Biomass burning is a worldwide phenomenon, which emits large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and strongly influences the environment. Burned area is an important parameter in modeling the impacts of biomass burning on the climate and ecosystem. The Medium Resolution Spectral Imager (MERSI) onboard FengYun-3C (FY-3C) has shown great potential for burned area mapping research, but there is still a lack of relevant studies and applications. This paper describes an automated burned area mapping algorithm that was developed using daily MERSI data. The algorithm employs time-series analysis and multi-temporal 1000-m resolution data to obtain seed pixels. To identify the burned pixels automatically, region growing and Support Vector Machine) methods have been used together with 250-m resolution data. The algorithm was tested by applying it in two experimental areas, and the accuracy of the results was evaluated by comparing them to reference burned area maps, which were interpreted manually using Landsat 8 OLI data and the MODIS MCD64A1 burned area product. The results demonstrated that the proposed algorithm was able to improve the burned area mapping accuracy at the two study sites. Full article

Research in the laboratory has shown that lyophilized black raspberries (BRB) significantly inhibit N-nitrosomethylbenzylamine (NMBA)-induced esophageal squamous cell carcinogenesis in rats. The objective of the present study is to characterize the underlying mechanism(s) of anti-cancer action of BRB in this preclinical animal model focusing on oxidative stress and its related oncogenic signaling pathways. Esophageal epithelial tissues were collected and assessed for markers of oxidative stress and nuclear factor κB (NFκB) and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK). BRB reduced the incidence of esophageal cancer from 100% in NMBA-treated rats to 81.5% in rats treated with NMBA plus BRB (p < 0.05). Tumor multiplicity was reduced from 4.73 ± 0.45 tumors per esophagus in NMBA-treated rats to 1.44 ± 0.26 in rats treated with NMBA plus BRB (p < 0.001). The data indicated that NMBA treatment increased production of hydrogen peroxide and lipid hydroperoxide, reduced expression and activity of glutathione peroxidase and superoxide dismutase 2, and activated NFκB/MAPK signaling in rat esophagus. The study’s results show that BRB reverses oxidative stress and suppresses NFκB/MAPK pathways, which could be the mechanisms for esophageal cancer chemopreventive action of BRB in rats. Full article

An actinomycete strain (H12-15) isolated from a sea sediment in a mangrove district was identified as Streptomyces antibioticus on the basis of 16S rDNA gene sequence analysis as well as the investigation of its morphological, physiological, and biochemical characteristics. Two novel benzamido nonacyclic dilactones, namely neoantimycins A (1) and B (2), together with the known antimycins A_1ab (3a,b), A_2a (4), and A₉ (5), were isolated from the culture broth of this strain. Compounds 1 and 2 are the first natural modified ATNs with an unusual benzamide unit. The structures of these new compounds, including their absolute configuration, were established on the basis of HRMS, NMR spectroscopic data, and quantum chemical ECD calculations. Their cytotoxicities against human breast adenocarcinoma cell line MCF-7, the human glioblastoma cell line SF-268, and the human lung cancer cell line NCI-H460 were also tested. All compounds exhibited mild cytotoxic activity. However, Compounds 1 and 2 showed no activity against C. albicans at the test concentration of 1 mg/mL via paper disc diffusion, while the known antimycins showed obvious antifungal activity. Full article

In this paper, the extraction of vanadium from stone coal by roasting with MgO and leaching with sulfuric acid has been investigated, and the mechanism analysis of stone coal roasting with MgO was studied. The results indicated that under the conditions that the mass fraction of the particles with grain size of 0–0.074 mm in raw ore was 75%, the roasting temperature was 500 °C, the roasting time was 1 h, MgO addition was 3 wt %, the sulfuric acid concentration was 20 vol %, the liquid-to-solid ratio was 1.5 mL/g, the leaching temperature was 95 °C, and leaching time was 2 h, resulting in a vanadium leaching efficiency of 86.63%, which increased by 7.73% compared with that of blank roasting. The mechanism analysis showed that the degree of calcite decomposition was low and, thus, magnesium vanadate was more easily formed than calcium vanadate below 500 °C. Moreover, magnesium vanadate was easier to dissolve than calcium vanadate during the sulfuric acid leaching process. Thus, the vanadium leaching efficiency was enhanced by using MgO as a roasting additive below 500 °C. Additionally, at high temperature the formation of tremolite would consume calcium oxide produced from the decomposition of calcite, thus, the formation of calcium vanadate was hindered, and V₂O₅ would react with MgO to form magnesium vanadate. Therefore, the vanadium leaching efficiency of roasting with MgO was higher than that of blank roasting at high temperature. Full article

An ultrasound (US) navigation system using global and local information is presented for transcatheter aortic stent deployment. The system avoids the use of contrast agents and radiation required in traditional fluoroscopically-guided procedures and helps surgeons precisely visualize the surgical site. To obtain a global 3D (three-dimensional) navigation map, we use magnetic resonance (MR) to provide a 3D context to enhance 2D (two-dimensional) US images through image registration. The US images are further processed to obtain the trajectory of interventional catheter. A high-resolution aortic model is constructed by using trajectory and segmented intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) images. The constructed model reflects morphological characteristics of the aorta to provide local navigation information. Our navigation system was validated using in vitro phantom of heart and aorta. The mean target registration error is 2.70 mm and the average tracking error of the multi-feature particle filter is 0.87 mm. These results confirm that key parts of our navigation system are effective. In the catheter intervention experiment, the vessel reconstruction error of local navigation is reduced by 80% compared to global navigation. Moreover, the targeting error of the navigation combining global and local information is reduced compared to global navigation alone (1.72 mm versus 2.87 mm). Thus, the US navigation system which integrates the large view of global navigation and high accuracy of local navigation can facilitate transcatheter stent deployment. Full article

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of four different fungal polysaccharides, named water-extracted mycelia polysaccharide (WPS), sodium hydroxide-extracted mycelia polysaccharide (SPS), hydrochloric-extracted mycelia polysaccharide (APS), and exo-polysaccharide (EPS) obtained from the endophytic Fusarium oxysporum Fat9 on the sprout growth, flavonoid accumulation, and antioxidant capacity of tartary buckwheat. Without visible changes in the appearance of the sprouts, the exogenous polysaccharide elicitors strongly stimulated sprout growth and flavonoid production, and the stimulation effect was closely related with the polysaccharide (PS) species and its treatment dosage. With application of 200 mg/L of EPS, 200 mg/L of APS, 150 mg/L of WPS, or 100 mg/L of SPS, the total rutin and quercetin yields of buckwheat sprouts were significantly increased to 41.70 mg/(100 sprouts), 41.52 mg/(100 sprouts), 35.88 mg/(100 sprouts), and 32.95 mg/(100 sprouts), respectively. This was about 1.11 to 1.40-fold compared to the control culture of 31.40 mg/(100 sprouts). Moreover, the antioxidant capacity of tartary buckwheat sprouts was also enhanced after treatment with the four PS elicitors. Furthermore, the present study revealed the polysaccharide elicitation that caused the accumulation of functional flavonoid by stimulating the phenylpropanoid pathway. The application of beneficial fungal polysaccharide elicitors may be an effective approach to improve the nutritional and functional characteristics of tartary buckwheat sprouts. Full article

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play important roles in nearly every aspect of biology, including physiological, biochemical, developmental and pathological processes. Therefore, a highly sensitive and accurate method of detection of miRNAs has great potential in research on theory and application, such as the clinical approach to medicine, animal and plant production, as well as stress response. Here, we report a strategic method to detect miRNAs from multicellular organisms, which mainly includes liquid hybridization and solid phase detection (LHSPD); it has been verified in various species and is much more sensitive than traditional biotin-labeled Northern blots. By using this strategy and chemiluminescent detection with digoxigenin (DIG)-labeled or biotin-labeled oligonucleotide probes, as low as 0.01–0.25 fmol [for DIG-CDP Star (disodium2-chloro-5-(4-methoxyspiro{1,2-dioxetane-3,2′-(5′-chloro)tricyclo[3.3.1.13,7]decan}-4-yl)phenyl phosphate) system], 0.005–0.1 fmol (for biotin-CDP Star system), or 0.05–0.5 fmol (for biotin-luminol system) of miRNA can be detected and one-base difference can be distinguished between miRNA sequences. Moreover, LHSPD performed very well in the quantitative analysis of miRNAs, and the whole process can be completed within about 9 h. The strategy of LHSPD provides an effective solution for rapid, accurate, and sensitive detection and quantitative analysis of miRNAs in plants and animals. Full article

Ginsenoside Rh2 is a potential pharmacologically active metabolite of ginseng. Previously, we have reported that an octyl ester derivative of ginsenoside Rh2 (Rh2-O), has been confirmed to possess higher bioavailability and anticancer effect than Rh2 in vitro. In order to better assess the possibility that Rh2-O could be used as an anticancer compound, the underlying mechanism was investigated in this study. The present results revealed that lysosomal destabilization was involved in the early stage of cell apoptosis in HepG2 cells induced by Rh2-O. Rh2-O could induce an early lysosomal membrane permeabilization with the release of lysosomal protease cathepsins to the cytosol in HepG2 cells. The Cat B inhibitor (leu) and Cat D inhibitor (pepA) inhibited Rh2-O-induced HepG2 apoptosis as well as tBid production and Δφm depolarization, indicating that lysosomal permeabilization occurred upstream of mitochondrial dysfunction. In addition, Rh2-O induced a significant increase in the protein levels of DRAM1 and Bax (p < 0.05) in lysosomes of HepG2 cells. Knockdown of Bax partially inhibited Rh2-O-induced Cat D release from lysosomes. Thus it was concluded that Rh2-O induced apoptosis of HepG2 cells through activation of the lysosomal-mitochondrial apoptotic pathway involving the translocation of Bax to the lysosome. Full article

As of late, polyphenols have increasingly interested the scientific community due to their proposed health benefits. Much of this attention has focused on their bioavailability. Polyphenol–gut microbiota interactions should be considered to understand their biological functions. The dichotomy between the biotransformation of polyphenols into their metabolites by gut microbiota and the modulation of gut microbiota composition by polyphenols contributes to positive health outcomes. Although there are many studies on the in vivo bioavailability of polyphenols, the mutual relationship between polyphenols and gut microbiota is not fully understood. This review focuses on the biotransformation of polyphenols by gut microbiota, modulation of gut microbiota by polyphenols, and the effects of these two-way mutual interactions on polyphenol bioavailability, and ultimately, human health. Full article

This paper proposes an approach to compute an EOH (edge-oriented histogram) descriptor with main orientation. EOH has a better matching ability than SIFT (scale-invariant feature transform) on multispectral images, but does not assign a main orientation to keypoints. Alternatively, it tends to assign the same main orientation to every keypoint, e.g., zero degrees. This limits EOH to matching keypoints between images of translation misalignment only. Observing this limitation, we propose assigning to keypoints the main orientation that is computed with PIIFD (partial intensity invariant feature descriptor). In the proposed method, SIFT keypoints are detected from images as the extrema of difference of Gaussians, and every keypoint is assigned to the main orientation computed with PIIFD. Then, EOH is computed for every keypoint with respect to its main orientation. In addition, an implementation variant is proposed for fast computation of the EOH descriptor. Experimental results show that the proposed approach performs more robustly than the original EOH on image pairs that have a rotation misalignment. Full article

Time series data capture crop growth dynamics and are some of the most effective data sources for crop mapping. However, a drawback of precise crop classification at medium resolution (30 m) using multi-temporal data is that some images at crucial time periods are absent from a single sensor. In this research, a medium-resolution, 15-day time series was obtained by merging Landsat-5 TM and HJ-1 CCD data (with similar radiometric performances in multi-spectral bands). Subsequently, optimal temporal windows for accurate crop mapping were evaluated using an extension of the Jeffries–Matusita (JM) distance from the merged time series. A support vector machine (SVM) was then used to compare the classification accuracy of the optimal temporal windows and the entire time series. In addition, different training sample sizes (10% to 90% of the entire training sample in 10% increments; five repetitions for each sample size) were used to investigate the stability of optimal temporal windows. The results showed that time series in optimal temporal windows can achieve high classification accuracies. The optimal temporal windows were robust when the training sample size was sufficiently large. However, they were not stable when the sample size was too small (i.e., less than 300) and may shift in different agro-ecosystems, because of different classes. In addition, merged time series had higher temporal resolution and were more likely to comprise the optimal temporal periods than time series from single-sensor data. Therefore, the use of merged time series increased the possibility of precise crop classification. Full article

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has been an unparalleled tool in cloudy and rainy regions as it allows observations throughout the year because of its all-weather, all-day operation capability. In this paper, the influence of Wenchuan Earthquake on the Sichuan Giant Panda habitats was evaluated for the first time using SAR interferometry and combining data from C-band Envisat ASAR and L-band ALOS PALSAR data. Coherence analysis based on the zero-point shifting indicated that the deforestation process was significant, particularly in habitats along the Min River approaching the epicenter after the natural disaster, and as interpreted by the vegetation deterioration from landslides, avalanches and debris flows. Experiments demonstrated that C-band Envisat ASAR data were sensitive to vegetation, resulting in an underestimation of deforestation; in contrast, L-band PALSAR data were capable of evaluating the deforestation process owing to a better penetration and the significant coherence gain on damaged forest areas. The percentage of damaged forest estimated by PALSAR decreased from 20.66% to 17.34% during 2009–2010, implying an approximate 3% recovery rate of forests in the earthquake impacted areas. This study proves that long-wavelength SAR interferometry is promising for rapid assessment of disaster-induced deforestation, particularly in regions where the optical acquisition is constrained. Full article

Veronica ciliata Fisch. has been traditionally used in Traditional Chinese Medicine prescriptions due to its curative effects for hepatitis, cholecystitis, rheumatism, and urticaria. The present study was focused on investigating the role of ethyl acetate and aqueous extracts of Veronica ciliata Fisch. Furthermore, in vitro antioxidant activity (scavenging of DPPH, ABTS, superoxide, and nitrite radicals; reducing power; β-carotene bleaching) and the hepatoprotective effect of the ethyl acetate extract by means of CCl₄-induced oxidative stress in mice were investigated. The ethyl acetate extract of Veronica ciliata Fisch. displayed more noteworthy in vitro antioxidant activities than the aqueous extract. Moreover, it significantly prevented the increase in serum T-AOC, ALT, AST and ALP level in acute liver damage induced by CCl₄, decreased the extent of MDA formation in liver and elevated the activities of SOD and GSH in liver. This activity was found to be comparable to that of bifendate. Histopathological observation of the liver was also performed to further support the evidence from the biochemical analysis. The results indicated that strong antioxidant activities and a significant protective effect against acute hepatotoxicity induced by CCl₄ of Veronica ciliata Fisch. were concentrated in the ethyl acetate extract. The results suggested that this activity may be due to free radical-scavenging and antioxidant properties. Full article

With the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, the available options for treating bacterial infections have become very limited, and the search for a novel general antibacterial therapy has received much greater attention. Quorum quenching can be used to control disease in a quorum sensing system by triggering the pathogenic phenotype. The interference with the quorum sensing system by the quorum quenching enzyme is a potential strategy for replacing traditional antibiotics because the quorum quenching strategy does not aim to kill the pathogen or limit cell growth but to shut down the expression of the pathogenic gene. Quorum quenching enzymes have been identified in quorum sensing and non-quorum sensing microbes, including lactonase, acylase, oxidoreductase and paraoxonase. Lactonase is widely conserved in a range of bacterial species and has variable substrate spectra. The existence of quorum quenching enzymes in the quorum sensing microbes can attenuate their quorum sensing, leading to blocking unnecessary gene expression and pathogenic phenotypes. In this review, we discuss the physiological function of quorum quenching enzymes in bacterial infection and elucidate the enzymatic protection in quorum sensing systems for host diseases and their application in resistance against microbial diseases. Full article

Wind power parallel operation is an effective way to realize the large scale use of wind power, but the fluctuations of power output from wind power units may have great influence on power quality, hence a new method of power smoothing and capacity optimized allocation based on hybrid energy storage technology is proposed in terms of the uncontrollable and unexpected characteristics of wind speed in wind farms. First, power smoothing based on a traditional Inertial Filter is introduced and the relationship between the time constant, its smoothing effect and capacity allocation are analyzed and combined with Proportional Integral Differential (PID) control to realize power smoothing control of wind power. Then wavelet theory is adopted to realize a multi-layer decomposition of power output in some wind farms, a power smoothing model based on hybrid energy storage technology is constructed combining the characteristics of the Super Capacitor (SC) and Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) technologies. The hybrid energy storage system is available for power fluctuations with high frequency-low energy and low frequency-high energy to achieve good smoothing effects compared with a single energy storage system. The power fluctuations filtered by the Wavelet Transform is regarded as the target value of BESS, the charging and discharging control for battery is completed quickly by Model Algorithm Control (MAC). Because of the influence of the inertia and the response speed of the battery, its actual output is not completely equal to the target value which mainly reflects in high-frequency part, the difference part uses SC to compensate and makes the output of battery and SC closer to the target value on the whole. Compared with the traditional Inertial Filter and PID control method, the validity of the model was verified by simulation results. Finally under the premise of power grid standards, the corresponding capacity design had been given to reduce the size of the energy storage devices as far as possible, which has a certain practical engineering value. Full article

A Gram-positive, facultatively anaerobic, endospore-forming and rod-shaped bacterium was isolated from soil samples and designated strain LQQ. This organism strongly quenches the acylhomoserine lactone quorum-sensing signal. The LQQ strain exhibits phenotypic characteristics consistent with its classification in the genus Bacillus. It is positive in catalase and no special growth factor is needed. It uses glucose as sole carbon source. The DNA G + C content is 39.8 mol %. The closest relatives based on the 16S rRNA gene sequence are Bacillus anthracis, Bacillus thuringiensis, and Brevibacillus brevis (syn. Bacillus brevis) with the similarity of 96.5%. The DNA–DNA hybridization data indicates a low level of genomic relatedness with the relative type strains of Bacillus thuringiensis (6.1%), Bacillus anthracis (10.5%) and Brevibacillus brevis (8.7%). On the basis of the phenotypic and phylogenetic data together with the genomic distinctiveness, the LQQ strain represents a novel species of the genus Bacillus, for which the name Bacillus marcorestinctum sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is LQQ^T. Full article