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Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor dysfunction and dopaminergic neuronal loss. Emerging evidence suggests that gut microbiota dysbiosis and systemic metabolic disturbances contribute to the pathogenesis of PD. This study aimed to investigate the neuroprotective effects of bavachalcone, a prenylated chalcone isolated from , in an MPTP-induced mouse model of PD, with a particular focus on its effects on motor function, inflammation, gut microbiota, and serum metabolism. Male C57BL/6 mice were divided into Control, MPTP, Bavac-L (low-dose bavachalcone), and Bavac-H (high-dose bavachalcone) groups. Bavachalcone was administered by gavage, followed by MPTP injection to induce PD. Behavioral assessments (open field test, pole test, and rotarod test), western blotting, immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence, 16S rDNA sequencing of fecal microbiota, and untargeted metabolomics of serum were performed to evaluate the effects of bavachalcone. Bavachalcone significantly alleviated MPTP-induced motor impairment, preserved dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra and striatum, and reduced systemic inflammation and glial activation. Gut microbiota analysis showed that bavachalcone improved microbial richness and diversity, enriched beneficial genera, such as , and suppressed harmful taxa, such as and . Metabolomic profiling revealed that bavachalcone modulated pathways, including pyruvate metabolism, folate biosynthesis, and phenylalanine metabolism. Bavachalcone exerts neuroprotective effects in mice with PD by improving motor function, preserving dopaminergic neurons, reducing inflammation, modulating gut microbiota composition, and remodeling systemic metabolism. These findings highlight bavachalcone as a promising therapeutic candidate for PD.

In the field of hardware accelerators for convolutional neural network (CNN) inference, quantization techniques have been widely employed to enhance the performance. The prevailing quantization scheme of the accelerator at present is using signed 8‐bit integer variables (INT8). CNN accelerators support INT8, while lower precision INT4 is less common. Accelerators supporting INT4 depthwise separable convolution (DWC) are even rarer. Therefore, this article presents a high‐performance CNN accelerator that not only supports 8‐bit and 4‐bit data but also supports standard convolution (SC) and DWC. Additionally, in order to improve the transmission efficiency of DWC, an intermediate cache strategy is proposed, using a pointwise convolution (PW) input buffer (PW BUF) to store output data from depthwise convolution (DW) to avoid off‐chip transmission. Furthermore, to address the issue of a DSP cannot perform two 4 × 4‐bit multiplications when dealing with DW, a processing element (PE) is designed to make full use of DSP hardware resources. Finally, this accelerator is implemented on ZYNQ ZC706 with a frequency of 200 MHz. Experimental results show that it achieves a performance up to 307.88 giga operations per second (GOPS) on VGG, reaching 97.9% peak performance; while on MobileNet, it achieves efficient performance with 206.43 GOPS with only 392 DSPs. Compared with mainstream CNN accelerators, it increases DSP utilization rate (GOPS/DSP) by 1.5× to 33.5×.

To investigate the impact of foundation settlement in loess areas on the dynamic response of liquid storage structure (LSS) under seismic motion, a finite element analysis model of the liquid–solid coupling of LSS was established using ADINA V9.6 software. By analyzing the dynamic response patterns of LSS under seismic motion with foundation failure, this study examines the effects of foundation failure and the direction of seismic wave incidence on the equivalent stress, maximum shear stress, wall displacement, and liquid sloshing wave height of the structure. The results indicate that among the three foundation failure scenarios, foundation failure at the center of the tank bottom has the least impact on the structural dynamic response. In contrast, foundation failure affecting one-fourth of the tank base has the greatest impact. Furthermore, compared to seismic motion along the X-axis, the dynamic response of the structure is more significantly affected when seismic motion co-occurs along the X-Z-axis.

PLAAT1 is a member of the PLAAT protein family and plays important roles in tumor suppression, transglutaminase activation and peroxisomal biogenesis. Recently, PLAAT1 has been shown to promote degradation of p53 protein and cellular organelles such as mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum and lysosome. In this study, we show that PLAAT1 inhibits the production of type I interferon and promotes virus replication in zebrafish. Overexpression of Plaat1 in zebrafish cells suppresses antiviral responses and promotes virus replication. Mechanistically, PLAAT1 interacts with IRF3 and IRF7 to initiate degradation of IRF3 and IRF7, which can be attenuated by 3-methyladenine, an inhibitor of autophagosome. Our study provides novel insights into the functions of PLAAT1 in host immune response to viral infection.

In the long history of the feudal society of China, Kaifeng played a vital role. During the Northern Song Dynasty, Kaifeng became a worldwide metropolis. The important reason was that the Grand Canal, which was excavated during the Sui Dynasty, became the main transportation artery for the political and military center of the north and the economic center of the south. Furthermore, Kaifeng was located at the center of the Grand Canal, which made it the capital of the later Northern Song Dynasty. The Northern Song Dynasty was called “the canal-centered era.” The development of the canal caused a series of major changes in the society of the Northern Song Dynasty that were different from the previous ones, which directly led to the transportation revolution, and in turn, promoted the commercial revolution and the urbanization of Kaifeng. The development of commerce contributed to the agricultural and money revolutions. After the Northern Song Dynasty, the political center moved to the south. During the Yuan Dynasty, the excavation of the Grand Canal made it so that water transport did not have to pass through the Central Plains. The relocation of the political center and the change in the canal route made Kaifeng lose the value of connecting the north and south, resulting in the long-time fall of the Bianhe River. Kaifeng, which had prospered for more than 100 years, declined gradually, and by the end of the Qing Dynasty, it became a common town in the Central Plains. In ancient China, the rise and fall of cities and regions were closely related to the canal, and the relationship between Kaifeng and the Grand Canal was typical. The history may provide some inspiration for the increasingly severe urban and regional sustainable development issues in contemporary times.

Teleost type I interferons (IFNs) are categorized into group I and II subgroups that bind to distinct receptors to activate antiviral responses. However, the interaction between ifn ligands and receptors has not fully been understood. In this study, the crystal structure of grass carp [ Ctenopharyngodon idella ( Ci )] IFNa has been solved at 1.58Å and consists of six helices. The Ci IFNa displays a typical structure of type I IFNs with a straight helix F and lacks a helix element in the AB loop. Superposition modeling identified several key residues involved in the interaction with receptors. It was found that Ci IFNa bound to cytokine receptor family B (CRFB) 1, CRFB2, and CRFB5, and the three receptors could form heterodimeric receptor complexes. Furthermore, mutation of Leu27, Glu103, Lys117, and His165 markedly decreased the phosphorylation of signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) 1a induced by Ci IFNa in the Epithelioma papulosum cyprini (EPC) cells, and Glu103 was shown to be required for the Ci IFNa-activated antiviral activity. Interestingly, wild-type and mutant Ci IFNa proteins did not alter the phosphorylation levels of STAT1b. Our results demonstrate that fish type I IFNs, although structurally conserved, interact with the receptors in a manner that may differ from mammalian homologs.

The tumor necrosis superfamily (TNFSF) and their receptors (TNFRs) play an essential role in inflammatory responses. In this study, tnfsf14, tnfrsf1a, tnfrsf1b and tnfrsf14 were identified in spotted gar. All the genes have conserved genomic organization and synteny with their respective homologs in zebrafish and humans. The putative TNFSF protein contains a typical TNF homology domain in the extracellular region. All three TNFRSFs possess characteristic cysteine-rich domains. TNFRSF1a has a death domain in the cytosolic region which is absent in the TNFRSF1b and TNFRSF14. Notably, TNFRSF14 lacks a transmembrane domain and is predicted to be secreted. Protein structure modeling revealed that the key residues involved in the interaction between TNFSF14 and TNFRSF14 are well conserved in spotted gar. All four genes were ubiquitously expressed in the spleen, liver, kidney, gills and intestine. Infection with Klebsiella pneumoniae resulted in remarkable downregulation of tnfsf14 and tnfrsf14 in tissues but upregulation of tnfrsf1a and tnfrsf1b. The results indicate that tnfsf14, tnfrsf1a, tnfrsf1b and tnfrsf14 are involved in the immune response to bacterial infection, and expand knowledge on the TNF system in the primitive ray-finned fish.

Enhancing self-sufficiency and national food security have been strategic policy goals of the Indonesian government. From 2015 to 2019, a food policy program called Upsus Pajale had been implemented to provide input subsidies and extension assistants to farmers for three strategic commodities: rice, maize, and soybeans, to accelerate productivity and increase production. The study was done by interviewing 374 beneficiary farmers. The objectives were to explore production efficiency and the farmers’ perspectives on the policy programs. By conducting stochastic frontier production function estimation, the results show that the mean efficiency level was 0.866. This study revealed that land size, seed cost, and labor cost were found to be important determinants of technical efficiency. In addition, the results of the inefficiency model indicated that age and farmers’ associations had a significant and positive effect on efficiency scores, whereas education had a negative effect. Contrarily, none of the policy program instruments appear to be essential determinants of efficiency. Furthermore, the research found that farmers prioritized their habits and profitability when deciding which crop to cultivate and that pests were their main concerns. Hence, the government should focus on enhancing research and development for improved seedling pest management control and encourage the establishment of farmers’ association to share experience and transfer information and technology for farmers to improve their efficiency.