Crustaceans (e.g., shrimp and crabs) are a good source of protein-rich foods for human consumption. They are the second largest aquaculture species worldwide. Understanding the digestion of dietary ...protein, as well as the absorption, metabolism and functions of amino acids (AAs) and small peptides is essential to produce cost-effective and sustainable aquafeeds. Hepatopancreas (the midgut gland) is the main site for the digestion of dietary protein as well as the absorption of small peptides and AAs into the hemolymph. Besides serving as the building blocks of protein, AAs (particularly aspartate, glutamate, glutamine and alanine) are the primary metabolic fuels for the gut and extra-hepatopancreas tissues (e.g., kidneys and skeletal muscle) of crustaceans. In addition, AAs are precursors for the syntheses of glucose, lipids, H
S, and low-molecular-weight molecules (e.g., nitric oxide, glutathione, polyamines, histamine, and hormones) with enormous biological importance, such as physical barrier, immunological and antioxidant defenses. Therefore, both nutritionally essential and nonessential AAs are needed in diets to improve the growth, development, molt rate, survival, and reproduction of crustaceans. There are technical difficulties and challenges in the use of crystalline AAs for research and practical production due to the loss of free AAs during feed processing, the leaching of in-feed free AAs to the surrounding water environment, and asynchronous absorption with peptide-bounded AAs. At present, much knowledge about AA metabolism and functions in crustaceans is based on studies of mammals and fish species. Basic research in this area is necessary to lay a solid foundation for improving the balances and bioavailability of AAs in the diets for optimum growth, health and wellbeing of crustaceans, while preventing and treating their metabolic diseases. This review highlights recent advances in AA nutrition and metabolism in aquatic crustacean species at their different life stages. The new knowledge is expected to guide the development of the next generation of their improved diets.
With emergence of Internet of Things (IoT), wireless traffic has grown dramatically, posing severe strain on core network and backhaul bandwidth. Proactive caching in mobile edge computing systems ...can not only efficiently mitigate the traffic congestion and relieve burden of backhaul but also can reduce the service latency for end devices. However, proactive caching heavily relies on the prediction accuracy of content popularity, which is typically unknown and change over time. In this paper, we propose an online proactive caching scheme based on bidirectional deep recurrent neural network (BRNN) model to predict time-series content requests and update edge caching accordingly. Specifically, on the first layer, a 1-D convolution neural network (CNN) is devised to reduce the computational costs. Then, BRNN is employed to predict time-varying requests from users. Afterward, a fully connected neural network (FCNN) is harnessed to learn and sample predicts from the BRNN. Finally, we conduct experiments based on real datasets, which demonstrate that the proposed approach can achieve considerably high prediction accuracy and significantly improve content hit rate of end devices.
The measurement of triple Higgs coupling is a key benchmark for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and future colliders. It directly probes the Higgs potential and its fundamental properties in ...connection to new physics beyond the Standard Model. There exist two phase space regions with an enhanced sensitivity to the Higgs self-coupling, the Higgs pair production threshold, and an intermediate top pair threshold. We show how the invariant mass distribution of the Higgs pair offers a systematic way to extract the Higgs self-coupling, focusing on the leading channel pp→hh+X→bb¯γγ+X. We utilize new features of the signal events at higher energies and estimate the potential of a high-energy upgrade of the LHC and a future hadron collider with realistic simulations. We find that the high-energy upgrade of the LHC to 27 TeV would reach a 5σ observation with an integrated luminosity of 2.5 ab−1. It would have the potential to reach 15% (30%) accuracy at the 68% (95%) confidence level to determine the Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson self-coupling. A future 100 TeV collider could improve the self-coupling measurement to better than 5% (10%) at the 68% (95%) confidence level.
In this paper, an automated umbilical system based on a 6-dof (degree of freedom) hydraulic parallel mechanism is proposed to automate the rocket propellant loading process. The mechanical structure, ...vision acquisition algorithm, and control algorithm used in the system are described in detail in the paper. To address the fluid nonlinearity problem of the hydraulic drive system, nonlinear compensation and three-state feedback control are used in the paper to enhance the performance of the hydraulic system. For the problem of force tracking during the docking process between the umbilical system and the rocket, an adaptive impedance control algorithm based on the online environmental parameter estimation is proposed in the paper, which effectively reduces the contact force during the docking process. The dynamic tracking and docking experiments indicate that this automated umbilical system features rapid reaction speed, high measurement precision, and good flexibility, which can be used to realize the auto-mating and following task for the propellant loading robot in a hazardous environment.
Magnetic actuators, which use magnetic effects for actuation, are very useful in many areas, such as electrical equipment, soft robots, and medical instruments. However, they inevitably suffer damage ...during long‐term use, leading to mechanical failure. Introduction of the self‐healing concept can solve this problem to a certain extent and extend their service life. Herein, a room‐temperature self‐healing magnetic nanocomposite is obtained using a simple, efficient, and environmental‐friendly strategy. In the authors' design, soft poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) polymeric materials are chosen as the matrix, and Fe3O4 nanoparticles are utilized as a functional magnetic nanofiller to obtain a new magnetic nanocomposite. By balancing the self‐healing property and mechanical performance, the optimal content of magnetic filler is determined to be 15 wt%. The optimized sample exhibits an ultimate tensile strength (0.44 MPa), a high tensile strain (400%), and an excellent self‐healing efficiency (62.2% mechanical recovery of fracture strength) at 25 °C for 30 min. Furthermore, this composite material shows an excellent and healable magnetic actuation performance. This new nanocomposite provides great potential for the magnetic actuation application.
A magnetic composite is prepared by blending Fe3O4 nanoparticles into a poly(dimethylsiloxane) polymer. The composite material exhibits high mechanical strength, good magnetic property, and fast self‐healing ability at room temperature. Based on these features, a self‐healing magnetic actuator, which shows excellent actuation performance and self‐healing behavior, is demonstrated.
This study investigates the shear characteristics of soil-rock mixtures, a critical factor influencing slope stability in engineering construction. Soil-rock mixtures, often exhibit poor integrity ...and can easily soften in water due to geological influences. The YT1200 direct shear drawing friction system was employed to conduct shear tests, analyzing the effect of varying water content and fine particle mass fraction under different normal stresses. Utilizing fractional derivatives, we formulated a fractional derivative shear model. Test results illustrated a softening phenomenon post achieving peak shear stress in the soil-rock mixture. It was found that peak shear stress is directly proportional to the normal stress, and inversely proportional to both water content and fine particle mass fraction. Additionally, the cohesion and internal friction angle decrease according to a power function with increasing water content, and non-linearly decrease with the rise of fine particle mass fraction. The proposed shear model aptly simulates the entire shear failure process of the soil-rock mixture, effectively analyzing the influence of key factors on shear characteristics. These findings contribute to the strength prediction and numerical simulation of soil-rock mixtures, thereby aiding in the design of reinforcement schemes and slope stability analysis.
Lateral hypothalamic (LH) hypocretin/orexin neurons (HONs) control brain-wide electrical excitation. Abnormally high excitation produces epileptic seizures, which affect millions of people and need ...better treatments. HON population activity spikes from minute to minute, but the role of this in seizures is unknown. Here, we describe correlative and causal links between HON activity spikes and seizures. Applying temporally-targeted HON recordings and optogenetic silencing to a male mouse model of acute epilepsy, we found that pre-seizure HON activity predicts and controls the electrophysiology and behavioral pathology of subsequent seizures. No such links were detected for HON activity during seizures. Having thus defined the time window where HONs influence seizures, we targeted it with LH deep brain stimulation (DBS), which inhibited HON population activity, and produced seizure protection. Collectively, these results uncover a feature of brain activity linked to seizures, and demonstrate a proof-of-concept treatment that controls this feature and alleviates epilepsy.
Light plays a vital role on the growth and development of plant. On the base of white light with high color rendering to the benefit of human survival and life, we proposed to improve "color ...rendering" of LED lighting for accelerating the growth of lettuce. Seven spectral LED lights were adopted to irradiate the lettuces under 150 μmol·m
·s
for a 16 hd
photoperiod. The leaf area and number profiles, plant biomass, and photosynthetic rate under the as-prepared LED light treatments were investigated. We let the absorption spectrum of fresh leaf be the emission spectrum of ideal light and then evaluate the "color rendering" of as-prepared LED lights by the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient and CIE chromaticity coordinates. Under the irradiation of red-yellow-blue light with high correlation coefficient of 0.587, the dry weights and leaf growth rate are 2-3 times as high as the sharp red-blue light. The optimized LED light for lettuce growth can be presumed to be limited to the angle (about 75°) between the vectors passed through the ideal light in the CIE chromaticity coordinates. These findings open up a new idea to assess and find the optimized LED light for plant growth.
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The paper presents a substantial review on the different kinds of strain sensors that have been employed as wearable sensing prototypes. The importance of strain sensors lies in their ...low cost, high sensitivity and multifunctional applications. The flexible strain sensors have been developed with printing techniques that have generated prototypes with varied electrical, mechanical and thermal characteristics. These types of devices have been primarily used for biomedical applications, where a small amount of deflection holds a crucial worth to monitor acute and chronic anomalies in human beings. Among the major areas in healthcare applications where strain sensors have been utilized, wearable sensing holds a pivotal role due to their capability of ubiquitous monitoring. The wearable sensors have been designed and fabricated with a range of processing materials, based on their respective applications. Along with the significant research related to the fabrication and implementation of wearable strain sensors, explanation related to the challenges of the current sensors and their futuristic possibilities have also been showcased in the paper.
Peroxisome proliferator-activator receptor (PPAR) γ is a nuclear hormone receptor that regulates glucose homeostasis, lipid metabolism, and adipocyte function. It has been shown that activation of ...PPARγ can reduce the incidence of gallstone. Herein we aimed to clarify the role of PPARγ in the reduction of gallstones. The plasmid containing the coding sequence of PPARγ was constructed and transfected in the human liver cell line (L02 cells). Western blot and RT-PCR were used to detect hydroxyl-methyl-glutaryl-CoA reductase (HMGCR), sterol regulatory element-binding proteins 2 (SREBP2), 7α-hydroxylase (CYP7A1), adenosine triphosphate-binding cassette (ABC) sterol transporters G5 and G8 (ABCG5, ABCG8) and liver X receptor α (LXRα). The Amplex Red cholesterol assay kit was used to detect the intracellular or extracellular cholesterol level. Our data showed that PPARγ overexpression caused significant decreases in both extracellular and intracellular cholesterol in the L02 cells. The further studies indicated PPARγ overexpression substantially decreased expression of HMGCR and SREBP-2, increased expression of CYP7A1, ABCG5, ABCG8 and LXRα. These results indicated that upregulation of PPARγ may reduce cholesterol levels through multiple-pathways including HMGCR/SREBP2-mediated biosynthesis, CYP7A1-mediated transformation, and ABCG5/ABCG8-mediated efflux. We thus suggest that PPARγ might have beneficial effects for cholesterol gallstones diseases.
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