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A high strength and ductile Mg-Gd-Y-Zn-Zr alloy was designed and fabricated. The local strain evolution of the alloys during plastic deformation was analyzed using high-resolution digital image correlation (DIC). The results showed that the β particles, nano-sized γ' phases, and LPSO phases were distributed in the as-extruded alloy and a bimodal microstructure was exhibited, including elongated un-dynamic recrystallized grains and fine dynamic recrystallized grains. With increasing extrusion ratio, the grain size remained, with the volume fraction of dynamic recrystallization of the as-extruded alloy increasing from 30% to 75%, and the as-extruded alloy exhibited a high strength-ductility synergy, which is attributed to the grain refinement, extensive β particles, and elongated block-shaped LPSO phases. The strain evolution analysis showed that a strain-transfer from un-DRXed regions to adjacent DRXed regions and LPSO phases can promote uniform plastic deformation, which tends to improve the ductility of the alloy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lithium‐Sulfur (Li‐S) batteries as the next‐generation battery system have an ultrahigh theoretical energy density. However, the limited conversion of polysulfides in sulfur cathodes deteriorates the performance of Li‐S batteries. In this study, we develop a novel titanium nitride (TiN) catalyst for sulfur cathodes via atomic layer deposition (ALD). The synthesized ALD‐TiN catalyst shows controllable ultrafine particle size (<2 nm) and uniform distribution at the nanoscale in the carbon matrix. Combined with electrochemical analysis and multiple post‐characterization techniques, ALD‐TiN demonstrates an excellent catalytic effect to facilitate the nucleation and deposition of Li2S, which effectively suppresses the dissolution and shuttle of polysulfides. The as‐prepared sulfur cathodes, with the assistance of TiN catalyst, exhibit excellent cycling performance at a high rate (4 C) and deliver 200% higher discharge capacity than the pristine Sulfur‐pristine porous carbon composite cathodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Irrigated cultivation exerts a significant influence on the local climate and the hydrological cycle. The North China Plain (NCP) is known for its intricate agricultural system, marked by expansive cropland, high productivity, compact rotation, a semi-arid climate, and intensive irrigation practices. As a result, there has been considerable attention on the potential impact of this intensive irrigated agriculture on the local climate. However, studying the irrigation impact in this region has been challenging due to the lack of an accurate simulation in crop phenology and irrigation practices within the climate model. By incorporating double-cropping with interactive irrigation, our study extends the capabilities of the Weather Research Forecast-Crop (WRF-Crop) model, which has previously demonstrated commendable performance in simulating single-cropping scenarios. This allows for two-way feedback between irrigated crops and climate, further enabling the inclusion of irrigation feedback from both ground and vegetation perspectives. The improved crop modeling system shows significant enhancement in capturing vegetation and irrigation patterns, which is evidenced by its ability to identify crop stages, estimate field biomass, predict crop yield, and project monthly leaf area index. In the next phase of our research, we plan to employ this integrated crop modeling system under various irrigation scenarios to further enhance our understanding of the intricate relationship between agricultural development and climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presented a unique process of mechanical alloying (MA) and laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) to prepare heterogeneous grain structure (HGS) Zn with strength-plasticity synergy. The results showed that the MA-treatment significantly refined the grain sizes of Zn to nano-scale and contributed to the formation of HGS powders. Moreover, the ultra-fast heating and cooling of LPBF process inhibited the grain growth and resulted in a specific core/shell HGS, wherein the cores (micron-grains) were surrounded by interconnected shells (nano-grains). Notably, the prepared HGS Zn demonstrated synergistically improved compressive yield strength (2.1 times) and plasticity (58%) compared with the homogeneous coarse-grained counterparts. This impressive strength-plasticity synergy was primarily attributed to high back stress and dislocation pile-ups generated by the deformation incompatibility between the nano-grained shells and micron-grained cores. These findings open up new fields for MA and LPBF in the preparation of HGS metals and their applications in solving strength-plasticity tradeoff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Resuscitative endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta (REBOA) can temporarily control traumatic bleeding. However, its prolonged use potentially leads to ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI). Partial REBOA (pREBOA) can alleviate ischemic burden; however, its security and effectiveness prior to operative hemorrhage control remains unknown. Hence, we aimed to estimate the efficacy of pREBOA in a swine model of liver injury using an experimental sliding-chamber ballistic gun. METHODS: Twenty Landrace pigs were randomized into control (no aortic occlusion) (n=5), intervention with complete REBOA (cREBOA) (n=5), continuous pREBOA (C-pREBOA) (n=5), and sequential pREBOA (S-pREBOA) (n=5) groups. In the cREBOA and C-pREBOA groups, the balloon was inflated for 60 min. The hemodynamic and laboratory values were compared at various observation time points. Tissue samples immediately after animal euthanasia from the myocardium, liver, kidneys, and duodenum were collected for histological assessment using hematoxylin and eosin staining. RESULTS: Compared with the control group, the survival rate of the REBOA groups was prominently improved (all P<0.05). The total volume of blood loss was markedly lower in the cREBOA group (493.14±127.31 mL) compared with other groups (P<0.01). The pH was significantly lower at 180 min in the cREBOA and S-pREBOA groups (P<0.05). At 120 min, the S-pREBOA group showed higher alanine aminotransferase (P<0.05) but lower blood urea nitrogen compared with the cREBOA group (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: In this trauma model with liver injury, a 60-minute pREBOA resulted in improved survival rate and was effective in maintaining reliable aortic pressure, despite persistent hemorrhage. Extended tolerance time for aortic occlusion in Zone I for non-compressible torso hemorrhage was feasible with both continuous partial and sequential partial measures, and the significant improvement in the severity of acidosis and distal organ injury was observed in the sequential pREBOA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inorganic-based solid-state lithium–sulfur batteries (SSLSBs) with high energy density and high safety have attracted wide attention as they are one of the most promising energy storage devices to meet future market requirements. However, the development of SSLSBs faces various challenges due to the unreasonable structural design in sulfur cathodes. Carbon is one of the indispensable components in sulfur cathodes. The rational design of carbon materials becomes an important strategy to address the challenges in sulfur cathodes. This review summarizes recent literature about the design and application of carbon materials for sulfur cathodes in inorganic-based SSLSBs. It starts with the introduction of different carbon materials from zero-dimensional to three-dimensional carbon materials. Particularly, this review paper highlights the structural design of carbon materials and the cathode fabrication methods, toward improving the conductivity of cathodes, buffering volume changes in cathodes, reducing interfacial resistance among cathode components, and increasing the mass loading of active materials. Finally, the existing challenges and promising solutions for carbon materials in the cathodes are discussed and proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The addition of superelastic shape memory alloy fibers (SMAF) into engineering cementitious composites (ECC) can create a new type of SMAF-ECC composite material with good self-recovery and energy dissipation performance, which is very suitable for seismic structures. In this study, 10 groups of beam specimens with different volume contents of SMAF were fabricated, and the bending performance, deflection recovery and energy dissipation ability of these beams were studied through three-point bending cyclic loading tests. The failure mode, peak load, load–deflection curve, crack width and other indicators of the specimens were analyzed, and the relationship expression between fiber content and bending strength was established by fitting analysis. The results show that adding SMA fibers can significantly improve the peak load of ECC beams, with a maximum increase of 48.31%. The knotted SMA fibers can fully exert their superelasticity, providing the beam specimens with crack self-closing and deflection recovery ability. When the volume content of SMA fibers is 0–0.6%, the bending strength, energy dissipation ability and deflection recovery ability of the composite material beams increase with the increase in fiber content. When the volume content of SMA fibers is 0.6–1.0%, the above indicators decrease with the increase in fiber content. The suggested equations can well reflect the relationship between fiber content and beam bending strength. The research results of this paper provide theoretical support for the engineering application of SMAF-ECC composite materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combining Engineered Cementitious Composites (ECC) with shape memory alloy (SMA) fibers can form SMA fiber reinforced ECC (SMAF-ECC) that has excellent deformation recovery and energy dissipation capabilities. Substituting some of the tensioned concrete with this new composite material, along with steel bars, is expected to significantly improve the seismic energy dissipation and self-recovery capabilities of traditional reinforced concrete components. However, a reliable bond between steel bars and SMAF-ECC is critical to ensure their synergistic performance. In this paper, the failure mode and bond strength of steel bars and SMAF-ECC were studied through direct tensile tests, and the influence factors such as steel bar diameter, bond length, and SMAF volume fraction were analyzed. A bond-slip constitutive model for steel bars and SMAF-ECC was proposed. The results show that the failure mode of the tensile test specimens is mainly steel bar pull-out failure; the incorporation of SMAF significantly enhances the bond strength between the steel bar and matrix; increasing the steel bar diameter and bond length both lead to a decrease in bond strength while increasing the SMAF volume fraction can significantly increase the bond strength. Among them, the specimen with a steel bar diameter of 12 mm, bond length of 70 mm, and SMAF volume fraction of 0.5% has the largest increase in bond strength, reaching 52.96%. The proposed improved bond-slip constitutive model is in good agreement with the bond-slip curve obtained in the experiments, with a determination coefficient of 0.99. The research results of this paper provide an important theoretical basis for promoting the engineering application of SMAF-ECC materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Downscaling methods are critical in efficiently generating high‐resolution atmospheric data. However, state‐of‐the‐art statistical or dynamical downscaling techniques either suffer from the high computational cost of running a physical model or require high‐resolution data to develop a downscaling tool. Here, we demonstrate a recently proposed zero‐shot super‐resolution method, the Fourier neural operator (FNO), to efficiently perform downscaling without the need for high‐resolution data. Because the FNO learns dynamics in Fourier space, FNO is a resolution‐invariant emulator; it can be trained at a coarse resolution and produces emulation at any high resolution. We applied FNO to downscale a 4‐km resolution Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model simulation of near‐surface heat‐related variables over the Great Lakes region. The FNO is driven by the atmospheric forcings and topographic features used in the WRF model at the same resolution. We incorporated a physics‐constrained loss in FNO by using the Clausius–Clapeyron relation to better constrain the relations among the emulated states. Trained on merely 600 WRF snapshots at 4‐km resolution, the FNO shows comparable performance with a widely‐used convolutional network, U‐Net, achieving averaged modified Kling–Gupta Efficiency of 0.88 and 0.94 on the test data set for temperature and pressure, respectively. We then employed the FNO to produce 1‐km emulations to reproduce the fine climate features. Further, by taking the WRF simulation as ground truth, we show consistent performances at the two resolutions, suggesting the reliability of FNO in producing high‐resolution dynamics. Our study demonstrates the potential of using FNO for zero‐shot super‐resolution in generating first‐order estimation on atmospheric modeling. Plain Language Summary: High‐resolution climate estimates are crucial for applications like examining heat exposure in populated areas. Downscaling from lower‐resolution estimates is one popular technique for obtaining these estimates. However, developing downscaling tools usually requires expensive computation or difficult‐to‐obtain data; they rely on either numerically solving a physical model or using a pair of existing high‐ and low‐resolution data. To address this issue, we demonstrated a novel deep learning model that can generate high‐resolution results from only low‐resolution data. Our study successfully applied this method to downscale near‐surface heat‐related variables of the Weather Research and Forecasting simulation to 1‐km resolution over the Great Lakes region. Key Points: We used the Fourier neural operator (FNO) to perform zero‐shot super‐resolution on near‐surface heat‐related estimatesIncorporating a physics‐constrained loss based on the Clausius–Clapeyron equation improves the emulation performance of the trained FNOTrained on a 4‐km Weather Research and Forecasting simulation, the FNO generates a 1‐km emulation that captures fine‐grained climate features induced by topography [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Some studies have found that probiotics can improve cognitive impairment in Alzheimer’s disease, although the specific molecular mechanism by which this occurs has not been reported. Our previous research found that probiotics inhibited bacteria-related Toll-like receptor 4- and retinoic-acid-inducible gene-I-mediated nuclear factor-κB signaling pathways to improve cognitive impairment. However, it is unclear whether probiotics have similar effects on other pattern recognition receptors that respond to bacteria. Methods: Nine-month-old senescence-accelerated mouse prone 8 (SAMP8) mice received ProBiotic-4 (a mixture of Lactobacillus acidophilus, Bifidobacterium bifidum, Lactobacillus casei, and Bifidobacterium lactis) orally for 12 weeks. The effects on other bacteria-related pattern recognition receptors were then investigated. Results: ProBiotic-4-treated SAMP8 mice showed improvement in memory deficits, synaptic and cerebral neuronal injuries, and microglial activation. ProBiotic-4 also markedly increased the expression of intestinal tight junction proteins (i.e., claudin-1, occludin, and zonula occluden-1), decreased the expression of interleukin-1β at both the mRNA and protein levels, and reduced the expression of caspase-11, cleaved caspase-1, and α-kinase 1 (ALPK1) in the intestine and brain. Conclusions: These findings suggest that probiotics may have therapeutic potential for the treatment of inflammation in the gut-brain axis and for cognitive impairment. The mechanism of action of probiotics appears to be related to inhibition of the caspase-11/caspase-1 pathway and reduction of ALPK1 expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jatropha curcas L. is a promising bioenergy source, and its seedling stage is sensitive to salinity. Nitrogen application presents an effective strategy for alleviating the adverse consequences of salinity stress. However, the responses of plant growth and physiology of Jatropha curcas L. seedlings to nitrogen application under salinity stress remain unclear. As a result, a one-year greenhouse plot experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of nitrogen application on the plant growth, antioxidant enzyme activity, and photosynthesis of Jatropha curcas L. seedlings under saline conditions. Experiment treatments consisted of three salinity stresses (mild salinity stress, S1: 2 g/kg; moderate salinity stress, S2: 4 g/kg; and severe salinity stress, S3: 6 g/kg), four nitrogen application rates (N0: 0 gN/plant; N1: 20 gN/plant; N2: 60 gN/plant; and N3: 100 gN/plant), and a control treatment (CK) which was without salinity stress and nitrogen application. The results showed that salinity stress substantially reduced plant growth of Jatropha curcas L. seedlings. As the salinity stress increased, the reduction in plant growth also increased. The S3 treatment had the lowest leaf area, leaf biomass, and total biomass, which decreased by an average of 70.4%, 66.3%, and 69.9%, respectively, compared to CK. Nitrogen application could compensate for these impairments of plant growth from salinity stress by promoting antioxidant enzyme activity and photosynthesis. As for mild and moderate salinity stresses, the maximum plant growth was found in the N3 treatment, with the maximum antioxidant enzyme activity, photosynthetic pigment, photosynthetic characteristic, and chlorophyll fluorescence. As for severe salinity stress, higher plant growth was found in N2 and N3 treatments, and there were no significant differences between N2 and N3 treatments. It also should be noted that the maximum photosynthetic characteristic and chlorophyll fluorescence were found in N2 treatment under severe salinity stress. In conclusion, nitrogen application could be an alternative strategy to improve the salinity tolerance of Jatropha curcas L. growth. The nitrogen application rate of 100 gN/plant could be recommended for low and moderate salinity stresses, while 60 gN/plant could be recommended for severe salinity stress. However, higher nitrogen application rate (>100 gN/plant) under mild and moderate salinity stress and the effects of reactive oxygen species under salinity stress should be further evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Link prediction involves the use of entities and relations that already exist in a knowledge graph to reason about missing entities or relations. Different approaches have been proposed to date for performing this task. This paper proposes a combined use of the translation-based approach with the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-based approach, resulting in a novel model, called ConCMH. In the proposed model, first, entities and relations are embedded into the complex space, followed by a vector multiplication of entity embeddings and relational embeddings and taking the real part of the results to generate a feature matrix of their interaction. Next, a 2D convolution is used to extract features from this matrix and generate feature maps. Finally, the feature vectors are transformed into predicted entity embeddings by obtaining the inner product of the feature mapping and the entity embedding matrix. The proposed ConCMH model is compared against state-of-the-art models on the four most commonly used benchmark datasets and the obtained experimental results confirm its superiority in the majority of cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Common-image gathers are extensively used in amplitude versus angle (AVA) and migration velocity analysis (MVA). The current state of methods for anisotropic angle gathers extraction use slant-stack, local Fourier transform or low-rank approximation, which requires much computation. Based on an anisotropic-Helmholtz P/S wave-mode decomposition method, we propose a novel and efficient approach to produce angle-domain common-image gathers (ADCIGs) in the elastic reverse time migration (ERTM) of VTI media. To start with, we derive an anisotropic-Helmholtz decomposition operator from the Christoffel equation in VTI media, and use this operator to derive the decomposed formulations for anisotropic P/S waves. Second, we employ the first-order Taylor expansion to calculate the normalized term of decomposed formulations and obtain the anisotropic-Helmholtz decomposition method, which generates the separated P/S wavefields with correct amplitudes and phases. Third, we develop a novel way that uses the anisotropic-Helmholtz decomposition operator to define the polarization angles for anisotropic P/S waves and substitute these angles to decomposing formulations. The polarization angles are then calculated directly from the separated vector P- and S-wavefields and converted to the phase angles. The ADCIGs are thusly produced by applying the phase angles to VTI ERTM. In addition, we develop a concise approximate expression of residual moveout (RMO) for PPreflections of flat reflectors in VTI media, which avoids the complex transformations between the group angles and the phase angles. The approximate RMO curves show a good agreement with the exact solution and can be used as a tool to assess the migration velocity errors. As demonstrated by two selected examples, our ADCIGs not only produce the correct kinematic responses with regards to different velocity pertubatation, but also generate the reliable amplitude responses versus different angle. The final stacking images of ADCIGs data exhibit the identical imaging effect as that of VTI ERTM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SMAF-ECC material composed of shape memory alloy fiber (SMAF) and engineered cementitious composite (ECC) has good bending and tensile properties, as well as good crack self-healing ability, energy consumption, and self-centering ability. The bond behavior between fiber and matrix is crucial to the effective utilization of the superelasticity of SMAF. The experimental study considered three variables: SMA fiber diameter, fiber end shape, and bond length. The pullout stress–strain curve of SMAF was obtained, and the maximum pullout stress, maximum bond stress, and fiber utilization rate were analyzed. Compared with the straight end and the hook end, the maximum pullout stress of the specimen using the knotted end SMAF is above 900 MPa, the fiber undergoes martensitic transformation, and the fiber utilization rate is above 80%, indicating that the setting of the knotted end can give full play to the superelasticity of the SMAF. Within the effective bond length range, increasing the bond length can increase the maximum anchorage force of the knotted end SMAF. Increasing the fiber diameter can increase the maximum pullout stress and maximum anchoring force of the knotted end SMAF but reduce the utilization rate of SMA fiber. This study provides a reliable theoretical basis for the bonding properties between SMAF and ECC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a devastating disease characterized by vasoconstriction and vascular remodeling, leading to right ventricular failure and death. PH is a common complication of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Accumulating evidence demonstrate that microRNAs participate in the pathobiology of PH in COPD patients. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the expression and function of microRNA-4640-5p (miR-4640-5p) in PH. Methods: The mRNA and protein levels were determined by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and western blot, separately. Functional assays and western blot were performed to determine the effects of miR-4640-5p and NOS1 on cell growth, migration. Besides, the dual-luciferase reporter assays were used to validate miR-4640-5p and NOS1 interactions. Results: We found that miR-4640-5p expression was significantly higher in the lung tissues of COPD-PH patients than in the healthy controls while higher expression of miR-4640-5p was correlated with more severe COPD-PH. By using pulmonary artery smooth muscle cell (PASMC) in in vitro assays, we demonstrated that inhibition of miR-4640-5p suppressed cell proliferation and migration of PASMC via regulating mTOR/S6 signaling. Bioinformatics analysis and validation experiments revealed that nitric oxide synthase 1 (NOS1) was a direct downstream target of miR-4640-5p. Overexpression of NOS1 partially antagonized the effect of miR-4640-5p in regulating PASMC cell proliferation and migration. In addition, our findings suggested that miR-4640-5p/NOS1 axis regulated mitochondrial dynamics in PASMCs. Furthermore, in the hypoxia-induced PH rat model, inhibition of miR-4640-5p ameliorated PH with reduced right ventricular systolic pressure and Fulton index. Conclusions: miR-4640-5p regulates PH via targeting NOS1, which provides a potential diagnostic biomarker and therapeutic target for COPD-PH patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the critical role of precipitation on hydroclimate, we quantified the contributions of moisture source regions to precipitation in the Great Lakes Region (GLR) using multiple reanalysis data sets. Results show that the Great Plains (GPs) and the GLR itself are the primary sources of moisture. The moisture sources for the double peaks in the GLR precipitation that occur in June and September are identified, which is caused by a shift in the peak timing of moisture contribution from the GLR and GPs. In particular, moisture from the GPs contributes more to the heavy precipitation, while moisture from the GLR contributes more to the light precipitation. We also found a statistically significant (p < 0.05) increasing trend in the moisture contribution from the mid‐Pacific, caused by an intensified zonal moisture transport from the mid‐Pacific through changes in atmospheric circulation. Plain Language Summary: Rain and snow are critical in determining how much water is in the Great Lakes—which in turn influences socioeconomic activity in the Great Lakes Region (GLR). Therefore, we need to understand where the moisture for rain and snow comes from, especially in a changing climate. We found that rain and snow over the GLR mostly originate from water vapor that comes from the Great Plains (GPs) and the GLR. The GPs contribute more water vapor in spring and summer, and the GLR contributes more in autumn and winter. We also found that when rain or snow is strong, much of the water comes from the GPs. On the other hand, when precipitation is weak, a large fraction of the water comes from the GLR itself. We did not find that significant increasing trend in the amount of rain or snow over the GLR over the past 40 years; however, strong winds from the west bring more and more moisture from the mid‐Pacific region each spring. Key Points: The Great Plains (GPs) and the Great Lakes Region (GLR) are the major sources of moisture for precipitation in the GLRMoisture evapotranspired from the GPs contributes to more than 40% of strong precipitation in the GLRMoisture contribution from the Mid‐Pacific to the Great Lakes precipitation has significantly increased in spring [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many mature oil fields in the North Sea. One of them is the Clair Oil Field, located on the United Kingdom Continental Shelf (UKCS) in Scotland. This oil field is unique because of the results of failure studies of several fluid injections, constituting secondary and tertiary oil recovery techniques, on increasing oil production. Only waterflooding has shown a promising future. In this paper, three-dimensional (3D) numerical simulations investigate the influence of infill drilling optimization by waterflooding in the Clair Oil Field so as to maximize net present value (NPV). An important goal of this study of reservoir management was to determine optimal well locations and optimal operational parameters (production constraints) that maximize cumulative oil production. Theoretical ideas and mathematical models with field data performance demonstrated the factors that can be considered in infill drilling so as to increase oil reserves. Most of the factors were related to reservoir heterogeneities and were important quantitatively for fluid injection and production. The results revealed that the four infill wells added in this study led to an increase in the field's total cumulative oil production from 7.91×106 to 9.39×106 m3. The NPV after infill drilling optimization by waterflooding increased by 54.4% over the base case. The oil recovery factor rose from 17.2% to 20.2%, while the gas oil ratio (GOR) fell from 1,000 to 840 SCF/STB. After combining infill drilling with waterflooding, the horizontal infill producers outperformed vertical infill producers by 5.5%. The field water cut was reduced from 95% to 88%. In addition, an analysis of cumulative production between parent and child wells was made. It was found that child wells produce less cumulative oil production than do parent wells. This paper reveals the greater success of a combination of infill drilling with waterflooding in enhancing oil production compared to other findings where the influence of infill drilling and waterflooding were analyzed separately or compared. It can be concluded that the Clair Oil Field has great potential to increase oil production by combining infill drilling with waterflooding, after other improved oil recovery techniques fail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cnidarians form a disparate phylum of animals and their diploblastic body plan represents a key step in animal evolution. Cnidarians are split into two main classes; anthozoans (sea anemones, corals) are benthic polyps, while medusozoans (hydroids, jellyfishes) generally have alternating life cycle stages of polyps and medusae. A sessile polyp is present in both groups and is widely regarded as the ancestral form of their last common ancestor. However, the nature and anatomy of the ancestral polyp, particularly of medusozoans, is controversial, owing to the divergent body plans of the extant lineages and the scarcity of medusozoan soft tissues in the fossil record. Here, we redescribe Conicula striata Luo & Hu from the early Cambrian Chengjiang biota, south China, which has previously been interpreted as a polyp, lophophorate or deuterostome. Through re-examination of the holotype and 51 exceptionally preserved specimens, we show that C. striata possessed features of both anthozoans and medusozoan polyps. A conical, annulated organic skeleton (periderm) fully encasing a polyp is found in fossil and living medusozoans, while a tubular pharynx extending from the mouth into a gut partitioned by c. 28 mesenteries, resembling the actinopharynx of anthozoans. Our phylogenetic analyses recover C. striata as a stem-group medusozoan, implying that the wealth of medusozoan diversity derived, ultimately, from an anemone-like ancestor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, a novel eccentric rotor mixer (ERM), which can generate circulating volume elongational deformation, is employed to prepare biodegradable polylactic acid (PLA)/poly(ε‐caprolactone) (PCL) thermo‐responsive shape‐memory blends without a compatibilizer. The results of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) show that the ERM has more efficient dispersion and compatibilization for blends than conventional Banbury mixers, which is beneficial for shape‐memory performance. The results of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) also confirm the consequences. Then, morphological and mechanical properties and shape memory behaviors of the blends are investigated in detail. Co‐continuous morphology is found on EF‐PLA50. The blends exhibit remarkable shape‐memory performance. The bending shape fixing ratio and recovery ratio of the blends are more than 94% and are still more than 90% after five shape memory cycles. With the increase of PLA content, the shape fixing ratio of blends decreases, while the shape recovery ratio increases and the shape recovery time becomes shorter. All the blends show good mechanical properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human tuberous sclerosis (TSC) is mainly caused by genetic mutations of tuberous TSC1or TSC2. Recent studies found that TSC1 deficiency promoted classical M1 macrophage polarization. However, whether TSC1 regulates other inflammatory cytokine expression in lipopolysaccharidem (LPS)-stimulated macrophages is unknown. Herein, we studied the cytokine expression profile of wild-type (WT) and TSC1-deleted macrophages after LPS stimulation in vitro and the pathogenesis of dextran sodium sulfate (DSS)-induced colitis in mice with myeloid-specific TSC1 deletion (TSC1cKO mice). We found that TSC1-deficient macrophages exhibited the enhanced secretion of interleukin-17A (IL-17A), IL-17F, and interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) in response to LPS stimulation in vitro. This is in contrast to LPS-stimulated WT macrophages, which usually do not. Importantly, TSC1cKO mice exhibited exacerbated DSS-induced acute colitis with severer symptoms. MTOR deletion or rapamycin treatment significantly reversed the enhanced expressions of IL-17A, IL-17F, and IFN-γ in LPSstimulated TSC1-deficient macrophages in vitro and rescued the enhanced DSS-induced colitis in TSC1cKO mice, indicating that TSC1 deficiency increased these cytokine productions in an mTOR-dependent manner. RNA-sequencing and molecular studies indicated that TSC1 deficiency enhanced the aerobic glycolysis process and the activities of mTOR-STAT3-RORγT pathway in LPS-stimulated macrophages. Inhibition of aerobic glycolysis, STAT3, or RORγT reversed IL-17 and IFN-γ expression in LPS-treated TSC1-deficient macrophages. Thus, TSC1 is essential for macrophages to shut down IL-17A, IL-17F, and IFN-γ expression during LPS stimulation by suppressing the aerobic glycolysis process and mTOR-STAT3, RORγT, and T-bet pathways. The present study uncovered the key role of TSC1 in shutting down IL-17A, IL-17F, and IFN-γ expressions in LPStreated macrophages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federated learning (FL) is an emerging distributed machine learning technique. However, when dealing with heterogeneous data, a shared global model cannot generalise all devices' local data. Furthermore, the FL training process necessitates frequent parameter communication, which interferes with the limited bandwidth and unstable connections of participating devices. These two issues have a significant impact on FL's effectiveness and efficiency. In this paper, an enhanced communication-efficient personalised FL technique, FedGB, is proposed. Different from existing approaches, FedGB believes that only interacting common information from training results on different devices can improve local personalised training results more effectively. FedGB dynamically selects the backbone structures in the local models to represent the dynamically determined backbone information (common features) in the global model for aggregation. Only interacting common features between different nodes reduce the impact of heterogeneous data to a certain extent. The dynamic adaptive sub-model selection avoids the impact of manually setting the scale of sub-model. FedGB can thus reduce communication overheads while maintaining inference accuracy. The results obtained in a variety of experimental settings show that FedGB can effectively improve communication efficiency and inference accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. With the aging of the social population, Osteoarthritis (OA) has already become a vital health and economic problem globally. Shujin Dingtong recipe (SJDTR) is an effective formula to treat OA in China. Although studies have shown that SJDTR can significantly alleviate OA symptoms, its mechanism still remains unclear. Purpose. This study is aimed at investigating the potential mechanism of SJDTR for the treatment of OA based on network pharmacology and molecular docking. Methods. Main ingredients of SJDTR were retrieved from the Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology (TCMSP) database. OA disease targets were obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. The overlapped targets and signaling pathways were explored using Protein-Protein Interaction (PPI) network, Gene Ontology (GO), and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG). Following this, the core targets were employed to dock with corresponding components via molecular docking in order to further explore the mechanism of SJDTR in the treatment of OA. Results. From network pharmacology, we found 100 active components of SJDTR, 31 drug and OA-related targets, 1161 GO items, and 91 signaling pathways. Based on the analysis with PPI network and molecular docking, TP53, CCNB1, and MMP-2 were selected for the core targets of SJDTR against OA. Molecular docking demonstrated that Quercetin, Baicalein, and Luteolin, had good binding with the TP53, CCNB1, and MMP-2 protein, respectively. Conclusion. To conclude, our study suggested the main ingredients of SJDTR might alleviate the progression of OA through multiple targets and pathways. Additionally, network pharmacology and molecular docking, as new approaches, were adopted for systematically exploring the potential mechanism of SJDTR for the treatment of OA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is a life-threatening vascular disease. BAF60c, a unique subunit of the SWItch/sucrose nonfermentable (SWI/SNF) chromatin remodeling complex, is critical for cardiac and skeletal myogenesis, yet little is known about its function in the vasculature and, specifically, in AAA pathogenesis. Here, we found that BAF60c was downregulated in human and mouse AAA tissues, with primary staining to vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs), confirmed by single-cell RNA-sequencing. In vivo studies revealed that VSMC-specific knockout of Baf60c significantly aggravated both angiotensin II- (Ang II-) and elastase-induced AAA formation in mice, with a significant increase in elastin degradation, inflammatory cell infiltration, VSMC phenotypic switch, and apoptosis. In vitro studies showed that BAF60c knockdown in VSMCs resulted in loss of contractile phenotype, increased VSMC inflammation, and apoptosis. Mechanistically, we demonstrated that BAF60c preserved VSMC contractile phenotype by strengthening serum response factor (SRF) association with its coactivator P300 and the SWI/SNF complex and suppressing VSMC inflammation by promoting a repressive chromatin state of NF-κB target genes as well as preventing VSMC apoptosis through transcriptional activation of KLF5-dependent B cell lymphoma 2 (BCL2) expression. Our identification of the essential role of BAF60c in preserving VSMC homeostasis expands its therapeutic potential in preventing and treating AAA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A landslide occurred on November 24, 2019, in weathered phyllite at the western longwall of Yabaling open pit of Anqian iron mine in Anshan City, Liaoning Province, China. The landslide was estimated to be 3.0 × 104 m3 in volume and caused severe damage to the road of transporting waste materials. This landslide was a typical jointed rock mass landslide, and the cause of the landslide was related to four factors: open-pit mining activity, the weak rock, discontinuities, and the high rainfall. According to the failure characteristics, the landslide area was divided into three parts: the tension-cracking area, the sliding-deformation area, and the colluvium area. The failure mechanism of the landslide was investigated through a back analysis combining nonlinear Hoek–Brown criterion and FLAC3D program with a parameter reduction technique. The results showed that the predicted sliding surface at the critical state matched closely the field observations. A remedial scheme of landslide stabilization including four rows of micropiles was proposed and the stabilization mechanism of the micropiles was discussed. The shear strain increment contours show that the micropiles arrested the original sliding surface and controlled the movement of the sliding mass behind them, and thereby significantly improved the stability of the landslide. This paper also presents the results obtained from the parametric analysis in order to understand the impact of strength parameters on the long-term stability of the stabilized slope. The findings improved understanding of the failure characteristics and mechanism of jointed rock mass landslides may be used for evaluating the stability of slopes and early identification for both active and inactive open-pit mines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantitative calculation and evaluation of seismic damage are very important for structural safety, performance-based structural analysis, and seismic reinforcement. However, the relevant research results for precast concrete structures are extremely limited. In this paper, the seismic damage evaluation of beam-column joints in monolithic precast concrete frames was studied through cyclic loading tests and damage index calculation. The seismic damage process, load-displacement relationship, stiffness degradation, and the influence of axial compression ratio were analyzed, then the damage indexes were calculated and analyzed, and the quantitative evaluation of joint damage was conducted last. The results show that the connection seams can significantly affect the mechanical properties of precast joints, easily causing damage concentration, resulting in a lower bearing capacity and faster stiffness degradation compared with a cast-in-situ joint. A larger axial compression ratio can bring higher bearing capacity for the precast joints, and the peak load can be increased by 42.9% when the axial compression ratio is increased from 0.2 to 0.4. In contrast, the stiffness degradation will be accelerated with the increase in the axial compression ratio. From yield load to peak load, the stiffness of the precast joint with the largest axial compression ratio decreases by 46.0%, while the joint with the smallest axial compression ratio is only 36.4%. The damage index model adopted in this paper can accurately reflect the damage characteristics of the precast joints. The presented damage states based on the damage index calculation can accurately reflect the joint's damage characteristics according to different stages. The paper realizes the quantitative damage evaluation for this kind of joint and provides a theoretical basis and method for further studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared with oil, natural gas has been the focus of the energy industry in recent years. Renewable energy is the goal and trend of future developments, and it has made considerable progress; however, it has not reached the ideal popularization rate. Therefore, natural gas is still very important so far. In this paper, the influence of thermal gas injection and room temperature gas injection on gas reservoir recovery is analyzed, and the method of water plugging by hot gas injection in tight gas reservoir is put forward. Indoor simulation experiments were carried out to evaluate the effect of hot-gas injection in cut pore water and the degree of water blockage. On this basis, the numerical simulation of removing water blockage by hot-gas injection was carried out. The changes in core temperature and remaining water saturation were discussed by using simulation models. Results of this study can provide a theoretical basis for removing water blockage in actual oil and gas reservoirs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ankle joint is one of the important joints of the human body to maintain the ability to walk. Diseases such as stroke and ankle osteoarthritis could weaken the body's ability to control joints, causing people's gait to be out of balance. Ankle–foot orthoses can assist users with neuro/muscular or ankle injuries to restore their natural gait. Currently, passive ankle–foot orthoses are mostly designed to fix the ankle joint and provide support for walking. With the development of materials, sensing, and control science, semi-active orthoses that release mechanical energy to assist walking when needed and can store the energy generated by body movement in elastic units, as well as active ankle–foot orthoses that use external energy to transmit enhanced torque to the ankle, have received increasing attention. This article reviews the development process of ankle–foot orthoses and proposes that the integration of new ankle–foot orthoses with rehabilitation technologies such as monitoring or myoelectric stimulation will play an important role in reducing the walking energy consumption of patients in the study of human-in-the-loop models and promoting neuro/muscular rehabilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common causes of cancer-associated mortalities. The clinical outcome of HCC patients remains poor due to distant metastasis and recurrence. In recent years, growing evidences have confirmed that the coiled-coil domain-containing (CCDC) family proteins are involved in the progression of several diseases. However, the expression and clinical significance of the coiled-coil domain-containing 137 (CCDC137) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) have not been investigated. Level 3 mRNA expression profiles and clinicopathological data were obtained in TCGA-LIHC. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were screened between 371 HCC and 50 nontumor specimens. The prognostic value of CCDC137 was analyzed in HCC patients. The correlations between CCDC137 and cancer immune infiltrates were investigated. In this study, a total of 2897 DEGs were obtained: 2451 genes were significantly upregulated and 446 genes were significantly downregulated. KEGG assays revealed that these DEGs were involved in tumor progression. Among 2897 DEGs, we found that CCDC137 expression was distinctly increased in HCC specimens compared with nontumor specimens. A high level of CCDC137 expression was related to an advanced tumor stage and grade. Moreover, patients with higher levels of CCDC137 expression had a shorter overall survival and disease-free survival than patients with lower CCDC137 levels. CCDC137 expression was positively correlated with infiltrating levels of several immune cells, such as CD8 T cells and Th2 cells. Finally, in vitro experiments confirmed that CCDC137 expression was highly expressed in HCC cells, and its knockdown suppressed the proliferation of HCC cells. Taken together, our findings revealed that CCDC137 might be used as a biomarker for immune infiltration and poor prognosis in HCC, which offered fresh insight on potential therapies for HCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most prevalent malignant primary brain tumors is primary glioma. Although glutathione peroxidase 8 (GPX8) is intimately associated with carcinogenesis, its function in primary gliomas has not yet been thoroughly understood. Here, we leveraged Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas (CGGA), The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) database to investigate the association between GPX8 and overall survival (OS) of patients with primary gliomas, and our results showed that GPX8 expression was negatively correlated with OS. Moreover, the expression of GPX8 is significantly lower in normal tissue when compared to glioma tissue. According to results of univariate and multivariate analysis from CGGA using R studio, GPX8 is a valuable primary glioma prognostic indicator. Interestingly, high GPX8 expression is correlated positively with the hedgehog and kras signaling pathways and negatively with G2 checkpoint, apoptosis, reactive oxygen species (ROS) pathway, and interferon gamma pathway, which could be beneficial for the proliferation of glioma cells. Furthermore, GPX8 knockdown caused G1 cell cycle arrest, increased cell death, and reduced colony formation in U87MG and U118MG cells. In conclusion, GPX8 is a promising therapeutic target and meaningful prognostic biomarker of primary glioma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paraneoplastic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a rare and special type of ALS. The pathogenesis, clinical presentation, treatment and prognosis remain poorly understood. We herein presented three cases of paraneoplastic ALS. In case 1, we first reported an ALS patient with the positive serum antibodies against both Sry-like high mobility group box 1 (SOX1) and glutamic acid decarboxylase 65 (GAD65). However, immunotherapy did not improve his neurological symptoms. We also reported two ALS patients with renal clear cell carcinoma and chronic myelogenous leukemia. No positive paraneoplastic antibodies were detected in either the serum or the cerebrospinal fluid of the two patients, and their clinical symptoms progressed slowly after tumor treatment. The three cases enriched the existing case pool of this rare disorder. In addition, we have comprehensively reviewed the literature of paraneoplastic ALS. The clinical features, treatment effect and prognosis were summarized to broaden our understanding of paraneoplastic ALS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The incorporation of superelastic shape memory alloy (SMA) fibers into engineered cementitious composite (ECC) materials can provide high seismic energy dissipation and deformation self-centering capabilities for ECC materials. Whether the SMA fibers can be sufficiently bonded or anchored in the ECC matrix and whether the mechanical properties of the SMA fibers in the ECC matrix can be effectively utilized are the key scientific issues that urgently need to be studied. In order to study the mechanical behavior of SMA fiber embedded in ECC matrix, four groups of semi-dog-bone pullout specimens were fabricated, and the cyclic pullout tests were conducted in this paper. The pullout stress, displacement, and self-centering capability were analyzed, and different influencing factors were discussed. The results show that the knotted ends can provide sufficient anchorage force for SMA fibers, and the maximum pullout stress of SMA fiber can reach 1100 MPa, thus the superelasticity can be effectively stimulated. The SMA fibers show excellent self-centering capability in the test. The minimum residual deformation in the test is only 0.29 mm, and the maximum self-centering ratio can reach 0.93. Increasing bond length can increase the ultimate strain of SMA fibers with knotted ends, but reduce the maximum pullout stress. Increasing fiber diameter can increase both the ultimate strain and the maximum stress of knotted end SMA fibers. While neither bond length nor fiber diameter has significant effect on the self-centering ratio. This paper provides a theoretical basis for further study of the combination of SMA fibers and ECC materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the problem of low efficiency and insufficient accuracy of threshold solution in multithreshold sculpture image segmentation, this paper proposes a threshold segmentation algorithm for sculpture images based on sparse decomposition. In this paper, sparse decomposition is introduced to optimize the model to reduce the impact of local noise on segmentation accuracy, and an energy functional based on pixel coconstraint is built to make up for the defect that pixels cannot retain local details. At the same time, the weighted sum of elite solution sets is used to determine Neighborhood centers increase communication between groups. Experiments show that compared with other algorithms, the above method has significant advantages in convergence efficiency and accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at a study which found generation of 25 mouse models of primary liver cancer (PLC) by in situ genome editing of hepatocytes recapitulating 25 single or combinations of human cancer driver gene. It mentions mouse tumors represent major histopathological types of human PLCs and could be divided into three human-matched molecular subtypes based on transcriptomic and proteomic profiles. It also mentions metabolic reprogramming, cell proliferation, and expression of drug targets.

Background: Patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) are better responders to neoadjuvant chemotherapy; however, they are poor in the durability of response with decreased overall and progression-free survival.Methods: Given that significant improvements have been reported with PD-L1-PD-1 blockade in different cancers, we evaluated the in vitro and in vivo effectiveness of Tomivosertib (eFT-508), an anthracycline, adriamycin, and MNK1/2 inhibitor, which has been previously shown to inhibit translation of PD-L1 in mice model of liver cancer, alone or in combination using BC cell lines and an orthotopic xenograft mice model using the TNBC cell line MDA-MB-231.Results: Within the context of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset, expression of CD274 mRNA, which encodes programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1), was found to be significantly overexpressed in TNBC patients compared to patients with HER2 + or luminal breast cancer (BC). Even within TNBC sub-types, CD274 expression was significantly higher in the immune modulatory subtype (TNBC-IM). BC cells exhibited high IC50 = 0.85 ± 0.07 nM with Adriamycin and significantly lower IC50 = 0.23 ± 0.04 nM with eFT-508 (P < 0.01). Combination treatment showed in vitro synergism on chemosensitivity. Combination therapy also exhibited a synergistic effect on inhibition of tumor growth and lung colonization in vivo. Mass cytometry-based evaluation of the tumor microenvironment revealed significant attenuation of both PD-L1 and PD-L2 following mono- or combination therapy with eFT-508.Conclusions: Treatment with eFT-508 restored effector and cytotoxic function of tumor-infiltrating CD8 + T cells in mice. The remarkable efficacy observed both in vitro and in vivo, and clinical synergism with adriamycin, highlights the potential of eFT-508 as an alternative, yet more efficacious, therapeutic option for patients with TNBC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iron accumulates with age in mammals, and its possible implications in altering metabolic responses are not fully understood. Here, we report that both high-iron diet and advanced age in mice consistently altered gene expression of many pathways, including those governing the oxidative stress response and the circadian clock. We used a metabolomic approach to reveal similarities between metabolic profiles and the daily oscillation of clock genes in old and iron-overloaded mouse livers. In addition, we show that phlebotomy decreased iron accumulation in old mice, partially restoring the metabolic patterns and amplitudes of the oscillatory expression of clock genes Per1 and Per2. We further identified that the transcriptional regulation of iron occurred through a reduction in AMPmodulated methylation of histone H3K9 in the Per1 and H3K4 in the Per2 promoters, respectively. Taken together, our results indicate that iron accumulation with age can affect metabolic patterns and the circadian clock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hot deformation behaviors of an antibacterial 50Cr15MoVCu tool steel were studied. The flow stress curves presented three typical characteristics: (i) a single peak dynamic recrystallization curve, (ii) a monotone incremental work-hardening curve, and (iii) the equilibrium dynamic recovery curve. The flow stress increased with the increase of the deformation rate at each deformation temperature and decreased with the increase of the deformation temperature at the same deformation rate. The thermal activation energy and material constants were Q of 461.6574 kJ/mol, A of 3.42 × 1017, and α of 0.00681 MPa−1, respectively. The high temperature constitutive equation was: Z = ε ˙ exp Q / RT = 3 . 42   ×   10 17 sinh 0. 0068   ×   σ 5. 6807 . Based on the processing maps and microstructure evolution, the best hot working process was a deformation temperature of 1050 °C and deformation rate of 0.001 s−1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combination of superelastic shape memory alloy fibers and ECC materials can form a new SMA fiber reinforced ECC composite material (SMAF-ECC) with good self-centering performance. In order to study the self-centering performance of the new composite material, 6 groups of pre-notch beam specimens were made for three-point bending cyclic loading tests, and the failure phenomenon, hysteresis curve, self-centering effect and influencing factors of the specimens were analyzed. The research results show that when the SMA fibers are effectively anchored in the ECC matrix, the SMA fibers can exert the superelastic properties to provide the ECC beams with recoverying force, and realize the crack self-closure and deflection self-recovery function for the beams, with the minimum residual crack width and deflection is only 0.9 mm and 1.3 mm respectively. Increasing fiber content can cause a small increase in the self-centering ability of the beams. However, only when the fiber diameter is appropriate, better self-centering effect can be achieved, but the difference caused by fiber diameter in the test was only 5%. SMA Fiber end forms have significant influence on self-centering performance. The knotted end beam can get a more than 70% self-centering ratio, while the straight end beams and bended end beams have no self-centering ability. The research results provide important reference for the research and application of this new self-centering materials and their structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federated learning (FL) is an emerging distributed machine learning technique. However, when dealing with heterogeneous data, a shared global model cannot generalise all devices' local data. Furthermore, the FL training process necessitates frequent parameter communication, which interferes with the limited bandwidth and unstable connections of participating devices. These two issues have a significant impact on FL's effectiveness and efficiency. In this paper, an enhanced communication-efficient personalised FL technique, FedGB, is proposed. Different from existing approaches, FedGB believes that only interacting common information from training results on different devices can improve local personalised training results more effectively. FedGB dynamically selects the backbone structures in the local models to represent the dynamically determined backbone information (common features) in the global model for aggregation. Only interacting common features between different nodes reduce the impact of heterogeneous data to a certain extent. The dynamic adaptive sub-model selection avoids the impact of manually setting the scale of sub-model. FedGB can thus reduce communication overheads while maintaining inference accuracy. The results obtained in a variety of experimental settings show that FedGB can effectively improve communication efficiency and inference accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The immunosuppressive microenvironment is associated with poor prognosis in papillary thyroid cancer (PTC); however, the molecular mechanisms involved are unknown. Among the triggering receptors expressed on myeloid cell (TREM) family, we found that TREM1 expression in PTC was significantly higher than that in normal tissues. TREM1 overexpression was associated with BRAFV600E profiles and advanced tumor stages. Furthermore, TREM1 mRNA expression was negatively correlated with promoter methylation status. Specifically, hypomethylation of CpG site cg06196379 in the TREM1 promoter was related with poor patient disease-free survival (DFS) and a high PTC recurrence rate. Mechanistically, TREM1 was mainly expressed in malignant epithelial cells but not in macrophages in PTC by single-cell analysis. PTC tissues with high TREM1 levels had enhanced infiltration of regulatory T cells (Tregs) and decreased infiltration of CD8+ T cells. Our study confirms that hypomethylation-mediated overexpression of TREM1 in PTC cells promotes an immunosuppressive microenvironment by enhancing Treg infiltration. We recommend the future use of therapeutic strategy targeting TREM1 for the treatment of PTC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transistor random threshold voltage variations due to process fluctuations seriously affects the stability of Static Random Access Memory (SRAM). In this paper, a SRAM bit transistors threshold voltage $({Vth})$ deviation monitoring scheme and system is proposed. This scheme ingeniously achieves on-chip measurement of all transistors threshold voltages without altering compact SRAM bit array layout. Control signal strategies and Transistor ${Vth}$ Determination Circuit (TVDC) for different types of Devices Under Test (DUTs) have been proposed. The system is implemented using a 65 nm CMOS process with a core area of 0.01875mm2. Through Monte Carlo analysis, the Weighted Average (WA) difference of the proposed scheme and the direct measurement method is not more than 10mV, and the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) difference is not more than 3mV. This system can also effectively detect the cell position of the transistor threshold voltage mismatch simulated by modifying the substrate voltage. For SRAM arrays of different scales, the method proposed in this paper has area efficiency and flexible reconfigurability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To determine the non-contrast computer tomography imaging features of pyonephrosis and evaluate the predictive value of Hounsfield units (HUs) in different hydronephrotic region slices. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively reviewed data from patients with hydronephrosis who had renal-ureteral calculi. All patients were categorized into pyonephrosis and simple hydronephrosis groups. Baseline characteristics, the mean HU values in the maximal hydronephrotic region (uHU) slice, and the range of uHU in different slices (?uHU) were compared between the two groups. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to identify risk factors for pyonephrosis. Results: Among the 181 patients enrolled in the current study, 71 patients (39.2%) were diagnosed with pyonephrosis. The mean dilated pelvis surface areas were comparable between patients with pyonephrosis and simple hydronephrosis (822.61 mm2 vs. 877.23 mm2, p=0.722). Collecting system debris (p=0.022), a higher uHU (p=0.038), and a higher ?uHU (p<0.001) were identified as independent risk factors for pyonephrosis based on multivariate analysis. The ?uHU sensitivity and specificity were 88.7% and 86.4%, respectively, at a cutoff value of 6.56 (p<0.001), whereas the sensitivity and specificity for detecting pyonephrosis at a uHU cutoff value of 7.96 was 50.7% and 70.9%, respectively (p=0.003). Conclusions: Non-contrast computer tomography was shown to accurately distinguish simple hydronephrosis from pyonephrosis in patients with obstructive uropathy. Evaluation of the ?uHU in different slices may be more reliable than the uHU acquired from a single slice in predicting pyonephrosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microleakage, frequently arising from aging or inadequate installation, significantly affects the performance and longevity of refrigeration systems. The presence of microleakages, while not precipitating an immediate system failure, results in the gradual deterioration of components and escalates the energy consumption within buildings. Nonetheless, identifying these microleakages through conventional methodologies poses significant challenges. This study introduced a dynamic model specifically designed for detecting microleakages in multi-connected air conditioning systems, particularly in variable refrigerant volume (VRV) systems. Experiments performed under standard operating conditions were integral to enhancing the model's accuracy and furthering its validation. The model integrates the structural and thermophysical attributes of various components, thereby addressing the issues related to data acquisition in standard VRV during instances of microleakage. The analysis of dynamic parameter shifts during system microleakage led to the generation of a comprehensive dataset, which proves invaluable for machine learning and fault detection tasks. A detection and alerting protocol is written in Python presented, chiefly anchored on pressure deviations, augmented by temperature shifts and refrigeration and heating capacities, all represented as virtual volumetric alterations. The findings indicate a delayed transmission of the leakage signal from the leakage point to the system's detection points, with the maximal delay occurring at the compressor inlet under refrigeration conditions, amounting to 239 s. Evaluation under prescribed conditions indicated variances in pressure, temperature, and refrigeration and heating capacities by up to 13.2 %, thereby validating the model's precision and reliability. The program, tested with the generated dataset, accurately identifies leakage states within an average time of 20 min. This model and detection strategy provide a new perspective on microleakage in refrigeration systems, suggesting a robust strategy for their sustained and secure operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When performing data classification tasks, it often occurs to them the curse of dimensionality problem. To address the issue, a manifold learning method termed locally conjugated orthogonal subspace (LCOS) is put forward for dimensionality reduction or feature extraction in this paper. Note that point to feature space (P2S) distance contributes to mining local geometry information, both a local margin characterizing data apartness and a locally conjugated orthogonal constraint beneficial to removing data redundancy are well studied from the P2S distance metric. They are all exploited to model the proposed LCOS. Then, a low dimensional subspace can be explored by maximizing the P2S distance induced local margin under the constraint. Compared with some other related dimensionality reduction methods, experimental results on benchmark face and object data sets validate the performance of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This communication deals with the design of discrete apertures (DAs) for wireless power transfer (WPT) within the Fresnel region and provides some design guidelines to enhance WPT efficiency. In fact, although the aperture excitations optimization problem, given two specific continuous or DAs, has been already researched, the effect of antenna arrays design choices (such as the number of antenna elements or their spacings) on the WPT efficiency has not been investigated yet. In order to do that, WPT efficiency formulation has been theoretically analyzed to understand the different antenna parameters contributions to the power transfer efficiency (PTE). After that, the problem of the array excitation optimization in the sense of maximum PTE has been revisited including cases with or without perfect impedance matching. Finally, different array designs and relative achievable PTEs have been compared systematically, and it is shown that arrays with interelement spacing in the order of $0.3\lambda $ – $0.4\lambda $ (tightly coupled arrays) provide the largest PTE (also for oblique WPT cases) when the array excitation is calculated taking into account the impedance mismatching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. With the advent of ageing population, osteoporosis (OP) has already become a global challenge. Jintiange capsule is extensively applied to treat OP in China. Although recent studies demonstrate that it generates significant effects on strengthening bone, the exact mechanism of the jintiange capsule for treating OP remains unknown. Purpose. To understand the main ingredients of the jintiange capsule, predict the possible targets and the relevant signal transduction pathways, and explore the mechanism of the jintiange capsule for the treatment of OP. Methods. Main ingredients of the jintiange capsule, drug targets, and potential disease targets for OP were obtained from public databases. Molecular biological processes and signaling pathways were determined via bioinformatic analysis, containing protein-protein interaction (PPI), Gene Ontology (GO), and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG). Subsequently, the disease-drug-ingredient-targets-pathways networks were constructed using Cytoscape. According to CytoNCA, core targets were acquired. Finally, the present study conducted molecular docking for better testing the abovementioned results. Results. In the current work, we found that 4 main ingredients of the jintiange capsule, 33 drug targets, 4745 potential disease targets for OP, and 12 overlapping targets were identified. PPI network containing 12 nodes and 25 edges proved that there existed a complex relationship. As revealed by GO functional annotation, the intersected targets were mostly associated with BP, CC, and MF. The targets were enriched to 368 items in BP, 27 items in CC, and 42 items in MF. They mainly included calcium ion homeostasis, calcium channel complex, and calcium channel regulator activity. According to KEGG pathway analysis, the intersected targets were mostly associated with Rap 1, cGMP-PKG, Ras, cAMP, calcium pathways, and so on. Based on the analysis with CytoNCA, we acquired 4 core targets, respectively—CALR, SPARC, CALM1, and CALM2. Besides, 2 core targets, CALR and CALM1, were selected for molecular docking experiments. Molecular docking revealed that the main ingredient, calcium phosphate, had good binding with the CALR protein and CALM1 protein. Conclusion. To conclude, the main ingredient of the jintiange capsule, particularly calcium phosphate, may interact with 2 targets, CALR and CALM1, and regulate multiple signaling pathways to treat OP. Additionally, this also benefits us in further understanding the mechanism of the jintiange capsule for treating OP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chemotherapy with combination drugs has become one of the most commonly used cancer prevention treatments, with positive clinical results. The goal of this study was to develop compostable polymeric nanomaterials (NMs) for the delivery of puerarin (PRN) and 5-fluorouracil (5FU), as well as to investigate the anticancer activity of the drug delivery system (PRN-5FU NMs) against in vitro and in vivo lung cancer cells. Since double antitumor drugs PRN and 5FU are insufficiently compressed in polymer-based bio-degradable nanoparticles, encapsulation of PRN and 5FU antitumor drugs were coencapsulated with polyethylene glycol and polylactidecoglycolide nanoparticles (NMs) is efficient. The arrangement of PRN NMs, 5FU NMs, and PRN-5FU NMs, as well as the nanoparticles shape and scale, were studied using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). 5FU-PRN NMs triggered apoptosis in lung carcinoma cell lines such as HEL-299 and A549 in vitro. Acridine orange/ethidium bromide (AO/EB) and nuclear damaging staining techniques were used to observe morphologies and cell death. The mechanistic analysis of apoptosis was also confirmed by flow cytometry analysis using dual staining. When compared to free anticancer products, the hemolysis analysis findings of the 5FU-PRN NMs showed excellent biocompatibility. Taken together the advantages, this combination drug conveyance strategy exposed that 5FU-PRN NMs could have a significant promising to improve the effectiveness of lung cancer cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a recrudescent and chronic inflammatory disease. Artesunate (ART) has shown its anti-inflammatory and antioxidative properties in severe diseases, including UC. The present study investigates the molecular mechanisms for effects of ART on UC, and the role of miR-155 in this process. The in vitro UC model was established by using lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced RAW264.7 cells. For BALB/c mice model, different concentrations/doses of ART were treated once a day for 7 days. The apoptosis and viability were measured by CCK-8 and flow cytometry assay, respectively. The expressions and concentrations of inflammatory factors were detected by qRT-PCR and ELISA, respectively. Colon tissues of mice were used for detecting the activity of MPO, and the histological changes were observed by H&E staining. The IC50 of ART for RAW264.7 cells was 107.3 μg/mL. In LPS-induced cells, ART treatment inhibited the cell apoptosis and promoted cell viability compared with the model group. Besides, ART treatment also reduced the expressions of pro-inflammatory factors and miR-155. However, overexpression of miR-155 showed opposite effects and attenuated the effects of ART. Meanwhile, inhibiting miR-155 expression also improved the inflammatory response induced by LPS. In UC mice model, ART treatment also alleviated the mice's survival and alleviated the inflammatory response. In addition, the expression of p-NF-κB was suppressed by ART. ART reduced the inflammatory response by inhibiting the expression of miR-155 in UC to inhibit the NF-κB pathway. This research showed ART might have potential in UC treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hibernation is an example of extreme hypometabolic behavior. How mammals achieve such a state of suspended animation remains unclear. Here we show that several strains of type 2 diabetic mice spontaneously enter into hibernationlike suspended animation (HLSA) in cold temperatures. Nondiabetic mice injected with ATP mimic the severe hypothermia analogous to that observed in diabetic mice. We identified that uric acid, an ATP metabolite, is a key molecular in the entry of HLSA. Uric acid binds to the Na+ binding pocket of the Na+/H+ exchanger protein and inhibits its activity, acidifying the cytoplasm and triggering a drop in metabolic rate. The suppression of uric acid biosynthesis blocks the occurrence of HLSA, and hyperuricemic mice induced by treatment with an uricase inhibitor can spontaneously enter into HLSA similar to that observed in type 2 diabetic mice. In rats and dogs, injection of ATP induces a reversible state of HLSA similar to that seen in mice. However, ATP injection fails to induce HLSA in pigs due to the lack of their ability to accumulate uric acid. Our results raise the possibility that nonhibernating mammals could spontaneously undergo HLSA upon accumulation of ATP metabolite, uric acid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of interleukin (IL)-1 family members/receptors in lung cancer remains uncertain due to the susceptibility of observed associations to confounding. We appraised the association of IL-1 family members/receptors with lung cancer and its subtypes [lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) and squamous cell lung cancer (LUSC)] using two-sample Mendelian randomization. This study found that no IL-1 family members/receptors were significantly associated with lung cancer and its subtypes risk after correction for multiple testing. However, suggestive total effects of increased risk were noted for genetically predicted IL-1Racp with lung cancer (P = 0.006), IL-1α with LUAD (P = 0.027), and IL-1Racp with LUSC (P = 0.008). Suggestive direct effects were also noted for IL-1β, IL-1Ra, IL-36γ with lung cancer, IL-1α/β, IL-1Ra with LUAD, and IL-1β, IL-18BP with LUSC, after adjusting for genetically predicted effects of other IL-1 family members/receptors. Taken together, our findings suggest that interventions decreasing IL-1Racp might protect against lung cancer, perhaps via IL-1α/β or IL-1Ra. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]