Effects of Norepinephrine and Acetylcholine on the Development of Cultured Leydig Cells in Mice

Few data have suggested how norepinephrine (NE) and acetylcholine (Ach) regulate the development of Leydig cells in mice at prepuberty, except for data indicating endocrine effects. The present study aims to elucidate the roles of NE and Ach on the differentiation and proliferation of Leydig cells. Firstly, the expression of adrenergic receptors and muscarinic acetylcholine receptors in Leydig cells was investigated. It was found that adrenergic receptors (β1AR, β2AR, and α1D) and muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (M1 and M3) mRNA are expressed in adult Leydig cells. Then, the effects of NE and Ach on the differentiation and proliferation of Leydig cells were analyzed. The results showed that NE and Ach at 10 μM significantly increased the number of 3β-hydroxysteroid-dehydrogenase-(3β-HSD-) positive Leydig cells and improved the expression of proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) in Leydig cells on postnatal day (PD) 15 (P < 0.05). NE and Ach at 10 μM had no impact on the expression of PCNA mRNA (P > 0.05), but reduced the expression of 3β-HSD mRNA in adult Leydig cells and a murine Leydig tumor cell line (MLTC-1) (P < 0.05). Therefore, a conclusion may be reached that NE and Ach participated in stimulating the development of Leydig cells in mice from prepuberty to adult stage

Supplementation of Crataegi fructus alleviates functional dyspepsia and restores gut microbiota in mice

IntroductionFunctional dyspepsia (FD), also known as non-ulcerative dyspepsia, is a common digestive system disorder.MethodsIn this study, an FD model was established using hunger and satiety disorders combined with an intraperitoneal injection of L-arginine. Indices used to evaluate the efficacy of hawthorn in FD mice include small intestinal propulsion rate, gastric residual rate, general condition, food intake, amount of drinking water, gastric histopathological examination, and serum nitric oxide (NO) and gastrin levels. Based on the intestinal flora and their metabolites, short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), the mechanism of action of Crataegi Fructus (hawthorn) on FD was studied. The fecal microbiota transplantation test was used to verify whether hawthorn altered the structure of the intestinal flora.ResultsThe results showed that hawthorn improved FD by significantly reducing the gastric residual rate, increasing the intestinal propulsion rate, the intake of food and drinking water, and the levels of gastrointestinal hormones. Simultaneously, hawthorn elevated substance P and 5-hydroxytryptamine expression in the duodenum, reduced serum NO levels, and increased vasoactive intestinal peptide expression in the duodenum. Notably, hawthorn increased the abundance of beneficial bacteria and SCFA-producing bacteria in the intestines of FD mice, decreased the abundance of conditional pathogenic bacteria, and significantly increased the SCFA content in feces.DiscussionThe mechanism by which hawthorn improves FD may be related to the regulation of intestinal flora structure and the production of SCFAs

A Deep Learning-Based Satellite Target Recognition Method Using Radar Data

A novel satellite target recognition method based on radar data partition and deep learning techniques is proposed in this paper. For the radar satellite recognition task, orbital altitude is introduced as a distinct and accessible feature to divide radar data. On this basis, we design a new distance metric for HRRPs called normalized angular distance divided by correlation coefficient (NADDCC), and a hierarchical clustering method based on this distance metric is applied to segment the radar observation angular domain. Using the above technology, the radar data partition is completed and multiple HRRP data clusters are obtained. To further mine the essential features in HRRPs, a GRU-SVM model is designed and firstly applied for radar HRRP target recognition. It consists of a multi-layer GRU neural network as a deep feature extractor and linear SVM as a classifier. By training, GRU neural network successfully extracts effective and highly distinguishable features of HRRPs, and feature visualization technology shows its advantages. Furthermore, the performance testing and comparison experiments also demonstrate that GRU neural network possesses better comprehensive performance for HRRP target recognition than LSTM neural network and conventional RNN, and the recognition performance of our method is almost better than that of other several common feature extraction methods or no data partition

Detection and Molecular Characterization of Enteric Viruses in Poultry Flocks in Hebei Province, China

Enteric viruses, as a potential pathogen, have been found to be vital causes of economic losses in poultry industry worldwide. The enteric viruses widely studied to date mainly include avian nephritis virus (ANV), avian reovirus (ARe), chicken astrovirus (CAstV), chicken parvovirus (ChPV), fowl adenovirus group I (FAdV-1), infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), and avian rotavirus (ARoV). This paper aimed to identify single and multiple infections of the seven enteric viruses using the data obtained from positive 145 enteric virus samples in poultry flocks from different areas in Hebei Province, throughout the period from 2019 to 2021. Next, the correlation between bird age and clinical signs was investigated using PCR and RT-PCR techniques. Furthermore, the whole genomes of seven parvovirus strains and open reading frame 2 (ORF2) of six CAstV strains and eight ANV strains were sequenced for phylogenetic analysis and recombination analysis, to characterize the viruses and evaluate species correlation and geographic patterns. A total of 11 profiles of virus combinations were detected; 191 viruses were detected in 145 samples; 106 single infections were reported in 73.1% of the samples; and multiple infections were detected in the remaining 26.9%. For viruses, 69% of ChPV was correlated with single infection, while ANV (61.4%) and CAstV (56.1%) were correlated with multiple infections. However, IBV and ARe were not detected in any of the samples. Recombination events were reported in parvovirus, and all CAstV sequences investigated in this paper were included within genotype Bii. The eight ANV strains pertained to different subtypes with significant differences. The above results revealed for the first time the complexity of enteric viruses over the past several years, thus contributing to disease prevention and control in the future

Effect of stress relaxation on soft magnetic properties of Fe

Stress relief can improve the soft magnetic properties of Fe-based metallic glasses (MGs) and is vital for industrial applications. In this work, we investigated the evolution of soft magnetic properties, relaxation dynamics, and mechanical properties of Fe-based MGs under different applied tensile strains and stress relaxation times. We found that stress relaxation can significantly reduce coercivity Hc by 95% compared with as-quenched state. Furthermore, the coercivity Hc, apparent activation volume Vact and time constant tr all show analogous two-stage variation with annealing time, accompanied by approximate crossovers. This suggests that the microstructure change emerges, further verified by the domain wall motion and the transition from elastic to plastic. These results are helpful in preparing Fe-based MGs with excellent soft magnetic and mechanical properties by controlling the stress relaxation condition

KDM6B Elicits Cell Apoptosis by Promoting Nuclear Translocation of FOXO1 in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Background/Aims: Non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) is the most common type of lung cancer and the cause of most cancer-related deaths. The molecular mechanisms that are involved in NSCLC development are currently not well understood. Accumulating evidence shows that histone demethylases play important roles in the regulation of pathological developmental processes in many diseases, including various types of cancers. Methods: Mitochondrial membrane potential assays, migration and invasion assays, caspase-3 and caspase-9 activity assays and western blot analysis were used in this research. Results: We found that overexpression of KDM6B, a demethylase that acts on histone H3 at lysine 27 (H3K27), inhibited cell growth by initiating mitochondria-dependent apoptosis and by attenuating the invasion-metastasis cascade in NSCLC cells. Moreover, our results showed that KDM6B directly interacted with FOXO1 and that overexpression of KDM6B promoted nuclear accumulation of FOXO1. The effects of KDM6B on cell apoptosis and metastasis were weakened by knockdown of FOXO1 expression. On the contrary, knocking down expression of KDM6B inhibited cell apoptosis and promoted cell growth by mitigating the nuclear translocation of FOXO1 in NSCLC cells. Conclusions: These findings suggest that KDM6B may act in a pro-apoptotic role in NSCLC by causing the nuclear translocation of FOXO1

Hunting the Correlation between Fe₅C₂ Surfaces and Their Activities on CO: The Descriptor of Bond Valence

To hunt the correlation between the surfaces of Fe₅C₂ and their corresponding activities, the CO adsorption and dissociation on a series of both low ((010), (001), (110), (111), (111̅)) and high Miller index surfaces of Fe₅C₂((221), (4̅11), and (510)) surfaces are systemically investigated. For the CO adsorption, configurations with bonding to surface Fe sites are much stronger than that on C sites. For the CO dissociation, direct C–O cleavage can take place on the (221), (510), (010), and (111̅) surfaces due to the low activation energy. More importantly, to correlate the surface character and the activity of CO dissociation we proposed a concept of sum bond valence. It is found that the adsorbed CO with more bond valence can dissociate easier, and a linear relationship between the activation energies and the CO bond valence can be established. It can be inferred that the activity of Fe₅C₂ surfaces for CO dissociation strongly relies on the binding characteristics. The relatively stable (100) and (111) surfaces are not active for direct CO dissociation. In this work, the CO bond valence is suggested to be an important descriptor to correlate complicated surfaces and their activities. Furthermore, such a finding can guide the rational design of catalysts with desired activities

Strain-driven Kovacs-like memory effect in glasses

Abstract Studying complex relaxation behaviors is of critical importance for understanding the nature of glasses. Here we report a Kovacs-like memory effect in glasses, manifested by non-monotonic stress relaxation during two-step high-to-low strains stimulations. During the stress relaxation process, if the strain jumps from a higher state to a lower state, the stress does not continue to decrease, but increases first and then decreases. The memory effect becomes stronger when the atomic motions become highly collective with a large activation energy, e.g. the strain in the first stage is larger, the temperature is higher, and the stimulation is longer. The physical origin of the stress memory effect is studied based on the relaxation kinetics and the in-situ synchrotron X-ray experiments. The stress memory effect is probably a universal phenomenon in different types of glasses