Landslide is one of the most common geological hazards, which causes a large number of property damage and loss of life in China every year. This case study was a 330-kV transmission line project ...located in Longnan City, Gansu Province, China, which is known as an area prone to landslides. A hybrid model of fractal theory-information value-random forests algorithm (FT-IV-RF) was proposed to evaluate the landslide susceptibility. First, sixteen landslide conditioning factors and pre-existing landslide events were selected as the initial evaluation indexes of landslide susceptibility from four datasets (geology, topography, climate and environment, and landslide inventory). Second, Pearson coefficient and sensitivity analyses were conducted to extract ten landslide conditioning factors with small correlation and large contribution to landslide occurrence from sixteen factors. Third, the weight of each class for a given factor were determined by using a combination of fractal theory and information value algorithms, which was regarded as one of input parameters and used to select the training samples in the random forest model. Four,
k
-means clustering was performed to classify the landslide susceptibility indices, which were predicted using the random forest model, into five levels to produce the landslide susceptibility map of the study area. Furthermore, the proposed model of FT-IV-RF model was validated by comparing with results obtained using information value (IV), back-propagation neural network (BPNN), and fuzzy logic (FL) models. Good agreements on the susceptibility estimation were observed among four models, and the hybrid model had the largest area under the curve (AUC) value of 0.996, indicating a good performance of the proposed hybrid model.
This study aimed to explore how cold acclimation (CA) modulates cold stress in tobacco leaves and reveal the relationship between CA and cold stress resistance, and the mechanism of CA-induced plant ...resistance to cold stress. This study examined the effects of CA treatment (at 8-10℃ for 2 d) on the cold tolerance of tobacco leaves under 4°C cold stress treatment using seedlings without CA treatment as the control (NA). In both CA and NA leaves, cold stress treatment resulted in a decrease in maximum photochemical efficiency of PSII (F
v
/F
m
), increase in relative variable fluorescence (V
J
) at 2 ms on the standardized OJIP curve, inhibition of PSII activity, and impairment of electron transfer on the acceptor side. Besides increasing the malondialdehyde (MDA) content and electrolyte leakage rate, the cold stress exacerbated the degree of membrane peroxidation. The CA treatment also induced the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), including superoxide anion (O
2
·
−
) and H
2
O
2,
and increased the activities of antioxidant enzymes, such as superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD), catalase (CAT) and ascorbic acid peroxidase (APX). The CA treatment also enhanced the accumulation of soluble sugar (SS) and soluble protein (SP), cyclic electron flow (CEF), and the proportion of regulatory energy dissipation Y(NPQ). Moreover, CA+ cold stress treatment significantly reduced CEF and Y(NPQ) in tobacco leaves than under NA+ cold stress treatment, thus significantly alleviating the degree of PSII photoinhibition. In conclusion, CA treatment significantly alleviated PSII photoinhibition and oxidative damage in tobacco leaves under cold stress treatment. Improvement in cold resistance of tobacco leaves is associated with the induction of antioxidant enzyme activity, accumulation of osmoregulation substances, and initiation of photoprotective mechanisms.
Chronic inflammation in adipose tissue plays a key role in obesity-induced insulin resistance. However, the mechanisms underlying obesity-induced inflammation remain elusive. Here we show that ...obesity promotes mtDNA release into the cytosol, where it triggers inflammatory responses by activating the DNA-sensing cGAS-cGAMP-STING pathway. Fat-specific knockout of disulfide-bond A oxidoreductase-like protein (DsbA-L), a chaperone-like protein originally identified in the mitochondrial matrix, impaired mitochondrial function and promoted mtDNA release, leading to activation of the cGAS-cGAMP-STING pathway and inflammatory responses. Conversely, fat-specific overexpression of DsbA-L protected mice against high-fat diet-induced activation of the cGAS-cGAMP-STING pathway and inflammation. Taken together, we identify DsbA-L as a key molecule that maintains mitochondrial integrity. DsbA-L deficiency promotes inflammation and insulin resistance by activating the cGAS-cGAMP-STING pathway. Our study also reveals that, in addition to its well-characterized roles in innate immune surveillance, the cGAS-cGAMP-STING pathway plays an important role in mediating obesity-induced metabolic dysfunction.
Acoustic logging instruments generate high voltages in the order of thousands of volts. Electrical interferences are thus induced by high-voltage pulses that affect the logging tool and make it ...inoperable owing to damaged components in severe cases. High-voltage pulses from the acoustoelectric logging detector interfere with the electrode measurement loop through capacitive coupling, which has seriously affected the acoustoelectric signal measurements. In this paper, we simulate high voltage pulses, capacitive coupling and electrode measurement loops based on qualitative analysis of the causes of electrical interference. Based on the structure of the acoustoelectric logging detector and the logging environment, an electrical interference simulation and prediction model was developed to quantify the characteristics of the electrical interference signal.
An approach was proposed to automatically measure the discontinuity geometric properties from a point cloud acquired using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR). The procedure primarily includes the ...following features: (Assali et al., 2016) Grid data from the point cloud was created to enhance computational efficiency for data processing and retrieval; (Barton & Choubey, 1977) A modified region growing (MRG) algorithm, which is characterized by more efficient grow criterion, was used to recognize discontinuities from the point cloud; (Cao et al., 2017) Four geometric properties from identified discontinuities were calculated based on analytic geometry; (Chen et al., 2016) Influence of threshold T on the identified results was investigated through sensitivity analysis, and threshold T was suggested to be less than the minimum normal difference among all joints and larger than 0°. Two cases (regular polyhedrons and a tunnel in the Rumei hydropower station) were taken as case studies to validate the developed approach, and calculation results have good agreement with real situations.
•Gridding data and MRG algorithm were adopted to enhance efficiency of discontinuity automated identification from point cloud•Four geometric parameters were measured automatically from extracted discontinuities•Suggestions for determination of a reasonable threshold T were provided
Major depressive disorder is associated with inflammation and immune processes. Depressive symptoms correlate with inflammatory markers and alterations in the immune system including cytokine levels ...and immune cell function. Th17 cells are a T cell subset which exerts proinflammatory effects. Th17 cell accumulation and Th17/Treg imbalances have been reported to be critical in the pathophysiology of major depressive disorder and depressive-like behaviors in animal models. Th17 cells are thought to interfere with glutamate signaling, dopamine production, and other immune processes. Ketamine is a newly characterized antidepressant medication which has proved to be effective in rapidly reducing depressive symptoms. However, the mechanisms behind these antidepressant effects have not been fully elucidated.
Literature about Th17 cells and their role in depression and the antidepressant effect of ketamine are reviewed, with the possible interaction networks discussed.
The immune-modulating role of Th17 cells may participate in the antidepressant effect of ketamine.
As Th17 cells play multiple roles in depression, it is important to explore the mechanisms of action of ketamine on Th17 cells and Th17/Treg cell balance. This provides new perspectives for strengthening the antidepressant effect of ketamine while reducing its side effects and adverse reactions.
Background
Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disease with a complex aetiology. B cells play an important role in the pathogenesis of T1D. Regulatory B cells (Bregs) are a subset of B cells that ...produce and secrete the inhibitory factor interleukin-10 (IL-10), thereby exerting an anti-inflammatory effect. It was recently discovered that T-cell immunoglobulin mucin domain 1 (Tim-1) is essential for maintaining Bregs function related to immune tolerance. However, the detailed understanding of Tim-1
+
Bregs and IL-10
+
Bregs in T1D patients is lacking. This study aimed to characterize the profile of B cell subsets in T1D patients compared with that in controls and determine whether Tim-1
+
Bregs and IL-10
+
Bregs play roles in T1D.
Materials and Methods
A total of 47 patients with T1D, 30 patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and 24 healthy controls were recruited in this study. Flow cytometry was used to measure the levels of different B cell subsets (including B cells, plasmablasts, and Bregs) in the peripheral blood. Radiobinding assays were performed to detect the antibody titres of T1D patients. In addition, the correlations between different B cell subsets and patient parameters were investigated.
Results
Compared with healthy controls, differences in frequency of Tim-1
+
Bregs were significantly decreased in patients with T1D (36.53 ± 6.51
vs
. 42.25 ± 6.83,
P
=0.02
*
), and frequency of IL-10
+
Bregs were lower than healthy controls (17.64 ± 7.21
vs
. 24.52 ± 11.69,
P
=0.009
**
), the frequency of total Bregs in PBMC was also decreased in patients with T1D (1.42 ± 0.53
vs
. 1.99 ± 0.93,
P
=0.002.
**
). We analyzed whether these alterations in B cells subsets were associated with clinical features. The frequencies of Tim-1
+
Bregs and IL-10
+
Bregs were negatively related to fasting blood glucose (FBG) (
r
=-0.25 and -0.22;
P
=0.01
*
and 0.03
*,
respectively). The frequencies of Tim-1
+
Bregs and IL-10
+
Bregs are positively correlated with fast C-peptide (FCP) (
r
=0.23 and 0.37;
P
=0.02
*
and 0.0001
***
, respectively). In addition, the frequency of IL-10
+
Breg was also negatively related to glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c) (
r
=-0.20,
P
=0.04
*
). The frequencies of Tim-1
+
Bregs, IL-10
+
Bregs and Bregs in T2D patients were reduced, but no statistically significant difference was found between other groups. Interestingly, there was positive correlation between the frequencies of Tim-1
+
Bregs and IL-10
+
Bregs in T1D (
r
=0.37,
P
=0.01
*
). Of note, it is worth noting that our study did not observe any correlations between B cell subsets and autoantibody titres.
Conclusions
Our study showed altered Tim-1 and IL-10 expression in regulatory B cell in T1D patients. Tim-1, as suggested by the present study, is associated with islet function and blood glucose levels. These findings indicate that Tim-1
+
Bregs and IL-10
+
Bregs were involved in the pathogenesis of T1D.
We propose GraphD, an out-of-core Pregel-like system targeting efficient big graph processing with a small cluster of commodity PCs connected by Gigabit Ethernet, an environment affordable to most ...users. This is in contrast to some recent efforts for out-of-core graph computation with specialized hardware. In our setting, a vertex-centric program is often data-intensive, since the CPU cost of calculating a message value is negligible compared with the network cost of transmitting that message. As a result, network bandwidth is usually the bottleneck, and out-of-core execution would not sacrifice performance if disk IO overhead can be hidden by message transmission, which is achieved by GraphD through the parallelism of computation and communication. GraphD streams edge and message data on local disks, and thus consumes negligible memory space. For a broad class of Pregel algorithms where message combiner is applicable, GraphD completely eliminates the need of any expensive external-memory join or group-by, which is required by existing systems such as Pregelix and Chaos. Extensive experiments show that GraphD beats existing out-of-core systems by orders of magnitude, and achieves comparable performance to in-memory systems running with adequate memory.
T cell Ig and mucin domain (Tim) protein family members were identified to be important regulators of the immune response. As their name indicates, Tim proteins were originally considered a T ...cell-specific markers, and they mainly regulate the responses of T helper cells. However, accumulating evidence indicates that Tims are also expressed on antigen-presenting cells (APCs), such as monocytes, macrophages, dendritic cells (DCs) and B cells, and even plays various roles in natural killer cells (NKs) and mast cells. In recent years, the expression and function of Tims on different cells and the identification of new ligands for the Tim family have suggested that the Tim family plays a crucial role in immune regulation. In addition, the relationship between Tim family gene polymorphisms and susceptibility to several autoimmune diseases has expanded our knowledge of the role of Tim proteins in immune regulation. In this review, we discuss how the Tim family affects immunomodulatory function and the potential role of the Tim family in typical autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis (MS), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and type 1 diabetes (T1D). A deeper understanding of the immunoregulatory mechanism of the Tim family might provide new insights into the clinical diagnosis and treatment of autoimmune diseases.
Interleukin-33 (IL-33), an emerging cytokine within the IL-1 family, assumes a pivotal function in the control of obesity. However, the specific mechanism of its regulation of obesity formation ...remains unclear. In this study, we found that the expression level of IL-33 increased in visceral adipose tissue in mice fed with a high-fat diet (HFD) compared with that in mice fed with a normal diet (ND). In vitro, we also found the expression level of IL-33 was upregulated during the adipogenesis of 3T3-L1 cells. Functional test results showed that knockdown of IL-33 in 3T3-L1 cells differentiation could promote the accumulation of lipid droplets, the content of triglyceride and the expression of adipogenic-related genes (i.e. PPAR-γ, C/EBPα, FABP4, LPL, Adipoq and CD36). In contrast, overexpression of IL-33 inhibits adipogenic differentiation. Meanwhile, the above tests were repeated after over-differentiation of 3T3-L1 cells induced by oleic acid, and the results showed that IL-33 played a more significant role in the regulation of adipogenesis. To explore the mechanism, transcriptome sequencing was performed and results showed that IL-33 regulated the PPAR signaling pathway in 3T3-L1 cells. Further, Western blot and confocal microscopy showed that the inhibition of IL-33 could promote PPAR-γ expression by inhibiting the Wnt/β-catenin signal in 3T3-L1 cells. This study demonstrated that IL-33 was an important regulator of preadipocyte differentiation and inhibited adipogenesis by regulating the Wnt/β-catenin/PPAR-γ signaling pathway, which provided a new insight for further research on IL-33 as a new intervention target for metabolic disorders.
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