Homoclinic orbits for periodic second order Hamiltonian systems with superlinear terms

We obtain the existence of nontrivial homoclinic orbits for nonautonomous second order Hamiltonian systems by using critical point theory under some different superlinear conditions from those previously used in Hamiltonian systems. In particular, an example is given to illustrate our result

Research on the Construction of Agro-Ecological Park Under the Background of Smart Agriculture - Take Zengcheng Chuangxian Smart Agriculture Model Park as an Example

[EN] In the process of agricultural modernization in China, smart. agriculture is the new direction of rural development, and scientific development of agroecological parks is an important starting point to promote agricultural transformation and upgrading, as well as an effective way to promote rural revitalization. At present, the application of smart agriculture in agricultural ecological parks in China is still in the experimental stage, and the pilots have been carried out in various regions, but most of them are almost stagnant at the level of agricultural production, failing to maximize the use of smart agricultural resources to build agroecological parks. This paper analyzes the case of Zengcheng Chuangxian Smart Agriculture Model Park on the basis of describing its current development and the existing problems after the introduction of smart agriculture, and puts forward relevant suggestions.Chen, J.; Cai, Y.; Gaoge, Y.; Lv, H. (2022). Research on the Construction of Agro-Ecological Park Under the Background of Smart Agriculture - Take Zengcheng Chuangxian Smart Agriculture Model Park as an Example. En 4th International Conference on Advanced Research Methods and Analytics (CARMA 2022). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 283-283. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/18976228328

Growth of Human Colorectal Cancer SW1116 Cells Is Inhibited by Cytokine-Induced Killer Cells

Previous reports have suggested that treatment with cytokine-induced killer (CIK) cells may benefit patients with various types of tumor. The aim of this study was to evaluate the antitumor effects of CIK cells against the colorectal cancer line SW1116 in vitro and in vivo. CIK cells were generated routinely from peripheral blood mononuclear cells of healthy human donors, and the number of CD3+CD56+ cells was expanded more than 1300-fold after 14-day culture. At an effector : target cell ratio of 50 : 1, the percentage lysis of SW1116 cells reached 68% in the presence of CIK cells, Experimental mice injected with SW1116 cells subcutaneously were divided randomly into four groups: untreated, 5-fluorouracil (5-FU)-treated, CIK-consecutive treated (injected once/day) and CIK-interval treated (injected once every 5 days). CIK cells were injected abdominally five times in total. Compared with the untreated group, xenograft growth was inhibited greatly by CIK treatment, to nearly the same extent as with 5-FU treatment. We demonstrated that the necrotic area in the tumor xenograft was markedly larger in the CIK-treated groups than in the other groups. These findings suggest that CIK-based immunotherapy may represent an effective choice for patients with colorectal cancer

Estimating Brain Age with Global and Local Dependencies

The brain age has been proven to be a phenotype of relevance to cognitive performance and brain disease. Achieving accurate brain age prediction is an essential prerequisite for optimizing the predicted brain-age difference as a biomarker. As a comprehensive biological characteristic, the brain age is hard to be exploited accurately with models using feature engineering and local processing such as local convolution and recurrent operations that process one local neighborhood at a time. Instead, Vision Transformers learn global attentive interaction of patch tokens, introducing less inductive bias and modeling long-range dependencies. In terms of this, we proposed a novel network for learning brain age interpreting with global and local dependencies, where the corresponding representations are captured by Successive Permuted Transformer (SPT) and convolution blocks. The SPT brings computation efficiency and locates the 3D spatial information indirectly via continuously encoding 2D slices from different views. Finally, we collect a large cohort of 22645 subjects with ages ranging from 14 to 97 and our network performed the best among a series of deep learning methods, yielding a mean absolute error (MAE) of 2.855 in validation set, and 2.911 in an independent test set

Synergistic effect of a combination of granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor and thymosin α1 on Lewis lung cancer transplanted tumor in mice

Purpose: To study the synergistic effect of a combination of granulocyte-macrophage colonystimulating factor and thymosin-α1 on the treatment of Lewis lung cancer transplanted tumor.Methods: C57BL/6 mice were used. A mouse model of Lewis lung cancer was established using Lewis lung cancer cell lines. The mice were randomly divided into blank control group, polyene taxol (DTX) group, DTX thymosin α1 (Tα-1) group, and DTX granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) group, with 8 mice per group. The degree of tumor inhibition, thymus mass, thymus index, spleen mass, spleen index, IL-6, TNF-1, IFN-1, CD4+, CD8+ T cells and the ratio of CD4+/CD8+ were determined by ELISA and flow cytometry.Results: Body mass, thymus mass, thymus index, spleen mass, spleen index, IL-6, TNF-1, IFN-1, CD4+, CD8+ T cells and the ratio of CD4+/CD8+ in DTX + Tα-1 group, DTX + GM-CSF group and DTX + Tα-1 + GM-CSF group were significantly elevated (p < 0.05), relative to the corresponding levels in DTXmice (p < 0.05). Body mass, degree of tumor inhibition, thymus mass, thymus index, spleen mass, spleen index, IL-6, TNF-1, IFN-1, CD4, CD8 T cells and CD4+/CD8+ ratio in DTX + Tα-1 + GM-CSF mice were significantly elevated, relative to the DTX + Tα-1 and DTX + GM-CSF groups (p < 0.05). Thestate of the tumor was significantly improved in the DTX + Tα-1 and DTX + GM-CSF mice.Conclusion: A combination treatment of GM-CSF, Tα-1 and DEX effectively enhances the resistance of mice and suppresses chemotherapy-induced decrease in body weight. This finding may be of clinical significance. Keywords: Granulocyte macrophage, Colony-stimulating factor, Thymosin, Docetaxel, Lewis lung cancer, Transplanted tumo

A R2R3-MYB Transcription Factor Regulates the Flavonol Biosynthetic Pathway in a Traditional Chinese Medicinal Plant, \u3cem\u3eEpimedium sagittatum\u3c/em\u3e

Flavonols as plant secondary metabolites with vital roles in plant development and defense against UV light, have been demonstrated to be the main bioactive components (BCs) in the genus Epimedium plants, several species of which are used as materials for Herba Epimedii, an important traditional Chinese medicine. The flavonol biosynthetic pathway genes had been already isolated from Epimedium sagittatum, but a R2R3-MYB transcription factor regulating the flavonol synthesis has not been functionally characterized so far in Epimedium plants. In this study, we isolated and characterized the R2R3-MYB transcription factor EsMYBF1 involved in regulation of the flavonol biosynthetic pathway from E. sagittatum. Sequence analysis indicated that EsMYBF1 belongs to the subgroup 7 of R2R3-MYB family which contains the flavonol-specific MYB regulators identified to date. Transient reporter assay showed that EsMYBF1 strongly activated the promoters of EsF3H (flavanone 3-hydroxylase) and EsFLS (flavonol synthase), but not the promoters of EsDFRs (dihydroflavonol 4-reductase) and EsANS (anthocyanidin synthase) in transiently transformed Nicotiana benthamiana leaves. Both yeast two-hybrid assay and transient reporter assay validated EsMYBF1 to be independent of EsTT8, or AtTT8 bHLH regulators of the flavonoid pathway as cofactors. Ectopic expression of EsMYBF1 in transgenic tobacco resulted in the increased flavonol content and the decreased anthocyanin content in flowers. Correspondingly, the structural genes involved in flavonol synthesis were upregulated in the EsMYBF1 overexpression lines, including NtCHS (chalcone synthase), NtCHI (chalcone isomerase), NtF3H and NtFLS, whereas the late biosynthetic genes of the anthocyanin pathway (NtDFR and NtANS) were remarkably downregulated, compared to the controls. These results suggest that EsMYBF1 is a flavonol-specific R2R3-MYB regulator, and involved in regulation of the biosynthesis of the flavonol-derived BCs in E. sagittatum. Thus, identification and functional characterization of EsMYBF1 provide insight into understanding the biosynthesis and regulation of the flavonol-derived BCs in Epimedium plants, and also provide an effective tool gene for genetic manipulation to improve the flavonol synthesis

Hesperidin Protects against Acute Alcoholic Injury through Improving Lipid Metabolism and Cell Damage in Zebrafish Larvae

Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) is a series of abnormalities of liver function, including alcoholic steatosis, steatohepatitis, and cirrhosis. Hesperidin, the major constituent of flavanone in grapefruit, is proved to play a role in antioxidation, anti-inflammation, and reducing multiple organs damage in various animal experiments. However, the underlying mechanism of resistance to alcoholic liver injury is still unclear. Thus, we aimed to investigate the protective effects of hesperidin against ALD and its molecular mechanism in this study. We established an ALD zebrafish larvae model induced by 350 mM ethanol for 32 hours, using wild-type and transgenic line with liver-specific eGFP expression Tg (lfabp10α:eGFP) zebrafish larvae (4 dpf). The results revealed that hesperidin dramatically reduced the hepatic morphological damage and the expressions of alcohol and lipid metabolism related genes, including cyp2y3, cyp3a65, hmgcra, hmgcrb, fasn, and fads2 compared with ALD model. Moreover, the findings demonstrated that hesperidin alleviated hepatic damage as well, which is reflected by the expressions of endoplasmic reticulum stress and DNA damage related genes (chop, gadd45αa, and edem1). In conclusion, this study revealed that hesperidin can inhibit alcoholic damage to liver of zebrafish larvae by reducing endoplasmic reticulum stress and DNA damage, regulating alcohol and lipid metabolism

Preparation of nano-selenium from chestnut polysaccharide and characterization of its antioxidant activity

Chestnut is widely cultivated and has high nutritional value due to its richness in polysaccharides. In order to improve the antioxidant activity of chestnut polysaccharide, chestnut polysaccharide (CP) was extracted by ultrasonic-assisted water extraction and alcohol precipitation and purified by cellulose DEAE-52 exchange and Sephadex G-100 chromatography in this study. CP isolates were characterized by I2-KI reaction, three-strand helical structure analysis, infrared spectrum analysis, and nuclear magnetic resonance detection. The results showed that CP is a pyrylan sugar with triple helical structure and connected by α-glycosidic bonds, with sugar residues 1,4-α-D-Glcp, 1,6-α-D-Galp, 1,5-α-L-Araf, 1,4-α-L-Rhap, and 1,4-β-D-Glcp in the CP backbone. After purification, the branching structure, rod, and spherical structure were significantly increased, with reduced lamellar structure. The in vitro scavenging rates of CP at 10 mg·mL−1 against DPPH, hydroxyl radicals, and ABTS were 88.95, 41.38, and 48.16%, respectively. The DPPH free radical scavenging rate of purified polysaccharide fraction CP-1a was slightly enhanced, and the other rates showed a small decrease. Selenized chestnut polysaccharide (CP-Se) was prepared using nano-selenium method. The selenization method was optimized and stable Se-CP was obtained. When the concentration was 5 mg·mL−1, Se-CP had significantly higher scavenging abilities 89.81 ± 2.33, 58.50 ± 1.60, and 40.66 ± 1.91% for DPPH, hydroxyl radical, and ABTS radicals, respectively, than those of CP. The results of this study provide insight into the effects purification and selenization of chestnut polysaccharide on antioxidant activity, and also provide a theoretical basis for the development of chestnut polysaccharide for use in functional foods or health products

The genetic variants at the HLA-DRB1 gene are associated with primary IgA nephropathy in Han Chinese

BACKGROUND: Immunoglobulin A nephropathy (IgAN), an immune-complex-mediated glomerulonephritis defined immunohistologically by the presence of glomerular IgA deposits, is the most common primary glomerular disease worldwide and a significant cause of end-stage renal disease. Familial clustering of patients with IgAN suggests a genetic predisposition. METHODS: In this study, 192 patients with IgAN and 192 normal controls in the Sichuan cohort and 935 patients with IgAN and 2,103 normal controls in the Beijing cohort were investigated. HLA-DRB1*01–DRB1*10 specificities were genotyped by the PCR–SSP technique in both cohorts. Based on the HLA-DRB1*04-positive results, the subtypes of HLA-DRB1*04 were analyzed using sequencing-based typing (SBT) in 291 IgAN cases and 420 matched controls. RESULTS: The frequency of HLA-DRB1*04 in the IgAN group was significantly higher than that in the control group (0.129 vs. 0.092, P = 8.29 × 10(-5), odds ratio (OR) =1.381, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.178–1.619). Other alleles at the HLA-DRB1 locus were observed with no significant differences between the case and control groups. The dominant alleles of the HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes were DRB1*0405 in both cohorts. The frequencies of HLA-DRB1*0405 and 0403 were significantly increased in the patients compared to healthy subjects. CONCLUSION: HLA-DRB1*04 was significantly associated with primary IgAN in Chinese population. This result implies that HLA-DRB1 gene plays a major role in primary IgAN