Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L.) is an important crop for sugar and bioenergy worldwide. The increasing greenhouse gas emission and global warming during climate change result in the increased ...frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Climate change is expected to have important consequences for sugarcane production in the world, especially in the developing countries because of relatively low adaptive capacity, high vulnerability to natural hazards, and poor forecasting systems and mitigating strategies. Sugarcane production may have been negatively affected and will continue to be considerably affected by increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme environmental conditions due to climate change. The degree of climate change impact on sugarcane is associated with geographic location and adaptive capacity. In this paper, we briefly reviewed sugarcane response to climate change events, sugarcane production in several different countries, and challenges for sugarcane production in climate change in order for us to better understand effects of climate change on sugarcane production and to propose strategies for mitigating the negative impacts of climate change and improving sugarcane production sustainability and profitability.
STING and liver disease Chen, Can; Yang, Rui-Xia; Xu, Hua-Guo
Journal of gastroenterology,
08/2021, Letnik:
56, Številka:
8
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
STING (stimulator of interferon genes) also known as transmembrane protein 173 (TMEM173) is a cytoplasmic DNA sensor which can be activated by the upstream cyclic dinucleotides (CDNs). This ...activation produces cytokines such as interferons and pro-inflammatory factors via the downstream IRF3 and NF-κB pathways, triggering an innate immune response and adaptive immunity to maintain homeostasis. STING is mainly expressed and activated in non-parenchymal cells, thus exerting a corresponding effect to maintain the homeostasis of the liver. In viral hepatitis, interferons and pro-inflammatory factors produced after STING activation initiate the immune response to inhibit virus replication and assembly. In the case of metabolic diseases of the liver, the activation of STING in kupffer cells and hepatic stellate cells leads to inflammation, the proliferation of connective tissue, and metabolic disorders in the hepatocytes, promoting the occurrence and development of the disease. In hepatocellular carcinoma, STING has two contradictory roles. When STING is activated in dendritic cells and macrophages, a large number of cytokines can be produced to initiate innate immune effects directly and to exert adaptive immunity through the recruitment and activation of T cells; however, aberrant activation of the STING pathway leads to a weakening of immune function and promotes oncogenesis and metastasis. Here, we summarize the interactions between STING and liver disease that have currently been identified and how to achieve therapeutic goals by modulating the activity of the STING pathway.
► A multi-agent system is developed to manage the indoor environment, including temperature, illumination, and air quality. ► A personal agent is designed to enable the interactions between the ...occupants and the environment. ► The energy efficiency and users’ comfort are optimized through the proposed control system. ► The system features an open architecture so that it can be adapted to different building types.
Energy and comfort management is the major task for a building automation system. As a trend of next-generation's commercial buildings, intelligent buildings are capable of facilitating intelligent control of the building to fulfill occupants’ needs. Since occupants’ behaviors have a direct impact on the system performance, the building should be able to interact with occupants by responding to their requests and obtaining feedbacks based on their behaviors. In this paper, a multi-agent based intelligent control system is developed for achieving effective energy and comfort management in a building environment. The developed multi-agent system turns out to be capable of facilitating the building to interact with its occupants for realizing user-centered control of buildings.
Sugarcane Agriculture and Sugar Industry in China Li, Yang-Rui; Yang, Li-Tao
Sugar tech : an international journal of sugar crops & related industries,
03/2015, Letnik:
17, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
China is the world’s third largest sugar producing country after Brazil and India. During milling years 2004/2005 and 2013/2014, the average yearly sugar production in China was 11.64 MT, 49.86 % ...more that in the previous decade. However, the major increase came from Guangxi province, which produced 7.21 MT sugar per annum in average in recent decade, increased by 104.25 % compared to the production of 3.53 MT sugar per annum in average during 1994/1994 and 2003/2004. Sugarcane contributed more than 90 % of the total sugar production in recent decade. Chinese sugar industry encompasses 270 operating sugar mills, 233 sugarcane, and 37 sugar beet. In the milling year 2007/2008, the total sugar production in China reached 14.83 MT, which was 24.04 % higher than that in previous milling year; and cane sugar production reached 13.67 MT, which occupied 92.18 % of the total. However, the severe low temperature and drought occurred almost every year since 2008, which caused continuous in cane and sugar productivity in the subsequent years. The sugar production began recovering since 2011/2012, and reached 13.32 MT sugar in 2013/2014, still 10.18 % lower than that in 2007/2008. Guangxi is the largest sugarcane and sugar producer in China, 9.41 MT sugar in 2007/2008, and 8.56 MT sugar in 2013/2014. Besides, many products, such as pulp, paper, alcohol, yeast, xylitol, chemicals, cane juice, bio-manure, feed, and electricity are also produced from sugarcane. The sugar industry is also the major contributor to the socio-economic development of the major cane producing areas especially Guangxi, Yunnan and western Guangdong.
In this study, we determined the influences of different drying techniques such as natural air (ND), hot-air (HD), vacuum (VD), infrared (ID), microwave (MD), and freeze drying (FD) methods on the ...color, shrinkage ratio (SR), rehydration ratio (RR), firmness, crispness, microstructures, nutritional components, and free amino acids of Pleurotus eryngii. The results showed that these parameters were markedly influenced by different drying techniques. Among them, FD was the most effective drying method which retained the main characteristics of the fresh P. eryngii in above mentioned indexes, followed by ND and HD at 40 °C. Finally, despite the least drying time, MD treatment was not suitable to the drying process of P. eryngii slices since it damaged physicochemical properties and caused massive losses of the main nutrients and free amino acids. The results will provide a theoretical basis for industrial processing of P. eryngii.
We report the results of our analysis of the publicly available data obtained by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the
Fermi
satellite towards the direction of the young massive star cluster ...Westerlund 2. We found significant extended
γ
-ray emission in the vicinity of Westerlund 2 with a hard power-law energy spectrum extending from 1 to 250 GeV with a photon index of 2.0 ± 0.1. We argue that amongst several alternatives, the luminous stars in Westerlund 2 are likely sites of acceleration of particles responsible for the diffuse
γ
-ray emission of the surrounding interstellar medium. In particular, the young star cluster Westerlund 2 can provide sufficient non-thermal energy to account for the
γ
-ray emission. In this scenario, since the
γ
-ray production region is significantly larger than the area occupied by the star cluster, we conclude that the
γ
-ray production is caused by hadronic interactions of accelerated protons and nuclei with the ambient gas. In that case, the total energy budget in relativistic particles is estimated of the order of 10
50
erg.
To quantify the fate of respiratory droplets under different ambient relative humidities, direct numerical simulations of a typical respiratory event are performed. We found that, because small ...droplets (with initial diameter of 10 μm) are swept by turbulent eddies in the expelled humid puff, their lifetime gets extended by a factor of more than 30 times as compared to what is suggested by the classical picture by Wells, for 50% relative humidity. With increasing ambient relative humidity the extension of the lifetimes of the small droplets further increases and goes up to around 150 times for 90% relative humidity, implying more than 2 m advection range of the respiratory droplets within 1 sec. Employing Lagrangian statistics, we demonstrate that the turbulent humid respiratory puff engulfs the small droplets, leading to many orders of magnitude increase in their lifetimes, implying that they can be transported much further during the respiratory events than the large ones. Our findings provide the starting points for larger parameter studies and may be instructive for developing strategies on optimizing ventilation and indoor humidity control. Such strategies are key in mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic in the present autumn and upcoming winter.
Triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2 (TREM2) is a single-pass transmembrane immune receptor that is mainly expressed on microglia in the brain and macrophages in the periphery. Recent ...studies have identified TREM2 as a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Increasing evidence has shown that TREM2 can affect lipid metabolism both in the central nervous system (CNS) and in the periphery. In the CNS, TREM2 affects the metabolism of cholesterol, myelin, and phospholipids and promotes the transition of microglia into a disease-associated phenotype. In the periphery, TREM2 influences lipid metabolism by regulating the onset and progression of obesity and its complications, such as hypercholesterolemia, atherosclerosis, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. All these altered lipid metabolism processes could influence the pathogenesis of AD through several means, including affecting inflammation, insulin resistance, and AD pathologies. Herein, we will discuss a potential pathway that TREM2 mediates lipid metabolism to influence the pathogenesis of AD in both the CNS and periphery. Moreover, we discuss the possibility that TREM2 may be a key factor that links central and peripheral lipid metabolism under disease conditions, including AD. This link may be due to impacts on the integrity of the blood-brain barrier, and we introduce potential pathways by which TREM2 affects the blood-brain barrier. Moreover, we discuss the role of lipids in TREM2-associated treatments for AD. We propose some potential therapies targeting TREM2 and discuss the prospect and limitations of these therapies.
•The obviously coupled effect of temperature and RH in early-age concrete is observed.•A coupled hygro-thermo-hydration model for cement-based materials is proposed.•The early change in RH is mainly ...controlled by the large rate of temperature change.
Cement-based materials are widely used as building materials in practice. However, the deformations caused by changes in temperature and humidity are large and can easily result in cracking at an early age. Early-age cracking significantly affects the durability of concrete. In this paper, experiments on temperature and relative humidity (RH) were conducted, and a coupled model of temperature and RH was proposed. The test results showed that the coupled phenomenon of temperature and RH could be clearly observed and divided into three stages. The RH rapidly decreases with a large temperature increase and rate of temperature increase in the first stage and sharply increases with a large temperature decrease and rate of temperature decrease in the second stage. Finally, the RH decreases again throughout the remainder of the test. Based on a comparison of the predicted values and experimental data, the coupled model proposed can accurately predict the temperature and humidity field in early-age cement-based materials. Additionally, the coupled model demonstrates that excepting for the self-desiccation and moisture diffusion, the early change in RH is significantly affected by the large temperature change and rate of temperature change in the early age.
The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus SARS‐CoV‐2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) has claimed many lives worldwide. Wearing medical masks (MMs) or N95 ...masks (N95Ms namely N95 respirators) can slow the virus spread and reduce the infection risk. Reuse of these masks can minimize waste, protect the environment, and help solve the current imminent shortage of masks. Disinfection of used masks is needed for their reuse with safety, but improper decontamination can damage the blocking structure of masks. In this study, we demonstrated using the avian coronavirus of infectious bronchitis virus to mimic SARS‐CoV‐2 that MMs and N95Ms retained their blocking efficacy even after being steamed on boiling water for 2 hours. We also demonstrated that three brands of MMs blocked over 99% viruses in aerosols. The avian coronavirus was completely inactivated after being steamed for 5 minutes. Altogether, this study suggested that MMs are adequate for use on most social occasions and both MMs and N95Ms can be reused for a few days with steam decontamination between use.
Highlights
Reuse of medical masks and N95 respirators is highly needed.
The masks have excellent efficacy in blocking coronaviruses in aerosols.
The masks should be decontaminated for reuse.
The masks maintain their blocking efficacy after being steamed on boiling water.
The steam measure can inactivate coronaviruses completely.
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