Believing through belonging: a sociological study of Christian conversion of Chinese migrants in Britain

This study is the first in-depth sociological inquiry into Chinese migrant Christian communities in Britain, through the examination of different pathways to and stages of conversion to Christianity among contemporary Chinese migrants. In the last four decades, the rapid growth of Christianity among the Chinese worldwide has also sparked a growth in academic research. The Chinese has become the fourth largest ethnic minority group in Britain. However, their religious attachments and experiences have hitherto received scant scholarly attention. The study seeks to fill the identified research gap by providing explorative sociological accounts of the socio-religious dynamics of the Chinese Christian communities in Britain, with a main focus on the issue of religious conversion. It draws on social scientific theories of religious conversion to develop a sequential framework for the documentation of typical conversion trajectories among Chinese Christian converts in Britain. The study takes a qualitative approach, employing in-depth interviews and multi-sited ethnography as the main investigative instruments, documenting three stages, namely, encounter, initiation and commitment, in Christian conversion. It proposes a thesis of believing-through-belonging for the understanding of Christian conversion of Chinese migrants in Britain. Moreover, the thesis points to the commitment-centred conversion, as promulgated by Chinese migrant Christian institutions and practiced by individual Chinese Christians, as a key to understand the continuous growth of Chinese Christian communities in Britain.</div

Identification and Discrimination of Salmonella enterica Serovar Gallinarum Biovars Pullorum and Gallinarum Based on a One-Step Multiplex PCR Assay

Salmonella enterica serovar Gallinarum biovars Pullorum (S. Pullorum) and Gallinarum (S. Gallinarum) can result in pullorum disease and fowl typhoid in avian species, respectively, and cause considerable economic losses in poultry in many developing countries. Conventional Salmonella serotyping is a time-consuming, labor-intensive and expensive process, and the two biovars cannot be distinguished using the traditional serological method. In this study, we developed a rapid and reliable one-step multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay to simultaneously identify and discriminate the biovars Pullorum and Gallinarum. The multiplex PCR method focused on three specific genes, stn, I137_08605 and ratA. Based on bioinformatics analysis, we found that gene I137_08605 was present only in S. Pullorum and S. Gallinarum, and a region of difference in ratA was deleted only in S. Pullorum after comparison with that of S. Gallinarum and other Salmonella serovars. Three pairs of primers specific for the three genes were designed for the multiplex PCR system and their selectivity and sensitivity were determined. The multiplex PCR results showed that S. Pullorum and S. Gallinarum could be identified and discriminated accurately from all tested strains including 124 strains of various Salmonella serovars and 42 strains of different non-Salmonella pathogens. In addition, this multiplex PCR assay could detect a minimum genomic DNA concentration of 67.4 pg/μL, and 100 colony forming units. The efficiency of the multiplex PCR was evaluated by detecting natural-occurring Salmonella isolates from a chicken farm. The results demonstrated that the established multiplex PCR was able to identify S. Gallinarum and S. Pullorum individually, with results being consistent with traditional serotyping and biochemical testing. These results demonstrated that a highly accurate and simple biovar-specific multiplex PCR assay could be performed for the rapid identification and discrimination of Salmonella biovars Gallinarum and Pullorum, which will be useful, particularly under massive screening situations

Generative artificial intelligence-enabled dynamic detection of nicotine-related circuits

The identification of addiction-related circuits is critical for explaining addiction processes and developing addiction treatments. And models of functional addiction circuits developed from functional imaging are an effective tool for discovering and verifying addiction circuits. However, analyzing functional imaging data of addiction and detecting functional addiction circuits still have challenges. We have developed a data-driven and end-to-end generative artificial intelligence(AI) framework to address these difficulties. The framework integrates dynamic brain network modeling and novel network architecture networks architecture, including temporal graph Transformer and contrastive learning modules. A complete workflow is formed by our generative AI framework: the functional imaging data, from neurobiological experiments, and computational modeling, to end-to-end neural networks, is transformed into dynamic nicotine addiction-related circuits. It enables the detection of addiction-related brain circuits with dynamic properties and reveals the underlying mechanisms of addiction

Salmonella Enteritidis activates inflammatory storm via SPI-1 and SPI-2 to promote intracellular proliferation and bacterial virulence

Salmonella Enteritidis is an important intracellular pathogen, which can cause gastroenteritis in humans and animals and threaten life and health. S. Enteritidis proliferates in host macrophages to establish systemic infection. In this study, we evaluated the effects of Salmonella pathogenicity island-1 (SPI-1) and SPI-2 to S. Enteritidis virulence in vitro and in vivo, as well as the host inflammatory pathways affected by SPI-1 and SPI-2. Our results show that S. Enteritidis SPI-1 and SPI-2 contributed to bacterial invasion and proliferation in RAW264.7 macrophages, and induced cytotoxicity and cellular apoptosis of these cells. S. Enteritidis infection induced multiple inflammatory responses, including mitogen-activated protein kinase (ERK-mediated) and Janus kinase-signal transducer and activator of transcript (STAT) (STAT2-mediated) pathways. Both SPI-1 and SPI-2 were necessary to induce robust inflammatory responses and ERK/STAT2 phosphorylation in macrophages. In a mouse infection model, both SPIs, especially SPI-2, resulted in significant production of inflammatory cytokines and various interferon-stimulated genes in the liver and spleen. Activation of the ERK- and STAT2-mediated cytokine storm was largely affected by SPI-2. S. Enteritidis ΔSPI-1-infected mice displayed moderate histopathological damage and drastically reduced bacterial loads in tissues, whereas only slight damage and no bacteria were observed in ΔSPI-2- and ΔSPI-1/SPI-2-infected mice. A survival assay showed that ΔSPI-1 mutant mice maintained a medium level of virulence, while SPI-2 plays a decisive role in bacterial virulence. Collectively, our findings indicate that both SPIs, especially SPI-2, profoundly contributed to S. Enteritidis intracellular localization and virulence by activating multiple inflammatory pathways

Large-scale Huygens metasurfaces for holographic 3D near-eye displays

Novel display technologies aim at providing the users with increasingly immersive experiences. In this regard, it is a long-sought dream to generate three-dimensional (3D) scenes with high resolution and continuous depth, which can be overlaid with the real world. Current attempts to do so, however, fail in providing either truly 3D information, or a large viewing area and angle, strongly limiting the user immersion. Here, we report a proof-of-concept solution for this problem, and realize a compact holographic 3D near-eye display with a large exit pupil of 10mm x 8.66mm. The 3D image is generated from a highly transparent Huygens metasurface hologram with large (>10^8) pixel count and subwavelength pixels, fabricated via deep-ultraviolet immersion photolithography on 300 mm glass wafers. We experimentally demonstrate high quality virtual 3D scenes with ~50k active data points and continuous depth ranging from 0.5m to 2m, overlaid with the real world and easily viewed by naked eye. To do so, we introduce a new design method for holographic near-eye displays that, inherently, is able to provide both parallax and accommodation cues, fundamentally solving the vergence-accommodation conflict that exists in current commercial 3D displays.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figure

Electrochemical Model-Based Fast Charging: Physical Constraint-Triggered PI Control

This paper proposes a new fast charging strategy for lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. The approach relies on an experimentally validated high-fidelity model describing battery electrochemical and thermal dynamics that determine the fast charging capability. Such a high-dimensional nonlinear dynamic model can be intractable to compute in real-time if it is fused with the extended Kalman filter or the unscented Kalman filter that is commonly used in the community of battery management. To significantly save computational efforts and achieve rapid convergence, the ensemble transform Kalman filter (ETKF) is selected and tailored to estimate the nonuniform Li-ion battery states. Then, a health- and safety-aware charging protocol is proposed based on successively applied proportional-integral (PI) control actions. The controller regulates charging rates using online battery state information and the imposed constraints, in which each PI control action automatically comes into play when its corresponding constraint is triggered. The proposed physical constraint-triggered PI charging control strategy with the ETKF is evaluated and compared with several prevalent alternatives. It shows that the derived controller can achieve close to the optimal solution in terms of charging time and trajectory, as determined by a nonlinear model predictive controller, but at a drastically reduced computational cost