Evolution of interactions and cooperation in the spatial prisoner's dilemma game

We study the evolution of cooperation in the spatial prisoner's dilemma game where players are allowed to establish new interactions with others. By employing a simple coevolutionary rule entailing only two crucial parameters, we find that different selection criteria for the new interaction partners as well as their number vitally affect the outcome of the game. The resolution of the social dilemma is most probable if the selection favors more successful players and if their maximally attainable number is restricted. While the preferential selection of the best players promotes cooperation irrespective of game parametrization, the optimal number of new interactions depends somewhat on the temptation to defect. Our findings reveal that the "making of new friends" may be an important activity for the successful evolution of cooperation, but also that partners must be selected carefully and their number limited.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures; accepted for publication in PLoS ON

Kinematics Analysis and Optimization of a Multi-Mode Mobile Parallel Mechanism

This paper aims to disclose the kinematics and optimize the design of multi-mode mobile parallel mechanism. To this end, a multi-mode mobile parallel mechanism was designed based on single-loop planar 4R systems. The horizontally symmetric mechanism is controlled by two motors: the mechanism can switch freely among different modes of movements (e.g. sliding, turning and rolling) by changing the input angles of the two motors. Based on the mechanism structure, the author analysed the degrees of freedom (DOFs) and kinematics of each mode, and optimized the stability of the mechanism. The results show that the mechanism is more stable at a short rod length and small rotating angle, when its width is constant. Finally, the theoretical correctness of the mechanism was verified through simulation and prototype test. The research findings provide a valuable reference for similar studies on multi-mode mobile parallel mechanism, and lay the theoretical basis for the application of mobile robots in various fields

Biochemical Issues in Estimation of Cytosolic Free NAD/NADH Ratio

Cytosolic free NAD/NADH ratio is fundamentally important in maintaining cellular redox homeostasis but current techniques cannot distinguish between protein-bound and free NAD/NADH. Williamson et al reported a method to estimate this ratio by cytosolic lactate/pyruvate (L/P) based on the principle of chemical equilibrium. Numerous studies used L/P ratio to estimate the cytosolic free NAD/NADH ratio by assuming that the conversion in cells was at near-equilibrium but not verifying how near it was. In addition, it seems accepted that cytosolic free NAD/NADH ratio was a dependent variable responding to the change of L/P ratio. In this study, we show (1) that the change of lactate/glucose (percentage of glucose that converts to lactate by cells) and L/P ratio could measure the status of conversion between pyruvate + NADH and lactate + NAD that tends to or gets away from equilibrium; (2) that cytosolic free NAD/NADH could be accurately estimated by L/P only when the conversion is at or very close to equilibrium otherwise a calculation error by one order of magnitude could be introduced; (3) that cytosolic free NAD/NADH is stable and L/P is highly labile, that the highly labile L/P is crucial to maintain the homeostasis of NAD/NADH; (4) that cytosolic free NAD/NADH is dependent on oxygen levels. Our study resolved the key issues regarding accurate estimation of cytosolic free NAD/NADH ratio and the relationship between NAD/NADH and L/P

Stigmatizing attitudes toward mental disorders among non-mental health nurses in general hospitals of China: a national survey

BackgroundNegative attitudes of nurses toward mental disorders have been reported in various countries. Nurses’ stigmatizing attitudes can harm patients with mental disorders (PWMD), thereby delaying the provision of help to patients and leading to decreased quality of care. In this study, we aimed to assess Chinese nurses’ stigmatizing attitudes toward patients with mental illness and provide a basis for future development and testing of appropriate and culturally adapted interventions to reduce it.ObjectiveThis study aimed to assess the attitudes of Non-mental Health Nurses (NMHNs) in general hospitals in China toward the stigma of PWMD and determine the factors influencing them.MethodsA cross-sectional survey of NMHNs in general hospitals were conducted. A self-designed WeChat-based questionnaire was used that included demographic information about the need for training on mental health issues. Participants were provided with a vignette of a depression case with suicidal thoughts. The Depression Stigma Scale (DSS) and Social Distance Scale (SDS) were used to assess attitudes toward mental disorders. Nine questions on the adequacy of knowledge about anxiety and depression and the current status of scale use were used to assess the current status of training needs for mental disorders. Descriptive analysis, chi-square test, and multivariate logistic regression were used for the table.ResultsA total of 8,254 nurses in non-mental health professions participated in this study. The mean DSS score of NMHNs was (17.24 ± 6.700), and the SDS score was (10.34 ± 3.154). The total detection rate of stigma among the survey respondents was 13.40% (1,107/8254). Multivariate logistic regression showed that age between 30 and 39 years [p = 0.001, OR = 1.427 (1.154–1.764)], 4 years of work experience and above [p = 0.018, OR = 1.377 (1.056–1.796)], having a bachelor’s degree [p < 0.001, OR = 0.742 (0.647–0.851)], adequate psychological knowledge [p < 0.001, OR = 1.567 (1.364–1.799)], full knowledge of communication with patients with anxiety and depression [p < 0.001, OR = 1.848 (1.389–2.459)], and the need to acquire skills to identify anxiety and depression were the influencing factors associated with stigma [p < 0.001, OR = 0.343 (0.236–0.499)].ConclusionStigmatizing attitudes toward PWMD exist among NMHNs in general hospitals in China. Thus, more mental health education programs for NMHNs are needed. Factors associated with higher morbidity stigma can be used to develop appropriate interventions to improve NMHNs’ stigmatizing attitudes and provide better quality care to PWMD

Characteristics of multiple‐year nitrous oxide emissions from conventional vegetable fields in southeastern China

The annual and interannual characteristics of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from conventional vegetable fields are poorly understood. We carried out 4 year measurements of N2O fluxes from a conventional vegetable cultivation area in the Yangtze River delta. Under fertilized conditions subject to farming practices, approximately 86% of the annual total N2O release occurred following fertilization events. The direct emission factors (EFd) of the 12 individual vegetable seasons investigated ranged from 0.06 to 14.20%, with a mean of 3.09% and a coefficient of variation (CV) of 142%. The annual EFd varied from 0.59 to 4.98%, with a mean of 2.88% and an interannual CV of 74%. The mean value is much larger than the latest default value (1.00%) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Occasional application of lagoon‐stored manure slurry coupled with other nitrogen fertilizers, or basal nitrogen addition immediately followed by heavy rainfall, accounted for a substantial portion of the large EFds observed in warm seasons. The large CVs suggest that the emission factors obtained from short‐term observations that poorly represent seasonality and/or interannual variability will inevitably yield large uncertainties in inventory estimation. The results of this study indicate that conventional vegetable fields associated with intensive nitrogen addition, as well as occasional applications of manure slurry, may substantially account for regional N2O emissions. However, this conclusion needs to be further confirmed through studies at multiple field sites. Moreover, further experimental studies are needed to test the mitigation options suggested by this study for N2O emissions from open vegetable fields

Effect of Enteromorpha prolifera Polysaccharide on Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Intestinal Barrier Injury and Intestinal Microbial Composition in Mice

Objective: This study was conducted to investigate the effect of Enteromorpha prolifera polysaccharide (EP) on lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced intestinal barrier injury and the intestinal microbial composition in mice. Methods: Forty-eight 8-week-old C57BL/6J male mice were selected and randomly divided into four groups (12 mice/group): control (Ctrl), LPS, EP, and EP + LPS. The mice in the Ctrl and LPS groups were provided with a basal diet, and those in the EP and EP + LPS groups were given a basal diet supplemented with 600 mg/kg EP. After feeding for 28 days, the mice in the LPS and EP + LPS groups were injected intraperitoneally with 200 µL of LPS solution at a dose of 0.5 mg/kg body mass, and those in the Ctrl and EP groups were given the same dose of normal saline. Results: After 4 weeks of EP treatment, there was no significant change in LPS-induced liver damage or splenomegaly in mice (P > 0.05). Compared with the LPS group, EP treatment significantly reduced the serum levels of myeloperoxidase (MPO) (P < 0.05) and diamine oxidase (DAO) (P < 0.01), elevated the colonic gene expression of interleukin-1β (IL-1β) (P < 0.05), and decreased the colonic gene expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) (P < 0.05) and colonic Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) expression (P < 0.05). At the phylum level, EP treatment significantly increased the abundance of Verrucomicrobiota in mice with LPS-induced intestinal barrier injury (P < 0.01); at the genus level, it significantly decreased the abundance of Alloprevotella, Bacteroides and unclassified_o_Bacteroidales (P < 0.05) and increased the abundance of Lachnospiraceae_NK4A136_group, Anaerostipes and Akkermansia (P < 0.05). Conclusion: EP not only can prevent LPS-induced impairment of intestinal barrier function, but also can alleviate intestinal barrier damage in mice by regulating the expression of genes related to the TLR4 signaling pathway and the composition of the intestinal microbiota

Triaqua­(2,2′-bipyridine)(5-nitro­isophthal­ato-κO)nickel(II) monohydrate

In the title compound, [Ni(C8H3NO6)(C10H8N2)(H2O)3]·H2O, the NiII cation is six-coordinated by a chelating 2,2′-bipyridine ligand, one carboxyl­ate O atom from a 5-nitro­isophthalate dianion and three water mol­ecules, with a slightly distorted cis-NiN2O4 octa­hedral geometry. The neutral complex is isolated, in contrast to coordination polymers formed by MnII, CoII and CuII with the same ligand set, but forms an extensive network of O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds between the coordinated and uncoordinated water mol­ecules and carboxyl­ate groups of the 5-nitro­isophthalate ions

White matter microstructure alterations in idiopathic restless legs syndrome: a study combining crossing fiber-based and tensor-based approaches

IntroductionRestless legs syndrome (RLS) is a common sensorimotor disorder characterized by an irrepressible urge to move the legs and frequently accompanied by unpleasant sensations in the legs. The pathophysiological mechanisms underlying RLS remain unclear, and RLS is hypothesized to be associated with alterations in white matter tracts.MethodsDiffusion MRI is a unique noninvasive method widely used to study white matter tracts in the human brain. Thus, diffusion-weighted images were acquired from 18 idiopathic RLS patients and 31 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs). Whole brain tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) and atlas-based analyzes combining crossing fiber-based metrics and tensor-based metrics were performed to investigate the white matter patterns in individuals with RLS.ResultsTBSS analysis revealed significantly higher fractional anisotropy (FA) and partial volume fraction of primary (F1) fiber populations in multiple tracts associated with the sensorimotor network in patients with RLS than in HCs. In the atlas based analysis, the bilateral anterior thalamus radiation, bilateral corticospinal tract, bilateral inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, left hippocampal cingulum, left inferior longitudinal fasciculus, and left uncinate fasciculus showed significantl increased F1, but only the left hippocampal cingulum showed significantly higher FA.DiscussionThe results demonstrated that F1 identified extensive alterations in white matter tracts compared with FA and confirmed the hypothesis that crossing fiber-based metrics are more sensitive than tensor-based metrics in detecting white matter abnormalities in RLS. The present findings provide evidence that the increased F1 metric observed in sensorimotor tracts may be a critical neural substrate of RLS, enhancing our understanding of the underlying pathological changes

DivAvatar: Diverse 3D Avatar Generation with a Single Prompt

Text-to-Avatar generation has recently made significant strides due to advancements in diffusion models. However, most existing work remains constrained by limited diversity, producing avatars with subtle differences in appearance for a given text prompt. We design DivAvatar, a novel framework that generates diverse avatars, empowering 3D creatives with a multitude of distinct and richly varied 3D avatars from a single text prompt. Different from most existing work that exploits scene-specific 3D representations such as NeRF, DivAvatar finetunes a 3D generative model (i.e., EVA3D), allowing diverse avatar generation from simply noise sampling in inference time. DivAvatar has two key designs that help achieve generation diversity and visual quality. The first is a noise sampling technique during training phase which is critical in generating diverse appearances. The second is a semantic-aware zoom mechanism and a novel depth loss, the former producing appearances of high textual fidelity by separate fine-tuning of specific body parts and the latter improving geometry quality greatly by smoothing the generated mesh in the features space. Extensive experiments show that DivAvatar is highly versatile in generating avatars of diverse appearances

ABI4 Mediates Antagonistic Effects of Abscisic Acid and Gibberellins at Transcript and Protein Levels

Abscisic acid (ABA) and gibberellins (GA) are plant hormones which antagonistically mediate numerous physiological processes, and their optimal balance is essential for normal plant development. However, the molecular mechanism underlying ABA and GA antagonism still needs to be determined. Here, we report that ABA- INSENSITIVE 4 (ABI4) is a central factor for GA/ABA homeostasis and antagonism in post-germination stages. ABI4 over-expression in Arabidopsis (OE-ABI4) leads to developmental defects including a decrease in plant height and poor seed production. The transcription of a key ABA biosynthetic gene, NCED6, and of a key GA catabolic gene, GA2ox7, is significantly enhanced by ABI4 over-expression. ABI4 activates NCED6 and GA2ox7 transcription by directly binding to the promoters, and genetic analysis revealed that mutation in these two genes partially rescues the dwarf phenotype of ABI4 overexpressing plants. Consistently, ABI4 overexpressing seedlings have a lower GA/ABA ratio compared to the wild type. We further show that ABA induces GA2ox7 transcription while GA represses NCED6 expression in an ABI4-dependent manner; and that ABA stabilizes the ABI4 protein, whereas GA promotes its degradation. Taken together, these results propose that ABA and GA antagonize each other by oppositely acting on ABI4 transcript and protein levels