Consumption of pectin contributes to changes in the gut microbiota and the metabolism of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). We aimed to investigate the effects of and mechanism by which pectin ...prevented nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in mice that were fed a high-fat diet containing 30% lard (HF). HF-fed mice that orally ingested pectin for 8 weeks exhibited improvements in lipid metabolism and decreased oxidative stress and inflammation through a mechanism regulated by the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway. Pectin dose-dependently generated an increase in acetic acid (from 566.4 ± 26.6 to 694.6 ± 35.9 μmol/mL, p < 0.05) and propionic acid (from 474.1 ± 84.3 to 887.0 ± 184.7 μmol/mL, p < 0.05) contents and significantly increased the relative abundance of Bacteroides (from 0.27% to 11.6%), Parabacteroides (from 3.9‰ to 5.3%), Olsenella (from 2.9‰ to 1.3%), and Bifidobacterium (from 0.03% to 1.9%) in the gut of HF-fed mice. Intestinal microbiota and SCFAs may thus contribute to the well-established link between pectin consumption and NAFLD.
Body Sensor Networks (BSNs) have emerged as the most effective technology enabling not only new e-Health methods and systems but also novel applications in human-centered areas such as electronic ...health care, fitness/welness systems, sport performance monitoring, interactive games, factory workers monitoring, and social physical interaction. Despite their enormous potential, they are currently mostly used only to monitor single individuals. Indeed, BSNs can proactively interact and collaborate to foster novel BSN applications centered on collaborative groups of individuals. In this paper, C-SPINE, a framework for Collaborative BSNs (CBSNs), is proposed. CBSNs are BSNs able to collaborate with each other to fulfill a common goal. They can support the development of novel smart wearable systems for cyberphysical pervasive computing environments. Collaboration therefore relies on interaction and synchronization among the CBSNs and on collaborative distributed computing atop the collaborating CBSNs. Specifically, collaboration is triggered upon CBSN proximity and relies on service-specific protocols allowing for managing services among the collaborating CBSNs. C-SPINE also natively supports multi-sensor data fusion among CBSNs to enable joint data analysis such as filtering, time-dependent data integration and classification. To demonstrate its effectiveness, C-SPINE is used to implement e-Shake, a collaborative CBSN system for the detection of emotions. The system is based on a multi-sensor data fusion schema to perform automatic detection of handshakes between two individuals and capture of possible heart-rate-based emotion reactions due to the individuals’ meeting.
Display omitted
•Degradation of p-nitrophenol by DBD plasma/PS/Fe2+ was studied.•PS and Fe2+ improved the degradation of p-nitrophenol by DBD.•Fe2+ and DBD plasma synergistically activates PS into ...radical species.•SO4− and OH are the important radical species for p-nitrophenol degradation.•Besides Fe2+, electron and heat from DBD may be responsible for activating PS.
Dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma in situ generates reactive species (e*, OH, O, H, H2O2, O3, etc.), UV irradiation and local high temperature. These physiochemical effects can non-selectively destroy aqueous organic contaminants, but the energy efficiency of DBD plasma for water decontamination can be further improved. Persulfate (S2O82-, PS) and ferrous ions (Fe2+) were employed for enhancing the degradation of p-nitrophenol (PNP). An addition of both S2O82- (<2.5 mM) and Fe2+ (<36 µM) in PNP solution apparently promoted the degradation efficiency of PNP and energy efficiency compared to discharge plasma alone, due to a more production of active OH and SO4·- through Fenton-like reactions and PS activation process. Moreover, the tertiary system of plasma/PS/Fe2+ (81.1%) presented higher PNP degradation efficiency after 50 min treatment than discharge plasma alone (34.8%) and the binary systems of plasma/PS (63.6%), plasma/Fe2+ (69.6%) and PS/Fe2+ (13.7%). However, an excessive addition of S2O82- (2.5–3.6 mM) and Fe2+ (36–360 µM) had unobvious or even harmful influence on PNP degradation, possibly due to the enhanced recombination or consumption of OH and SO4·- by radical side reactions. The effect of radical scavengers on PNP degradation indicates that OH was the most important radical species in plasma system for PNP degradation, but SO4·- was also very important for PNP degradation when PS was present in solution. Besides Fe2+ and the heat effect from discharge plasma, the electrons produced by electric discharge may also be one of the important contributors to the activation of PS.
Display omitted
•The content of antibiotics and ARGs on PE was decreased with salinity.•PE MPs can selectively enrich antibiotics, ARGs and microbe in various waters.•Bacterial community on PE MPs ...differed from surrounding water by antibiotics.•ARGs and bacterial diversity on PE MPs increased in river water.•Bacteria on PE MPs were more susceptible to antibiotics in marine water.
The partition of antibiotics and antibiotic resistant genes (ARGs) between the microplastics (MPs) and the surrounding water with various salinity are still unclear. In this study, we hypothesized that adsorption of antibiotics on MPs might cause a significant change of the structure of microbial communities, diversity and abundance of ARGs on MPs and this might be further affected by change of salinity. In this study, we investigated adsorption of four common antibiotics (sulfamerazine, tetracycline, chloramphenicol and tylosin) to polyethylene (PE) MPs in river, estuary and marine waters, and the differences of antibiotic resistant genes (ARGs) and bacterial communities on MPs and in the three waters. The results showed that MPs can enrich antibiotics, ARGs and microbes from the surrounding water. Elevated salinity could reduce adsorption of antibiotics to MPs and the abundance of ARGs. For example, MPs can concentrate more antibiotics and ARGs in the fresh river water than in the estuary and the marine waters. In addition, ARGs and bacterial communities on MPs at various salinity were significantly different under the pressure of four antibiotics. On MPs, sul1, sulA/folP-01, tetA, tetC, tetX and ermE increased significantly but a few new ARGs such as sulA/folP-01 and tetA appeared. The structure of the bacterial communities on MPs was different from the surrounding water since some bacteria species found on MPs were barely detected in the surrounding water while some genera on MPs vanished after exposure to antibiotics. As the antibiotics adsorbed and the ARGs on MPs decreased with the water salinity, the structure of the communities on MPs thus varied with salinity change. These findings are important to understand the effects of MPs on the transport, fate and ecological risk of antibiotics and ARGs in different aquatic environments.
Pyruvate kinase M2 isoform （PKM2） catalyzes the last step of glycolysis and plays an important role in tumor cell proliferation. Recent studies have reported that PKM2 also regulates apoptosis. ...However, the mechanisms under- lying such a role of PKM2 remain elusive. Here we show that PKM2 translocates to mitochondria under oxidative stress. In the mitochondria, PKM2 interacts with and phosphorylates Bcl2 at threonine （T） 69. This phosphoryla- tion prevents the binding of Cul3-based E3 ligase to Bcl2 and subsequent degradation of Bcl2. A chaperone protein, HSP90al, is required for this function of PKM2. HSP90al＇s ATPase activity launches a conformational change of PKM2 and facilitates interaction between PKM2 and Bci2. Replacement of wild-type Bcl2 with phosphorylation-de- ficient Bcl2 T69A mutant sensitizes glioma cells to oxidative stress-induced apoptosis and impairs brain tumor for- mation in an orthotopic xenograft model. Notably, a peptide that is composed of the amino acid residues from 389 to 405 of PKM2, through which PKM2 binds to Bcl2, disrupts PKM2-BcI2 interaction, promotes Bcl2 degradation and impairs brain tumor growth. In addition, levels of Bcl2 T69 phosphorylation, conformation-altered PKM2 and Bcl2 protein correlate with one another in specimens of human glioblastoma patients. Moreover, levels of Bcl2 T69 phos- phorylation and conformation-altered PKM2 correlate with both grades and prognosis of glioma malignancy. Our findings uncover a novel mechanism through which mitochondrial PKM2 phosphorylates Bcl2 and inhibits apoptosis directly, highlight the essential role of PKM2 in ROS adaptation of cancer cells, and implicate HSP90-PKM2-Bcl2 axis as a potential target for therapeutic intervention in glioblastoma.
Phosphate (Pi) deficiency impairs plant growth and productivity in many agricultural ecosystems, causing severe reductions in crop yield. To uncover novel aspects in acclimation to Pi starvation, we ...investigated the correlation between Pi deficiency-induced changes in transcriptome and proteome profiles in Arabidopsis roots. Using exhaustive tandem mass spectrometry-based shotgun proteomics and whole-genome RNA sequencing to generate a nearly complete catalog of expressed mRNAs and proteins, we reliably identified 13,298 proteins and 24,591 transcripts, subsets of 356 proteins and 3106 mRNAs were differentially expressed during Pi deficiency. Most dramatic changes were noticed for genes involved in Pi acquisition and in processes that either liberate Pi or bypass Pi/ATP-consuming metabolic steps, for example during membrane lipid remodeling and glycolytic carbon flux. The concordance between the abundance of mRNA and its encoded protein was generally high for highly up-regulated genes, but the analysis also revealed numerous discordant changes in mRNA/protein pairs, indicative of divergent regulation of transcription and post-transcriptional processes. In particular, a decreased abundance of proteins upon Pi deficiency was not closely correlated with changes in the corresponding mRNAs. In several cases, up-regulation of gene activity was observed solely at the protein level, adding novel aspects to key processes in the adaptation to Pi deficiency. We conclude that integrated measurement and interpretation of changes in protein and transcript abundance are mandatory for generating a complete inventory of the components that are critical in the response to environmental stimuli.
How to shorten time delay and enhance delivery ratio in sparse settings is still an open issue in the study of opportunistic networks. Most proposals are trying to deal with this issue by introducing ...infrastructures; however, although related research has been proved to be useful in improving the routing performance of the network, there is still room for further improvement. In this paper, inspired by the powerful message synchronization capability of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), we propose a new opportunistic network framework called WON that introduces WSNs into the opportunistic network. With the support of WSNs, low latency delivery and high delivery ratio can be achieved. To make the best use of WSNs, we present a comprehensive routing mechanism that is able to cover all the message-forwarding activities (i.e., mobile-to-mobile, mobile-to-stationary, stationary-to-mobile and stationary-to-stationary) in WON. To tackle the challenging issues caused by constrained energy and storage space, we develop a storage management scheme and a message control scheme. The experimental results show that WON can improve the success ratio while lowering the latency compared with the existing architectures. Furthermore, it is shown that WON is a highly effective solution for the rapid deployment of a low-latency communication network in the disaster-relief scenarios.
•A WSN-assisted opportunistic network framework called WON is proposed.•An opportunistic routing mechanism for WON is designed.•Schemes for storage management and message control are presented.•The performance of WON and proposed routing mechanism are evaluated.
Fructose as a daily sweetener is widely recognized as a risk catalyst for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). The aim of current study is to evaluate the effects and molecular mechanism by ...which polyphenol-rich loquat fruit extract (LFP) prevents NAFLD in mice fed 30% fructose water (HF) for 8 weeks. Administration of LFP to HF-fed mice mitigated abnormal body weight, disordered lipid metabolism, oxidative stress, and inflammation through a mechanism regulated by the AKT, ChREBP/SREBP-1c, Nrf2, and TLR4/MyD88/TRIF pathways. LFP caused a significant decrease in the endotoxin content (16.67–12.7 EU/mL) in the liver of HF-fed mice. LFP not only improved HF-induced breakage of the intestinal barrier via interacting with tight junction proteins (ZO-1, occludin), mucin, and immunoreaction in the colon but also maintained normal colonic Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratios and the relative abundance of Veillonella in HF-fed mice. Our results suggest that LFP may serve as a nutritional agent for protecting liver in HF-fed mice.
As an essential part of classical analysis, Ostrowski and Čebyšev type inequalities have recently attracted considerable attention. Due to its universality, the non-additive integral inequality takes ...several forms, including Sugeno integrals, Choquet integrals, and pseudo-integrals. Set-valued analysis, a well-known generalization of classical analysis, is frequently employed in studying mathematical economics, control theory, etc. Inspired by pioneering work on interval-valued inequalities, this paper establishes specific Ostrowski and Čebyšev type inequalities for interval-valued functions. Moreover, the error estimation to quadrature rules is presented as some applications for illustrating our results. In addition, illustrative examples are offered to demonstrate the applicability of the mathematical methods presented.
Mobile activity recognition is significant to the development of human-centric pervasive applications including elderly care, personalized recommendations, etc. Nevertheless, the distribution of ...inertial sensor data can be influenced to a great extent by varying users. This means that the performance of an activity recognition classifier trained by one user's dataset will degenerate when transferred to others. In this study, we focus on building a personalized classifier to detect four categories of human activities: light intensity activity, moderate intensity activity, vigorous intensity activity, and fall. In order to solve the problem caused by different distributions of inertial sensor signals, a user-adaptive algorithm based on K-Means clustering, local outlier factor (LOF), and multivariate Gaussian distribution (MGD) is proposed. To automatically cluster and annotate a specific user's activity data, an improved K-Means algorithm with a novel initialization method is designed. By quantifying the samples' informative degree in a labeled individual dataset, the most profitable samples can be selected for activity recognition model adaption. Through experiments, we conclude that our proposed models can adapt to new users with good recognition performance.
PDF
