Circadian and Ultradian Rhythms of Free Glucocorticoid Hormone Are Highly Synchronized between the Blood, the Subcutaneous Tissue, and the Brain

Total glucocorticoid hormone levels in plasma of various species, including humans, follow a circadian rhythm that is made up from an underlying series of hormone pulses. In blood most of the glucocorticoid is bound to corticosteroid-binding globulin and albumin, resulting in low levels of free hormone. Although only the free fraction is biologically active, surprisingly little is known about the rhythms of free glucocorticoid hormones. We used single-probe microdialysis to measure directly the free corticosterone levels in the blood of freely behaving rats. Free corticosterone in the blood shows a distinct circadian and ultradian rhythm with a pulse frequency of approximately one pulse per hour together with an increase in hormone levels and pulse height toward the active phase of the light/dark cycle. Similar rhythms were also evident in the subcutaneous tissue, demonstrating that free corticosterone rhythms are transferred from the blood into peripheral target tissues. Furthermore, in a dual-probe microdialysis study, we demonstrated that the circadian and ultradian rhythms of free corticosterone in the blood and the subcutaneous tissue were highly synchronized. Moreover, free corticosterone rhythms were also synchronous between the blood and the hippocampus. These data demonstrate for the first time an ultradian rhythm of free corticosterone in the blood that translates into synchronized rhythms of free glucocorticoid hormone in peripheral and central tissues. The maintenance of ultradian rhythms across tissue barriers in both the periphery and the brain has important implications for research into aberrant biological rhythms in disease and for the development of improved protocols for glucocorticoid therapy

Bootstrapping Multi-view Representations for Fake News Detection

Previous researches on multimedia fake news detection include a series of complex feature extraction and fusion networks to gather useful information from the news. However, how cross-modal consistency relates to the fidelity of news and how features from different modalities affect the decision-making are still open questions. This paper presents a novel scheme of Bootstrapping Multi-view Representations (BMR) for fake news detection. Given a multi-modal news, we extract representations respectively from the views of the text, the image pattern and the image semantics. Improved Multi-gate Mixture-of-Expert networks (iMMoE) are proposed for feature refinement and fusion. Representations from each view are separately used to coarsely predict the fidelity of the whole news, and the multimodal representations are able to predict the cross-modal consistency. With the prediction scores, we reweigh each view of the representations and bootstrap them for fake news detection. Extensive experiments conducted on typical fake news detection datasets prove that the proposed BMR outperforms state-of-the-art schemes.Comment: Authors are from Fudan University, China. Under Revie

Meat and bone meal stimulates microbial diversity and suppresses plant pathogens in asparagus straw composting

Meat and bone meal (MBM), as slaughterhouse waste, is a potential biostimulating agent, but its efficiency and reliability in composting are largely unknown. To access the MBM application to the composting process of asparagus straw rice, we followed the composting process for 60 days in 220-L composters and another 180 days in 20-L buckets in treatments applied with MBM or urea. The microbial succession was investigated by high-throughput sequencing. Compared with urea treatments, MBM addition stabilized pH and extended the thermophilic phase for 7 days. The germination index of MBM treatments was 24.76% higher than that of urea treatments. MBM also promoted higher microbial diversity and shifted community compositions. Organic matter and pH were the most significant factors that influence the bacterial and fungal community structure. At the genus level, MBM enriched relative abundances of organic matter-degrading bacteria (Alterococcus) and lignocellulose-degrading fungi (Trichoderma), as well as lignocellulolytic enzyme activities. Notably, MBM addition decreased sum abundances of plant pathogenic fungi of Phaeoacremonium, Acremonium, and Geosmithia from 17.27 to 0.11%. This study demonstrated the potential of MBM as an effective additive in asparagus straw composting, thus providing insights into the development of new industrial aerobic fermentation.Peer reviewe

Mechanical behaviours and mass transport properties of bone-mimicking scaffolds consisted of gyroid structures manufactured using selective laser melting

Bone scaffolds created in porous structures manufactured using selective laser melting (SLM) are widely used in tissue engineering, since the elastic moduli of the scaffolds are easily adjusted according to the moduli of the tissues, and the large surfaces the scaffolds provide are beneficial to cell growth. SLM-built gyroid structures composed of 316L stainless steel have demonstrated superior properties such as good corrosion resistance, strong biocompatibility, self-supported performance, and excellent mechanical properties. In this study, gyroid structures of different volume fraction were modelled and manufactured using SLM; the mechanical properties of the structures were then investigated under quasi-static compression loads. The elastic moduli and yield stresses of the structures were calculated from stress-strain diagrams, which were developed by conducting quasi-static compression tests. In order to estimate the discrepancies between the designed and as-produced gyroid structures, optical microscopy and micro-CT scanner were used to observe the structures’ micromorphology. Since good fluidness is conducive to the transport of nutrients, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) values were used to investigate the pressure and flow velocity of the channel of the three kinds of gyroid structures. The results show that the sizes of the as-produced structures were larger than their computer aided design (CAD) sizes, but the manufacturing errors are within a relatively stable range. The elastic moduli and yield stresses of the structures improved as their volume fractions increased. Gyroid structure can match the mechanical properties of human bone by changing the porosity of scaffold. The process of compression failure showed that 316L gyroid structures manufactured using SLM demonstrated high degrees of toughness. The results obtained from CFD simulation showed that gyroid structures have good fluidity, which has an accelerated effect on the fluid in the middle of the channel, and it is suitable for transport nutrients. Therefore, we could predict the scaffold's permeability by conducting CFD simulation to ensure an appropriate permeability before the scaffold being manufactured. SLM-built gyroid structures that composed of 316L stainless steel were suitable to be designed as bone scaffolds in terms of mechanical properties and mass-transport properties, and had significant promise

Concentrations and gas-particle partitioning of PCDD/Fs in the urban air of Dalian, China

PCDD/Fs in the urban air of Dalian, China were monitored with high-volume active sampler from November 2009 to October 2010. The concentration of Cl4-8DD/Fs ranged from 3065 to 49538 fg m(-3), with an average of 10249 fg m(-3). The international toxic equivalents (I-TEQ) value of that was 61.8-1182 fg m(-3), with an average of 235 fg m(-3), which was comparable to those in the other urban locations around the world. It was found that the Cl4-8DD/Fs appeared to be present mainly in the particle phase during winter, spring and autumn, while during summer which were dominantly in gas phase. The ratio of Cl4-8DD/Fs present in particle phase increased with the increasing level of chlorination. The concentrations of PCDFs and PCDDs decreased with the increase of chlorinated level, while the concentrations of 2,3,7,8-PCDDs congeners increased with the increase of chlorination level. The homolog profiles of the concentrations of PCDFs presented were higher than those of the PCDDs, which indicated the PCDD/Fs pollution source of the air in Dalian was characteristic for thermal source pollution. The correlation analysis of meteorological parameters with the concentrations of Cl4-8CDD/Fs was conducted using SPSS packages, and it was found that the ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure were important factors influence the concentration of PCDD/Fs in the air. The respiratory risk and intake dioxins of the residents around the sampling sites were studied in the paper. It was found that Junge-Pankow model was much more accurate in predicting the gas-particle partitioning behavior of PCDD/Fs homologues during winter, while the Harner-Bidleman model shows better agreement with the measured data during winter and summer

Manufacturability, mechanical properties, mass-transport properties and biocompatibility of Triply Periodic Minimal Surface (TPMS) scaffolds fabricated by selective laser melting

Selective laser melting is a promising additive manufacturing technology for manufacturing porous metallic bone scaffolds. Bone repair requires scaffolds that meet various mechanical and biological requirements. This paper addresses this challenge by comprehensively studying the performance of porous scaffolds. The main novelty is exploring scaffolds with different porosities, verifying various aspects of their performance and revealing the effect of their permeability on cell growth. This study evaluates the manufacturability, mechanical behaviour, permeability and biocompatibility of gyroid scaffolds. In simulations, mechanical behaviour and permeability exhibited up to 56% and 73% accuracy, respectively, compared to the experimental data. The compression and permeability experiments showed that the elastic modulus and the permeability of the scaffolds were both in the range of human bones. The morphological experiment showed that manufacturing accuracy increased with greater designed porosity, while the in vitro experiments revealed that permeability played the main role in cell proliferation. The significance of this work is improving the understanding of the effect of design parameters on the mechanical properties, permeability and cell growth of the scaffolds, which will enable the design of porous bone scaffolds with better bone-repair effects

Mapping of nighttime light trends and refugee population changes in Ukraine during the Russian–Ukrainian War

The nighttime lights accurately and coherently depict how humans live. This study uses nighttime light measurements to quantify changes in nighttime lighting and refugee population in Ukraine before and after the war. We combined the Theil–Sen estimator with the M-K test to explore the trends of nighttime light. In addition, we constructed a linear model using nighttime light data and a portion of the UNHCR refugee data. Our results reveal that 1 week after the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the nighttime light area and the average nighttime light DN value in Ukraine exhibited a steep decline of about 50 percent. Our findings showed taht refugee population changes calculated through models and nighttime light data were mostly consistent with UNHCR data. We thought that the nighttime light data might be used directly to dynamically estimate changes in the refugee movement throughout the war. Nighttime light changes has significant implications for international humanitarian assistance and post-war reconstruction

Prevention of Wogonin on Colorectal Cancer Tumorigenesis by Regulating p53 Nuclear Translocation

The tumor suppressor protein p53 plays an important role in the development and progression of colon cancer, and the subcellular organelle localization directly affects its function. Wogonin (5,7-dihydroxy-8-methoxyflavone), a mono-flavonoid extracted from root of Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi, possesses acceptable toxicity and has been used in colorectal cancer (CRC) chemoprevention in pre-clinical trials by oncologist. However, the underlying anti-colon cancer mechanisms of wogonin are not yet fully understood. In the present study, the effect of wogonin on the initiation and development of colitis-associated cancer through p53 nuclear translocation was explored. AOM-DSS CRC animal model and human CRC HCT-116 cell model were used to evaluate the in vivo and in vitro anti-colon cancer action of wogonin. We observed that wogonin showed a dramaticlly preventive effect on colon cancer. Our results showed that wogonin caused apoptotic cell death in human CRC HCT-116 cell through increased endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress. Meanwhile, excessive ER stress facilitated the cytoplasmic localization of p53 through increasing phosphor-p53 at S315 and S376 sites, induced caspase-dependent apoptosis and inhibited autophagy. Furthermore, we verified the chemoprevention effect and toxicity of wogonin in vivo by utilizing an AOM-DSS colon cancer animal model. We found that wogonin not only reduced tumor multiplicity, preserved colon length to normal (6.79 ± 0.34 to 7.41 ± 0.56, P < 0.05) but also didn’t induce side effects on various organs. In conclusion, these results explain the anti-tumor effect of wogonin in CRC and suggest wogonin as a potential therapeutic candidate for the therapeutic strategy in CRC treatment