Modified Natural Polymer Materials for Paper Protection

Natural polymer materials, such as cellulose, chitosan, starch, are compatible with paper fiber , which can be used for paper reinforcement. However, due to the poor performance of aging, flexibility, adhesion, it needs to be modified. The progress of the modification of some natural materials in paper artifacts protection is introduced.Research and application of some natural materials in paper artifacts protection is summarized. And the development prospects of paper artifacts protection are also discussed

Research progress on water-soluble chitosan

Chitosan has good film-forming property, adsorption, biocompatibility, biodegradability and antimicrobial properties, but it can only be dissolved in weak acidic aqueous solution and cannot be directly dissolved in water, which greatly limits its application. In order to increase its solubility in water, chitosan is modified, the research on the water-soluble derivatives of chitosan is reviewed in this paper, and its application in the protection of paper relics is briefly introduced. Chitin is a kind of natural polysaccharide macromolecular polymer synthesized by biology in animals and plants, which mainly comes from shrimp shelsl, crab shells, insect shells and so on. Chitosan (CS) is obtained by deacetylation of chitin. The chitin is deacetylated under homogeneous conditions, and water-soluble product can be obtained by controlling the degree of deacetylation at about 50% [1]. The primary hydroxyl group, secondary hydroxyl group and amino group on the glucosamine unit in the chitosan molecular chain, with strong reactivity, which can be modified and embellished by functionalization to improve its solubility

Antidiabetic activity of isoquercetin in diabetic KK -Ay mice

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Tartary buckwheat bran is an important natural source of quercetin and isoquercetin. Quercetin and isoquercetin are both powerful α-glucosidase inhibitors. Although the IC₅₀of isoquercetin as α-glucosidase inhibitor was much higher than that of quercetin, the bioavailability of isoquercetin was higher than that of quercetin. Hence, we are interested in the antidiabetic effect of isoquercetin in diabetic KK -A^ymice.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The hypoglycemic effect of isoquercetin in a type 2 diabetic animal model (KK-A^ymice) was studied. Isoquercetin was administrated at doses of 50, 100 and 200 mg/kg for 35 days.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>It was found that fasting blood glucose concentration was decreased with the 200 mg/kg group (<it>p </it>< 0.01) the most efficient compared with the diabetic control group. In addition, there was significant decrease in plasma C-peptide, triglyceride, total cholesterol and blood urea nitrogen levels after 35 days. Meanwhile, glucose tolerance was improved, and the immunoreactive of pancreatic islets β-cells was promoted.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These results suggest that isoquercetin had a regulative role in blood glucose level and lipids, and improved the function of pancreatic islets. Isoquercetin may be useful in the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus.</p

Comparative Proteomic Analysis of Panax ginseng C. A. Meyer × Panax quinquefolius L. Leaves and Parental Lines

Heterosis refers to the superior performance of heterozygous F1 hybrid plants with respect to those of their genetically distinct parents. Despite its wide use in crops, heterosis is seldom applied in the Panax genus, and its molecular basis remains unclear. Thus, this study is aimed to obtain hybrid F1s and identify the proteins associated with heterosis. Hybrid F1 plants and parental inbred lines were obtained using the embryo rescue technique, and the proteomes of their leaves were analyzed using two‐dimensional gel electrophoresis. A total of 236 differentially expressed proteins were found, among which 84 nonadditive proteins indicated a heterosis pattern in the hybrid. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analysis revealed that photosynthesis, carbohydrate metabolism, and protein and amino acid synthesis were the most abundant classes of nonadditive proteins. Of the proteins in these categories, 10, 6, and 4 proteins, respectively, showed above high parent expression in the hybrid leaves. These results imply that the increment in photosynthetic capacity, carbohydrate decomposition, and nitrogen fixation might be related to the heterosis of the hybrid biomass and ginsenoside production in the hybrid leaves. This study could provide a basis for hybrid breeding of the Panax genus

Multi-decadal trends in global terrestrial evapotranspiration and its components

Evapotranspiration (ET) is the process by which liquid water becomes water vapor and energetically this accounts for much of incoming solar radiation. If this ET did not occur temperatures would be higher, so understanding ET trends is crucial to predict future temperatures. Recent studies have reported prolonged declines in ET in recent decades, although these declines may relate to climate variability. Here, we used a well-validated diagnostic model to estimate daily ET during 1981–2012, and its three components: transpiration from vegetation (Et), direct evaporation from the soil (Es) and vaporization of intercepted rainfall from vegetation (Ei). During this period, ET over land has increased significantly (p < 0.01), caused by increases in Et and Ei, which are partially counteracted by Es decreasing. These contrasting trends are primarily driven by increases in vegetation leaf area index, dominated by greening. The overall increase in Et over land is about twofold of the decrease in Es. These opposing trends are not simulated by most Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) models, and highlight the importance of realistically representing vegetation changes in earth system models for predicting future changes in the energy and water cycle

Fault Troubleshooting Using Bayesian Network and Multicriteria Decision Analysis

Fault troubleshooting aims to diagnose and repair faults at the highest efficacy and a minimum cost. The efficacy depends on multiple criteria like fault probability, cost, time, and risk of a repair action. This paper proposes a novel fault troubleshooting approach by combining Bayesian network with multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA). Automobile engine start-up failure is used as a case study. Bayesian network is employed to establish fault diagnostic model for reasoning and calculating standard values of uncertain criteria like fault probability. MCDA is adopted to integrate the influence of the four criteria and calculate utility value of the actions in each troubleshooting step. The approach enables a cost-saving, high efficient, and low risky troubleshooting

Multimodal transformer augmented fusion for speech emotion recognition

Speech emotion recognition is challenging due to the subjectivity and ambiguity of emotion. In recent years, multimodal methods for speech emotion recognition have achieved promising results. However, due to the heterogeneity of data from different modalities, effectively integrating different modal information remains a difficulty and breakthrough point of the research. Moreover, in view of the limitations of feature-level fusion and decision-level fusion methods, capturing fine-grained modal interactions has often been neglected in previous studies. We propose a method named multimodal transformer augmented fusion that uses a hybrid fusion strategy, combing feature-level fusion and model-level fusion methods, to perform fine-grained information interaction within and between modalities. A Model-fusion module composed of three Cross-Transformer Encoders is proposed to generate multimodal emotional representation for modal guidance and information fusion. Specifically, the multimodal features obtained by feature-level fusion and text features are used to enhance speech features. Our proposed method outperforms existing state-of-the-art approaches on the IEMOCAP and MELD dataset

Gut Microbiota Is a Major Contributor to Adiposity in Pigs

Different breeds of pigs vary greatly in their propensity for adiposity. Gut microbiota is known to play an important role in modulating host physiology including fat metabolism. However, the relative contribution of gut microbiota to lipogenic characteristics of pigs remains elusive. In this study, we transplanted fecal microbiota of adult Jinhua and Landrace pigs, two breeds of pigs with distinct lipogenic phenotypes, to antibiotic-treated mice. Our results indicated that, 4 weeks after fecal transplantation, the mice receiving Jinhua pigs’ “obese” microbiota (JM) exhibited a different intestinal bacterial community structure from those receiving Landrace pigs’ “lean” microbiota (LM). Notably, an elevated ratio of Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes and a significant diminishment of Akkermansia were observed in JM mice relative to LM mice. Importantly, mouse recipients resembled their respective porcine donors in many of the lipogenic characteristics. Similar to Jinhua pig donors, JM mice had elevated lipid and triglyceride levels and the lipoprotein lipase activity in the liver. Enhanced expression of multiple key lipogenic genes and reduced angiopoietin-like 4 (Angptl4) mRNA expression were also observed in JM mice, relative to those in LM mice. These results collectively suggested that gut microbiota of Jinhua pigs is more capable of enhancing lipogenesis than that of Landrace pigs. Transferability of the lipogenic phenotype across species further indicated that gut microbiota plays a major role in contributing to adiposity in pigs. Manipulation of intestinal microbiota will, therefore, have a profound impact on altering host metabolism and adipogenesis, with an important implication in the treatment of human overweight and obesity