The Agricultural Green Production following the Technological Progress: Evidence from China.

This study performs the spatial Durbin model (SDM) and threshold model to analyze the efficiency of agricultural green production following technological progress from 1998 through 2019. The SDM supports a nonlinear contribution of technological progress spillover to agricultural green total factor productivity (GTFP), exacerbated by upgrading agricultural structure. Moreover, the threshold model confirms that technological progress has a single threshold effect on agricultural GTFP with the rationalization of the agrarian system as a threshold variable; meanwhile, the contribution of technological progress to agricultural GTFP is less than that of agricultural total factor productivity. Out of the expanded application of dissipative structure theory in agricultural GTFP systems innovatively, this study reveals the urgency to strengthen the innovation of independent technology, lower the threshold for introducing technology, and optimize the agrarian structure in the long-term sustainable agriculture for the economies that are undergoing a similar development stage as China.

Hydroxy-α-sanshool isolated from Zanthoxylum bungeanum attenuates learning and memory impairments in scopolamine-treated mice.

Learning and memory impairments are common symptoms of dementia in neurodegenerative disorders. Occasionally, we found that Zanthoxylum bungeanum pericarps (ZBP) significantly activated the spontaneous activity of the hippocampus (HIPP) and paraHIPP (P < 0.001, uncorrected), implying the potential ability of ZBP to improve cognitive impairments. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the improving effect of hydroxy-α-sanshool (HAS), a characteristic ingredient of ZBP, against scopolamine (1 mg kg-1, i.p.)-induced learning and memory deficits. HAS (5 mg kg-1, p.o.) markedly reversed scopolamine-induced cognitive impairments, as indicated by its performance in the passive avoidance test and Morris water maze test (P < 0.01). Furthermore, HAS (2.5 and 5.0 mg kg-1, p.o.) also dose-dependently prevented changes in hippocampal neuronal morphology and apoptosis, inhibited acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity, increased the acetylcholine (ACh) content, and increased the protein and mRNA expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and phospho-cAMP response element-binding (p-CREB) compared with those in the model group (P < 0.05 & P < 0.01). These findings demonstrated that HAS attenuated scopolamine-induced cognitive impairments mainly by enhancing the activity of the cholinergic system and increasing the CREB/BDNF signalling pathway.