Background
The Griffiths Mental Development Scales (GMDS) are used in many countries to assess the development of children from birth to 8 years. There is a need for accurate and culturally ...appropriate developmental assessment tools for Chinese children. Here, we adapted the GMDS for use in Chinese children and compare the developmental trajectories between Chinese and British children.
Methods
Children with typical development were recruited from 7 urban cities in China between 2009 and 2013. The Griffiths Mental Development Scales‐Chinese (GDS‐C) were adapted and used to assess the development of urban Chinese children. Developmental curves were computed for 6 subscales using learning management system methods and compare against the British curves from the Griffiths Mental Development Scales‐Extended Revised (GMDS‐ER).
Results
The GDS‐C were used to assess the developmental status of 815 Chinese children. Plots of the 1st, 5th, 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th, 95th, and 99th percentiles, and full percentile tables were obtained, which showed similar trends to data from the British GMDS‐ER.
Conclusions
The Chinese developmental curves obtained from the GDS‐C showed similarities and differences to the developmental curves from the British GMDS‐ER. The development of urban Chinese children should be assessed with the culturally appropriate GDS‐C.
The current study investigated the efficacy of a probiotic mixture on ameliorating heat stress-induced impairment of intestinal microflora, morphology, and barrier integrity in broilers. The ...probiotic mixture contained Bacillus licheniformis, Bacillus subtilis, and Lactobacillus plantarum. Three hundred sixty 21-d-old Ross 308 male broilers were allocated in 4 experimental treatments, each of which was replicated 6 times with 15 broilers per replicate. A 2 × 2 factorial design was used in the study, and the main factors were composed of diet (basal diet or addition of 1.5 g/kg of probiotic mixture) and temperature (thermoneutral zone or heat stress). From d 22 to 42, birds were either raised in a thermoneutral zone (22°C) or subjected to cyclic heat stress by exposing them to 33°C for 10 h (from 0800 to 1800) and 22°C from 1800 to 0800. Compared with birds kept in the thermoneutral zone, birds subjected to heat stress had reduced ADG and ADFI; lower viable counts of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium and increased viable counts of coliforms and Clostridium in small intestinal contents; shorter jejunal villus height, deeper crypt depth, and lower ratio of villus height to crypt depth; decreased jejunal transepithelial electrical resistance and a higher level of jejunal paracellular permeability of fluorescein isothiocyanate dextran 4 kDa; and downregulated protein levels of occludin and zonula occludens-1 (P < 0.05). Supplemental probiotics increased (P < 0.05) small intestinal Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, jejunal villus height, protein level of occludin, and decreased (P < 0.05) feed to gain ratio and small intestinal coliforms. These results indicate that dietary addition of probiotic mixture was effective in partially ameliorating intestinal barrier function. But no temperature × diet interaction was observed in the present study, revealing that the supplemented probiotics had the same effect at both temperatures.
Mesoporous β‐MnO2 (rutile structure) with a highly ordered pore structure (see figure) and highly crystalline walls is capable of reversibly accommodating lithium, up to a composition of Li0.92MnO2 ...(equivalent to a charge storage of 284 mA h g–1). Remarkably, the crystal structure and the ordered mesostructure are preserved after many cycles (Li intercalation/deintercalation).
U–Pb age, trace element and Hf isotope compositions of zircon were analysed for a metasedimentary rock and two amphibolites from the Kongling terrane in the northern part of the Yangtze Craton. The ...zircon shows distinct morphological and chemical characteristics. Most zircon in an amphibolite shows oscillatory zoning, high Th/U and 176Lu/177Hf ratios, high formation temperature, high trace element contents, clear negative Eu anomaly, as well as HREE‐enriched patterns, suggesting that it is igneous. The zircon yields a weighted mean 207Pb/206Pb age of 2857 ± 8 Ma, representing the age of the magmatic protolith. The zircon in the other two samples is metamorphic. It has low Th/U ratios, low trace element concentrations, variable HREE contents (33.8 ≥ LuN≥2213; 14.7 ≤ LuN/SmN ≤ 354) and 176Lu/177Hf ratios (0.000030–0.001168). The data indicate that the zircon formed in the presence of garnet and under upper amphibolite facies conditions. The metamorphic zircon yields a weighted mean 207Pb/206Pb age of 2010 ± 13 Ma. These results combined with previously obtained Palaeoproterozoic metamorphic ages suggest a c. 2.0 Ga Palaeoproterozoic collisional event in the Yangtze Craton, which may result from the assembly of the supercontinent Columbia. The zircon in two samples yields weighted mean two‐stage Hf model (TDM2) ages of 3217 ± 110 and 2943 ± 50 Ma, respectively, indicating that their protoliths were mainly derived from Archean crust.
Three Mg–Al–Zn alloys (AZ31, AZ61 and AZ91) were subjected to plane-strain compression at different temperatures (200 and 400
°C) and strain rates (10
−2 and 10
−4
s
−1). The effect of second-phase ...precipitates on the texture evolution was investigated. It was found that a high level of Mg
17Al
12 precipitates impeded extension twinning and enhanced dynamic recrystallization, resulting in weak deformation textures.
Although anthropogenic disturbances are often perceived as detrimental to plant biodiversity, the relationship between biodiversity and disturbance remains unclear. Opinions diverge on how natural ...diversity is generated and maintained. We conducted a large-scale investigation of a temperate grassland system in Inner Mongolia and assessed the richness-disturbance relationship using grazing intensity, the primary anthropogenic disturbance in the region. Vascular plant-species richness peaked at an intermediate level of anthropogenic disturbance. Our results support the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis, which provides a valid and useful measure of biodiversity at a metacommunity scale, indicating that anthropogenic disturbances are necessary to conserve the biodiversity of grassland systems.
Manipulative experiments and observations along environmental gradients, the two most common approaches to evaluate the impacts of climate change on nutrient cycling, are generally assumed to produce ...similar results, but this assumption has rarely been tested. We did so by conducting a meta-analysis and found that soil nutrients responded differentially to drivers of climate change depending on the approach considered. Soil carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus concentrations generally decreased with water addition in manipulative experiments but increased with annual precipitation along environmental gradients. Different patterns were also observed between warming experiments and temperature gradients. Our findings provide evidence of inconsistent results and suggest that manipulative experiments may be better predictors of the causal impacts of short-term (months to years) climate change on soil nutrients but environmental gradients may provide better information for long-term correlations (centuries to millennia) between these nutrients and climatic features. Ecosystem models should consequently incorporate both experimental and observational data to properly assess the impacts of climate change on nutrient cycling.
Nanotechnology has provided many promising nanoplatforms for targeted cancer imaging and therapy. Among these platforms, gold nanoparticles (GNPs) play a unique role in medicine because of their ...excellent physical and chemical properties. To expand the applications of GNPs in medicine, amounts of targeting moieties, imaging labels, and therapeutic agents have been integrated into these particles to form multifunctionalized GNPs. In this review, we highlight recent advances of the fabrication of cancer-targeting multifunctionalized GNPs and their applications in imaging and therapy.
The biosynthesis and transport of nicotine has been shown to be coordinately upregulated by jasmonate (JA). MYC2, a member of basic helix‐loop‐helix (bHLH) transcription factor family, is ...well‐documented as the core player in the JA signalling pathway to regulate diverse plant development processes. Four MYC2 genes were found in the tobacco genome, NtMYC2a/2b and 1a/1b. In this study, we tested whether one of them, NtMYC2a, acts as a ‘master switch’ in the regulation of nicotine biosynthesis and transport in tobacco.
We generated NtMYC2a knockout tobacco plants using the CRISPR‐Cas9 technique and analysed the effect of NtMYC2a knockout on expression of the nicotine biosynthesis genes (NtAO, NtQS, NtPMT1a, NtQPT2, NtODC2, NtMPO1, NtA622 and NtBBLa) and transport genes (NtMATE2 and NtJAT1), as well as leaf accumulation of nicotine in the NtMYC2a knockout plants.
We found that all the nicotine biosynthesis and transport genes tested in this study were significantly downregulated (>50% reduction compared with wild‐type control) in the NtMYC2a knockout plants. Moreover, the leaf nicotine content in knockout plants was dramatically reduced by ca 80% compared with the wild‐type control.
These results clearly show that NtMYC2a acts as a ‘master switch’ to coordinate JA‐induced nicotine accumulation in tobacco and suggests that NtMYC2a might play an important role in tobacco nicotine‐mediated defence against herbivory.
NtMYC2a acts as a “master switch” to coordinate the JA‐induced nicotine accumulation in tobacco plant.
Ordered mesoporous Mn2O3 and Mn3O4 with crystalline walls (see figure) have been successfully synthesized. Mesoporous Mn2O3 was converted to Mn3O4 in a reducing atmosphere without destroying the ...ordered mesostructure, which gives the first example of mesoporous Mn3O4 or any reduced mesoporous manganese oxide, something that is unlikely to be achieved by direct template synthesis.
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