EFFECTS OF HEAT STRESS ON INFLAMMATION, INTESTINAL INTEGRITY, MICROBIOTA, AND PRODUCTIVITY IN DAIRY CALVES

Two studies were conducted to evaluate the effects of heat stress on growth performance, inflammation, intestinal integrity and microbiota changes, furthermore dexamethasone was tested to alleviate heat stress in dairy calves. In study one, we hypothesized that cyclical heat stress for 7 days alters pro- and anti-inflammatory signals, gut microbiota community composition, and intestinal barrier in dairy calves. Heat stress had a section-specific impact on intestinal integrity. Jejunal mRNA expression of TJP1 and expression of heat shock transcription factor-1 decreased in heat stress calves. Heat stress decreased interleukin-1 alpha and tended to decrease interleukin-17A. Conversely, heat stress increased jejunal concentration of interleukin-36 receptor antagonist. Heat stress reduced concentrations of interleukin-6 in plasma. Alteration of the large intestine bacterial communities was characterized by increased butyrate-producing bacteria genus Butyrivibrio_3 in heat stress calves. In study two, we hypothesized that a modulation of the immune response improves nutrient metabolism, intestinal morphology, barrier function, and gut microbial community composition in Holstein bull calves exposed to cyclical heat stress for 5 days. Treatments (saline vs dexamethasone), environments (thermoneutral vs heat stress), and time (study day or hour) were included in the statistical analysis. Feed intake did not change but a treatment by environment interaction showed that dexamethasone increased average daily gain and feed efficiency in heat stress calves. A treatment by environment by time interaction on study day 1 showed that the post prandial plasma glucose concentration declined in thermoneutral but increased in heat stress calves treated with dexamethasone. A treatment by environment by study day interaction showed that white blood cells and neutrophil concentrations increased more in heat stress than in thermoneutral calves treated with dexamethasone on study day 1. A treatment by environment by study day interaction showed that blood lymphocyte concentration decreased in heat stress calves treated with dexamethasone on study day 1. Treatment by environment interaction showed that jejunal crypt depth was reduced in heat stress calves treated with dexamethasone only. A treatment by environment interaction showed that jejunal IL-6 concentration was increased in thermoneutral dexamethasone but reduced in heat stress dexamethasone calves. Collectively, heat stress triggered inflammation, intestinal barrier dysfunction, and jejunal microbial community imbalance and dexamethasone improved productivity, intestinal morphology and reduced the pro-inflammatory tone in dairy calves

Identification of Haloarchaea in Gypsum from Great Salt Lake

Gypsum (CaSO4·2H2O) is a common precipitate at Great Salt Lake (GSL). On Earth, gypsum is formed in hypersaline environments, in minerals left behind when water evaporates. In the Autumn, as the water cools, mineral precipitation is favored since solubility is lowered. In this process, newly formed gypsum will trap microorganisms in fluid and clay inclusions. This study is to cultivate haloarchaea preserved in gypsum, and identify the species using PCR technique

Land-use change simulation and assessment of driving factors in the loess hilly region - a case study as Pengyang County

The main objective of this study is to evaluate the land-use change and its relationship with its driving factors in the loess hilly region. In this study, a case study was carried out in Pengyang County. We set two land-use demand scenarios (a baseline scenario (scenario 1) and a real land-use requirement scenario (scenario 2)) during year 2001-2005 via assuming the effect of driving factors on land-use change keeps stable from 1993 to 2005. Two simulated land-use patterns of 2005 are therefore achieved accordingly by use of the conversion of land use and its effects model at small regional extent. Kappa analyses are conducted to compare each simulated land-use pattern with the reality. Results show that (1) the associated kappa values were decreased from 0.83 in 1993-2000 to 0.27 (in scenario 1) and 0.23 (in scenario 2) in 2001-2005 and (2) forest and grassland were the land-use types with highest commission errors, which implies that conversion of both the land-use types mentioned above is the main determinant of change of kappa values. Our study indicates the land-use change was driven by the synthetic multiply factors including natural and social-economic factors (e.g., slope, aspect, elevation, distance to road, soil types, and population dense) in 1993-2000 until "Grain for Green Project" was implemented and has become the dominant factor in 2001-2005

Design and Development of High-Performance Solid Electrolyte for All-Solid-State Lithium Ion Batteries

All SOlid-state Lithium Ion Batteries (ALSOLIBs) offering high energy density and power density are considered as one of the next generation electrochemical energy storage technologies. It is in urgent need to develop high-performance solid electrolytes (SEs), which is the key component of ALSOLIBs, satisfying the requirements in multiple categories of properties, including high ionic conductivity at ambient temperature, good chemical and electrochemical stability, and good mechanical durability. Among various type of SEs, sulfide and halide electrolytes show promising ionic conductivity and favorable synthesizability, which are beneficial for the ALSOLIBs fabrication. In this work, the structural factors such as polarizability of anions framework, anions disordering, Li ions sublattice have been tuned through various Li ionic conductor systems and their influences on ionic conductivity were systematically studied. We believe this work is beneficial to advance the mechanistic understanding of Li ion diffusion behavior in sulfide and halide SEs to pave the way towards high performance ALSOLIBs.Ph.D

AutoPET Challenge 2022: Step-by-Step Lesion Segmentation in Whole-body FDG-PET/CT

Automatic segmentation of tumor lesions is a critical initial processing step for quantitative PET/CT analysis. However, numerous tumor lesions with different shapes, sizes, and uptake intensity may be distributed in different anatomical contexts throughout the body, and there is also significant uptake in healthy organs. Therefore, building a systemic PET/CT tumor lesion segmentation model is a challenging task. In this paper, we propose a novel step-by-step 3D segmentation method to address this problem. We achieved Dice score of 0.92, false positive volume of 0.89 and false negative volume of 0.53 on preliminary test set.The code of our work is available on the following link: https://github.com/rightl/autopet.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2209.0121

Augmenting x-ray single particle imaging reconstruction with self-supervised machine learning

The development of X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs) has opened numerous opportunities to probe atomic structure and ultrafast dynamics of various materials. Single Particle Imaging (SPI) with XFELs enables the investigation of biological particles in their natural physiological states with unparalleled temporal resolution, while circumventing the need for cryogenic conditions or crystallization. However, reconstructing real-space structures from reciprocal-space x-ray diffraction data is highly challenging due to the absence of phase and orientation information, which is further complicated by weak scattering signals and considerable fluctuations in the number of photons per pulse. In this work, we present an end-to-end, self-supervised machine learning approach to recover particle orientations and estimate reciprocal space intensities from diffraction images only. Our method demonstrates great robustness under demanding experimental conditions with significantly enhanced reconstruction capabilities compared with conventional algorithms, and signifies a paradigm shift in SPI as currently practiced at XFELs