Does young feces make the elderly live better? Application of fecal microbiota transplantation in healthy aging

As we are facing an aging society,anti-aging strategies have been pursued to reduce the negative impacts of aging and increase the health span of human beings.Gut microbiota has become a key factor in the anti-aging process.Modulation of gut microbiota by fecal microbiota transplantation(FMT)to prevent frailty and unhealthy aging has been a hot topic of research.This narrative review summarizes the benefits of FMT for health span and lifespan,brains,eyes,productive systems,bones,and others.The mechanisms of FMT in improving healthy aging are discussed.The increased beneficial bacteria and decreased pathological bacteria decreased gut permeability and systemic inflammation,increased short-chain fatty acid(SCFA)and SCFA-producing bacteria,and other factors are listed as mechanisms of FMT to improve healthy aging.The points that need to be considered to ensure the optimal outcomes of FMT are also discussed,such as recipients’age,sex,genetic background,and gut microbiota after FMT.Although thisfield is still in its infancy,it has shown that FMT has great potential to improve healthy aging.

Robust adaptive control for interval time-delay systems

This paper focuses on the robust adaptive control problems for a class of interval time-delay systems and a class of large-scale interconnected systems. The nonlinear uncertainties of the systems under study are bounded by high- order polynomial functions with unknown gains. Firstly, the adaptive feedback controller which can guarantee the stability of the closed-loop system in the sense of uniform ultimate boundedness is proposed. Then the proposed adaptive idea is extended to robust stabilizing designing method for a class of large-scale interconnected systems. Here, another problem we address is to design a decentralized feedback adaptive controller such that the closed-loop system is stable in the sense of uniform ultimate boundedness for all admissible uncertainties and time-delay. Finally, an illustrative example is given to show the validity of the proposed approach.

Nutritional evaluation,fatty acid analysis and anticancer properties investigation of seeds from kan-zaw,a potential diet oil and medicinal plant

Payenapara lleloneura Kurz.(Kan-zaw),an endemic medicinal plant only found in Tanintharyi Region of Myanmar,is widely used in the treatment of various cancer and different ailments.In the present research,the seeds were phytochemical investigated for their nutritional potential for their use as functional foods or novel diet oil resources.Nutritional evaluation showed that the seeds are rich in fats and carbohydrates(soluble sugars and starch).Fatty acid analyses showed that the seeds accumulate very richα-eleostearic acid(α-ESA,18:3^(Δ9 cis,11-trans),13 trans),an important conjugated fatty acid,up to more than 70% of total fatty acids.The seed oil derived from the Kan-zaw tree contains approximately 3.25% β-eleostearic acid(18:3^(Δ9 trans,11 trans,13 trans)),an unusual conjugated fatty acid that imparts a potent anticancer application and industrially important drying qualities to Kan-zaw oil.Physicochemical properties of the Kan-zaw seeds were examined;petroleum ether(60–90℃)extract of seed oils were also investigated for the saponification value,iodine value and estimation of acid value.Further,the present study investigated cytotoxic potential of ethanol,methanol,acetone,chloroform Kan-zaw seed extracts and commercial Kan-zaw oil against human cervical cancer cell line(HeLa).The Kan-zaw extracts and oil have shown significant anticancer activity on HeLa cells.

Interest Rate Pass-through in a Dual-track System:Evidence from China

Using the Phillips-Loretan approach, this paper verifies the degree and speed of pass- through and rigidity of different interest rates in China, as well as the response of private loan interest rates to other interest rates during 2002-2012. The results indicate that the long-term pass-through from the interbank offered rates and deposit and loan interest rates to the treasury bond rate is incomplete, but that the long-term pass-through to private loan interest rates is overshooting. The long-term pass-through from the deposit and loan interest rates to the overnight interbank offered rate is incomplete, while that to the interbank offered rates of other maturities is complete. The short-term passthrough and adjustment speed of interest rates exhibit asymmetry. Therefore, before considering a full liberalization of interest rates, it is important to further enhance the competition of the financial system and the function of different interest rate systems, such as the interhank market and bond market.

Monetary Policy and Corporate Investment:Evidence from Chinese Micro Data

This paper investigates how a firm＇s characteristics restrict the influence of monetary policy changes on its investment behavior. Focusing on China＇s listed companies for a sample period from the first quarter of 2002 to the first quarter of 2011, we find that quantity- oriented and price-based monetary policies have heterogeneous impacts on corporate investment behavior, but the influence of monetary policies is constrained by the liquidity, inventory, size and asset-liability ratio of a firm. Firms with higher liquidity, lower inventory level and lower asset-liability ratios are less sensitive to the impact from two kinds of monetary policies. The larger the size of the firm, the less it is subject to influenee from quantity-oriented monetary policy; it responds more to price-based monetary poliey. The policy implication is that the monetary authorities should pay attention to the importance of policy-making based on the monetary demand of mieroeconomie entities.

Feed intake prediction model for group fish using the MEA-BP neural network in intensive aquaculture

In aquaculture,the accurate prediction of feed intake for group fish is considered to be crucial to any feeding system.Previous studies mainly used mathematical statistics to establish the mapping relationship between feed intake and influencing factors.The result was easily influenced by subjective experience.To solve the above issues,this paper proposed a feed intake prediction model for group fish using the back-propagation neural network(BPNN)and mind evolutionary algorithm(MEA).Firstly,four factors,including water temperature,dissolved oxygen,the average fish weight and the number of fish were selected as the input of the BPNN model.Secondly,the initial weight and threshold of the BPNN were optimized by the MEA to improve the matching precision.Finally,the prediction model was achieved after training.Experimental results showed that the correlation coefficient between the predicted and measured values reached 0.96.And the root mean squared error,mean square error,mean absolute error,mean absolute percent error of the model was 6.89,47.53,6.17 and 0.04,respectively.In addition,the proposed method also had the better nonlinear fitting ability than BPNN and GA-BP.By using an intelligent optimization algorithm,the mapping relationship between fish intake and environmental factors was automatically established,thus avoiding the subjectivity of traditional methods.Therefore,it can lay a theoretical foundation for the development of intelligent feeding equipment and meet the needs of the smart fishery.

Macroeconomic Uncertainty, Fund Demand and Corporate Investment

Using a unique set of data on fund use by China＇s listed companies, this paper examines how macroeconomic uncertainty works on corporate investment. The study shows that macroeconomic uncertainty affects corporate investment behavior through the three channels of external demand, liquidity demand and long-term fund demand, However, the result is influenced by expectations and can differ across firms depending on their economic cycle, shareholder character, industrial character and the financial constraints they are exposed to. Specifically, high macroeconomic uncertainty can weaken the positive roles of these channels, especially those of external demand and liquidity demand, in driving corporate investment. During economic upturns, the effect of these channels is the most evident among state-owned firms, manufacturing firms and low cash dividend firms. The lessons from this study are that macroeconomic policies should be leveraged taking account of the channels through which economic shocks find their way, and monetary policies have to be implemented by targeting microscopic fund demand.