Albumin Binding Function: The Potential Earliest Indicator for Liver Function Damage

Background. Currently there is no indicator that can evaluate actual liver lesion for early stages of viral hepatitis, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), and cirrhosis. Aim of this study was to investigate if albumin binding function could better reflect liver function in these liver diseases. Methods. An observational study was performed on 193 patients with early NAFLD, viral hepatitis, and cirrhosis. Cirrhosis patients were separated according to Child-Pugh score into A, B, and C subgroup. Albumin metal ion binding capacity (Ischemia-modified albumin transformed, IMAT) and fatty acid binding capacity (total binding sites, TBS) were detected. Results. Both IMAT and TBS were significantly decreased in patients with NAFLD and early hepatitis. In hepatitis group, they declined prior to changes of liver enzymes. IMAT was significantly higher in cirrhosis Child-Pugh class A group than hepatitis patients and decreased in Child-Pugh class B and class C patients. Both IMAT/albumin and TBS/albumin decreased significantly in hepatitis and NAFLD group patients. Conclusions. This is the first study to discover changes of albumin metal ion and fatty acid binding capacities prior to conventional biomarkers for liver damage in early stage of liver diseases. They may become potential earliest sensitive indicators for liver function evaluation

Exploring optimal joint operating rules for large-scale inter-basin water transfer projects with multiple water sources, diversion routes, and water demand areas

Study region: The Jiangsu Province section of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project (JS-SNWDP) is an essential section of the SNWDP, which includes multiple water sources, diversion routes, and water demand areas. Study focus: Exploring effective operating rules for the JS-SNWDP is critical to improving its long-term operational performance. However, deriving the operating rule for the JS-SNWDP remains a pressing challenge due to the complexity of its water allocation, which requires trade-offs between multiple water sources and diversion routes when supplying and transferring water. Here, we design a new form of the joint operating rules for the JS-SNWDP that includes water-supply rules and water-transfer rules, and establish a multi-objective optimization operation model by simulation-optimization approach to identify the optimal joint operating rules that contribute to the improvement of water supply reliability and the reduction of operation cost. New hydrological insights for the region: The proposed joint operating rule shows obvious advantages over the regular operating rule, with an increase in the water supply rate (2.0%) while the strongly reduced pumping water (24.7%). Meanwhile, compared with the regular operating rule, the joint operating rule enables a more rational use of the runoff regulation capacity of the lakes, which obviously reducing the pumping water from the Yangtze River and the surplus water in the two lakes obviously. The findings of this study are applicable to improve the operational performance of the JS-SNWDP, and provide a reference for exploring the joint operating rules for other IBWTPs with similar structures

Microstructure, mechanical properties and corrosion resistance properties of Ni-Co- Mn-Sn-Gd magnetic shape memory alloys

Ni-Mn-Sn alloy is considered to be one of the most potential refrigerant, sensor and driver materials, but its practical application is hindered to a large extent due to the inherent brittleness of intermetallic compounds.The microstructure, martensitic transformation, mechanical properties and seawater corrosion resistance of Ni45Co5Mn38Sn12-xGdx(x=0.3, 0.6, 1, 1.5, atom fraction/%, the same below) magnetic shape memory alloy were studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), electron universal capacity testing machine and electrochemical workstation.The experimental results show that when the content of Gd is 0.3%, a mottled precipitate phase appears, and a particle precipitate phase is found around the mottled precipitate phase. The two precipitates increase gradually and are connected together in a network distribution. The doping of Gd increases the concentration of valence electrons in the alloy matrix, which leads to the increase of the alloy martensitic transformation temperature. When Gd content is 1.5%, the compressive strength of the alloy can reach 1258 MPa and the compressive fracture strain can reach 13.7%. In addition, the corrosion resistance of Ni-Co-Mn-Sn-Gd alloy is better than that of 304 stainless steel, and the corrosion resistance of the alloy gradually increases with the increase of Gd content

Guilt leads to enhanced facing-the-viewer bias

<div><p>As an important moral emotion, guilt plays a critical role in social interaction. It has been found that people tended to exhibit prosocial behavior under circumstances of guilt. However, all extant studies have predominantly focused on the influence of guilt on macro-level behavior. So far, no study has investigated whether guilt affects people’s micro-level perception. The current study closes this gap by examining whether guilt affects one’s inclination to perceive approaching motion. We achieved this aim by probing a facing-the-viewer bias (FTV bias). Specifically, when an ambiguous walking biological motion display is presented to participants via the point-light display technique, participants tend to perceive a walking agent approaching them. We hypothesized that guilt modulated FTV bias. To test this hypothesis, we adopted a two-person situation induction task to induce guilt, whereby participants were induced to feel that because of their poor task performance, their partner did not receive a satisfactory payment. We found that when participants were told that the perceived biological motion was motion-captured from their partner, the FTV bias was significantly increased for guilty participants relative to neutral participants. However, when participants were informed that the perceived biological motion was from a third neutral agent, the FTV bias was not modulated by guilt. These results suggest that guilt influences one’s inclination to perceive approaching motion, but this effect is constrained to the person towards whom guilt is directed.</p></div

Diagrammatical explanation of the 2-D view of the 3-D projection space.

<p>The solid gray lines represent the projection lines of the perspective projections (3 field-of-view angles: 87°, 58°, and 31°). These three angles were determined via a pilot experiment (<i>n</i> = 8): 58° was the point of subjective ambiguity when perceiving ambiguous BM (i.e., 50% perception of motion towards participants and 50% perception of motion away); at 31°, participants were inclined to judge the BM display as walking towards them, while at 87°, participants were inclined to judge the BM display as walking away. The gray dots represent projection plane. The black dots represent the point-light walker which is walking away from the projection plane.</p

Score for the first five questions in Experiment 1 (error bars represent standard errors).

<p>Score for the first five questions in Experiment 1 (error bars represent standard errors).</p

Results of Experiment 2 (error bars represent standard errors).

<p>Results of Experiment 2 (error bars represent standard errors).</p

Score of each question in Experiment 2 (error bar stands for standard error).

<p>Score of each question in Experiment 2 (error bar stands for standard error).</p

The single-cell chromatin accessibility landscape in mouse perinatal testis development

Spermatogenesis depends on an orchestrated series of developing events in germ cells and full maturation of the somatic microenvironment. To date, the majority of efforts to study cellular heterogeneity in testis has been focused on single-cell gene expression rather than the chromatin landscape shaping gene expression. To advance our understanding of the regulatory programs underlying testicular cell types, we analyzed single-cell chromatin accessibility profiles in more than 25,000 cells from mouse developing testis. We showed that single-cell sequencing assay for transposase-accessible chromatin (scATAC-Seq) allowed us to deconvolve distinct cell populations and identify cis-regulatory elements (CREs) underlying cell-type specification. We identified sets of transcription factors associated with cell type-specific accessibility, revealing novel regulators of cell fate specification and maintenance. Pseudotime reconstruction revealed detailed regulatory dynamics coordinating the sequential developmental progressions of germ cells and somatic cells. This high-resolution dataset also unveiled previously unreported subpopulations within both the Sertoli and Leydig cell groups. Further, we defined candidate target cell types and genes of several genome-wide association study (GWAS) signals, including those associated with testosterone levels and coronary artery disease. Collectively, our data provide a blueprint of the ‘regulon’ of the mouse male germline and supporting somatic cells