Diverse biological effects of glycosyltransferase genes from Tartary buckwheat

Background: Tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum) is an edible cereal crop whose sprouts have been marketed and commercialized for their higher levels of anti-oxidants, including rutin and anthocyanin. UDP-glucose flavonoid glycosyltransferases (UFGTs) play an important role in the biosynthesis of flavonoids in plants. So far, few studies are available on UFGT genes that may play a role in tartary buckwheat flavonoids biosynthesis. Here, we report on the identification and functional characterization of seven UFGTs from tartary buckwheat that are potentially involved in flavonoid biosynthesis (and have varying effects on plant growth and development when overexpressed in Arabidopsis thaliana.) Results: Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the potential function of the seven FtUFGT proteins, FtUFGT6, FtUFGT7, FtUFGT8, FtUFGT9, FtUFGT15, FtUFGT40, and FtUFGT41, could be divided into three Arabidopsis thaliana functional subgroups that are involved in flavonoid biosynthesis of and anthocyanin accumulation. A significant positive correlation between FtUFGT8 and FtUFGT15 expression and anthocyanin accumulation capacity was observed in the tartary buckwheat seedlings after cold stress. Overexpression in Arabidopsis thaliana showed that FtUFGT8, FtUFGT15, and FtUFGT41 significantly increased the anthocyanin content in transgenic plants. Unexpectedly, overexpression of FtUFGT6, while not leading to enhanced anthocyanin accumulation, significantly enhanced the growth yield of transgenic plants. When wild-type plants have only cotyledons, most of the transgenic plants of FtUFGT6 had grown true leaves. Moreover, the growth speed of the oxFtUFGT6 transgenic plant root was also significantly faster than that of the wild type. At later growth, FtUFGT6 transgenic plants showed larger leaves, earlier twitching times and more tillers than wild type, whereas FtUFGT15 showed opposite results. Conclusions: Seven FtUFGTs were isolated from tartary buckwheat. FtUFGT8, FtUFGT15, and FtUFGT41 can significantly increase the accumulation of total anthocyanins in transgenic plants. Furthermore, overexpression of FtUFGT6 increased the overall yield of Arabidopsis transgenic plants at all growth stages. However, FtUFGT15 shows the opposite trend at later growth stage and delays the growth speed of plants. These results suggested that the biological function of FtUFGT genes in tartary buckwheat is diverse

A Compromise Programming Model for Highway Maintenance Resources Allocation Problem

This paper formulates a bilevel compromise programming model for allocating resources between pavement and bridge deck maintenances. The first level of the model aims to solve the resource allocation problems for pavement management and bridge deck maintenance, without considering resource sharing between them. At the second level, the model uses the results from the first step as an input and generates the final solution to the resource-sharing problem. To solve the model, the paper applies genetic algorithms to search for the optimal solution. We use a combination of two digits to represent different maintenance types. Results of numerical examples show that the conditions of both pavements and bridge decks are improved significantly by applying compromise programming, rather than conventional methods. Resources are also utilized more efficiently when the proposed method is applied

Metagenomic insights into the relationship between gut microbiota and residual feed intake of small-sized meat ducks

IntroductionThe objective of this study was to determine the regulatory effects of gut microbiota on the feed efficiency (FE) of small-sized meat ducks by evaluating correlations between gut microbiota and residual feed intake (RFI).MethodsA total of 500 21-day-old healthy male ducks with similar initial body weights (645 ± 15.0 g) were raised contemporaneously in the same experimental facility until slaughter at 56 days of age. In total, nine low-RFI (LR) and nine high-RFI (HR) birds were selected for further gut microbiota composition and functional analyses based on the production performance, and the RFI was calculated from 22 to 56 days of age.ResultsGrowth performance results indicated a significantly lower RFI, feed conversion ratio, feed intake, and average daily feed intake in the LR ducks (P < 0.05). Taxonomy results of gut microbiota showed the identification of 19 kinds of phyla and more than 250 kinds of genera in all samples. No significant discrepancies in cecal bacterial α-diversity were discovered between the LR and HR groups, which indicated that the microbial modulatory effects on RFI may be attributed to the bacterial composition, rather than the species diversity. Differential analysis of bacterial communities between the LR and HR groups showed a significant increment of Firmicutes and a significant decline of Bacteroidetes in the LR group (P < 0.05). Specifically, genera of Erysipelatoclostridium, Parasutterella, Fournierella, and Lactococcus significantly proliferated, while Bacteroides significantly decreased in the LR group (P < 0.05). Furthermore, correlation analysis showed that the RFI was significantly correlated with carbohydrate metabolism-related bacteria including Bacteroides, Alistipes, Bifidobacterium, Ruminiclostridium_9, Sellimonas, Oscillibacter, Escherichia-Shigella, Lactococcus, and Streptococcus.ConclusionIn conclusion, the communities related to carbohydrate metabolism had positive regulatory effects on the FE of small-sized meat ducks, promoting it by improving the relative abundance and utilization of these communities. The present study provides valuable insight into the dynamics of gut microbiota underlying the variations in the FE of small-sized meat ducks

Stochastic evolutions of dynamic traffic flow: modeling and applications

This book reveals the underlying mechanisms of complexity and stochastic evolutions of traffic flows. Using Eulerian and Lagrangian measurements, the authors propose lognormal headway/spacing/velocity distributions and subsequently develop a Markov car-following model to describe drivers’ random choices concerning headways/spacings, putting forward a stochastic fundamental diagram model for wide scattering flow-density points. In the context of highway onramp bottlenecks, the authors present a traffic flow breakdown probability model and spatial-temporal queuing model to improve the stability and reliability of road traffic flows. This book is intended for researchers and graduate students in the fields of transportation engineering and civil engineering

Dynamic Offloading Loading Optimization in Distributed Fault Diagnosis System with Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

Artificial intelligence and distributed algorithms have been widely used in mechanical fault diagnosis with the explosive growth of diagnostic data. A novel intelligent fault diagnosis system framework that allows intelligent terminals to offload computational tasks to Mobile edge computing (MEC) servers is provided in this paper, which can effectively address the problems of task processing delays and enhanced computational complexity. As the resources at the MEC and intelligent terminals are limited, performing reasonable resource allocation optimization can improve the performance, especially for a multi-terminals offloading system. In this study, to minimize the task computation delay, we jointly optimize the local content splitting ratio, the transmission/computation power allocation, and the MEC server selection under a dynamic environment with stochastic task arrivals. The challenging dynamic joint optimization problem is formulated as a reinforcement learning (RL) problem, which is designed as the computational offloading policies to minimize the long-term average delay cost. Two deep RL strategies, deep Q-learning network (DQN) and deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG), are adopted to learn the computational offloading policies adaptively and efficiently. The proposed DQN strategy takes the MEC selection as a unique action while using the convex optimization approach to obtain the local content splitting ratio and the transmission/computation power allocation. Simultaneously, the actions of the DDPG strategy are selected as all dynamic variables, including the local content splitting ratio, the transmission/computation power allocation, and the MEC server selection. Numerical results demonstrate that both proposed strategies perform better than the traditional non-learning schemes. The DDPG strategy outperforms the DQN strategy in all simulation cases exhibiting minimal task computation delay due to its ability to learn all variables online

Evolution and Effect of Transportation Policy on Public Transit: Lessons from Beijing

The United Nations predicts that half the world’s population will live in cities by 2008. Thus, rapid urban sprawl, and especially its traffic congestion, is a global problem. Meeting mobility needs of urban dwellers is critical to sustaining growth and social stability, but many major cities struggle to do so. The evolving situation in Beijing, is examined, and the policy-making process in Beijing is analyzed to understand why transportation problems occur and are intractable and how they can be solved. A structure of policy making is proposed that includes four factors: institutional, travel behavior, ideals, and landmark events. The analysis includes a case study and comparison of transit service in Beijing and other cities, including results from the latest transit level-of-service rider survey in Beijing. It is concluded that an imbalance between transportation supply and demand is the primary cause of traffic congestion. The transportation problem must be solved from two sides: increasing supply and managing demand simultaneously. Public transit, paired with transportation demand management, is an effective approach for sustainable transportation but requires a range of policies

Core-Shell Nanoencapsulation of α-Tocopherol by Blending Sodium Oleate and Rebaudioside A: Preparation, Characterization, and Antioxidant Activity

Nanoencapsulation of α-tocopherol (α-TOC) by blending sodium oleate (NaOl) and rebaudioside A (RebA) was successfully prepared by self-assembly method under mild conditions. The optimized nanoemulsion showed the loading capacity of α-TOC was 30 wt% of sodium oleate. FTIR analysis suggested that hydrogen bonds and hydrophobic interactions were the major forces in α-TOC-NaOl/RebA complexes that were spherical and possessed well-distinguishable core-shell structures. The freeze-dried α-TOC-NaOl/RebA complexes had great stability under ambient conditions. The release profile of α-TOC showed a first-order kinetics reaching around 67.9% after 90 h at 25 °C. Nanoencapsulation improved dispersibility and greatly increased the antioxidant activity of α-TOC. Therefore, the stable α-TOC-NaOl/RebA core-shell complexes prepared from “generally recognized as safe„ (GRAS) ingredients have great potential to supplement α-TOC in food and cosmetic products

1-Laurin-3-Palmitin as a Novel Matrix of Solid Lipid Particles: Higher Loading Capacity of Thymol and Better Stability of Dispersions Than Those of Glyceryl Monostearate and Glyceryl Tripalmitate

To develop solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) with a new lipid matrix for delivery of hydrophobic bioactive molecules, high purity 1-laurin-3-palmitin (1,3-LP) was synthesized and the prepared 1,3-LP SLNs were compared with those of two common SLN matrices in glyceryl monostearate (GMS) and glyceryl tripalmitate (PPP). Conditions of preparing SLNs were first optimized by evaluating the particle size, polydispersity index (PDI), zeta-potential, and stability. Thereafter, the performance of SLN loading of a model compound in thymol was studied. The loading capacity of thymol in 1,3-LP SLNs was 16% of lipids and higher than 4% and 12% for GMS- and PPP-SLNs, respectively. The 1,3-LP SLNs also had the best efficiency to entrapment thymol during the prolonged storage. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses confirmed the excellent crystalline stability of 1,3-LP leading to the stable entrapment efficiency and better stability of thymol-loaded SLNs. Conversely, the polymorphic transformation of GMS and PPP resulted in the declined entrapment efficiency of thymol in the corresponding SLNs. This work indicated the 1,3-diacylglycerol (DAG) SLNs could be used as a promising delivery system for the encapsulation of hydrophobic bioactive molecules with high loading capacity and stability

Research on the performance of modified shell ash mortar used for strengthening of historical masonry buildings

On the basis of previous research on the preparation of modified shell ash mortar, which can be used in the strengthening of historical masonry buildings, this paper carried out a further experimental study on the performance of this mortar. Workability, mechanical performances, volume stability and water resistance are the main aspects of the research focus. The test results show that compared with pure shell ash mortar, the compressive strength, flexural strength, tensile bond strength, volume stability and water resistance of the modified shell ash mortar are significantly improved. The pozzolanic activity effect and microaggregate filling effect of the two added modified materials act synergistically in the hydration and structural formation of shell ash mortar, which is the main reason for its improved performance following modification. The research results provide a basis for the application of modified shell ash mortar in the strengthening of historical masonry buildings

Hypoxia Inhibits Cell Cycle Progression and Cell Proliferation in Brain Microvascular Endothelial Cells via the miR-212-3p/MCM2 Axis

Hypoxia impairs blood–brain barrier (BBB) structure and function, causing pathophysiological changes in the context of stroke and high-altitude brain edema. Brain microvascular endothelial cells (BMECs) are major structural and functional elements of the BBB, and their exact role in hypoxia remains unknown. Here, we first deciphered the molecular events that occur in BMECs under 24 h hypoxia by whole-transcriptome sequencing assay. We found that hypoxia inhibited BMEC cell cycle progression and proliferation and downregulated minichromosome maintenance complex component 2 (Mcm2) expression. Mcm2 overexpression attenuated the inhibition of cell cycle progression and proliferation caused by hypoxia. Then, we predicted the upstream miRNAs of MCM2 through TargetScan and miRanDa and selected miR-212-3p, whose expression was significantly increased under hypoxia. Moreover, the miR-212-3p inhibitor attenuated the inhibition of cell cycle progression and cell proliferation caused by hypoxia by regulating MCM2. Taken together, these results suggest that the miR-212-3p/MCM2 axis plays an important role in BMECs under hypoxia and provide a potential target for the treatment of BBB disorder-related cerebrovascular disease