Search Results (430)

This paper proposes an urban-scale dynamic screening method for the preliminary seismic-risk prioritization of masonry buildings. The method is based on the integration of rapid surveys, relational databases, geographic information systems, and accelerometric data recorded during seismic events. It is not intended to replace comprehensive seismic vulnerability or risk assessment procedures. In its present formulation, it provides an event-specific preliminary dynamic-priority indicator, derived from recorded ground motions, to support post-event inspections and subsequent detailed analyses at the urban scale. The procedure combines a rapid visual survey (on average covering ca. 300 buildings per day) with a database management system (DBMS) linked to a three-dimensional cartographic database of the building stock. The geometric and structural information collected in the field is integrated with the processing of ground acceleration records, from which the pseudo-acceleration spectra, peak ground acceleration (PGA), and spectral amplification ratios (DAF) are derived. Through the relationship between spectral period and building height, the method identifies height classes and number of storeys corresponding to the highest spectral amplification ratios derived from the recorded ground motions. Buildings belonging to these classes are not classified as vulnerable in absolute terms, but are considered priority buildings for subsequent checks, inspections, or detailed analyses. The method was applied to the municipalities of Umbertide and Gubbio, in the province of Perugia, which were affected by the seismic sequence of 9 March 2023. The processed accelerometric records identified Classes I, II and III, corresponding to one-, two-, and three-storey masonry buildings. The illustrative GIS application focused on Classes II and III; 27 of the 33 masonry buildings included in the damaged-building sample (82%) belonged to these two classes. The main contribution of the study is the definition of an integrated, rapid, and replicable workflow that can support local authorities, technicians, and civil protection operators in the preliminary management of seismic risk at the urban scale. Full article

Reuse of industrial wastewater contributes to the conservation of freshwater resources and the implementation of the principles of the circular economy. In this study, the cyclic performance of a flat-sheet polyamide reverse osmosis membrane (PA-RO) for the advanced treatment of wastewater from a poultry slaughterhouse, pretreated by dissolved air flotation (DAF), was evaluated. The membrane was operated at three recirculation flow rates in successive filtration and chemical cleaning cycles to evaluate its hydraulic behavior, retention efficiency, fouling evolution, and permeate quality. Among the conditions investigated, the recirculation flow rate of 0.5 L/min provided the highest hydraulic stability and flux recovery under the investigated conditions, although hydraulic and microbiological performances were not optimized under the same operating conditions. The progressive deterioration of membrane performance during cyclic operation was associated with the accumulation of reversible and irreversible fouling, evidenced by the increase in hydraulic resistances and the incomplete flux recovery after chemical cleaning. Hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) and mathematical modeling revealed strong relationships between operating conditions, membrane performance, and fouling evolution, generating predictive models with high coefficients of determination. The results demonstrate the potential of the cyclic operation of the PA-RO membrane to obtain a high-quality permeate intended for industrial reuse and provide a practical framework for optimizing operating conditions and fouling control strategies in membrane wastewater treatment processes. Full article

Dicyclohexyl phthalate (DCHP) is a widely used plasticizer, but its potential impact on immunity remains largely unexplored. In this study, synchronized L1-stage Caenorhabditis elegans were exposed to 0.0001–0.1 g/L DCHP for 72 h to investigate the effects of chronic early-life exposure on innate immunity; 0.01 and 0.1 g/L were used for subsequent mechanistic analyses. Innate immune function was evaluated using Pseudomonas aeruginosa PA14 survival assays, RT-qPCR, mutant strains, and oxidative-stress-related measurements. Chronic exposure beginning at the L1 stage significantly reduced the survival of C. elegans infected with Pseudomonas aeruginosa PA14. This immunosuppression was associated with increased daf-2 and age-1 transcript levels and reduced daf-16 transcript levels, indicating transcriptional alterations in insulin-like signaling-related genes. Additionally, the expression of pmk-1, nsy-1, and sek-1, key components of the p38 MAPK pathway, was markedly downregulated. Survival assays using different mutants supported the involvement of insulin-like signaling- and p38 MAPK-related genes in the decline in innate immunity following DCHP exposure. Furthermore, DCHP exposure reduced the expression of stress resistance genes, including skn-1, and several antioxidant enzymes. These findings suggest that DCHP may impair innate immune function through transcriptional alterations in immune- and stress-response pathways, although direct pathway activation or inhibition was not demonstrated. Full article

Sorghum is an important raw material for China’s baijiu (liquor) brewing industry, and the tannin content in its grains directly affects the quality and nutritional value of the liquor. Grain color is closely associated with tannin content, yet the genetic mechanism underlying grain color formation remains incompletely understood. In this study, we systematically observed grain development in the yellow-grained sorghum line GW605. The results showed that from 1 to 16 days after flowering (DAF), the grains underwent a rapid growth phase, after which the expansion rate slowed. On 25 DAF, the green color of the grains gradually faded, shifting from white to yellow and continuously deepening, ultimately turning dark yellow. A segregating population was subsequently constructed using GW605 (yellow grain) and 6E16 (white grain) as parents. Bulked segregant analysis (BSA) localized the gene controlling the yellow grain to chromosome 1. Through fine mapping based on recombinant individuals, the gene was narrowed to a 108 kb physical interval containing seven candidate genes. Sequencing and functional annotation of the candidate genes suggested that Yellow Seed 2 (Sobic.001G397900) is the candidate gene associated with yellow grain color difference between the two parental lines. Haplotype analysis of Yellow Seed 2 using resequencing data from 698 sorghum germplasm accessions detected a total of 11 SNP loci, forming four haplotypes, among which Hap1 was the predominant haplotype. Further analysis revealed that the haplotype diversity of Yellow Seed 2 increased considerably during the domestication process from Chinese landraces to Chinese cultivars, suggesting that this gene may have incorporated genetic lineages from foreign germplasm during domestication. Full article

FOXO/DAF-16 is involved in stress resistance and metabolic regulation, but the molecular mechanisms of its interaction with hypoxia remain unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the anti-hypoxic effects of Poecilobdella manillensis bioactive peptide (PMP) and to investigate whether IIS/FOXO acts as a key node in mediating the regulation of oxidative stress and metabolic reprogramming. In the chemical hypoxia model of Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) induced by sodium sulfite, PMP treatment improved the survival status and movement, feeding, and reproductive ability of hypoxic C. elegans, and significantly increased their survival rate. It also reduced reactive oxygen species (ROS) and lipofuscin levels in C. elegans, enhancing their tolerance to oxidative and heat stress. In the terminal normobaric hypoxia mice model, PMP intervention prolonged the survival time of hypoxic mice, alleviated the damage of heart, lung, and brain tissues, and increased superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity and glutathione (GSH) levels, and decreased malondialdehyde (MDA) concentrations and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity in serum and tissues of mice. ¹H-NMR metabolomics analysis showed that PMP treatment reversed hypoxia-induced abnormalities in key metabolites such as glucose, lactic acid, glutamic acid, and taurine. Next, we utilized C. elegans mutants deficient in daf-2, age-1, akt-1, daf-16, and hsp-16.2, and further observed the nuclear translocation of DAF-16 in DAF-16::GFP C. elegans. The results showed PMP induced DAF-16 nuclear translocation and upregulated the expression of downstream SOD-3. Key metabolites representing antioxidant and energy metabolism were measured in the daf-16 mutant C. elegans. The results showed that PMP intervention failed to restore the levels of glucose, lactic acid, glutamic acid, and taurine in the mutant. Finally, 12 peptides containing antioxidant-related bioactive amino acid residues in PMP were screened by UPLC-Q-Exactive-MS and peptide biological activity prediction. Among them, molecular docking showed that KPPGP had a good binding with FOXO1. In conclusion, in C. elegans, PMP activated DAF-16/FOXO by inhibiting the Insulin/insulin-like growth factor-1 signaling (IIS) pathway and regulated redox homeostasis and metabolic reprogramming to resist hypoxia injury, and this protective effect was also observed in mouse models. IIS/FOXO can be used as a key node to regulate oxidative stress and energy metabolism under hypoxic conditions, and the identification of KPPGP provides insights into the screening and study of bioactive peptides in natural products. Full article

Tool wear state classification under varying working conditions remains challenging due to domain discrepancy and the scarcity of labeled target samples. To address this issue, this paper proposes a Semi-Supervised Domain-Adaptive Feature Separation framework (SS-DAFS) for intelligent condition monitoring in machining processes. Experiments are conducted on the PHM2010 milling dataset, where tool conditions are categorized into three health states, including initial wear, normal wear, and severe wear. The proposed framework separates shared domain-invariant features from private domain-specific features to enhance feature representation capability and reduce domain-specific interference. Meanwhile, Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) is incorporated to further align feature distributions between source and target domains. Semi-supervised transfer tasks under one-shot and three-shot settings are constructed to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed framework with extremely limited labeled target samples. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed framework consistently outperforms several representative domain adaptation methods under both settings. The average accuracy of the proposed method under three-shot and one-shot achieves 95.68% and 94.34%, respectively. The results verify the effectiveness of the proposed framework for intelligent condition monitoring for machining processes under cross-domain machining scenarios. Full article

6-PPD quinone (6-PPDQ) has been recognized as a typical emergent contaminant with the potential to cause multiple aspects of damage to organisms. Creatine is an important metabolite that mediates energy homeostasis. In Caenorhabditis elegans, creatine content was reduced by 0.1–10 μg/L of 6-PPDQ, which was accompanied by a decrease in the expression of argk-1 encoding a creatine kinase and snf-5 encoding a potential creatine transporter. Creatine content could be reduced by RNAi of argk-1 and snf-5. Moreover, RNAi of argk-1 and snf-5 aggravated 6-PPDQ-induced immunosuppression, reflected by decreased expression of antimicrobial genes (lys-7 and spp-1), and double RNAi of argk-1 and snf-5 resulted in more severe immunosuppression induction in 6-PPDQ-exposed nematodes. After 6-PPDQ exposure, RNAi of argk-1 and snf-5 decreased the expression of aak-2 encoding AMPK, and aak-2 RNAi also strengthened 6-PPDQ-induced immunosuppression. During control of 6-PPDQ caused immunosuppression, ARGK-1, SNF-5, and AAK-2 modulated expressions of PMK-1/p38 MAPK and DAF-16 signals. The immunosuppression and inhibition in PMK-1 and DAF-16 expressions induced by 6-PPDQ could be further suppressed by creatine treatment. Therefore, the environmental exposure risk of 6-PPDQ in disrupting creatine synthesis and transporter was suggested, which potentially contributes to the induction of immunosuppression in nematodes. Full article

Remote sensing imagery provides a primary data source for large-scale surface water body monitoring, which is crucial for quantifying climate-related hydrological impacts, supporting flood control, and sustaining integrated water resource management. However, remote sensing images generally face the trade-off between spatial resolution and temporal coverage. To address this issue, the Real-ESRGAN super-resolution algorithm is employed to reconstruct temporally continuous, wide-coverage medium-resolution imagery to a 2.5 m resolution, effectively improving its capability to identify sub-pixel river boundaries. Water body segmentation (WBS) is an effective method for fine-detail surface water extraction. Nonetheless, when applied in complex hydrological environments, it still faces several limitations, such as ambiguous delineation of land–water boundaries and the difficulty in capturing multiscale water body characteristics. To address these issues, a Dynamic Weight Fusion SegFormer (DWFSeg) network is constructed, integrating a MixVision Transformer (MVT) encoder with a multiscale decoding architecture. Specifically, a Dynamic Multiscale Feature Fusion (DMFF) mechanism is proposed, which adaptively assigns semantic-guided fusion weights to multiscale feature water bodies. Furthermore, the Dual Attention-Enhanced (DAE) module strengthens discriminative essential features and suppresses background noise in both channel and spatial dimensions. Evaluated on a self-constructed super-resolution imagery dataset (SID) and the public GID, DWFSeg achieves overall accuracies of 98.08% and 96.14%, respectively. It outperforms representative benchmark models across multiple quantitative metrics, while maintaining competitive inference efficiency and favorable segmentation stability. Ablation studies verify the effectiveness and necessity of each proposed component. The presented network provides a reliable technical solution and supports refined water resource evaluation and sustainable watershed management. Full article

Ratoon rice cultivation is a significant practice for enhancing land productivity and food security. Ratooning ability is a key determinant of ratoon season crop (RC) yield and is influenced by genetic, agronomic, and hormonal factors. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of foliar-applied ratooning enhancers, formulated with plant hormones and botanical extracts, on the growth and regeneration of a japonica–indica hybrid rice cultivar, ‘Qingxiangyou 19 Xiang’. Treatments included gibberellin (GA), low, medium, and high concentrations of brassinosteroid (BR), each with or without jasmine extract (JE), alongside proline and zinc chloride (ZnCl₂) as supporting components. These solutions were applied twice at 5 and 15 days after flowering (DAF) of the main crop (MC). The results showed that GA treatment increased plant height and panicle length but reduced MC tiller number. BR treatments did not affect plant height but significantly increased the 1000-grain weight. Crucially, while BR alone had no significant effect on ratooning ability, the BR-JE combined application, particularly at medium (MBR-JE) and high (HBR-JE) concentrations, significantly increased ratoon tiller number and enhanced ratooning ability. However, the HBR-JE combination increased grain chalkiness. In conclusion, the foliar application of BR combined with JE during the flowering stage effectively promotes ratooning ability without compromising MC yield, offering a promising agronomic strategy for sustainable ratoon rice production. Full article

(1) Background: Reactive oxygen species (ROS) act as physiological signaling mediators but contribute to oxidative damage, cellular dysfunction, and age-related disease when redox homeostasis fails. Forkhead box O4 (FOXO4) has emerged as a redox-sensitive regulator linking stress adaptation, antioxidant defense, and cellular senescence. This structured narrative review critically evaluates which redox- and aging-related conclusions are supported directly for FOXO4 and which remain inferred from other FOXO isoforms. (2) Methods: PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, and Web of Science were searched from inception to May 2026; Google Scholar was used only for supplementary citation tracking and did not contribute a separate platform-level count. Of 420 records, 300 remained after deduplication, 110 full texts were assessed, and 89 publications were retained. FOXO4-related evidence was classified as directly FOXO4-specific (n = 18), FOXO-family/conserved (n = 24), or extrapolated predominantly from FOXO1/FOXO3/DAF-16 (n = 20); 27 contextual publications on redox biology, senescence, disease, and NRF2 were tracked separately. (3) Results: The strongest FOXO4-specific evidence supports three mechanistic axes: cysteine-dependent redox sensing, stress-regulated nuclear trafficking and coactivator engagement through transportin-1 and p300/CBP, and FOXO4–p53-mediated survival of senescent cells. By contrast, direct FOXO4 regulation of commonly cited antioxidant targets, including SOD2, catalase, sestrins, and GADD45, remains insufficiently demonstrated and is inferred mainly from FOXO3 or broader FOXO-family studies. FOXO4-DRI has shown senolytic activity in preclinical models, including vascular endothelium, but has not been clinically validated. (4) Conclusions: FOXO4 is a redox-responsive transcriptional regulator with well-supported roles in cysteine-based signaling and senescent-cell survival, whereas its target-gene-level antioxidant program remains incompletely resolved. Clinical translation of FOXO4–p53 disruption requires isoform- and tissue-specific validation, pharmacokinetic and delivery studies, long-term toxicology, and explicit assessment of p53-dependent tumor surveillance. Full article

To address electric bicycle detection in confined indoor environments affected by occlusion and image degradation, this study proposes DCM-YOLO, a robustness-oriented detection framework designed to improve detection accuracy under complex indoor visual conditions. First, the Dual-branch Adaptive Fusion (DAF) module combines lightweight feature generation with adaptive modulation to preserve local structures and channel diversity when target appearances are incomplete. Second, the Spatial–Channel Synergistic Attention (SCSA) mechanism sequentially refines informative regions and semantic channels, allowing the detector to suppress background interference more effectively. Third, the Multi-Scale Group-Aware Head (MSGA-Head) introduces multi-branch receptive-field modeling and grouped refinement to improve scale-sensitive classification and localization. These components form a coordinated backbone–attention–head design, reducing detection ambiguity caused by partial visibility and degraded image quality, including underexposure, overexposure, low contrast, and blur. Experimental results on a public dataset collected from representative indoor environments indicate that DCM-YOLO achieves 87.6% Precision, 83.7% Recall, 86.2% mAP50, and 65.1% mAP50-95, exceeding the baseline model by 2.5, 2.9, 2.8, and 1.7 percentage points, respectively. Additional evaluations on public benchmark datasets further verify the effectiveness and robustness of DCM-YOLO. Full article

Fucoidan, a sulfated polysaccharide, is known for its beneficial bioactive effects, for example antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and vascular modulatory effects. Such a bioactive compound may also be useful for treating neurodegenerative diseases like age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Our research focuses on AMD-related pathomechanisms using primary porcine retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells in vitro and zebrafish (Danio rerio) models in vivo. We tested the bioactivity of a commercially available fucoidan (FVs) from bladderwrack with regard to pathomechanisms of AMD. We performed multiplex assays, RT-qPCR and fluorescence-based assays for the formation of nitric oxide (DAF-FM assay) and reactive oxygen species (DCF-DA assay) to analyze angiogenesis-related chemokines and pro-inflammatory cytokines as well as protection against oxidative stress and inflammatory insult. Our results showed that FVs significantly reduced the secretion of pro-angiogenic vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A) and follistatin as well as the pro-inflammatory cytokines interleukin 8 (IL-8) after lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and polyinosinic/polycytidylic acid (PIC) induction. Interleukin 6 (IL-6) was also reduced in the supernatant of the RPE cells. Additionally, in zebrafish, fucoidan decreased the production of NO and ROS. Gene expression of zebrafish embryos revealed anti-inflammatory effects by suppressing pro-inflammatory genes and significantly downregulating, e.g., interleukin 1 beta (IL-1β). These findings indicate modulation of oxidative stress, inflammatory responses, and VEGF secretion of the used FVs. This study demonstrates that fucoidan possesses AMD-relevant bioactivities in vitro and in vivo, suggesting fucoidan warrants further investigation in AMD-related research and related pathological mechanisms. Full article

Background/Objectives: Chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) is associated with epithelial remodeling, impaired mucociliary clearance, and altered nitric oxide (NO) metabolism. However, cell type-specific mechanisms underlying epithelial NO signaling remain poorly understood. This study investigated NO-related signaling in differentiated human sinonasal epithelial cells. Methods: Human sinonasal tissues were obtained from patients with CRSwNP (n = 20) and control subjects (n = 20). Air–liquid interface (ALI) cultures were established from donor-derived epithelial cells. Ciliated and non-ciliated cells were identified by immunostaining for acetylated α-tubulin and BCAM. Expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) was analyzed by quantitative RT-PCR. Intracellular NO-related fluorescence signals were evaluated using DAF-FM fluorescence imaging. Results: CRSwNP tissues exhibited significantly increased iNOS expression and elevated iNOS/eNOS ratios, whereas eNOS expression did not differ significantly from that in controls. ALI cultures reproduced differentiated sinonasal epithelium containing both ciliated and non-ciliated cell populations. DAF-FM fluorescence signals were significantly higher in ciliated cells than in non-ciliated cells (80.3 ± 25.3 vs. 49.3 ± 21.1). Non-selective NOS inhibition markedly reduced fluorescence signals in both cell types, whereas selective iNOS inhibition reduced but did not abolish signals in ciliated cells. Conclusions: NO-related signaling appears to differ among epithelial cell subtypes. Persistence of fluorescence signals after selective iNOS inhibition suggests a contribution of constitutive NOS activity in ciliated cells, whereas non-ciliated cells appear to rely more heavily on iNOS-dependent pathways. These findings support the hypothesis that altered epithelial NO signaling contributes to epithelial dysfunction and impaired mucociliary homeostasis in CRSwNP. Full article

DNA methylation is a key epigenetic regulator in plant development. However, the changes in methylation patterns between the early and late stages of grape berry development, the two phases with the most pronounced morphological differences, and the respective roles of methylation at these stages remain largely unexplored. To investigate the dynamic DNA methylation changes during this stage and their regulatory role in fruit development, we constructed genome-wide methylation maps of grape at two key time points: the early development stage (7 days after flowering, 7DAF; hereafter referred to as S1) and the late development stages (78 days after flowering, 78DAF; hereafter referred to as S2). Global cytosine methylation increased from 12.57% (S1) to 14.16% (S2), driven primarily by a substantial increase in CHH methylation (from 5.88% to 7.92%; p < 0.001), whereas CG and CHG methylation showed no statistically significant change. Most differentially methylated regions (DMRs) were hypermethylated in S2, predominantly in the CHH context. Integrative methylome and transcriptome analysis revealed that CHH hypermethylation was associated with the downregulation of YABBY5 (a berry size repressor) and upregulation of UGPase (a cell wall biosynthesis gene), suggesting a potential regulatory role in fruit expansion. Because our study compares only two time points, it cannot distinguish between gradual and stage-specific methylation changes, and functional validation of the identified genes is required. Nevertheless, these findings provides a valuable resource for understanding stage-specific DNA methylation dynamics and their association with gene expression during grape berry development. Full article

We study the cooperation for the joint unicast and multicast (JUMC) transmission system through a full-duplex (FD) decode-and-forward (DaF) mode relay and propose sub-optimal beamforming schemes for this cooperative JUMC FD relay channel. The beamforming vectors at the access point (AP) and at the full-duplex relay (FDR) are optimized with the metric based on the end-to-end information rate. The cooperation lets the user terminals (UT) outside of the direct coverage of the AP to be served by JUMC from the AP, and hence, the focus of this paper is on the sum rate resulting from the cooperation. As a reference scheme, a zero-forcing-based (ZF) beamforming algorithm is proposed, which suppresses the self-interference (SI) at the FDR perfectly. The SI at the FDR and the minimum operation for the signal-to-interference power ratios (SINR) at involved nodes of the DaF protocol are leveraged in designing and optimizing the second beamforming algorithm, which is the regularized beamforming scheme, since it allows an optimal amount of the SI at the FDR. This algorithm relies on the iterative applications of a quadratically constrained quadratic problem (QCQP) in its central part, while a few one-dimensional searches are running for the optimal SI levels for the individual rates. We consider three different scenarios depending on the existence of an FDR unicast message and the multiple UTs in the coverage of FDR for the application of the proposed algorithms, with some necessary modifications. Corroborating simulation results are presented to show the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed algorithms for the cooperative JUMC system. Full article