐ and late‐successional species were significantly separated along axis 1, which was strongly associated with hydraulic‐photosynthetic coordination. In contrast to species distributed in late‐successional forest, early‐successional species had the highest hydraulic conductivity, net photosynthetic rates, photosynthetic nitrogen and phosphorus use efficiencies, but had the lowest photosynthetic water‐use efficiency. However, changes of the measured drought‐tolerance traits of the 34 species along the succession did not demonstrate a clear trend – no significant correlations between these traits and plant successional stages were found. Moreover, the trade‐off between hydraulic efficiency and safety was not identified. Taken together, our results suggested that hydraulic efficiency and photosynthetic function, rather than drought tolerance, play an important role in species distributions along plant succession in subtropical forests.
It is important to understand the eco‐physiological characters of plants when exploring mechanisms underlying species substitution in the process of plant succession. In the present work, 34 woody species from different successional stages in subtropical forests in southern China were selected, to investigate plant traits such as hydraulic conductivity, gas exchange rates, leaf nutrient contents, xylem vulnerability to cavitation, turgor loss point, and carbon isotope ratio. Main findings of the manuscript were: i) both plant hydraulic conductance and photosynthetic capacity decreased significantly in the order of early to late successional stages; ii) changes in drought resistant traits measured for different successional species did not show a clear pattern. The results suggested that hydraulic‐photosynthetic coordination (rather than drought tolerance) might be the key factor affecting species distributions along plant succession in subtropical forests.
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