Search Results (648)

Rhabditis (Rhabditella) axei is a predominantly free-living nematode commonly found in sewage systems and decomposing organic matter. While primarily saprophytic, it has been documented as an opportunistic pathogen in human urinary and gastrointestinal tracts. The Chinese red panda (Ailurus styani), a rare and protected species in China, has not previously been reported as a host for Rhabditis (Rhabditella) spp. infections. This study reports the first documented occurrence of R. axei in red panda feces, unambiguously confirmed through integrative taxonomic approaches combining morphological and molecular analyses. The nematodes exhibited key morphological features consistent with R. axei, including a cylindrical rhabditiform esophagus, sexually dimorphic tail structures, and diagnostic spicule morphology. Molecular analysis based on 18S-ITS-28S rDNA sequencing confirmed their identity, showing >99% sequence similarity to R. axei reference strains (GenBank: PP135624.1, PP135622.1). Phylogenetic reconstruction using 18S rDNA and ITS rDNA sequences placed the isolate within a well-supported R. axei clade, clearly distinguishing it from related species such as R. blumi and R. brassicae. The findings demonstrate the ecological plasticity of R. axei as a facultative parasite capable of infecting non-traditional hosts and further highlight potential zoonotic risks associated with environmental exposure in captive wildlife populations. Our results emphasize the indispensable role of molecular diagnostics in accurately distinguishing morphologically similar nematodes within the Rhabditidae family, while providing essential baseline data for health monitoring in both in situ and ex situ conservation programs for this endangered species. Full article

In order to study the problem of obvious wall thinning in the wellbore caused by proppant backflow and sand production under throttling conditions in tight gas wells. Based on the gas-phase control equation, particle motion equation, and erosion model, the wellbore erosion model is established. The distribution law of pressure, temperature, and velocity trace fields under throttling conditions is analyzed, and the influences of different throttling pressures, particle diameters, and particle mass flows on wellbore erosion are analyzed. The flow field at the nozzle changes drastically, and there is an obvious pressure drop, temperature drop, and velocity rise. When the surrounding gas is completely mixed, the physical quantity gradually stabilizes. The erosion shape of the wellbore outlet wall has a point-like distribution. The closer to the throttle valve outlet, the more intense the erosion point distribution is. Increasing the inlet pressure and particle mass flow rate will increase the maximum erosion rate, and increasing the particle diameter will reduce the maximum erosion rate. The particle mass flow rate has the greatest impact on the maximum erosion rate, followed by the particle diameter. The erosion trend was predicted using multiple regression model fitting of the linear interaction term. The research results can provide a reference for the application of downhole throttling technology and wellbore integrity in tight gas exploitation. Full article

Fe³⁺-incorporated hydrogels are particularly valuable for wearable devices due to their tunable mechanical properties and ionic conductivity. However, conventional immersion-based fabrication fundamentally limits hydrogel performance because of heterogeneous ion distribution, ionic leaching, and scalability limitations. To overcome these challenges, we report a novel one-pot strategy where controlled amounts of Fe³⁺ are directly added to polyacrylamide-sodium acrylate (PAM-SA) precursor solutions, ensuring homogeneous ion distribution. Combining this with Photoinduced Electron/Energy Transfer Reversible Addition–Fragmentation Chain Transfer (PET-RAFT) polymerization enables efficient hydrogel fabrication under open-vessel conditions, improving its scalability. Fe³⁺ concentration achieves unprecedented modulation of mechanical properties: Young’s modulus (10 to 150 kPa), toughness (0.26 to 2.3 MJ/m³), and strain at break (800% to 2500%). The hydrogels also exhibit excellent compressibility (90% strain recovery), energy dissipation (>90% dissipation efficiency at optimal Fe³⁺ levels), and universal adhesion to diverse surfaces (plastic, metal, PTFE, and cardboard). Finally, these Fe³⁺-incorporated hydrogels demonstrated high effectiveness as strain sensors for monitoring finger/elbow movements, with gauge factors dependent on composition. This work provides a scalable, oxygen-tolerant route to tunable hydrogels for advanced wearable devices. Full article

Underwater image enhancement (UIE) technology plays a vital role in marine resource exploration, environmental monitoring, and underwater archaeology. However, due to the absorption and scattering of light in underwater environments, images often suffer from blurred details, color distortion, and low contrast, which seriously affect the usability of underwater images. To address the above limitations, a lightweight transformer-based model (LITM) is proposed for improving underwater degraded images. Firstly, our proposed method utilizes a lightweight RGB transformer enhancer (LRTE) that uses efficient channel attention blocks to capture local detail features in the RGB domain. Subsequently, a lightweight HSV transformer encoder (LHTE) is utilized to extract global brightness, color, and saturation from the hue–saturation–value (HSV) domain. Finally, we propose a multi-modal integration block (MMIB) to effectively fuse enhanced information from the RGB and HSV pathways, as well as the input image. Our proposed LITM method significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods, achieving a peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of 26.70 and a structural similarity index (SSIM) of 0.9405 on the LSUI dataset. Furthermore, the designed method also exhibits good generality and adaptability on unpaired datasets. Full article

Thesium chinense Turcz., a traditional Chinese medicinal herb, is enriched with bioactive constituents such as flavonoids and polysaccharides, demonstrating multifaceted therapeutic properties including anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and neuroprotective effects. This review systematically elucidates the regulatory mechanisms by which active components of Thesium chinense Turcz. modulate pathological processes in NDDs, such as neuroinflammation and oxidative stress. Furthermore, it synthesizes evidence of its neuroprotective efficacy across experimental models and evaluates its translational potential for clinical applications. By integrating preclinical findings and mechanistic insights, this work provides a robust theoretical foundation for advancing natural product-based therapeutics in the management of NDDs. Full article

Free space optical communication (FSOC) systems operating in the space–atmosphere channel are susceptible to severe turbulence-induced scintillation, particularly in up-link configurations where the adaptive optics (AO) pre-correction becomes ineffective due to anisoplanatic constraints. This study presents a novel scintillation suppression strategy utilizing self-focusing optical pin-like beams (OPBs) with tailored phase modulation, combining theoretical derivation and numerical simulation. It is found that increasing the shape factor γ and modulation depth C elevates the average received power and reduces the scintillation index at the focal point. Meanwhile, quantitative evaluation of the five OPB configurations shows that the parameter set γ = 1.4 and C = 7 × 10⁻⁵ gives a peak scintillation suppression efficiency. It shows that turbulence induced scintillation is suppressed by 44% with the turbulence intensity D/r₀ = 10, demonstrating exceptional effectiveness in up-link transmission. The findings demonstrate that OPB with optimized γ and C establish an approach for uplink FSOC, which is achieved through suppressed scintillation and stabilized power reception. Full article

Hydraulic concrete is a critical infrastructure material, with its surface condition playing a vital role in quality assessments for water conservancy and hydropower projects. However, images taken in complex hydraulic environments often suffer from degraded quality due to low lighting, shadows, and noise, making it difficult to distinguish defects from the background and thereby hindering accurate defect detection and damage evaluation. In this study, following systematic analyses of hydraulic concrete color space characteristics, we propose a Dual-Branch Luminance–Chrominance Attention Network (DBLCANet-HCIE) specifically designed for low-light hydraulic concrete image enhancement. Inspired by human visual perception, the network simultaneously improves global contrast and preserves fine-grained defect textures, which are essential for structural analysis. The proposed architecture consists of a Luminance Adjustment Branch (LAB) and a Chroma Restoration Branch (CRB). The LAB incorporates a Luminance-Aware Hybrid Attention Block (LAHAB) to capture both the global luminance distribution and local texture details, enabling adaptive illumination correction through comprehensive scene understanding. The CRB integrates a Channel Denoiser Block (CDB) for channel-specific noise suppression and a Frequency-Domain Detail Enhancement Block (FDDEB) to refine chrominance information and enhance subtle defect textures. A feature fusion block is designed to fuse and learn the features of the outputs from the two branches, resulting in images with enhanced luminance, reduced noise, and preserved surface anomalies. To validate the proposed approach, we construct a dedicated low-light hydraulic concrete image dataset (LLHCID). Extensive experiments conducted on both LOLv1 and LLHCID benchmarks demonstrate that the proposed method significantly enhances the visual interpretability of hydraulic concrete surfaces while effectively addressing low-light degradation challenges. Full article

Fermented feed has considerable potential as a high-quality protein source in animal production. This research aimed to examine the effects of a low-protein (LP) diet, supplemented with fermented feed, on the meat quality and intestinal health of growing–fattening pigs. The pigs were randomly divided into three groups, and a total of 72 growing–fattening pigs were subjected to the experiment. They were fed the control (CON) diet, LP diet, and LP diet supplemented with fermented rapeseed meals and fermented distiller’s grains (FLP), respectively. The results indicated that the FLP diet altered the structure of the intestinal microbiota and regulated the composition of unsaturated fatty acids in the longissimus dorsi. Furthermore, the FLP diet upregulated the expression of genes associated with myosin heavy chain isoforms (p < 0.05) and modified the content of short-chain fatty acids in the intestines (p < 0.05). In summary, the addition of fermented distiller’s grains (FDGs) and fermented rapeseed meals (FRMs) to the LP diet enhanced fatty acid metabolism and intestinal barrier function in growing–fattening pigs. Full article

The research on teaching scaffolding for preschool children’s oral language development (OLD) has become an important topic in the academic world. However, there remains a lack of evidence-based research on the integration of scaffolding strategies integrated into creative art contexts to support children’s creative expression and language production. In this study, a qualitative case study was conducted to analyze the non-participatory observation and artwork analysis of five-year-old children’s drawing activities in a kindergarten in China based on socio-cultural and scaffolding theories. Three types of core scaffolding strategies were summarized. The findings reveal that the three strategies work together dynamically within the children’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): (1) the visual prompt strategy enriches the vocabulary diversity of metaphors, adjectives, and ordinal words; (2) dialogic narrative co-construction effectively improves narrative coherence across exposition, rising action, climax, and resolution; and (3) emotional engagement strategies foster a safe expressive environment, promoting the integration of affective vocabulary with intrinsic motivation. Accordingly, a three-dimensional integrated “visual-linguistic-emotional” scaffolding model was constructed, emphasizing the practical guidelines of simultaneous scaffolding and gradual scaffolding withdrawal during the warm-up, creation, and sharing sessions of the drawing activity. This study expands the application of scaffolding theory in unstructured art contexts, and provides a systematic practical framework for the design of cross-contextual language support strategies and teacher training in preschool education. Full article

This study aims to improve the accuracy and interpretability of deep groundwater level forecasting in Cangzhou, a typical overexploitation area in the North China Plain. To address the limitations of traditional models and existing machine learning approaches, we develop a Stacking ensemble learning framework that integrates meteorological, spatial, and anthropogenic variables, including lagged groundwater levels to reflect aquifer memory. The model combines six heterogeneous base learners with a meta-model to enhance prediction robustness. Performance evaluation shows that the ensemble model consistently outperforms individual models in accuracy, generalization, and spatial adaptability. Scenario-based simulations are further conducted to assess the effects of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project. Results indicate that the diversion project significantly mitigates groundwater depletion, with the most overexploited zones showing water level recovery of up to 17 m compared to the no-diversion scenario. Feature importance analysis confirms that lagged water levels and pumping volumes are dominant predictors, aligning with groundwater system dynamics. These findings demonstrate the effectiveness of ensemble learning in modeling complex groundwater behavior and provide a practical tool for water resource regulation. The proposed framework is adaptable to other groundwater-stressed regions and supports dynamic policy design for sustainable groundwater management. Full article

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a widely used chemical to produce raw materials in plastic production, which has led to its ubiquity in the natural environment and toxicity to both plants and humans. In this study, we evaluated the phytotoxic effects of BPA on the growth and physiology of pepper (Capsicum annuum L.), a globally cultivated horticultural plant. Our high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) result revealed that 0.5 mg/kg of BPA treatment did not lead to the accumulation of BPA in the leaves and fruits of pepper plants. The exogenous application of 5 mg/kg of BPA prominently inhibited pepper growth, while 0.5 mg/kg of BPA had no obvious effects on pepper growth. Additionally, our transcriptomic assay revealed that BPA-regulated gene expression is associated with photosynthesis and reactive oxygen species (ROS) signaling. Physiological and qRT-PCR assays further demonstrated that BPA reduced chlorophyll content and increased ROS levels by regulating the expression of genes related to chlorophyll synthesis and ROS production. Our transcriptomic data also elucidated the potential role of plant hormones, including brassinolides (BR), salicylic acid (SA), jasmonic acid (JA), and strigolactone (SL) in mediating BPA-induced phytotoxicity. Furthermore, BPA activated the N⁶-methyladenosine (m⁶A) modification to exert its toxicity. Collectively, our findings offer additional insights into the mechanisms through which BPA attenuates pepper plant growth, which might contribute new knowledge toward a better scientific assessment of BPA exposure risks in horticultural species. Full article

There is no consensus in existing research on whether the application of digital technology diversification strengthens or weakens export resilience. This study fills this gap by exploring the influence mechanism of digital technology diversity on enterprise export resilience. Based on organizational inertia theory, dynamic capabilities perspective, and organizational learning theory, this study uses data from Chinese listed export manufacturing companies from 2019 to 2023 in order to empirically examine the relationship between digital technology diversity and enterprise export resilience. The results show that digital technology diversity significantly inhibits enterprise export resilience, supply chain finance plays a partially mediating role in this relationship, and digital interlock alleviates the inhibitory effect of digital technology diversity on supply chain finance. The findings provide guidance for the digital technology application strategy of export enterprises in adversity. Full article

As a beneficial fungus, Trichoderma harzianum (T. harzianum) has been widely applied for growth promotion and biocontrol. Recently, it has attracted much attention with regard to improving stress tolerance in plants under abiotic stress. In this paper, the multiple mechanisms of T. harzianum for alleviating abiotic stress damage in plants are reviewed. T. harzianum can regulate the synthesis of key phytohormones, such as abscisic acid (ABA), indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), etc., thereby enhancing the physiological response ability of plants under stress conditions such as drought, salt stress, and high temperature. These are associated with antioxidant system regulation in plants, which reduces levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and oxidative damage and maintains intracellular redox balance. T. harzianum can also improve plant nutrient uptake and root development, secondary metabolism, soil environment and structure, and expression of related genes. In addition, in this paper, the characteristics of T. harzianum application in field and horticultural crops are summarized and compared, revealing differences in the methods, concentrations, time, and effects of applying T. harzianum to various crops. We further explore the synergistic regulation effect of T. harzianum and plant–microbiome interaction on the stress microenvironment. Future perspectives on the molecular mechanism of T. harzianum and its field application potential are discussed. This review provides a theoretic and practical reference for the application of T. harzianum in agricultural production. Full article

Background: GRAS transcription factors are crucial for plant development and stress responses but remain poorly characterized in citrus. Soil salinization increasingly threatens sweet orange (Citrus sinensis) yield. Identifying salt-responsive GRAS genes could reveal key tolerance determinants for breeding resistant cultivars. Methods: We systematically identified and analyzed sweet orange GRAS transcription factors using bioinformatics. Results: Forty-three CsGRAS genes were identified, phylogenetically classified into ten subfamilies, and found to be structurally conserved. A promoter analysis revealed a high prevalence (58.78%) of hormone- and stress-responsive cis-elements. These genes reside on nine chromosomes, with segmental duplication being the primary evolutionary driver (eight duplicated pairs). Functional enrichment implicated hormone signaling pathways in regulating growth under stress. Transcriptome profiling identified 42 differentially expressed CsGRAS genes (19 upregulated and 23 downregulated) under salt stress. qRT-PCR validated the expression patterns of selected genes (e.g., CsGRAS15 and CsGRAS27). Notably, DELLA subfamily members CsGRAS15 and CsGRAS27, key negative regulators in gibberellin (GA) signaling, were differentially expressed. Modulating these DELLA proteins presents a promising strategy to enhance sweet orange salt tolerance by mitigating GA-mediated growth inhibition during stress. Conclusion: This study identifies salt-responsive CsGRAS genes, highlighting CsGRAS15 and CsGRAS27 as potential targets for improving salt tolerance in citrus. Full article

The coastline of the Yellow River Delta in China has experienced significant dynamic changes due to both natural and human activities. Investigating its coastal dynamics and understanding the equilibrium with riverine runoff and sediment discharge is crucial for ecological balance and sustainable development in the region. In this study, a coastline extraction algorithm was developed by integrating water index and dynamic frequency thresholds based on the Google Earth Engine platform. Long-term optical remote sensing datasets from Landsat (1988–2016) and Sentinel-2 (2017–2023) were utilized. The End Point Rate (EPR) and Linear Regression Rate (LRR) methods were employed to quantify coastline changes, and the relationship between coastal evolution and runoff–sediment dynamics was investigated. The results revealed the following: (1) The coastline of the Yellow River Delta exhibits pronounced spatiotemporal variability. From 1988 to 2023, the Diaokou estuary recorded the lowest EPR and LRR values (−206.05 m/a and −248.33 m/a, respectively), whereas the Beicha estuary recorded the highest values (317.54 m/a and 374.14 m/a, respectively). (2) The cumulative land area change displayed a fluctuating pattern, characterized by a general trend of increase–decrease–increase, indicating a gradual progression toward dynamic equilibrium. The Diaokou estuary has been predominantly erosional, while the Qingshuigou estuary experienced deposition prior to 1996, followed by subsequent erosion. In contrast, the land area of the Beicha estuary has continued to increase since 1997. (3) Deltaic progradation has been primarily governed by runoff–sediment dynamics. Coastline advancement has occurred along active river channels as a result of sediment deposition, whereas former river mouths have retreated landward due to insufficient fluvial sediment input. In the Beicha estuary, increased land area has exhibited a strong positive correlation with annual sedimentary influx. The critical sediment discharge required to maintain equilibrium has been estimated at 79 million t/a for the Beicha estuary and 107 million t/a for the entire deltaic region. These findings provide a scientific foundation for sustainable sediment management, coastal restoration, and integrated land–water planning. This study supports sustainable coastal management, informs policymaking, and enhances ecosystem resilience. Full article