The model of rat lipid metabolism disorder induced by chronic stress accompanying high-fat-diet

<p>Abstract Objective</p> <p>To develop an animal model of Lipid Metabolism Disorder, which conforms to human clinical characteristic. Methods: There were 24 male Wistar rats that were randomly divided into 3 groups with 8 rats in each. They were group A (normal diet), group B (high-fat-diet), group C (chronic stress+ high-fat-diet). Group A was fed with normal diet, while group B and C were fed with high-fat-diet, going on for 55 days. From the 35th day, group B and C received one time of daily chronic stress, going on for 21 days. After that, the activities of the serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST), and the levels of the serum triglyceride (TG), Cholesterol (Ch), high-density lipoprotein-Cholesterol (HDL-C) and liver TG were evaluated. Results: Compared with group A, the activities of the serum ALT and AST, and the levels of the serum CH, TG, HDL-C and liver TG were found to be markedly increased, when the level of HDL-C was markedly decreased in group B and C, and the results of group C was more obviously. Conclusion: Chronic stress and high-fat-diet have the synergistic action in rat's Lipid Metabolism Disorder. They lead to a model of Lipid Metabolism Disorder, which conforms to human clinical characteristic much better.</p

Local Bifurcations for a Delay Differential Model of Plankton Allelopathy

Abstract: This paper is concerned with a two-species competitive system of plankton allelopathy with delay. A modified differential equation model of plankton allelopathy having stimulatory effects on each other is investigated in this paper. By regarding the delay τ as the bifurcation parameter, firstly, the stability of the positive equilibrium and the existence of Hopf bifurcation are investigated. Furthermore, the direction of Hopf bifurcation and the stability of the bifurcating periodic solutions are determined by the normal form theory and the center manifold theorem for functional differential equations. Finally, some numerical simulations are carried out for illustrating the theoretical results

Research progress in intravesical instillation for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer

Bladder cancer is the most common malignant tumor of the urinary system， which seriously affects patients’ health and life. Transurethral resection of bladder tumor is the main treatment for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer （NMIBC）， whereas high recurrence rate after surgery remains the main challenge. To prevent tumor recurrence， intravesical instillation is often performed postoperatively by clinicians. In this article， traditional intravesical instillation， new drugs and therapeutic regimens were illustrated and summarized， aiming to provide valuable reference for clinical treatment of NMIBC

A 5'-proximal Stem-loop Structure of 5' Untranslated Region of Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus Genome Is Key for Virus Replication

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>It has been well documented that the 5' untranslated region (5' UTR) of many positive-stranded RNA viruses contain key <it>cis</it>-acting regulatory sequences, as well as high-order structural elements. Little is known for such regulatory elements controlling porcine arterivirus replication. We investigated the roles of a conserved stem-loop 2 (SL2) that resides in the 5'UTR of the genome of a type II porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We provided genetic evidences demonstrating that 1) the SL2 in type II PRRSV 5' UTR, N-SL2, could be structurally and functionally substituted by its counterpart in type I PRRSV, E-SL2; 2) the functionality of N-SL2 was dependent upon the G-C rich stem structure, while the ternary-loop size was irrelevant to RNA synthesis; 3) serial deletions showed that the stem integrity of N-SL2 was crucial for subgenomic mRNA synthesis; and 4) when extensive base-pairs in the stem region was deleted, an alternative N-SL2-like structure with different sequence was utilized for virus replication.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Taken together, we concluded that the phylogenetically conserved SL2 in the 5' UTR was crucial for PRRSV virus replication, subgenomic mRNA synthesis in particular.</p

Evaluation and Suppression Method of Turn-off Current Spike for SiC/Si Hybrid Switch

SiC MOSFET/Si IGBT (SiC/Si) hybrid switch usually selects the gate control pattern that SiC MOSFET turns on earlier and turns off later than Si IGBT, with the aim of making the hybrid switch show excellent switching characteristics of SiC MOSFET and reduce switching loss. However, when SiC MOSFET turns off, the fast slew rate of drain source voltage causes the current spike in Si IGBT due to the effects of parasitic capacitance charging and carrier recombination, which will produce additional turn-off loss, thus affecting the overall efficiency and temperature rise of the converter. Based on the double pulse test circuit of SiC/Si hybrid switch, the mathematical model of the turn-off transient process is established. The effects of the remnant carrier recombination degree of Si IGBT, the turn-off speed of SiC MOSFET and the working conditions on the turn-off current spike of hybrid switch are evaluated. Although adjusting these parameters can reduce the turn-off current spike somewhat, additional losses will be introduced. Therefore, a new method to suppress the turn-off current spike is proposed to balance the power loss and current stress

Acute and chronic effects of betel quid chewing on brain functional connectivity

Background: The active alkaloid in Betel quid is arecoline. Consumption of betel quid is associated with both acute effects and longer-term addictive effects. Despite growing evidence that betel quid use is linked with altered brain function and connectivity, the neurobiology of this psychoactive substance in initial acute chewing, and long-term dependence, is not clear. Methods: In this observational study, functional magnetic resonance imaging in a resting-state was performed in 24 male betel quid-dependent chewers and 28 male controls prior to and promptly after betel quid chewing. Network-based statistics were employed to determine significant differences in functional connectivity between brain networks for both acute effects and in long-term betel users versus controls. A support vector machine was employed for pattern classification analysis. Results: Before chewing betel quid, higher functional connectivity in betel quid-dependent chewers than in controls was found between the temporal, parietal and frontal brain regions (right medial orbitofrontal cortex, right lateral orbital frontal cortex, right angular gyrus, bilateral inferior temporal gyrus, superior parietal gyrus, and right medial superior frontal gyrus). In controls, the effect of betel quid chewing was significantly increased functional connectivity between the subcortical regions (caudate, putamen, pallidum, and thalamus), and the visual cortex (superior occipital gyrus and right middle occipital gyrus). Conclusion: These findings show that individuals who chronically use betel quid have higher functional connectivity than controls of the orbitofrontal cortex, and inferior temporal and angular gyri. Acute effects of betel quid are to increase the functional connectivity of some visual cortical areas (which may relate to the acute symptoms) and the basal ganglia and thalamus

Inefficient DMN Suppression in Schizophrenia Patients with Impaired Cognitive Function but not Patients with Preserved Cognitive Function

Previous studies have observed reduced suppression of the default mode network (DMN) during cognitive tasks in schizophrenia, suggesting inefficient DMN suppression is critical for the cognitive deficits of schizophrenia. Cognitive function in schizophrenia patients, however, varies from relatively intact to severely impaired. This study, which compared the DMN suppression patterns between first-episode schizophrenia patients with (SZ-Imp) and without (SZ-Pre) impaired cognitive function, may provide further insight into the role of DMN dysfunction in cognitive deficits of schizophrenia. Independent component analysis (ICA) was applied to resting-state fMRI data to identify the DMN in each subject, and then general linear modeling based on the task-fMRI data was used to examine the different DMN activation patterns between groups. We observed that the SZ-Imp group, but not the SZ-Pre group, showed reduced suppression in the medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulated cortexPrevious studies have observed reduced suppression of the default mode network (DMN) when compared to the healthy controls (HC) group. Moreover, less DMN suppression was associated with poorer task performance in both HC and patient groups. Our findings provide the first direct evidence that disrupted DMN activity only exists in schizophrenia patients with impaired cognitive function, supporting the specific neuro-pathological role of inefficient DMN suppression in cognitive deficits of first-episode schizophrenia

Mutational and Transcriptomic Changes Involved in the Development of Macrolide Resistance in Campylobacter jejuni

Macrolide antibiotics are important for clinical treatment of infections caused by Campylobacter jejuni. Development of resistance to this class of antibiotics in Campylobacter is a complex process, and the dynamic molecular changes involved in this process remain poorly defined. Multiple lineages of macrolide-resistant mutants were selected by stepwise exposure of C. jejuni to escalating doses of erythromycin or tylosin. Mutations in target genes were determined by DNA sequencing, and the dynamic changes in the expression of antibiotic efflux transporters and the transcriptome of C. jejuni were examined by real-time reverse transcription-PCR, immunoblotting, and DNA microarray analysis. Multiple types of mutations in ribosomal proteins L4 and L22 occurred early during stepwise selection. On the contrary, the mutations in the 23S rRNA gene, mediating high resistance to macrolides, were observed only in the late-stage mutants. Upregulation of antibiotic efflux genes was observed in the intermediately resistant mutants, and the magnitude of upregulation declined with the occurrence of mutations in the 23S rRNA gene. DNA microarray analysis revealed the differential expression of 265 genes, most of which occurred in the intermediate mutant, including the upregulation of genes encoding ribosomal proteins and the downregulation of genes involved in energy metabolism and motility. These results indicate (i) that mutations in L4 and L22 along with temporal overexpression of antibiotic efflux genes precede and may facilitate the development of high-level macrolide resistance and (ii) that the development of macrolide resistance affects the pathways important for physiology and metabolism in C. jejuni, providing an explanation for the reduced fitness of macrolide-resistant Campylobacter

Pre-training Graph Transformer with Multimodal Side Information for Recommendation

Side information of items, e.g., images and text description, has shown to be effective in contributing to accurate recommendations. Inspired by the recent success of pre-training models on natural language and images, we propose a pre-training strategy to learn item representations by considering both item side information and their relationships. We relate items by common user activities, e.g., co-purchase, and construct a homogeneous item graph. This graph provides a unified view of item relations and their associated side information in multimodality. We develop a novel sampling algorithm named MCNSampling to select contextual neighbors for each item. The proposed Pre-trained Multimodal Graph Transformer (PMGT) learns item representations with two objectives: 1) graph structure reconstruction, and 2) masked node feature reconstruction. Experimental results on real datasets demonstrate that the proposed PMGT model effectively exploits the multimodality side information to achieve better accuracies in downstream tasks including item recommendation, item classification, and click-through ratio prediction. We also report a case study of testing the proposed PMGT model in an online setting with 600 thousand users