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The electrical boundary condition plays an important role in the manipulation of domain structures in low-dimensional ferroelectric materials, especially ferroelectric nanowires. Here, using phase-field simulations, we systematically investigate the influence of electrical boundary conditions on the domain structure in porous PbTiO3 ferroelectric nanowires. Our results demonstrate the formation of four types of domain structures via varying electrical boundary conditions, which possess distinguished local polarization and energy configurations. We further show that the domain structures are also dependent on the nanowire radius, including the breakdown of a metastable concentric toroidal domain structure upon reducing the radius to 14 nm. The present work provides guidance for further experimental studies on the control of polar domain structures through manipulating the electrical boundary condition and the ferroelectric size, which paves the way for developing multi-functions of low-dimensional ferroelectric systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge of the thermodynamic equilibria and domain structures of ferroelectrics is critical to establishing their structure–property relationships that underpin their applications from piezoelectric devices to nonlinear optics. Here, we establish the strain condition for strain phase separation and polydomain formation and analytically predict the corresponding domain volume fractions and wall orientations of, relatively low symmetry and theoretically more challenging, monoclinic ferroelectric thin films by integrating thermodynamics of ferroelectrics, strain phase equilibria theory, microelasticity, and phase‐field method. Using monoclinic KxNa1 − xNbO3(0.5 < x < 1.0) thin films as a model system, we establish the polydomain strain–strain phase diagrams, from which we identify two types of monoclinic polydomain structures. The analytically predicted strain conditions of formation, domain volume fractions, and domain wall orientations for the two polydomain structures are consistent with phase‐field simulations and in good agreement with experimental results in the literature. The present study demonstrates a general, powerful analytical theoretical framework to predict the strain phase equilibria and domain wall orientations of polydomain structures applicable to both high‐ and low‐symmetry ferroelectrics and provide fundamental insights into the equilibrium domain structures of ferroelectric KxNa1 − xNbO3 thin films that are of technology relevance for lead‐free dielectric and piezoelectric applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractMotivating viewers’ relationship development with live-streaming streamers faces challenge. This study fills this gap by proposing a model based on an integrated framework between flow and relationship management. We seek to analyze how post-adoption is facilitated by relationship development with streamers, which in turn is influenced by live-streaming socio-technical features and flow (optimal experience). Specifically, we conceptualize response to optimal experience as two-stage post-adoption, including relationship development and outcomes (emotional connectedness and donation). Empirical results support most hypotheses, showing that group norms and interactivity exert significant influence on flow, which in turn affects outcomes through relationship development. We provide implications for research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: The natural Cordyceps sinensis insect–fungal complex is one of the most highly valued therapeutic agents in traditional Chinese medicine. The sexual reproduction of Ophiocordyceps sinensis is controlled by the expression of mating-type genes within the MAT1-1 and MAT1-2 idiomorphs and a-/α-pheromone receptor genes. This study revealed the differential expression of these genes in Hirsutella sinensis (Genotype #1 among the 17 genotypes of O. sinensis) and alternative splicing of the MAT1-2-1 gene, characterized by an unspliced intron I that contains stop codons. Mutations of the mating and pheromone receptor proteins were also identified, potentially leading to changes in the secondary structures and functionalities of the proteins. These results indicate the requirement of mating partners under either heterothallism or hybridization during the sexual life of natural C. sinensis but do not support the "self-fertilization" hypothesis for O. sinensis under homothallism or pseudohomothallism. Sexual reproduction in ascomycetes is controlled by the mating-type (MAT) locus. (Pseudo)homothallic reproduction has been hypothesized on the basis of genetic data from Hirsutella sinensis (Genotype #1 of Ophiocordyceps sinensis). However, the differential occurrence and differential transcription of mating-type genes in the MAT1-1 and MAT1-2 idiomorphs were found in the genome and transcriptome assemblies of H. sinensis, and the introns of the MAT1-2-1 transcript were alternatively spliced with an unspliced intron I that contains stop codons. These findings reveal that O. sinensis reproduction is controlled at the genetic, transcriptional, and coupled transcriptional-translational levels. This study revealed that mutant mating proteins could potentially have various secondary structures. Differential occurrence and transcription of the a-/α-pheromone receptor genes were also found in H. sinensis. The data were inconsistent with self-fertilization under (pseudo)homothallism but suggest the self-sterility of H. sinensis and the requirement of mating partners to achieve O. sinensis sexual outcrossing under heterothallism or hybridization. Although consistent occurrence and transcription of the mating-type genes of both the MAT1-1 and MAT1-2 idiomorphs have been reported in natural and cultivated Cordyceps sinensis insect-fungi complexes, the mutant MAT1-1-1 and α-pheromone receptor transcripts in natural C. sinensis result in N-terminal or middle-truncated proteins with significantly altered overall hydrophobicity and secondary structures of the proteins, suggesting heterogeneous fungal source(s) of the proteins and hybridization reproduction because of the co-occurrence of multiple genomically independent genotypes of O. sinensis and >90 fungal species in natural C. sinensis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning is now one of the leading causes of poisoning-related mortality worldwide. The central nervous system is the most vulnerable structure in acute CO poisoning. MRI is of great significance in the diagnosis and prognosis of CO toxic encephalopathy. The imaging features of CO poisoning are diverse. We report atypical hippocampal lesions observed on MRI in four patients after acute CO exposure. Case presentations: We report four patients who presented to the emergency department with loss of consciousness. The diagnosis of CO poisoning was confirmed on the basis of their detailed history, physical examination and laboratory tests. Brain MRI in all of these patients revealed abnormal signal intensity in hippocampi bilaterally. They all received hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The prognosis of all four patients was poor. Conclusion: Hippocampi, as a relatively rare lesion on MRI of CO poisoning, is of important significance both in the early and delayed stages of acute CO poisoning. In this article, we summarize the case reports of hippocampal lesions on MRI in patients with CO poisoning in recent years, in order to provide reference for the diagnosis and prognosis of CO poisoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Prolactinoma is a common intracranial tumor with a high incidence and serious harm to human health. At present, there is only one therapeutic drug in China, bromocriptine, and the Chinese herb Prunella vulgaris L. (P. vulgaris)(PV) has shown certain anti-prolactinoma effects in the early stage. We expect to develop a candidate drug against prolactinoma. Materials and Methods: First, the extracts of P. vulgaris L.(PVE)were extracted with water, and the cell proliferation test of rat pituitary tumor cells MMQ was checked by the Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) assay. Then, core targets and correlative pathways were selected by the "protein–protein interaction" (PPI) network and the "PV–Target–Prolactinoma" network. The core targets and main components simulate the binding by molecular docking. Finally, the PVE and MMQ cells were used to verify the results. Results: Through the CCK-8 assay, the PVE inhibited the proliferation of MMQ cells. From the network pharmacology, the 21 targets, 9 signaling pathways, and 20 gene ontology (GO) projects were attained (p < 0.05). As a result the estrogen receptor α (ESR1), RAC-alpha serine/threonine-protein kinase(AKT1), and mitogen-activated protein kinase 3(MAPK3)were the core targets of protein against prolactinomas, which was in line with western blotting analysis. Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate that the PVE was verified against prolactinomas through the ESR1, MAPK3 targets, and the phosphoinositide 3-kinase/protein kinase B pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to investigate the selection signatures at a genome-wide level in 'Pishan' sheep using Specific Locus Amplified Fragment (SLAF)-seq. Blood samples from 126 ewes were sequenced using SLAF tags, and the ovarian tissues from 8 ewes (Bashbay sheep, a single litter size group (SG group); 'Pishan' sheep, double litter size group (DG group)) were collected to detect expression levels by quantitative real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Selection signature analysis was performed using global fixation index (Fst) and nucleotide diversity (π) ratio. A total of 1,192,168 high-quality SLAFs were identified. Notably, 2380 candidate regions under selection using two approaches were identified. A total of 2069 genes were identified, which were involved in dopaminergic synapses, thyroid hormone synthesis, ovarian steroidogenesis and thyroid hormone signalling pathways. Furthermore, Growth Differentiation Factor 9 (GDF9), Period Circadian Regulator 2 (PER2), Thyroid Stimulating Hormone Receptor (TSHR), and Nuclear Receptor Coactivator 1 (NCOA1) reside within these regions and pathways. The expression levels of GDF9 and PER2 genes in sheep tissue of the DG group were significantly higher than those in the SG group. These genes are interesting candidates for litter size and provide a starting point for further identification of conservation strategies for 'Pishan' sheep. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) is a common spinal deformity in young women, but its pathogenesis remains unclear. The primary pathogenic factors contributing to its development include genetics, abnormal bone metabolism, and endocrine factors. Bone marrow stem cells (BMSCs) play a crucial role in the pathogenesis of AIS by regulating its occurrence and progression. Noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) are also involved in the pathogenesis of AIS, and their role in regulating BMSCs in patients with AIS requires further evaluation. In this review, we discuss the relevant literature regarding the osteogenic, chondrogenic, and lipogenic differentiation of BMSCs. The corresponding mechanisms of ncRNA‐mediated BMSC regulation in patients with AIS, recent advancements in AIS and ncRNA research, and the importance of ncRNA translation profiling and multiomics are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on a stochastic goodwill model involving a single manufacturer and a single retailer in a supply chain, in which both quality level and goodwill level are governed by stochastic differential equations. In both the linear-quadratic Stackelberg game and linear-quadratic cooperative game, explicit expressions are obtained for the optimal quality improvement efforts level of the manufacturer, the optimal advertising efforts level of the retailer as well as the optimal profit of the supply chain. We also derive the expectation and variance values for quality and goodwill levels, respectively. The distribution of incremental profit and subsidy are analysed in the cooperative game via the utility theory. Finally, several numerical experiments are reported to show the influence of decay rates and white noise disturbance of the quality and goodwill levels on the expectation of quality and goodwill levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teleconnections refer to long-range climate system linkages occurring over typically thousands of kilometers. Generally speaking, most teleconnections are attributed to the transmission of energy and propagation of waves although the physical complexity and characteristics behind these waves are not fully understood. To address this knowledge gap, we develop a climate network-based approach to reveal their directions and distribution patterns, evaluate the intensity of teleconnections, and identify sensitive regions using global daily surface air temperature data. Our results reveal a stable average intensity distribution pattern for teleconnections across a substantial spatiotemporal scale from 1948 to 2021, with the extent and intensity of teleconnection impacts increasing more prominently in the Southern Hemisphere over the past 37 years. Furthermore, we pinpoint climate-sensitive regions, such as southeastern Australia, which are likely to face increasing impacts due to global warming. Our proposed method offers new insights into the dynamics of global climate patterns and can inform strategies to address climate change and extreme events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Brassica yellows virus (BrYV) transmitted by the green peach aphid belongs to the genus Polerovirus and mostly damages the crucifer crops in East Asia. To reveal the networks of aphid gene response to BrYV stress, comparative transcriptome and proteome approaches were performed to identify significantly putative regulators involved in BrYV stress. Based on the results of RNA Sequencing (RNA-Seq) coupled with quantitative proteomic analysis on BrYV-carrying and BrYV-free aphids, 1266 differently expressed genes (980 upregulated and 286 downregulated DEGs) and 18 differently expressed proteins (12 upregulated and 6 downregulated DEPs) were identified in BrYV-carrying aphids. Enrichment analysis indicated that these DEGs and DEPs were primarily involved in epidermal protein synthesis, phosphorylation, and various metabolic processes. Interestingly, the expressions of a number of cuticle proteins and tubulins were substantially upregulated in viruliferous aphids. To sum up, these findings provide a crucial clue for screening key vector factors involved in the process of virus circulation in aphids and exploring the molecular mechanism of transmission of BrYV by the green peach aphid. Viruses in the genus Polerovirus infect a wide range of crop plants and cause severe economic crop losses. BrYV belongs to the genus Polerovirus and is transmitted by Myzus persicae. However, the changes in transcriptome and proteome profiles of M. persicae during viral infection are unclear. Here, RNA-Seq and TMT-based quantitative proteomic analysis were performed to compare the differences between viruliferous and nonviruliferous aphids. In total, 1266 DEGs were identified at the level of transcription with 980 DEGs being upregulated and 286 downregulated in viruliferous aphids. At the protein level, among the 18 DEPs identified, the number of upregulated proteins in viruliferous aphids was twice that of the downregulated DEPs. Enrichment analysis indicated that these DEGs and DEPs were mainly involved in epidermal protein synthesis, phosphorylation, and various metabolic processes. Interestingly, the expressions of a number of cuticle proteins and tubulins were upregulated in viruliferous aphids. Taken together, our study revealed the complex regulatory network between BrYV and its vector M. persicae from the perspective of omics. These findings should be of great benefit to screening key factors involved in the process of virus circulation in aphids and provide new insights for BrYV prevention via vector control in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detecting overlapping communities is essential for analyzing the structure and function of complex networks. However, most existing approaches only consider network topology and overlook the benefits of attribute information. In this paper, we propose a novel attribute-information non-negative matrix factorization approach that integrates sparse constraints and optimizes an objective function for detecting communities in directed weighted networks. Our algorithm updates the basic non-negative matrix adaptively, incorporating both network topology and attribute information. We also add a sparsity constraint term of graph regularization to maintain the intrinsic geometric structure between nodes. Importantly, we provide strict proof of convergence for the multiplication update rule used in our algorithm. We apply our proposed algorithm to various artificial and real-world networks and show that it is more effective for detecting overlapping communities. Furthermore, our study uncovers the intricate iterative process of system evolution toward convergence and investigates the impact of various variables on network detection. These findings provide insights into building more robust and operable complex systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability of isolated surface layer proteins (SLPs) to reassemble on suitable surfaces enables the application of SLPs in various fields of nanotechnology. In this work, SLPs from Lactobacillus buchneri BNCC 187,964 and L. kefir BNCC 190,565 were extracted and verified as glycosylated proteins. They were applied to coat on the surface of cationic liposomes. The absorption of the two SLPs on liposomes induced the zeta potential reduction and particle size increase. The two kinds of SLP-coated liposomes demonstrated better thermal, light and pH stability than the control liposomes. And the L. kefir SLP showed better protective effects than the L. buchneri SLP. Moreover, both of the SLPs could endow liposomes with the function of binding ferritin as observed by transmission electron microscope. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy illustrated that the interaction between the two SLPs and liposomes was similar. The recrystallization of the two SLPs on the liposomes might drive the lipid into a higher order state and hydrogen bonds were formed between the two SLPs and the liposomes. All the findings demonstrated that L. kefir SLP and L. buchneri SLP had great potential to be explored as effective coating agents to improve the stability and function of cationic liposomes.Please check and confirm that the authors and their respective affiliations have been correctly identified and amend if necessary.Yes, all have been checked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complex environments of plants force them to prioritize their immune responses to stimuli occurring simultaneously, including colonization by microbes or nutrient availability. Little is known about how the interplay between endophytes and nutrient status affects the immune responses of both plants and fungi. We primarily monitored immune responses in rice following inoculation with the endophytic fungus Phomopsis liquidambaris under different nitrogen (N) conditions. Ph. liquidambaris promoted plant growth under low N (LN) conditions, concomitant with higher root colonization. Plant production of oxidative signals, including hydrogen peroxide and nitric oxide, was activated by Ph. liquidambaris colonization under LN conditions, while salicylic acid (SA) was maintained at high levels and was involved in controlling rice‐fungal interactions. High N (HN) conditions enhanced the ability of Ph. liquidambaris in suppressing plant cell death and the ability of roots to degrade Ph. liquidambaris cell walls. Furthermore, under both LN and HN conditions, the activity of plant defence‐associated enzymes and fungal antioxidases was not affected in the interactive association. Our data reveal the alteration of plant immunity, including oxidative signalling and plant cell death, by fungal colonization in response to external N conditions and identify SA signalling as a potential controller for rice‐Ph. liquidambaris interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some new solitary solutions of (3+1)-dimensional Jimbo-Miwa equation such as breather solutions, double breather solutions and mixed solutions of different forms are studied via applying Hirota's bilinear form and constructing various trial functions. Besides, the degradation phenomenon of breather solution to lump-type solution is investigated, and dynamical behaviours of the interaction between solitary solutions and lump-type solutions varying with time t is discussed. Finally, the interactive result between N-soliton solution (N takes any positive integer) and lump-type solution is studied by reducing dimension, and the detailed proof process is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aquilaria sinensis is an important non-timber tree species for producing high-value agarwood, which is widely used as a traditional medicine and incense. Agarwood is the product of Aquilaria trees in response to injury and fungal infection. The APETALA2/ethylene responsive factor (AP2/ERF) transcription factors (TFs) play important roles in plant stress responses and metabolite biosynthesis. In this study, 119 AsAP2/ERF genes were identified from the A. sinensis genome and divided into ERF, AP2, RAV, and Soloist subfamilies. Their conserved motif, gene structure, chromosomal localization, and subcellular localization were characterized. A stress/defense-related ERF-associated amphiphilic repression (EAR) motif and an EDLL motif were identified. Moreover, 11 genes that were highly expressed in the agarwood layer in response to whole-tree agarwood induction technique (Agar-Wit) treatment were chosen, and their expression levels in response to methyl jasmonate (MeJA), salicylic acid (SA), or salt treatment were further analyzed using the quantitative real time PCR (qRT-PCR). Among the 11 genes, eight belonged to subgroup B-3. All 11 genes were significantly upregulated under salt treatment, while eight genes were significantly induced by both MeJA and SA. In addition, the gene clusters containing these upregulated genes on chromosomes were observed. The results obtained from this research not only provide useful information for understanding the functions of AP2/ERF genes in A. sinensis but also identify candidate genes and gene clusters to dissect their regulatory roles in agarwood formation for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postpartum depression has been one of the most common psychological disorders in patients during postpartum period. The constant anxiety and depression during this period seriously affect the physiological and psychological health of both the mother and infant. Evidence‐based nursing has been widely applied in clinical practice and has achieved remarkable results. However, the effect of evidence‐based nursing on postpartum depression remains unclear. Pregnant women who were not diagnosed with postpartum depression during hospitalisation (Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale [EPDS] ≤ 13 points) but prone to postpartum depression (EPDS scores of 9–13) were recruited into the study. They were randomly divided into the Intervention group (N = 60) and Control group (N = 60). Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD), Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAMA), EPDS and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) were used to investigate the psychological outcomes of puerperae during and after the 6‐week intervention. Both the intention‐to‐treat and per‐protocol analyses showed that 6 weeks of evidence‐based nursing intervention significantly reduced the incidence of postpartum depression. The application of the evidence‐based nursing also improved the patients' satisfaction degree and effectively alleviated their anxiety according to both the intention‐to‐treat and per‐protocol analyses. Evidence‐based nursing intervention had positive effects against anxiety and depression in the postpartum period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-SMC condensin I complex subunit H (NCAPH) plays a regulatory role in various cancers. However, its role in prognosis and immune infiltrates in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) remains unclear. This study examined the expression of NCAPH in tumor tissues and its association with immune infiltrates and prognostic roles in LUAD patients. Patients characteristics were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Integrated analysis of TCGA showed that NCAPH was overexpressed across cancers, including LUAD. NCAPH expression was verified by quantitative polymerase chain reaction and western blotting in 20 LUAD matched tissues. High NCAPH expression was significantly related to T, N, M, pathologic stage, primary therapy outcome and smoking status according to the Wilcoxon rank sum test. Cox and Kaplan–Meier analyses showed that the NCAPH-high group was associated with shorter OS. The PFI and DSS in the NCAPH-high group were significantly decreased. Multivariate analysis showed that NCAPH was an independent predictive factor for poor prognosis. Gene set enrichment analysis demonstrated that the G2/M checkpoint, ncRNA metabolic, memory B cells, KRAS, E2F targets and MIER1 process were significantly associated with NCAPH expression. Single-sample Gene Set Enrichment Analysis indicated that NCAPH expression was associated with levels of Th2 and mast cells. The impact of NCAPH on malignant phenotypes was evaluated by MTT, transwell, cell cycle and apoptosis assays in vitro. The malignant phenotype of LUAD cells was inhibited if NCAPH was knocked down. In conclusion, this research indicates that NCAPH could be a potential factor for predicting prognosis and a new biomarker in LUAD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New nickel complexes with tridentate phenoxy–amidate–aNHC donor groups were synthesized from the reactions between nickel acetate and imidazolium ligand precursors in net pyridine. An unusual degradation pathway was observed, leading to imidazole derivatives occupying the fourth coordination sites in these square planar complexes. A new imidazole-coordinated nickel complex was found to be efficient in catalyzing Suzuki–Miyaura cross-coupling with aryl chlorides under 3 mol% of catalyst loading. The catalytic activities were superior to those of its reported normal NHC counterpart. Instead of the common procedure of using additional phosphine, the addition of IMes·HCl significantly enhances the product yields of the catalytic reaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different ribonucleic acids (RNAs) can interact to form regulatory networks that play important role in many life activities. Molecular biology experiments can confirm RNA–RNA interactions to facilitate the exploration of their biological functions, but they are expensive and time-consuming. Machine learning models can predict potential RNA–RNA interactions, which provide candidates for molecular biology experiments to save a lot of time and cost. Using a set of suitable features to represent the sample is crucial for training powerful models, but there is a lack of effective feature representation for RNA–RNA interaction. This study proposes a novel feature representation method with information enhancement and dimension reduction for RNA–RNA interaction (named RNAI-FRID). Diverse base features are first extracted from RNA data to contain more sample information. Then, the extracted base features are used to construct the complex features through an arithmetic-level method. It greatly reduces the feature dimension while keeping the relationship between molecule features. Since the dimension reduction may cause information loss, in the process of complex feature construction, the arithmetic mean strategy is adopted to enhance the sample information further. Finally, three feature ranking methods are integrated for feature selection on constructed complex features. It can adaptively retain important features and remove redundant ones. Extensive experiment results show that RNAI-FRID can provide reliable feature representation for RNA–RNA interaction with higher efficiency and the model trained with generated features obtain better performance than other deep neural network predictors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aircraft measurement campaigns have revealed that super coarse dust (diameter >10 μm) surprisingly accounts for approximately a quarter of aerosols by mass in the atmosphere. However, most global aerosol models either underestimate or do not include super coarse dust abundance. To address this problem, we use brittle fragmentation theory to develop a parameterization for the emitted dust size distribution that includes emission of super coarse dust. We implement this parameterization in the Community Earth System Model (CESM) and find that it brings the model in good agreement with aircraft measurements of super coarse dust close to dust source regions. However, the CESM still underestimates super coarse dust in dust outflow regions. Thus, we conclude that the model underestimation of super coarse atmospheric dust is in part due to the underestimation of super coarse dust emission and likely in part due to errors in deposition processes. Plain Language Summary: Aircraft measurements have found surprisingly large concentrations of super coarse atmospheric dust (diameter >10 μm), which accounts for approximately a quarter of particulate matter mass in the atmosphere. However, current atmospheric models do not include or cannot reproduce this abundance of super coarse dust. Here we develop a parameterization for the emission of super coarse dust. We evaluate this new parameterization in the Community Earth System Model (CESM) and find that it enables the model to reproduce in situ aircraft measurements of super coarse atmospheric dust near dust source regions. However, the CESM still underestimates super coarse atmospheric dust over dust outflow regions, possibly due to errors in deposition processes. We further find that the equivalent effect of possible errors in dust deposition processes during transport is to decrease the effective dust aerosol density in the CESM to an order of magnitude of its physical value of ∼2,500 kg/m3. Thus, we conclude that the underestimation of super coarse atmospheric dust by models is in part due to the underestimation of the emission of super coarse dust and likely in part due to errors in deposition processes. Key Points: We develop a model parameterization for the size distribution of emitted dust aerosols that includes emission of super coarse dustThe parameterization enables models to reproduce measurements of super coarse atmospheric dust near dust source regionsThe remaining underestimation of super coarse dust over dust outflow regions is likely due to errors in models' deposition processes [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cathaysian Coastal Mountains are thought to be an ancient high‐topographic feature that existed along the margin of South China. They are characterised by extensive Jurassic–Cretaceous magmatism; however, their formation mechanism and timing remains uncertain. In this paper, we present sedimentological and detrital zircon analyses from Cretaceous–Eocene strata and drainage sediments from Hainan Island. Our analyses show a change in provenance from a proximal Cathaysian Coastal arc source in Cretaceous strata to a widely distributed intra‐island granite source in the Eocene strata and modern river sediments. Reconstruction of the crustal thickness evolution for the South China margin from Eu/Eu*‐in‐zircon proxy shows significant crustal thickening during the Late Jurassic–Cretaceous, thereby suggesting the existence of the Cathaysian Coastal Mountains. Together with a compilation of detrital zircon U‐Pb ages in the northern basins of the South China Sea margin, we conclude that the Cathaysian Coastal Mountains extended from the Red River region to Taiwan along the South China margin during the Late Jurassic–Cretaceous and then collapsed/eroded from northeast to southwest during the Eocene–Miocene. This large mountain range supplied detrital sediments to the marginal basins in the northern South China Sea and formed a topographic barrier that prohibited moist Pacific air to reach the relatively arid inland area of South China during the Late Jurassic–Cretaceous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here we investigated the effects of three types of microplastics (MPs), i.e., PS (P), ABS (B), PVC (V), and each with additive (MPAs) (PA, BA, and VA), on soil health, microbial community, and plant growth in two acidic and slightly alkaline soils. Incubation experiment revealed that although MPs and MPAs consistently stimulated soil nutrients and heavy metals (e.g., Mn, Cu) in weakly alkaline soils, only BA and VA led to increase in soil nutrients and heavy metals in acidic soils. This suggests distinct response patterns in the two soils depending on their initial pH. Concerning microorganisms, MPs and MPAs reduced the assembly degree of bacteria in acidic soils, with a reduction of Chloroflexi and Acidobacteriota but an increase of WPS-2 in VA. Culture experiment showed consistent positive or negative responses in radish seed germination, roots, and antioxidant activity across MPs and MPAs types in both soils, while the responses of seed heavy metals (e.g., Cr, Cd) were consistent in acidic soils but dependent on MPs and MPAs types in alkaline soils. Therefore, our study strongly suggests that the effects of MPs on soil-microbial-plant systems were highly dependent on initial soil characteristics and the types of MPs with plastic additives. [Display omitted] • Microplastics with/out additives significantly affect soil-microbial-plant systems. • Distinct response patterns of soil nutrients and heavy metals between two soils. • MPAs decreased Chloroflexi and Acidobacteriota abundance only in the acidic soil. • Consistent effects of MPs/MPAs on plant growths in both acidic and alkaline soils. • Seed heavy metal contents differed between two soils dependent on MPs/MPAs types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peptide-protein interactions (PepPIs) play a crucial role in various fundamental biological activities in plants. As traditional experimental technologies are usually time-consuming and labor-intensive, it is indispensable to develop computational methods for PepPI identification, which has potential applications across diverse fields including food safety and peptide drug discovery. However, existing methods have received relatively little attention in adequately representing the interaction information between peptides and proteins, consequently limiting the prediction performance. To this end, we present DeepPepPI, a novel deep cross-dependent framework for accurate prediction of plant PepPIs. Concretely, a data-driven context-embedded representation (DCR) module is developed as the peptide feature extractor that can capture rich contextual semantic information, even from short sequences. To fully characterize inherent properties of proteins, we propose a bi-level self-correlation search (BSS) module, which integrates the primary sequence and secondary structure into a unified space to learn their potential relationships. In addition, a cross-dependent feature integration (CFI) module with information sharing mechanism is introduced, aimed at providing a comprehensive feature representation to portray the intricate interaction patterns between peptides and proteins from a global perspective. Extensive experimental results conducted on the benchmark datasets show that DeepPepPI achieves superior prediction performance compared to other state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The synthesis of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) can be realized via CH 4 chemical vapor deposition (CVD) on substrates such as Ge(001) that promote highly anisotropic growth. Small polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are first sublimed onto Ge at relatively low temperature to form graphene-like seeds that subsequently initiate GNR growth with CH 4 exposure at 1173 K. The behaviors of PAHs between their sublimation onto Ge and GNR growth are unclear. Here, we study an archetypical PAH – perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxyl acid dianhydride (PTCDA) – on Ge(001) using both scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and density functional theory (DFT) to characterize PAH configuration, surface diffusivity, and clustering. PTCDA becomes mobile above 673 K, consistent with a DFT diffusion barrier of 1.74 eV. The mobile PTCDA molecules meet, cluster, and fuse at Ge step edges, dehydrogenating at higher temperatures. These clusters have a height of 0.4 nm, similar to small graphene islands, and grow laterally with increasing temperature – reaching 1.2–2.1 nm in width at 1173 K, consistent with extrapolated CVD experiments. These results provide a plausible picture for how PTCDA forms seeds for anisotropic GNR CVD and show that PAHs with reduced surface diffusivity and inter-molecular reactivity are needed to enable more monodisperse PAH-seeded GNR synthesis. [Display omitted] • PTCDA molecules deposited on Ge(001) act as seeds for GNR synthesis via CH 4 CVD. • The PTCDA migrates on the surface above 673 K (with a diffusion barrier of 1.74 eV). • The migrating PTCDA molecules meet, cluster, and fuse at Ge step edges. • STM shows the PTCDA clusters are 1.2–2.1 nm in width, matching CVD experiments. • The energy barrier for PTCDA dehydrogenation exceeds that for surface diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the development of sophisticated statistical and dynamical climate models, a relative long-term and reliable prediction of the Indian summer monsoon rainfall (ISMR) has remained a challenging problem. Toward achieving this goal, here we construct a series of dynamical and physical climate networks based on the global near-surface air temperature field. We show that some characteristics of the directed and weighted climate networks can serve as efficient long-term predictors for ISMR forecasting. The developed prediction method produces a forecasting skill of 0.54 (Pearson correlation) with a 5-month lead time by using the previous calendar year's data. The skill of our ISMR forecast is better than that of operational forecasts models, which have, however, quite a short lead time. We discuss the underlying mechanism of our predictor and associate it with network–ENSO and ENSO–monsoon connections. Moreover, our approach allows predicting the all-India rainfall, as well as the rainfall different homogeneous Indian regions, which is crucial for agriculture in India. We reveal that global warming affects the climate network by enhancing cross-equatorial teleconnections between the southwest Atlantic, the western part of the Indian Ocean, and the North Asia–Pacific region, with significant impacts on the precipitation in India. A stronger connection through the chain of the main atmospheric circulations patterns benefits the prediction of the amount of rainfall. We uncover a hotspot area in the midlatitude South Atlantic, which is the basis for our predictor, the southwest Atlantic subtropical index (SWAS index). Remarkably, the significant warming trend in this area yields an improvement of the prediction skill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hainan Island lies near the Red River Fault, a prominent tectonic feature produced by the India‐Asia collision. There, we carried out a geochronologic and paleomagnetic study on Cretaceous rocks in order to better understand the kinematic history of the region. U‐Pb zircon dating of tuff intercalated in red bed sedimentary rocks yielded a concordant age of 106.6 ± 0.3 Ma; a mafic dyke intruding the red beds yielded a concordant age of 104.6 ± 0.7 Ma. Stepwise demagnetization experiments on 448 sedimentary rock samples and 191 dyke samples isolate solely normal polarities. Paleomagnetic directions of the dykes cluster in two distinct populations in geographic coordinates, indicating that dyke intrusion occurred in two pulses of limited duration (secular variation was not averaged) after tilting of the sediments. Baking of the sediments from the dykes only occurred near the contacts. Together with published data, the mean directions of 104 sites most tightly group at 58.3 ± 3.2% unfolding, indicative of a synfolding remagnetization, which can be constrained to have occurred within a 2 Myr period between sedimentation and dyke intrusion. We suggest that warm (50–100°C) fluid interaction during basin development led to new mineral growth spawning chemical remagnetization. The corresponding paleomagnetic pole at 81.5°N, 145.2°E (A95 = 2.4°) is indistinguishable from the coeval Eurasian reference pole, suggesting the South China Block has remained fixed to Eurasia since 105 Ma. A contour map of paleomagnetic rotations from 115 studies in the region shows that the Red River Fault roughly demarcates rotation magnitudes/signs, suggestive of a major tectonic boundary. Plain Language Summary: Highly stable magnetic remanences of hematite‐bearing sedimentary rocks (red beds) form the basis of numerous paleomagnetic studies. However, an on‐going scientific debate called the "red bed controversy" stems from the relative timing when the remanence was acquired (primary = detrital vs. secondary = chemical). Our article concerns a paleomagnetic and geochronologic study of Cretaceous red beds and cross cutting dykes from Hainan Island (South China). Radiometric‐dating of tuff intercalated in the red beds and the crosscutting mafic dykes, combined with paleomagnetic analyses of 639 samples, allows us to precisely constrain the age of a pervasive synfolding remagnetization at ca. 105 Ma. Together with electron microscopy, we demonstrate the existence of a chemical remanent magnetization (CRM) that occurred within 2 Myr of the depositional age of the sediments. We also show that the dykes had limited thermal influence on the wall rocks. Importantly, the red beds that have CRMs do not suffer from inclination shallowing—the paleolatitude is very compatible with that predicted from the reference curve, suggesting the relative configuration between South China and Siberia has remained constant since 105 Ma. Key Points: Chemical remagnetization of Cretaceous sedimentary rocks in Hainan is dated between 106.6 Ma and 104.6 MaAuthigenic growth of iron oxides and sulfides in the Cretaceous sediments occurred within 2 Myr of depositionThe South China Block has remained fixed to Eurasia since the Cretaceous (105 Ma) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immunotherapy is an important treatment modality in cancer, but it can also cause adverse reactions, with skin toxicity being the most common. The increasing number of immune checkpoint inhibitors being used in the clinic will inevitably cause an increase in the rate of adverse skin reactions that markedly affect the patient's quality of life. A 58-year-old patient with intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma developed bullous pemphigoid (BP) nearly a year after using immune checkpoint inhibitors, which is different from what has been reported in the literature within two weeks of treatment. Pathologically, the skin biopsy diagnosis was epidermal hyperplasia and focal sub-epidermal pustule formation, consistent with drug-induced dermatitis. The patient was treated with methylprednisolone, minocycline, colchicine, nicotinamide, triamcinolone, and traditional Chinese medicine decoction. No new blisters developed after 1 week of treatment. The medication was gradually discontinued, and BP did not recur. Clinicians should carefully consider the risk-benefit ratio when using PD-1 inhibitors, particularly concerning rash severity. Further studies are needed to investigate the relationship between adverse skin reactions and drug efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interactions between microRNAs (miRNAs) and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important roles in biological activities. Specially, lncRNAs as endogenous target mimics (eTMs) can bind miRNAs to regulate the expressions of target messenger RNAs (mRNAs). A growing number of studies focus on animals, but the studies on plants are scarce and many functions of plant eTMs are unknown. This study proposes a novel ensemble pruning protocol for predicting plant miRNA–lncRNA interactions at first. It adaptively prunes the base models based on dual-path parallel ensemble method to meet the challenge of cross-species prediction. Then potential eTMs are mined from predicted results. The expression levels of RNAs are identified through biological experiment to construct the lncRNA–miRNA–mRNA regulatory network, and the functions of potential eTMs are inferred through enrichment analysis. Experiment results show that the proposed protocol outperforms existing methods and state-of-the-art predictors on various plant species. A total of 17 potential eTMs are verified by biological experiment to involve in 22 regulations, and 14 potential eTMs are inferred by Gene Ontology enrichment analysis to involve in 63 functions, which is significant for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Myosin heavy chain 11 (MYH11), encoded by the MYH11 gene, is a protein that participates in muscle contraction through the hydrolysis of adenosine triphosphate. Although previous studies have demonstrated that MYH11 gene expression levels are downregulated in several types of cancer, its expression levels have rarely been investigated in lung cancer. The present study aimed to explore the clinical significance and prognostic value of MYH11 expression levels in lung cancer and to further study the underlying molecular mechanisms of the function of this gene. The Oncomine database showed that the MYH11 expression levels were decreased in lung cancer compared with those noted in the normal lung tissue (P<0.05). Kaplan-Meier plotter results revealed that the decreased MYH11 expression levels were correlated with poor prognosis in lung cancer patients. Among the lung cancer cases with gene alteration of MYH11, mutation was the most common of all alteration types. Coexpedia and Metascape analyses revealed that the target genes were primarily enriched in 'muscle contraction', 'contractile fiber part', 'actin cytoskeleton' and the 'adherens junction'. These results indicated that MYH11 is a potential novel drug target and prognostic indicator of lung cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to develop population-specific regression equations for age estimation by investigating the correlation between chronological age and pulp–tooth volume ratios in three types of anterior teeth using cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) in the Western Chinese population. Three hundred and ninety-two CBCT images of 207 female and 185 male individuals, aged between 16 to 76 years were evaluated. Mimics software was used to calculate the pulp–tooth volume ratios (PTVR) from CBCT images. Regression analysis was conducted with chronological age as a dependent variable and PTVR as an independent variable to establish a mathematical model for age estimation. The mean absolute error (MAE) was calculated to evaluate the accuracy of the regression model using an independent validation sample. Among the three types of anterior teeth, the left maxillary lateral incisor provides the most accurate age prediction for males (MAE = 6.804), and the left maxillary central incisor gave the most accurate results for females (MAE = 6.104). The statistical analysis also found gender differences exist in the PTVR for three types of anterior teeth. This study revealed that gender and tooth type specific equations are recommended when using the PTVR for age estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While supervised learning approaches show great vitality and effectiveness in video object segmentation, most of them require large amounts of annotations which are expensive and time-consuming. Recently, self-supervised learning has attracted great attention by benefiting from unlabeled video sequences. However, current patch-based self-supervised video object segmentation methods only discriminate the patch from the entire image without distinguishing the object of interest from meaningless backgrounds or even occlusion. These disturbances deteriorate the extracted features and hinder the robustness of tracking when applied to real-world video sequences. In this paper, we propose a novel model named Tracker With Integration-Augmented Attention (TWIAA) to achieve both label-free and prominent performance. Specifically, we integrate both spatial and channel dimensions by introducing a feature spatial enhancement module and a two-stream channel module. With the combination of the two modules, the network can focus on exploring the discriminative object and suppressing the irrelevant part to improve the tracking robustness. Moreover, unlike other methods that calculate features separately on the search branch and template branch, the two designed modules coupled with the Siamese network compute the respective features of the search branch and the template branch jointly to augment the interdependence of the two branches. Such interdependence is injected into both spatial and channel dimensions. So that our approach establishes richer and more discriminative associations to identify the object more accurately. In addition, our method takes full advantage of cycle-consistency information in consecutive frames, which uses coherence as the learning signal to acquire object-oriented relationships. Extensive experiments and ablation studies are conducted on large VOS benchmarks, including DAVIS-2017, YouTube-VOS-2018, and YouTube-VOS-2019. The results verify that our proposed framework has both strong feature representation and competitive performance compared with supervised and self-supervised models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Main observation and conclusion: A detailed chemical study on the Hainan soft coral Sinularia crass has resulted in the isolation and characterization of eleven casbane‐type diterpenoids, named sinucrassins A—K (1—11), along with six known related ones (12—17). Their structures were elucidated by extensive spectroscopic analyses and comparison with the reported data. The absolute configurations of new compounds were determined by the X‐ray diffraction analysis and computer‐assisted structural elucidation including 13C NMR data calculation and time‐dependent density functional theory/electronic circular dichroism calculation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Rice spikelet rot disease (RSRD) is an emerging disease that significantly reduces rice yield and quality. In this study, we evaluated the potential use of the broad‐spectrum endophytic fungus Phomopsis liquidambaris B3 as a biocontrol agent against RSRD. We also compared the control effects of different treatments, including chemical fungicides and treatment with multiple strains and single strains in combination or individually, against RSRD. The objective of this study was to find an effective and environmentally friendly control strategy to reduce the occurrence of RSRD and improve the rice yield. RESULTS: In pot experiments, the effect of B3 alone was better than that of fungicide or combined measures. The results showed that root colonization by B3 significantly reduced the incidence and disease index of RSRD by 41.0% and 53.8%, respectively. This was related to enhanced superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD), and polyphenol oxidase (PPO) activity, and to significantly upregulated expression levels of OsAOX, OsLOX, OsPAL, and OsPR10 in rice. Moreover, B3 improved the diversity of the bacterial community rather than the fungal community in the rice rhizosphere. It also led to a decrease in Fusarium proliferatum colonization and fumonisin content in the grain. Finally, root development was markedly promoted after B3 inoculation, and the yield improved by 48.60%. The result of field experiments showed that the incidence of RSRD and the fumonisin content were observably reduced in rice receiving B3, by 24.41% and 37.87%, respectively. CONCLUSION: The endophytic fungus Phomopsis liquidambaris B3 may become an effective tool to relieve rice spikelet rot disease. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the effect of corn straw biochar on the decomposition, nutrient transformation, and bacterial community characteristics in the corn straw decomposition process. A 90-day microcosm incubation experiment was performed to assess the effects of corn straw biochar (500 °C, 1 h) on the corn straw decomposition process and the resulting product. Four biochar amendment rates (0%, 5, 10, and 15%, as mass fractions of biochar) and three different addition times (1st day, 30th day, and 60th day) were set in total. The results showed that corn straw biochar significantly increased the pH of the corn straw decomposition process by 0.71–0.73 and increased the electrical conductivity value by 0.64–1.07 μS/cm over that of the controls. In addition, biochar was shown to increase the temperature rise rate and temperature peak of the straw maturation system, and advance the process of straw maturation by 10 days. Thus, treatment with corn straw biochar could accelerate the corn straw decomposition process and change the conditions for microorganisms involved in the process. Furthermore, biochar additions significantly decreased the organic matter content by 9.67% under B3 and T1 treatment, and enhanced the N, P2O5, and K2O contents of the straw decomposition product by 0.36, 0.19, and 0.88% under B3 and T1 treatment. Biochar additions could increase the abundance of several effective bacteria closely related to the N, P2O5, and K2O contents of the straw maturation product. The growth of these bacteria was likely to be affected by the increase in pH with biochar addition, which enabled the improvement of the nutrient mineralization process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surface layer proteins (SLPs) are crystalline arrays in the outermost layer of cell envelope in many archaea and bacteria. SLPs subunits have the ability to reassemble on the surface of lipid layers. In this work, the SLP from Lactobacillus acidophilus ATCC 4356 was extracted and reassembled on the surface of positively charged liposomes composed of dipalmitoyl phosphatidylcholine, cholesterol and octadecylamine. Zeta potentials and particle size were determined to describe the adsorption process of SLP on liposomes. The liposomes completely coated with SLP were observed by transmission electron microscope. To investigate the stabilizing effects of SLP on liposomes, carboxyfluorescein (CF) was encapsulated and its leakage was determined as an evaluation index. The results showed that the L. acidophilus ATCC 4356 SLP significantly (P < 0.05) increased the stability of the liposomes in the course of thermal challenge. Furthermore, SLP was able to reduce the aggregation of liposomes in serum. Storage stability of liposomes was performed at 25 °C, 4 °C and −20 °C for 90 days. And the SLP-coated liposomes released less CF than the control liposomes during storage at the three evaluated temperatures. Our findings extended the application field of Lactobacillus SLPs and introduced a novel nanocarrier system with good chemical stability. • A novel kind of surface layer protein (SLP)-coated liposome was introduced. • SLP could enhance the thermal stability of positively charged liposomes. • SLP could enhance the serum stability of positively charged liposomes. • SLP could enhance the storage stability of positively charged liposomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nonlinear dependence of the dust saltation process on wind speed poses a challenge for models of varying resolutions. This challenge is of particular relevance for the next generation of chemical transport models with nimble capability for multiple resolutions. We develop and apply a method to harmonize dust emissions across simulations of different resolutions by generating offline grid-independent dust emissions driven by native high-resolution meteorological fields. We implement into the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model a high-resolution dust source function to generate updated offline dust emissions. These updated offline dust emissions based on high-resolution meteorological fields strengthen dust emissions over relatively weak dust source regions, such as in southern South America, southern Africa and the southwestern United States. Identification of an appropriate dust emission strength is facilitated by the resolution independence of offline emissions. We find that the performance of simulated aerosol optical depth (AOD) versus measurements from the AERONET network and satellite remote sensing improves significantly when using the updated offline dust emissions with the total global annual dust emission strength of 2000 Tgyr-1 rather than the standard online emissions in GEOS-Chem. The updated simulation also better represents in situ measurements from a global climatology. The offline high-resolution dust emissions are easily implemented in chemical transport models. The source code and global offline high-resolution dust emission inventory are publicly available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that Bose–Einstein condensation cannot occur in a free two-dimensional (2D) system. Recently, several studies have showed that BEC can occur on the surface of a sphere. We investigate BEC on the surface of cylinder on both sides of which atoms are confined in a one-dimensional (1D) harmonic potential. In this work, only the non-interacting Bose gas is considered. We determine the critical temperature and the condensate fraction in the geometry using the semi-classical approximation. Moreover, the thermodynamic properties of ideal bosons are also studied using the grand canonical partition function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sludge contains a little organic matter. Due to the action of microorganisms, organic matter was decomposed, and released humic acid. It can also affect lime or cement solidified sludge. Three categories of pH solution (pH = 4.0, 7.0, and 9.0) were prepared to soaking sludge. The organic matter and pH were observed for 78 days. The results showed that both acidic and alkaline buffer solutions can accelerate the consumption of organic matter, and change the molecule structure from tightness to loosening. In addition, the alkaline solution not only can promote humic acid releasing from organic matter, but also can consume it at the same time. This is a benefit to create alkaline pore water, and further improve the effect of lime or/and cement solidified sludge. The long-term strength indicated that solidified sludge without organic matter was almost unchanged throughout the curing time. From this view, pre-treatment organic matter with alkaline solution is an effective measurement for improving the long-term performance of cement/lime solidified sludge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play an important role in regulating biological activities and their prediction is significant for exploring biological processes. Long short-term memory (LSTM) and convolutional neural network (CNN) can automatically extract and learn the abstract information from the encoded RNA sequences to avoid complex feature engineering. An ensemble model learns the information from multiple perspectives and shows better performance than a single model. It is feasible and interesting that the RNA sequence is considered as sentence and image to train LSTM and CNN respectively, and then the trained models are hybridized to predict lncRNAs. Up to present, there are various predictors for lncRNAs, but few of them are proposed for plant. A reliable and powerful predictor for plant lncRNAs is necessary. Results: To boost the performance of predicting lncRNAs, this paper proposes a hybrid deep learning model based on two encoding styles (PlncRNA-HDeep), which does not require prior knowledge and only uses RNA sequences to train the models for predicting plant lncRNAs. It not only learns the diversified information from RNA sequences encoded by p-nucleotide and one-hot encodings, but also takes advantages of lncRNA-LSTM proposed in our previous study and CNN. The parameters are adjusted and three hybrid strategies are tested to maximize its performance. Experiment results show that PlncRNA-HDeep is more effective than lncRNA-LSTM and CNN and obtains 97.9% sensitivity, 95.1% precision, 96.5% accuracy and 96.5% F1 score on Zea mays dataset which are better than those of several shallow machine learning methods (support vector machine, random forest, k-nearest neighbor, decision tree, naive Bayes and logistic regression) and some existing tools (CNCI, PLEK, CPC2, LncADeep and lncRNAnet). Conclusions: PlncRNA-HDeep is feasible and obtains the credible predictive results. It may also provide valuable references for other related research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HIAF-BRing, the main synchrotron accelerator of the High Intensity Heavy-Ion Accelerator Facility, requires an average pressure lower than 1 × 10 −9 Pa and the magnetic field increase rate of no less than 12 T/s to fulfill radioactive beam physics and high energy density physics experiments. To reduce the eddy current effect and the gap size of dipoles, a titanium alloy-lined thin-walled vacuum chamber with a wall thickness of 0.3 mm is proposed by IMP, which has been developed from the initial ceramic-lined vacuum chamber. By mechanical loading testing, when the internal stress of titanium alloy rings made by 3D selective laser melting (SLM) reaches 639 MPa, it is still within the elastic deformation range, in fact, the yield strength of the 3D printed titanium alloy material is 912 MPa. In order to reduce the pressure gradient inside the thin-walled vacuum chamber caused by the surface outgassing of the rings, TiZrV thin films have been deposited on the rings by planar target magnetron sputtering. Through TiZrV deposited on the rings, the pressure at the middle of the thin-walled vacuum chamber has been dropped from 1.5 × 10−9 Pa to 1.0 × 10−9 Pa. At the same time, as the magnets are continuously energized, the actual heating state of the thin-walled vacuum chamber has been also measured. • A titanium alloy-lined thin-walled vacuum chamber with wall thickness 0.3 mm has been proposed. • Titanium alloy rings have been proposed to be manufactured through 3D selective laser melting (SLM), and then their yield strength has been evaluated. • TiZrV thin films have been deposited on the titanium alloy rings by planar target magnetron sputtering to reduce the pressure gradient inside the ultra-thin wall vacuum chamber caused by the surface outgassing of the rings. • The actual heating state of the thin-walled vacuum chamber during normal operation of HIAF has been evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aimed to investigate the accuracy of new noninvasive markers in predicting liver fibrosis among individuals with primary biliary cholangitis (PBC). This retrospective analysis included subjects with PBC who had liver biopsies. Scheuer's classification was used to determine the fibrosis stage. The bilirubin to albumin (Alb) ratio (BAR), fibrosis index based on the four factors (FIB-4), γ-glutamyl transpeptidase to platelet (PLT) ratio (GPR), red cell distribution width to PLT ratio (RPR), aspartate aminotransferase (AST) to alanine aminotransferase ratio (AAR), AST to PLT ratio index (APRI) and total bilirubin to PLT ratio (TPR) were calculated based on the laboratory parameters. A novel index called BARP was conceived as BAR x RPR. A total of 78 individuals with PBC were included in the study, 84.6% of whom had significant fibrosis, 30.8% had advanced fibrosis and 15.4% had cirrhosis. In the multivariate analysis, Alb was determined to be an independent predictor of advanced fibrosis (odds ratio=0.823, P=0.034). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUROCs) of the BAR, GPR, TPR and BARP were statistically significant in predicting severe fibrosis (P<0.05) and were 0.747, 0.684, 0.693 and 0.696, respectively. In assessing advanced fibrosis, the AUROCs for the AAR, APRI, BAR, FIB-4, RPR, TPR and BARP were 0.726, 0.650, 0.742, 0.716, 0.670, 0.735 and 0.750, respectively. The AUROCs for the APRI, BAR, FIB-4, RPR, TPR and BARP for cirrhosis prediction were 0.776, 0.753, 0.821, 0.819, 0.808 and 0.832, respectively. By comparing the AUROCs, it was demonstrated that the diagnostic capabilities of the BARP (P=0.021) and TPR (P=0.044) were superior to those of the APRI in predicting advanced fibrosis. In conclusion, the BAR, BARP and TPR were of predictive value for the grade of liver fibrosis in PBC and Alb had a diagnostic value in identifying early fibrosis. The aforementioned noninvasive indices may be used for predicting histologic stages of PBC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Double-pass pumping structure for unstable cavity OPO. • High-energy and good beam quality simultaneously realized for NCPM-KTA. • Comparison of output parameters of parametric light under two pumping structures. • Variation trend of pulse width of parametric light at different pumping conditions. A novel double-pass pumping optical parametric oscillator (OPO) with unstable resonator based on Gaussian reflectivity mirror (GRM) was proposed and demonstrated. The output characteristics of double-pass pumping OPO based on non-critical phase matching (NCPM) KTiOAsO 4 (KTA) crystal were researched at a pulse repetition frequency of 100 Hz. Compared with the single-pass pumping OPO, the output energy and the conversion efficiency of double-pass pumping OPO were improved by 36 %. The beam qualities of signal and idler were measured and compared with different pump structures, and the results show that beam quality of signal for double-pass pumping OPO barely deteriorated. In addition, the pulse widths of signal and idler under two pumping structures and their variation trends with different pump energies were researched and compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Paleocurrent direction of Early Devonian strata in Tarim transitioned from SW to NE. • Magnetic fabric can be used to track paleocurrent changes in weakly deformed rocks. • The shift in source regions supports Early Devonian opening of South Tianshan Ocean. The magnetic fabric technique is widely used to measure the direction of paleocurrent and paleostress due to its speediness, precision, and cheapness. However, correlating unique magnetic fabric patterns in weakly deformed rocks with hydrodynamic or tectonic regimes remains challenging. The Early Devonian sedimentary rocks in the Keziertage Formation have well-preserved sedimentary structures and were deformed by the Cenozoic non-plunging fold. This sequence offers a prime opportunity to explore the relationship between magnetic fabric evolution, paleocurrents, and weakly deformation. Furthermore, the paleocurrent characteristics of the Keziertage Formation reflect the provenance changes during the opening of the South Tianshan Ocean. Here, we report 120 sedimentary structure-based paleocurrents and 382 magnetic fabric data from the Keziertage Formation in the Kalpin area, Xinjiang. We find that: (1) During the weakly deformation stage, the minimum axis of susceptibility's imbrication direction serves as a reliable indicator for detecting paleocurrents at the coarse sandstone layer with well-developed cross-bedding; (2) While the maximum axis of susceptibility is more consistent with the tectonic stress rather than paleocurrents. Consequently, the complexity of magnetic fabric needs to be clearly verified when it is applied in the weakly deformed strata. In the northwest margin of Tarim, both the minimum susceptibility axes of magnetic fabrics and sedimentary structures indicate a shift in the paleocurrent direction, transitioning from southwest to northeast in the mid-to-upper Keziertage Formation. This indicates significant channel changes, potentially linked to a regional change in provenance due to the Early Devonian opening of the South Tianshan Ocean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Escherichia coli and Salmonella are common pathogenic bacteria in human intestine, which can infect epithelial cells and cause diseases. Adhesion to intestinal tissue is the first step of pathogen infection. This work was to investigate the protective function of surface layer protein (SLP) from Lactobacillus casei fb05 against the harmful effects of E. coli and Salmonella on intestinal tissue (collagen and HT-29 cells). The SLP of L. casei fb05 was identified by transmission electron microscopy and SDS-PAGE. The purified SLP could reduce the adhesion of E. coli and Salmonella to collagen and HT-29 cells as observed by light microscope. The flow cytometry results showed that the L. casei fb05 SLP decreased the two pathogens-induced apoptosis of HT-29 cells by about 45%–49%. In addition, the activation of caspase-9 and caspase-3 caused by the two pathogens was significantly declined by the interference of the L. casei fb05 SLP. All the findings demonstrated that the L. casei fb05 SLP could decrease the deleterious effects of E. coli and Salmonella on intestinal tract in two ways: reducing pathogen adhesion and inhibiting pathogen-induced apoptosis. The potential of L. casei fb05 SLP in the treatment of intestinal diseases might be explored in this work. • L. casei surface layer protein (SLP) reduced the adhesion of pathogens to collagen. • L. casei SLP reduced the adhesion of pathogens to HT-29 cells. • L. casei SLP decreased the E. coli and Salmonella -induced apoptosis of HT-29 cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global warming, extreme climate events, earthquakes and their accompanying socioeconomic disasters pose significant risks to humanity. Yet due to the nonlinear feedbacks, multiple interactions and complex structures of the Earth system, the understanding and, in particular, the prediction of such disruptive events represent formidable challenges to both scientific and policy communities. During the past years, the emergence and evolution of Earth system science has attracted much attention and produced new concepts and frameworks. Especially, novel statistical physics and complex networks-based techniques have been developed and implemented to substantially advance our knowledge of the Earth system, including climate extreme events, earthquakes and geological relief features, leading to substantially improved predictive performances. We present here a comprehensive review on the recent scientific progress in the development and application of how combined statistical physics and complex systems science approaches such as critical phenomena, network theory, percolation, tipping points analysis, and entropy can be applied to complex Earth systems. Notably, these integrating tools and approaches provide new insights and perspectives for understanding the dynamics of the Earth systems. The overall aim of this review is to offer readers the knowledge on how statistical physics concepts and theories can be useful in the field of Earth system science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noni (Morinda citrifolia L.) is rich in polyphenols, flavonoids, terpenoids, and iridoids. However, its bad taste and smell make noni fruit unsuitable for consumption. After fermentation, noni wine becomes free from the undesirable smell. Nevertheless, it is still unclear whether processed noni could retain its original nutrients and effects. Therefore, we conducted a series of evaluations on the nutritional composition and efficacy of noni wine. Our results showed that the polyphenol, flavonoid, and vitamin C contents in noni wine were 558.80, 234.42, and 0.30 mg/L, respectively. Our animal experiments showed that 40 ml kg−1 day−1 noni wine could reduce bodyweight, as well as the levels of body fat, serum triglycerides, total cholesterol, and low‐density lipoprotein, while it simultaneously increased the amount of energy expenditure and activity, and improved the systemic antioxidant capacity in mice following a high‐fat diet. The results of the gene expression and western blot analyses showed that 40 ml kg−1 day−1 noni wine could regulate the Nrf2 pathway and improve the antioxidant enzyme gene expression in mice maintained on a high‐fat diet, thereby improving body lipid metabolism, reducing fatty acid synthesis, and promoting fatty acid β‐oxidation. Our study indicated that drinking 40 ml kg−1 day−1 noni wine could effectively prevent high‐fat diet‐induced oxidative stress and obesity in mice. Practical applications: Noni fruit is rich in nutrients but its bad smell and hardship of processing make its commercialization difficult. Previous studies mainly focused on fresh noni juice and its primary processed products, while few noni products, of poor taste and low quality, are available in the market. Therefore, the fruit wine with both the nutritive values and the special flavor of noni has broad market prospects. Our work provides a valuable reference for the commercialization of noni wine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electrochemical reduction of CO2 is a promising route to convert waste products to valuable chemicals. Search for suitable and efficient CO2 reduction electrocatalysts with high C2:C1 selectivity holds great promise. Herein, for the first time we have developed a molten salt oxidized method to modify the morphology and oxidation state of a Cu‐foam catalyst. The catalyst displayed a current density of 30 mA cm−2 (−1.4 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode) and an ethylene/methane ratio of 870. We provide insight into the improved performance of the catalysts by cross section scanning transmission electron microscopy and quasi in situ soft X‐ray spectroscope, which show that copper oxides are surprisingly reconstructed with Cu (I) and Cu (0) on the surface during the reaction. First principle calculations also demonstrate that the partly reduced Cu2O (111) surface has a high reactivity and selectivity for C2+ products. Furthermore, the molten salt treated catalysts could be applied to the direct synthesis of multi‐carbon fuels, including C3‐C4 compounds in high CO2 pressure electrocatalytic reduction. Our results demonstrate that molten salt are both the oxidizing agent and reaction medium, which is a promising approach for synthesis of highly active CO2 electrocatalysts, which may open a new way for industrial application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]