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As a cell proliferation regulator involved in wide biological processes in plants, GRF-INTERACTING FACTOR (GIF) controls different tissues development. However, whether GIF participates in fruit development remains unclear. According to transcriptome data, we identified PbGIF1 was highly expressed during fruit development in cytokinins induced parthenocarpy pear. In the present study, the biofunction of PbGIF1 was initially verified. Overexpression of PbGIF1 promoted fruit size of transgenic tomato. The size of flesh fruit was not affected by cell expansion but the cell proliferation was promoted by overexpressing PbGIF1. The accelerated cell proliferation process was also observed in PbGIF1-overexpressed transgenic pear fruit calli. The transcriptional regulation of cytokinins on PbGIF1 was further confirmed by exogenous CPPU treatments in pear fruitlets. To investigate the underlying mechanism, the cytokinins-responded factor, PbRR1, was further focused on. The results of Yeast-one-hybrid assay suggested that PbRR1 can bind to the promoter sequence of PbGIF1. The transcriptional activation of PbRR1 on PbGIF1 was also confirmed by Dual-Luciferase assays. Taken together, the results showed that cytokinins control pear fruit development via the transcriptional activation of PbGIF1 by PbRR1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The blue osmotic energy harvesting based on the nanofiber-based layered membranes has received tremendous attention. However, the most nanofiber-based ion-selective membranes are suffering from uneconomical, environmentally unfriendly characteristics and a long growth cycle, as well as insufficient power density. In this work, kelp cellulose nanofibers (KCNFs) from green and inexpensive kelp with short growth cycle are compounded with hydrophilic MXene nanosheets to prepare KCNF/MXene nanofluidic membranes. Notably, the KCNF/MXene-40 (40 is the mass fraction of KCNF) membrane with an aligned nacre-like nanostructure achieves 3.03-fold increase in mechanical strength compared to the pure MXene membrane. The ingenious combination of the surface charge of the MXene nanosheets and the space charge formed by negatively charged KCNFs endows the KCNF/MXene-40 membrane with enhanced cation selectivity (≈0.85), high energy conversion efficiency of 24.04% and high power density of 66.23 W m[sup -2] in a 500-fold concentration gradient, which has exceeded most reported state-of-the-art 2D nanofluidic membranes. More importantly, the membrane exhibits the exceptional long-term stability with relatively unchanged power density within 6000 s. Under the conditions of the natural seawater and simulated river water, the KCNF/MXene-based generator deliveries an output power density of ≈10.56 W m[sup -2]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This research aims to investigate whether peripheral biomarkers might differentiate individuals with Tourette syndrome (TS) from those without the condition. Methods: A broad range of databases was searched through November 2022. This study employed a systematic literature review and subsequent meta-analysis of case-control studies that assessed the aberration of biomarkers of patients with TS and controls. Results: A total of 81 studies were identified, out of which 60 met the eligibility criteria for inclusion in the meta-analysis. Following a meticulous screening procedure to determine the feasibility of incorporating case-control studies into the meta-analysis, 13 comparisons were statistically significant [CD3+ T cell, CD4+ T cell, CD4+ T cell to CD8+ T cell ratio, NK-cell, anti-streptolysin O antibodies, anti-DNase antibodies, glutamic acid (Glu), aspartic acid (Asp), ferritin (Fe), zinc (Zn), lead (Pb), vitamin D, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)]. Publication bias was found for anti-streptolysin O antibodies. Suggestive associations were evidenced for norsalsolinol (NSAL), neuronspecific enolase (NSE), and S100B. Conclusion: In this study, we present empirical evidence substantiating the link between several peripheral biomarkers and the early diagnosis of TS. Larger and more standardized studies are necessary to replicate the observed results, elucidate the specificity of the biomarkers for TS, and evaluate their precision for use in clinical settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the exponential growth of network resources, recommendation systems have become successful at combating information overload. In intelligent recommendation systems, the prediction of click-through rates (CTR) plays a crucial role. Most CTR models employ a parallel network architecture to successfully capture explicit and implicit feature interactions. However, the existing models ignore two aspects. One limitation observed in most models is that they focus only on the interaction of paired term features, with no emphasis on modeling unary terms. The second issue is that most models input characteristics indiscriminately into parallel networks, resulting in network input oversharing. We propose a disentangled self-attention neural network based on information sharing (DSAN) for CTR prediction to simulate complex feature interactions. Firstly, an embedding layer transforms high-dimensional sparse features into low-dimensional dense matrices. Then, the disentangled multi-head self-attention learns the relationship between different features and is fed into a parallel network architecture. Finally, we set up a shared interaction layer to solve the problem of insufficient information sharing in parallel networks. Results from experiments conducted on two real-world datasets demonstrate that our proposed method surpasses existing methods in predictive accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to predict the 5-year overall survival (OS) benefit of pola-R-CHP versus R-CHOP in the POLARIX trial based on the 2-year event-free survival (EFS) and progression-free survival (PFS) rates in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). We identified randomized controlled trials (RCT) published before 31 May 2023. The correlation between the logarithmic (log) hazard ratio (HR) for EFS (HREFS) or PFS (HRPFS) and the HR for OS (HROS) was estimated at the triallevel. Correlation analysis was performed between 2-year PFS or EFS and 5-year OS rates at the treatment arm-level. Linear regression models were used to calculate the 5-year OS of pola-R-CHP and R-CHOP. In the included 20 RCTs, a linear correlation between HREFS (r=0.765) or HRPFS (r=0.534) and HROS was observed at the trial- level. Two-year EFS (r=0.918) or 2-year PFS (r=0.865) correlated linearly with 5-year OS. Linear regression analysis between 2-year EFS/PFS and 5-year OS gave estimated 5-year OS rates between pola-R-CHP and R-CHOP of 6.4% and 6.3%, respectively. Two-year EFS and PFS are feasible early endpoints in patients with DLBCL treated primarily with immunochemotherapy. The polaR-CHP regimen is expected to improve 5-year OS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional deep learning-based strategies for sentiment analysis rely heavily on large-scale labeled datasets for model training, but these methods become less effective when dealing with small-scale datasets. Fine-tuning large pre-trained models on small datasets is currently the most commonly adopted approach to tackle this issue. Recently, prompt-based learning has gained significant attention as a promising research area. Although prompt-based learning has the potential to address data scarcity problems by utilizing prompts to reformulate downstream tasks, the current prompt-based methods for few-shot sentiment analysis are still considered inefficient. To tackle this challenge, an adaptive prompt-based learning method is proposed, which includes two aspects. Firstly, an adaptive prompting construction strategy is proposed, which can capture the semantic information of texts by utilizing a dot-product attention structure, improving the quality of the prompt templates. Secondly, contrastive learning is applied to the implicit word vectors obtained twice during the training stage to alleviate over-fitting in few-shot learning processes. This improves the generalization ability of the model by achieving data enhancement while keeping the semantic information of input sentences unchanged. Experimental results on the ERPSTMT datasets of FewCLUE demonstrate that the proposed method have great ability to construct suitable adaptive prompts and outperforms the state-of-the-art baselines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The marbling fat regulates the flavor of mutton and measures the fat density in the loin eye and is the most important parameter of carcass grading. The objective of this study was to explore the relationship of rumen microbiota and mutton marbling grade. One hundred and eighty-seven feedlot-finished Hu male lambs (Age: 180 day; Final BW: 46.32 ± 6.03 kg) were slaughtered, and ruminal contents and marbling grade were collected. Ruminal microbial DNA extraction and 16S rRNA gene sequencing was performed to investigate microbial composition and to predict microbial metabolic pathways. The animal cohort was then grouped based on marbling grades [low marbling (LM), marbling grade ≤ 1; Medium marbling (MM), 1 < marbling grade ≤ 3; High Marbling (HM), 3 < marbling grade ≤ 5] and intramuscular fat-associated microorganisms were pinpointed using LEfSe and random forest classification model. Intramuscular fat content had significantly differences among the three groups (P < 0.05), and was significantly correlated with VFAs profiling. HM sheep showed a higher abundance of one bacterial taxon (Kandleria), and two taxa were overrepresented in the MM sheep (Pseudobutyrivibrio and Monoglobus), respectively. In addition, the main intramuscular fat deposition pathway was found to involve peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) fatty acid synthesis. By studying the effect of the ruminal microbiome on the marbling of sheep, the present study provides insights into the production of high-quality mutton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of ecological discourse can reflect the relationship between language and environmental issues. According to Systemic-Functional Linguistics, language is not only a means of action but also a means of reflection. This study aims to use systemic functional linguistics to analyze Chinese President Xi Jinping's ecological view based on the book Xi Jinping's Comments on Socialism Ecological Construction (Abstract) from the perspective of transitivity, hoping to raise people's ecological consciousness, and lead them to act ecologically and think ecologically in their daily life to protect our precious earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecological discourse analysis could reflect the relationship between language and environmental issues and awake people's consciousness to protect our earth. According to Systemic-Functional linguistics, language is not only a means of action but also a means of reflection. This study aims to use Systemic-Functional linguistics to analyze the United Nation's general-secretary's remarks on climate change and reveal the ecological ideologies from the perspective of Ecolinguistics, appealing for people's ecological values, and lead them to act ecologically and think ecologically (Huang Guowen, 2016) in their daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The red color of fruit is an attractive plant trait for consumers. Plants with color-faded fruit have a lower commercial value, such as 'Red Bartlett' pears (Pyrus communis L.) that have dark-red fruit in the early stages of fruit development that subsequently fade to red-green at maturity. To identify the reason for color fading, we first analyzed the anthocyanin content of peel from 'Red Bartlett,' which displays the color fading phenomenon, and 'Starkrimson,' which has no color fading. Results showed that the anthocyanin content of 'Red Bartlett' peel decreased significantly late in fruit development, while in 'Starkrimson' there was no significant decrease. Next, RNASequencing was used to identify 947 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between 'Red Bartlett' and 'Starkrimson.' Among them, 471 genes were upregulated and 476 genes were downregulated in 'Red Bartlett' at the late development stage relative to 'Starkrimson.' During 'Red Bartlett' color fading, the structural gene LDOX and six GST family genes were downregulated, while FLS, LAC, POD, and five lightresponding genes were significantly upregulated. Additionally, 45 genes encoding transcription factors MYB, bHLH, WRKY, NAC, ERF, and zinc finger were identified among 947 DEGs. Changes in the expression of these genes may be responsible for the decrease in anthocyanin accumulation in 'Red Bartlett' fruit. Taken together, this study demonstrated that color fading of 'Red Bartlett' was closely linked to reduced anthocyanin biosynthesis, increased anthocyanin degradation and suppression of anthocyanin transport. It also provided novel evidence for the involvement of light signals in the color fading of red-skinned pears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bleached kraft pulp of hardwood was pretreated in a NaOH-thiourea aqueous solution to modify the bulk and softness of the cellulose fibers with minimal reduction in paper strength. The effects of soaking time, fiber concentration, alkali dosage, and freezing time were evaluated through single factor experiments. The optimal conditions were determined to be a soaking time of 15 min, fiber concentration of 15%, alkali dosage of 9%, and freezing time of 75 min. Under the optimal conditions, the bulk and softness of the treated cellulose fibers were increased by 28.7% and 21.6%, respectively, compared with those of untreated cellulose fibers. The tensile and burst indices were only reduced by 1.2% and 5.1%, respectively, under these conditions. Also, there were almost no effects on the polymerization degree, the thermostability, and the structure of the functional groups or crystalline regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flavonoid compounds play important roles in the modern diet, and pear fruits are an excellent dietary source of these metabolites. However, information on the regulatory network of flavonoid biosynthesis in pear fruits is rare. In this work, 18 putative flavonoid-related MYB transcription factors (TFs) were screened by phylogenetic analysis and four of them were correlated with flavonoid biosynthesis patterns in pear fruits. Among these MYB-like genes, the specific functions of two novel MYB TFs, designated as PbMYB10b and PbMYB9, were further verified by both overexpression and RNAi transient assays. PbMYB10b, a PAP-type MYB TF with atypical motifs in its conserved region, regulated the anthocyanin and proanthocyanidin pathways by inducing the expression of PbDFR, but its function could be complemented by other MYB TFs. PbMYB9, a TT2-type MYB, not only acted as the specific activator of the proanthocyanidin pathway by activating the PbANR promoter, but also induced the synthesis of anthocyanins and flavonols by binding the PbUFGT1 promoter in pear fruits. The MYBCORE-like element has been identified in both the PbUFGT1 promoter and ANR promoters in most species, but it was not found in UFGT promoters isolated from other species. This finding was also supported by a yeast one-hybrid assay and thus enhanced the likelihood of the interaction between PbMYB9 and the PbUFGT1 promoter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To reduce the refining energy consumption of chemi-mechanical pulping, treatment with NaOH-thiourea-urea aqueous solution was studied in this work. By means of single-factor experiments, the effects of alkali dosage, soaking time, and freezing time were evaluated. It was found that the optimal conditions were an alkali dosage of 8%, soaking time of 45 min, and freezing time of 105 min. The results revealed that refining energy consumption could be reduced by approximately 40% under optimal conditions compared with that of alkaline peroxide mechanical pulp, while other pulping or paper-making properties were similar. There were no significant effects on the structure of the functional groups, the crystalline region of the pulp, or the whole structure of the treated wood chips. However, damage to single wood fibers on the chips treated in NaOHthiourea- urea aqueous solution was more obvious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, wet strength paper was prepared from quantitative filter paper pretreated with NaOH-thiourea-urea aqueous solution. The effects of alkali concentration, soaking time, freezing time, and washing time were evaluated through single factor experiments. The optimum conditions were found to be an alkali concentration of 8%, soaking time of 2 seconds, freezing time of 15 minutes, and washing time of 10 minutes. Under these conditions, the wet tensile strength of the modified paper could be increased to 33% of the dry tensile strength and 400% of the wet tensile strength of the body paper. Also, the wet burst strength could be improved to 200% of the dry burst strength and 2400% of the wet burst strength of the body paper. However, there were no significant effects on the structure of the functional groups or crystalline region. Also, there was no toxic material released during the treatment, and the treatment solution was recyclable and environmentally friendly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to examine how home institutions moderate the influence of internationalization, and the effect this has on the performance of stock-listed Chinese firms. Design/methodology/approach -- A sample of 118 stock-listed Chinese firms over the period 2006-2011 was considered, using the panel data method. Findings -- The results show that foreign ownership and region-specific marketization help firms reap the performance benefits of internationalization, while state ownership plays an insignificant role. Research limitations/implications -- The findings may not hold for unlisted firms, service firms or firms from other emerging economies. Practical implications -- The study suggests that Chinese managers should take advantage of home country institutions to improve the effects of internationalization on performance. Originality/value -- This research suggests that the analysis of the performance consequences of internationalization should go beyond the nexus between internationalization and performance, and also consider the home institutional factors that may facilitate or constrain the focal relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, the thermomechanical pulp of Pinus massoniana was pretreated with a NaOH/thiourea/urea aqueous solution to promote fiber bonded area and to increase paper strength. The effects of pulp concentration, alkali dosage, dipping time, and freezing time were evaluated through single factor experiments. The optimum conditions were found to be 15% pulp consistency, 8% NaOH, a dipping time of 15 min, and a freezing time of 60 min. Under these conditions, the paper tensile and burst index of treated pulp increased nearly 100%, and the bulk also was reduced by 10%, but there were no significant effects on folding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally the difference between the band compression mechanisms of plasmonic gratings and plasmonic heterogratings. The plasmonic grating can pick out a fixed polarization bandwidth with changing the incidence angle, while the plasmonic heterograting composed of two different nanogratings can pick out a tunable bandwidth with changing the incidence angle and the period ratio of two gratings. The range of the plasmonic resonances of the heterograting is about 30% wider than that of a conventional grating. Thus, the plasmonic heterograting can work efficiently in a wider wavelength range. Moreover, high polarization extinction ratio is achieved in these plasmonic devices. This gives more insights into the mechanisms in plasmonic filters and is helpful to promote the actual applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hierarchical MnO2 nanostructures were prepared through the reaction between KMnO4 and oleic acid at room temperature in the surfactant-free microemulsion system. The obtained samples were characterized by powder X-ray diffraction, N2 adsorption, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. The results indicated that the flowerlike nanospheres were threedimensional (3D) porous microstructures consisting of nanoplates. The surface area of the sample was 171.5 m2/g and the distribution of pore diameter lay within the range of 5-15 nm. The prepared hierarchically structured MnO2 showed excellent adsorption capacity and rapid adsorption rate for methylene blue ions in water. The maximum adsorption capacity of methylene blue was as high as 273.9 mg/g and 97.5% of the dye was removed within initial 5 min of contact time. Compared with other adsorbents, the synthesized hierarchical MnO2 nanostructures displayed a faster adsorption rate and higher adsorption capacity, which implied potential application for removing dye pollutants from waste water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SiC nanobelts have been synthesized by a reaction of Si and CNTS without catalysts using the simple evaporation method. The nanobelts display a unique bicrystalline structure that has growth directions, i.e. and , splitting along the twin boundary that exists at the centreline. The width of the nanobelts is in the range of 100-200?nm, the thickness ranging from 10 to 20?nm and their lengths are up to several tens of micrometres. The growth of bicrystalline SiC nanobelts follows the vapour-solid process. The photoluminescence spectrum of bicrystalline SiC nanobelts at room temperature shows a strong emission peak centred at 418?nm with a weak broad emission, based on which a possible emission mechanism is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]