Improved weed mapping in corn fields by combining UAV-based spectral, textural, structural, and thermal measurements.

BACKGROUND: Spatial-explicit weed information is critical for controlling weed infestation and reducing corn yield losses. The development of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based remote sensing presents an unprecedented opportunity for efficient, timely weed mapping. Spectral, textural, and structural measurements have been used for weed mapping, whereas thermal measurements-for example, canopy temperature (CT)-were seldom considered and used. In this study, we quantified the optimal combination of spectral, textural, structural, and CT measurements based on different machine-learning algorithms for weed mapping. RESULTS: CT improved weed-mapping accuracies as complementary information for spectral, textural, and structural features (up to 5% and 0.051 improvements in overall accuracy [OA] and Marco-F1, respectively). The fusion of textural, structural, and thermal features achieved the best performance in weed mapping (OA = 96.4%, Marco-F1 = 0.964), followed by the fusion of structural and thermal features (OA = 93.6%, Marco-F1 = 0.936). The Support Vector Machine-based model achieved the best performance in weed mapping, with 3.5% and 7.1% improvements in OA and 0.036 and 0.071 in Marco-F1 respectively, compared with the best models of Random Forest and Naïve Bayes Classifier. CONCLUSION: Thermal measurement can complement other types of remote-sensing measurements and improve the weed-mapping accuracy within the data-fusion framework. Importantly, integrating textural, structural, and thermal features achieved the best performance for weed mapping. Our study provides a novel method for weed mapping using UAV-based multisource remote sensing measurements, which is critical for ensuring crop production in precision agriculture. © 2023 The Authors. Pest Management Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

Correlation analysis between body mass index and foot length in Chinese adolescents: a regional study.

This study aims to analyse the relationship between body mass index and foot length in Chinese adolescents and to provide theoretical guidance for preventing a flat foot in Chinese adolescents. This study recruited 1477 students aged 14-23 years. The participants' height, weight, and body mass index were measured, as well as baseline data, including age, gender and foot length. Differences in foot length (bilateral) and flat foot distribution were statistically significant except for the normal foot and high arch foot distribution based on different body mass index groups. Linear correlation analysis demonstrated that body height, weight and body mass index were positively correlated with bilateral foot length regardless of gender. Body mass index acted as a risk factor for flat foot (bilateral) through disordered multi-classification logistic regression analysis. Body mass index was positively correlated with left and right foot length regardless of gender and acted as a risk factor for a flat foot in Chinese adolescents. Practitioner summary: Significant differences exist in the anthropometric data of various races and ethnic groups. The study was investigated in the form of a cross-sectional study. BMI was positively correlated with bilateral foot length and acted as a risk factor for a flat foot in Chinese adolescents.

Hydrophilic hindering and hydrophobic growing: a vesicle glycometabolism multi-drug combination therapeutic against Alzheimer's disease.

Advanced drug vehicle exploitation and the sophisticated synergy mechanism revelation are two great difficulties in combination therapy. Compared with most readily available polymer micelles, some undiscovered complex chemical design principles limit the expanding research of polymer vesicles. Here, polycaprolactone (PCL)-g-Dextran vesicle that dextran brush steric hindrance guide PCL lamellae-aligned growth was synthesized. The effect of the glycometabolism multi-drug vesicle combination treatment and synergism mechanism were investigated on senescence-accelerated mouse prone 8 (SAMP8) mice. The main insulin sensitizer drug could improve the memory ability of mice to a small extent, and the main insulin secretion promoter drug had little beneficial effect. Moreover, the triple anti-insulin resistant drugs of insulin (INS), repaglinide (REP) and metformin hydrochloride (MET) activated the glycometabolism-related bio-signals, and the energy cycle was normalized successfully. The insulin intracellular uptake and utilization efficiency could be the reason for the gap. The upregulation of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) protein confirmed that the crosstalk between the mitochondria and synapse contributes to the nerve repair. This study provided an excellent drug combination vesicle to treat Alzheimer's disease (AD). The discovery of the combination mechanism leads to an improvement in the AD clinical treatment.

Hydrophilic polymer driven crystallization self-assembly: an inflammatory multi-drug combination nanosystem against Alzheimer's disease.

The hydrophobic polymer driven crystallization of self-assembled micelles is usually sufficient for their purposes in materials chemistry studies. However, with the state of smart drug delivery research, micelles alone are not enough. The principles of the self assembly driven by hydrophilic dextran brushes together with charged poly(3-acrylamidophenyl boronic acid) (PPBA) are uncovered in this study. A series of poly(ε-caprolactone)-block-poly(3-acrylamidophenyl boronic acid)-dextran (PCL-b-PPBA-Dex) micelles and vesicles are investigated as potential Alzheimer's disease (AD) treatments. Three inflammatory microenvironment responsive micelles, including celecoxib drug-loaded micelles (CEL), ibuprofen drug-loaded micelles (IBU) and telmisartan drug-loaded micelles (TEL), are developed. In vivo, CEL/IBU (mixture of CEL and IBU) and CEL/TEL (mixture of CEL and TEL) suppress the activation of glia and reduce the levels of inflammatory mediators through eliminating cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2) signals. The CEL/TEL combination nanosystem is better at correcting neuroinflammation and improving the spatial memory ability of a senescence-accelerated mouse prone 8 model (SAMP8). We consider that the inflammation responsive combination nanosystem provides a new potential treatment for AD clinical patients.

Visualizing Formation of Intermetallic PdZn in a Palladium/Zinc Oxide Catalyst: Interfacial Fertilization by PdHx.

Controllable synthesis of well-defined supported intermetallic catalysts is desirable because of their unique properties in physical chemistry. To accurately pinpoint the evolution of such materials at an atomic-scale, especially clarification of the initial state under a particular chemical environment, will facilitate rational design and optimal synthesis of such catalysts. The dynamic formation of a ZnO-supported PdZn catalyst is presented, whereby detailed analyses of in situ transmission electron microscopy, electron energy-loss spectroscopy, and in situ X-ray diffraction are combined to form a nanoscale understanding of PdZn phase transitions under realistic catalytic conditions. Remarkably, introduction of atoms (H and Zn in sequence) into the Pd matrix was initially observed. The resultant PdHx is an intermediate phase in the intermetallic formation process. The evolution of PdHx in the PdZn catalyst initializes at the PdHx /ZnO interfaces, and proceeds along the PdHx ⟨111⟩ direction.

Serum microRNA-195 is down-regulated in breast cancer: a potential marker for the diagnosis of breast cancer.

MicroRNA-195 (miR-195) is a tumor suppressor that plays an important role in tumorigenesis. There are few studies on miR-195 expression in breast cancer patients and the results have been inconsistent; therefore, this study examined miR-195 expression in the serum of BC patients. Samples from 102 normal subjects and 210 subjects with BC who had detailed clinical follow-up information available were selected. An internal reference (miR-16) and serum miR-195 were amplified and quantitatively detected by SYBR green-based real-time RT-PCR. We analyzed the differences in miR-195 levels between BC and healthy cases and the relationships between the miR-195 level and TNM stage and other clinicopathological parameters. In addition, changes in miR-195 levels were examined for 21 BC cases using paired samples before and after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. miR-195 was downregulated in BC compared with control samples (P = 0.000, Mann-Whitney U test). The sensitivity and specificity of miR-195 in the diagnosis of BC were 69.0 and 89.2 %, respectively; whereas, the sensitivities of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and carbohydrate antigen 153 (CA153) were only 15.08 and 21.1 %, respectively. Remarkably, serum miR-195 had higher sensitivity, 73.97 % (108/146), as a tumor marker in the diagnosis of early stage BC [ductal carcinoma in situ, tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) I, II] compared with the conventional tumor markers CA153 and CEA (12.41 and 7.59 %). Moreover, compared with CEA and CA153, miR-195 had a higher sensitivity for detecting the response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy and significantly increased, more than twofold, after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (P = 0.025, paired t test) in 52.381 % (11/21) of BC cases. However, there were no significant relationships between miR-195 expression and other clinicopathological parameters (TNM stage/pathotype/ER/PR/lymph node status). Our data indicate serum miR-195 is a promising tumor marker for BC diagnosis and general screening, especially for early stage BC. The high sensitivity of miR-195 to neoadjuvant chemotherapy may lay the foundation for future studies on the use of miRNA-based methods for monitoring BC treatment and therapy.