Carbon reduction effect of comprehensive land consolidation and its configuration paths at the township level: A case study of Zhejiang Province, China.

Changing land use is one of the main factors influencing global climate change and the imbalance in the carbon cycle. Consequently, the focus of international organizations and the academic community is on strategies to mitigate carbon emissions or improve carbon sequestration by optimizing land use structure and function. Since 2019, China's Zhejiang Province has implemented a township-level pilot policy, exploring a comprehensive land consolidation (CLC for short) pilot policy that includes all elements of "mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, and grasslands.

Contrasting effects of arsenic on mycorrhizal-mediated silicon and phosphorus uptake by rice.

Silicon (Si) and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) increase plant resistance to various environmental stresses, including heavy metal (and metalloid) toxicity. Although Si and AMF each independently enhance plant tolerance, the nature of their interactions and their combined impacts on nutrient uptake, especially in the context of toxic elements such as arsenic (As), remains to be elucidated. This study investigated AMF-mediated regulation of plant nutrient uptake under As stress using rice, a model Si-accumulating plant.

Inorganic bioelectric system for nitrate removal with low NO production at cold temperatures of 4 and 10 °C.

Groundwater, essential for ecological stability and freshwater supply, faces escalating nitrate contamination. Traditional biological methods struggle with organic carbon scarcity and low temperatures, leading to an urgent need to explore efficient approaches for groundwater remediation. In this work, we proposed an inorganic bioelectric system designed to confront these challenges.

Promoting defect formation and inhibiting hydrogen evolution by S-doping NiFe layered double hydroxide for electrocatalytic reduction of nitrate to ammonia.

Activation of HO cleavage for H* production by defect engineering eliminates the insufficient supply of protons in the NORR process under neutral conditions. However, it remains challenging to precisely control the defect formation for optimizing the equilibrium between H* production and H* binding. Here, we propose a strategy to boost defect generation through S-doping induced NiFe-LDH lattice distortion, and successfully optimize the balance of H* production and binding.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi mitigate cadmium stress in maize.

Soil cadmium (Cd) pollution poses a significant environmental threat, impacting global food security and human health. Recent studies have highlighted the potential of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi to protect crops from various heavy metal stresses, including Cd toxicity. To elucidate the tolerance mechanisms of maize in response to Cd toxicity under AM symbiosis, this study used two maize genotypes with contrasting Cd tolerance: Zhengdan958 (Cd-tolerant) and Zhongke11 (Cd-sensitive).

Low-dose radiation ameliorates PM2.5-induced lung injury through non-canonical TLR1/TLR2-like receptor pathways modulated by Akkermansia muciniphila.

Exposure of PM2.5 can cause different degrees of lung injury, which is referred with inflammatory response. Some evidences showed that low-dose radiation (LDR) induces hormesis in immune, however, it is unknown if LDR ameliorates the PM2.

Mechanism of microplastics in the reduction of cadmium toxicity in tomato.

Soil pollution by microplastics (MPs) and cadmium (Cd) poses significant threats to agricultural production, yet their combined toxicity and underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here, we examined the effects of three types of MPs-polyethylene (PE), polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polypropylene (PP)-with particle sizes of 150 μm and 10 μm, in combination with Cd stress (5 mg/kg) on tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) growth.

N6-methyladenosine modification of 3'tRF-AlaAGC impairs PD-1 blockade efficacy by promoting lactic acid accumulation in the tumor microenvironment of gastric carcinoma.

The balance between CD8 T cells and regulatory T (Treg) cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME) plays a crucial role in the immune checkpoint inhibition (ICI) therapy in gastric carcinoma (GC). However, related factors leading to the disturbance of TME and resistance to ICI therapy remain unknown. In this study, we applied N6-methyladenosine (m6A) small RNA Epitranscriptomic Microarray and screened out 3'tRF-AlaAGC based on its highest differential expression level and lowest inter-group variance.

Interleukin 29 is a novel antiangiogenic factor in angiogenesis.

Aims: Angiogenesis is tightly controlled by growth factors and cytokines in pathophysiological settings. Despite the importance of Interleukin 29 (IL-29), a newly identified cytokine of type III interferon family, its role in angiogenesis remains unknown. We aimed to elucidate IL-29's impact on angiogenesis under both and physiological and pathological conditions.

Bitter acids from Humulus lupulus L. alleviate D-galactose induced osteoblastic senescence and bone loss via regulating AKT/mTOR-mediated autophagy.

Bitter acids (BA) are main component of Humulus lupulus L. (hops). They are known for beer brewing and have various biological and pharmacological properties, especially the bone-protective effect confirmed by our previous in vivo study.

CPI-GGS: A deep learning model for predicting compound-protein interaction based on graphs and sequences.

Background: Compound-protein interaction (CPI) is essential to drug discovery and design, where traditional methods are often costly and have low success rates. Recently, the integration of machine learning and deep learning in CPI research has shown potential to reduce costs and enhance discovery efficiency by improving protein target identification accuracy. Additionally, with an urgent need for novel therapies against complex diseases, CPI investigation could lead to the identification of effective new drugs.

Tea consumption and cognitive health in Chinese older adults: A propensity score matching and weighting analysis.

Background: The association between tea consumption, especially different types, and cognitive function has not been adequately explored. This study aimed to investigate the associations of tea consumption, including status, frequency, and type, with cognitive function, considering selection bias.

Methods: We used data from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) in 2018(N = 8498).

Laboratory-simulated marine heatwave enhances physiological damage to mussels exposed to titanium dioxide nanoparticles by disrupting the gut-hepatopancreas axis.

The aggregation state of nano-TiO in the environment is altered under marine heatwaves (MHWs), thus affecting its bioavailability and toxicity to the marine organisms. Here, we investigated the toxic mechanisms and effects of nano-TiO on gut-hepatopancreas axis health of Mytilus coruscus exposed to 25 and 250 μg/L of nano-TiO under laboratory-simulated MHW. Compared with the control conditions or post-MHW cooling phase, prolonged MHW exposure significantly inhibited digestive function, decreased immune-related enzymes activities, and caused neurotoxicity in the mussels.

How does industrial intelligence affect the ecological efficiency of China's mariculture industry? Empirical analysis based on panel data from coastal regions of China.

Exploring new pathways for the growth of output in the mariculture industry and its alignment with environmentally coordinated and sustainable development has become an urgent task. Against the backdrop of the new technological revolution, the burgeoning development of industrial intelligence offers new opportunities for enhancing the ecological efficiency of China's mariculture. Based on panel data from coastal provinces of China from 2008 to 2022, this paper measures the ecological efficiency of mariculture while comprehensively considering both positive and negative externalities of the industry.

Preliminary application of EPID three-dimensional dose reconstruction in in vivo dose verification of breast cancer intensity-modulated radiation therapy.

A preliminary study was conducted using electronic portal imaging device (EPID) based dose verification in pre-treatment and in vivo dose reconstruction modes for breast cancer intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) technique with known repositioning set-up errors. For 43 IMRT plans, the set-up errors were determined from 43 sets of EPID images and 258 sets of cone beam computed tomography images. In-house developed Edose software was used to reconstruct the dose distribution using the pre-treatment and on-treatment (in vivo) EPID acquired fluence maps.

Measuring Attractive Interaction between a Self-Electrophoretic Micromotor and a Wall.

Chemically driven micromotors exhibit a pronounced affinity for nearby surfaces, yet the quantification of this motor-wall interaction strength remains unexplored in experiments. Here, we apply an external force to a self-electrophoretic micromotor which slides along a wall and measures the force necessary to disengage the motor from the wall. Our experiments unveil that the required disengaging force increases with the strength of chemical driving, often surpassing both the motor's effective gravity and its propulsive thrust.

Dual Mechanism for Transient Capacitance Anomaly in Improper Ferroelectrics.

Negative capacitance (NC) effects in ferroelectrics can potentially break fundamental limits of power dissipation known as "Boltzmann tyranny." However, the origin of transient NC of ferroelectrics, which is attributed to two different mechanisms involving free-energy landscape and nucleation, is under intense debate. Here, we report the coexistence of transient NC and an S-shaped anomaly during the switching of ferroelectric hexagonal ferrites capacitor in an RC circuit.

Disentangling Sources of Momentum Fluctuations in Xe+Xe and Pb+Pb Collisions with the ATLAS Detector.

High-energy nuclear collisions create a quark-gluon plasma, whose initial condition and subsequent expansion vary from event to event, impacting the distribution of the eventwise average transverse momentum [P([p_{T}])]. Disentangling the contributions from fluctuations in the nuclear overlap size (geometrical component) and other sources at a fixed size (intrinsic component) remains a challenge. This problem is addressed by measuring the mean, variance, and skewness of P([p_{T}]) in ^{208}Pb+^{208}Pb and ^{129}Xe+^{129}Xe collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=5.

Precise Synthesis of 4.75 V-Tolerant LiCoO with Homogeneous Delithiation and Reduced Internal Strain.

The rapid advancements in 3C electronic devices necessitate an increase in the charge cutoff voltage of LiCoO to unlock a higher energy density that surpasses the currently available levels. However, the structural devastation and electrochemical decay of LiCoO are significantly exacerbated, particularly at ≥4.5 V, due to the stress concentration caused by more severe lattice expansion and shrinkage, coupled with heterogeneous Li intercalation/deintercalation reactions.

Hepatitis B virus hijacks MRE11-RAD50-NBS1 complex to form its minichromosome.

Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection can significantly increase the incidence of cirrhosis and liver cancer, and there is no curative treatment. The persistence of HBV covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) is the major obstacle of antiviral treatments. cccDNA is formed through repairing viral partially double-stranded relaxed circular DNA (rcDNA) by varies host factors.

Smartphone-Assisted Fluorescence Determination of Inorganic Phosphorus Using a Samarium Metal-Organic Framework.

Inorganic phosphori are widely used in food, whose quantitative detection method is of significance. This work presents a Sm-DDB (HDDB = 1,3-di(3',5'-dicarboxylphenyl)benzene), which acts as a ratiometric fluorescence sensor to monitor PO, HPO, and (PO) with high sensitivity. The determination factors of pH, MOF dosage, and fluorescence response time are optimized as 7.

Thermostability Enhancement of Tagatose 4-Epimerase through Protein Engineering and Whole-Cell Immobilization.

d-Tagatose, a rare sugar endowed with a low-calorie property, superior taste quality, and probiotic functionality, has garnered significant research attention. However, the prevailing biological production methods relying on β-galactosidase and l-arabinose isomerase face challenges including high cost and suboptimal conversion efficiency. Consequently, it is of great research significance to find efficient alternative routes for d-tagatose synthesis.