The Early-Middle Jurassic impression/compression macroflora and the palynoflora from the Qaidam Basin in the northeastern Qinghai-Xizang (Tibetan) Plateau have been well studied; however, fossil wood from this region has not been previously documented systematically. Here, we describe an anatomically well-preserved fossil wood specimen from the Lower Jurassic Huoshaoshan Formation at the Dameigou section in northern Qinghai Province, northwestern China. This fossil exhibits typical Metapodocarpoxylon Dupéron-Laudoueneix et Pons anatomy with usually araucarian radial tracheid pits and variable cross-field pits, representing a new record for Metapodocarpoxylon in the Qaidam Basin. This discovery indicates that trees with this type of wood anatomy were not confined to northern Gondwana but also grew in more northerly regions in Laurasia. The wood displays distinct growth rings, with abundant, well-formed earlywood and narrow latewood. This observation, along with previous interpretations based on macroflora, palynoflora and sedimentological data, suggests that a warm and humid climate with mild seasonality prevailed in the region during the Early Jurassic.

This study presents observations of coherent modes (CMs) in a spherical tokamak using a microwave interferometer near the midplane. The CMs within the 30–60 kHz frequency range were observed during electron cyclotron resonance heating only, and the frequency of the CMs increased proportionally with the square root of the electron temperature near $R = 0.7m$. Generally, these modes displayed bursting and chirping signatures with strong density rise and fall. Their appearance indicated an increase in the intensity of hard x rays, suggesting a deterioration in energetic electron confinement. Furthermore, the effect of CMs on the intensity of energetic electron-driven whistler waves was observed. They decreased when CMs were present and gradually increased with the decrease in CM intensity. The CMs may influence the intensity of whistler waves by affecting the energetic electron confinement.

From 2013 to 2015, China gradually established nationwide air quality monitoring stations and began to release real-time air pollution information to the public. We exploit step-by-step environmental regulations across cities to identify the effects of information disclosure on air pollution. We find that information disclosure significantly decreases the concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10. Through mechanism analysis, we find that information disclosure raises the level of government awareness, increases the amount of investments in air pollution prevention and control, stimulates green innovation, and forces heavily polluting enterprises to shut down. Additionally, we find evidence that the effectiveness of information disclosure varies across cities.

This paper, based on the idea of redundancy angle discretisation, proposes an obstacle avoidance method for the fixed tip pose trajectory of a seven degrees-of-freedom (7-DOF) modular manipulator. First, for the case in which a specific redundancy angle is given, the analytical solutions of the redundant manipulator left 6-DOF subchain are found. Then, through the discretisation of the redundancy angle, the concept of the self-motion space of the tip pose is proposed and is extended to the concept of the self-motion space of the trajectory. Based on this discrete space, a path-planning algorithm is proposed to help select the appropriate redundancy angles to obtain the collision-free solution set of the fixed Cartesian trajectory. However, due to the large fluctuation of the obtained path, a path optimisation method based on the path cost is proposed to smooth the path, and the continuous and collision-free solution set of the manipulator tip’s trajectory is obtained. The method proposed in this paper provides a new thought for the problem of collision-free solution set planning for the Cartesian trajectory of a 7-DOF manipulator and it has great application potential in working environments with high accuracy requirements for the trajectory.

Research has acknowledged the value of bootleg innovation behavior (BIB) to organizational innovation. Unfortunately, we know little about the factors that lead to the emergence of this behavior, how and when it occurs. Integrating self-concordance theory and sense-making perspective, we build a moderated mediation model positioning work engagement as a mediator of the organizational identification's effects on BIB, and willingness to take risks as a moderator of such effects. The results based on data analysis of 237 employees from different organizations in China show that organizational identification is positively related to BIB and work engagement partially mediates this link. Moreover, willingness to take risks not only moderates the work engagement–BIB association but also moderates the mediating effect of work engagement between organizational identification and BIB. Notably, at the lowest level of willingness to take risks, the influence of organizational identification on BIB via work engagement is insignificant.

This paper aims to assess young farmers' willingness to adopt sustainable agriculture (SA) by implementing the expanded theory of planned behavior (TPB) within the northern region of Bangladesh. The outcomes attained specified that attitudes toward SA, perceived behavior control and perceived self-identity have progressive and fundamental impacts on adoption behavior and affect farmers' intentions to adopt SA's particular production mechanism. On the other hand, the social interface view toward SA is not significantly associated with the Bangladeshi farmer's adoption intention. The results also show that interconnections between social and familial pressure are not significant for sustainable farming practice adoption intentions. However, the interconnections among the psychosocial factors have a crucial role in formulating the TPB to forecast the intentional behavior for adopting SA practices. Thus, the government should highlight the advantages of several sustainable agricultural practices and circulate more detailed information regarding SA tactics to improve the knowledge gap of smallholder farmers. Furthermore, training facilities should be extended to improve the attitude and perceived self-identity of young farmers. Moreover, the formulation of structural information sharing platforms and agricultural value chain facilities should also help shape young farmers' interpersonal behavior in adopting SA practices.

The current epidemic of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) significantly affects human health worldwide. Activation of brown adipocytes and browning of white adipocytes are considered as a promising molecular target for T2DM treatment. Mulberry leaf, a traditional Chinese medicine, has been demonstrated to have multi-biological activities, including anti-diabetic and anti-inflammatory effects. Our experimental results showed that mulberry leaf significantly alleviated the disorder of glucose and lipid metabolism in T2DM rats. In addition, mulberry leaf induced browning of inguinal white adipose tissue (IWAT) by enhancing the expressions of brown-mark genes as well as beige-specific genes, including uncoupling protein-1 (UCP1), peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator 1 alpha (PGC-1α), peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha (PPARα), PRD1-BF-1-RIZ1 homologous domain containing protein 16 (PRDM16), cell death inducing DFFA-like effector A (Cidea), CD137 and transmembrane protein 26 (TMEM26). Mulberry leaf also activated brown adipose tissue (BAT) by increasing the expressions of brown-mark genes including UCP1, PGC-1α, PPARα, PRDM16 and Cidea. Moreover, mulberry leaf enhanced the expression of nuclear respiratory factor 1 (NRF-1) and mitochondrial transcription factor A (TFAM) genes that are responsible for mitochondrial biogenesis in IWAT and BAT. Importantly, mulberry leaf also increased the expression of UCP1 and carnitine palmitoyl transferase 1 (CPT-1) proteins in both IWAT and BAT via a mechanism involving AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and PGC-1α pathway. In conclusion, our findings identify the role of mulberry leaf in inducing adipose browning, indicating that mulberry leaf may be used as a candidate browning agent for the treatment of T2DM.

ABSTRACT IMPACT: Screening the effect of thousands of non-coding genetic variants will help identify variants important in the etiology of diseases OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Massively parallel reporter assays (MPRAs) can experimentally evaluate the impact of genetic variants on gene expression. In this study, our objective was to systematically evaluate the functional activity of 3’-UTR SNPs associated with neurological disorders and use those results to help understand their contributions to disease etiology. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: To choose variants to evaluate with the MPRA, we first gathered SNPs from the GWAS Catalog that were associated with any neurological disorder trait with p-value < 10-5. For each SNP, we identified the region that was in linkage disequilibrium (r2 > 0.8) and retrieved all the common 3’-UTR SNPs (allele-frequency > 0.05) within that region. We used an MPRA to measure the impact of these 3’-UTR variants in SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells and a microglial cell line. These results were then used to train a deep-learning model to predict the impact of variants and identify features that contribute to the predictions. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Of the 13,515 3’-UTR SNPs tested, 400 and 657 significantly impacted gene expression in SH-SY5Y and microglia, respectively. Of the 84 SNPs significantly impacted in both cells, the direction of impact was the same in 81. The direction of eQTL in GTEx tissues agreed with the assay SNP effect in SH-SY5Y cells but not microglial cells. The deep-learning model predicted sequence activity level correlated with the experimental activity level (Spearman’s corr = 0.45). The deep-learning model identified several predictive motifs similar to motifs of RNA-binding proteins. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF FINDINGS: This study demonstrates that MPRAs can be used to evaluate the effect of non-coding variants, and the results can be used to train a machine learning model and interpret its predictions. Together, these can help identify causal variants and further understand the etiology of diseases.

A tunable ultrafast intensity-rotating optical field is generated by overlapping a pair of 20 Hz, 800 nm chirped pulses with a Michelson interferometer (MI). Its rotating rate can be up to 10 trillion radians per second ($\text{Trad}/\text{s}$), which can be flexibly tuned with a mirror in the MI. Besides, its fold rotational symmetry structure is also changeable by controlling the difference from the topological charges of the pulse pair. Experimentally, we have successfully developed a two-petal lattice with a tunable rotating speed from $3.9~\text{Trad}/\text{s}$ up to $11.9~\text{Trad}/\text{s}$, which is confirmed by our single-shot ultrafast frame imager based on noncollinear optical-parametric amplification with its highest frame rate of 15 trillion frames per second (Tfps). This work is carried out at a low repetition rate. Therefore, it can be applied at relativistic, even ultrarelativistic, intensities, which usually operate in low repetition rate ultrashort and ultraintense laser systems. We believe that it may have application in laser-plasma-based accelerators, strong terahertz radiations and celestial phenomena.

The purpose of this paper is to numerically realize the inverse scattering scheme proposed in [19] of reconstructing complex elastic objects by a single far-field measurement. The unknown elastic scatterers might consist of both rigid bodies and traction-free cavities with components of multiscale sizes presented simultaneously. We conduct extensive numerical experiments to show the effectiveness and efficiency of the imaging scheme proposed in [19]. Moreover, we develop a two-stage technique, which can significantly speed up the reconstruction to yield a fast imaging scheme.

Usually, the high-power microwave (HPM) devices suffer from impedance collapse and cathode material degradation or even failure. When the intense electron beam bombards the anode (or named as collector in HPM device), an anode plasma could appear under certain conditions. In this case, the impedance collapse is caused by the expansions of the cathode and anode plasmas and diode current overshot caused by the bipolar flow. In this paper, characterization of a short-pulse high-power diode operated with anode effects with a dielectric fiber (velvet) cathode is discussed. The bipolar flow (or anode plasma) is indeed evident at beam power densities ~11 MW/cm2 and the pulse durations of ~50 ns. The analysis results of the deposit dose and thermal regime of the anode show that the electron stimulated desorption played an important role in the generation of anode plasma in this case. With the effect of anode plasma, the appearance of local cathode plasma flares (or nonuniform electron emission) is particularly detrimental for the diode closure. Micro-structure and elemental surface compositions of cathode are changed by the anode splashing, which is very harmful to the performance of cathode.

The nonisothermal crystallization kinetics, fragility, and thermodynamics of Ti20Zr20Cu20Ni20Be20 high entropy bulk metallic glass (HE-BMG) have been investigated by differential scanning calorimetry. The activation energies for the glass transition and crystallization events were determined by Kissinger and Ozawa methods. The value of local Avrami exponent is less than 1.5 in most cases for all the three crystallization events, indicating that the major crystallization mechanism is diffusion-controlled growth of pre-existing nuclei. The local activation energy is stable during the whole crystallization process and this further confirms that the crystallization occurs through a single mechanism. Ti20Zr20Cu20Ni20Be20 alloy can be classified into “strong glass formers” according to the estimated fragility index and also shows a relatively low value of Gibbs free energy difference. However, compared with Zr41.2Ti13.8Cu12.5Ni10Be22.5 BMG, the glass-forming ability of Ti20Zr20Cu20Ni20Be20 HE-BMG is much lower and the related reasons have been discussed.

Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy is characterised by progressive, fibrofatty replacement of myocardium, and ventricular arrhythmias, and its prognosis is usually poor. Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy associated with atrial septal defect is very rare, and this combination may make the diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis difficult. We present a case of a patient with this association who underwent interventional treatment with a septal defect occluder. Transcatheter closure of atrial septal defect in a patient with arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy is hitherto unreported. During a 3-year follow-up he remained relatively stable. We also review the cases reported in the medical literature describing this uncommon association between arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy and atrial septal defect or patent foramen ovale.

Background: Although accumulating research demonstrates the association between attentional bias and social anxiety, the bias for positive stimuli has so far not been adequately studied. Aims: The aim is to investigate the time-course of attentional bias for positive social words in participants with high and low social anxiety. Method: In a modified dot-probe task, word-pairs of neutral and positive social words were randomly presented for 100, 500, and 1250 milliseconds in a nonclinical sample of students to test their attentional bias. Results: Non-significant interaction of Group × Exposure Duration was found. However, there was a significant main effect of group, with significantly different response latencies between the high social anxiety (HSA) and low social anxiety (LSA) groups in the 100 ms condition, without for 500 or 1250 ms. With respect to attentional bias, the LSA group showed enhanced preferential attention for positive social words to which the HSA group showed avoidance in the 100 ms condition. In the 500 ms condition, preferential attention to positive social words was at trend in the LSA group, relative to the HSA group. Neither group showed attentional bias in the 1250 ms condition. Conclusions: These findings extend recent research about the attention training program and add to the empirical literature suggesting that the initial avoidance of positive stimuli may contribute to maintaining social anxiety.

Experimental animal studies and adult research consistently show that stress exposure and/or psychological symptoms are associated with poorer health and immune functioning. The application to children is not yet clear, however, and we lack developmental models for studies in this area. The objective of this paper was to test the hypothesis that self-reported self-efficacy and depression, two markers of psychological well-being in children, would predict immunity and rate of illnesses. The data are based on a prospective study of 141 healthy, normally developing children aged 7–13 years who were recruited from an ambulatory pediatric setting. Children completed self-efficacy and depression measures and had blood obtained for IL-6 plasma levels and natural killer cell functional assays on three occasions, 6 months apart. Parents maintained weekly child illness diaries over 1 year using a thermometer to record fever. Parent psychiatric symptoms and income were used as covariates. Results indicated that, across the three occasions of measurement collected over the 1-year period, higher perceived self-efficacy was significantly associated with lower plasma interleukin 6 concentrations. There was no overall main effect of depressive symptoms on immune measures; however, for older girls, higher depression was associated with elevated natural killer cell cytotoxicity and an increased rate of total illnesses and febrile illnesses. The findings provide some of the first evidence that psychological processes are associated with immunity and health in a normally developing sample of preadolescents. Furthermore, the pattern of results suggests a modified model of a link between psychological well-being and immunological processes in children. These results build on and expand research on the notion of allostatic load and develop a groundwork for developmental studies in this area.

Both high-fat and high-carbohydrate diets have been considered in association with the impairment of baroreflex sensitivity. However, the mechanisms are unclear. In the present study, the effects of a complex high-fat and high-carbohydrate diet (HFCD) on baroreflex circuitry were investigated. A HFCD emulsion was formulated and orally administered to rats for 30 d. Rats were then anaesthetised and baroreflex sensitivity was measured following intravenous injection of phenylephrine (PE) and sodium nitroprusside (SNP) at various doses. Morphological changes of the brainstem were detected by transmission electron microscopy. Baroreflex sensitivity-associated gene and protein expression was determined by quantitative RT-PCR and Western blot analysis. We found that: (1) the HFCD significantly attenuated heart rate responses to arterial blood pressure (ABP) increases induced by PE, but had no effect on heart rate responses to ABP decreases induced by SNP; (2) the HFCD induced medullary sheath thickening, myelinated nerve atrophy and hyaloplasm dissolving; (3) protein levels of substance P, calcitonin gene-related peptide, GlutR2 and γ-aminobutyric acid A receptors were all markedly decreased in the brainstems of rats administered with the HFCD. These findings conclude that a HFCD could impair the baroreflex sensitivity of rats. Remodelled morphology and decreased neurotransmitters and receptors in the domains of the nucleus tractus solitarii and nucleus ambiguus are participating in this process.

The influence of fiber type and method of composite fabrication on the thermal shock behavior of 2-D fiber-reinforced ceramic composites is studied. Thermal shock tests are performed using a water quench technique, and thermal shock damage is characterized by both destructive and nondestructive techniques. It is shown that the composites possessed superior resistance to thermal shock damage than the monolithic ceramics. Catastrophic failure due to severe thermal stresses is prevented in composites and a significant portion of their original strength is retained at a quench temperature difference up to 1000°C. These results along with an analysis of the thermal shock damage mechanism based on the destructive and nondestructive tests is described.