This study tested the effects of soil amendment with orange peel powder (Citrus sinensis L.) on Brassica rapa growth, the performance of the aphid Myzus persicae Sulzer, and the foraging behaviour of its parasitoid Aphidius gifuensis Ashmead. Three peel: soil ratios (1:10, 1:15, 1:20 w/w) were compared with an unamended control. The 1:10 amendment significantly reduced seed germination, plant height, leaf size, and fresh weight, while the 1:20 amendment also decreased fresh weight. Aphid nymphal development was significantly delayed in the 1:10 and 1:15 treatments, and adult weight gain was reduced in the 1:15 treatment. Aphid population growth and parasitoid foraging time were unaffected across treatments. The results indicate that orange peel amendments can delay aphid development but also suppress plant growth at higher concentrations, highlighting the need for optimized application rates. This study supports further exploration of orange peel as a sustainable soil amendment in integrated pest management.

This study systematically evaluates the effects of probiotic interventions on gut microbiota and clinical outcomes in diabetic patients to determine the optimal target population and conditions for effective use, with an emphasis on precision treatment. A comprehensive search was performed across PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Embase, China National Knowledge Internet (CNKI), and Wanfang databases until April 2024. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) assessing probiotics as adjunctive therapy for diabetes were included. The control group received standard care, and the intervention group received probiotics alongside standard care. Data were managed with Endnote and Excel, and analyses were conducted using Revman 5.3 and Stata 16. Twelve RCTs involving 1,113 participants were included. Probiotics significantly increased fecal Lactobacillus (standardized mean difference (SMD) 1.42, P < 0.0001, I2 = 95%) and Bifidobacterium levels (SMD 1.27, P < 0.0001, I² = 90%) and reduced fasting plasma glucose (SMD -0.35, P = 0.004). Subgroup analysis showed that shorter intervention durations (≤3 months) improved FPG, HbA1c, and Bifidobacterium levels, while younger patients (≤60 years) experienced the most significant improvements in Bifidobacterium levels. In conclusion, probiotics improve gut microbiota and clinical outcomes in diabetic patients, with intervention duration and patient age as key factors influencing treatment effectiveness.

Evidence regarding the association between dietary choline intake and mortality in individuals with diabetes remains limited. This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between dietary choline intake and all-cause, CVD and cancer-related mortality among adults with diabetes. A total of 4712 participants with diabetes were included from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007–2018 cycles. Dietary choline intake was estimated using two 24-h dietary recalls, and mortality outcomes were ascertained via linkage to National Death Index records through 31 December 2019. Cox proportional hazards models and Kaplan-Meier analyses were employed to assess the associations between choline intake and mortality. Restricted cubic spline models were used to examine potential non-linear relationships, and threshold analyses were conducted to identify inflection points. Over a median follow-up of 6·42 years, 805 deaths were documented, including 267 from CVD and 126 from cancer. A U-shaped association was observed between dietary choline intake and all-cause mortality (Pfor non-linearity < 0·0001). Compared with the lowest quartile, multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios for all-cause mortality were 0·64 (95 % CI 0·47, 0·88) for the second quartile, 0·59 (0·43, 0·82) for the third and 0·69 (0·43, 1·09) for the highest quartile. No significant associations were found between choline intake and either CVD or cancer mortality. These findings indicate a U-shaped relationship between dietary choline intake and all-cause mortality in individuals with diabetes, with intakes between 286·77 and 538·86 mg/d associated with the lowest risk – providing potential implications for dietary guidance in diabetes management.

Compressibility transformations have received considerable attention for extending well-established incompressible wall models to high-speed flows. While encouraging progress has been made in mean velocity scalings, research on temperature transformations has lagged behind. In this study, we rigorously derive a general framework for both velocity and temperature transformations directly from the compressible Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations and their ‘incompressible’ counterparts, elucidating how these transformations guide the development of compressible algebraic RANS models in the inner layer. The introduction of the mixed Prandtl number further links the mean momentum and energy transport, facilitating the formulation of novel temperature transformations through integration with arbitrary mean velocity scalings, thereby unifying existing transformation methods while providing a systematic approach for further improvement. A detailed evaluation using direct numerical simulation databases of canonical compressible wall-bounded turbulent flows (CWBTFs) demonstrates that temperature transformations based on the Griffin–Fu–Moin and our recently proposed velocity scalings exhibit superior accuracy and robustness across a wide range of Reynolds and Mach numbers, as well as varying wall thermal boundary conditions. We also perform a preliminary investigation into the applicability of the proposed integral mean temperature–velocity relation and inverse temperature transformations for near-wall temperature modelling in cold-wall boundary layer flows, where discontinuities caused by non-monotonic temperature distributions are effectively avoided. Although the omission of higher-order terms in deriving the total heat flux equation enables closed-form wall modelling, it remains a key limitation to the model’s accuracy at the current stage. Future work may therefore need to address this issue to achieve further advances. These findings enhance the physical understanding of mean momentum and energy transport in canonical CWBTFs, and offer promising prospects for advancing near-wall temperature modelling within RANS and wall-modelled large eddy simulation frameworks.

Anthracological studies of preserved wooden building materials can help reveal ancient networks of resource mobilisation. Here, the authors report on the analysis of 657 charred timbers from four ancillary pits at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor. The frequent use of dark coniferous wood (fir, spruce and hemlock) indicates sophisticated logistical planning and labour organisation—matching historic records of Qin administrative ascendency—because these species required sourcing from across many kilometres of rugged terrain. Identification of a temporal shift towards the use of higher-elevation species points to the ecological impact of large-scale timber harvesting.

Objective: Optimized teaching methods in medical students to improve skills of occupational protection against infectious diseases and reduce the risk of developing infectious occupational exposure in clinical practice. Methods: Establish a database of infectious occupational exposure cases in clinical practice based on monitoring data. Teaching guided by cases and videos-based scenario was carried out in the experimental group and traditional theoretical teaching was carried out in the control group in medical students. And then conducted a questionnaire survey on knowledge and skills of occupational protection against infectious diseases and observed the frequency and the prescriptive disposal measures of infectious occupational exposure in clinical practice in two groups. Results: The infectious occupational exposure database included a total of 95 typical cases in 6 categories, including various sharp weapon injuries and mucosal exposure. There were 116 medical students involved in the study across the course of 12 months. The incidence of infectious occupational exposure in medical students during clinical practice internships was 18.9%. Compared with the control group, the awareness rate of knowledge and skills of occupational protection against infectious diseases significantly increased (91.8% vs 87.0%, P<0.05), the incidence of infectious occupational exposure during clinical internships has decreased (15.6% vs 23.1%, P<0.05), and the implementation rate of prescriptive disposal measures after exposure has increased (91.7% vs 83.3%, P<0.05) in the experimental group in medical students. Conclusion: The case-based scenario teaching in medical students improved skills of occupational protection against infectious diseases and decreased the incidence of infectious occupational exposure during clinical internships. The effect of the optimized teaching methods was significant which is recommended to carry out widely.

Spodoptera frugiperda (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), commonly known as the fall armyworm (FAW), is an invasive pest known for its rapid migration, strong adaptability, and wide host range. Small heat shock proteins (sHsps) are a specific class of Hsps associated with the molecular mechanisms of insect growth and development and the response to abiotic stresses, such as extreme temperatures, ultraviolet (UV) rays, and pesticides. Herein, six sHsps, SfsHsp11.2, SfsHsp15.8, SfsHsp20.2, SfsHsp21.4, SfsHsp22, and SfsHsp26.6, were successfully cloned and identified from FAW. The six SfsHsps all have an α-crystallin domain in their amino acid sequences. Furthermore, we investigated the expression patterns of these six SfsHsps in different tissues and developmental stages of FAW using real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction. Their expression levels in adult FAW were also analysed under extreme temperatures (36°C and 4°C) and UV-A stress for different durations (0, 30, 60, 90, and 120 min). Our findings revealed distinct expression profiles for the six SfsHsps in different FAW tissues and developmental stages. Notably, under temperature and UV-A stress, most SfsHsp genes were significantly upregulated in adults. Our findings strongly indicate that SfsHsps are crucial in the development and stress response of S. frugiperda.

We present a unified framework derived from the total heat flux equation, enabling the direct formulation of the relationship between mean temperature and velocity fields, as well as the development of mean temperature scalings in compressible turbulent channel flows. The proposed mean temperature–velocity relationship, combined with a simple damping function model for the mixed Prandtl number, demonstrates high efficacy in channels with both symmetric and asymmetric thermal boundary conditions across a range of Mach and Reynolds numbers. In contrast, the state-of-the-art generalised Reynolds analogy (GRA) relation (Zhang et al., 2014, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 739, pp. 392–420) is shown to be insufficient for asymmetric cases due to mismatched boundary conditions at the effective boundary layer edge. By introducing a mean temperature decomposition, we clarify that while the GRA relation effectively characterises the component associated with turbulence production and viscous dissipation, it fails to account for the contribution arising from non-zero edge total heat flux. Furthermore, we rigorously derive mean temperature transformations compatible with arbitrary velocity scalings for the first time. These findings provide some physical insights into the mean momentum and heat transport in compressible wall-bounded turbulence, and may be helpful for developing near-wall models.

Triceps skinfold thickness (TSF) is a surrogate marker of subcutaneous fat. Evidence is limited about the association of sex-specific TSF with the risk of all-cause mortality among maintenance haemodialysis (MHD) patients. We aimed to investigate the longitudinal relationship of TSF with all-cause mortality among MHD patients. A multicenter prospective cohort study was performed on 1034 patients undergoing MHD. The primary outcome was all-cause mortality. The median (interquartile range) of TSF was 9·7 (6·3–13·3 mm) in males and 12·7 (10·0–18·0 mm) in females. Over a median follow-up of 4·4 years (interquartile range, 2·4–7·9 years), there were 548 (53·0 %) deaths. When TSF was assessed as sex-specific quartiles, compared with those in quartile 1, the adjusted hazard ratio (HR) (95 % CI) of all-cause mortality in quartile 2, quartile 3 and quartile 4 was 0·93 (0·73, 1·19), 0·75 (0·58, 0·97) and 0·69 (0·52, 0·92), respectively (P for trend = 0·005). Moreover, when analysed by sex, increased TSF (≥9·7 mm for males and ≥18 mm for females) was significantly associated with a reduced risk of all-cause mortality (quartile 3–4 v. quartile 1–2; HR, 0·70; 95 % CI: 0·55, 0·90 in males; quartile 4 v. quartile 1–3; HR, 0·69; 95 % CI: 0·48, 1·00 in females). In conclusion, high TSF was significantly associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality in MHD patients.

Traditional bulky and complex control devices such as remote control and ground station cannot meet the requirement of fast and flexible control of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in complex environments. Therefore, a data glove based on multi-sensor fusion is designed in this paper. In order to achieve the goal of gesture control of UAVs, the method can accurately recognize various gestures and convert them into corresponding UAV control commands. First, the wireless data glove fuses flexible fiber optic sensors and inertial sensors to construct a gesture dataset. Then, the trained neural network model is deployed to the STM32 microcontroller-based data glove for real-time gesture recognition, in which the convolutional neural network-Attention mechanism (CNN-Attention) network is used for static gesture recognition, and the convolutional neural network-bidirectional long and short-term memory (CNN-Bi-LSTM) network is used for dynamic gesture recognition. Finally, the gestures are converted into control commands and sent to the vehicle terminal to control the UAV. Through the UAV simulation test on the simulation platform, the average recognition accuracy of 32 static gestures reaches 99.7%, and the average recognition accuracy of 13 dynamic gestures reaches 99.9%, which indicates that the system’s gesture recognition effect is perfect. The task test in the scene constructed in the real environment shows that the UAV can respond to the gestures quickly, and the method proposed in this paper can realize the real-time stable control of the UAV on the terminal side.

This study aimed to demonstrate the utilization value of 1PN embryos. The 1PN zygotes collected from December 2021 to September 2022 were included in this study. The embryo development, the pronuclear characteristics, and the genetic constitutions were investigated. The overall blastocyst formation and good-quality blastocyst rates in 1PN zygotes were 22.94 and 16.24%, significantly lower than those of 2PN zygotes (63.25 and 50.23%, respectively, P = 0.000). The pronuclear characteristics were found to be correlated with the developmental potential. When comparing 1PN zygotes that developed into blastocysts to those that arrested, the former exhibited a significantly larger area (749.49 ± 142.77 vs. 634.00 ± 119.05, P = 0.000), a longer diameter of pronuclear (29.81 ± 3.08 vs. 27.30 ± 3.00, P = 0.000), and a greater number of nucleolar precursor body (NPB) (11.56 ± 3.84 vs. 7.19 ± 2.73, P = 0.000). Among the tested embryos, the diploidy euploidy rate was significantly higher in blastocysts in comparison with the arrested embryos (66.67 vs. 11.76%, P = 0.000), which was also significantly higher in IVF-1PN blastocysts than in ICSI-1PN blastocysts (75.44 vs. 25.00%, P = 0.001). However, the pronuclear characteristics were not found to be linked to the chromosomal ploidy once they formed blastocysts.

In summary, while the developmental potential of 1PN zygotes is reduced, our study shows that, in addition to the reported pronuclear area and diameter, the number of NPB is also associated with their developmental potential. The 1PN blastocysts exhibit a high diploidy euploidy rate, are recommend to be clinically used post genetic testing, especially for patients who do not have other 2PN embryos available.

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.

Characterised by the extensive use of obsidian, a blade-based tool inventory and microblade technology, the late Upper Palaeolithic lithic assemblages of the Changbaishan Mountains are associated with the increasingly cold climatic conditions of Marine Isotope Stage 2, yet most remain poorly dated. Here, the authors present new radiocarbon dates associated with evolving blade and microblade toolkits at Helong Dadong, north-east China. At 27 300–24 100 BP, the lower cultural layers contain some of the earliest microblade technology in north-east Asia and highlight the importance of the Changbaishan Mountains in understanding changing hunter-gatherer lifeways in this region during MIS 2.

We consider continuous-state branching processes (CB processes) which become extinct almost surely. First, we tackle the problem of describing the stationary measures on $(0,+\infty)$ for such CB processes. We give a representation of the stationary measure in terms of scale functions of related Lévy processes. Then we prove that the stationary measure can be obtained from the vague limit of the potential measure, and, in the critical case, can also be obtained from the vague limit of a normalized transition probability. Next, we prove some limit theorems for the CB process conditioned on extinction in a near future and on extinction at a fixed time. We obtain non-degenerate limit distributions which are of the size-biased type of the stationary measure in the critical case and of the Yaglom distribution in the subcritical case. Finally we explore some further properties of the limit distributions.