Search Results (13)

Pseudotachylytes and cataclasites record transient seismic slips within the brittle–ductile transition zone and ductile flow layers. Investigating the mechanisms of pseudotachylytes can provide the most direct geological evidence for revealing seismic fault slip and coseismic processes. We investigate the deformation and chemical composition of pseudotachylytes, cataclasites, and mylonites collected from the Anning River fault zone in this study. Three kinds of pseudotachylyte veins were found in granite gneiss and cataclasite. Microstructural analyses show that pseudotachylytes and cataclasites developed within granitic gneiss and mylonites, and EBSD analysis indicates granitic gneiss deformed at temperatures of 250–350 °C. All of the pseudotachylytes are enriched in Fe and Ca, with SiO₂ content closely resembling that of the wall rock of granitic gneiss. The geochemical results indicate that pseudotachylytes originated from the in situ melting of granitic gneiss, which was produced during coseismic frictional heating. Based on the deformation and geochemical data of mylonites, cataclasites, and pseudotachylytes, a simple model of the seismogenic layer is established for rock deformation during coseismic, post-seismic relaxation, and interseismic periods. Mylonite represents the rheological flow of the brittle–ductile transition zone during interseismic periods, cataclasites display brittle fracturing during coseismic rupture, and pseudotachylytes stand for localized melting induced by coseismic frictional heating. During the post-seismic relaxation, crack healing and static recrystallization of quartz occur. Full article

Developing a catalyst with excellent electrical conductivity and catalytic performance for on-site testing of residual imidacloprid is significant and challenging. In situ growth of Mo₂C nanodots on Co-induced N-doped carbon nanotubes (Co/Mo₂C/N-CNT) was synthesized to construct a molecularly imprinted electrochemical sensor for the detection of imidacloprid. The results proved that the catalytic performance of Co/Mo₂C/N-CNT for imidacloprid was over two times higher than those of Co/N-CNT and commercial CNT. This improvement was attributed to the formation of a heterostructure between Co species, Mo₂C, and N-CNT, which facilitated highly exposed catalytic active sites. Additionally, the abundant Mo₂C nano-dots promoted interfacial charge transfer to achieve optimal dynamics. The optimum preparation parameters of the catalysts were obtained by response surface methodology. By analyzing the relationship between different pH values and peak potential, as well as the influence of different scanning rates on peak potential, it was deduced that the possible electrocatalytic mechanism of imidacloprid involved the reduction of the nitro group to a hydroxylamine group and H₂O. Under optimal conditions, the limit of detection (LOD) was 0.033 × 10⁻⁶ mol·L⁻¹ (R² = 0.99698), and the linear range was 0.1 × 10⁻⁶~100 × 10⁻⁶ mol·L⁻¹. The application effect of the prepared sensor was evaluated by measuring the imidacloprid in two kinds of tea, indicating that the sensor possessed good sensitivity and selectivity, and was capable of meeting the requirements of on-site detection. Full article

Based on the field survey and reference data of the sea area of the Zhongjieshan Islands from 2021 to 2022, the Ecopath model was used to analyze the energy flow structure of the marine ecosystem of the sea area of the Zhongjieshan Islands; the energy structure of the marine ecosystem was divided into 21 functional groups, and its nutrient structure, energy flow, and total system characteristics were analyzed. The results show that the credibility of the model is 0.414, which is at a medium level. The trophic level of each functional group of the ecosystem in the sea area of Zhongjieshan Islands was 1–3.48, the energy flow structure of the system was mainly concentrated in the first five grades, and the trophic level was relatively simple, with the average energy transfer efficiency of the system being 8.11%, the energy flow range being 2.81–13.04%, the energy transfer efficiency of the primary producers of the system being 7.25%, and the energy conversion efficiency of the system debris being 9.12%. The total system throughput was 2125.96 t·km⁻²; The analysis of the overall characteristics of the ecosystem showed that the system connectance index and the system omnivory index were 0.45 and 0.24, respectively, while the Finn’s cycling index was 8.24, the Finn’s mean path length of the system was 2.72, and the total primary production/total respiration was 1.71. In this study, the marine ecosystem model of the sea area of the Zhongjieshan Islands was studied to understand the trophic structure and ecosystem status of the sea area, which is conducive to the sustainable utilization and scientific management of fishery resources in the sea area. Full article

PRRS is a viral disease that profoundly impacts the global swine industry, causing significant economic losses. The development of a novel and effective vaccine is crucial to halt the rapid transmission of this virus. There have been several vaccination attempts against PRRSV using both traditional and alternative vaccine design development approaches. Unfortunately, there is no currently available vaccine that can completely control this disease. Thus, our study aimed to develop an mRNA vaccine using the antigens expressed by single or fused PRRSV structural proteins. In this study, the nucleotide sequence of the immunogenic mRNA was determined by considering the antigenicity of structural proteins and the stability of spatial structure. Purified GP5 protein served as the detection antigen in the immunological evaluation. Furthermore, cellular mRNA expression was detected by immunofluorescence and western blotting. In a mice experiment, the Ab titer in serum and the activation of spleen lymphocytes triggered by the antigen were detected by ELISA and ICS, respectively. Our findings demonstrated that both mRNA vaccines can significantly stimulate cellular and humoral immune responses. More specifically, the GP5-mRNA exhibited an immunological response that was similar to that of the commercially available vaccine when administered in high doses. To conclude, our vaccine may show promising results against the wild-type virus in a natural host. Full article

LiDAR odometry is a fundamental task for high-precision map construction and real-time and accurate localization in autonomous driving. However, point clouds in urban road scenes acquired by vehicle-borne lasers are of large amounts, “near dense and far sparse” density, and contain different dynamic objects, leading to low efficiency and low accuracy of existing LiDAR odometry methods. To address the above issues, a simulation-based self-supervised line extraction in urban road scene is proposed, as a pre-processing for LiDAR odometry to reduce the amount of input and the interference from dynamic objects. A simulated dataset is first constructed according to the characteristics of point clouds in urban road scenes; and then, an EdgeConv-based network, named LO-LineNet, is used for pre-training; finally, a model transferring strategy is adopted to transfer the pre-trained model from a simulated dataset to real-world scenes without ground-truth labels. Experimental results on the KITTI Odometry Dataset and the Apollo SouthBay Dataset indicate that the proposed method can accurately extract reliable lines in urban road scenes in a self-supervised way, and the use of the extracted reliable lines as input for odometry can significantly improve its accuracy and efficiency in urban road scenes. Full article

Pea (Pisum sativum L.) is a vital leguminous crop farmed worldwide. Pea plays an essential role in China’s crop rotation system, but the major restrictions to its cultivation are stability and low yield. Breeding for promising cultivars with a significantly high yield will impact the sustainability of pea production. Additionally, diverse environment trials are crucial in determining the best genotype. The new cultivar “Yunwan 52” was developed by hybridization and subsequently evaluated through yield trials among six pea genotypes across 14 environments during the 2016–2018 growing seasons. The results showed that the average yield of “Yunwan 52” for all tested environments was 2.64 t ha⁻¹ compared to the control cultivar (Yunwan 18, 1.83 t ha⁻¹). Analysis of AMMI variance showed significant differences (p < 0.01) between genotypes, environments, and their interaction. Based on the GGE biplot, some genotypes possessed wide and narrow adaptability to environments, such as Yunwan 52 was considered the most stable and ideal gen-otype across all tested environments. GYT biplot analysis also revealed that this realized cultivar was a superior and stable genotype that can be identified visually by combining all characters in breeding programs. Yunwan 52 distinguishes with purple blossoms and seed coat peas. It is possible to infer that the newly released cultivar “Yunwan 52” has outstanding yield performance and wide adaptability to multiple environmental conditions (resilience to abiotic stress). It will contribute to developing nutritional pea genotypes and increase pea production in irrigated areas. Full article

Emotion analysis is the key technology in human–computer emotional interaction and has gradually become a research hotspot in the field of artificial intelligence. The key problems of emotion analysis based on EEG are feature extraction and classifier design. The existing methods of emotion analysis mainly use machine learning and rely on manually extracted features. As an end-to-end method, deep learning can automatically extract EEG features and classify them. However, most of the deep learning models of emotion recognition based on EEG still need manual screening and data pre-processing, and the accuracy and convenience are not high enough. Therefore, this paper proposes a CNN-Bi-LSTM-Attention model to automatically extract the features and classify emotions based on EEG signals. The original EEG data are used as input, a CNN and a Bi-LSTM network are used for feature extraction and fusion, and then the electrode channel weights are balanced through the attention mechanism layer. Finally, the EEG signals are classified to different kinds of emotions. An emotion classification experiment based on EEG is conducted on the SEED dataset to evaluate the performance of the proposed model. The experimental results show that the method proposed in this paper can effectively classify EEG emotions. The method was assessed on two distinctive classification tasks, one with three and one with four target classes. The average ten-fold cross-validation classification accuracy of this method is 99.55% and 99.79%, respectively, corresponding to three and four classification tasks, which is significantly better than the other methods. It can be concluded that our method is superior to the existing methods in emotion recognition, which can be widely used in many fields, including modern neuroscience, psychology, neural engineering, and computer science as well. Full article

This study aims to investigate the near-infrared spectral properties of Rose Oxide (4-Methyl-2-(2-methyl-1-propenyl) tetrahydropyran) in wine, establish a quantitative detection, and build relationships between the chemical groups of Rose Oxide and near-infrared characteristic bands, so as to provide ideas and references for the near-infrared detection of a low-content aroma substance in wine. In total, 133 samples with different wine matrices were analyzed using Fourier transform–near-infrared (FT-NIR) spectroscopy. Min–max normalization (MMN), principal component analysis (PCA), and synergy interval partial least squares regression (Si-PLSR) were used for pre-processing, outlier rejection, analysis of spectral properties, and modeling. Finally, the quantitative detection model was established using the PLSR method and the wine sample containing Rose Oxide was verified externally. Eight subintervals (4000–4400 cm⁻¹, 4400–4800 cm⁻¹, 5600–6000 cm⁻¹, 6000–6400 cm⁻¹, 6400–6800 cm⁻¹, 6800–7200 cm⁻¹, 7200–7600 cm⁻¹, 8400–8800 cm⁻¹) were determined as the characteristic band intervals of Rose Oxide in the NIR region. Among them, 5600–6000 cm⁻¹ was assigned to the first overtone C–H stretching in tetrahydropyran ring and methyl as well as the combination C–H stretching of the CH₃ function groups, 6000–6400 cm⁻¹ was assigned to the first overtone C–H stretching of the C–H=group and the combination C=C stretching in isobutyl, and 8400–8800 cm⁻¹ was assigned to the second overtone C–H stretching and C–O stretching in tetrahydropyran ring as well as the C–H stretching vibration in methyl. In addition, 4000–4800 cm⁻¹, 6400–6800 cm⁻¹, and 7200–7600 cm⁻¹ were assigned to the C–H stretching vibration, while 6400–7600 cm⁻¹ was assigned to the C–O stretching vibration. The training result showed that the calibration model ($r_{cv}^2$ of 0.96 and $RMS{E}_{CV}$ of 2.33) and external validation model ($r_{cv}^2$ of 0.84 and $RMS{E}_{CV}$ of 2.72) of Rose Oxide in wine were acceptable, indicating a good predictive ability. The spectral assignment of Rose Oxide provides a new way for the NIR study of other terpenes in wine, and the use of the established Si-PLSR model for the rapid determination of Rose Oxide content in wine is feasible. Full article

It was found in our previous work that hyperbranched polyester (HPE) can generate radicals and accelerate the chemical reactions of hydrocarbon fuels used as initiators. In this work, the evaporation and autoignition characteristics of JP-10 droplets with or without HPE were investigated using the high-speed backlight imaging technique in detail. The results indicate that the puffing and micro-explosion phenomena of HPE-blended JP-10 droplets can accelerate fuel evaporation and autoignition. When a 0.1% mass concentration of HPE was used, the droplet lifetime was reduced by 16.5% in evaporation at 850 K and 18.0% in autoignition at 900 K. A mechanism of HPE that promotes puffing and micro-explosions was proposed by analyzing droplet images of combustion and SEM images of combustion residues. Overall, this study provides a method for improving the evaporation and autoignition performance of JP-10. Full article

The current methods for evaluating the operating condition of electricity transmission lines (ETLs) and providing early warning have several problems, such as the low correlation of data, ignoring the influence of seasonal factors, and strong subjectivity. This paper analyses the sensitive factors that influence dynamic key evaluation indices such as grounding resistance, sag, and wire corrosion, establishes the evaluation criteria of the ETL operation state, and proposes five ETL status levels and seven principles for selecting evaluation indices. Nine grade I evaluation indices and twenty-nine grade II evaluation indices, including passageway and meteorological environments, are determined. The cloud model theory is embedded and used to propose a warning technology for the operation state of ETLs based on inspection defect parameters and the cloud model. Combined with the inspection defect parameters of a line in the Baicheng district of Jilin Province and the critical evaluation index data such as grounding resistance, sag, and wire corrosion, which are used to calculate the timeliness of the data, the solid line is evaluated. The research shows that the dynamic evaluation model is correct and that the ETL status evaluation and early warning method have reasonable practicability. Full article

This study aimed to apply transcriptomics to determine how Molor-Dabos-4 (MD-4) protects healthy rats against indomethacin (IND)-induced gastric ulcers and to identify the mechanism behind this protective effect. Rats were pretreated with MD-4 (0.3, 1.5, or 3 g/kg per day) for 21 days before inducing gastric ulcers by oral administration with indomethacin (30 mg/kg). Unulcerated and untreated healthy rats were used as controls. Effects of the treatment were assessed based on the ulcer index, histological and pathological examinations, and indicators of inflammation, which were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Transcriptomic analysis was performed for identifying potential pharmacological mechanisms. Eventually, after identifying potential target genes, the latter were validated by quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). After pretreatment with MD-4, gastric ulcers, along with other histopathological features, were reduced. MD-4 significantly (p < 0.05) increased the superoxide dismutase (SOD) levels in ulcers and reduced pepsin, TNF-α, and IL-6 levels. RNA-seq analysis identified a number of target genes on which MD-4 could potentially act. Many of these genes were involved in pathways that were linked to anti-inflammatory and antioxidant responses, and other protective mechanisms for the gastric mucosa. qRT-PCR showed that altered expression of the selected genes, such as Srm, Ryr-1, Eno3, Prkag3, and Eef1a2, was consistent with the transcriptome results. MD-4 exerts protective effects against IND-induced gastric ulcers by reducing inflammatory cytokines and pepsin and increasing the expression of SOD levels. Downregulation of Srm, Ryr-1, Eno3, Prkag3, and Eef1a2 genes involved in regulating arginine and proline metabolism, calcium signaling pathway, HIF-1 signaling pathway, oxytocin signaling pathway, and legionellosis are possibly involved in MD-4-mediated protection against gastric ulcers. Full article

Visual loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) is qualified to be applied in the field to detect pathogens due to its simplicity, rapidity and cost saving. However, the color changes in currently reported visual reverse transcription LAMP (RT-LAMP) for foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) detection are not so obvious to the naked eye, so interpretation of results is troublesome. In this study, a new naked-eye visual RT-LAMP to detect all seven distinct serotypes of FMDV was established based on the 3D genes by using pH-sensitive neutral red as the indicator, rendering a sharp contrast of color changes between the negative (light orange) and the positive (pink). Analytical sensitivity tests showed that the detection limit of the visual RT-LAMP was 10⁴ copies/µL while those were 10³ and 10⁴ copies/µL for the RT-qPCR and conventional RT-PCR methods, respectively. Specificity tests proved that the established visual RT-LAMP assay had no cross-reactivity with other common livestock viruses. Furthermore, the analysis of 59 clinical samples showed 98.31% and 100% concordance with the RT-qPCR and the RT-PCR, respectively. The pan-serotypic FMD visual RT-LAMP assay could be suitable for a pen-side test of all seven serotypes of FMDV because the results could be easily distinguished by the naked eye without the requirement of complicated instruments and professional technicians. Hence, the novel method may have a promising prospect in field tests which exert an important role in monitoring, preventing, and controlling FMD, especially in regions with no PCR or qPCR instrument available. Full article

Existing methods often fail to recognize the conversions for the biological roles of the pairs of genes and microRNAs (miRNAs) between the tumor and normal samples. We have developed a novel cluster scoring method to identify messenger RNA (mRNA) and miRNA interaction pairs and clusters while considering tumor and normal samples jointly. Our method has identified 54 significant clusters for 15 cancer types selected from The Cancer Genome Atlas project. We also determined the shared clusters across tumor types and/or subtypes. In addition, we compared gene and miRNA overlap between lists identified in our liver hepatocellular carcinoma (LIHC) study and regulatory relationships reported from human and rat nonalcoholic fatty liver disease studies (NAFLD). Finally, we analyzed biological functions for the single significant cluster in LIHC and uncovered a significantly enriched pathway (phospholipase D signaling pathway) with six genes represented in the cluster, symbols: DGKQ, LPAR2, PDGFRB, PIK3R3, PTGFR and RAPGEF3. Full article