Dengue counts among the most commonly encountered arboviral diseases, representing the fastest spreading tropical illness in the world. It is prevalent in 128 countries, and each year >2.5 billion people are at risk of dengue virus infection worldwide. Neurological signs of dengue infection are increasingly reported. In this review, the main neurological complications of dengue virus infection, such as central nervous system (CNS), peripheral nervous system, and ophthalmic complications were discussed according to clinical features, treatment and possible pathogenesis. In addition, neurological complications in children were assessed due to their atypical clinical features. Finally, dengue infection and Japanese encephalitis were compared for pathogenesis and main clinical manifestations.

Exposure to the Great Famine in early life had sex-specific association with moderate-severe NAFLD. This indicates that malnutrition in early life may influence the development of adult NAFLD; thus pregnant women and their infants and children may require the highest priority in obtaining nutritional relief.

Lectins are a group of proteins with carbohydrate recognition activity. Lectins are categorized into many families based on their different cellular locations as well as their specificities for a variety of carbohydrate structures due to the features of their carbohydrate recognition domain (CRD) modules. Many studies have indicated that the direct recognition of particular oligosaccharides on viral components by lectins is important for interactions between hosts and viruses. Herein, we aim to globally review the roles of this recognition by animal lectins in antiviral immune responses and viral pathogenesis. The different classes of mammalian lectins can either recognize carbohydrates to activate host immunity for viral elimination or can exploit those carbohydrates as susceptibility factors to facilitate viral entry, replication or assembly. Additionally, some arthropod C-type lectins were recently identified as key susceptibility factors that directly interact with multiple viruses and then facilitate infection. Summarization of the pleiotropic roles of direct viral recognition by animal lectins will benefit our understanding of host-virus interactions and could provide insight into the role of lectins in antiviral drug and vaccine development.

Taking advantage of multiple new remote sensing data sources, especially from Chinese satellites, the CropWatch system has expanded the scope of its international analyses through the development of new indicators and an upgraded operational methodology. The approach adopts a hierarchical system covering four spatial levels of detail: global, regional, national (thirty-one key countries including China) and "sub-countries" (for the nine largest countries). The thirty-one countries encompass more that 80% of both production and exports of maize, rice, soybean and wheat. The methodology resorts to climatic and remote sensing indicators at different scales. The global patterns of crop environmental growing conditions are first analyzed with indicators for rainfall, temperature, photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) as well as potential biomass. At the regional scale, the indicators pay more attention to crops and include Vegetation Health Index (VHI), Vegetation Condition Index (VCI), Cropped Arable Land Fraction (CALF) as well as Cropping Intensity (CI). Together, they characterize crop situation, farming intensity and stress. CropWatch carries out detailed crop condition analyses at the national scale with a comprehensive array of variables and indicators. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), cropped areas and crop conditions are integrated to derive food production estimates. For the nine OPEN ACCESSRemote Sens. 2015, 7 3908 largest countries, CropWatch zooms into the sub-national units to acquire detailed information on crop condition and production by including new indicators (e.g., Crop type proportion). Based on trend analysis, CropWatch also issues crop production supply outlooks, covering both long-term variations and short-term dynamic changes in key food exporters and importers. The hierarchical approach adopted by CropWatch is the basis of the analyses of climatic and crop conditions assessments published in the quarterly "CropWatch bulletin" which provides accurate and timely information essential to food producers, traders and consumers.

Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) are an ideal therapy for type 2 diabetes and, as of recently, for obesity. In contrast to visceral fat, subcutaneous fat appears to be protective against metabolic diseases. Here, we aimed to explore whether liraglutide, a GLP-1RA, could redistribute body fat via regulating lipid metabolism in different fat depots. After being fed a high-fat diet for 8 weeks, 50 male Wistar and Goto-Kakizaki rats were randomly divided into a normal control group, a diabetic control group, low-and high-dose liraglutide-treated groups and a diet-control group. Different doses of liraglutide (400 μg/kg/day or 1200 μg/kg/day) or an equal volume of normal saline were administered to the rats subcutaneously once a day for 12 weeks. Body composition and body fat deposition were measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry and MRI. Isotope tracers were infused to explore lipid metabolism in different fat depots. Quantitative real-time PCR and Western blot analyses were conducted to evaluate the expression of adipose-related genes. The results showed that liraglutide decreased visceral fat and relatively increased subcutaneous fat. Lipogenesis was reduced in visceral white adipose tissue (WAT) but was elevated in subcutaneous WAT. Lipolysis was also attenuated, and fatty acid oxidation was enhanced. The mRNA expression levels of adipose-related genes in different tissues displayed similar trends after liraglutide treatment. In addition, the expression of browning-related genes was upregulated in subcutaneous WAT. Taken together, the results suggested that liraglutide potentially redistributes body fat and promotes browning remodeling in subcutaneous WAT to improve metabolic disorders.

Exposure to famine in early life may have a significant association with visceral adipose dysfunction in adult females. The fetal age and childhood may be important time windows for nutrition relief to prevent visceral adipose dysfunction.

ObjectiveChronic kidney disease (CKD) is an increasing contributor to the global disease burden. Previous findings indicated that exposure to famine in early life was associated with various metabolic diseases and urinary protein levels. We aimed to assess whether the exposure to China’s Great Famine 1959–1962 during fetal or childhood period was associated with glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and risk of CKD (eGFR<60 mL/min per 1.73 m2) in adulthood.Materials and methodsSPECT-China was a population-based observational study in 2014–2015. Totally, 5124 women were included from SPECT-China study. Based on the birth year, they were divided into fetal-exposed (1959–1962), childhood-exposed (1949–1958), adolescence/young adult-exposed (1921–1948), and non-exposed (1963–1974, reference). The estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) was calculated according to the Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration equation. CKD was defined as eGFR less than 60 mL/min per 1.73 m2.ResultsCompared with the non-exposed, fetal exposure to famine was significantly associated with lower eGFR (B −1.47, 95%CI −2.81, −1.13) and greater risk of having CKD (OR 2.85, 95%CI 1.25, 6.50) in the crude model adjusting age. Further adjustments for demographic variables, body mass index, diabetes, and blood pressure did not qualitatively change the association (eGFR B −1.35, 95%CI −2.67, −0.04; CKD OR 2.42, 95%CI 1.05, 5.58). This association was not found in childhood-exposed and adolescence/young adult-exposed individuals.ConclusionsPrenatal exposure to famine may have long-term effects on declined GFR and the development of CKD in humans. thus, fetal stage may be an important time window to prevent CKD in later life.

In this paper, properties of a homogeneous Bose gas with a Feshbach resonance are studied in the dilute region at zero temperature. The stationary state contains condensations of atoms and molecules. The ratio of the molecule density to the atom density is na 3 . There are two types of excitations, molecular excitations and atomic excitations. Atomic excitations are gapless, consistent with the traditional theory of a dilute Bose gas. The molecular excitation energy is finite in the long-wavelength limit as observed in recent experiments on 85 Rb. In addition, the decay process of the condensate is studied. The coefficient of the three-body recombination rate is about 140 times larger than that of a Bose gas without a Feshbach resonance, in reasonably good agreement with the experiment on 23 Na.