Consider a networked evolutionary game (NEG). According to its strategy updating rule, a fundamental evolutionary equation (FEE) for each node is proposed, which is based on local information. Using ...FEEs, the network strategy profile dynamics (SPD) is expressed as a k-valued (deterministic or probabilistic) logical dynamic system. The SPD is then used to analyze the network dynamic behaviors, such as the fixed points, the cycles, and the basins of attractions, etc. Particularly, when the homogeneous networked games are considered, a necessary and sufficient condition is presented to verify when a stationary stable profile exists. Then the equivalence of two NEGs is investigated. Finally, after a rigorous definition of controlled NEGs, some control problems, including controllability, stabilization, and network consensus, are considered, and some verifiable conditions are presented. Examples with various games are presented to illustrate the theoretical results. The basic tool for this approach is the semi-tensor product (STP) of matrices, which is a generalization of the conventional matrix product.
Edwardsiella tarda is a Gram-negative intracellular pathogen accounting for enormous economic losses in cultured seawater and freshwater fish. Infection by E. tarda often leads to the development of ...a systematic disease called edwardsiellosis, characterized by symptoms of ascites, hernia, exophthalmia, and severe lesions of internal organs. Although edwardsiellosis has been studied for many years, however, the major virulence factors of E. tarda are still poorly understood. In addition, the control of edwardsiellosis by antibiotics or formalin-killed bacterin was not as effective as that of extracellular pathogens such as Vibrio spp. More recently, great efforts have been put in studying the virulent factors of E. tarda, especially by scientists from China, and various candidate vaccines have been developed, some of which are very promising for cure of edwardsiellosis.
•Edwardsiella tarda is an important bacterial pathogen in aquaculture.•Contributions of Chinese scientists to this area have been emphasized.•Numerous highly effective vaccine candidates have been developed.
Summary
It is well known that soil is inherently anisotropic and its mechanical behavior is significantly influenced by its fabric anisotropy. Hypoplasticity is increasingly being accepted in the ...constitutive modeling for soils, in which many salient features, such as nonlinear stress‐strain relations, dilatancy, and critical state failure, can be described by a single tensorial equation. However, within the framework of hypoplasticity, modeling fabric anisotropy remains challenging, as the fabric and its evolution are often vaguely assumed without a sound basis. This paper presents a hypoplastic constitutive model for granular soils based on the newly developed anisotropic critical state theory, in which the conditions of fabric anisotropy are concurrently satisfied along with the traditional conditions at the critical state. A deviatoric fabric tensor is introduced into the Gudehus‐Bauer hypoplastic model, and a scalar‐valued anisotropic state variable signifying the interplay between the fabric and the stress state is used to characterize its impact on the dilatancy and strength of the soils. In addition, fabric evolution during shearing can explicitly be addressed. Modifications have also been undertaken to improve the performance of the undrained response of the model. The anisotropic hypoplastic model can simulate experimental tests for sand under various combinations of principle stress direction, intermediate principal stress (or mode of shearing), soil densities, and confining pressures, and the associated drastic effect of different principal stress orientations in reference to the material axes of anisotropy can be well captured.
Multivariate synchronization index (MSI) has been successfully applied for frequency detection in steady state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) based brain-computer interface (BCI) systems. However, ...the standard MSI algorithm and its variants cannot simultaneously take full advantage of the time-local structure and the harmonic components in SSVEP signals, which are both crucial for frequency detection performance. To overcome the limitation, we propose a novel filter bank temporally local MSI (FBTMSI) algorithm to further improve SSVEP frequency detection accuracy. The method explicitly utilizes the temporal information of signal for covariance matrix estimation and employs filter bank decomposition to exploits SSVEP-related harmonic components. We employed the cross-validation strategy on the public Benchmark dataset to optimize the parameters and evaluate the performance of the FBTMSI algorithm. Experimental results show that FBTMSI outperforms the standard MSI, temporally local MSI (TMSI) and filter bank driven MSI (FBMSI) algorithms across multiple experimental settings. In the case of data length of one second, the average accuracy of FBTMSI is 9.85% and 3.15% higher than that of the FBMSI and the TMSI, respectively. The promising results demonstrate the effectiveness of the FBTMSI algorithm for frequency recognition and show its potential in SSVEP-based BCI applications.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common aging‐associated dementia. The population of AD patients is increasing as the world age grows. Currently, there is no cure for AD. Given that methyl ...vitamin B12 (methylcobalamin) deficiency is related to AD and Aβ‐induced oxidative damage and that methylcobalamin can scavenge reactive oxygen species (ROS) by direct or indirect ways, we studied the effect of methylcobalamin on the cytotoxicity of Aβ. PC12 cells were chronically exposed (24 hours) to Aβ25‐35 (25 μM) to establish an AD cell model. The cells were pretreated with or without methylcobalamin (1‐100 μM) to investigate the role of methylcobalamin. Cell viability and apoptosis were tested, followed by testing of mitochondrial damage, oxidative stress, and mitochondrial calcium concentration. We observed that methylcobalamin improved the cell viability by decreasing the ratio of apoptosis cells in this AD cell model. Further experiments suggested that methylcobalamin functioned as an antioxidant to scavenge ROS, reducing the endoplasmic reticulum‐mitochondria calcium flux through IP3R, preventing mitochondria dysfunction, ultimately protecting cells against apoptosis and cell death. Taken together, our results presented, for the first time, that methyl vitamin B12 can protect cells from Aβ‐induced cytotoxicity and the mechanism was mainly relevant to the antioxidative function of methyl B12.
Methylcobalamin functions as an antioxidant that firstly repairs the cellular insulted ROS scavenging ability then decreases the mitochondrial Ca2+ concentration by reducing endoplasmic reticulum‐mitochondria calcium flux, preventing the mitochondria from damage and eventually protecting cells from apoptosis and death.
Recently, a pressing requirement of solid-state lighting sources with high performance and low cost has motivated increasing research in metal halide perovskites. However, the relatively low emission ...efficiency and poor operation stability of perovskite light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are still critical drawbacks. In this study, a strategy of solution-processed all-inorganic heterostructure was proposed to overcome the emission efficiency and operation stability issues facing the challenges of perovskite LEDs. Solution-processed n-ZnO nanoparticles and p-NiO are used as the carrier injectors to fabricate all-inorganic heterostructured CsPbBr3 quantum dot LEDs, and a high-efficiency green emission is achieved with maximum luminance of 6093.2 cd/m2, external quantum efficiency of 3.79%, and current efficiency of 7.96 cd/A. More importantly, the studied perovskite LEDs possess a good operation stability after a long test time in air ambient. Typically, the devices can endure a high humidity (75%, 12 h) and a high working temperature (393 K, three heating/cooling cycles) even without encapsulation, and the operation stability is better than any previous reports. It is anticipated that this work will provide an effective strategy for the fabrication of high-performance perovskite LEDs with good stability under ambient and harsh conditions, making practical applications of such LEDs a real possibility.
The effect of high-grain (HG) feeding on caecal bacterial microbiota composition and fermentation and mucosa health is largely unknown. In the present study, ten male goats were randomly assigned to ...either a group fed a hay diet (0 % grain; n 5) or a group fed a HG diet (65 % grain; n 5) to characterise the changes in the composition of the bacterial community and mucosal morphology in the caecum. After 7 weeks of feeding, the HG diet decreased the caecal pH (P< 0·001) and increased (P< 0·001 to P< 0·004) the caecal digesta concentrations of total volatile fatty acids and lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Pyrosequencing of the 16S ribosomal RNA gene revealed that HG feeding increased (P= 0·001 to P= 0·009) the abundance of predominant genera Turicibacter and Clostridium in the caecal lumen and in the caecal mucosa and decreased (P< 0·001 to P< 0·009) the proportion of Bacteroides in the lumen and Mucispirillum in the mucosa compared with the hay diet. Furthermore, the HG diet-fed goats exhibited intense epithelial damage and up-regulation (P< 0·001 to P< 0·025) of the relative mRNA expression of IL-1β, IL-6, IL-12 and interferon-γ (IFN-γ) in the caecal mucosa. The correlation analysis revealed that alterations in caecal pH, LPS concentration and mucosa-associated microbiota abundance during HG feeding might partly contribute to local inflammation. Collectively, these results provide insight into the adaptive response of caecal bacterial populations to HG feeding in goats and reveal that the fermentable substrates that flow into the caecum may cause dramatic alterations in microbial compositions and play a significant role in caecal dysfunction.
Exosomes from cancer cells or immune cells, carrying bio-macromolecules or long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), participate in tumor pathogenesis and progression by modulating the microenvironment. This ...study aims to explore the function of M2 macrophage-derived exosomes on the invasion and metastasis of esophageal cancer (EC) with the involvement of the lncRNA AFAP1-AS1/microRNA-26a (miR-26a)/activating transcription factor 2 (ATF2) axis. We found that lncRNA AFAP1-AS1 could specifically bind to miR-26a, thus affecting the expression of miR-26a, and ATF2 was the direct target of miR-26a. Compared with M1 macrophage-derived exosomes, M2 macrophage-derived exosomes exhibited higher AFAP1-AS1 and ATF2 expression and lower miR-26a expression. Moreover, extracellular AFAP1-AS1 could be moved to KYSE410 cells via being incorporated into M2 macrophage-derived exosomes. M2 macrophage-derived exosomes could downregulate miR-26a and promote the expression of ATF2 through high expression of AFAP1-AS1, thus promoting the migration, invasion, and lung metastasis of EC cells; M2-exosomes upregulating AFAP1-AS1 or downregulating miR-26a ameliorated this effect. In summary, M2 macrophage-derived exosomes transferred lncRNA AFAP1-AS1 to downregulate miR-26a and upregulate ATF2, thus promoting the invasion and metastasis of EC. Targeting M2 macrophages and the lncRNA AFAP1-AS1/miR-26a/ATF2 signaling axis represents a potential therapeutic strategy for EC.
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This study provides evidence that M2 macrophage-derived exosomes transferred lncRNA AFAP1-AS1 to downregulate miR-26a and upregulate ATF2, thus promoting the invasion and metastasis of esophageal cancer (EC). Our work provides novel insights for the role of AFAP1-AS1 in M2-exosomes in EC treatment.
China has been experiencing fine particle (i.e., aerodynamic diameters ≤ 2.5 μm; PM2.5) pollution and acid rain in recent decades, which exert adverse impacts on human health and the ecosystem. ...Recently, ammonia (i.e., NH₃) emission reduction has been proposed as a strategic option to mitigate haze pollution. However, atmospheric NH₃ is also closely bound to nitrogen deposition and acid rain, and comprehensive impacts of NH₃ emission control are still poorly understood in China. In this study, by integrating a chemical transport model with a high-resolution NH₃ emission inventory, we find that NH₃ emission abatement can mitigate PM2.5 pollution and nitrogen deposition but would worsen acid rain in China. Quantitatively, a 50% reduction in NH₃ emissions achievable by improving agricultural management, along with a targeted emission reduction (15%) for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, can alleviate PM2.5 pollution by 11−17% primarily by suppressing ammonium nitrate formation. Meanwhile, nitrogen deposition is estimated to decrease by 34%, with the area exceeding the critical load shrinking from 17% to 9% of China’s terrestrial land. Nevertheless, this NH₃ reduction would significantly aggravate precipitation acidification, with a decrease of as much as 1.0 unit in rainfall pH and a corresponding substantial increase in areas with heavy acid rain. An economic evaluation demonstrates that the worsened acid rain would partly offset the total economic benefit from improved air quality and less nitrogen deposition. After considering the costs of abatement options, we propose a region-specific strategy for multipollutant controls that will benefit human and ecosystem health.
•HA/γ-PGA hydrogels can be formed in situ as fast as 9s.•HA/γ-PGA hydrogels exhibit good mechanical properties and superior biocompatible.•Gelation time, protein release behavior can be modulated ...easily.•HA/γ-PGA hydrogels are a promising candidate as protein carrier.
Injectable hydrogels have great potential in minimally invasive delivery. In this work, novel injectable hydrogels were prepared via self-crosslinking of aldehyde hyaluronic acid (HA-CHO) and hydrazide-modified poly (γ-glutamic acid) (γ-PGA-ADH) for proteins delivery. The HA/γ-PGA hydrogels could be formed in situ as fast as 9s with high swelling ratios. Rheological properties illustrated a wide processing range and good mechanical properties, which were reflected by broad linear viscoelastic region and higher threshold shear stress (σc) and storage modulus (G′). Meanwhile, the gelation time, swelling ratio, rheological properties, as well as the protein release behavior could be modulated conveniently. Bovine serum albumin (BSA) was designed as a model drug to study the release behavior. We found that the release mechanisms were either diffusion or Case-II relaxation depending on the different hydrogel components. The HA/γ-PGA hydrogels also showed good biocompatibility. Therefore, the HA/γ-PGA hydrogels have great potential as promising injectable biomaterials for controlled protein delivery.
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