Lead oxides (PbO, 1 ≤ ≤ 2) are promising high-capacity and low-cost anodes for lithium ion batteries (LIBs). However, the huge lithiation-induced volume expansion of conventional large-sized PbO particles leads to severe electrode pulverization with poor cycling stability. Herein, a rare mixed-valence PbO with a unique hierarchical architecture of nanoparticle-assembled interconnected hollow spheres (denoted PbO NAHSs) is crafted by introducing polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) into the solution of generating β-PbO microspheres (MSs), which is exploited for the first time as a potential advanced anode material for LIBs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBacterial wilt caused by is one of the most important diseases in solanaceous plants, including peppers. It generally tends to be more serious under warm-temperature and moist (WM) conditions than at moist room-temperature (RM) conditions. Although immunity mechanisms at room temperature have been intensively studied, the mechanisms underlying WM conditions remain poorly understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExploring the association between exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and the risk of dyslipidemia and possible mediating effects is essential for conducting epidemiological health studies on related lipid disorders. Therefore, our study aimed to elucidate the potential association between PAH exposure and dyslipidemia risk and further identify the mediating effects based on blood cell-based inflammatory biomarkers. This cross-sectional study was conducted on 8380 individuals with complete survey data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2001-2016).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCaWRKY40 coordinately activates pepper immunity against infection (RSI) and high temperature stress (HTS), forms positive feedback loops with other positive regulators and is promoted by CaWRKY27b/CaWRKY28 through physical interactions; however, whether and how it is regulated by negative regulators to function appropriately remain unclear. Herein, we provide evidence that CaWRKY40 is repressed by a SALT TOLERANCE HOMOLOG2 in pepper (CaSTH2). Our data from gene silencing and transient overexpression in pepper and epoptic overexpression in plants showed that CaSTH2 acted as negative regulator in immunity against RSI and thermotolerance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: To analyze the impact of the time of natural cessation of the umbilical cord on maternal and infant outcomes in order to explore the time of clamping that would be beneficial to maternal and infant outcomes.
Methods: The study was a cohort study and pregnant women who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria at the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department of Qilu Hospital of Shandong University from September 2020 to September 2021. Analysis using Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test, Pearson's Chi-squared test, generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) and repeated measures ANOVA.
Global climate changes induce substantial alterations in the marine system, including ocean acidification (OA), desalination and warming of surface seawater. Here, we examined the combined effects of OA and reduced salinity under different temperatures on the growth and photosynthesis of the diatom Skeletonema costatum. After having been acclimated to 2 CO concentrations (400 μatm, 1000 μatm) and 2 salinity levels (20 psu, 30 psu) at temperature levels of 10 °C and 20 °C, the diatom showed enhanced growth rate at the lowered salinity and elevated pCO irrespective of the temperature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDeveloping safe, eco-friendly, and functionally edible packaging materials has attracted global attention. Essential oils, can be incorporated into packaging materials as antioxidant and antibacterial agents. However, their high volatility and discontinuous film matrix issues may cause a rough film surface, limiting the application in food packaging.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Cancer Res Clin Oncol
December 2023
Objective: We aim to use the microRNA (miRNA, micro-ribonucleic acid) data of lung cancer tissues to establish a miRNA biomarker database for lung cancer that can be used for marker screening and analysis of lung cancer prognosis.
Methods: We obtained lung cancer-related data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and analyzed the miRNA expression profiles of lung cancer tissues and normal tissues using bioinformatics techniques to develop a new composite miRNA-based model for the prognostic assessment of lung cancer. The predictive power of this model was verified and evaluated based on grouping of data.
High temperature and high humidity (HTHH) conditions increase plant susceptibility to a variety of diseases, including bacterial wilt in solanaceous plants. Some solanaceous plant cultivars have evolved mechanisms to activate HTHH-specific immunity to cope with bacterial wilt disease. However, the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMany real-world complex systems, when hitting a tipping point, undergo irreversible sudden shifts that can eventually take a great toll on humanity and the natural world, such as ecosystem collapses, disease outbreaks, etc. Previous work has adopted approximations to predict the tipping points, but due to the nature of nonlinearity, this may lead to unexpected errors in predicting real-world systems. Here we obtain the rigorous bounds of the tipping points for general nonlinear cooperative networks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGinsenoside Rg1 (Rg1) has been demonstrated to have antidiabetic and antiosteoporotic activities. The aim of this study was to investigate the protective effect of Rg1 against diabetic osteoporosis and the underlying mechanism. , we found that Rg1 increased the number of osteoprogenitors and alleviated high glucose (HG) induced apoptosis of osteoprogenitors by MTT assays and flow cytometry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiomass pretreatment is an essential strategy to overcome biomass recalcitrance and promote lignocellulosic bioconversion. Here, a reusable organic solvent system (formic acid-methanesulfonic acid) was explored to pretreat poplar under a mild temperature (below 100 °C). The results showed that the co-solvent system could extract basically complete hemicelluloses and part of lignin with original cellulose retained in the pretreated substrates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNanomaterials (Basel)
October 2022
Objectives: An increase in homocysteine (Hcy) concentration is closely related to polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). This study aimed to further explore serum homocysteine concentration and its influencing factors in clinically young (≤ 35 years) patients with PCOS and hyperandrogenism.
Material And Methods: An electrochemical immunoassay was used to investigate the changes in serum homocysteine and related indexes in clinically young patients with PCOS and hyperandrogenism, and the results were statistically analyzed.
Pepper (Capsicum annuum) responds differently to high temperature stress (HTS) and Ralstonia solanacearum infection (RSI) but employs some shared transcription factors (TFs), such as CabZIP63 and CaWRKY40, in both cases. How the plant activates and balances these distinct responses, however, was unclear. Here, we show that the protein CaSWC4 interacts with CaRUVBL2 and CaTAF14b and they all act positively in pepper response to RSI and thermotolerance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDuring the traditional autohydrolysis, formation and deposition of "pseudo-lignin" and lignin droplets on the surface of biomass had a detrimental effect on the subsequent biomass conversion. In this study, isothermal phase separation was introduced into autohydrolysis, and the effects of isothermal phase separation on the dissolution of components and enzymatic hydrolysis of bamboo were studied. The research showed that isothermal phase separation after autohydrolysis without cooling had an effective reduction in the deposition of "pseudo-lignin" and lignin droplets on the residues surface.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn electronic nose based on metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) sensors has been used to identify liquors with excessive methanol. The technique for a square wave temperature modulated MOS sensor was applied to generate the response patterns and a back-propagation neural network was used for pattern recognition. The parameters of temperature modulation were optimized according to the difference in response features of target gases (methanol and ethanol).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlant diseases generally tend to be more serious under conditions of high temperature and high humidity (HTHH) than under ambient temperature, but plant immunity against pathogen attacks under HTHH remains elusive. Herein, we used pepper as an example to study how Solanaceae cope with Ralstonia solanacearum infection (RSI) under HTHH by performing RNA-seq combined with the reverse genetic method. The result showed that immunities mediated by salicylic acid (SA) and jasmonic acid (JA) in pepper roots were activated by RSI under ambient temperature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn integration of different pretreatments is important to overcome recalcitrance and realize efficient bioconversion of lignocellulosic biomass. This study aims at the effects of combination of hydrothermal pretreatment and different chemi-mechanical pretreatments on enzymatic hydrolysis, and understanding the enzymes adsorption mechanism. The combination of hydrothermal and chemi-mechanical pretreatments effectively improved the enzymatic hydrolysis of poplar substrates, in which the enzymatic hydrolysis of substrates pretreated by hydrothermal pretreatment + Fenton pretreatment + mechanical refining (HFM) was the highest (92.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe question of what peripheral vision is good for, especially in pattern recognition, is one of the most important and controversial issues in cognitive science. In a series of experiments, we provide substantial evidence that observers' behavioral performance in the periphery is consistently superior to central vision for topological change detection, while nontopological change detection deteriorates with increasing eccentricity. These experiments generalize the topological account of object perception in the periphery to different kinds of topological changes (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlant responses to pathogen attacks and high-temperature stress (HTS) are distinct in nature but generally share several signaling components. How plants produce specific responses through these common signaling intermediates remains elusive. With the help of reverse-genetics approaches, we describe here the mechanism underlying trade-offs in pepper (Capsicum annuum) between growth, immunity, and thermotolerance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding the adsorption behavior and the interaction between substrates and enzymes are critical to improving enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency and reducing bioconversion cost. Herein, the adsorption of cellulase on wet ground corncob residues was studied, and the effects of main characteristics of wet ground corncob residues on adsorption capacity were quantitatively analyzed with the combination of principal component analysis and multiple linear regression models. The results showed that the adsorption of cellulase on wet ground corncob residues was fitted well with Langmuir isotherm adsorption and pseudo second-order kinetics model, the adsorption rate and adsorption capacity were greatly enhanced with increasing grinding time; the multiple linear regression models describing the relationship between main characteristics of corncob residues and adsorption capacity to cellulase were established; the significance of these characteristics were in the following order: average particle size, crystallinity index, specific surface area, surface lignin concentration, water retention value, and surface charge density.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the crowding effect, object recognition in the periphery deteriorates when other items flank the target, especially if they share similarities. Here, we report that the similarity defined by topological property (differences in number of holes) influences the crowding effect. Orientation discrimination tasks suggested that the crowding effect was weaker with a topological different (TD) flanker than a topological equivalent (TE) flanker and an existing inward-outward anisotropy phenomenon.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe combination of different pretreatment methods can effectively overcome recalcitrance of lignocellulosic biomass to ensure its highly efficient conversion into bio-based products. In this study, the combined pretreatments of chemical methods (hydrothermal treatment and Fenton treatment) with mechanical refining were used to improve the enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency of poplar branches. The results indicated that hydrothermal pretreatment and Fenton pretreatment can effectively improve the enzymatic hydrolysis of poplar substrates, e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBioresour Technol
January 2020
Under the situation of increasingly severe challenge of energy consumption, it is of great importance to make full use of bioresources such as forestry and agricultural residues. Herein, the corncob residues generated after processing corncob were enzymatically hydrolyzed to yield fermentable sugars. To overcome the recalcitrance of corncob residues, three kinds of pretreatment methods, i.
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