Gut microbiota and acylcarnitine metabolites connect the beneficial association between estrogen and lipid metabolism disorders in ovariectomized mice

Decreased estrogen level is one of the main causes of lipid metabolism disorders and coronary heart disease in women after menopause. Exogenous estradiol benzoate is effective to some extent in alleviating lipid metabolism disorders caused by estrogen deficiency. However, the role of gut microbes in the regulation process is not yet appreciated. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of estradiol benzoate supplementation on lipid metabolism, gut microbiota, and metabolites in ovariectomized (OVX) mice and to reveal the importance of gut microbes and metabolites in the regulation of lipid metabolism disorders. This study found that high doses of estradiol benzoate supplementation effectively attenuated fat accumulation in OVX mice. There was a significant increase in the expression of genes enriched in hepatic cholesterol metabolism and a concomitant decrease in the expression of genes enriched in unsaturated fatty acid metabolism pathways. Further screening of the gut for characteristic metabolites associated with improved lipid metabolism revealed that estradiol benzoate supplementation influenced major subsets of acylcarnitine metabolites. Ovariectomy significantly increased the abundance of characteristic microbes that are significantly negatively associated with acylcarnitine synthesis, such as Lactobacillus and Eubacterium ruminantium group bacteria, while estradiol benzoate supplementation significantly increased the abundance of characteristic microbes that are significantly positively associated with acylcarnitine synthesis, such as Ileibacterium and Bifidobacterium spp. The use of pseudosterile mice with gut microbial deficiency greatly facilitated the synthesis of acylcarnitine due to estradiol benzoate supplementation and also alleviated lipid metabolism disorders to a greater extent in OVX mice. IMPORTANCE Our findings establish a role for gut microbes in the progression of estrogen deficiency-induced lipid metabolism disorders and reveal key target bacteria that may have the potential to regulate acylcarnitine synthesis. These findings suggest a possible route for the use of microbes or acylcarnitine to regulate disorders of lipid metabolism induced by estrogen deficiency

Early Triassic microbialites from the Changxing Region of Zhejiang Province, South China

© 2019, The Author(s). Microbialites, often considered as a signal of extreme marine environment, are common in the Lower Triassic strata of South China where they flourished in the aftermath of the end-Permian mass extinction. Early Triassic microbialite facies are known to vary palaeogeographically, perhaps due to differing climates, ocean chemistry, and water depths. This paper provides the first record of a brief, but spectacular development of microbialites in the aftermath of the end-Permian mass extinction at Panjiazhuang section, Changxing Region of Zhejiang Province (eastern South China). Here, the Upper Permian Changxing Formation comprises typical shallow platform facies rich in calcareous algae and foraminifera, the development of which was terminated by the major end-Permian regression. A 3.4-m-thick microbialite began to form at the onset of the transgression in the earliest Triassic. The microbialite at Panjiazhuang section is composed of thrombolite that contains abundant calcified cyanobacteria, small gastropods, microconchid tubes and ostracods, representing a low-diversity shallow marine community in the aftermath of the end-Permian crisis. The microbialites are succeeded by thin-bedded micrites bearing thin-shelled bivalves, which record a rapid sea-level rise in the Early Triassic. Abundant populations of small pyrite framboids are observed in the upper part of the microbialites and the overlying thin-bedded micrites, suggesting that dysoxic water conditions developed at that time. The appearance of microbialites near the Permian–Triassic boundary (PTB) at Panjiazhuang section was the result of peculiar marine conditions following the end-Permian regression, whilst their disappearance was due to the increasing water depth and the development of dysoxia

Japanese Bombing in Beibei Chongqing and the Response of Soldiers and Civilians in Beibei During the Anti-Japanese War

During the Anti-Japanese War, Beibei was an important political, economic and cultural rear area. In 1940, the Japanese troops bombed Beibei four times, bringing heavy disaster to the local people. In order to reduce casualties and property losses to the minimum, Beibei set up a special protection mechanism, built a large number of air defense facilities, while paid attention to the expansion of public education, organized air defense relief, and actively responded to the Japanese bombing

Effects of Chitosan on Body Weight Gain, Growth Hormone and Intestinal Morphology in Weaned Pigs

The study was conducted to determine the effects of chitosan on the concentrations of GH and IGF-I in serum and small intestinal morphological structure of piglets, in order to evaluate the regulating action of chitosan on weaned pig growth through endocrine and intestinal morphological approaches. A total of 180 weaned pigs (35 d of age; 11.56±1.61 kg of body weight) were selected and assigned randomly to 5 dietary treatments, including 1 basal diet (control) and 4 diets with chitosan supplementation (100, 500, 1,000 and 2,000 mg/kg, respectively). Each treatment contained six replicate pens with six pigs per pen. The experiment lasted for 28 d. The results showed that the average body weight gain (BWG) of pigs was improved quadratically by dietary chitosan during the former 14 d and the later 14 d after weaned (p<0.05). Furthermore, dietary supplementation of chitosan tended to quadratically increase the concentration of serum GH on d 14 (p = 0.082) and 28 (p = 0.087). Diets supplemented with increasing levels of chitosan increased quadratically the villus height of jejunum and ileum on d 14 (p = 0.089, p<0.01) and 28 (p = 0.074, p<0.01), meanwhile, chitosan increased quadratically the ratio of villus height to crypt depth in duodenum, jejunum and ileum on d 14 (p<0.05, p = 0.055, p<0.01) and 28 (p<0.01, p<0.01, p<0.01), however, it decreased quadratically crypt depth in ileum on d 14 (p<0.05) and that in duodenum, jejunum and ileum on d 28 (p<0.01, p<0.05, p<0.05). In conclusion, these results indicated that chitosan could quadratically improve growth in weaned pigs, and the underlying mechanism may due to the increase of the serum GH concentration and improvement of the small intestines morphological structure

Specters of the subaltern : a critique of representations of rural women in contemporary China

China has speeded up modernization since the reform and open-door policy was introduced in 1978. After accession to the World Trade Organization in 1999, China has been further incorporated into the global track. The national policy of economic development requires a continuing exploitation of natural resources and intensive labor from the rural sector, and over the last few decades, there has been a ceaseless wave of rural women going to the cities and working mainly as assembly-line workers, domestic helpers and sex workers. Developing a subaltern and feminist perspective, this thesis examines representations of rural women in academic research and literary works, as well as in films, documentaries, TV dramas, photography and popular magazines. The thesis attempts to outline and invoke a spectral figure of the subaltern as the rural woman demonstrably haunting dominant regimes of representations of modernization. In the prevailing mentality of development, a mega-city is portrayed as the ultimate destination; meanwhile, the rural is depicted as residual and as a repository of the past. There is a system of negative equivalences attached to the rural, which is always positioned as the unspoken, invisible or stereotyped other of overwhelming cosmopolitan values. The thesis reviews how urban intellectuals represent rural women in the contemporary cosmopolitan settings. Drawing on Gayatri Spivak’s discussion of the two kinds of representation—proxy and portrait—the thesis aims to read how urban intellectuals speak for as well as draw a portrait of rural women. The thesis also tries to read against the grain of the texts to trace the irreducible figure of the rural woman. As the readings will demonstrate, there are contradictions, paradoxes and ambivalences in narrating and portraying rural women as actors of modernization, victims of industrialization, agents of proletarian struggle, consumers purchasing commodities, and as the residual from agrarian society. From such incongruities within the texts, one can posit the figure of the rural woman as a symbol of resistance to the predominant discourse of modernization. This is not necessarily to suggest a nostalgic return to the past, that is, to the statist industrialization of Mao Zedong’s period and the patriarchal tradition; or an orthodox ruralism that everyone should go back to ancient society; or a romanticization of the primitive. Rather, this figure operates like Stuart Hall’s concept of “black”, referring to a way of referencing the widespread experience of marginalization in contemporary China, and an organizing category of a new politics of resistance among different groups. This research not only negotiates but also re-adjusts the notion of urban superiority by exploring the spectral figure of the rural woman. Gendering the rural vision means not only making a difference from the present capitalist and patriarchal values and practices, but also taking the excluded majority into serious consideration. It is hoped that this exercise, in the end, will help us to imagine a communal society in which we can recognize the practice of care of others as care of the self

Urine biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease: A new opportunity for wastewater-based epidemiology?

While Alzheimer's disease (AD) diagnosis, management, and care have become priorities for healthcare providers and researcher's worldwide due to rapid population aging, epidemiologic surveillance efforts are currently limited by costly, invasive diagnostic procedures, particularly in low to middle income countries (LMIC). In recent years, wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has emerged as a promising tool for public health assessment through detection and quantification of specific biomarkers in wastewater, but applications for non-infectious diseases such as AD remain limited. This early review seeks to summarize AD-related biomarkers and urine and other peripheral biofluids and discuss their potential integration to WBE platforms to guide the first prospective efforts in the field. Promising results have been reported in clinical settings, indicating the potential of amyloid β, tau, neural thread protein, long non-coding RNAs, oxidative stress markers and other dysregulated metabolites for AD diagnosis, but questions regarding their concentration and stability in wastewater and the correlation between clinical levels and sewage circulation must be addressed in future studies before comprehensive WBE systems can be developed.The authors would like to thank the Bioproduction Systems and MARTEC lab from Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico. The authors appreciate the support of Tecnologico de Monterrey for granting access to literature services and the scholarship awarded to Mónica T. Núñez-Soto (Student ID A00827926). CONACYT is thankfully acknowledged for the scholarships awarded to the authors Arnoldo Armenta-Castro (CVU: 1275527) and partially supporting this work under Sistema Nacional de Investigadores program awarded to Alberto Aguayo-Acosta (CVU: 403948), Mariel A. Oyervides-Muñoz (CVU: 422778), Juan Eduardo Sosa-Hernández (CVU: 375202) and Roberto Parra-Saldívar (CVU: 35753). Figures Created with BioRender.com.Peer reviewe

Structural and surface degradation of PVDF nanocomposite material

Cílem bakalářské práce je sledování strukturních a povrchových změn polyvinyliden fluoridových nanokompozitních materiálů (PVDF) s nanoplnivy na bázi vermikulit (V), oxid zinečnatý (ZnO) a chlorhexidin (CH). Teoretická část bakalářské práce je řešena formou literární rešerše na téma PVDF, nanokompozitní materiály, degrabilita a biodegrabilita polymerních nanokompozitních materiálů. V rámci experimentální části práce byly připraveny PVDF nanokompozitní filmy metodou ex-situ které byly podrobeny UV-, bio- a ultrazvukové degradaci. PVDF nanokompozitní materiály byly charakterizovány pomocí optické mikroskopie (OM), rentgenové difrakční analýzy (RTG), skenovací elektronové mikroskopie (SEM), infračervené spektroskopie s Furierovou transformací (FTIR), diferenční skenovací kalorimetrie (DSC) a termogravimetrické analýzy (TGA).This work deals with characterisation of structural and surface changes of the polyvinylidene fluoride nanocomposites (PVDF) with nanofillers based on vermiculite (V), zinc oxide (ZnO) and chlorhexidine (CH). Theoretical part is based on the literature review on the theme of PVDF, nanocomposite materials, degrability and biodegrability of polymer nanocomposite materials. In the experimental part were prepared PVDF nanocomposite films by the ex-situ method, which were characterized by optical microscopy, X-ray diffraction analysis (RTG), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA).9360 - Centrum nanotechnologiívýborn