Silencing of two insulin receptor genes disrupts nymph-adult transition of alate brown citrus aphid

Insulin receptors play key roles in growth, development, and polymorphism in insects. Here, we report two insulin receptor genes (AcInR1 and AcInR2) from the brown citrus aphid, Aphis (Toxoptera) citricidus. Transcriptional analyses showed that AcInR1 increased during the nymph-adult transition in alate aphids, while AcInR2 had the highest expression level in second instar nymphs. AcInR1 is important in aphid development from fourth instar nymphs to adults as verified by dsRNA feeding mediated RNAi. The silencing of AcInR1 or/and AcInR2 produced a variety of phenotypes including adults with normal wings, malformed wings, under-developed wings, and aphids failing to develop beyond the nymphal stages. Silencing of AcInR1 or AcInR2 alone, and co-silencing of both genes, resulted in 73% or 60%, and 87% of aphids with problems in the transition from nymph to normal adult. The co-silencing of AcInR1 and AcInR2 resulted in 62% dead nymphs, but no mortality occurred by silencing of AcInR1 or AcInR2 alone. Phenotypes of adults in the dsInR1 and dsInR2 were similar. The results demonstrate that AcInR1 and AcInR2 are essential for successful nymph-adult transition in alate aphids and show that RNAi methods may be useful for the management of this pest

Application of meso-2,3-Dimercaptosuccinic Acid Self-assembled Gold Electrode for Voltammetric Determination of Copper

Fabrication and electrochemical characteristics of the meso-2,3-dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) self-assembled monolayer modified gold electrode were described. The modified electrode exhibited increased sensitivity and selectivity for CuII compared to the bare gold electrode by stripping voltammetry and the peak current was proportional to the concentration of CuII in the range of 8.0 10–7 1.2 10–4 mol/L with the detection limit of 1.1 10–7 mol/L. The influence of coexistent substances was investigated and the modified electrode showed good selectivity for copper determination. The DMSA/Au electrode was applied for CuII determination in a tap water sample with satisfactory results, with the recovery in the range from 99.7 to 101.1 %

Cryptanalysis of SPEEDY

SPEEDY is a family of ultra-lightweight block ciphers designed by Leander et al. at CHES 2021. There are three recommended variants denoted as SPEEDY-$r$-192 with $r$∈{5,6,7}. All of them support the 192-bit block and the 192-bit key. The main focus during its design is to ensure hardware-aware low latency, thus, whether it is designed to have enough security is worth to be studied. Recently, the full-round security of SPEEDY-7-192 is announced to be broken by Boura et al. at EUROCRYPT 2023 under the chosen-ciphertext setting, where a round-reduced attack on SPEEDY-6-192 is also proposed. However, no valid attack on SPEEDY-5-192 is given due to its more restricted security parameters. Up to now, the best key recovery attack on this variant only covers 3 rounds proposed by Rohit et al. at AFRICACRYPT 2022. In this paper, we give three full-round attacks on SPEEDY-7-192. Using the divide-and-conquer strategy and other new proposed techniques, we found a 5.5-round differential distinguisher which can be used to mount the first chosen-plaintext full-round key recovery attack. With a similar strategy, we also found a 5-round linear distinguisher which leads to the first full-round attack under the known-plaintext setting. Meanwhile, the 5.5-round differential distinguisher also helps us slightly improve the full-round attack in the chosen-ciphertext setting compared with the previous result. Besides, we also present a 4-round differential attack on SPEEDY-5-192, which is the best attack on this variant in terms of the number of rounds so far. A faster key recovery attack covering the same rounds is also given using a differential-linear distinguisher. Both attacks cannot threaten the full round security of SPEEDY-5-192

Protective effect of Macleaya cordata isoquinoline alkaloids on lipopolysaccharide-induced liver injury in broilers

Objective This experiment aimed to explore the protective action of dietary supplementation with isoquinoline alkaloids (IA) from Macleaya cordata on lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced liver injury in broilers. Methods Total 216 healthy broilers were selected in a 21-d trial and assigned randomly to the following 3 treatments: control (CON) group, LPS group, and LPS+IA group. The CON and LPS groups were provided with a basal diet, whereas the LPS+IA group received the basal diet supplemented with 0.6 mg/kg Macleaya cordata IA. Broilers in LPS and LPS+IA groups were intraperitoneally injected with LPS (1 mg/kg body weight) at 17, 19, and 21 days of age, while those in CON group were injected with equivalent amount of saline solution. Results Results showed LPS injection caused systemic and liver inflammation in broilers, inhibited immune function, and ultimately lead to liver injury. By contrast, supplementation of IA ameliorated LPS-induced adverse change in serum parameters, boosted immunity in LPS+IA group. Furthermore, IA suppressed the elevation of hepatic inflammatory cytokines and caspases levels induced by LPS, as well as the expressions of genes related to the toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4)/myeloid differentiation primary response 88 (MyD88)/nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) pathway. Conclusion Dietary inclusion of 0.6 mg/kg Macleaya cordata IA could enhance immune function of body and inhibit liver damage via inactivating TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB signaling pathway in broilers

Demand side management of plug-in electric vehicles and coordinated unit commitment: A novel parallel competitive swarm optimization method

Decreasing initial costs, the increased availability of charging infrastructure and favorable policy measures have resulted in the recent surge in plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) ownerships. PEV adoption increases electricity consumption from the grid that could either exacerbate electricity supply shortages or smooth demand curves. The optimal coordination and commitment of power generation units while ensuring wider access of PEVs to the grid are, therefore, important to reduce the cost and environmental pollution from thermal power generation systems, and to transition to a smarter grid. However, flexible demand side management (DSM) considering the stochastic charging behavior of PEVs adds new challenges to the complex power system optimization, and makes existing mathematical approaches ineffective. In this research, a novel parallel competitive swarm optimization algorithm is developed for solving large-scale unit commitment (UC) problems with mixed integer variables and multiple constraints typically found in PEV integrated grids. The parallel optimization framework combines binary and real-valued competitive swarm optimizers for solving the UC problem and demand side management of PEVs simultaneously. Numerical case studies have been conducted with multiple scales of unit numbers and various demand side management strategies of plug-in electric vehicles. The results show superior performance of proposed parallel competitive swarm optimization based method in successfully solving the proposed complex optimization problem. The flexible demand side management strategies of plug-in electric vehicles have shown large potentials in bringing considerable economic benefit

Antimicrobial Activity of Quinazolin Derivatives of 1,2-Di(quinazolin-4-yl)diselane against Mycobacteria

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. Currently, the emergence of drug resistance has an urgent need for new drugs. In previous study, we found that 1,2-di(quinazolin-4-yl)diselane (DQYD), a quinazoline derivative, has anticancer activities against many cancers. However, whether DQYD has the activity of antimycobacterium is still little known. Here our results show that DQYD has a similar value of the minimum inhibitory concentration with clinical drugs against mycobacteria and also has the ability of bacteriostatic activity with dose-dependent and time-dependent manner. Furthermore, the activities of DQYD against M. tuberculosis are associated with intracellular ATP homeostasis. Meanwhile, mycobacterium DNA damage level was increased after DQYD treatment. But there was no correlation between survival of mycobacteria in the presence of DQYD and intercellular reactive oxygen species. This study enlightens the possible benefits of quinazoline derivatives as potential antimycobacterium compounds and furtherly suggests a new strategy to develop new methods for searching antituberculosis drugs