Silicified microfossils are reported from nine stratigraphic sections of the Ediacaran Doushantuo Formation deposited in shelf margin, slope, and basin environments in Hunan Province of South China. These microfossils include sphaeromorphic and acanthomorphic acritarchs (15 genera and 29 species, including three new acanthomorph species, Bullatosphaera? colliformis n. sp., Eotylotopalla inflata n. sp., and Verrucosphaera? undulata n. sp.), multicellular algae, tubular microfossils, and other problematic forms, representing major fossil groups similar to those from the Doushantuo Formation in more proximal facies (e.g., inner shelf and shelf lagoon). A database of the abundance and occurrences of Doushantuo acanthomorphs is assembled and analyzed using quantitative and data-visualization methods (e.g., rarefaction analysis, non-parametric multidimensional scaling, and network analysis). The results show that, at the genus and species levels, taxonomic richness of Doushantuo acanthomorphs exhibits considerable variation among facies, but this variation is largely due to sampling and taphonomic biases. The results also show that numerous acanthomorph taxa have broad facies distribution, affirming their biostratigraphic value. The analysis confirms that acanthomorphs in the Weng'an biota of shelf margin facies are composed of a mixture of Member II and Member III assemblages of shelf-lagoon facies in the Yangtze Gorges area. The study shows the biostratigraphic potential of acanthomorphs in the establishment of regional biozones using the first appearance datum of widely distributed taxa, highlighting the importance of continuing exploration of under-sampled Doushantuo sections in slope and basinal facies.

UUID: http://zoobank.org/6fc92858-4054-4117-8043-1f06cfe77155

Substantial changes resulting from the interaction of environmental and dietary factors contribute to an increased risk of obesity, while their specific associations with obesity remain unclear. Identify inflammation-related dietary patterns (DPs) and explore their associations with obesity among urbanized Tibetan adults under significant environmental and dietary changes.Totally, 1826 subjects from the suburbs of Golmud City were enrolled in an open cohort study, of which 514 were followed up. Height, weight, and waist circumference were used to define overweight and obesity. DPs were derived using reduced rank regression with 41 food groups as predictors and hs-CRP and prognostic nutritional index as inflammatory response variables. Altitude was classified as high or ultra-high. Two DPs were extracted. DP-1 was characterized by having high consumptions of sugar-sweetened beverages, savory snacks, and poultry, and a low intake of tsamba. DP-2 had high intakes of poultry, pork, animal offal, and fruits, and a low intake of butter tea. Participants in the highest tertiles (T3) of DPs had increased risks of overweight and obesity (DP-1: OR=1.37, 95% CI: 1.07, 1.77; DP-2: OR=1.48, 95% CI: 1.18, 1.85) than those in the lowest tertiles (T1). Participants in T3 of DP-2 had an increased risk of central obesity (OR=2.25, 95% CI: 1.49, 3.39) than those in T1. The positive association of DP-1 with overweight and obesity was only significant at high altitudes, while no similar effect was observed for DP-2. Inflammation-related DPs were associated with increased risks of overweight and/or obesity.

Laser-driven inertial confinement fusion (ICF) diagnostics play a crucial role in understanding the complex physical processes governing ICF and enabling ignition. During the ICF process, the interaction between the high-power laser and ablation material leads to the formation of a plasma critical surface, which reflects a significant portion of the driving laser, reducing the efficiency of laser energy conversion into implosive kinetic energy. Effective diagnostic methods for the critical surface remain elusive. In this work, we propose a novel optical diagnostic approach to investigate the plasma critical surface. This method has been experimentally validated, providing new insights into the critical surface morphology and dynamics. This advancement represents a significant step forward in ICF diagnostic capabilities, with the potential to inform strategies for enhancing the uniformity of the driving laser and target surface, ultimately improving the efficiency of converting laser energy into implosion kinetic energy and enabling ignition.

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 assessment of seed quality and physiological potential is essential in seed production and crop breeding. In the process of rapid detection of seed viability using tetrazolium (TZ) staining, it is necessary to spend a lot of labour and material resources to explore the pretreatment and staining methods of hard and solid seeds with physical barriers. This study explores the TZ staining methods of six hard seeds (Tilia miqueliana, Tilia henryana, Sassafras tzumu, Prunus subhirtella, Prunus sibirica, and Juglans mandshurica) and summarizes the TZ staining conditions required for hard seeds by combining the difference in fat content between seeds and the kinship between species, thus providing a rapid viability test method for the protection of germplasm resources of endangered plants and the optimization of seed bank construction. The TZ staining of six species of hard seeds requires a staining temperature above 35 °C and a TZ solution concentration higher than 1%. Endospermic seeds require shorter staining times than exalbuminous seeds. The higher the fat content of the seeds, the lower the required incubation temperature and TZ concentration for staining, and the longer the staining time. And the closer the relationship between the two species, the more similar their staining conditions become. The TZ staining method of similar species can be predicted according to the genetic distance between the phylogenetic trees, and the viability of new species can be detected quickly.

Graphite phase carbon nitride (g-C3N4) is a non-metal semiconductor material with a suitable band gap (2.7 eV) for visible photocatalysis. However, the high cost of relevant synthesis methods and poor adsorption performance have limited its practical applications. The objective of the present study was to mitigate these problems by synthesizing the g-C3N4 in the presence of exfoliated montmorillonite (Mnt). Compared with bulk montmorillonite, the specific surface area of exfoliated two-dimensional Mnt layers was significantly increased. As a result, the light transmittance of the lamella improved noticeably due to the fact that a freshly exposed surface had a large number of active reaction sites, making Mnt an excellent carrier for the photocatalyst g-C3N4. In order to improve the photocatalytic performance of g-C3N4, a series of g-C3N4/Mnt composites was prepared by a wet chemical method using Mnt nanolayers as the matrix. X-ray diffraction, infrared spectroscopy, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller nitrogen adsorption/desorption, transmission electron microscopy, and ultraviolet-visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy were used to analyze the phase structure, the chemical bonds, the specific surface area and pore sizes, the morphology, and the light absorption characteristics of the composites, respectively. Rhodamine B (RhB) served as the target dye to test the photocatalytic degradation performance of the composites under visible light. According to the findings, the surface of the Mnt nanolayers was densely and uniformly covered by g-C3N4, forming a multi-layered stack structure. An increase of the calcination temperature improved the crystallinity of g-C3N4, leading first to densification and then to relaxation of the layered composite structure. Conversely, the band gap of the composite gradually decreased from 2.56 to 2.4 eV. Furthermore, temperature exposure changed the photocatalytic performance of the composite drastically. While the largest photocatalytic activity was observed at 610°C, it started to decrease with further heating of the composite. The complete degradation of RhB solution occurred after 2 h of visible light irradiation. The findings of the current study provide a scientific basis for the synthesis of a new generation of photocatalysts.

As a solution to soft material manipulation, dual-arm robots that are capable of multi-point grasping have become the latest trend due to their higher capability and efficiency. To explore further development in soft material manipulation and go beyond the hardware limit of dual arms, in this paper the robot platform “Quad-SCARA” that consists of four Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA) is developed and introduced. With the base of hardware platform, a novel collision avoidance system designed for the motion planning of Quad-SCARA in multi-point grasping state is proposed. This system is inspired by the idea of “Buffered Voronoi Cell (BVC),” an algorithm originally proposed for multi-agent collision avoidance. After appropriate adaptation and new proposition in implementation of BVC, the experiments of folding and spreading a handkerchief are performed, and the results in simulation and robot experiments are presented and discussed for the validation and evaluation of entire system.

The target backsheath field acceleration mechanism is one of the main mechanisms of laser-driven proton acceleration (LDPA) and strongly depends on the comprehensive performance of the ultrashort ultra-intense lasers used as the driving sources. The successful use of the SG-II Peta-watt (SG-II PW) laser facility for LDPA and its applications in radiographic diagnoses have been manifested by the good performance of the SG-II PW facility. Recently, the SG-II PW laser facility has undergone extensive maintenance and a comprehensive technical upgrade in terms of the seed source, laser contrast and terminal focus. LDPA experiments were performed using the maintained SG-II PW laser beam, and the highest cutoff energy of the proton beam was obviously increased. Accordingly, a double-film target structure was used, and the maximum cutoff energy of the proton beam was up to 70 MeV. These results demonstrate that the comprehensive performance of the SG-II PW laser facility was improved significantly.

Microbubble emission boiling (MEB), a phenomenon that occurs under highly subcooled boiling conditions, can achieve a high heat flux beyond critical heat flux. MEB has been observed to differ from nucleate boiling and is always accompanied by the emission of microbubbles from an oscillating bubble. The heat transfer mechanism of MEB differs from that of nucleate boiling and remains elusive. In this study, we measure the behaviour of a vapour bubble and its induced liquid flow simultaneously during subcooled boiling using the high-speed two-phase particle image velocimetry method. Different from nucleate boiling, we observe a rapid oscillating flow outside the bubble that constantly attaches on the heating surface in MEB. The spatially and temporally averaged velocity magnitude values under this oscillating flow, and their dependency on liquid subcooling and heat flux, are quantified. Then we derive a scaling law for the heat transfer of MEB as a function of Péclet and Jacob numbers. With such correlations, we suggest that the oscillating flow induced by bubble oscillations is important to MEB, thus elucidating a different heat transport process from nucleate boiling.

The objective was to evaluate the association between serum carotenoid levels and respiratory morbidity and mortality in a nationally representative sample of US adults. We assessed the association of serum carotenoid levels with respiratory morbidity and mortality using logistic regression and proportional hazards regression models. Meanwhile, a series of confounders were controlled in regression models and restricted cubic spline, which included age, sex, race, marriage, education, income, drinking, smoking, regular exercise, BMI, daily energy intake, vitamin E, vitamin C, fruit intake, vegetable intake, diabetes, hypertension, asthma, emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Compared with participants in the lowest tertiles, participants in the highest tertiles of serum total carotenoids, β-cryptoxanthin and lutein/zeaxanthin levels had a significantly lower prevalence of emphysema (ORtotal carotenoids = 0·61, 95% CI: 0·41–0·89, ORβ-cryptoxanthin = 0·67, 95% CI: 0·49–0·92), chronic bronchitis (ORβ-cryptoxanthin = 0·66, 95% CI: 0·50–0·87) and asthma (Q2: ORlutein/zeaxanthin = 0·78, 95% CI: 0·62–0·97); participants in the highest tertiles of total carotenoids, α-carotene, lutein/zeaxanthin and lycopene had a lower risk of respiratory mortality (hazard ratio (HR)total carotenoids = 0·62, 95% CI: 0·42–0·90, HRα-carotene = 0·54, 95% CI: 0·36–0·82, HRlutein/zeaxanthin = 0·48, 95% CI: 0·33–0·71, HRlycopene = 0·66, 95% CI: 0·45–0·96) than those in the lowest tertiles. Higher serum total carotenoids and β-cryptoxanthin levels is associated with decreased prevalence of emphysema and chronic bronchitis, and higher serum total carotenoids, α-carotene, lutein/zeaxanthin and lycopene levels had a lower mortality of respiratory disease.

As optical parametric chirped pulse amplification has been widely adopted for the generation of extreme intensity laser sources, nonlinear crystals of large aperture are demanded for high-energy amplifiers. Yttrium calcium oxyborate (YCa4O(BO3)3, YCOB) is capable of being grown with apertures exceeding 100 mm, which makes it possible for application in systems of petawatt scale. In this paper, we experimentally demonstrated for the first time to our knowledge, an ultra-broadband non-collinear optical parametric amplifier with YCOB for petawatt-scale compressed pulse generation at 800 nm. Based on the SG-II 5 PW facility, amplified signal energy of approximately 40 J was achieved and pump-to-signal conversion efficiency was up to 42.3%. A gain bandwidth of 87 nm was realized and supported a compressed pulse duration of 22.3 fs. The near-field and wavefront aberration represented excellent characteristics, which were comparable with those achieved in lithium triborate-based amplifiers. These results verified the great potential for YCOB utilization in the future.

Homeostasis of gut microbiota is a critical contributor to growth and health in weaned piglets. Fish oil is widely reported to benefit health of mammals including preventing intestinal dysfunction, yet its protective effect during suckling-to-weaning transition in piglets remains undetermined. Low (30 g/d) and high (60 g/d) doses of n-3-rich fish oil were supplemented in sows from late gestation to lactation. Serum indicators and gut microbiota were determined to evaluate the effects of maternal fish oil on growth performance, immunity and diarrhea of piglets. DHA and EPA in the colostrum as well as serum of suckling and 1-week post-wean piglets were significantly and linearly increased by maternal supplementation of fish oil (P < 0.05). IGF1 and T3 in nursing and weaned piglets were significantly elevated by maternal fish oil (P < 0.05), and the increase of IGF1 was concerning the dosage of fish oil. Colostrum IgG, plasma IgG, IgM in suckling piglets, IgG, IgM and IgA in weaned piglets were significantly increase as maternal replenishment of fish oil increased (P < 0.05). Additionally, cortisol was significantly reduced in weaned pigs (P < 0.05), regardless of dosage. 16S rRNA sequencing revealed that α-diversity of fecal microbiota in nursery piglets, and fecal Lactobacillus genus, positively correlated with post-weaning IgA, was significantly increased by high dosage. Collectively, maternal fish oil during late pregnancy and lactation significantly promoted growth, enhanced immunity, and reduced post-weaning diarrhea in piglets, therefore facilitated suckling-to-weaning transition in piglets, which may be partially due to the altered gut microbial community.

The purpose of this retrospective study was to optimize the transplantation strategy for women of advanced maternal age to achieve live births within the shortest time. Data were collected from patients older than 40 years who underwent assisted reproductive therapy at our centre from 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2019. In total, 1023 cases of fresh cleavage embryo transfer (CET) cycles, 280 cases of frozen–thawed blastocyst transfer (FBT) cycles, and 26 cases of frozen–thawed CET (FCET) cycles were included. The main outcome was the live birth rate (LBR). The secondary outcomes were the clinical pregnancy rate (CPR) and neonatal outcomes. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to adjust for confounding factors. The blastocyst formation rate of patients older than 40 years was 23.5%, the freezing cycle rate was 19.8%, and the fresh-embryo transfer rate was 83.0%. The implantation rate, CPR, and LBR were significantly different among the CET, FCET, and FBT groups. There were no significant differences in multiple pregnancies and abortion rates among the groups, and neonatal outcomes were similar. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that, compared with the CET group, LBR did not increase in the FCET group, whereas LBR increased in the FBT group. For patients older than 40 years when having approximately eight embryos after fertilization, blastocyst transfer can be considered after fully discussing the advantages and disadvantages of blastocyst culture. Alternatively, CET can be performed first, followed by FBT if the cleavage embryo transfer is unsuccessful.

We demonstrate an efficient ultrafast source with 195 fs pulse duration, 54 W average power at 200 kHz repetition rate and near diffraction-limited beam quality. The compact setup incorporates a thin-disk Yb:YAG regenerative amplifier (RA) and a subsequent nonlinear pulse compression stage with periodic-layered Kerr media (PLKM), which is one of the multiple-thin-solid-plate schemes based on nonlinear resonator theory. In virtue of the formation of quasi-stationary spatial soliton in PLKM, the near diffraction-limited beam quality of the RA remained almost undisturbed after post-compression. The nonlinear pulse compression module is simple and efficient with a transmission of 96%. To the best our knowledge, for pulse energy over 200 μJ, this is the highest output power reported for the multiple-thin-solid-plate scheme. This source manifests an economical combination to mitigate the bandwidth limitations of Yb-based high-power chirped pulse amplifiers.