Sensory neuron membrane protein (SNMP) gene play a crucial role in insect chemosensory systems. However, the role of SNMP in the host searching behaviour of Rhopalosiphum padi (Hemiptera: Aphididae), a highly destructive pest of cereal crops, has not been clearly understood. Our previous research has shown that three wheat volatile organic compounds (VOCs) – (E)-2-hexenol, linalool, and octanal can attract R. padi, but the involvement of SNMP in the aphid’s olfactory response to these wheat VOCs has not to be elucidated. In this study, only one SNMP gene was cloned and characterised from R. padi. The results revealed that the SNMP belongs to the SNMP1 subfamily and was named RpadSNMP1. RpadSNMP11 was predominantly expressed in the antennae of the aphid, with significantly higher expression levels observed in winged forms, indicating that it is involved in olfactory responses of R. padi. RpadSNMP1 expression was significantly up-regulated following starvation, and the expression of this gene showed a decreasing trend after 24 h of aphid feeding. Functional analysis through RpadSNMP1 knockdown demonstrated a significant decrease in R. padi’s ability to search for host plants. The residence time of R. padi injected with dsRpadSNMP1 significantly shortened in response to (E)-2-hexenol, linalool and octanal according to the four-arm olfactometer, indicating the crucial role of RpadSNMP1 in mediating the aphid’s response to these wheat VOCs. Molecular docking suggested potential binding interactions between RpadSNMP1 and three wheat VOCs. Overall, these findings provided evidence for the involvement of RpadSNMP1 in host plant searching and lay a foundation for developing new methods to control this destructive pest.

Bombyx mori Tryptophanyl-tRNA synthetase (BmWARS) belongs to the family of Ic-like aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (aaRSs), whose specific recognition of the substrate Trp, tRNA, maintains the fidelity of protein synthesis. In this study, BmWARS was cloned and characterized from the midgut of the silkworm, Bombyx mori, resulting in an open reading frame (ORF) with a full length of 1,149 bp, which can encode 382 Aa. BmWARS is localized in the cytoplasm, and is expressed in all tissues of the silkworm, with higher expression in the testis, ovary, silk gland and malpighian tubule. The expression of BmWARS was significantly up-regulated in the midgut and silk gland after infection with Bombyx mori nuclear polyhedrosis virus (BmNPV). In addition, overexpression of BmWARS inhibited BmNPV infection and replication extremely significantly, while interference with BmWARS expression promoted BmNPV infection and replication. Analysis of the immune pathways in which BmWARS may be involved revealed that the expression of the key genes of the PI3K-Akt pathway, BmPI3K, BmAkt, BmPDK1, BmeIF4E, BmS6, and p-Akt protein was significantly reduced, whereas the expression of BmPTEN, BmFoxO, and BmCaspase9 was significantly increased in the cells that overexpressed BmWARS and were infected with BmNPV. Meanwhile, the results of the study interfering with the expression of BmWARS were completely opposite to those of the study overexpressing BmWARS. This is the first report that BmWARS has antiviral effects in Bombyx mori. Moreover, BmWARS inhibits BmNPV infection and replication in Bombyx mori cells by promoting apoptosis and inhibiting cell proliferation.

The identification of fishing vessel operations holds significant importance in addressing fishing industry issues, such as overfishing and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUUF). Many countries utilise data from vessel monitoring systems (VMSs) or automatic identification systems (AISs) to monitor fishing activities. These data include vessel trajectories, headings and speeds, among others. We aimed to analyse the fishing behaviours of three types of fishing gear used by vessels (trawl, purse seine and gill net) and identify the types of gear employed by the vessels. Therefore, a 1D CNN-LSTM fishing vessel operational behaviour prediction model was proposed by combining a one-dimensional convolutional (1D CNN) neural network and a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network. The model utilises 1D CNN to extract local features from fishing vessel trajectories and employs LSTM to capture the time series information in the data, eventually classifying fishing gears. The results show that the proposed model achieves a classification accuracy of 92% in categorising fishing vessel operational trajectories. This study significantly contributes to preventing IUUF, curtailing overfishing, and enhancing fisheries management strategies.

This cohort study evaluated the associations of C-reactive protein-neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (C-NLR) and lymphocyte-CRP ratio (LCR) with refractory Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia (RMPP), and the predictive values of C-NLR and LCR for RMPP and prolonged fever in children based on 389 children with MPP. The associations of NLR, C-NLR, and LCR with RMPP and prolonged fever were evaluated by logistic regression analysis. C-NLR was correlated with an increased risk of RMPP in children [odds ratio (OR) = 3.459, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.598–7.491]. A higher risk of RMPP was identified in the C-NLR > 29.9 group (OR = 2.885, 95% CI: 1.599–5.203). LCR > 1584.2 was associated with a decreased risk of RMPP (OR = 0.500, 95% CI: 0.282–0.887). Increased risk of prolonged fever in children was identified with the increase of C-NLR (OR = 5.913, 95% CI: 2.335–14.972) or NLR (OR = 2.413, 95% CI: 1.689–3.446). The AUCs of C-NLR, LCR, and NLR for predicting RMPP were 0.630, 0.623, and 0.608, respectively. In conclusion, C-NLR was associated with increased RMPP risk in children and had good value for predicting RMPP and prolonged fever in children.

The delay-shift of the pre-pulse may mislead the determination of its origination and cause problems for the temporal contrast improvement of high-peak-power lasers, especially when the corresponding post-pulse is beyond the time window of the measurement device. In this work, an empirical formula is proposed to predict the delay-shift of pre-pulses for the first time. The empirical formula shows that the delay-shift is proportional to the square of the post-pulse’s initial delay, and also the ratio of the third-order dispersion to the group delay dispersion’s square, which intuitively reveals the main cause for the delay-shift and may provide a convenient routing for identifying the real sources of pre-pulses in both chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) and optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) systems. The empirical formula agrees well with the experimental results both in the CPA and the OPCPA systems. Besides, a numerical simulation is also carried out to further verify the empirical formula.

This study aims to evaluate the impact of low-carbohydrate diet, balanced dietary guidance and pharmacotherapy on weight loss among individuals with overweight or obesity over a period of 3 months. The study involves 339 individuals with overweight or obesity and received weight loss treatment at the Department of Clinical Nutrition at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University, School of Medicine, between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2023. The primary outcome is the percentage weight loss. Among the studied patients, the majority chose low-carbohydrate diet as their primary treatment (168 (49·56 %)), followed by balanced dietary guidance (139 (41·00 %)) and pharmacotherapy (32 (9·44 %)). The total percentage weight loss for patients who were followed up for 1 month, 2 months and 3 months was 4·98 (3·04, 6·29) %, 7·93 (5·42, 7·93) % and 10·71 (7·74, 13·83) %, respectively. Multivariable logistic regression analysis identified low-carbohydrate diet as an independent factor associated with percentage weight loss of ≥ 3 % and ≥ 5 % at 1 month (OR = 0·461, P < 0·05; OR = 0·349, P < 0·001). The results showed that a low-carbohydrate diet was an effective weight loss strategy in the short term. However, its long-term effects were comparable to those observed with balanced dietary guidance and pharmacotherapy.

Text readability assessment aims to automatically evaluate the degree of reading difficulty of a given text for a specific group of readers. Most of the previous studies considered it as a classification task and explored a wide range of linguistic features to express the readability of a text from different aspects, such as semantic-based and syntactic-based features. Intuitively, when the external form of a text becomes more complex, individuals will experience more reading difficulties. Based on this motivation, our research attempts to separate the textual external form from the text and investigate its efficiency in determining readability. Specifically, in this paper, we introduce a new concept, namely textual form complexity, to provide a novel insight into text readability. The main idea is that the readability of a text can be measured by the degree to which it is challenging for readers to overcome the distractions of external textual form and obtain the text’s core semantics. To this end, we propose a set of textual form features to express the complexity of the outer form of a text and characterize its readability. Findings show that the proposed external textual form features can be used as effective evaluation indexes to indicate the readability of text. It brings a new perspective to the existing research and provides a new complement to the existing rich features.

Studies on obesity and risk factors from a life-course perspective among residents in the Tibet Plateau with recent economic growth and increasing obesity are important and urgently needed. The birth cohort in this area provides a unique opportunity to examine the association between maternal dietary practice and neonatal obesity. The study aims to detect the prevalence of obesity among neonates, associated with maternal diet and other factors, supporting life-course strategies for obesity control. A cohort of pregnant women was enrolled in Tibet Plateau and followed till childbirth. Dietary practice during pregnancy was assessed using the Chinese FFQ – Tibet Plateau version, food items and other variables were associated with the risk for obesity of neonates followed by logistic regression, classification and regression trees (CART) and random forest. Of the total 1226 mother–neonate pairs, 40·5 % were Tibetan and 5·4 % of neonates with obesity. Consuming fruits as a protective factor for obesity of neonates with OR (95 % CI) = 0·61 (0·43, 0·87) from logistic regression; as well as OR = 0·20 (0·12, 0·35) for consuming fruits (≥ weekly) from CART. Removing fruit consumption to avoid overshadowing effects of other factors, the following were influential from CART: maternal education (more than middle school, OR = 0·22 (0·13, 0·37)) and consumption of Tibetan food (daily, OR = 3·44 (2·08, 5·69). Obesity among neonates is prevalent in the study population. Promoting healthy diets during pregnancy and strengthening maternal education should be part of the life-course strategies for obesity control.

The absorption and distribution of radiocarbon-labeled urea at the ultratrace level were investigated with a 14C-AMS biotracer method. The radiopharmaceutical concentrations in the plasma, heart, liver, spleen, lung, kidney, stomach, brain, bladder, muscle, testis, and fat of rats after oral administration of 14C urea at ultratrace doses were determined by AMS, and the concentration-time curves in plasma and tissues and pharmacokinetic distribution data were obtained. This study provides an analytical method for the pharmacokinetic parameters and tissue distribution of exogenous urea in rats at ultratrace doses and explores the feasibility of evaluation and long-term tracking of ultratrace doses of drugs with AMS.

In mammals, the skin acts as a barrier to prevent harmful environmental stimuli from entering the circulation. CYP450s are involved in drug biotransformation, exogenous and endogenous substrate metabolism, and maintaining the normal physiological function of the skin, as well as facilitating homeostasis of the internal environment. The expression pattern of CYP450s in the skin is tissue-specific and thus differs from the liver and other organs. The development of skin topical medications, and knowledge of the toxicity and side effects of these medications require a detailed understanding of the expression and function of skin-specific CYP450s. Thus, we summarized the expression of CYP450s in the skin, their function in endogenous metabolic physiology, aberrant CYP450 expression in skin diseases and the influence of environmental variables and medications. This information will serve as a crucial foundation for future studies on the skin, as well as for the design and development of new drugs for skin diseases including topical medications.

A new species of Moniliformis, M. tupaia n. sp. is described using integrated morphological methods (light and scanning electron microscopy) and molecular techniques (sequencing and analysing the nuclear 18S, ITS, 28S regions and mitochondrial cox1 and cox2 genes), based on specimens collected from the intestine of the northern tree shrew Tupaia belangeri chinensis Anderson (Scandentia: Tupaiidae) in China. Phylogenetic analyses show that M. tupaia n. sp. is a sister to M. moniliformis in the genus Moniliformis, and also challenge the systematic status of Nephridiacanthus major. Moniliformis tupaia n. sp. represents the third Moniliformis species reported from China.

We investigate whether chief financial officers (CFOs) serving on U.S. corporate boards benefit shareholders in M&A transactions. We find that acquisitions made by firms with CFOs on boards have significantly better acquirer announcement returns. This is due to the CFO director’s ability to select targets with better strategic and financial fit. CFO board membership can create shareholder value if there are effective governance regimes restraining managerial entrenchment and CFOs’ interests are closely aligned with those of shareholders through equity ownership. Furthermore, sitting on boards enables CFOs to secure more and cheaper financing for their acquisitions.

Based on the characteristics of large-scale plume currents in rotating plane Poiseuille flows (RPPF), an injection/suction control strategy is introduced to augment the intensity of plume currents and improve the turbulent transport of passive scalar. The control strategy maintains the conventional non-penetrative condition on the stable side, and applies a wall-normal velocity that varies in the spanwise direction on the unstable side. For comparison, the control with non-penetrative condition on the unstable side and injection/suction on the stable side is also examined. The RPPF at $Re_\tau$ ranging from $180$ to $300$ and $Ro_\tau$ ranging from $0$ to $30$ are studied. Injection/suction with fixed root-mean-squared wall-normal velocity (below $1\,\%$ of the bulk mean velocity) at the wall is considered. Direct numerical simulations reveal that the injection/suction on the stable side has minor effect for all cases studied, whereas the injection/suction with properly distributed slots on the unstable side can significantly enhance the large-scale plume currents and the turbulent transport efficiency at small or moderate rotation numbers. This is attributed to the fact that plumes are generated on the unstable side, and controlling the origin of plumes is more effective. A proper strategy for maximum enhancement of turbulent transport is limiting the distance between injection slots equal to or slightly larger than the intrinsic distance between plume currents. This strategy is valid for all physical and computational parameters currently considered, and is potentially applicable over a much wider parameter range.

Water droplets containing the SARS-CoV-2 virus, responsible for coronavirus 2019 transmission, were introduced into a controlled-temperature and -humidity chamber. The SARS-CoV-2 virus with green fluorescent protein tag in droplets was used to infect Caco-2 cells, with viability assessed through flow cytometry and microscopic counting. Whereas temperature fluctuations within typical indoor ranges (20°C–30°C) had minimal impact, we observed a notable decrease in infection rate as the surrounding air’s relative humidity increased. By investigating humidity levels between 20% and 70%, we identified a threshold of ≥40% relative humidity as most effective in diminishing SARS-CoV-2 infectivity. We also found that damage of the viral proteins under high relative humidity may be responsible for the decrease in their activity. This outcome supports previous research demonstrating a rise in the concentration of reactive oxygen species within water droplets with elevated relative humidity.