Differential roles of salicylic acid, seed transmission and plant colonization in greenhouse and field conditions

Oilseed rape (Brassica napus) is the second most important source of vegetable plant oil. Products from oilseed rape are nowadays used as edible oil for humans, as meal for animal feeding and as biodiesel for industry. With the growing demands, the global oilseed rape production is rapidly increasing since the last 40 years. Due to the intensive production of oilseed rape, several biotic and abiotic stresses threaten the growth and productivity of this crop. Among the economically important diseases, Verticillium longisporum, a soil-borne vascular pathogen causing ‘Verticillium stem striping’ on oilseed rape, has become a potential threat in major oilseed rape production areas. This Brassicaceae host-specific pathogen leads to abnormal foliar chlorosis, reduction of plant height under greenhouse conditions, and unilateral stem striping in the field. It has been estimated to cause 10% to 50% of yield losses in the field. No registered fungicide is available on the market to control this pathogen. In spite of intensive research on V. longisporum in the last decades, some basic knowledge on epidemiology, seed transmission and resistance mechanisms are still lacking. Therefore, the present study has focused on exploring the time course of infection and disease development in the field including the potential of seed transmission. Besides, the role of salicylic acid (SA) in resistance of oilseed rape to V. longisporum was investigated. Furthermore, tests to identify oilseed rape genotypes and accessions with enhanced resistance to V. longisporum were conducted. The present study revealed that the colonization patterns of V. longisporum are different in winter and spring oilseed rape. Besides, soil temperature had a positive correlation to the root colonization of the fungus. Seeds obtained from diseased plants under greenhouse condition had an incidence of V. longisporum infestation ranging from 0.08% to 13.3% in in vitro tests, among which the highest level of seed transmission incidence was recorded for the susceptible cultivar Falcon. However, none of seeds harvested from diseased field-grown winter oilseed rape have been affected by V. longisporum. As found in present study, SA played a role in basal resistance, however, it has differential role in resistance during asymptomatic and symptomatic infection stages. A faster increase of SA was observed in the resistant cultivar at 7 dpi, which allowed poorer growth of V. longisporum in the hypocotyl, indicating that elevated SA is important for disease defense in the asymptomatic phase of colonization. At later stages of infection at 14 and 21 dpi (symptomatic stages), the increased SA levels were similar in the susceptible and resistant cultivar. However, a remarkable increase in the levels of several phenolic acids was observed in resistance cultivar but not in susceptible cultivar. These results indicated that SA and phenolic acid synthesis are important in cultivar-related resistance during asymptomatic and symptomatic stages of infection, respectively. last but not least, the present study has also found large variation of responses to infection with V. longisporum occurred among the screened accessions of B. napus

Prospects of CKM elements ∣Vcs∣|V_{cs}| and decay constant fDs+f_{D_{s}^+} in Ds+→μ+νμD_s^+\to\mu^+\nu_\mu decay at STCF

We report a feasibility study of pure leptonic decay $D_s^+\to\mu^+\nu_\mu$ by using a fast simulation software package at STCF. With an expected luminosity of $1~\mathrm{ab}^{-1}$ collected at STCF at a center-of-mass energy of 4.009 GeV, the statistical sensitivity of the branching fraction is determined to be 0.3\%. Combining this result with the $c\rightarrow s$ quark mixing matrix element $|V_{cs}|$ determined from the current global Standard Model fit, the statistical sensitivity of $D_s^+$ decay constant, $f_{D_s^+}$, is estimated to be 0.2\%. Alternatively, combining the current results of $f_{D_s^+}$ calculated by lattice QCD, the statistical sensitivity of $|V_{cs}|$ is determined to be 0.2\%, which helps probe possible new physics beyond. The unprecedented precision to be achieved at STCF will provide a precise calibration of QCD and rigorous test of Standard Model.Comment: 8pages, 7 figure

Research on Safety Lane Change Warning Method Based on Potential Angle Collision Point

In order to ensure safe lane change and avoid traffic accidents, an effective lane change assist system is required. In a lane change assist system, it is very important to obtain the following elements in time, such as actual distance between vehicles, minimum safety distance, and warning signal. To this end, this paper analyzed four kinds of lane change angle collision scenes. Initial position, initial velocity, acceleration, heading angle, and kinematics of vehicles were used to calculate the position of potential angle collision points between lane change vehicle and obstacle vehicles. Then, actual distance model was constructed based on potential angular collision points. The minimum safety distance model was also established under the two most unfavorable conditions. In order to achieve the lane change warning, three early warning rules were formulated. We verified the validity of models and early warning rules using vehicle driving video data of Interstate 80 in California. Models and early warning rules constructed in our research can be applied to the advanced active safety systems of vehicle, such as vehicle lane change assist system and active collision early warning system, which can improve the active safety and reduce traffic accidents. Document type: Articl

Mechanistic insight into how multidrug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii response regulator AdeR recognizes an intercistronic region

AdeR-AdeS is a two-component regulatory system, which controls expression of the adeABC efflux pump involved in Acinetobacter baumannii multidrug resistance. AdeR is a response regulator consisting of an N-terminal receiver domain and a C-terminal DNA-binding-domain. AdeR binds to a direct-repeat DNA in the intercistronic region between adeR and adeABC. We demonstrate a markedly high affinity binding between unphosphorylated AdeR and DNA with a dissociation constant of 20 nM. In addition, we provide a 2.75 angstrom crystal structure of AdeR DNA-binding-domain complexed with the intercistronic DNA. This structure shows that the alpha 3 and beta hairpin formed by beta 5-beta 6 interacts with the major and minor groove of the DNA, which in turn leads to the introduction of a bend. The AdeR receiver domain structure revealed a dimerization motif mediated by a gearwheel-like structure involving the D108F109-R122 motif through cation pi stack interaction. The structure of AdeR receiver domain bound with magnesium indicated a conserved Glu19Asp20-Asp63 magnesium-binding motif, and revealed that the potential phosphorylation site Asp63(OD1) forms a hydrogen bond with Lys112. We thus dissected the mechanism of how AdeR recognizes the intercistronic DNA, which leads to a diverse mode of response regulation. Unlocking the AdeRS mechanism provides ways to circumvent A. baumannii antibiotic resistance

Real-world efficacy and safety of pyrotinib in patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer: A prospective real-world study

Background: Pyrotinib, a novel irreversible EGFR/HER2 dual tyrosine kinase inhibitor, shows encouraging anticancer activity and acceptable tolerability in multiple phase II and phase III randomized clinical trials, but the real-world data of pyrotinib, especially the outcomes in HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, have been rarely reported. Here, we evaluated the treatment outcomes of pyrotinib in real-world practice in patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer (MBC).Methods: This was a prospective, real-world, observational cohort study. Through the Breast Cancer Information Management System, HER-2 positive MBC patients treated with pyrotinib between 2017/06 and 2020/09 were included. Provider-reported objective response rate, progression-free survival (PFS), and overall survival (OS) were considered in the assessment of treatment outcomes. Tumor responses to pyrotinib treatment were calculated using RECIST 1.1. Adverse events were evaluated using clinical records.Results: The trial involved 113 individuals who were receiving pyrotinib treatment, with an average age of 51 years. Complete response, partial response and stable disease were observed in 9 (8.0%), 66 (58.4%), and 17 (15.0%) patients, respectively, while progressive disease was recorded in 20 (17.7%) patients. After a median follow-up of 17.2 months, the median PFS was 14.1. The most common adverse events of any grade were diarrhea (87.6%), vomiting (31.9%), and palmar-plantar erythrodysesthesia (26.6%). Among the patients with brain metastases, the median PFS and OS were 15.2 and 19.8 months, respectively. In addition, pyrotinib has similar efficacy in various subtypes of HER2-positive MBC patients, as shown by the lack of a significant difference of PFS and OS among pyrotinib-treated patients with or without brain metastases, or patients using pyrotinib as first-line, second-line, third-line or beyond therapies.Conclusion: Our real-world results demonstrated equivalent clinical efficacy in HER-2 positive MBC patients compared to phase II and phase III clinical trials with pyrotinib, and promising outcomes in patients with brain metastases

Hepatitis B virus infections and risk factors among the general population in Anhui Province, China: an epidemiological study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Hepatitis B is one of the most common infectious diseases in China. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) among the general population and the risk factors associated with HBV infection in Anhui province, China.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A provincial serosurvey was conducted in four cities, and selected through stratified clustering sampling. Data on demographics, immunization history, medical history, family medical history, and life history were collected, along with serum tested for HBsAg. Completed surveys were analysed from 8,875 participants.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Overall prevalence of HBsAg was 7.44%. Using multivariate analysis, older age was a risk factor for HBsAg infection among children younger than 15 years. Among adults 15-59 years old, the risk factors were male gender, a history of surgical operations, at least one HBsAg-positive family member, and non-vaccination. For adults older than 59 years, the risk factor was a blood transfusion history.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Though Anhui province has already reached the national goal of reducing HBsAg prevalence to less than 1% among children younger than 5 years, there are still several risk factors for HBsAg infection among the older population. Immunization programs should continue to focus on adults, and interventions should be taken to reduce risk factors associated with being infected with Hepatitis B.</p

OWL: A Large Language Model for IT Operations

With the rapid development of IT operations, it has become increasingly crucial to efficiently manage and analyze large volumes of data for practical applications. The techniques of Natural Language Processing (NLP) have shown remarkable capabilities for various tasks, including named entity recognition, machine translation and dialogue systems. Recently, Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved significant improvements across various NLP downstream tasks. However, there is a lack of specialized LLMs for IT operations. In this paper, we introduce the OWL, a large language model trained on our collected OWL-Instruct dataset with a wide range of IT-related information, where the mixture-of-adapter strategy is proposed to improve the parameter-efficient tuning across different domains or tasks. Furthermore, we evaluate the performance of our OWL on the OWL-Bench established by us and open IT-related benchmarks. OWL demonstrates superior performance results on IT tasks, which outperforms existing models by significant margins. Moreover, we hope that the findings of our work will provide more insights to revolutionize the techniques of IT operations with specialized LLMs.Comment: 31 page

One Case of Autopsy Pathological Analysis of Acute Pancreatitis Combined with Hemorrhage in Pericardial Cavity

Senile male, physically ft at usual, he died suddenly without any clinical symptoms. By autopsy dissection, it was found that large amount of bleeding was presented in pericardial cavity, the abdominal cavity and thoracic cavity had a small amount of hemorrhage, partial pancrea tissue had coagulation necrosis accompanied with infltration of neutrophile granulocyte and degeneration and necrosis of liver cell accompanied with acute or chronic inflammation cell infltration. Laboratory examination of the patient when he was alive suggested that liver function and coagulation function had obstacles, there was not any timely clinical process, and he died suddenly. Autopsy examination results suggested that acute pancreatitis caused a large quantity of bleeding in pericardial cavity, which led to cardiac tamponade and it cause acute circulation failure, which initiated cardiac arrest and then death. Coronary heart disease may exert certain facilitation effect in the death process. Patients with pancreatitis, especially the senile and pancreatitis patients with coronary artery disease, should be evaluated and prevented ahead of schedule, for those patients who had coma suddenly, it should be thought that it had possibility of combining with hemorrhage in the interior of pericardial cavity, the patient's doctor should try his or her best to reduce death rate