Vascular calcification (VC) is a pathological condition frequently observed in cardiovascular diseases. Primary factors contributing to VC are osteogenic differentiation of vascular smooth muscle and ...hydroxyapatite deposition. Targeted autophagy (a lysosome-mediated mechanism for degradation/recycling of unnecessary cellular components) is a useful approach for inhibiting VC and promoting vascular cell health. Calycosin has been shown to alleviate atherosclerosis by enhancing macrophage autophagy, but its therapeutic effect on VC has not been demonstrated. Using an in vitro model (rat thoracic aortic smooth muscle cell line A7r5), we demonstrated effective inhibition of VC using calycosin (the primary flavonoid component of astragalus), based on the enhancement of autophagic flux. Calycosin treatment activated AMPK/mTOR signaling to induce initiation of autophagy and restored mTORC1-dependent autophagosome-lysosome fusion in late-stage autophagy by promoting soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein receptor (SNARE) complex formation, thereby preventing stoppage of autophagy in calcified cells. Calycosin substantially reduced degrees of both osteogenic differentiation and calcium deposition in our VC cell model by enhancing autophagy. The present findings clarify the mechanism whereby calycosin mitigates autophagy stoppage in calcified smooth muscle cells and provide a basis for effective VC treatment via autophagy enhancement.
This article examines whether different levels of entry controls impact burglary rates in gated communities. It differs from the previous studies that only distinguish gated communities from ...non-gated communities but ignore important variation in different levels of entry controls. A sample of 698 gated communities in a large Chinese city are selected for this study. A negative binomial regression model estimates the relationships between entry control levels and burglary rates in gated communities. The test of these relationships accounts for the control of other important explanatory variables, including management fee, building height, building age, housing price, house for sale, rental house and floating population. Results indicate that higher entry control levels are associated with significantly lower burglary rates in gated communities. This is the first study that reveals a quantitative relationship between burglary and entry control level in gated communities at the city-wide scale.
Empirical studies have focused on investigating the interactive relationships between crime pairs. However, many other types of crime patterns have not been extensively investigated. In this paper, ...we introduce three basic crime patterns in four combinations. Based on graph theory, the subgraphs for each pattern were constructed and analyzed using criminology theories. A Monte Carlo simulation was conducted to examine the significance of these patterns. Crime patterns were statistically significant and generated different levels of crime risk. Compared to the classical patterns, combined patterns create much higher risk levels. Among these patterns, “co-occurrence, repeat, and shift” generated the highest level of crime risk, while “repeat” generated much lower levels of crime risk. “Co-occurrence and shift” and “repeat and shift” showed undulated risk levels, while others showed a continuous decrease. These results outline the importance of proposed crime patterns and call for differentiated crime prevention strategies. This method can be extended to other research areas that use point events as research objects.
Isolated Bacillus velezensis strain NA16, which produces proteases, amino acids and the transcription levels of different keratinolytic enzymes and disulfide reductase genes in whole gene sequencing, ...was evaluated during feather degradation. The result shows under optimum fermentation conditions, chicken feather fermentation showed total amino acid concentration of 7599 mg/L, degradation efficiency of 99.3% at 72 h, and protease activity of 1058 U/mL and keratinase activity of 288 U/mL at 48 h. Goose feather fermentation showed total amino acid concentration of 4918 mg/L (96 h), and degradation efficiency was 98.9% at 120 h. Chicken feather fermentation broth at 72 h showed high levels of 17 amino acids, particularly phenylalanine (1050 ± 1.90 mg/L), valine (960 ± 1.04 mg/L), and glutamic (950 ± 3.00 mg/L). Scanning electron microscopy and Fourier transform infrared analysis revealed the essential role of peptide bond cleavage in structural changes and degradation of feathers. Protein purification and zymographic analyses revealed a key role in feather degradation of the 39-kDa protein encoded by gene1031, identified as an S8 family serine peptidase. Whole genome sequencing of NA16 revealed 26 metalloproteinase genes and 22 serine protease genes. Among the proteins, S8 family serine peptidase (gene1031, gene1428) and S9 family peptidase (gene3132) were shown by transcription analysis to play major roles in chicken feather degradation. These findings revealed the transcription levels of different families of keratinolytic enzymes in the degradation of feather keratin by microorganisms, and suggested potential applications of NA16 in feather waste management and amino acid production.
•Efficient degradation of chicken and goose feathers.•Bacillus velezensis NA16 showed great potential for feather waste management and amino acid production.•S8 family serine peptidase to play major roles in feather degradation.
A hot spot refers to numerous crime incidents clustered in a limited space-time range. The near-repeat phenomenon suggests that every victimization might form a contagion-like pattern nearby in terms ...of both space and time. In this article, the near-repeat phenomenon is used to analyze the risk levels around hot spots. Utilizing a recent burglary dataset in N (a large city located in southeastern China), we examine the near-repeat phenomenon, the results of which we then use to test the contributions of hot spots. More importantly, we propose a temporal expanded near-repeat matrix to quantify the undulation of risk both before and after hot spots. The experimental results demonstrate that hot spots always form. Space-time areas of high risk are always variable in space and time. Regions in the vicinity of hot spots simultaneously share this higher risk. In general, crime risks around hot spots present as a wave diffusion process. The conclusions herein provide a detailed analysis of criminal patterns, which not only advances previous results but also provides valuable research results for crime prediction and prevention.
Previous research has recognized the importance of edges to crime. Various scholars have explored how one specific type of edges such as physical edges or social edges affect crime, but rarely ...investigated the importance of the composite edge effect. To address this gap, this study introduces nightlight data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite sensor on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership Satellite (NPP-VIIRS) to measure composite edges. This study defines edges as nightlight gradients—the maximum change of nightlight from a pixel to its neighbors. Using nightlight gradients and other control variables at the tract level, this study applies negative binomial regression models to investigate the effects of edges on the street robbery rate and the burglary rate in Cincinnati. The Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) of models show that nightlight gradients improve the fitness of models of street robbery and burglary. Also, nightlight gradients make a positive impact on the street robbery rate whilst a negative impact on the burglary rate, both of which are statistically significant under the alpha level of 0.05. The different impacts on these two types of crimes may be explained by the nature of crimes and the in-situ characteristics, including nightlight.
It has long been acknowledged that crimes of the same type tend to be committed at the same location or proximity in a short period. However, the investigation of whether this phenomenon exists ...across crime types remains limited. The spatial-temporal clustered patterns for two types of crimes in public areas (pocket-picking and vehicle/motor vehicle theft) are separately examined. Compared with existing research, this study contributes to current research from three aspects: (1) The repeat and near-repeat phenomenon exists in two types of crimes in a large Chinese city. (2) A significant spatial-temporal interaction between pocket-picking and vehicle/motor vehicle theft exists within a range of 100 m. Some cross-crime type interactions seem to have a stronger ability of prediction than does single-crime type interaction. (3) A risk-avoiding activity is identified after spatial-temporal hotspots of another crime type. The spatial extent with increased risk is limited to a certain distance from the previous hotspots. The experimental results are analyzed and interpreted with current criminology theories.
Screening of foodborne pathogens is an effective way to prevent microbial food poisoning. A microfluidic biosensor was developed for rapid and sensitive detection of Salmonella Typhimurium using ...quantum dots (QDs) as fluorescent probes for sensor readout and manganese dioxide nanoflowers (MnO2 NFs) and as QDs nanocarriers for signal amplification. Prior to testing, amino-modified MnO2 nanoflowers (MnO2-NH2 NFs) were conjugated with carboxyl-modified QDs through EDC/NHSS method to form MnO2-QD NFs, and MnO2-QD NFs were functionalized with polyclonal antibodies (pAbs) to form MnO2-QD-pAb NFs. First, the mixture of target Salmonella Typhimurium cells and magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) modified with monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) was injected with MnO2-QD-pAb NFs into a microfluidic chip to form MNP-bacteria-QD-MnO2 complexes. Then, glutathione (GSH) was injected to dissolve MnO2 on the complexes into Mn2+, resulting in the release of QDs. Finally, fluorescent intensity of the released QDs was measured using the fluorescent detector to determine the amount of Salmonella. A linear relationship between fluorescent intensity and bacterial concentration from 1.0 × 102 to 1.0 × 107 CFU/mL was found with a low detection limit of 43 CFU/mL and mean recovery of 99.7% for Salmonella in spiked chicken meats, indicating the feasibility of this biosensor for practical applications.
Effective predictive policing can guide police patrols and deter crime. Hourly crime prediction is expected to save police time. The selection of spatial resolution is important due to its strong ...relationship with the accuracy of crime prediction. In this paper, we propose an adaptive spatial resolution method to select the best spatial resolution for hourly crime prediction. The ST-ResNet model is applied to predict crime risk, with historical crime data and weather data as predictive variables. A prediction accuracy index (PAI) is used to evaluate the accuracy of the results. Data on property crimes committed in Suzhou, a big city in China, were selected as the research data. The experiment results indicate that a 2.4 km spatial resolution leads to the best performance for crime prediction. The adaptive spatial resolution method can be used to guide police deployment.
Crime geographical displacement has been examined in many Western countries. However, little is known about its existence, distribution, and potential predictive ability in large cities in China. ...Compared to the existing research, this study contributes to the current research in three ways. (1) It provides confirmation that crime geographical displacement exists in relation to burglaries that occur in a large Chinese city. (2) A crime geographical displacement detector is proposed, where significant displacements are statistically detected and geographically displayed. Interestingly, most of the displacements are not very far from one another. These findings confirm the inferences in the existing literature. (3) Based on the quantitative results detected by the crime geographical displacement detector, a crime prediction method involving crime geographical displacement patterns could improve the accuracy of the empirical crime prediction method by 7.25% and 3.1 in the capture rate and prediction accuracy index (PAI), respectively. Our current study verifies the feasibility of crime displacement for crime prediction. The feasibility of the crime geographical displacement detector and results should be verified in additional areas.
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