Macleaya cordata isoquinoline alkaloids attenuate Escherichia coli lipopolysaccharide-induced intestinal epithelium injury in broiler chickens by co-regulating the TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB and Nrf2 signaling pathways

This study sought to explore the effects and potential mechanisms of dietary supplementation with isoquinoline alkaloids (IA) from Macleaya cordata to alleviate lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced intestinal epithelium injury in broilers. A total of 486 1-day-old broilers were assigned at random to a control (CON) group, LPS group, and LPS+IA group in a 21-d study. The CON and LPS groups received a basal diet, while the LPS+IA group received a basal diet supplemented with 0.6 mg/kg IA. At 17, 19, and 21 days of age, the LPS and LPS+BP groups were injected intraperitoneally with LPS, and the CON group was intraperitoneally injected equivalent amount of saline solution. The results manifested that LPS injection caused intestinal inflammation and lipid peroxidation, disrupted intestinal barrier and function, and increased the abundance of harmful microorganisms. However, dietary IA supplementation alleviated LPS-induced adverse changes in intestinal morphology, apoptosis, mucosal barrier integrity, cecum microorganisms, and homeostasis disorder by decreasing inflammatory cytokines and enhancing antioxidant-related genes expressions; inhibited LPS-induced increases in TLR4 and NF-κB expressions and decreases in Nrf2 and GPX1 genes expressions. Our findings indicated that Macleaya cordata IA addition attenuated LPS-induced intestinal epithelium injury and disorder of intestinal homeostasis by enhancing the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant capacity of broiler chickens possibly via co-regulating TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB and Nrf2 signaling pathways

A Study on the retweeting behaviour of marketing microblogs with high retweets in Sina Weibo

This research studies marketing microblogs with high retweets in Sina Weibo. The content features of marketing microblogs, the structural and temporal characteristics of retweet networks, the major features of retweeters, the incentive mechanisms for retweeting, and the influential retweeters are investigated. A microblog dataset including 19,889 microblogs from 20 enterprise accounts and a retweet network dataset including 207,649 retweets and 113,755 retweeters are analysed. This analysis shows that the marketing microblogs with high retweets are normally the results of some incentive mechanisms, high percentage of their retweets are retweeted from the original microblog directly, the frequencies of retweets vary over the activity periods, incentive mechanisms can significantly affect the behaviour of retweeters, and influential retweeters have significant impact on arousing subsequent retweets. These results could be utilized by enterprises for improving their marketing activities.8 page(s

A Hybrid feature selection method for predicting user influence on Twitter

This paper proposes a hybrid feature selection method for predicting user influence on Twitter. A set of candidate features from Twitter is identified based on the five attributes of influencers defined in sociology. Firstly, less relevant features are filtered out with a featureweighting algorithm. Then the Sequential Backward Floating Selection is utilized as the search strategy. A Back Propagation Neural Network is employed to evaluate the feature subset at each step of searching. Finally, an optimal feature set is obtained for predicting user influence with a high degree of accuracy. Experimental results are provided based on a real world Twitter dataset including seven million tweets associated with 200 popular users. The proposed method can provide a set of features that could be used as a solid foundation for studying complicated user influence evaluation and prediction.15 page(s

Exogenous ABA Enhances the Antioxidant Defense System of Maize by Regulating the AsA-GSH Cycle under Drought Stress

When drought occurs during the maize-filling period, the probability of yield decline increases. Abscisic acid (ABA) plays a regulatory role in physiological and metabolic activities during plant development. However, its effect on the antioxidant system of maize leaves during the grain-filling stage is unclear. Maize plants (Zhengdan958) were used as an experimental material, and ABA was sprayed on the leaves during the grain-filling stage. The plants were placed under drought conditions to analyze the relationship between the ascorbate-glutathione (AsA-GSH) cycle and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) removal. Exogenous ABA significantly reduced the malondialdehyde content, relative electrolyte leakage, and H2O2 under drought stress. This is similar to the exogenous ABA effect on the AsA-GSH cycle. Exogenous ABA upregulated the transcription of related genes and alleviated the inhibition of drought stress on the monodehydroascorbate reductase and dehydroascorbate reductase activities, thereby further increasing the ascorbate peroxidase and glutathione reductase activities. It contributed to an increase in the AsA and GSH levels and inhibited the decrease in the AsA/dehydroascorbic acid and GSH/oxidized glutathione ratios. Therefore, exogenous ABA plays an important role in improving the antioxidant capacity and drought resistance physiology of maize by enhancing antioxidant enzyme activity and stabilizing the AsA and GSH redox state

Regulation of Maize Kernel Carbohydrate Metabolism by Abscisic Acid Applied at the Grain-Filling Stage at Low Soil Water Potential

A water deficit during the grain-filling stage increases the frequency of yield loss in maize (Zea mays L.). Abscisic acid (ABA) plays a regulatory role in many stages of plant growth; however, its effects on sucrose-metabolizing enzyme activities under stress are poorly understood. The activities of cell-wall-bound acid invertase, vacuolar invertase, cytoplasmic invertase, and sucrose synthase decreased continuously under drought stress, whereas ABA treatment partially restored these activities. In addition, the increase and development of sucrose content under drought stress were related to invertase activity. Up-regulation of the activities and gene expression of cell-wall-bound acid invertase and vacuolar invertase with ABA treatment contributed to the increase in the number of rows and number of grains per row. Furthermore, ABA inhibited the increase in the length of the bald tip. Compared with the control group, water stress significantly reduced the yield index, with the lowest yield index on the 10th day of stress. These results suggest that the increase in ABA-induced sucrose-metabolizing enzyme activity might be an effective mechanism to improve maize drought resistance at the grain-filling stage

Multistate structures in a hydrogen-bonded polycatenation non-covalent organic framework with diverse resistive switching behaviors

Abstract The inherent structural flexibility and reversibility of non-covalent organic frameworks have enabled them to exhibit switchable multistate structures under external stimuli, providing great potential in the field of resistive switching (RS), but not well explored yet. Herein, we report the 0D+1D hydrogen-bonded polycatenation non-covalent organic framework (HOF-FJU-52), exhibiting diverse and reversible RS behaviors with the high performance. Triggered by the external stimulus of electrical field E at room temperature, HOF-FJU-52 has excellent resistive random-access memory (RRAM) behaviors, comparable to the state-of-the-art materials. When cooling down below 200 K, it was transferred to write-once-read-many-times memory (WORM) behaviors. The two memory behaviors exhibit reversibility on a single crystal device through the temperature changes. The RS mechanism of this non-covalent organic framework has been deciphered at the atomic level by the detailed single-crystal X-ray diffraction analyses, demonstrating that the structural dual-flexibility both in the asymmetric hydrogen bonded dimers within the 0D loops and in the infinite π–π stacking column between the loops and chains contribute to reversible structure transformations between multi-states and thus to its dual RS behaviors