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Is childhood adversity associated with biological aging, and if so, does sex modify the association, and do lifestyle and mental health mediate the association? A lifespan analysis is conducted using data on 142 872 participants from the UK Biobank to address these questions. Childhood adversity is assessed through the online mental health questionnaire (2016), including physical neglect, physical abuse, emotional neglect, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and a cumulative score. Biological aging is indicated by telomere length (TL) measured from leukocyte DNA using qPCR, and the shorter TL indicates accelerated biological aging; a lifestyle score is constructed using body mass index, physical activity, drinking, smoking, and diet; mental disorder is assessed using depression, anxiety, and insomnia at the baseline survey. The results reveal a sex‐specific association such that childhood adversity is associated with shorter TL in women after adjusting for covariates including polygenic risk score for TL, but not in men. Unhealthy lifestyle and mental disorder partially mediate the association in women. The proportions of indirect effects are largest for sexual and physical abuse. These findings highlight the importance of behavioral and psychological interventions in promoting healthy aging among women who experienced childhood adversity, particularly sexual and physical abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective Evaluate surgical utilization of SCOUT reflectors placed at breast biopsy. Methods Consent was waived for this retrospective IRB-approved, HIPAA-compliant study. Breast biopsy examinations that reported the term "SCOUT" between January 2021 and June 2022 were identified using an institutional search engine. Cases were included if a SCOUT reflector was placed at time of breast biopsy and excluded if lesion pathology was already known. Analysis was performed at the lesion level. A multivariate-regression analysis evaluated 6 variables with potential impact on SCOUT utilization. Results One hundred twenty-one lesions in 112 patients met inclusion criteria. Biopsy yielded 93% (113/121) malignant, 3% (4/121) elevated risk, 2% (2/121) benign-discordant, and 2% (2/121) benign-concordant results. Two cases lost to follow-up were excluded. SCOUT reflectors were utilized for lumpectomy (58%, 69/119 lesions) and excisional biopsy (6%, 7/119 lesions). SCOUTs were not utilized due to mastectomy (23%, 27/119), subsequent wire localization (2%, 2/119), and nonsurgical cases (12%, 14/119). Reflector placement utilization was 52% higher for findings less than 3.5 cm in size (P <.001), 33% higher in patients without prior treated breast cancer (P = .012), and 19% higher in patients with no suspicious ipsilateral lymph node (P = .048). Conclusion SCOUT reflector placement at time of biopsy was utilized for surgery 64% (76/119) of the time, although most (98%, 119/121) biopsies were malignant, elevated risk, or benign-discordant. Factors increasing reflector utilization include smaller lesion size, no suspicious ipsilateral lymph node, and no prior treated breast cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The prevalence of obesity (OB) has increased in the older adult (OA) population. However, it is not quite clear whether OB exaggerates gait instability and leads to a higher risk of falls in OAs. The first goal of this study was to investigate whether OB is associated with gait alterations and gait asymmetry in OAs. The second goal of this study was to examine relationships between various OB measures with gait measures and gait symmetry measures in OAs . Methods : A total of 30 OAs were included and categorized according to their body mass index (BMI) values into groups of persons with normal weight (NW), overweight (OW), and OB. Participants were required to complete an anthropometric assessment, a body composition assessment. and overground walking tests. Results: The group with OB had shorter swing phase, longer stance phase, and shorter single support phase than the NW group. Increased body weight, BMI. visceral adipose tissue mass, and android fat had correlations with shorter swing phase. longer stance phase, and shorter single support phase. Increased body weight and BMI had significantly positive correlations with symmetry index of knee range of motion. Conclusions : OB may impair gait automation capacity in OAs. Both body weight and BM[ remain good measures in terms of establishing correlations with gait stability in OAs. However, the amount of fat mass surrounding the abdomen could be vital to interpreting the alterations in the gait of OAs with obesity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complicated associations between multiplexed environmental factors and aging are poorly understood. We manipulated aging using multidimensional metrics such as phenotypic age, brain age, and brain volumes in the UK Biobank. Weighted quantile sum regression was used to examine the relative individual contributions of multiplexed environmental factors to aging, and self-organizing maps (SOMs) were used to examine joint effects. Air pollution presented a relatively large contribution in most cases. We also found fair heterogeneities in which the same environmental factor contributed inconsistently to different aging metrics. Particulate matter contributed the most to variance in aging, while noise and green space showed considerable contribution to brain volumes. SOM identified five subpopulations with distinct environmental exposure patterns and the air pollution subpopulation had the worst aging status. This study reveals the heterogeneous associations of multiplexed environmental factors with multidimensional aging metrics and serves as a proof of concept when analyzing multifactors and multiple outcomes. Complicated associations between multiplexed environmental factors and aging are poorly understood. Here, authors show heterogeneous associations of multiplexed environmental factors with multidimensional aging metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persistent inflammatory responses often occur when bacteria and other microorganisms frequently invade and colonize open wounds and eventually result in the formation of chronic wounds. Therefore, achieving real-time detection of invasive bacteria accurately and promptly is essential for efficient wound management and accelerating the healing process. Recently, flexible wearable sensors have garnered significant attention, especially those designed for monitoring real-time biophysical or biochemical signals in wound sites in a minimally invasive manner. They provide more precise and continuous monitoring data, making them as emerging tools for clinical diagnostics. In this review, we first discuss the species and community distribution of different types of bacteria in chronic wounds. Next, we introduce currently developed techniques for detecting bacteria at wound sites. Following that, we discuss the recent progress and unresolved issues of various flexible wearable sensors in detecting bacteria at wound sites. We believe that this review can provide meaningful guidance for the development of flexible wearable sensors for bacteria detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The understanding of the link between the gut-bone axis is growing yearly, but the mechanisms involved are not yet clear. Our study analyzed the role of Sestrin2 (SESN2)pathway in the gut-bone axis. We established an osteoarthritis (OA) model in Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats using the anterior cruciate ligament transection (ACLT) procedure, followed by a dietary intervention with varying levels of dietary fiber content for 8 weeks. By 16S rRNA sequencing of the gut microbiota, we found that high dietary fiber (HDF) intake could significantly increase the Bacillota-dominant gut microbiota. Meanwhile, enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and histological analysis showed that intervention with HDF could reduce the degree of bone and joint lesions and inflammation. We hypothesize that HDF increased the dominant flora of Bacillota, up-regulated the expression of SESN2 in knee joint, and reduced gut permeability, thereby reducing systemic inflammatory response and the degree of bone and joint lesions. Therefore, the present study confirms that changes in gut microbiota induced by increased dietary fiber intake delayed the onset of OA by promoting up-regulation of SESN2 expression at the knee joint to maintain chondrocyte activity and reduce synovial inflammation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The understanding of the link between the gut-bone axis is growing yearly, but the mechanisms involved are not yet clear. Our study analyzed the role of Sestrin2 (SESN2)pathway in the gut-bone axis. We established an osteoarthritis (OA) model in Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats using the anterior cruciate ligament transection (ACLT) procedure, followed by a dietary intervention with varying levels of dietary fiber content for 8 weeks. By 16S rRNA sequencing of the gut microbiota, we found that high dietary fiber (HDF) intake could significantly increase the Bacillota-dominant gut microbiota. Meanwhile, enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and histological analysis showed that intervention with HDF could reduce the degree of bone and joint lesions and inflammation. We hypothesize that HDF increased the dominant flora of Bacillota, up-regulated the expression of SESN2 in knee joint, and reduced gut permeability, thereby reducing systemic inflammatory response and the degree of bone and joint lesions. Therefore, the present study confirms that changes in gut microbiota induced by increased dietary fiber intake delayed the onset of OA by promoting up-regulation of SESN2 expression at the knee joint to maintain chondrocyte activity and reduce synovial inflammation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-performance GNN obtains dependencies within a graph by capturing the mechanism of message passing and aggregation between neighboring nodes in the graph, and successfully updates node embeddings. However, in practical applications, the inherent model structure of the graph is highly susceptible to privacy attacks, and the heterogeneity of external data can lead to a decrease in model performance. Motivated by this challenge, this work proposes a novel framework called Personalized Federated Graph Neural Network for Privacy-Preserving (PFGNN). Specifically, firstly, this work introduces a graph similarity strategy. Based on the principle that clients with similar features exhibit stronger homophily, this work divides all participating clients into multiple clusters for collaborative training. Furthermore, within each group, this work employs an attention mechanism to design a federated aggregation weighting scheme. This scheme is used to construct a global model on the server, which helps mitigate the difficulty of model generalization resulting from data heterogeneity collected from different clients. Lastly, to ensure the privacy of model parameters during the training process and prevent malicious adversaries from stealing them, this work implements privacy-enhancing technology by introducing an optimized function-hiding multi-input function encryption scheme. This ensures the security of both model data and user privacy. Experiments on real datasets show that our scheme outperforms FedAvg in accuracy, and the communication overhead is linearly related to the number of clients. Through this framework, PFGNN can handle all kinds of non-Euclidean structured data, multiple clients collaborate to train high-quality and highly secure global models. This work provides the foundation for designing efficient and privacy-preserving personalized federated graph neural networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breast hemangiomas are rare benign vascular lesions. In a previously performed review of approximately 10,000 breast surgical pathology results, roughly 0.15% (15/~10 000) were hemangiomas. Hemangiomas are more frequent in women and have a documented age distribution of 1.5 to 82 years. They are most often subcutaneous or subdermal and anterior to the anterior mammary fascia but may rarely be seen in the pectoralis muscles or chest wall. On imaging, breast hemangiomas typically present as oval or round masses, often measuring less than 2.5 cm, with circumscribed or mostly circumscribed, focally microlobulated margins, equal or high density on mammography, and variable echogenicity on US. Calcifications, including phleboliths, can be seen. Color Doppler US often shows hypovascularity or avascularity. MRI appearance can vary, although hemangiomas are generally T2 hyperintense and T1 hypointense with variable enhancement. Pathologic findings vary by subtype, which include perilobular, capillary, cavernous, and venous hemangiomas. If core biopsy pathology results are benign, without atypia, and concordant with imaging and clinical findings, surgical excision is not routinely indicated. Because of histopathologic overlap with well-differentiated or low-grade angiosarcomas, surgical excision may be necessary for definitive diagnosis. Findings that are more common with angiosarcomas include size greater than 2 cm, hypervascularity on Doppler US, irregular shape, and invasive growth pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is a prevalent form of lung cancer originating from lung glandular cells with low survival rates despite recent therapeutic advances due to its diverse and complex nature. Recent evidence suggests a link between ferroptosis and the effectiveness of anti-PD-L1 therapy, with potential synergistic effects. Methods: Our study comprehensively analyzed the expression patterns of ferroptosis regulators in LUAD and their association with prognosis and PD-L1 expression. Furthermore, we identified two distinct subtypes of LUAD through consensus clustering of ferroptosis regulators, revealing significant tumor heterogeneity, divergent PD-L1 expression, and varying prognoses between the subtypes. Results: Among the selected ferroptosis regulators, SLC7A11 emerged as an independent prognostic marker for LUAD patients and exhibited a negative correlation with PD-L1 expression. Subsequent investigations revealed high expression of SLC7A11 in the LUAD population. In vitro experiments demonstrated that overexpression of SLC7A11 led to reduced PD-L1 expression and inhibited ferroptosis in A549 cells, underscoring the significant role of SLC7A11 in LUAD. Additionally, pan-cancer analyses indicated an association between SLC7A11 and the expression of immune checkpoint genes across multiple cancer types with poor prognoses. Discussion: From a clinical standpoint, these findings offer a foundation for identifying and optimizing potential combination strategies to enhance the therapeutic effectiveness of immune checkpoint inhibitors and improve the prognosis of patients with LUAD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbohydrate-binding modules (CBMs) are non-catalytic proteins found appended to carbohydrate-active enzymes. Soil and marine bacteria secrete such enzymes to scavenge nutrition, and they often use CBMs to improve reaction rates and retention of released sugars. Here we present a structural and functional analysis of the recently established CBM family 92. All proteins analysed bind preferentially to β−1,6-glucans. This contrasts with the diversity of predicted substrates among the enzymes attached to CBM92 domains. We present crystal structures for two proteins, and confirm by mutagenesis that tryptophan residues permit ligand binding at three distinct functional binding sites on each protein. Multivalent CBM families are uncommon, so the establishment and structural characterisation of CBM92 enriches the classification database and will facilitate functional prediction in future projects. We propose that CBM92 proteins may cross-link polysaccharides in nature, and might have use in novel strategies for enzyme immobilisation. Carbohydrate binding modules (CBMs) are non-catalytic domains found within multi-modular carbohydrate-active enzymes like glycoside hydrolases. Here, the authors show the crystal structures of two CBM family 92 members, which use three different surface binding sites to bind to β-glucans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital economy is playing a crucial effect in the field of environmental governance. Digital and intelligent management is an essential means to fully realize the "zero-waste city" construction. The present paper investigates the impact of digital economy on China's provincial "zero-waste city" construction. The results indicate that digital economy can contribute to "zero-waste city" construction. The digital economy has a positive nonlinear effect on the construction of "zero-waste city," but the marginal effect is diminishing. The digital economy can facilitate "zero-waste city" construction by improving industrial structure upgrading and green technology innovation. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that digital economy contributes to the construction of "zero-waste city" in the eastern and western regions and high-level environmental regulation regions, while this impact is insignificant in the central region and low-level environmental regulation regions. The digital economy exerts the most significant positive influence on waste resource recycling followed by waste final disposal and then waste reduction at the source. These findings underscore the effect of digital economy in fostering "zero-waste city" construction and promoting sustainable waste management. The present study provides new ideas for the "zero-waste city" construction in emerging developing countries such as China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease with complex genetic architecture. Emerging evidence has indicated comorbidity between ALS and autoimmune conditions, suggesting a potential shared genetic basis. The objective of this study is to assess the prognostic value of systematic screening for rare deleterious mutations in genes associated with ALS and aberrant inflammatory responses. Methods: A discovery cohort of 494 patients and a validation cohort of 69 patients were analyzed in this study, with population-matched healthy subjects (n = 4961) served as controls. Whole exome sequencing (WES) was performed to identify rare deleterious variants in 50 ALS genes and 1177 genes associated with abnormal inflammatory responses. Genotype–phenotype correlation was assessed, and an integrative prognostic model incorporating genetic and clinical factors was constructed. Results: In the discovery cohort, 8.1% of patients carried confirmed ALS variants, and an additional 15.2% of patients carried novel ALS variants. Gene burden analysis revealed 303 immune-implicated genes with enriched rare variants, and 13.4% of patients harbored rare deleterious variants in these genes. Patients with ALS variants exhibited a more rapid disease progression (HR 2.87 [95% CI 2.03–4.07], p < 0.0001), while no significant effect was observed for immune-implicated variants. The nomogram model incorporating genetic and clinical information demonstrated improved accuracy in predicting disease outcomes (C-index, 0.749). Conclusion: Our findings enhance the comprehension of the genetic basis of ALS within the Chinese population. It also appears that rare deleterious mutations occurring in immune-implicated genes exert minimal influence on the clinical trajectories of ALS patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ferroptosis is a new form of regulated cell death caused by iron‐dependent accumulation of lethal polyunsaturated phospholipids peroxidation. It has received considerable attention owing to its putative involvement in a wide range of pathophysiological processes such as organ injury, cardiac ischemia/reperfusion, degenerative disease and its prevalence in plants, invertebrates, yeasts, bacteria, and archaea. To counter ferroptosis, living organisms have evolved a myriad of intrinsic efficient defense systems, such as cyst(e)ine‐glutathione‐glutathione peroxidase 4 system (cyst(e)ine‐GPX4 system), guanosine triphosphate cyclohydrolase 1/tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4) system (GCH1/BH4 system), ferroptosis suppressor protein 1/coenzyme Q10 system (FSP1/CoQ10 system), and so forth. Among these, GPX4 serves as the only enzymatic protection system through the reduction of lipid hydroperoxides, while other defense systems ultimately rely on small compounds to scavenge lipid radicals and prevent ferroptotic cell death. In this article, we systematically summarize the chemical biology of lipid radical trapping process by endogenous chemicals, such as coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), BH4, hydropersulfides, vitamin K, vitamin E, 7‐dehydrocholesterol, with the aim of guiding the discovery of novel ferroptosis inhibitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Teriparatide (TPTD) is a widely used anabolic agent for the treatment of osteoporosis. Several factors have been identified to be related to bone mineral density (BMD) increase in anti-osteoporosis treatment with other agents; however, there has been no systematic analysis to summarize the associated determinants of BMD reaction to daily teriparatide treatment. Methods: In this retrospective study, we performed a comprehensive investigation involving not only clinical data but also several relevant lifestyle factors to be examined for their potential contribution to BMD response. This post-hoc analysis included 258 post-menopaused patients with osteoporosis who received TPTD at 20 µg/day for 12 months. Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to distinguish the response variables of lumbar spine (LS) BMD transformation, the principal outcome measure of efficacy, from the baseline at 12 months. Results: Twelve months of TPTD treatment resulted in an absolute 0.39 ± 0.37 increase in T-score of LS BMD. Gastrointestinal disease, prior bisphosphonate or glucocorticoid treatment, no vitamin K2 supplementation, low levels of serum 25(OH)D and PINP, weak increment of PINP and β-CTX at 3 months, unhealthy lifestyle (excessive smoking, tea, coffee, and drinking), vegetarian diet pattern, low ALT level, and high BMD at baseline were determined by univariate analyses to be related to the weak reaction of TPTD treatment (P < 0.10). In the multiple regression model, postmenopausal women with vitamin K2 supplementation, higher baseline serum 25(OH)D level, and higher PINP concentration at 3 months indicated a good reaction of LS BMD at 12 months (P < 0.05). Patients with gastrointestinal disease, prior bisphosphonate and glucocorticoid treatment, vegetarian diet pattern, and higher baseline BMD were significantly more likely to have a lower absolute LS BMD response compared to patients without these characteristics (P < 0.05). Further analysis confirmed the negative effect of unhealthy lifestyle on TPTD treatment. Conclusion: Our results emphasize the significance of a comprehensive assessment of clinical or lifestyle-related characteristics of postmenopausal women with osteoporosis in the management of TPTD therapy in routine care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The range accuracy of single-photon-array three-dimensional (3D) imaging systems is limited by the time resolution of the array detectors. We introduce a method for achieving super-resolution in 3D imaging through sub-bin delayed scanning acquisition and fusion. Its central concept involves the generation of multiple sub-bin difference histograms through sub-bin shifting. Then, these coarse time-resolution histograms are fused with multiplied averages to produce finely time-resolved detailed histograms. Finally, the arrival times of the reflected photons with sub-bin resolution are extracted from the resulting fused high-time-resolution count distribution. Compared with the sub-delayed with the fusion method added, the proposed method performs better in reducing the broadening error caused by coarsened discrete sampling and background noise error. The effectiveness of the proposed method is examined at different target distances, pulse widths, and sub-bin scales. The simulation analytical results indicate that small-scale sub-bin delays contribute to superior reconstruction outcomes for the proposed method. Specifically, implementing a sub-bin temporal resolution delay of a factor of 0.1 for a 100 ps echo pulse width substantially reduces the system ranging error by three orders of magnitude. Furthermore, Monte Carlo simulations allow to describe a low signal-to-background noise ratio (0.05) characterised by sparsely reflected photons. The proposed method demonstrates a commendable capability to simultaneously achieve wide-ranging super-resolution and denoising. This is evidenced by the detailed depth distribution information and substantial reduction of 95.60% in the mean absolute error of the reconstruction results, confirming the effectiveness of the proposed method in noisy scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sodium alginate, as one of natural polymer existing in marine plants, can function as precursor of carbon-based microwave-absorbing materials with the advantages of low cost, easy degradation, and non-toxicity. However, its resultant carbon-based materials suffer from the poor impedance matching and low lossy capacity due to no magnetism and small amount of interface. In this work, CoNi alloy nanoparticles were uniformly located on the surface of carbon nanofibers (CNFs) derived from the sodium alginate fabricated by the electrospinning and solvothermal method to construct the CNFs/CoNi nanocomposites. The results show that CNFs/CoNi nanocomposites have the good absorbing performance, where the minimum RL of − 56.96 dB at a very thin thickness of 1.63 mm and an effective absorption bandwidth of 5.3 GHz (12.7–18 GHz) at a very thin thickness of 1.7 mm are obtained, respectively. The excellent wave-absorbing performance is mainly attributed to the appropriate impedance matching and high attenuation factor. The multilevel interfacial polarization from the interfaces between CoNi nanoparticles and carbon nanofiber makes the main contribution to the wave-absorbing performance at the whole test frequency range, while the natural ferromagnetic resonance of CoNi composition dominates the low frequency range and eddy current loss plays a major role at higher frequency range. This work develops a simple method for designing high-performance microwave-absorbing nanocomposites by using the marine raw materials of sodium alginate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Podophyllotoxin is an aryltetralin lignan lactone derived from different plants of Podophyllum. It consists of five rings with four chiral centers, one trans‐lactone and one aryl tetrahydronaphthalene skeleton with multiple modification sites. Moreover, podophyllotoxin and its derivatives showed lots of bioactivities, including anticancer, anti‐inflammatory, antiviral, and insecticidal properties. The demand for podophyllotoxin and its derivatives is rising as a result of their high efficacy. As a continuation of our previous review (Chem. Eur. J. 2017, 23, 4467–4526), herein, total synthesis, biotransformation, structural modifications, bioactivities, and structure–activity relationships of podophyllotoxin and its derivatives from 2017 to 2022 are summarized. Meanwhile, a piece of update information on the origin of new podophyllotoxin analogues from plants from 2014 to 2022 was compiled. We hope that this review will provide a reference for future high value–added applications of podophyllotoxin and its analogues in the pharmaceutical and agricultural fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graph neural network(GNN) has become one of the research field in the new wave of technological revolution and industrial transformation. High-performance GNN makes full use of structural information, aggregates neighbor information through a message passing mechanism, and finally successfully updates node embeddings, which effectively overcomes the limitations of traditional neural networks. However, in practice, an adversary can use the embedding of nodes to infer information about the architecture and parameters of the GNN model, which poses a potential threat to privacy. To solve this problem, we propose a privacy-preserving vertical federated graph neural network model training framework based on split learning (SVFGNN), an efficient secure gradient computation framework for vertical federated graph neural network models, which can be extended to existing GNN models. Specifically, in the forward propagation process, in order to reduce the client to perform a large number of calculation locally, we employ split learning for device-cloud collaborative training, and apply function-hiding multi-input function encryption technology to protect the parameters uploaded during model training. This solution not only ensures the security of model data and user privacy, but also creates high-precision models and supports lossless training. At the same time, in the process of backward propagation, in order to accurately predict the classification problem of nodes, we need to safely transmit errors and respond to client requests in a timely manner. To achieve this goal, we adopt hybrid encryption technology to realize cloud ciphertext data sharing, which eliminates point-to-point communication between various parties and significantly reduces communication overhead during model training. Compared to state-of-the-art works, our communication overhead scales linearly with the number of clients. Through the optimization of this research, we can better deal with the risk of privacy leakage, and provide a feasible security guarantee for the practical application of vertical federated graph neural network, and promote the development and progress of this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a close relationship between potassium (K) and nitrogen (N). However, the roles of K under high N conditions remain unclear. Using a hydroponics approach, we monitored the morphological, physiological, and molecular changes in M9T337 apple (Malus domestica) rootstocks under different nitrate (10 and 30 mmol•L-1 NO-3) and K supply (0.5, 6, 10, and 20 mmol•L-1 K+) conditions. Results revealed that high nitrate inhibited the root growth of M9T337 rootstocks, downregulated the expressions of K transporter genes (MdPT5, MdHKT1, and MdATK1), and reduced the net NO-3 and K+ influx at the surface of roots, thereby resulting in an N/K imbalance in rootstocks. Further investigation showed that 10 mmol•L-1 K increased the activity of N metabolic enzymes (NR, GS, NiR, and GOGAT), upregulated the expressions of genes related to nitrate uptake and transport (MdNRT1.1, MdNRT1.2, MdNRT1.5, and MdNRT2.4), promoted 15N transport from the roots to the shoots, optimized leaf N distribution, and improved photosynthetic N utilization efficiency under high nitrate conditions. These results suggest that the negative effects of high nitrate may be related to the N/K imbalance and that reducing N/K in plants by increasing K supply level can effectively alleviate the inhibition of N assimilation by high nitrate stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insulin secretion by pancreatic islets plays a vital role in regulating blood glucose levels. Nevertheless, the mechanism responsible for this dynamic insulin secretion has not been completely understood, particularly at the single islet level. In this study, we have successfully developed an easy microfluidic platform that allows for the exploration of dynamic glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS) at the single islet level. With the utilization of this platform, we evaluated dynamic GSIS from single islets isolated from both normal and diabetic rats. Our results demonstrate that islets can be categorized into three types based on their dynamic GSIS: Type I exhibits a biphasic GSIS profile with a fast first phase and flat second phase; Type II also has a biphasic GSIS profile with a fast first phase but a slow increased second phase; Type III displays only a slowly increased second phase and lacks a fast first phase. RNA sequencing analysis demonstrated that the cell type and exocytosis-specific genes are consistent with the proportion of cells and insulin release kinetics among the three types of islets, respectively. Moreover, our findings suggest that high expression of Atp5pb is anti-correlated with the first phase of insulin secretion. Furthermore, we revealed that diabetic islets exhibit only the type I GSIS response, indicating a deliberate impairment of the second phase of insulin secretion. Together, this device serves as a crucial tool in the research field of islets and diabetes, allowing researchers to investigate islet functional heterogeneity and identity at the single islet level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herein, ultrathin silver nanowires (AgNWs) with high aspect ratio have been obtained by a facile one-step polyol method using FeCl3, NaBr, and NaCl as co-nucleants. Firstly, ultralong AgNWs with length in the range of 110–400 μm were synthesized by adjusting the amount of FeCl3. On the basis, NaBr and NaCl were further added to reduce the diameter of the nanowires. Eventually, ultrafine AgNWs with an average diameter in the range of 15–40 nm, length up to 110 µm, and the aspect ratio as high as 3200 have been successfully developed. The nucleation process of nanowires dependent on oxidation etching was revealed by scanning electron microscope (SEM). Flexible transparent conductive film prepared using these AgNWs owned a transmittance about 88% and square resistances of 16.5 Ω/sq. Compared with commercial ITO, transparent conductive films (TCFs) based on these AgNWs have an excellent performance and are expected to become promising candidates for flexible electronic devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) is an emerging infectious disease with increasing incidence and geographic extent. The extent to which global climate change affects the incidence of SFTS disease remains obscure. We use an integrated multi‐model, multi‐scenario framework to assess the impact of global climate change on SFTS disease in China. The spatial distribution of habitat suitability for the tick Haemaphysalis longicornis was predicted by applying a boosted regression tree model under four alternative climate change scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0, and RCP8.5) for the periods 2030–2039, 2050–2059, and 2080–2089. We incorporate the SFTS cases in the mainland of China from 2010 to 2019 with environmental variables and the projected distribution of H. longicornis into a generalized additive model to explore the current and future spatiotemporal dynamics of SFTS. Our results demonstrate an expanded geographic distribution of H. longicornis toward Northern and Northwestern China, showing a more pronounced change under the RCP8.5 scenario. In contrast, the environmental suitability of H. longicornis is predicted to be reduced in Central and Eastern China. The SFTS incidence in three time periods (2030–2039, 2050–2059, and 2080–2089) is predicted to be increased as compared to the 2010s in the context of various RCPs. A heterogeneous trend across provinces, however, was observed, when an increased incidence in Liaoning and Shandong provinces, while decreased incidence in Henan province is predicted. Notably, we predict possible outbreaks in Xinjiang and Yunnan in the future, where only sporadic cases have been reported previously. These findings highlight the need for tick control and population awareness of SFTS in endemic regions, and enhanced monitoring in potential risk areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives Physical resilience (PR) is recognized as the ability to recover from the adverse effects of a stressor. However, there is a lack of consensus on how to optimally measure PR in older adults in general. We aimed to measure PR using residuals from regression analyses and investigated its association with adverse outcomes in older adults. Research Design and Methods A total of 6 508 older adults were included from the National Health and Aging Trends Study, which was a population-based prospective cohort study. PR was assessed using residual methods from a linear model regressing the short physical performance battery on clinical diseases, age, sex, race/ethnicity, and health condition. Adverse outcomes included all-cause mortality, falls, and overnight hospitalization. Results The mean age was 77.48 (7.84) years. Increased PR was associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.85, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.83–0.87). Compared to participants with reduced PR, those with normal PR had a lower risk for mortality (HR = 0.51, 95% CI: 0.46–0.56). Specifically, restricted cubic spline regression revealed a dose–response relationship between PR and all-cause mortality (p -overall <.0001, p -nonlinear =.011). Additionally, we also found significant associations of increased PR with lower risks of falls (HR = 0.98, 95% CI: 0.96–0.99) and overnight hospitalization (HR = 0.98, 95% CI: 0.97–1.00). Discussion and Implications PR, measured by residual methods, was robustly and independently associated with all-cause mortality, falls, and overnight hospitalization. Our findings provide evidence that this approach may be a simple and feasible strategy to assess PR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid hemostasis of uncontrolled bleeding following traumatic injuries, especially accompanied by coagulopathies, remains a significant clinical challenge. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) show therapeutic effects for fast clotting. However, low yield, specific storage conditions, and lack of proper carriers have hindered EVs' clinical application. Herein, we establish an optimized procedure method to generate lyophilized mesenchymal stem cell-derived apoptotic vesicles (apoVs) with adhesive hydrogel sponge to show superior procoagulant activity for traumatic hemorrhage. Mechanistically, apoVs' procoagulant ability stems from their high tissue factor (TF) and phosphatidylserine (PS) expression independent of hemocytes and circulating procoagulant microparticles (cMPs). Their stable hemostatic capability was maintained after 2-month room temperature storage. Subsequently, we mixed apoVs with both phenylboronic acid grafted oxidized hyaluronic acid (PBA-HA) and poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) simultaneously, followed by lyophilization to construct a novel apoV-encapsulated hydrogel sponge (apoV-HS). Compared to commercial hemostats, apoV-HS exhibits rapid procoagulant ability in liver-laceration and femoral artery hemorrhage in rat and rabbit models of coagulopathies. The combination of high productivity, physiological stability, injectability, plasticity, excellent adhesivity, biocompatibility, and rapid coagulant property indicates that apoV-HS is a promising therapeutic approach for heavy hemorrhage in civilian and military populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solving arithmetic word problems that entail deep implicit relations is still a challenging problem. However, significant progress has been made in solving Arithmetic Word Problems (AWP) over the past six decades. This paper proposes to discover deep implicit relations by qualia inference to solve Arithmetic Word Problems entailing Deep Implicit Relations (DIR-AWP), such as entailing commonsense or subject-domain knowledge involved in the problem-solving process. This paper proposes to take three steps to solve DIR-AWPs, in which the first three steps are used to conduct the qualia inference process. The first step uses the prepared set of qualia-quantity models to identify qualia scenes from the explicit relations extracted by the Syntax-Semantic (S²) method from the given problem. The second step adds missing entities and deep implicit relations in order using the identified qualia scenes and the qualia-quantity models, respectively. The third step distills the relations for solving the given problem by pruning the spare branches of the qualia dependency graph of all the acquired relations. The research contributes to the field by presenting a comprehensive approach combining explicit and implicit knowledge to enhance reasoning abilities. The experimental results on Math23K demonstrate hat the proposed algorithm is superior to the baseline algorithms in solving AWPs requiring deep implicit relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) is listed as a priority pathogen by the World Health Organization (WHO) because it causes serious and fatal disease in humans, and there are currently no effective countermeasures. Therefore, it is urgent to develop a safe and efficacious vaccine. Here, we developed six nucleotide-modified mRNA vaccines encoding different regions of the Gn and Gc proteins of RVFV encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles, compared their ability to induce immune responses in mice and found that mRNA vaccine encoding the full-length Gn and Gc proteins had the strongest ability to induce cellular and humoral immune responses. IFNAR(−/−) mice vaccinated with mRNA-GnGc were protected from lethal RVFV challenge. In addition, mRNA-GnGc induced high levels of neutralizing antibodies and cellular responses in rhesus macaques, as well as antigen-specific memory B cells. These data demonstrated that mRNA-GnGc is a potent and promising vaccine candidate for RVFV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION: Motoric cognitive risk syndrome (MCR) is a predementia syndrome that is characterized by cognitive complaints and slow gait. Cardiometabolic multimorbidity (CMM) is associated with an increased risk of dementia. However, the relationship between CMM and MCR is still unclear. METHODS: We included 4744 participants (aged 65+ years) without MCR at baseline from the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), who were followed‐up from 2011 to 2018. CMM was defined as the presence of two or more cardiometabolic diseases (including diabetes mellitus, heart disease, and stroke). RESULTS: CMM was significantly associated with an increased risk of MCR (hazard ratio [HR] 1.41, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.13–1.75) in fully adjusted models. Consistent results were observed from stratified analyses of different subgroups. Increasing numbers of cardiometabolic diseases were dose‐dependently associated with increased MCR risk (HR 1.33, 95% CI 1.20–1.48). DISCUSSION: CMM is associated with an increased risk of MCR in older adults. HIGHLIGHTS: Motoric cognitive risk syndrome (MCR) is a predementia syndrome characterized by slow gait speed and cognitive complaints.Cardiometabolic multimorbidity was associated with an increased MCR risk.An increased number of cardiometabolic diseases were dose‐dependently associated with increased MCR risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solving arithmetic word problems (AWPs) that involve deep implicit relations can be quite challenging. However, the paper proposed two approaches to tackle this issue. The first approach used the modifier-to-matrix (MTM) model to extract noun modification components from the problem text. Specifically, a missing entity recovery (MER) model translated explicit expressions into a node dependency graph (NDG). The nodes on the graph then recursively acquired connections from the knowledge base through the MER model until the goal was achieved with a known quantity. The solving engine then selected the appropriate knowledge as the prompt. The second approach proposed in the paper was a comprehensive one that combined explicit and implicit knowledge to enhance reasoning abilities. The experimental results of the dataset demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is superior to the baseline algorithms in solving AWPs that require deep implicit relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the traces of conformal twisted signature operators and noncommutative residue for compact manifolds with boundary are considered, the classic gravity representation for manifolds with boundary associated with conformal twisted signature operators and Kastler–Kalau–Walze-type theorems is explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address the problem that the features extracted by CNN‐based facial expression recognition (FER) do not consider structural information, a region adaptive correlation deep network (RACN) is proposed. The network consists of two branches. In one branch, the features obtained by applying CNN to facial sub‐blocks are used as the input of the proposed second‐order region correlation network (SRCN), which obtains structural features by adaptively learning the correlation of facial regions. Furthermore, they are fused with the parallel branch‐extracted global features to obtain a comprehensive high‐semantic feature representation. Finally, weights are assigned to the two features through the channel attention mechanism for more accurate expression classification. Experimental results show that our method can effectively extract expression features in an end‐to‐end manner, improve the accuracy of FER, and achieve competitive performance without relying on any a priori knowledge. And the region‐adaptive correlation feature extraction branch RACN can be applied to other deep learning networks to extract discriminative structural‐adaptive features. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first to enrich the feature representation for end‐to‐end static FER by adaptively obtaining more discriminative regional adaptive correlation feature vectors via the autocorrelation matrix combined with CNN compared to the existing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, amount of evidence suggests that silibinin (SLB), an active constituent isolated from the seeds of Silybum marianum, possesses pleiotropic anticancer effects in different cancers. In this study, poly (lactic-coglycolic acid) (PLGA) polymer was used to fabricate SLB containing nanofibers (NFs) by the electrospinning method. The NFs were characterized by their unique morphological features, degradation rate, and drug release profile. The cytotoxic effects, production of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS), and the gene expression of apoptotic proteins were investigated in A549 human lung adenocarcinoma cells and normal human lung epithelial cell line (BEAS-2B cells) treated with free SLB and SLB-loaded PLGA NFs. The results indicated that both free SLB and SLBloaded NFs had no effect on BEAS-2B cells, but were cytotoxic against A549 cells, increasing intracellular ROS levels in cancer cells. In addition, both agents induced the gene expression of apoptotic proteins, and the SLB-loaded NFs acted more efficiently than the free SLB. With further study, hence, the SLB-loaded NFs could be potentially used as an anti-cancer agent against human lung adenocarcinoma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new gold(I) self-relay catalysis reaction enabling the annulative oxygenation of propargylic alcohols with various O-nucleophiles, such as carboxylic acids, alcohols and TBHP, is reported, producing a series of functionalized benzofurans in moderate to good yields under mild conditions. This protocol benefits from the π- and σ-Lewis acid capability of gold complexes, demonstrating high molecular convergence, broad substrate flexibility, high functional group compatibility and mild conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graph Neural Network (GNN) architecture is a state-of-the-art model, which can obtain complete node embedding features and rich data information by aggregating the information of nodes and neighbors. Therefore, GNNs are widely used in electronic shopping, drug discovery (especially for the treatment of COVID-19) and other fields, promoting the explosive development of machine learning. However, user interaction, data sharing and circulation are highly sensitive to privacy, and centralized storage can lead to data isolation. Therefore, Federated Learning with high efficiency and strong security and privacy enhancement technology based on secure aggregation can improve the security dilemma faced by GNN. In this paper, we propose an Efficient Secure Aggregation for Federated Graph Neural Network(ESA-FedGNN), which can efficiently reduce the cost of communication and avoid computational redundancy while ensuring data privacy. Firstly, a novel secret sharing scheme based on numerical analysis is proposed, which employs Fast Fourier Transform to improve the computational power of the neural network in sharing phase, and leverages Newton Interpolation method to deal with the disconnection and loss of the client in reconstruction phase. Secondly, a regular graph embedding based on geometric distribution is proposed, which optimizes the aggregation speed by using data parallelism. Finally, a double mask is adopted to ensure privacy and prevent malicious adversaries from stealing model parameters. We achieve O (log N log (log N)) improvements compared to O N 2 in state-of-the-art works. This research helps to provide security solutions related to the practical development and application of privacy-preserving graph neural network technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a potential producer of prebiotics, a novel endo-polygalacturonase pePGA from Penicillium rolfsii BM-6, was successfully expressed in Komagataella phaffii, characterized and applied to produce pectic oligosaccharides. The optimum temperature and pH of pePGA were 60 °C and 6.0. The purified recombinant enzyme showed a good pH stability and was stable from pH 3.5 to 8.0. The Km, Vmax and kcat values of pePGA were 0.1569 g/L, 12,273 μmol/min/mg and 7478.4 s−1, respectively. More importantly, pePGA-POS, the pePGA hydrolysis products from commercial pectin, had good prebiotic and antibacterial activities in vitro. The pePGA-POS was able to significantly promote the growth of probiotics; meanwhile, the growth of Escherichia coli JM109, Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus subtilis 168 was effectively inhibited by pePGA-POS. In addition, pePGA-POS also had the DPPH radical scavenging capacity. These properties of pePGA-POS make pePGA attractive for the production of prebiotics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

GPUs are widely used to accelerate the training of machine learning workloads. As modern machine learning models become increasingly larger, they require a longer time to train, leading to higher GPU energy consumption. This paper presents GPOEO, an online GPU energy optimization framework for machine learning training workloads. GPOEO dynamically determines the optimal energy configuration by employing novel techniques for online measurement, multi-objective prediction modeling, and search optimization. To characterize the target workload behavior, GPOEO utilizes GPU performance counters. To reduce the performance counter profiling overhead, it uses an analytical model to detect the training iteration change and only collects performance counter data when an iteration shift is detected. GPOEO employs multi-objective models based on gradient boosting and a local search algorithm to find a trade-off between execution time and energy consumption. We evaluate the GPOEO by applying it to 71 machine learning workloads from two AI benchmark suites running on an NVIDIA RTX3080Ti GPU. Compared with the NVIDIA default scheduling strategy, GPOEO delivers a mean energy saving of 16.2% with a modest average execution time increase of 5.1%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and aim: A decreased estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) is associated with frailty, but the association between kidney function and frailty using multidimensional assessments has not been entirely examined. We aimed to investigate whether albuminuria and the eGFR using different biomarkers were associated with frailty. Methods: A total of 1830 older adults were included. Kidney function was assessed by the eGFR (based on combined creatinine-cystatin C [eGFRcr-cys]) and β2-microglobulin [eGFRB2M]) and urine albumin-creatinine ratio (UACR). Frailty was measured by the Fried phenotype (FP) and frailty index (FI). Logistic regression models were used to investigate cross-sectional and longitudinal associations of baseline kidney measures with prevalent and incident frailty. Results: At baseline, kidney function was associated with prevalent frailty. During the 2-year follow-up, a decreased eGFR (per 10 units) was associated with an increased risk of incident frailty using the FP (eGFRcr-cys: OR 1.18, 95% CI 1.03–1.35; eGFRB2M: OR 1.14, 95% CI 1.02–1.29, respectively) and FI (eGFRB2M: OR 1.18, 95% CI 1.04–1.65). An increased logUACR was associated with a higher risk of incident frailty using the FP (OR 1.18, 95% CI 1.03–1.35). Additionally, individuals with chronic kidney disease (CKD) had a higher risk of incident frailty using the FP (eGFRcr-cys: OR 2.13, 95% CI 1.28–3.47; eGFRB2M: OR 1.58, 95% CI 1.10–2.29, respectively) and FI (eGFRcr-cys: OR 1.97, 95% CI 1.15–3.32; eGFRB2M: OR 1.51, 95% CI 1.03–2.24, respectively). Conclusion: Kidney function decline and CKD were associated with an increased risk of prevalent and incident frailty in older adults. Physicians should pay more attention to monitoring frailty status in older adults with CKD, even in those with kidney function decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dehydroabietic acid is a tricyclic diterpenoid resin acid isolated from rosin. Dehydroabietic acid and its derivatives showed lots of medical and agricultural bioactivities, such as anticancer, antibacterial, antiviral, antiulcer, insecticidal, and herbicidal activities. This review summarized the research advances on the structural modification and total synthesis of dehydroabietic acid and its derivatives from 2015 to 2021, and analyzed the biotransformation and structure-activity relationships in order to provide a reference for the development and utilization of dehydroabietic acid and its derivatives as drugs and pesticides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Compound Turkish gall ointment (CTGO) has a long history of being widely used as a folk medicine in Xinjiang for the treatment of eczema. CTGO is currently in the pre-investigational new drug application stage, but its pharmacological mechanisms of action have not yet been clarified. Methods: First, a sensitive and reliable ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-Q exactive hybrid quadrupole-orbitrap high-resolution accurate mass spectrometry (UHPLC-Q-Orbitrap HRMS) technique was established. Second, an integrative strategy of network analysis and molecular docking based on identified and retrieved ingredients was implemented to investigate the potential targets and pathways involved in the treatment of eczema with CTGO. Finally, Sprague–Dawley (SD) rats with eczema were prepared to verify the predicted results. The skin conditions of the rats were observed, evaluated, and scored. Skin tissues were observed by hematoxylin–eosin (HE) staining, and the levels of serum interferon-γ (IFN-γ) and interleukin-4 (IL-4) were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The expression levels of toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), nuclear factor kappa-B p65 (NF-κB p65), interleukin-1β (IL-1β), and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) were detected by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). Results: A total of 29 compounds were identified. We found 38 active components and 58 targets for the treatment of eczema, which included 118 signaling pathways related to inflammation, immunity, and apoptosis. CTGO significantly improved the skin surface and histopathological characteristics of eczema-affected rats, downregulated the expression of IL-4, TLR4, NF-κB (p65), IL-1β, and TNF-α, and upregulated the expression level of IFN-γ. Conclusion: We predicted and validated our prediction that CTGO may be used to treat eczema by affecting the TLR4/NF-κB signaling pathway, which provides guidance for future experimental studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The realization of high‐quality heterostructures or hybrids of graphene and superconductor is crucial for exploring various novel quantum phenomena and devices engineering. Here, the electronic transport on directly grown high‐quality graphene/Mo2C vertical heterostructures with clean and sharp interface is comprehensively investigated. Owing to the strong interface coupling, the graphene layer feels an effective confinement potential well imposed by two‐dimensional (2D) Mo2C crystal. Employing cross junction device geometry, a series of resonance‐like magnetoresistance peaks are observed at low temperatures. The temperature and gate voltage dependences of the observed resonance peaks give evidence for geometric resonance of electron cyclotron orbits with the formed potential well. Moreover, it is found that both the amplitude of resonance peaks and conductance fluctuation exhibit different temperature‐dependent behaviors below the superconducting transition temperature of 2D Mo2C, indicating the correlation of quantum fluctuations and superconductivity. This study offers a promising route toward integrating graphene with 2D superconducting materials, and establishes a new way to investigate the interplay of massless Dirac fermion and superconductivity based on graphene/2D superconductor vertical heterostructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new compound, exophilone (1), together with nine known compounds (2–10), were isolated from a deep-sea-derived fungus, Exophiala oligosperma. Their chemical structures, including the absolute configuration of 1, were elucidated using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, high-resolution electrospray ionization mass spectroscopy (HRESIMS), and electronic circular dichroism (ECD) calculation. Compounds were preliminarily screened for their ability to inhibit collagen accumulation. Compounds 1, 4, and 7 showed weaker inhibition of TGF-β1-induced total collagen accumulation in compared with pirfenidone (73.14% inhibition rate). However, pirfenidone exhibited cytotoxicity (77.57% survival rate), while compounds 1, 4, and 7 showed low cytotoxicity against the HFL1 cell line. Particularly, exophilone (1) showed moderate collagen deposition inhibition effect (60.44% inhibition rate) and low toxicity in HFL1 cells (98.14% survival rate) at a concentration of 10 μM. A molecular docking study suggests that exophilone (1) binds to both TGF-β1 and its receptor through hydrogen bonding interactions. Thus, exophilone (1) was identified as a promising anti-pulmonary fibrosis agent. It has the potential to be developed as a drug candidate for pulmonary fibrosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]