Estimation of shear stress by using a myocardial bridge-mural coronary artery simulating device

Background: This study was aimed at developing a myocardial bridge-mural coronary artery simulative device and analyzing the relationship between shear stress on the mural coronary artery and atherosclerosis. Methods: A myocardial bridge-mural coronary artery simulative device was used to simulate experiments in vitro. In the condition of maintaining any related parameters such as system temperature, average flow rate, and heart rate, we calculated and observed changes in proximal and distal mean values, and oscillatory value of shear stress on the mural coronary artery by regulating the compression level of the myocardial bridge to the mural coronary artery. Results: Under 0% compression, no significant differences were observed in distal and proximal mean values and oscillatory value of the shear stress on the mural coronary artery. With the increase in the degree of compression, the mean shear stress at the distal end was greater than that at the proximal end, but the oscillatory value of the shear stress at the proximal end was greater than that at the distal end. Conclusions: The experimental results of this study indicate that myocardial bridge compression leads to abnormal hemodynamics at the proximal end of the mural coronary artery. This abnormal phenomenon is of great significance in the study of atherosclerosis hemodynamic pathogenesis, which has potential clinical value for pathological effects and treatments of myocardial bridg

(E)-5-Phenyl-N′-(1-phenyl­ethyl­idene)-1H-pyrazole-3-carbohydrazide

In the mol­ecule of the title compound, C18H16N4O, the intra­molecular N—H⋯N hydrogen bond results in the formation of a planar five-membered ring, which is also co-planar with the adjacent five-membered ring, being oriented at a dihedral angle of 1.23 (3)°. The dihedral angles formed by the planar pyrazole ring with the adjacent phenyl ring and the other phenyl ring are 7.29 and 11.21°, respectively. The dihedral angle between the two phenyl rings is 18.07°. In the crystal structure, inter­molecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds link the mol­ecules

Seed Germination Responses to Seasonal Temperature and Drought Stress Are Species‐Specific but Not Related to Seed Size in a Desert Steppe: Implications for Effect of Climate Change on Community Structure

Investigating how seed germination of multiple species in an ecosystem responds to environmental conditions is crucial for understanding the mechanisms for community structure and biodiversity maintenance. However, knowledge of seed germination response of species to environmental conditions is still scarce at the community level. We hypothesized that responses of seed germination to environmental conditions differ among species at the community level, and that germination response is not correlated with seed size. To test this hypothesis, we determined the response of seed germination of 20 common species in the Siziwang Desert Steppe, China, to seasonal temperature regimes (representing April, May, June, and July) and drought stress (0, −0.003, −0.027, −0.155, and −0.87 MPa). Seed germination percentage increased with increasing temperature regime, but Allium ramosum, Allium tenuissimum, Artemisia annua, Artemisia mongolica, Artemisia scoparia, Artemisia sieversiana, Bassia dasyphylla, Kochia prastrata, and Neopallasia pectinata germinated to \u3e60% in the lowest temperature regime (April). Germination decreased with increasing water stress, but Allium ramosum, Artemisia annua, Artemisia scoparia, Bassia dasyphylla, Heteropappus altaicus, Kochia prastrata, Neopallasia pectinata, and Potentilla tanacetifolia germinated to near 60% at −0.87 MPa. Among these eight species, germination of six was tolerant to both temperature and water stress. Mean germination percentage in the four temperature regimes and the five water potentials was not significantly correlated with seed mass or seed area, which were highly correlated. Our results suggest that the species‐specific germination responses to environmental conditions are important in structuring the desert steppe community and have implications for predicting community structure under climate change. Thus, the predicted warmer and dryer climate will favor germination of drought‐tolerant species, resulting in altered proportions of germinants of different species and subsequently change in community composition of the desert steppe

Enhanced bioremediation of triclocarban-contaminated soil by Rhodococcus rhodochrous BX2 and Pseudomonas sp. LY-1 immobilized on biochar and microbial community response

Triclocarban (TCC), an emerging organic contaminant (EOC), has become a severe threat to soil microbial communities and ecological security. Here, the TCC-degrading strain Rhodococcus rhodochrous BX2 and DCA-degrading strain Pseudomonas sp. LY-1 (together referred to as TC1) were immobilized on biochar to remove TCC and its intermediates in TCC-contaminated soil. High-throughput sequencing was used to investigate the microbial community structure in TCC-contaminated soil. Analysis of co-occurrence networks was used to explore the mutual relationships among soil microbiome members. The results showed that the immobilized TC1 significantly increased the removal efficiency of TCC from 84.7 to 92.7% compared to CK (no TC1 cells on biochar) in 10 mg/L TCC liquid medium. The utilization of immobilized TC1 also significantly accelerated the removal of TCC from contaminated soil. Microbial community analysis revealed the crucial microorganisms and their functional enzymes participating in TCC degradation in soil. Moreover, the internal labor division patterns and connections of TCC-degrading microbes, with a focus on strains BX2 and LY-1, were unraveled by co-occurrence networks analysis. This work provides a promising strategy to facilitate the bioremediation of TCC in soil, which has potential application value for sustainable biobased economies

Deletion of mouse FXR gene disturbs multiple neurotransmitter systems and alters neurobehavior

Farnesoid X receptor (FXR) is a nuclear hormone receptor involved in bile acid synthesis and homeostasis. Dysfunction of FXR is involved in cholestasis and atherosclerosis. FXR is prevalent in liver, gallbladder, and intestine, but it is not yet clear whether it modulates neurobehavior. In the current study, we tested the hypothesis that mouse FXR deficiency affects a specific subset of neurotransmitters and results in a unique behavioral phenotype. The FXR knockout mice showed less depressive-like and anxiety-related behavior, but increased motor activity. They had impaired memory and reduced motor coordination. There were changes of glutamatergic, GABAergic, serotoninergic and norepinephrinergic neurotransmission in either hippocampus or cerebellum. FXR deletion decreased the amount of the GABA synthesis enzyme GAD65 in hippocampus but increased GABA transporter GAT1 in cerebral cortex. FXR deletion increased serum concentrations of many bile acids, including taurodehydrocholic acid, taurocholic acid, deoxycholic acid, glycocholic acid, tauro-α-muricholic acid, tauro-ω-muricholic acid, and hyodeoxycholic acid. There were also changes in brain concentrations of taurocholic acid, taurodehydrocholic acid, tauro-ω-muricholic acid, tauro-β-muricholic acid, deoxycholic acid, and lithocholic acid. Taken together, the results from studies with FXR knockout mice suggest that FXR contributes to the homeostasis of multiple neurotransmitter systems in different brain regions and modulates neurobehavior. The effect appears to be at least partially mediated by bile acids that are known to cross the blood-brain barrier inducing potential neurotoxicity

Response of temperate forest ecosystem services to rainfall: A case study in the forest nature reserves of northern China

In the context of global climate change, temperate forests in climate-sensitive areas are inevitably affected. To deepen the understanding of the impact on precipitation changes into the relationship between key ecosystem services (ESs), this study selected net primary productivity (NPP), soil conservation (SC) and water yield (WY) of temperate forest in northern China as objects, and the Spearman correlation test and redundancy analysis were applied to analyze the response of ESs relationship to precipitation gradient. The results show that precipitation is the meteorological factor with the greatest impact (contribution 21.2%, p<0.01) on ESs and their relationships in temperate forests. The 600-700 mm precipitation gradient is the key turning point in the change of ESs relationship of WY with NPP and SC. This indicates that attention should be paid to the spatial variation of the 600-700 mm precipitation region in the future warm-wet in northern China, which should be used as a dividing line of forest management and policy development. Based on the results, future restoration projects in northern temperate forest should focus on (1) in areas with less than 600-700 mm of precipitation, attention should be paid to the selection of tree species for afforestation to maintain regional water balance; (2) in areas with more than 700 mm of precipitation, soil and water conservation projects need to be planned, especially in mountainous area. The research can not only support the management of temperate forest ecosystems in northern China, but also provide reference to other forest ecosystems to cope with climate change

CodeFuse-13B: A Pretrained Multi-lingual Code Large Language Model

Code Large Language Models (Code LLMs) have gained significant attention in the industry due to their wide applications in the full lifecycle of software engineering. However, the effectiveness of existing models in understanding non-English inputs for multi-lingual code-related tasks is still far from well studied. This paper introduces CodeFuse-13B, an open-sourced pre-trained code LLM. It is specifically designed for code-related tasks with both English and Chinese prompts and supports over 40 programming languages. CodeFuse achieves its effectiveness by utilizing a high quality pre-training dataset that is carefully filtered by program analyzers and optimized during the training process. Extensive experiments are conducted using real-world usage scenarios, the industry-standard benchmark HumanEval-x, and the specially designed CodeFuseEval for Chinese prompts. To assess the effectiveness of CodeFuse, we actively collected valuable human feedback from the AntGroup's software development process where CodeFuse has been successfully deployed. The results demonstrate that CodeFuse-13B achieves a HumanEval pass@1 score of 37.10%, positioning it as one of the top multi-lingual code LLMs with similar parameter sizes. In practical scenarios, such as code generation, code translation, code comments, and testcase generation, CodeFuse performs better than other models when confronted with Chinese prompts.Comment: 10 pages with 2 pages for reference

Susceptibilities of Yersinia pestis to Twelve Antimicrobial Agents in China

Streptomycin is the preferred choice for therapy of plague in China and other countries. However, Yersinia pestis exhibiting plasmid-mediated antimicrobial agent–resistant traits had been reported in Madagascar. In this study, we evaluated the susceptibility of traditional or newer antimicrobial agents used for treatment and/or prophylaxis of plague. Following Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) recommendations, the susceptibility of 12 antimicrobial agents was evaluated by the agar microdilution method in 1,012 strains of Y. pestis isolated from 1943 to 2017 in 12 natural plague foci in China. One clinical Y. pestis isolate (S19960127) was found to be highly resistant to streptomycin, while the strain was still sensitive to other 11 antibiotics, that is, ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin, kanamycin, chloramphenicol, ampicillin, ceftriaxone, cefuroxime, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, tetracycline, spectinomycin and moxifloxacin. The remaining 1,011 Y. pestis strains in this study demonstrated susceptibility to the above-mentioned 12 antimicrobial agents. Antimicrobial sensitivity surveillance of Y. pestis isolates, including dynamic monitoring of streptomycin resistance during various clinical plague treatments, should be carried out routinely