Comprehensive land-use planning (CLUP) at the county level in China must include land-use zoning. This is specifically stipulated by the China Land Management Law and aims to achieve strict control on the usages of land. The land-use zoning problem is treated as a multi-objective optimization problem (MOOP) in this article, which is different from the traditional treatment. A particle swarm optimization (PSO) based model is applied to the problem and is developed to maximize the attribute differences between land-use zones, the spatial compactness, the degree of spatial harmony and the ecological benefits of the land-use zones. This is subject to some constraints such as: the quantity limitations for varying land-use zones, regulations assigning land units to a certain land-use zone, and the stipulation of a minimum parcel area in a land-use zoning map. In addition, a crossover and mutation operator from a genetic algorithm is adopted to avoid the prematurity of PSO. The results obtained for Yicheng, a county in central China, using different objective weighting schemes, are compared and suggest that: (1) the fundamental demand for attribute difference between land-use zones leads to a mass of fragmentary land-use zones; (2) the spatial pattern of land-use zones is remarkably optimized when a weight is given to the sub-objectives of spatial compactness and the degree of spatial harmony, simultaneously, with a reduction of attribute difference between land-use zones; (3) when a weight is given to the sub-objective of ecological benefits of the land-use zones, the ecological benefits get a slight increase also at the expense of a reduction in attribute difference between land-use zones; (4) the pursuit of spatial harmony or spatial compactness may have a negative effect on each other; (5) an increase in the ecological benefits may improve the spatial compactness and spatial harmony of the land-use zones; (6) adjusting the weights assigned to each sub-objective can generate a corresponding optimal solution, with a different quantity structure and spatial pattern to satisfy the preference of the different decision makers; (7) the model proposed in this paper is capable of handling the land-use zoning problem, and the crossover and mutation operator can improve the performance of the model, but, nevertheless, leads to increased time consumption.

Departmental sources Background: Preeclampsia is a severe obstetric complication affecting the health of pregnant women. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of LAMA4 gene on extravillous trophoblasts (EVTs) in the pathogenesis of preeclampsia and its possible regulatory mechanism. Material/Methods: HTR-8/SVneo cells were transfected with small-interfering ribonucleic acid (siRNA) targeting LAMA. The LAMA4 protein level was detected via Western blotting. Moreover, the influences of LAMA4 gene on the proliferation, migration and invasion of HTR-8/SVneo cells were detected via cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) assay and Transwell assay. We also assessed the influences of LAMA4 gene on vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase-1 (sFlt-1) messenger RNA (mRNA) levels in HTR-8/SVneo cells as measured by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Results: The cell lines with downregulation of LAMA4 gene were successfully established by transfection. Compared with those in the normal group, the proliferation, migration, and invasion of HTR-8/SVneo cells declined, the VEGF mRNA level was reduced, and the sFlt-1 mRNA level was increased in the silencing group. Conclusions: Downregulation of the LAMA4 gene inhibits the proliferation, migration, and invasion of EVT to suppress the expression of vascular factors, leading to the occurrence or development of preeclampsia. Our data provide new insights into modulation of LAMA4 expression as a potential target for therapy against preeclampsia. Further research is needed on placenta sampling from pre-eclamptic pregnancies to validate the effect of LAMA4 expression compared to control pregnancies.

The present study was conducted to investigate the effects of diet with betaine supplementation on the growth performance, carcass quality and fat deposition in finishing Ningxiang pigs. A total of 24 Ningxiang pigs (43.6 ± 5.34 kg of average body weight) was randomly divided into two groups, with 6 replicates per treatment and 2 pigs per replicate. The treatments included a control group (basal diet) and a test group (basal diet + 0.2% betaine). The whole trial lasted 81 days. At the end of the experiment, one pig (close to the average body weight of all experimental pigs) per replicate was slaughtered to determine the carcass traits, meat quality and the mRNA expression levels of genes relate to fat deposition (one pig per replicate was randomly selected and fasted for 12 h, n = 6). Results indicated that growth performance was not changed with betaine supplementation. However, dietary with betaine supplementation decreased back fat thickness and fat percentage, and increased the lean meat percentage as well (p < 0.05). In addition, diet with betaine supplementation reduced drip loss, water loss, cooking loss, shear force and b × 24 h value of meat (p < 0.05). There was no difference in total moisture, ether extract and crude protein of longissimus thoracis between the control and test group. Dietary with betaine supplementation decreased ether extract and total cholesterol (p < 0.05) in liver. Dietary with betaine supplementation upregulated the mRNA expression levels of adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL) and sirtuin 1 (Sirt1), while downregulated the mRNA expression levels of fatty acid synthase (FAS) and acetyl CoA carboxylase (ACC) in subcutaneous fat of back (p < 0.05). Besides, dietary with betaine supplementation upregulated the fatty acid binding protein 4 (FABP4) mRNA expression of longissimus thoracis in finishing Ningxiang pigs (p < 0.05). These results showed that diet supplemented with betaine could improve the slaughtering performance and meat quality, and regulate the genes expression to affect the fat deposition in finishing Ningxiang pigs.