Moderating Effect of Mindfulness on the Relationships Between Perceived Stress and Mental Health Outcomes Among Chinese Intensive Care Nurses

This study aimed to explore the potential moderating effect of mindfulness and its facets on the relationships among perceived stress and mental health outcomes (burnout, depression, anxiety, and subjective well-being) among Chinese intensive care nurses. A total of 500 Chinese intensive care nurses completed self-report measures of mindfulness, burnout syndromes, perceived stress, depression, anxiety, and subjective well-being. Correlation and hierarchical multiple regressions were applied for data analysis. Mindfulness moderated the effects of perceived stress on emotional exhaustion (the core component of burnout syndrome), depression, anxiety, positive affect, and negative affect but not on the other two dimensions of burnout and life satisfaction. Further analyses indicated that the ability to act with awareness was particularly crucial in improving the effects of perceived stress on depression. These results further broaden our understanding of the relationships between perceived stress and burnout, depression, anxiety, and subjective well-being by demonstrating that mindfulness may serve as a protective factor that alleviates or eliminates the negative effects of perceived stress on depression, anxiety, burnout syndrome, and subjective well-being and may instigate further research into targeted mindfulness interventions for Chinese intensive care nurses

Incorporating pleiotropic quantitative trait loci in dissection of complex traits: seed yield in rapeseed as an example

© The Author(s) 2017 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, duplication, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.Most agronomic traits of interest for crop improvement (including seed yield) are highly complex quantitative traits controlled by numerous genetic loci, which brings challenges for comprehensively capturing associated markers/ genes. We propose that multiple trait interactions underlie complex traits such as seed yield, and that considering these component traits and their interactions can dissect individual quantitative trait loci (QTL) effects more effectively and improve yield predictions. Using a segregating rapeseed (Brassica napus) population, we analyzed a large set of trait data generated in 19 independent experiments to investigate correlations between seed yield and other complex traits, and further identified QTL in this population with a SNP-based genetic bin map. A total of 1904 consensus QTL accounting for 22 traits, including 80 QTL directly affecting seed yield, were anchored to the B. napus reference sequence. Through trait association analysis and QTL meta-analysis, we identified a total of 525 indivisible QTL that either directly or indirectly contributed to seed yield, of which 295 QTL were detected across multiple environments. A majority (81.5%) of the 525 QTL were pleiotropic. By considering associations between traits, we identified 25 yield-related QTL previously ignored due to contrasting genetic effects, as well as 31 QTL with minor complementary effects. Implementation of the 525 QTL in genomic prediction models improved seed yield prediction accuracy. Dissecting the genetic and phenotypic interrelationships underlying complex quantitative traits using this method will provide valuable insights for genomics-based crop improvement.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Fluorimetric analysis of paeonol in Chinese herbal medicine Cynanchi Paniculati Radix by aluminum ion-sensitized fluorescence

A novel fluorimetric method for determination of paeonol, an active component of Chinese herbal medicine, is proposed. The method is based on the reaction of paeonol with aluminum ion in pH 4.4 HAc-NaAc buffer to form a fluorescent Al(III)-paeonol complex. The maximum excitation wavelength and emission wavelength of the complex were 296 nm and 455 nm, respectively. The fluorescence quantum yield of the complex was determined to be 0.053 at an excitation wavelength of 296 nm. A linear calibration curve covered the concentration range 0.017–1.2 μg/mL. The method has been applied to the analysis of paeonol in medicinal crop Cynanchi Paniculati Radix (Xuchangqing), and the results demonstrated that this method can be used for quality evaluation of crude drug Xuchangqing

Structural Optimization of Heavy Haul Wagon Body Based on MPSO-BP Algorithm

Fatigue cracks usually occur at welded joints of heavy haul wagon body, in order to effectively curb the occurrence of such problems from the design stage, it is researched from structural design strategy to structural optimization method in this paper. Firstly, when analyzing the finite element simulation results, the new structural design strategy not only pays attention to the maximum stress which can reflect the stress concentration position, but also focuses on the stress distributions at the key welded joints. Secondly, in order to further reduce the stress at the key positions, the paper gives the optimization method which integrates orthogonal experimental design, BP network and MPSO algorithm. Finally, 80t gondola car body is optimized from the whole structure to the local area by the method. Meanwhile, it is also verified that the structural optimization method of heavy haul wagon body is reasonable and feasible.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author

Research on Stress Intensity Factor and Fatigue Crack Propagation Rate of General Purpose Gondola Car Body

In order to study the crack propagation characteristics of key parts of the general purpose gondola car body, according to the structural characteristics and crack statistics result of car body, the floor along the cross bear weld is taken as the research object. The stress intensity factors under different conditions of the floor are studied, which is based on linear elastic fracture mechanics and finite element analysis. Meanwhile, the crack propagation rates of the floor are studied by the Paris formula. The research results will provide a reference not only for the formulating maintenance procedures of general purpose gondola car body, but also for the safety and reliability assessment of wagon bodies.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author

GAN-GLS: Generative lyric steganography based on generative adversarial networks

Steganography based on generative adversarial networks (GANs) has become a hot topic among researchers. Due to GANs being unsuitable for text fields with discrete characteristics, researchers have proposed GAN-based steganography methods that are less dependent on text. In this paper, we propose a new method of generative lyrics steganography based on GANs, called GAN-GLS. The proposed method uses the GAN model and the large-scale lyrics corpus to construct and train a lyrics generator. In this method, the GAN uses a previously generated line of a lyric as the input sentence in order to generate the next line of the lyric. Using a strategy based on the penalty mechanism in training, the GAN model generates non-repetitive and diverse lyrics. The secret information is then processed according to the data characteristics of the generated lyrics in order to hide information. Unlike other text generation-based linguistic steganographic methods, our method changes the way that multiple generated candidate items are selected as the candidate groups in order to encode the conditional probability distribution. The experimental results demonstrate that our method can generate high-quality lyrics as stego-texts. Moreover, compared with other similar methods, the proposed method achieves good performance in terms of imperceptibility, embedding rate, effectiveness, extraction success rate and security

Urban Expansion Assessment Based on Optimal Granularity in the Huaihe River Basin of China

Determining the optimal granularity, which has often been ignored in the analysis of urban expansion and its landscape pattern, is the core problem in landscape ecology research. Here, we calculate the optimal granularities for differently sized cities in the Huaihe River Basin of China based on scale transformation and area loss evaluation. Accordingly, we construct a landscape index and urban land density function to analyze urban expansion and landscape pattern. The results can be summarized as follows. (1) Within the first scale domain of the landscape indices, the optimal granularities of Zhengzhou, Xuzhou, Yancheng, Xinyang, and Bozhou are 60 m, 50 m, 40 m, 40 m, and 40 m, respectively, which are the optimal units in the study of urban expansion. (2) The urban land density decreases from the urban center to the outskirts, the urban core of each city is more compact than the outskirts, and the land density curve parameter α of Zhengzhou is the largest at 4.693 and its urban core the most compact. (3) There are significant spatial and temporal differences in the urban land densities of differently sized cities. The urban land density functions of different cities are similar before 2000; after that, they are similar to the standard inverse S-shaped function and the land use density curve of large cities is closer to the standard inverse S-shaped function than that of small- and medium-sized cities. (4) Large cities have faster expansion, much larger land density curve parameter c than medium- and small-cities, stronger linkage development with surrounding areas, and a higher degree of urban centralization. Urban expansion compactness was influenced by urban locations and functions except for urban sizes. This study offers a method for identifying the optimal granularities for differently sized cities and also provides information for the decision-making efforts that concern the rapid urbanization in major grain-producing areas of China

A Review of the Material Characteristics, Antifreeze Mechanisms, and Applications of Cryoprotectants (CPAs)

Cryopreservation has been a key technology in medical science, food preservation, and many other fields. In a freezing process, the formation of ice crystals may cause significant damage to the frozen samples. In order to reduce the damage, many cryoprotectants (CPAs) have been developed and added in cryopreservation processes for reduced ice volume, decreased ice size, proper ice shaping, and cell protection. According to the material characteristics, the CPAs are either impermeable (i.e., antifreeze protein, polyampholytes, and polyvinyl alcohol) or permeable (i.e., dimethyl sulfoxide, proline, and glycerol) to cell membranes. The typical CPAs are introduced in this work with their material characteristics, antifreeze mechanisms, and applications. Antifreeze mechanisms for different CPAs involve molecular adsorption on the ice surface, hydrogen bonding to ice, bending the ice surface, lowering the freezing point, inhibiting ice recrystallization, protecting cell membranes, reducing dehydration of cells, and breaking hydrogen bonds among ice crystals to reduce the size of ice crystals. In practice, different CPAs can be used together with their cryopreservation properties functioning synergetically. This study reviews the recent applications of CPAs in food, biology and medicine, and agriculture. Future works for CPAs are suggested in improving efficiency, revealing mechanisms, broadening application, and finding new CPAs