Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a metabolic stress-induced liver disease that is closely related not only to genetic susceptibility but also to insulin resistance and highly linked with metabolic syndrome. In recent years, the prevalence of NAFLD has increased rapidly, paralleling the epidemic of type 2 diabetes mellitus and obesity leading to cardiovascular disease. It has been demonstrated that NAFLD is highly associated with atherosclerosis. With recently gained knowledge, it appears that NAFLD may induce insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, oxidative stress, inflammation, and fluctuation of adipokines associated with atherosclerosis. In this review, we aimed to summarize recent discoveries related to both NAFLD and atherosclerosis, and to identify possible mechanisms linking them.

Growing evidence highlighted the tumor mutational burden (TMB) as an important feature of carcinogenesis and therapeutic efficacy in esophageal cancer (EC). Our study aimed to explore the genomic landscape and the correlation between TMB and immune cell infiltration in EC patients with or without radiotherapy. The EC patients were categorized into high TMB (TMB-H) and low TMB (TMB-L) groups by the ESTIMATE algorithm, and subgroup analysis was performed based on receiving radiotherapy or not. Univariate regression analysis indicated TMB and TNM stages as high-risk prognostic factors (Hazard ratio > 1 and P < 0.05). Multivariate regression analysis suggested TMB as an independent prognostic factor (Hazard ratio = 1.051, P = 0.003). Kaplan-Meier analysis showed no significant difference of the overall survival (OS) between TMB-H and TMB-L groups (P = 0.082). However, EC patients without radiotherapy in the TMB-H group had significantly decreased OS (P = 0.038) and increased Tregs cell infiltration (P = 0.033). These results suggested TMB as a prognostic marker for EC patients. Especially for patients who did not receive radiotherapy, the prognosis of TMB-H patients was significantly poorer than that of TMB-L patients, which might result from the different regulatory T cell infiltration.

International trade of agricultural products has complicated and far-reaching impacts on land and nitrogen use efficiencies. We analyzed the productivity of cropland and livestock and associated use of feed and fertilizer efficiency for over 240 countries, and estimated countries' cumulative contributions to imports and exports of 190 agricultural products for the 1961-2017 period. Crop trade has increased global land and partial fertilizer nitrogen productivities in terms of protein production, which equaled savings of 2270 M ha cropland and 480 Tg synthetic fertilizer nitrogen over the analyzed period. However, crop trade decreased global cropland productivity when productivity is expressed on an energy (per calorie) basis. Agricultural trade has generally moved towards optimality, i.e. has increased global land and N use efficiencies during 1961-2017, but remains at a relatively low level. Overall, mixed impacts of trade on resource use indicate the need for re-thinking trade patterns and improving their optimality.N-Circle China-UK Virtual Joint Centre on Nitrogen, funded by the Newton Fund via UK BBSRC/NERC (grant BB/N013484/1). Zhaohai Bai also thanks Francesco N.