Where it all begins (in the dad)

Here we are taking a deep look at a cross-section of mouse testis, where the sperm and hormones are made. The tubular structures are seminiferous tubules, the basic unit in the testis, and contain 4-5 layers of round germ cells, that will become sperm later. The red dots are mature sperm and the bright green structures are the sperm tails. The purple/blue interstitial cells make male sex hormone testosterone, which is essential for normal production of sperm and maintaining male characteristics. The green color also highlights the location of a protein called basigin, which is important for sperm production. I am studying the role of basigin in male (and female) reproduction to further understand the mechanisms of fertility.Ope

A BIPV/T System Design Based on Simulation and its Application in Integrated Heating System

AbstractIn order to better master the internal airflow distribution characteristics of photovoltaic thermal (PV/T) collector on air source heat pump (ASHP) system heating performance, CFD software was applied in studying the building-integrated photovoltaic thermal (BIPV/T) sys-tem. A mathematical model of BIPV/T and ASHP integrated heating system was established. Numerical simulation of the system was conducted based on the typical meteorological data in Shenyang area. The influence of the inlet and outlet velocity, internal flow field distribution and temperature field distribution of the BIPV/T system were analyzed on the system thermal efficiency. The relationship between optimal COP and the inlet and outlet velocity of ASHP system was studied. The optimal inlet velocity of the BIPV/T – ASHP integrated system was determined to be 4 m/s, and the COP reached 4.6

Wifi-based smart car for toxic gas monitoring in large-scale petrochemical plants

Providing complete monitoring on the concentration of various toxic gases in large-scale petrochemical plants is critical, since it serious affects the safely producing activities and first line workers' lives. Safe production environment can enhance the productivity and keep high profits of enterprises. In this paper, we present a newly developed mobile car with WIFI wireless communication to smartly monitor and track the concentration of various toxic gases

Effectiveness of Yijinjing on cognitive and motor functions in patients with Parkinson’s disease: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

BackgroundParkinson’s disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder that affects motor and non-motor functions, significantly reducing patients’ quality of life. No effective drug-based treatments are known to solve this problem. Non-drug therapies such as Yijinjing exercise have shown potential in improving cognitive and motor functions in PD patients. However, solid evidence must still be provided to support their clinical efficacy. This study aims to evaluate the clinical efficacy of Yijinjing exercise interventions in PD patients and explore the underlying mechanisms between the cognitive and motor functions in PD.MethodsThis is a single-center randomized controlled trial in which 96 eligible PD patients will be randomly assigned to receive either Yijinjing exercise group or brisk walking group or control group in a ratio of 1:1:1. Interventions (Yijinjing exercise or brisk walking training, 40 min per session) will be provided in 3 sessions per week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) for 12 weeks, with a total of 36 sessions. After the treatment, there will be a 1-month follow-up period. The primary outcomes will be measured using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale motor section (UPDRS-III). Secondary outcomes include balance function, executive function, walking function, sleep quality, and quality of life. Additionally, the prefrontal cerebral and sensorimotor cortex blood oxygen signal level will be collected to explore the underlying mechanisms. All outcomes will be assessed at baseline, at the end of 12 weeks of treatment and after an additional 1-month follow-up period.DiscussionThe results of the study protocol will provide high-quality evidence for the potential of intervention measures based on the Yijinjing exercise to improve the cognitive and activity levels of Parkinson’s disease patients. We envision the Yijinjing exercise as a non-pharmacological family activity that can provide a new and more effective method for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease patients or those at risk.Clinical trial registrationThis study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Second Rehabilitation Hospital of Shanghai (2020-05-01). The trial has been registered in the China Clinical Trials Registry (ChiCTR2200055636)

Precipitation gradient drives divergent relationship between non-structural carbohydrates and water availability in Pinus tabulaeformis of Northern China

Seasonal non-structural carbohydrate (NSC) dynamics in different organs can indicate the strategies trees use to cope with water stress; however, these dynamics remain poorly understood along a large precipitation gradient. In this study, we hypothesized that the correlation between water availability and NSC concentrations in different organs might be strengthened by decreasing precipitation in Pinus tabulaeformis Carr. forests in temperate China. Our results show that the concentrations of soluble sugars were lower in stems and coarse roots, and starch was higher in branches in the early growing season at drier sites. Throughout the growing season, the concentrations of soluble sugars increased in drier sites, especially for leaves, and remained stable in wetter sites, while starch concentrations were relatively stable in branches and stems at all sites. The NSC concentrations, mainly starch, decreased in coarse roots along the growing season at drier sites. Trees have a faster growth rate with an earlier cessation in active stem growth at drier sites. Interestingly, we also found a divergent relationship between NSCs in different organs and mean growing season water availability, and a stronger correlation was observed in drier sites. These results show that pine forests in arid and semi-arid regions of northern China exhibit different physiological responses to water availability, improving our understanding of the adaptive mechanisms of trees to water limitations in a warmer and drier climate

Molecular cloning and in silico analysis of the duck (Anas platyrhynchos) MEF2A gene cDNA and its expression profile in muscle tissues during fetal development

The role of myogenic enhancer transcription factor 2a (MEF2A) in avian muscle during fetal development is unknown. In this work, we cloned the duck MEF2A cDNA sequence (GenBank accession no. HM460752) and examined its developmental expression profiles in cardiac muscle, non-vascular smooth muscle and skeletal muscle. Duck MEF2A cDNA comprised 1479 bp encoding 492 amino acid residues. In silico analysis showed that MEF2A contained MADS (MCM1, AGAMOUS, DEFICIENS and SRF - serum response factor), MEF2 and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) transcription domains with high homology to related proteins in other species. Modified sites in these domains were conserved among species and several variants were found. Quantitative PCR showed that MEF2A was expressed in all three muscles at each developmental stage examined, with the expression in smooth muscle being higher than in the other muscles. These results indicate that the conserved domains of duck MEF2A, including the MADS and MEF2 domains, are important for MEF2A transcription factor function. The expression of MEF2A in duck smooth muscle and cardiac muscle suggests that MEF2A plays a role in these two tissues

SILOS: An Intelligent Fault Detection Scheme for Solar Insecticidal Lamp IoTs with Improved Energy Efficiency

Solar Insecticidal Lamp Internet of Things (SIL-IoTs) nodes are susceptible to failures due to the harsh environment, burn-in, theft, and vandalism in the agricultural setting. Most state-of-the-art research mainly focuses on fault detection without considering hardware and communication performance in terms of potential fault modes, energy consumption, and network loads. This study presents a completely decentralized solution, namely a SIL-Oriented binary Sliding window-based fault self-detection scheme (SILOS), which can be performed on each SIL-IoTs node. The problem we are trying to answer is how to detect faults as accurately as possible while keeping the communication overhead, memory, and computational costs low. Specifically, we develop a fault dictionary concept to 1) model the faults of SIL-IoTs nodes, 2) construct the fault dictionary according to the characteristics of measurements, and 3) detect faults via the fault dictionary. In addition, a binary-based sliding window (BSW) fault self-detection approach is proposed to save detection costs and reduce the false alarm rate (with only 92B system caches). A series of experiments are performed to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The result demonstrates that the BSW method can detect faults with an average accuracy of 99.14% with less than 1% energy consumption. By only sending the fault code, 71B data (i.e., data transmitting and forwarding) can be reduced, saving energy consumption, and decreasing network congestion

Sustainable and Intelligent Phytoprotection in Photovoltaic Agriculture: New Challenges and Opportunities

Photovoltaic Agriculture (PA) is a new management system combining industry with modern agriculture that can effectively reduce the competition for limited land resource usage between electric power production and agricultural production. However, PA has been facing the challenge of managing plant protection measures because it is difficult to monitor plants grown under the photovoltaic panels by remote sensing satellites and pesticide applications using drones. To overcome this challenge, Solar Insecticidal Lamps (SILs) can be used for phytoprotection in PA. However, to effectively use SILs in PA, it is important to identify a suitable field location to maintain strong wireless communication signals. In this paper, two testbeds were designed and a series of experiments in PA was performed. The results indicate that there is considerable interference exists around the confluence box. A higher interference seriously reduces the Packet Reception Rate (PRR) of the nearby node, which is an important constraint for deploying wireless sensors in PA. Finally, new challenges and future research opportunities are proposed

Optimal Deployment of Solar Insecticidal Lamps over Constrained Locations in Mixed-Crop Farmlands

Solar Insecticidal Lamps (SILs) play a vital role in green prevention and control of pests. By embedding SILs in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), we establish a novel agricultural Internet of Things (IoT), referred to as the SILIoTs. In practice, the deployment of SIL nodes is determined by the geographical characteristics of an actual farmland, the constraints on the locations of SIL nodes, and the radio-wave propagation in complex agricultural environment. In this paper, we mainly focus on the constrained SIL Deployment Problem (cSILDP) in a mixed-crop farmland, where the locations used to deploy SIL nodes are a limited set of candidates located on the ridges. We formulate the cSILDP in this scenario as a Connected Set Cover (CSC) problem, and propose a Hole Aware Node Deployment Method (HANDM) based on the greedy algorithm to solve the constrained optimization problem. The HANDM is a two-phase method. In the first phase, a novel deployment strategy is utilised to guarantee only a single coverage hole in each iteration, based on which a set of suboptimal locations is found for the deployment of SIL nodes. In the second phase, according to the operations of deletion and fusion, the optimal locations are obtained to meet the requirements on complete coverage and connectivity. Experimental results show that our proposed method achieves better performance than the peer algorithms, specifically in terms of deployment cost