Genes involved in melanin production directly impact insect pigmentation and can affect diverse physiology and behaviours. The role these genes have on sex behaviour, however, is unclear. In the present study, the crucial melanin pigment gene black was functionally characterised in an urban pest, the German cockroach, Blattella germanica. RNAi knockdown of B. germanica black (Bgblack) had no effect on survival, but did result in black pigmentation of the thoraxes, abdomens, heads, wings, legs, antennae, and cerci due to cuticular accumulation of melanin. Sex-specific variation in the pigmentation pattern was apparent, with females exhibiting darker coloration on the abdomen and thorax than males. Bgblack knockdown also resulted in wing deformation and negatively impacted the contact sex pheromone-based courtship behaviour of males. This study provides evidence for black function in multiple aspects of B. germanica biology and opens new avenues of exploration for novel pest control strategies.

Microplastics (MPs) are carbon-rich polymers that are ubiquitous in the environment. With the increase of plastic production, microplastic pollution may be exacerbated and result in significant changes in microbial communities and biogeochemical processes such as carbon cycling, eventually impacting greenhouse gas emission and carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems. However, current research on the effect of MPs on soil carbon cycling is still limited, and there is a lack of systematic review of the scattered information obtained from previous studies. Accordingly, this review provides a systematic overview of the current knowledge on the effects of MPs on soil carbon cycling and gives future research suggestions. Emerging evidence indicates that MPs could affect soil carbon stability and CO2 and CH4 emission by modifying soil physicochemical and microbiological properties; though biodegradable MPs often exhibit a greater effect than nonbiodegradable ones, the specific effects are highly dependent on plastic type, size and concentration. The specific mechanisms of MPs’ impact on soil carbon cycles remain elusive, which are discussed mainly from the perspective of microbial changes, including microbial biomass, microbial community composition, and key enzymes and functional genes associated with carbon metabolism. Further research is needed to elucidate whether MPs have a positive priming effect on soil carbon decomposition and the biotic and abiotic mechanisms involved. This review paper helps researchers gain a clearer picture of how and through which way MPs impact carbon cycling in soil ecosystems.

Autonomous fabric manipulation is a challenging task due to complex dynamics and potential self-occlusion during fabric handling. An intuitive method of fabric-folding manipulation first involves obtaining a smooth and unfolded fabric configuration before the folding process begins. However, the combination of quasi-static actions like pick & place and dynamic action like fling proves inadequate in effectively unfolding long-sleeved T-shirts with sleeves mostly tucked inside the garment. To address this limitation, this paper introduces an enhanced quasi-static action called pick & drag, specifically designed to handle this type of fabric configuration. Additionally, an efficient dual-arm manipulation system is designed in this paper, which combines quasi-static (including pick & place and pick & drag) and dynamic fling actions to flexibly manipulate fabrics into unfolded and smooth configurations. Subsequently, once it is confirmed that the fabric is sufficiently unfolded and all fabric keypoints are detected, the keypoint-based heuristic folding algorithm is employed for the fabric-folding process. To address the scarcity of publicly available keypoint detection datasets for real fabric, we gathered images of various fabric configurations and types in real scenes to create a comprehensive keypoint dataset for fabric folding. This dataset aims to enhance the success rate of keypoint detection. Moreover, we evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed system in real-world settings, where it consistently and reliably unfolds and folds various types of fabrics, including challenging situations such as long-sleeved T-shirts with most parts of sleeves tucked inside the garment. Specifically, our method achieves a coverage rate of 0.822 and a success rate of 0.88 for long-sleeved T-shirts folding. Supplemental materials and dataset are available on our project webpage at https://sites.google.com/view/fabricfolding.

This paper proposes a composite non-singular fast terminal sliding mode attitude control scheme based on a reduced-order extended state observer for the stratospheric airship’s attitude system affected by multiple disturbances. First, the feedback linearisation method is applied to address the nonlinearity of the attitude motion model and achieve decoupling of the model in three channels. Second, the overall disturbances, encompassing airship parameter perturbations and external disturbances, are treated as an aggregate. A reduced-order extended state observer is designed for each channel to formulate a composite non-singular fast terminal sliding mode surface. In the control design phase, the hyperbolic sine function is adopted as replacement for the sign function to ensure the continuity of the control signal. The estimated disturbances are incorporated in the control law design to directly offset the effects of multiple disturbances on the attitude motion of the airship. Third, based on Lyapunov theory, it has been proven that the control law can drive the attitude tracking error to converge to zero within a finite time. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed control scheme exhibits favorable disturbance rejection capability, as well as higher tracking accuracy and faster response speed.

Buckminsterfullerene (C60) is one of the most important carbon-based nanoparticles (CNPs). Industrial-scale production of C60 has reached the level of tons; release to the environment has been confirmed (Tremblay, 2002; Qiao et al., 2007). The present study was devoted to study of the effect of clay minerals on the migration process of C60. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were used to study the interaction of CNPS with clay minerals through study of the adsorption of C60 on various surfaces of kaolinite and pyrophyllite in vacuum and aqueous environments. Two kinds of surfaces, hydrophobic siloxane surfaces and hydrophilic hydroxyl surfaces, were investigated. C60 is mainly adsorbed onto the vacancy of the six-membered ring, composed of SiO4 tetrahedra or AlO6 octahedra, on clay-mineral surfaces. A single adsorption layer consisting of C60 molecules with an ordered hexagonal arrangement is presented for all surfaces in vacuum. In aqueous environments, however, the monolayer appears on the siloxane surfaces only, while a cluster of C60 molecules is formed on the hydroxyl surfaces. Free energies prove that the attachment of two C60 molecules is stronger than the adsorption of C60 onto the hydroxyl surface in water, which is the reason for unfavorable formation of C60 monolayer. On the other hand, the adsorption free energy is more negative on the hydrophobic siloxane surface, explaining the monolayer formation. The existence of water, which forms hydration layers on the surfaces of clay minerals, produces energy barriers, and reduces the adsorption affinity to some extent. Because clay minerals act as geosorbents in the environment, the present study is significant in terms of understanding the migration and fate of CNPS in nature.

The global transition towards diets high in calories has contributed to 2.1 billion people becoming overweight, or obese, which damages male reproduction and harms offspring. Recently, more and more studies have shown that paternal exposure to stress closely affects the health of offspring in an intergenerational and transgenerational way. SET Domain Containing 2 (SETD2), a key epigenetic gene, is highly conserved among species, is a crucial methyltransferase for converting histone 3 lysine 36 dimethylation (H3K36me2) into histone 3 lysine 36 trimethylation (H3K36me3), and plays an important regulator in the response to stress. In this study, we compared patterns of SETD2 expression and the H3K36me3 pattern in pre-implantation embryos derived from normal or obese mice induced by high diet. The results showed that SETD2 mRNA was significantly higher in the high-fat diet (HFD) group than the control diet (CD) group at the 2-cell, 4-cell, 8-cell, and 16-cell stages, and at the morula and blastocyst stages. The relative levels of H3K36me3 in the HFD group at the 2-cell, 4-cell, 8-cell, 16-cell, morula stage, and blastocyst stage were significantly higher than in the CD group. These results indicated that dietary changes in parental generation (F0) male mice fed a HFD were traceable in SETD2/H3K36me3 in embryos, and that a paternal high-fat diet brings about adverse effects for offspring that might be related to SETD2/H3K36me3, which throws new light on the effect of paternal obesity on offspring from an epigenetic perspective.

Maternal syphilis not only seriously affects the quality of life of pregnant women themselves but also may cause various adverse pregnancy outcomes (APOs). This study aimed to analyse the association between the related factors and APOs in maternal syphilis. 7,030 pregnant women infected with syphilis in Henan Province between January 2016 and December 2022 were selected as participants. Information on their demographic and clinical characteristics, treatment status, and pregnancy outcomes was collected. Multivariate logistic regression models and chi-squared automatic interaction detector (CHAID) decision tree models were used to analyse the factors associated with APOs. The multivariate logistic regression results showed that the syphilis infection history (OR = 1.207, 95% CI, 1.035–1.409), the occurrence of abnormality during pregnancy (OR = 5.001, 95% CI, 4.203–5.951), not receiving standard treatment (OR = 1.370, 95% CI, 1.095–1.716), not receiving any treatment (OR = 1.313, 95% CI, 1.105–1.559), and a titre ≥1:8 at diagnosis (OR = 1.350, 95%CI, 1.079–1.690) and before delivery (OR = 1.985, 95%CI, 1.463–2.694) were risk factors. A total of six influencing factors of APOs in syphilis-infected women were screened using the CHAID decision tree model. Integrated prevention measures such as early screening, scientific eugenics assessment, and standard syphilis treatment are of great significance in reducing the incidence of APOs for pregnant women infected with syphilis.

A novel concept—the contact-based landing on a mobile platform—is proposed in this paper. An adaptive backstepping controller is designed to deal with the unknown disturbances in the interactive process, and the contact-based landing mission is implemented under the hybrid force/motion control framework. A rotorcraft aerial vehicle system and a ground mobile platform are designed to conduct flight experiments, evaluating the feasibility of the proposed landing scheme and control strategy. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a rotorcraft unmanned aerial vehicle has been implemented to conduct a contact-based landing. To improve system autonomy in future applications, vision-based recognition and localization methods are studied, contributing to the detection of a partially occluded cooperative object or at a close range. The proposed recognition algorithms are tested on a ground platform and evaluated in several simulated scenarios, indicating the algorithm’s effectiveness.

The association between dietary Cu intake and mortality risk remains uncertain. We aimed to investigate the relationship of dietary Cu intake with all-cause mortality among Chinese adults. A total of 17 310 participants from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, a national ongoing open cohort of Chinese participants, were included in the analysis. Dietary intake was measured by three consecutive 24-h dietary recalls in combination with a weighing inventory over the same 3 d. The average intakes of the 3-d dietary macronutrients and micronutrients were calculated. The study outcome was all-cause mortality. During a median follow-up of 9·0 years, 1324 (7·6 %) participants died. After adjusting for sex, age, BMI, ever alcohol drinking, ever smoking, education levels, occupations, urban or rural residents, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure and the intakes of fat, protein and carbohydrate, the association between dietary Cu intake and all-cause mortality followed a J-shape (P for nonlinearity = 0·047). When dietary Cu intake was assessed as quartiles, compared with those in the first quartile (<1·60 mg/d), the adjusted hazard ratios for all-cause mortality were 0·87 (95 % CI (0·71, 1·07)), 0·98 (95 % CI (0·79, 1·21)) and 1·49 (95 % CI (1·19, 1·86)), respectively, in participants in the second (1·60–<1·83 mg/d), third (1·83–<2·09 mg/d) and fourth (≥2·09 mg/d) quartiles. A series of subgroup analyses and sensitivity analyses showed similar results. Overall, our findings emphasised the importance of maintaining optimal dietary Cu intake levels for prevention of premature death.

The aim of this study was to explore the status of thyroid peroxidase antibody (TPOAb) and thyroglobulin antibody (TGAb) in three areas with differing water iodine concentrations; and to discuss the relationships between these two thyroid antibodies and thyroid diseases in the three areas. We investigated 2503 adults from three areas. Urinary iodine concentrations, thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), free thyroxine (FT4), free triiodothyronine (FT3), TPOAb, TGAb and thyroid volume (TV) were measured, and thyroid ultrasonography was performed. The positivity rates of TGAb(+), TPOAb(+) and TGAb(+) and TPOAb(+) or TGAb(+) were significantly higher in iodine fortification (IF) areas than iodine adequate (IA) areas (all P < 0·05). In IF and iodine excess areas, the positivity rates of TPOAb(+), TGAb(+) and TPOAb(+) or TGAb(+) significantly increased with age (all P for trend < 0·05). The levels of TSH, TV and the prevalence of overt hypothyroidism, subclinical hypothyroidism and goitre were significantly elevated in the thyroid antibody-positive groups in the three areas, but the FT3 was diminished (all P < 0·010). Positivity for TPOAb and TGAb was associated with an increased risk of subclinical hypothyroidism in the three areas. In areas with different median water iodine, positivity for both TPOAb and TGAb was associated with elevated TSH values. Notably, with the increased levels of TPOAb, the frequency of abnormally elevated TSH increased dramatically in the three areas.

Quantitative phase analysis is one of the major applications of X-ray powder diffraction. The essential principle of quantitative phase analysis is that the diffraction intensity of a component phase in a mixture is proportional to its abundance. Nevertheless, the diffraction intensities of the component phases cannot be compared with each other directly since the coherent scattering power per unit cell (or chemical formula) of each component phase is usually different. The coherent scattering power per unit cell of a crystal is well represented by the sum of the squared structure factors, which cannot be calculated directly when the crystal structure data is unavailable. Presented here is a way to approximate the coherent scattering power per unit cell based solely on the unit cell parameters and the chemical contents. This approximation is useful when the atomic coordinates for one or more of the phases in a sample are unavailable. An assessment of the accuracy of the approximation is presented. This assessment indicates that the approximation will likely be within 10% when X-ray powder diffraction data is collected over a sufficient portion of the measurable pattern.

Novel navigation applications provide a driving behavior score for each finished trip to promote safe driving, which is mainly based on experts’ domain knowledge. In this paper, with automobile insurance claims data and associated telematics car driving data, we propose a supervised driving risk scoring neural network model. This one-dimensional convolutional neural network takes time series of individual car driving trips as input and returns a risk score in the unit range of (0,1). By incorporating credibility average risk score of each driver, the classical Poisson generalized linear model for automobile insurance claims frequency prediction can be improved significantly. Hence, compared with non-telematics-based insurers, telematics-based insurers can discover more heterogeneity in their portfolio and attract safer drivers with premiums discounts.

Chronic inflammation exerts pleiotropic effects in the aetiology and progression of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Glucosamine is widely used in many countries and may have anti-inflammatory properties. We aimed to prospectively evaluate the association of regular glucosamine use with incident COPD risk and explore whether such association could be modified by smoking in the UK Biobank cohort, which recruited more than half a million participants aged 40–69 years from across the UK between 2006 and 2010. Cox proportional hazards models with adjustment for potential confounding factors were used to calculate hazard ratios (HR) as well as 95 % CI for the risk of incident COPD. During a median follow-up of 8·96 years (interquartile range 8·29–9·53 years), 9016 new-onset events of COPD were documented. We found that the regular use of glucosamine was associated with a significantly lower risk of incident COPD with multivariable adjusted HR of 0·80 (95 % CI, 0·75, 0·85; P < 0·001). When subgroup analyses were performed by smoking status, the adjusted HR for the association of regular glucosamine use with incident COPD were 0·84 (0·73, 0·96), 0·84 (0·77, 0·92) and 0·71 (0·62, 0·80) among never smokers, former smokers and current smokers, respectively. No significant interaction was observed between glucosamine use and smoking status (P for interaction = 0·078). Incident COPD could be reduced by 14 % to 84 % through a combination of regular glucosamine use and smoking cessation.

In this paper, we developed a new navigation system, called ATCM, which detects obstacles in a sliding window with an adaptive threshold clustering algorithm, classifies the detected obstacles with a decision tree, heuristically predicts potential collision and finds optimal path with a simplified Morphin algorithm. This system has the merits of optimal free-collision path, small memory size and less computing complexity, compared with the state of the arts in robot navigation. The modular design of 6-steps navigation provides a holistic methodology to implement and verify the performance of a robot’s navigation system. The experiments on simulation and a physical robot for the eight scenarios demonstrate that the robot can effectively and efficiently avoid potential collisions with any static or dynamic obstacles in its surrounding environment. Compared with the particle swarm optimisation, the dynamic window approach and the traditional Morphin algorithm for the autonomous navigation of a mobile robot in a static environment, ATCM achieved the shortest path with higher efficiency.

Echinococcus granulosus sensu lato has complex defence mechanisms that protect it from the anti-parasitic immune response for long periods. Echinococcus granulosus cyst fluid (EgCF) is involved in the immune escape. Nevertheless, whether and how EgCF modulates the inflammatory response in macrophages remains poorly understood. Here, real-time polymerase chain reaction and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay revealed that EgCF could markedly attenuate the lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced production of pro-inflammatory factors including tumour necrosis factor-α, interleukin (IL)-12 and IL-6 but increase the expression of IL-10 at mRNA and protein levels in mouse peritoneal macrophages and RAW 264.7 cells. Mechanically, western blotting and immunofluorescence assay showed that EgCF abolished the activation of nuclear factor (NF)-κB p65, p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and ERK1/2 signalling pathways by LPS stimulation in mouse macrophages. EgCF's anti-inflammatory role was at least partly contributed by promoting proteasomal degradation of the critical adaptor TRAF6. Moreover, the EgCF-promoted anti-inflammatory response and TRAF6 proteasomal degradation were conserved in human THP-1 macrophages. These findings collectively reveal a novel mechanism by which EgCF suppresses inflammatory responses by inhibiting TRAF6 and the downstream activation of NF-κB and MAPK signalling in both human and mouse macrophages, providing new insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying the E. granulosus-induced immune evasion.

The accurate prediction of turbulent mixing induced by Rayleigh–Taylor (R–T), Richtmyer–Meshkov (R–M) and Kelvin–Helmholtz (K–H) instabilities is very important in understanding natural phenomena and improving engineering applications. In applications, the prediction of mixing with the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equation remains the most widely used method. The RANS method involves two aspects, i.e. physical modelling and model coefficients. Generally, the latter is determined empirically; thus, there is a lack of universality. In this paper, inspired by the well-known Reynolds decomposition, we propose a methodology to determine the model coefficients with the following three steps: (i) preset a set of analytical RANS solutions by fully using the knowledge of mixing evolutions; (ii) simplify the differential RANS equations to algebraic equations by imposing the preset solutions to RANS equations; (iii) solve the algebraic equations approximately to give the values of the entire model coefficients. The specific application of this methodology in the widely used K–L mixing model shows that, using the same set of model coefficients determined from the current methodology, the K–L model successfully predicts the mixing evolutions in terms of different physical quantities (e.g. temporal scalings and spatial profiles), density ratios and problems (e.g. R–T, R–M, K–H and reshocked R–M mixings). It is possible to extend this methodology to other turbulence models characterised with self-similar evolutions, such as K-$\epsilon$ mixing models.