Preoperative neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) is a standard treatment for locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) patients, yet little is known about the mediators underlying the heterogeneous patient response. In this longitudinal study, we performed 16S rRNA sequencing on 353 fecal specimens and find reduced microbial diversity after nCRT. Multi-omics data integration reveals that Bacteroides vulgatus-mediated nucleotide biosynthesis associates with nCRT resistance in LARC patients, and nonresponsive tumors are characterized by the upregulation of genes related to DNA repair and nucleoside transport. Nucleosides supplementation or B. vulgatus gavage protects cancer cells from the 5-fluorouracil or irradiation treatment. An analysis of 2,205 serum samples from 735 patients suggests that uric acid is a potential prognosis marker for LARC patients receiving nCRT. Our data unravel the role of intestinal microbiota-mediated nucleotide biosynthesis in the response of rectal tumors to nCRT, and highlight the importance of deciphering the cross-talk between cancer cells and gut microorganisms during cancer therapies.
The perceived position of a moving object in vision entails an accumulation of neural signals over space and time. Due to neural signal transmission delays, the visual system cannot acquire immediate information about the moving object's position. Although physiological and psychophysical studies on the flash-lag effect (FLE), a moving object is perceived ahead of a flash even when they are aligned at the same location, have shown that the visual system develops the mechanisms of predicting the object's location to compensate for the neural delays, the neural mechanisms of motion-induced location prediction are not still understood well. Here, we investigated the role of neural activity changes in areas MT+ (specialized for motion processing) and the potential contralateral processing preference of MT+ in modulating the FLE. Using transcranial direct current stimulations (tDCS) over the left and right MT+ between pre- and posttests of the FLE in different motion directions, we measured the effects of tDCS on the FLE. The results found that anodal and cathodal tDCS enhanced and reduced the FLE with the moving object heading to but not deviating from the side of the brain stimulated, respectively, compared with sham tDCS. These findings suggest a causal role of area MT+ in motion-induced location prediction, which may involve the integration of position information.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Perceived positions of moving objects are related to neural activities in areas MT+. We demonstrate that tDCS over areas MT+ can modulate the FLE, and further anodal and cathodal tDCS facilitated and inhibited the FLE with a moving object heading to but not deviating from the side of the brain stimulated, respectively. These findings suggest a causal role of area MT+ in motion-induced location prediction and contribute to understanding the neural mechanism of the FLE.
<p><em>Aesthetics is a comprehensive discipline about aesthetic phenomena with diverse and synthetic research methods. Compared with the general humanity disciplines, aesthetic studies pay more attention to perceptual experience, emotional conformity and psychological collision, and requires more cooperation and assistance of empirical science. This paper starts from different cultures under multiple contexts to expound on aesthetic understandings and perceptions from different aspects.</em><em></em></p>
Industrialization and urbanization are critical paths to modernization for a country or region. The coordination of industrialization and urbanization fosters the development of a regional economy. In academic circles, this is usually measured by the IU ratio (ratio of labor industrialization rate to urbanization rate) and the NU ratio (ratio of non-agricultural employment rate to urbanization rate). However, these methods are inapplicable to large countries' inland areas. The traditional methods failed to explain the real situation and produced contradictory results. The IU ratio shows that industrialization lags behind urbanization, while the NU ratio shows that industrialization is ahead of urbanization. According to studies conducted in the Sichuan Province of China, through comparison with Jiangsu Province, it is found that the non-agricultural employment growth is not dependent on the development of local industrialization, and rural-urban migration is not entirely dependent on the evolution of the non-agricultural employment rate. Other factors that promote urbanization, such as the country's capital policies and funds for migrant labor force transfer, should also be considered. This research attempts to improve the traditional methods for measuring the degree of urbanization and industrialization synergy in inland areas. The new empirical approach can effectively identify the critical characteristics of urbanization in inland provinces, such as the development of non-agricultural employment with external assistance and urban migrants "unrelated to employment opportunities". Based on these key characteristics, it can provide the basis for local urbanization policy formulation.
This paper investigates the dynamic pricing strategy for perishable products sold through online and offline channels with the consideration of consumers’ low‐carbon preferences. The MNL stochastic utility model is used to describe the purchasing decisions of consumers with different low‐carbon preferences. On this basis, we establish a dual‐channel dynamic pricing model for perishable products to maximize the firm’s expected revenue by using the dynamic programming method. We also study the influence of consumers’ low‐carbon preferences on optimal prices. The conclusions show that the low‐carbon utility and the proportion of consumers with high low‐carbon preference have positive effects on the optimal prices of the dual sales channels. Moreover, consumers are more inclined to purchase products through the online channel in the presence of low‐carbon preference, so the optimal price of the online channel product is higher than that of the offline channel product.
Ancient Chinese scholars considered the nature as the philosophical proposition of life’s reflective objects and applied it in life. The passions of human (pleasure, anger, sorrow and joy) often come from the natural landscapes. Lao-Zhuang philosophy proposed the philosophical view of advocating the nature and laid the natural landscape garden culture foundation. Meanwhile, this acts on the landscapes of scholars. Chinese paintings and classical garden culture are important constituent parts in traditional Chinese culture. Both of them have a close relation. The former has the spiritual pursuit beyond the world, while the latter endows spirit with entity, hoping for being a hermit in the world. Beginning with theory of paintings, garden appreciation and garden interest shown in Six Chapters of a Floating Life, the author studied Shen Fu and his wife’s comprehension on paintings, their contact details with scholars in the same era, as well as life interest and life attitude in gardens, trying to understand spiritual ballast of Qing scholars displayed in classical gardens through small ones.
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