Mecanismos fisiológicos y bioquímicos comparativos de tolerancia a la sequía en tres cultivares contrastantes de quinua (Chenopodium quinoa)

Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) is a halophytic, pseudocereal crop, which has a richer nutritional value than other major cereals and is highly resistant to multiple abiotic stresses. In this study, the germination characteristics, morphological, physiological and biochemical changes of three contrasting quinoa cultivars under drought stress were compared. The results indicated that ‘Chaidamuhong’ and ‘Gongzha No.3’ showed stronger drought tolerance than ‘Qingli No.1’. This was mainly manifest in seed germination index, activity of antioxidant enzymes, cell membrane damage and morphological changes. We speculate that the increase in the activity of many antioxidant enzymes and the lower stomatal density make ‘Chaidamuhong’ and ‘Gongzha No.3’ superior in release of reactive oxygen species and water retention than ‘Qingli No.1’, thus reducing the degree of cell damage, and improving drought resistance.La quinua (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) es un cultivo de pseudocereal halófilo, que tiene un valor nutricional más rico que el de otros cereales importantes y es altamente resistente a múltiples estreses abióticos. En este estudio, se compararon características de germinación, cambios morfológicos, fisiológicos y bioquímicos de tres cultivares de contrastantes quinua bajo estrés por sequía. Los resultados indicaron que ‘Chaidamuhong’ y ‘Gongzha No.3’ mostraron una mayor tolerancia a la sequía que ‘Qingli No.1’. Esto se manifestó principalmente en el índice de germinación de las semillas, la actividad de las enzimas antioxidantes, el daño de la membrana celular y los cambios morfológicos. Especulamos que el aumento en la actividad de muchas enzimas antioxidantes y la menor densidad estomática hacen que ‘Chaidamuhong’ y ‘Gongzha No.3’ sean superiores en la liberación de especies reactivas de oxígeno y la retención de agua que ‘Qingli No.1’, reduciendo así el grado de daño celular y mejorando la resistencia a la sequía

Secrecy sum rate maximization in non-orthogonal multiple access

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been recognized as a promising technique for providing high data rates in 5G systems. This letter is to study physical layer security in a single-input single-output (SISO) NOMA system consisting of a transmitter, multiple legitimate users and an eavesdropper. The aim of this letter is to maximize the secrecy sum rate (SSR) of the NOMA system subject to the users' quality of service (QoS) requirements. We firstly identify the feasible region of the transmit power for satisfying all users' QoS requirements. Then we derive the closed-form expression of an optimal power allocation policy that maximizes the SSR. Numerical results are provided to show a significant SSR improvement by NOMA compared with conventional orthogonal multiple access (OMA)

Secure Short-Packet Communications for Mission-Critical IoT Applications

In pervasive Internet of Things (IoT) applications, the use of short packets is expected to meet the stringent latency requirement in ultra-reliable low-latency communications; however, the incurred security issues and the impact of finite blocklength coding on the physical-layer security have not been well understood. This paper comprehensively investigates the performance of secure short-packet communications in a mission-critical IoT system with an external multi-antenna eavesdropper. An analytical framework is proposed to approximate the average achievable secrecy throughput of the system with finite blocklength coding. To gain more insight, a simple case with a single-antenna access point (AP) is considered first, in which the secrecy throughput is approximated in a closed form. Based on that result, the optimal blocklengths to maximize the secrecy throughput with and without the reliability and latency constraints, respectively, are derived. For the case with a multi-antenna AP, following the proposed analytical framework, closed-form approximations for the secrecy throughput are obtained under both beamforming and artificial-noise-aided transmission schemes. Numerical results verify the accuracy of the proposed approximations and illustrate the impact of the system parameters on the tradeoff between transmission latency and reliability under the secrecy constraint.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

Effects of acute ammonia exposure and post-exposure recovery on nonspecific immunity in Clam Cyclina sinensis

This study aimed to assess the toxicity of ammonia on clam Cyclina sinensis and the post-exposure recovery. With increased exposure to TAN, the alkaline phosphatase (AKP) activities after exposure showed a trend of growing initially and subsequently decreasing, whereas the AKP activities after post-exposure recovery showed an increasing trend. The AKP activities after post-exposure recovery were significantly higher than those in control. The acid phosphatase (ACP) activities in T1 and T2 after post-exposure recovery were higher than those in the control, whereas the ACP activities in T3, T4, and T5 after post-exposure recovery were significantly higher than those in the control. The lysozyme (LZM) activities in T1 and T2 after exposure were significantly higher than those in control, whereas the LZM activities in T3, T4, and T5 after exposure were significantly lower than those in the control. Overall, ACP and LZM in the clams exposed to a low level of TAN (≤ 40 mg/L) can recover to the normal levels completely. However, a 48h recovery period scarcely seems adequate to compensate for AKP, ACP, and LZM activities in the clams exposed to a high level of TAN (> 40 mg/L)

Differentiation of Glial Cells From hiPSCs: Potential Applications in Neurological Diseases and Cell Replacement Therapy.

Glial cells are the most abundant cell type in the central nervous system (CNS) and play essential roles in maintaining brain homeostasis, forming myelin, and providing support and protection for neurons, etc. Over the past decade, significant progress has been made in the reprogramming field. Given the limited accessibility of human glial cells, in vitro differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) into glia may provide not only a valuable research tool for a better understanding of the functions of glia in the CNS but also a potential cellular source for clinical therapeutic purposes. In this review, we will summarize up-to-date novel strategies for the committed differentiation into the three major glial cell types, i.e., astrocyte, oligodendrocyte, and microglia, from hiPSCs, focusing on the non-neuronal cell effects on the pathology of some representative neurological diseases. Furthermore, the application of hiPSC-derived glial cells in neurological disease modeling will be discussed, so as to gain further insights into the development of new therapeutic targets for treatment of neurological disorders

A Full Wave Conductor Modeling Using Augmented Electric Field Integral Equation

A numerical full wave solver is proposed to solve conductor problems in electromagnetics. This method is an extension of the dielectric augmented electric field integral equation (D-AEFIE). Using this method, conductors, from lowly lossy to highly lossy, can be rigorously modeled to capture the conductive losses. Broadband stability can be achieved, thanks to the introduction of the augmentation technique. This paper demonstrates the formulation of this method. A simple and effective preconditioner is introduced to accelerate the convergence. A novel integration scheme is adopted to accurately capture the losses inside the conductor. Finally some numerical examples are shown to support the capability of this method to solve real-world circuit problems

Achieving mainstream nitrogen removal via the nitrite pathway from real municipal wastewater using intermittent ultrasonic treatment

Achieving mainstream nitrogen removal via the nitrite pathway (NH → NO → N) is highly beneficial for energy neutral/positive wastewater treatment. Our previous batch assays revealed that ultrasonic treatment can suppress nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB) while enhancing the activity of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB). Based on this concept, this study investigated the feasibility of applying ultrasonication to achieve the nitrite pathway in mainstream wastewater treatment. Two lab-scale sequencing batch reactors were set-up in parallel and fed with real municipal wastewater. With 100% of the sludge treated every 12 h at a treatment energy input of 0.066 kJ per mg mixed liquor suspended solids, the nitrite pathway was rapidly (within two weeks) established in the experimental reactor with stable effluent nitrite accumulation ratio (NO /(NO + NO )) of above 80% and significantly decreased NOB population. In comparison, the control reactor always possessed the conventional nitrification and denitrification pathway. Economic analysis indicated that energy consumption is too high for practical applications. However, this technology may be used in conjunction with other technologies, whereby this ultrasonic treatment can be used infrequently (e.g. once every few months) when the nitrite pathway becomes unstable

A cable insulation defect classification method based on CNN-transformer

Cable insulation defect detection ensures electrical safety, prevents accidents, extends equipment life and guarantees stable system operation. For the traditional cable insulation defect detection and identification of difficult problems, this paper proposes the use of ultrasonic cable insulation defect detection and combined with the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-transformer model of cable insulation defect classification method. Firstly, the ultrasonic probe is used to obtain different cable insulation defect signals, and then the CNN-transformer model is used to classify different cable insulation defects. The CNN is used to initially extract the characteristics of the cable insulation defects from the input signals, and then the multi-attention mechanism in the time series Transformer is used to extract the transient local and periodic global characteristics of the cable insulation defect signals. The deeper transient local features and periodic global features of the cable insulation defect signal are extracted by the multi-attention mechanism in the time series Transformer; finally, the recognition results are outputted by the fully connected layer and softmax classifier. The results show that ultrasonic reflection and transmission phenomena occur at the defects, and different defects can be accurately reflected by the defect echo time and amplitude, and the accuracy of cable insulation defect recognition using the CNN-transformer model reaches 100%, with good generalization ability

No association of the insulin gene VNTR polymorphism with polycystic ovary syndrome in a Han Chinese population

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a common endocrine disorder associated with an increased risk of type II diabetes mellitus. The results of previous research about the association of the VNTR polymorphism in 5-prime flanking region of the insulin (INS) gene with PCOS have been inconsistent. The present study was to investigate the association of the INS-VNTR polymorphism with PCOS in a Han Chinese population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The -23/HphI polymorphism as a surrogate marker of the INS-VNTR length polymorphism was genotyped by polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) in 216 PCOS patients and 192 non-PCOS women as a control group. Allelic and genotypic frequencies were compared between patients and controls, and these results were analyzed in respect to clinical test data.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>No significant differences were observed between the cases and controls groups either in allele (P = 0.996) or genotype (P = 0.802) frequencies of INS-VNTR polymorphism; Regarding anthropometric data and hormone levels, there were no significant differences between INS-VNTR genotypes in the PCOS group, as well as in the non-PCOS group.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The present study demonstrated for the first time that the INS-VNTR polymorphism is not a key risk factor for sporadic PCOS in the Han Chinese women. Further studies are needed to give a global view of this polymorphism in pathogenesis of PCOS in a large-scale sample, family-based association design or well-defined subgroups of PCOS.</p