The ferritin secreted by mammals has been well documented, with the protein capable of localizing to cell membranes and facilitating the delivery of iron to cells through endocytosis. However, the ...presence of ferritin in the circulatory fluid of mollusks and its functions remain largely unknown. In this study, we aimed to investigate the potential interacting proteins of ferritin in the ark clam (
Fn) through the use of a pull-down assay. Our findings revealed the presence of an insulin-like growth factor type 1 receptor (IGF-1R) in ark clams, which was capable of binding to
Fn and was named
IGF-1R.
IGF-1R was found to be composed of two leucine-rich repeat domains (L domain), a cysteine-rich domain, three fibronectin type III domains, a transmembrane domain, and a tyrosine kinase domain. The ectodomain of
IGF-1R was observed to form a symmetrical antiparallel homodimer in the shape of the letter 'A', with the fibronectin type III domains serving as its 'legs'. The mRNA expression of
IGF-1R gene was detected ubiquitously in various tissues of the ark clam, with the highest expression levels found in hemocytes, as determined by qRT-PCR. Using a confocal microscopic and yeast two-hybrid assays, the interaction between
IGF-1R and
Fn was further verified. The results showed that
Fn co-localized with
IGF-1R on the cell membrane, and their interaction was expected to occur on the FNIII domains of the
IGF-1R. In conclusion, our findings highlight the identification of a putative receptor,
IGF-1R, for
Fn, demonstrating the versatility of IGF-1R in ark clams.
Xylooligosaccharide (XOS) is known as a prebiotic, however, it is unknown whether XOS can directly protect against bacterial infection. This study aimed to investigate the direct inhibitory effects ...of XOS on Salmonella Typhimurium colonization and the inductive impairments in gut health and growth performance in broilers. We firstly probed the inhibitory effects of XOS on S. Typhimurium adhesion and its induction of intestinal epithelial cell (IPEC-J2) injuries. Afterwards, 168 1-d-old yellow-feathered broilers were randomly divided into 3 groups (7 replicates/group): negative control (NC, received a basal diet), positive control (PC, received a basal diet with S. Typhimurium challenge) and XOS group (PC birds + 1,500 mg/kg XOS). All birds except those in NC were orally challenged with S. Typhimurium from 8 to 10 d of age. Parameters were analyzed on d 11. The results showed that XOS inhibited S. Typhimurium adhesion and the inductive injuries of IPEC-J2 cells by lowering (P < 0.05) certain adhesion-related genes expression of this bacterium. It also alleviated S. Typhimurium-induced increase (P < 0.05) in the expression of certain inflammatory cytokines and tight junction (TJ) proteins of IPEC-J2 cells. Supplementing XOS to S. Typhimurium-challenged broilers attenuated the elevations (P < 0.05) in S. Typhimurium colonization of ileal mucosa and its translocation to the liver and spleen, as well as increased (P < 0.05) certain TJ proteins expression of ileum. Besides, XOS addition normalized S. Typhimurium-induced impairments (P < 0.05) in ileal morphology, final body weight and average daily gain in broilers. Collectively, supplemental XOS directly suppressed intestinal colonization of S. Typhimurium by diminishing its adhesiveness and subsequently mitigated destructions in intestinal barriers, thus contributing to weaken growth retardation in challenged broilers. Our findings provide a new insight into the mechanisms of XOS limiting Salmonella infection in chickens.
Global or regional mean evapotranspiration (ET), calculated as the difference between observed precipitation (P) and runoff (R), has been widely used as the standard method to investigate the ...long‐term variability of ET and evaluate hydrological and climate models. The increasing number of reservoirs built in China has led to a considerable amount of water storage, which could significantly alter regional water budgets. This change in terrestrial water storage (ΔS) because of the newly built reservoirs reduces the observed R but does not directly translate into ET. The present study is the first to quantify this reservoir effect on the estimated ET at the national and basin scale from 1997 to 2014 in China. The results show that the reservoir total storage capacity in China increased by 0.38 × 1012 m3 from 1997 to 2014. If this change in ΔS is not considered, a significant increase in the calculated ET of 4.2% per decade is derived. However, after this change in ΔS is taken into account, the calculated trend of ET decreases to almost zero for the period 1997 to 2014, which is consistent with the negligible changes in the determining factors for ET, including precipitation, surface incident solar radiation, and air temperature. The impact of reservoirs and the determining factors of ET are further explored in six major river basins of China, which confirmed our conclusions at the national scale. This study indicates that the impact of ΔS due to reservoir construction on calculated ET trends must be considered.
Key Points
This study quantifies the impact of water storage in the newly built reservoirs on the calculated evapotranspiration (ET) trend in China
After considering this impact, we estimated a negligible trend in ET in China from 1997 to 2014 using water balance method
This trend of ET at national scale is consistent with its determining factors and is confirmed at basin scales
When power systems encounter outages and large-scale blackouts, system restoration is critical and should be carried out with dedicated schemes. In this past, most studies divided the power system ...restoration into three stages (i.e., black-start zone partitioning, network reconfiguration, and load restoration) and deal with them separately. After that, few studies considering the three stages together were emerging while the support of multiple flexible resources, i.e., renewable energy source (RES), electric vehicle system (EVS) and energy storage system (ESS), were not considered comprehensively. Therefore, a bi-level coordinated power system restoration (BiCPSR) model is proposed in this work considering the support of multiple flexible resources. In the upper level, two network topology indices that describe the "reachability" and "shortest reachable distance" of buses in power systems, and the restoration characteristics of generators and loads are utilized for optimizing the start-up sequence of generators and network reconfiguration. In the lower level, the uncertainties of RES and EVS are considered by various scenarios and the support of multiple flexible resources is utilized cooperatively for accelerating the restoration process and maximizing the restorable load. Case studies on the revised IEEE 39-bus, WECC 179-bus and the actual Zhejiang power systems are performed to illustrate the basic features of the proposed model and its availability in bulk power systems. The comparisons between the proposed model and other models are also performed to illustrate the strengths of the proposed model.
Electrochemical nitrate reduction to ammonia (NRA) catalyzed by Cu-based electrodes can realize green synthesis of NH3 while removing nitrate contaminant. However, there still lacks exploration for ...the effect of supporting matrixes on NRA performance of Cu-based catalysts. We present here the design of three kinds of supporting matrixes including Ni foams (NF), Cu foams (CF) and carbon clothes (CC) to electrochemically grow Cu catalysts and the investigations of their NRA performance. Results show that NF-supported Cu catalyst (Cu@NF) exhibits the best performance in terms of NH3 yield rate, selectivity and Faradaic efficiency. Remarkably, at −0.23 V vs. RHE, Cu@NF delivers a NH3 yield rate up to 0.252 mmol h−1 cm−2, outperforming Cu@CF (0.148 mmol h−1 cm−2) and Cu@CC (0.076 mmol h−1 cm−2). Moreover, Cu@NF well retains NH3 yield rate and selectivity after consecutive five cycles, demonstrating an excellent stability. It is found that NF as supporting matrix can induce Ni doping to Cu catalyst for Cu@NF, which is proposed to favor atomic hydrogen reduction pathway. This work not only explores the effect of supporting matrixes on NRA performance of Cu-based catalysts but also can be extended to design rational supporting matrixes for other electrocatalytic and electro-synthetic systems.
Display omitted
•Three kinds of supporting matrixes are designed to load Cu electrocatalysts.•Effect of structure-activity of matrixes on NRA performance is investigated.•Nickel foam supported Cu catalyst exhibits the best NRA performance.•It delivers a NH3 yield of 0.252 mmol h−1 cm−2 at −0.23 V vs. RHE.•It induces Ni doping to Cu catalyst to favor atomic hydrogen reduction pathway.
Amyloid aggregation is associated with many neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). The current technologies using phototherapy for amyloid inhibition are usually photodynamic ...approaches based on evidence that reactive oxygen species can inhibit Aβ aggregation. Herein, we report a novel combinational photothermally assisted photo-oxygenation treatment based on a nano-platform of the brain-targeting peptide RVG conjugated with the 2D porphyrinic PCN-222 metal-organic framework and indocyanine green (PCN-222@ICG@RVG) with enhanced photo-inhibition in Alzheimer's Aβ aggregation. A photothermally assisted photo-oxygenation treatment based on PCN@ICG could largely enhance the photo-inhibition effect on Aβ
aggregation and lead to much lower neurotoxicity upon near-infrared (NIR) irradiation at 808 nm compared with a single modality of photo-treatment in both cell-free and in vitro experiments. Generally, local photothermal heat increases the instability of Aβ aggregates and keeps Aβ in the status of monomers, which facilitates the photo-oxygenation process of generating oxidized Aβ monomers with low aggregation capability. In addition, combined with the brain-targeting peptide RVG, the PCN-222@ICG@RVG nanoprobe shows high permeability of the human blood-brain barrier (BBB) on a human brain-on-a-chip platform. The ex vivo study also demonstrates that NIR-activated PCN-222@ICG@RVG could efficiently dissemble Aβ plaques. Our work suggests that the combination of photothermal treatment with photo-oxygenation can synergistically enhance the inhibition of Aβ aggregation, which may boost NIR-based combinational phototherapy of AD in the future.
Urbanization leads to the occupation of green areas, directly contributing to a high level of fragmentation of urban green spaces, which, in turn, results in numerous socioeconomic and environmental ...problems. Consequently, an understanding of the relationships between patterns of urban green spaces and urbanization processes is essential. Although previous quantitative studies have examined this relationship, they have not included an exploration of spatial heterogeneities in the effects of urbanization on the spatial patterns of urban green areas. We therefore applied a spatiotemporal perspective to examine the above relationship, while considering the wider planning context. First, we quantified the extent of fragmentation of urban green spaces using landscape metrics comprising the largest patch index (LPI) and landscape shape index (LSI). Next, using the calculated spatial metrics and nighttime light data (NTL) for central Beijing for the period 1992–2016, we applied a geographically weighted regression model to assess variations in the spatiotemporal effects of urbanization on the fragmentation of urban green spaces. The results showed that urbanization initially occurred mainly in the northern parts of Beijing, whereas urbanization of southern urban fringe areas occurred after 2008. The reduction in green spaces along with increasing fragmentation and complex spatial patterns are indicative of issues relating to Beijing’s rapid urbanization and planning policies. This study contributes to an understanding of how urbanization influences fragmentation of urban green spaces and offers insights for the planning of urban green spaces from the perspective of promoting sustainability.
Rub-impact is a kind of serious malfunction, which often occurs in rotating machinery. The non-stationary rub-impact signals are always submerged in the background and noise signals, which makes it ...difficult to accurately diagnose the rubbing based on the hand-designed features extracted by the traditional methods. This paper presents a 1-D convolutional neural network (CNN) based approach to automatically learn useful features for rub-impact fault diagnosis from the raw vibration signals of a rotor system. The proposed model is trained on a dataset of vibration signals obtained from an industrial hydro turbine rotor. The results show that timely and accurate rub-impact fault detection can be achieved by a simple 1-D CNN configuration.
Future-oriented motivation refers to the attitude towards the future consequences of current actions, which has pronounced effects on intertemporal choice by improving self-control resources. ...However, it remains unknown whether this effect holds consistent among individuals with different levels of trait self-control. To address this issue, the present study compared the intertemporal choices of participants with high versus low trait self-control before and after implementing future-oriented motivation priming. The results demonstrated that future-oriented motivation increased dramatically the tendency to pursue larger delayed rewards in participants with lower self-control, but had no effect on those with high self-control. These results suggest that the effect of future-oriented motivation on intertemporal choice is moderated by individuals' trait self-control, and shed light on the improvement of intertemporal choices in individuals with low-self control.
•Stories that induce people to think long term can prime future-oriented motivation.•Future-oriented motivational priming impacts the intertemporal choice.•The influence of future-oriented motivation on intertemporal choice is moderated by individuals' trait self-control.
•Buoys, satellite data, and a numerical model were used to study wave climates.•Wave heights are inhomogeneous across the Caribbean and Atlantic Ocean.•The Nicaraguan rise can cause deformations in ...wave properties.
Surface waves are extremely important in a large variety of oceanographic applications and thus, the study of their spatiotemporal characteristics remains crucial. This study analyzes waves in the Caribbean Sea (CS) and western Atlantic Ocean (AO) using a high-resolution (HR) Simulating WAves Nearshore model validated with buoy observations and paired with a HR bathymetric dataset from 2010 – 2019. Island sheltering effects are examined but special attention is given to these effects under Hurricane Dorian in The Bahamas using observations from the China-France Oceanographic Satellite. Results illustrate that wave heights within the CS fluctuated with Caribbean Low-Level Jet activity, but a different wave regime exists within the AO. While wind waves overwhelmingly dominate the wave field and this is true even in the AO, surprisingly, the contribution of swell in the central CS was equal to one site in the AO. Possibly, due to interaction with the shallow Nicaraguan Rise, wave heights were strongly (depth-induced) refracted nearly 45°, a feature unseen in previous research using coarse bathymetric datasets. Island sheltering effects were pervasive and were naturally most pronounced under hurricane conditions. Crucially, New Providence in The Bahamas is vulnerable to hurricane-forced waves funneled through the Grand Bahama and Northeastern Providence Channels.
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