Toxicity of food sweetener-sodium cyclamate on osteoblasts cells

In this paper, the effect of commonly used food sweetener (sodium cyclamate) on the proliferation and differentiation of osteoblasts has been researched. The morophology change of osteoblasts was investigated by confocal laser scanning microscopy. Cell viability was studied by MTT analysis. BMP2 expression was analyzed by western blot and immunofluorescence. Mineralization ability of osteoblasts was researched by using alizarin red staining method. The results indicate that a very low concentration (0.06?μM) of sodium cyclamate can curle and fold microfilament and microtubule of osteoblasts. The increase addition of sodium cyclamate resulted significantly decrease of cells viability. The expression of bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP2) was seriously suppressed by sodium cyclamate. Alizarin Red staining experiment revealed that sodium cyclamate decreased the mineralization ability of osteoblasts. The present results suggest that sodium cyclamate can seriously inhibit the proliferation and differentiation of osteoblasts.     

乙基多杀菌素和联苯肼酯对地熊蜂的毒性及风险评估

【目的】明确乙基多杀菌素和联苯肼酯对地熊蜂Bombus terrestris的毒性, 探讨这两种农药亚致死浓度对地熊蜂体内乙酰胆碱酯酶(AchE)、谷胱甘肽-S-转移酶(GST)和羧酸酯酶(CarE) 3种解毒酶活性的影响。【方法】采用饲喂法测定60 g a.i./L乙基多杀菌素和43%联苯肼酯对地熊蜂采集蜂的急性经口毒性,依据农药对蜜蜂生态风险的危害熵(hazard quotient, HQ)值评估这两种农药对地熊蜂的风险。同时测定了这两种农药亚致死剂量(LD₅₀和LD₈₀)处理后地熊蜂AchE, GST和CarE的活性变化。【结果】60 g a.i./L乙基多杀菌素和43%联苯肼酯对地熊蜂采集蜂的急性经口毒性测定48 h时LD₅₀值分别为3.590和1 447 μg a.i./蜂,其中60 g a.i./L乙基多杀菌素表现为中毒,43%联苯肼酯表现为低毒。两种农药对地熊蜂采集蜂的HQ值均低于50,表现为低风险。LD₅₀和LD₈₀剂量的乙基多杀菌素处理组与对照组相比,3 h时地熊蜂AchE活性被激活,显著高于对照组(P＜0.05),分别为对照组的1.45和1.23倍,24 h后活性受到抑制,两个剂量处理组AchE活性均显著低于对照组(P＜0.05);CarE活性3 h时同样被激活,显著高于对照组(P＜0.05),LD₅₀和LD₈₀剂量处理组CarE活性分别为对照组的1.24和1.53倍, 24 h后活性受到抑制,其中LD₅₀剂量处理组CarE活性显著低于对照组(P＜0.05),LD₈₀剂量处理组CarE活性与对照组差异不显著(P＞0.05);LD₅₀和LD₈₀剂量处理组GST活性3 h被激活,显著高于对照组(P＜0.05),分别为对照组的2.24和2.58倍,24 h后活性降低,但两个剂量处理组GST活性仍显著高于对照组(P＜0.05)。43%联苯肼酯处理后,与对照组相比3 h时LD₅₀和LD₈₀剂量处理组AchE活性与对照组差异不显著(P＞0.05),24 h后AchE活性降低,显著低于对照组(P＜0.05),分别是对照组的75%和80%;CarE活性3 h时被抑制,LD₅₀剂量处理组CarE活性显著低于对照组(P＜0.05),LD₈₀剂量处理组CarE活性低于对照组,但差异不显著(P＞0.05),24 h后CarE活性被激活,其中LD₅₀剂量处理组CarE活性高于对照组,但差异不显著(P＞0.05),LD₈₀剂量处理组CarE活性显著高于对照组(P＜0.05);LD₅₀剂量处理组GST活性3 h时被激活,显著高于对照组(P＜0.05),24 h后活性降低,但仍显著高于对照组(P＜0.05),3 h和24 h的活性分别为对照组的2.04和1.72倍,LD₈₀剂量处理组3 h的GST活性与对照组无显著差异(P＞0.05),24 h后活性降低,显著低于对照组(P＜0.05)。【结论】乙基多杀菌素和联苯肼酯对地熊蜂的HQ 评估均表现为低风险,其中联苯肼酯对地熊蜂的安全性较高,在熊蜂授粉过程中可以按照推荐剂量应用,但过量施用或者长期施用可能会造成熊蜂体内药剂积累引起生理或者行为的变化,乙基多杀菌素在温室及大田授粉期的使用剂量和方法有待进一步研究。     

Introducing “best single template” models as reference baseline for the Continuous Automated Model Evaluation (CAMEO)

Critical blind assessment of structure prediction techniques is crucial for the scientific community to establish the state of the art, identify bottlenecks, and guide future developments. In Critical Assessment of Techniques in Structure Prediction (CASP), human experts assess the performance of participating methods in relation to the difficulty of the prediction task in a biennial experiment on approximately 100 targets. Yet, the development of automated computational modeling methods requires more frequent evaluation cycles and larger sets of data. The “Continuous Automated Model EvaluatiOn (CAMEO)” platform complements CASP by conducting fully automated blind prediction evaluations based on the weekly pre-release of sequences of those structures, which are going to be published in the next release of the Protein Data Bank (PDB). Each week, CAMEO publishes benchmarking results for predictions corresponding to a set of about 20 targets collected during a 4-day prediction window. CAMEO benchmarking data are generated consistently for all methods at the same point in time, enabling developers to cross-validate their method's performance, and referring to their results in publications. Many successful participants of CASP have used CAMEO—either by directly benchmarking their methods within the system or by comparing their own performance to CAMEO reference data. CAMEO offers a variety of scores reflecting different aspects of structure modeling, for example, binding site accuracy, homo-oligomer interface quality, or accuracy of local model confidence estimates. By introducing the "bestSingleTemplate" method based on structure superpositions as a reference for the accuracy of 3D modeling predictions, CAMEO facilitates objective comparison of techniques and fosters the development of advanced methods.     

The different dissipation behavior of chiral pesticide paclobutrazol in the brine during Chinese cabbage pickling process

Paclobutrazol (PBZ) is a kind of chiral pesticide, which is a plant growth regulator and has fungicidal activity. Because of the steric‐hindrance effect, there are two enantiomers (2S, 3S; 2R, 3R) in the production. This research studied on the dissipation behavior of chiral pesticide PBZ in the brine during the Chinese cabbage pickled process by phase column‐high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The result demonstrated the PBZ enantiomers had the different dissipation in the brine. The study on the behavior of chiral pesticide PBZ in food may provide more sufficient data and information for understanding the potential risk in food and evaluating the environmental pollution at the enantiomer level.     

The use of natural language to communicate the perception of vibrotactile stimuli

This study explores the subjective use of adjectives to verbally communicate vibrotactile stimulation across multiple frequencies. In total, nine different vibrotactile stimulus frequencies (10–300?Hz) were utilized, and subjective evaluation methods, which involved adjectives, were used to assess the sensory representations of the participants (18 healthy male participants; mean age, 22.9 years; standard deviation, 3.5). Sensory terms such as ‘slow,’ ‘protruding,’ and ‘thick’ were used as representative expressions to describe low-frequency (10–100?Hz) vibrotactile stimulations, while ‘fast,’ ‘shallow,’ and ‘tickly’ were used to describe high-frequency (225–300?Hz) vibrotactile stimulations. At the frequencies of 150 and 200?Hz, no characteristic word was found because there was no difference in subjective evaluation scores from other low or high frequencies. The results suggest that vibrotactile stimulation at different frequencies induce diverse sensory representations, owing to not only the motion and shape of the stimuli but also the subjective responses of the perceivers. The results of this study could be utilized in developing affective haptic devices in the future.     

Inter‐individual variation in colour patterns in noctuid moths characterizes long‐distance dispersers and agricultural pests

A high capacity for long‐distance dispersal is a key to success for species confronted with environmental heterogeneity, habitat modification, fragmentation and loss. However, dispersal capacity is difficult to quantify and therefore poorly known in most taxa. Here, we report on a test for an association of variation in dispersal capacity with variable colouration of noctuid moths. First, using data from 12 experienced lepidopterologists, we showed that despite variation among experts in average assessments, different species are consistently classified as having non‐variable, variable or highly variable colour patterns when assessed by different experts. We then compared the incidence of non‐resident species with high inter‐individual variation in colour patterns recorded on the isolated island Utklippan (n = 47), with that in a species pool of potential long‐distance dispersers from the nearest mainland (n = 295). Species with high inter‐individual colour pattern variation were over‐represented on the island compared with species having non‐variable colouration. This finding constitutes rare evidence from the wild of long‐distance dispersal, measured on a spatial scale relevant for moths when tracking habitats in fragmented and changing landscapes or when keeping pace with environmental challenges associated with climate change. Finally, we showed that Swedish noctuid moths classified as agricultural pests (n = 28) had more variable colour patterns compared with non‐pests (n = 368). The majority of agricultural pests were also recorded on the isolated island, an outcome that is indicative of pest species having high dispersal capacity. Data on colour pattern variation may thus offer a simple and cost‐effective proxy to estimate dispersal capacity and can also help identify potential pest species. Our findings are potentially useful when modelling and predicting population and range dynamics of species in spatiotemporally heterogeneous environments, with direct implications for conservation biology and pest management.     

我国福寿螺入侵现状和防控研究进展

福寿螺原分布于南美洲,20世纪80年代作为一种水生经济生物引入我国,后因食味不佳被弃于水生环境,因其具有繁殖力高、适应性强、食性杂等特点,在我国多个区域迅速扩散入侵,已给农业生产、生态系统、人类健康等造成了严重的危害.文章对福寿螺入侵现状进行了深入分析与系统总结,介绍了现有福寿螺防控技术手段,重点阐述环境友好型福寿螺防...