The Relative Molecular Mass, Monosaccharide Composition and Antioxidant Activity of Ziziphus jujuba FleshPolysaccharide at Different Stages

For the purpose of exploring the polysaccharide content, relative molecular mass, monosaccharide composition, as well as antioxidant activity in Ziziphus jujuba flesh polysaccharide (ZJFP) at distinct growth stages. The content, relative molecular weight, monosaccharide composition and free radical scavenging ability of ZJFP in wild-type and plant-type at different growth stages were studied by phenol-sulfuric acid assay, high performance gel chromatography, high performance ion chromatography, and DPPH free radical scavenging experiment. Moreover, the results determined that the polysaccharide content of ZJFP in both wild and plant types demonstrated a trend of first decreasing and consequently rising. Furthermore, the relative molecular mass of the two types of ZJFP gradually decreased with the development of the Ziziphus jujuba. During the initial stage of fruit development, the ZJFP exhibited the highest content of rhamnose, reaching 46.14 mg/g, followed by galactose up to 33.10 mg/g. Whereas, in the later stage of fruit development, the highest monosaccharide content in the two types of ZJFP was arabinose up to 60.30 mg/g, preceded by galacturonic acid up to 45.02 mg/g. Additionally, the trend of DPPH free radical scavenging capacity of ZJFP of the two types was identical to the trend of polysaccharide content in Ziziphus jujuba flesh. Plant-type and wild-type Ziziphus jujuba illustrated the identical trend regarding polysaccharide content, the relative molecular weight of polysaccharides, monosaccharide composition, as well as free radical scavenging ability, and both were of the type of fruit that reduces sugar accumulation. The research serve as a valuable reference for the future development and utilization of Ziziphus jujuba flesh resources

Dietary supplementation with a complex of cinnamaldehyde, carvacrol, and thymol negatively affects the intestinal function in LPS-challenged piglets

BackgroundThe effects of cinnamaldehyde, carvacrol and thymol complex (CCT) on the growth performance and intestinal function of piglets challenged with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) were determined. Colistin sulphate (CS) was as a positive control.MethodPiglets (n = 24, 32 days of age) were allocated to four treatments: Control group (fed basal diet), LPS group (fed basal diet), CS+LPS group (fed basal diet + 50 mg/kg CS), and CCT+LPS group (fed basal diet + 50 mg/kg CCT).ResultsResults showed that diarrhea rates of piglets were significantly reduced by CCT and CS supplementation respectively. Further research showed that CS supplementation tended to improve the intestinal absorption function in LPS-challenged piglets. Moreover, CS supplementation significantly reduced the contents of cortisol in blood and malondialdehyde in the duodenum and the activities of inducible nitric oxide synthase in the duodenum and ileum and total nitric oxide synthase in the ileum in LPS-challenged piglets. CS supplementation significantly increased the activities of sucrase in the ileum and myeloperoxidase in the jejunum in LPS-challenged piglets. CS supplementation significantly alleviated the reduced mRNA levels of immune-related genes (IL-4, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10) in mesenteric lymph nodes and jejunum and mucosal growth-related genes (IGF-1, mTOR, ALP) in LPS-challenged piglets. These results suggested that CS supplementation improved the intestinal function in LPS-challenged piglets by improving intestinal oxidative stress, immune stress, and absorption and repair function. However, although CCT supplementation improved oxidative stress by reducing (p < 0.05) the content of malondialdehyde and the activity of nitric oxide synthase in the duodenum, CCT supplementation tended to aggravate the intestinal absorption dysfunction in LPS-challenged piglets. Furthermore, compared with the control and LPS groups, CCT supplementation remarkably elevated the content of prostaglandin in plasma and the mRNA levels of pro-inflammatory factor IL-6 in mesenteric lymph nodes and jejunum, and reduced the activity of maltase in the ileum in LPS-challenged piglets. These results suggested that CCT supplementation had a negative effect on intestinal function by altering intestinal immune stress response and reducing disaccharidase activity in LPS-challenged piglets.ConclusionsCompared to CS, CCT supplementation exhibited a negative effect on intestinal function, suggesting whether CCT can be as an effective feed additive still needs further study

Prognostic value of N-terminal Pro–B-Type natriuretic peptide in patients with intermediate coronary lesions

BackgroundThe optimal treatment strategy for patients with coronary intermediate lesions, defined as diameter stenosis of 50–70%, remains a great challenge for cardiologists. Identification of potential biomarkers predictive of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs) risk may assist in risk stratification and clinical decision.MethodsA total of 1,187 patients with intermediate coronary lesions and available N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) levels were enrolled in the current study. A baseline NT-proBNP level was obtained. The primary endpoint was defined as MACEs, the composite endpoint of all-cause death and non-fatal myocardial infarction. A multivariate Cox regression model was used to explore the association between NT-proBNP level and MACE risk.ResultsThe mean age of the study cohort was 59.2 years. A total of 68 patients experienced MACE during a median follow-up of 6.1 years. Restricted cubic spline analysis delineated a linear relationship between the baseline NT-proBNP level and MACE risk. Both univariate and multivariate analyses demonstrated that an increased NT-proBNP level was associated with an increased risk of MACE [adjusted hazard ratio (HR) per doubling: 1.412, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.022–1.952, p = 0.0365]. This association remains consistent in clinical meaningful subgroups according to age, sex, body mass index (BMI), and diabetes.ConclusionAn increased NT-proBNP level is associated with an increased risk of MACE in patients with intermediate coronary lesions and may serve as the potential biomarker for risk stratification and treatment decision guidance

A Mesh Mapping-Based Cooperative Inversion Strategy for Airborne Transient Electromagnetic and Magnetic Methods

Cooperative inversion is a powerful underground imaging technique that can overcome the limitations of a single detection method. However, due to the different grid divisions used by various geophysical methodologies, imposing structural constraints between grids of different scales is challenging. This paper proposes a new cooperative inversion strategy and applies it to the inversion of the quasi-two-dimensional aerial transient electromagnetic method (ATEM) with the induced polarization (IP) effect and the two-dimensional magnetic method to solve the problem of applying cross-gradient constraints under grids of different scales. The mesh mapping method is incorporated into the iterative process of cooperative inversion in this inversion strategy. The inversion of synthetic data shows that this technique can effectively employ data complementarity to increase the accuracy of the results for describing the medium boundary. The mesh mapping methodology may be applied to the cooperative inversion of geophysical methods under any grid division and successfully solves the problem of grid division mismatch in cooperative inversion

Self-Organized Patchy Target Searching and Collecting with Heterogeneous Swarm Robots Based on Density Interactions

The issue of searching and collecting targets with patchy distribution in an unknown environment is a challenging task for multiple or swarm robots because the targets are unevenly dispersed in space, which makes the traditional solutions based on the idea of path planning and full spatial coverage very inefficient and time consuming. In this paper, by employing a novel framework of spatial-density-field-based interactions, a collective searching and collecting algorithm for heterogeneous swarm robots is proposed to solve the challenging issue in a self-organized manner. In our robotic system, two types of swarm robots, i.e., the searching robots and the collecting robots, are included. To start with, the searching robots conduct an environment exploration by means of formation movement with Levy flights; when the targets are detected by the searching robots, they spontaneously form a ring-shaped envelope to estimate the spatial distribution of targets. Then, a single robot is selected from the group to enter the patch and locates at the patch’s center to act as a guiding beacon. Subsequently, the collecting robots are recruited by the guiding beacon to gather the patch targets; they first form a ring-shaped envelope around the target patch and then push the scattered targets inward by using a spiral shrinking strategy; in this way, all targets eventually are stacked near the center of the target patch. With the cooperation of the searching robots and the collecting robots, our heterogeneous robotic system can operate autonomously as a coordinated group to complete the task of collecting targets in an unknown environment. Numerical simulations and real swarm robot experiments (up to 20 robots are used) show that the proposed algorithm is feasible and effective, and it can be extended to search and collect different types of targets with patchy distribution

Development modes of Triassic Yanchang Formation Chang 7 Member tight oil in Ordos Basin, NW China

The Triassic Yanchang Formation Chang7 Member tight oil reservoir in Ordos Basin, featuring complex pore-throat structures, low porosity, low permeability, rich micro-fractures and low pressure coefficient, is difficult to produce by advanced water-flooding from cluster vertical wells with low individual-well producing rate. With Block A as an example, the material balance calculation, numerical simulation and field practical analysis showed that the horizontal well production would increase significantly using volumetric fracturing. But the well pattern of water injection in vertical wells and oil production in horizontal wells has high risk of injection water breakthrough in horizontal wells, and the proportion of water breakthrough wells reached 65%. In contrast, the formation energy decreased in depletion development with horizontal wells, in which the oil production kept stable in early period, but decreased quickly after 12 months, the cumulative decline of oil rate in 4 months amounted to 50.3%. Therefore, a development scheme of depletion production from volumetric fracturing horizontal wells at first and then water-flooding huff and puff after producing energy is deficient was proposed. Following this scheme, the daily oil rate of single well increased by 78.3% after the first cycle of water huff-and-puff than before the treatment, marking the initial success of the measure. Key words: tight oil, volumetric fracturing, development mode, horizontal well, numerical simulation, water-flooding huff and puf

Detection of Potential Mutated Genes Associated with Common Immunotherapy Biomarkers in Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Patients

Microsatellite instability (MSI), high tumor mutation burden (TMB-H) and programmed cell death 1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression are hot biomarkers related to the improvement of immunotherapy response. Two cohorts of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were collected and sequenced via targeted next-generation sequencing. Drug analysis was then performed on the shared genes using three different databases: Drugbank, DEPO and DRUGSURV. A total of 27 common genes were mutated in at least two groups of TMB-H-, MSI- and PD-L1-positive groups. AKT1, SMAD4, SCRIB and AXIN2 were severally involved in PI3K-activated, transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β)-activated, Hippo-repressed and Wnt-repressed pathways. This study provides an understanding of the mutated genes related to the immunotherapy biomarkers of NSCLC