Cholera remains a significant public health burden in many countries and regions of the world, highlighting the need for a deeper understanding of the mechanisms associated with its transmission, ...spread, and control. Mathematical modeling offers a valuable research tool to investigate cholera dynamics and explore effective intervention strategies. In this article, we provide a review of the current state in the modeling studies of cholera. Starting from an introduction of basic cholera transmission models and their applications, we survey model extensions in several directions that include spatial and temporal heterogeneities, effects of disease control, impacts of human behavior, and multi-scale infection dynamics. We discuss some challenges and opportunities for future modeling efforts on cholera dynamics, and emphasize the importance of collaborations between different modeling groups and different disciplines in advancing this research area.
Human health is affected by many environmental factors. Geographical detector is software based on spatial variation analysis of the geographical strata of variables to assess the environmental risks ...to human health: the risk detector indicates where the risk areas are; the factor detector identifies which factors are responsible for the risk; the ecological detector discloses the relative importance of the factors; and the interaction detector reveals whether the risk factors interact or lead independently to disease.
Two types of coupled neural networks with reaction-diffusion terms are considered in this paper. In the first one, the nodes are coupled through their states. In the second one, the nodes are coupled ...through the spatial diffusion terms. For the former, utilizing Lyapunov functional method and pinning control technique, we obtain some sufficient conditions to guarantee that network can realize synchronization. In addition, considering that the theoretical coupling strength required for synchronization may be much larger than the needed value, we propose an adaptive strategy to adjust the coupling strength for achieving a suitable value. For the latter, we establish a criterion for synchronization using the designed pinning controllers. It is found that the coupled reaction-diffusion neural networks with state coupling under the given linear feedback pinning controllers can realize synchronization when the coupling strength is very large, which is contrary to the coupled reaction-diffusion neural networks with spatial diffusion coupling. Moreover, a general criterion for ensuring network synchronization is derived by pinning a small fraction of nodes with adaptive feedback controllers. Finally, two examples with numerical simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.
Curculigoside (CUR) is natural ingredient from Curculigo orchioides Gaertn with multiple biological activities. However, whether CUR protects from ulcerative colitis (UC) and underlying mechanisms ...are unclear. Herein, mice challenged with dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) were established and administrated with CUR for 7 days. Then histological pathologies and ferroptosis regulators were determined in vivo. The ferroptotic IEC-6 cells were prepared to investigate the underlying mechanism of CUR. Results showed that CUR inhibited the disease activity index, histological damage and cell death in mice with colitis. We also found that ferroptosis was induced in mice with colitis, as evidenced by iron overload, GSH depletion, ROS and MDA production, accompanied by decreased expression of SOD and GPX4. CUR treatment significantly reversed these alterations of ferroptotic features in DSS-induced mice. Furthermore, similar effects of CUR on ferroptosis were observed in IEC-6 cells under the combined treatment of H2O2 and iron chloride hexahydrate. Interestingly, we found that CUR could increase the selenium sensitivity and promote GPX4 transcription level in IEC-6 cells. Knockdown of GPX4 significantly blocked the protective effects of CUR on cell death, GSH and MDA contents as well as LDH activity in ferroptotic IEC-6 cells. Taken together, these findings suggest that CUR protects against ferroptosis in UC by the induction of GPX4, which presents a potential agent for UC treatment.
Summary
As the largest cultivated fiber crop in the world, cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) is often exposed to various biotic stresses during its growth periods. Verticillium wilt caused by Verticillium ...dahliae is a severe disease in cotton, and the molecular mechanism of cotton resistance for Verticillium wilt needs to be further investigated. Here, we revealed that the cotton genome contains nine types of GST genes. An evolutionary analysis showed that a newly identified cluster (including Gh_A09G1508, Gh_A09G1509 and Gh_A09G1510) located on chromosome 09 of the A‐subgenome was under positive selection pressure during the formation of an allotetraploid. Transcriptome analysis showed that this cluster participates in Verticillium wilt resistance. Because the Gh_A09G1509 gene showed the greatest differential expression in the resistant cultivar under V. dahliae stress, we overexpressed this gene in tobacco and found that its overexpression resulted in enhanced Verticillium wilt resistance. Suppression of the gene cluster via virus‐induced gene silencing made cotton plants of the resistant cultivar Nongda601 significantly susceptible. These results demonstrated that the GST cluster played an important role in Verticillium wilt resistance. Further investigation showed that the encoded enzymes of the cluster were essential for the delicate equilibrium between the production and scavenging of H2O2 during V. dahliae stress.
Significance statement
Evolution of the glutathione S‐transferases gene family was clarified in the Gossypium genus. A newly identified tau cluster in the A‐subgenome was shown to have undergone adaptive evolution, and provided Verticillium wilt resistance in cotton.
We study the entanglement entropy of a one-parameter family of exactly solvable gravities in the two-dimensional asymptotically flat space. The islands and Page curves of eternal, evaporating, and ...bath-removed black holes are investigated. The different theories in this parameter class are identified through field redefinitions, which leave the island invariant. The Page transition is found to occur at the first and third of the black hole lifetimes in the evaporating case for this family of solutions. In addition, we consider gluing the equilibrium black hole and the evaporating one along a null trajectory and study the effect of gluing on the islands and Page curves. In the glued space, the island jumps across two different geometries at a certain retarded time. As a result, the Page transition is stretched and split into two separate ones-the first transition happens when the net entropy generation stops, and the second one occurs as the early radiation effectively starts to become purified. Finally, we discuss the issues concerning the inconsistent rates of purification and the paradox related to the state of the radiation.
A three‐tiered cake‐style composite is elaborately established, with the characteristic of a double‐deck of MoS2 nanosheets and reduction of graphene oxide (RGO) sheets dotted with CoS2 nanoparticles ...(CoS2@MoS2/RGO). Because of the prominent synergistic effect of graphene acting as conductive support, MoS2 and CoS2 providing abundant catalytically active sites, and the cake‐style structure promoting mechanical stability, the CoS2@MoS2/RGO exhibits a superior hydrogen evolution reaction activity with a small overpotential of 98 mV at cathodic current density of 10 mA cm−2, and a small Tafel slope of 37.4 mV dec−1, as well as excellent cycling stability. Density functional theory calculations reveal that the hydrogen adsorption free energy of CoS2@MoS2/RGO is close to zero.
A three‐tiered cake‐style CoS2@MoS2/RGO hybrid catalyst is established with the characteristic of a double‐deck of MoS2 nanosheets and graphene sheets dotted with CoS2 nanoparticles. Because the prominent synergistic effect of graphene acts as a conductive support, MoS2 and CoS2 provide abundant catalytically active sites, and the cake‐style structure promotes mechanical stability. The CoS2@MoS2/RGO (reduction of graphene oxide) hybrid catalyst exhibits outstanding hydrogen evolution reaction electrocatalytic activity.
Conventionally, resource allocation is formulated as an optimization problem and solved online with instantaneous scenario information. Since most resource allocation problems are not convex, the ...optimal solutions are very difficult to obtain in real time. Lagrangian relaxation or greedy methods are then often employed, which results in performance loss. Therefore, the conventional methods of resource allocation are facing great challenges to meet the ever increasing QoS requirements of users with scarce radio resource. Assisted by cloud computing, a huge amount of historical data on scenarios can be collected for extracting similarities among scenarios using machine learning. Moreover, optimal or near-optimal solutions of historical scenarios can be searched offline and stored in advance. When the measured data of a scenario arrives, the current scenario is compared with historical scenarios to find the most similar one. Then the optimal or near-optimal solution in the most similar historical scenario is adopted to allocate the radio resources for the current scenario. To facilitate the application of new design philosophy, a machine learning framework is proposed for resource allocation assisted by cloud computing. An example of beam allocation in multi-user massive MIMO systems shows that the proposed machine-learning-based resource allocation outperforms conventional methods.
While the studies on the material interaction with mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been mainly focused on the ability of materials to provide environment to regulate cell viability, proliferation ...or differentiation, the therapeutic effects of MSC-material constructs may result from the secretion of immunomodulatory and angiogenic cytokines from MSCs. Here, electrospun scaffolds composed of fibers in random, aligned and mesh-like patterns were fabricated, and the paracrine behavior of adipose-derived MSCs (Ad-MSCs) on the scaffolds were investigated in comparison to the cell culture via conventional microplates. It was found that the Ad-MSCs on the electrospun fibers produced significantly higher levels of anti-inflammatory and pro-angiogenic cytokines compared to those cultured on microplates. The enhanced modulatory effects of the secreted products of Ad-MSCs on fibrous electrospun scaffolds were also proven in the cultures of endothelial cells and the LPS-stimulated macrophages, with three types of scaffolds showing distinct influences on the paracrine function of Ad-MSCs. In a skin excisional wound-healing model in rat, the conditioned medium collected from the MSC-scaffold system accelerated the wound closure, promoted the macrophage recruitment and enhanced the polarization of macrophages toward the pro-healing phenotype in the wound bed. Our study demonstrates that the fibrous topography of scaffolds is a key material property that modulates the paracrine function of cells. The discovery elucidates a new aspect of material functions, laying the foundation for developing scaffold materials to promote tissue regeneration/repair through guiding the paracrine signaling network.
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Simply mixing a Cu(II) salt and 6,6′-dihydroxy-2,2′-bipyridine (H2 L) in a basic aqueous solution afforded a highly active water oxidation catalyst (WOC). Cyclic voltammetry of the solution at pH = ...12–14 shows irreversible catalytic current with an onset potential of ∼0.8 V versus NHE. Catalytic oxygen evolution takes place in controlled potential electrolysis at a relatively low overpotential of 640 mV. Experimental and computational studies suggest that the L ligand participates in electron transfer processes to facilitate the oxidation of the Cu center to lead to an active WOC with low overpotential, akin to the use of the tyrosine radical by Photosystem II to oxidize the CaMn4 center for water oxidation.
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