EGTA, a calcium chelator, affects cell cycle and increases DNA methylation in root tips of Triticum aestivum L.

In this study, when germinated Triticum aestivum L. seeds were treated with 0, 2, 4 and 6 mM ethyl glycol tetraacetic acid (EGTA), root growth was suppressed and the mitotic index decreased. These inhibitory effects were positively correlated with EGTA concentration. RT-PCR analysis revealed that the expression of several gene markers related to the G1/S transition of the cell cycle were significantly downregulated. Confocal microscopy of Fluo-3/AM-stained roots showed chelation of nearly all of the Ca2+ within the root meristematic regions. Both random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and coupled restriction enzyme digestion-random amplification (CRED-RA) techniques showed significant increases in the levels of genomic DNA polymorphisms and degree of DNA methylation. The study provides information concerning the impact of Ca2+ chelator, EGTA, on the growth, expression of cell cycle transition marker genes, and changes in DNA structure and methylation in the wheat roots

Anti-diabetic effect of the polyphenol-rich extract from Tadehagi triquetrum in diabetic mice

Purpose: To clarify the diabetes-reducing abilities of the polyphenol-rich extract from Tadehagi triquetrum (HC) in diabetic ob/ob mice.Methods: Aerial parts of T. triquetrum were extracted under reflux and partitioned by n-butanol to generate HC. The effects of HC consumption on blood glucose and lipids, insulin resistance, and liver glucose metabolism were evaluated in vivo. The main compounds of HC were tested for their effects on stimulating glucose consumption and uptake by HepG2 hepatocytes and C2C12 myotubes.Results: After HC treatment, body fat, subcutaneous fat, and epidydimal fat masses decreased (p <0.05), while mean daily food intake was  unaffected. HC (200–400 mg/kg) decreased fasting blood glucose, glycosylated serum protein (GSP), and glycosylated hemoglobin (HbAlc); it also lowered hyperinsulinemia, improved oral glucose tolerance, and reduced hyperlipidemia and liver fat content (p < 0.05). HC treatment markedly elevated liver glycogen content and activity of hepatic glucokinase and pyruvate kinase (p < 0.05). Eight polyphenols were isolated from HC, six of which potently stimulated glucose consumption and uptake in vivo.Conclusion: HC has potent antidiabetic activities. Polyphenols are the main compounds accounting for these effects. Chronic oral administration of HC may be an alternative therapy for managing diabetes, but this has to be subjected first to clinical studies. Keywords: Tadehagi triquetrum, Diabetes, Phenylpropanoid glucosides, Pyruvate kinase, Glucokinas

Atrial Fibrillation Beat Identification Using the Combination of Modified Frequency Slice Wavelet Transform and Convolution Neural Networks

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a serious cardiovascular disease with the phenomenon of beating irregularly. It is the major cause of variety of heart diseases, such as myocardial infarction. Automatic AF beat detection is still a challenging task which needs further exploration. A new framework, which combines modified frequency slice wavelet transform (MFSWT) and convolutional neural networks (CNNs), was proposed for automatic AF beat identification. MFSWT was used to transform 1-s electrocardiogram (ECG) segments to time-frequency images, then the images were fed into a 12-layer CNN for feature extraction and AF/non-AF beat classification. The results on the MIT-BIH Atrial Fibrillation database showed that a mean accuracy (Acc) of 81.07% from 5-fold cross validation is achieved for the test data. The corresponding sensitivity (Se), specificity (Sp) and the area under ROC curve (AUC) results are 74.96%, 86.41% and 0.88. When excluding an extreme poor signal quality ECG recording in the test data, a mean Acc of 84.85% is achieved, with the corresponding Se, Sp and AUC values of 79.05%, 89.99% and 0.92. This study indicates that it is possible to accurately identify AF or non-AF ECGs from a short-term signal episode

Experimental Study on Non-Darcian Flow in Phyllite Bimrocks With the Orientation of Blocks

Phyllite bimrocks are widely distributed in the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau, and it is the main geomaterial for landslides, slopes, dam basement and subgrades in this area. However, the flow behavior of phyllite bimrocks is unknown, especially the flow behavior of phyllite bimrocks with the orientation of blocks. This paper reports the coupling characteristics of flow and orientation of blocks in phyllite bimrocks. The flow behavior of phyllite bimrocks with different block percentages and block sizes was studied by a series of permeability experiments. A large-scale permeability apparatus was designed, and specimens with varying percentages of block and block sizes were produced by the same dip angle of blocks and compaction degree. Based on the Reynolds number analysis, it was found that the flow in phyllite bimrocks becomes laminar to turbulent under lower hydraulic gradient, and the flow behavior of phyllite bimrocks does not obey Darcy’s law. Furthermore, the Forchheimer equation is better at analyzing the flow behavior of phyllite bimrocks compared with Izbash equation. In addition, based on the coefficients a in the Forchheimer equation, the hydraulic conductivity of phyllite bimrocks can be calculated. The calculation result shows that when the percentage of blocks is 25%, the hydraulic conductivity reaches the minimum. Besides, the hydraulic conductivity increases approximately linear with the block size increase. On the basis of previous studies, coefficients A and B of the Forchheimer equation are detected by the normalized objective function analysis. The results would provide a valuable reference for risk assessment and prevention of phyllite bimrock slope

Diurnal Variations in Neural Activity of Healthy Human Brain Decoded with Resting-State Blood Oxygen Level Dependent fMRI

It remains an ongoing investigation about how the neural activity alters with the diurnal rhythms in human brain. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (RS-fMRI) reflects spontaneous activities and/or the endogenous neurophysiological process of the human brain. In the present study, we applied the ReHo (regional homogeneity) and ALFF (amplitude of low frequency fluctuation) based on RS-fMRI to explore the regional differences in the spontaneous cerebral activities throughout the entire brain between the morning and evening sessions within a 24-h time cycle. Wide spread brain areas were found to exhibit diurnal variations, which may be attributed to the internal molecular systems regulated by clock genes, and the environmental factors including light-dark cycle, daily activities and homeostatic sleep drive. Notably, the diurnal variation of default mode network (DMN) suggests that there is an adaptation or compensation response within the subregions of DMN, implying a balance or a decoupling of regulation between these regions.National Natural Science Foundation of China [81371359]; National Basic Research Program of China [2015CB755500]; Basic Research Program of Shenzhen [JCYJ20160429191938883]SCI(E)[email protected]

Dual Defense: Adversarial, Traceable, and Invisible Robust Watermarking against Face Swapping

The malicious applications of deep forgery, represented by face swapping, have introduced security threats such as misinformation dissemination and identity fraud. While some research has proposed the use of robust watermarking methods to trace the copyright of facial images for post-event traceability, these methods cannot effectively prevent the generation of forgeries at the source and curb their dissemination. To address this problem, we propose a novel comprehensive active defense mechanism that combines traceability and adversariality, called Dual Defense. Dual Defense invisibly embeds a single robust watermark within the target face to actively respond to sudden cases of malicious face swapping. It disrupts the output of the face swapping model while maintaining the integrity of watermark information throughout the entire dissemination process. This allows for watermark extraction at any stage of image tracking for traceability. Specifically, we introduce a watermark embedding network based on original-domain feature impersonation attack. This network learns robust adversarial features of target facial images and embeds watermarks, seeking a well-balanced trade-off between watermark invisibility, adversariality, and traceability through perceptual adversarial encoding strategies. Extensive experiments demonstrate that Dual Defense achieves optimal overall defense success rates and exhibits promising universality in anti-face swapping tasks and dataset generalization ability. It maintains impressive adversariality and traceability in both original and robust settings, surpassing current forgery defense methods that possess only one of these capabilities, including CMUA-Watermark, Anti-Forgery, FakeTagger, or PGD methods