Insights into the molecular mechanism of glucose metabolism regulation under stress in chicken skeletal muscle tissues

AbstractAs substantial progress has been achieved in modern poultry production with large-scale and intensive feeding and farming in recent years, stress becomes a vital factor affecting chicken growth, development, and production yield, especially the quality and quantity of skeletal muscle mass. The review was aimed to outline and understand the stress-related genetic regulatory mechanism, which significantly affects glucose metabolism regulation in chicken skeletal muscle tissues. Progress in current studies was summarized relevant to the molecular mechanism and regulatory pathways of glucose metabolism regulation under stress in chicken skeletal muscle tissues. Particularly, the elucidation of those concerned pathways promoted by insulin and insulin receptors would give key clues to the understanding of biological processes of stress response and glucose metabolism regulation under stress, as well as their later effects on chicken muscle development

Spatiotemporal patterns of particulate matter (PM) and associations between PM and mortality in Shenzhen, China

DOI: 10.1186/s12889-016-2725-6Background: Most studies on air pollution exposure and its associations with human health in China have focused on the heavily polluted industrial areas and/or mega-cities, and studies on cities with comparatively low air pollutant concentrations are still rare. Only a few studies have attempted to analyse particulate matter (PM) for the vibrant economic centre Shenzhen in the Pearl River Delta. So far no systematic investigation of PM spatiotemporal patterns in Shenzhen has been undertaken and the understanding of pollution exposure in urban agglomerations with comparatively low pollution is still limited. Methods: We analyze daily and hourly particulate matter concentrations and all-cause mortality during 2013 in Shenzhen, China. Temporal patterns of PM (PM2.5 and PM10) with aerodynamic diameters of 2.5 (10) μm or less (or less (including particles with a diameter that equals to 2.5 (10) μm) are studied, along with the ratio of PM2.5 to PM10. Spatial distributions of PM10 and PM2.5 are addressed and associations of PM10 or PM2.5 and all-cause mortality are analyzed. Results: Annual average PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations were 61.3 and 39.6 μg/m3 in 2013. PM2.5 failed to meet the Class 2 annual limit of the National Ambient Air Quality Standard. PM2.5 was the primary air pollutant, with 8.8 % of days having heavy PM2.5 pollution. The daily PM2.5/PM10 ratios were high. Hourly PM2.5 concentrations in the tourist area were lower than downtown throughout the day. PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations were higher in western parts of Shenzhen than in eastern parts. Excess risks in the number of all-cause mortality with a 10 μg/m3 increase of PM were 0.61 % (95 % confidence interval [CI]: 0.50–0.72) for PM10, and 0.69 % (95 % CI: 0.55–0.83) for PM2.5, respectively. The greatest ERs of PM10 and PM2.5 were in 2-day cumulative measures for the all-cause mortality, 2-day lag for females and the young (0–65 years), and L02 for males and the elder (>65 years). PM2.5 had higher risks on all-cause mortality than PM10. Effects of high PM pollution on mortality were stronger in the elder and male. Conclusions: Our findings provide additional relevant information on air quality monitoring and associations of PM and human health, valuable data for further scientific research in Shenzhen and for the on-going discourse on improving environmental policie

Phylogeny, Functional Annotation, and Protein Interaction Network Analyses of the Xenopus tropicalis Basic Helix-Loop-Helix Transcription Factors

The previous survey identified 70 basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) proteins, but it was proved to be incomplete, and the functional information and regulatory networks of frog bHLH transcription factors were not fully known. Therefore, we conducted an updated genome-wide survey in the Xenopus tropicalis genome project databases and identified 105 bHLH sequences. Among the retrieved 105 sequences, phylogenetic analyses revealed that 103 bHLH proteins belonged to 43 families or subfamilies with 46, 26, 11, 3, 15, and 4 members in the corresponding supergroups. Next, gene ontology (GO) enrichment analyses showed 65 significant GO annotations of biological processes and molecular functions and KEGG pathways counted in frequency. To explore the functional pathways, regulatory gene networks, and/or related gene groups coding for Xenopus tropicalis bHLH proteins, the identified bHLH genes were put into the databases KOBAS and STRING to get the signaling information of pathways and protein interaction networks according to available public databases and known protein interactions. From the genome annotation and pathway analysis using KOBAS, we identified 16 pathways in the Xenopus tropicalis genome. From the STRING interaction analysis, 68 hub proteins were identified, and many hub proteins created a tight network or a functional module within the protein families

Numerical Prediction and Risk Analysis of Hydraulic Cavitation Damage in a High-Speed-Flow Spillway

Hydraulic cavitation is usually an undesirable phenomenon since it can damage the concrete surface of a chute spillway. In order to numerically predict the potential cavitation of a high-speed flow in a chute spillway, a compound risk assessment is proposed by combining probabilistic analysis with a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique. Based on the local pressure and flow velocity of the nodes, the traditional cavitation number is introduced to characterize the possibility of cavitation. The distribution of cavitation numbers was obtained according to the numerical simulation of the flow field in an open spillway. A hydraulic experiment was conducted to validate the numerical result. As a result, the potential cavitation region could be shown by visualizing the numerical result. Comparing the numerical results with the experimental results, hydraulic model validates the numerical simulation. The proposed numerical approach is economical and saves time; moreover, it can provide greater information about the potential cavitation region. This approach is more convenient for designers in their efforts to optimize the spillway shape and protect the concrete structure from cavitation erosion while maintaining lower costs and achieving higher visualization

Cutting force analysis in machining of titanium alloy with solid carbide cutters of different geometriy

In order to study the cutting force in machining of titanium alloy with solid carbide cutters of different geometriy, variable helix (VH), variable pitch (VP) and standard (SD) milling cutter were used to machine titanium alloy TB6 via dry milling. The influence of cutting parameters and geometric structure parameters of milling cutters on the cutting force was investigated by the analysis of radial and tangential forces in the cutting process with three kinds of milling cutters. The experiment results showed that cutting parameters had the same influence on the radial force and tangential force of the three milling cutters, and the influence of geometric structure parameters on radial force and tangential force was different. Compared with the SD milling cutter, the change of pitch and helix resulted in the increase of radial and tangential forces, the pitch change led to the radial force being larger than the tangential force, and the helix change led to the radial force being smaller than the tangential force

Measuring the subprime crisis contagion: Evidence of change point analysis of copula functions

In this paper, we first determine the existence of structural changes in the dependence between time series of equity index returns of two markets using the change point testing method. The method is based on Archimedean copula functions, which are able to comprehensively describe dependence characteristics of random variables. The degree of financial contagion between markets is subsequently estimated using the tail dependence coefficient of copula functions before and after the change point. We empirically test our method by investigating financial contagion during the subprime crisis between the US S&P 500 index and five Asian markets, namely China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Our results show that a statistically significant change point exists in the dependence between the US market and all Asian stock markets except Taiwan. The upper tail dependence is larger after the time of change, implying the existence of contagion during the banking crisis between the US and the Asian economies. The degree of financial contagion is also estimated and found to be consistent with market events and media reports during that period

Geometry-aware partitioning of complex domains for parallel quad meshing

We develop a partitioning algorithm to decompose complex 2D data into small and simple subregions suitable for effective distributed and parallel quadrilateral mesh generation. To support high-quality quad mesh generation, the partitioning reduces to solving an integer quadratic optimization problem with linear constraints. Directly solving this problem is expensive for large-scale data. Hence, we also suggest a more efficient two-step algorithm to obtain an approximate solution. First, we partition the region into a set of cells using L∞ Centroidal Voronoi Tessellation (CVT), then we solve a graph partitioning on the dual graph of this CVT to minimize the total partitioning boundary length, while enforcing the load balancing and each subregion\u27s connectivity. With this decomposition, subregions are distributed to multiple processors for parallel mesh generation. Through comparisons on the quality of the final meshes and the performance of simulations run on these meshes, we show that our decomposition algorithm outperforms existing partitioning approaches by offering more simulation-friendly regular meshes