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Abstract Increasing the spectrum and time utilization rate is the goal of the next wireless communication networks. This work studies the outage performance of the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided integrated satellite duplex unmanned-aerial-vehicle relay terrestrial networks. Especially, the RIS is installed in the tall building to enhance the communication. To further increase the time utilization rate, the duplex unmanned aerial vehicle is utilized to enhance the time utilization efficiency. However, owing to the practical reasons, the imperfect hardware and co-channel interference are further researched in this paper. Particularly, the accurate expression for the outage probability (OP) is gotten to confirm the effects of RIS parameters, channel parameters and imperfect hardware on the considered network. To gain more insights of the OP at high signal-to-noise ratios, the asymptotic analysis for the OP is derived. Finally, some Monte Carlo simulations are provided to verify the rightness of the theoretical analysis. The simulations indicate that the OP is mainly judged by the satellite transmission link. The results also indicate that although RIS can enhance the system performance, the system performance is not decided by RIS.

The NLRP3 inflammasome serves as a host defense mechanism against various pathogens, but there is growing evidence linking its activation in sterile condition to diverse inflammatory diseases. Therefore, the identification of specific inhibitors that target NLRP3 inflammasome activation is meaningful and important for novel therapies for NLRP3 inflammasome-associated diseases. In this study, we identified a chemical compound, namely ODZ10117 (ODZ), that showed NLRP3 inflammasome-targeting anti-inflammatory effects during the screening of a chemical library for anti-inflammatory activity. Although ODZ was initially discovered as a STAT3 inhibitor, here we found it also has inhibitory activity on NLRP3 inflammasome activation. ODZ inhibited the cleavage of caspase-1 and IL-1β-induced canonical NLRP3 inflammasome triggers, but had no effect on those induced by AIM2 or NLRC4 triggers. Mechanistically, ODZ impairs NLRP3 inflammasome activation through the inhibition of NLRP3–NEK7 interaction that is required for inflammasome formation. Moreover, the results obtained from the in silico docking experiment suggested that ODZ targets NLRP3 protein, which provides evidence for the specificity of ODZ to the NLRP3 inflammasome. Furthermore, ODZ administration significantly reduced MSU-induced IL-1β release and the mortality rate of mice with LPS-induced sepsis. Collectively, these results demonstrate a novel effect of ODZ10117 in regulating NLRP3 inflammasome activation both in vitro and in vivo, making it a promising candidate for the treatment of NLRP3-inflammasome-associated immune disorders and cancer.

Social Impact Statement Patents can be used as a measure of innovation and to illustrate the commercial potential of plant and fungal biodiversity. The proportion of plant species named in patents represents only 6.2% of plant species, whereas the proportion of fungi is likely less than 0.4%. Fungi clearly justify further research. Innovation on a species usually drives more innovation on that species. We suggest that we should ensure that commercialization frameworks encourage studies on a greater diversity of plants and fungi. This could not only increase the range of biodiversity‐based products and associated income but also incentivize their conservation and encourage more fundamental research. Summary In this review, patents are used as a measure of innovation, and data show that a low proportion of plant and fungal biodiversity is mentioned in patents. The proportion of plant species named in patents represents only 6.2% of plant species, whereas the proportion of fungi is most likely less than 0.4%. The number of species within a plant family mentioned in patents varies greatly. The following families having the greatest numbers: Asteraceae with 1,445 species (4.5% of species), Fabaceae with 1,299 species (5.8%), Poaceae with 1,008 species (8.5%), and Rosaceae with 718 species (12.7%). Case studies from Brazil, Ethiopia, and South Africa explore some of the controversies associated with patenting, especially when patents have not taken prior art into account. In contrast, a case study on plants and fungi used in traditional Chinese medicine illustrates their economic value and their potential to support new innovations. Innovative ways to use plant and fungal biodiversity has the potential to generate wealth, reduce poverty, improve human well‐being and in theory incentivize biodiversity conservation. International and national policies and laws that aim to facilitate equitable benefit‐sharing associated with access to and use of genetic diversity need to be reviewed to help facilitate innovation, as well as ensure that the rights of communities to use these resources are recognized and supported.

ABSTRACTSevere fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) is an emerging infectious disease with increasing spread. Currently SFTS transmission has expanded beyond Asian countries, however, with definitive global extents and risk patterns remained obscure. Here we established an exhaustive database that included globally reported locations of human SFTS cases and the competent vector, Haemaphysalis longicornis (H. longicornis), as well as the explanatory environmental variables, based on which, the potential geographic range of H. longicornis and risk areas for SFTS were mapped by applying two machine learning methods. Ten predictors were identified contributing to global distribution for H. longicornis with relative contribution ≥1%. Outside contemporary known distribution, we predict high receptivity to H. longicornis across two continents, including northeastern USA, New Zealand, parts of Australia, and several Pacific islands. Eight key drivers of SFTS cases occurrence were identified, including elevation, predicted probability of H. longicornis presence, two temperature-related factors, two precipitation-related factors, the richness of mammals and percentage coverage of water bodies. The globally model-predicted risk map of human SFTS occurrence was created and validated effective for discriminating the actual affected and unaffected areas (median predictive probability 0.74 vs. 0.04, P

Back-translation (BT) has been widely used and become one of standard techniques for data augmentation in Neural Machine Translation (NMT), BT has proven to be beneficial for improving the performance of translation effectively, especially for low-resource scenarios. While most previous works related to BT mainly focus on European languages with high relatedness, few of them study less-related languages in other areas around the world. In this paper, we choose the language pair with less relatedness in Asia: Chinese and Vietnamese, to investigate the impacts of BT on extremely low-resource machine translation between them. We first discuss the similarities and differences between the two languages, then evaluate and compare the effects of different sizes of back-translated data on NMT and Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) models for Chinese-Vietnamese and Vietnamese-Chinese, with both character-based and word-based settings, and conduct further analysis on the translation outputs from several aspects. Some conclusions from previous works are partially confirmed and we also draw some new findings and conclusions, which are beneficial to understand BT further and deeper for translation between less-related low-resource languages.

It is indispensable to comprehend the mechanism that regulates plant responses to drought conditions to intensify the water use efficiency of stone fruits. The physiological, biochemical and molecular responses of drought-treated peach leaves were investigated. Results revealed that drought-treated plants manifested a significant attenuation in water potential as compared to control plants. Furthermore, sorbitol and proline contents were accumulated contrary to glucose, fructose, and sucrose that were dwindled significantly throughout the drought period. Similarly, the activities of antioxidant enzymes and expression pattern of related genes were hoisted to counter the lipid peroxidation in drought-treated plants. Moreover, reduced stomatal conductance has repressed the photosynthesis process and linked genes during drought stress. The expression level of regulatory genes (dehydration-responsive element-bindings and WRKYs) exhibited up-regulation in the drought-treated group. Overall, this study asserts that ‘Yoshihime’ peach cultivar possesses unique physiological, biochemical, and molecular responses under different spells of drought stress.

Core Ideas First study of PpEIN3 by transgenic experiments to verify its function in the maturity process PpEIN3 is a positive regulator of ethylene signal transduction pathway to promote fruits ripening Ethylene is one of the most important phytohormone in plants and plays a critical role during growth, development, maturity, and aging. The framework of the ethylene signaling pathway is well reported. Nevertheless, studies on Ethylene Insensitive 3 (EIN3), the downstream regulator of the ethylene signaling pathway, need to be investigated, especially in peach [Prunus persica (L.) Batsch]. In this study, we cloned PpEIN3 from peach and characterized it in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.). Our results depicted that the open‐reading frame of PpEIN3 was 1875 bp, encoding a protein with 624 amino acid residues that contained a conserved EIN3 domain, a highly conserved N‐terminal region, and seven DNA‐binding sites. PpEIN3 showed very close association with homologous EIN genes from apple (Malus domestica Borkh.) and grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.). All investigated EIN proteins shared similar domains and structures. The PpEIN3 promoter possessed several motifs related to hormones that affect fruit development and ripening. Spatial–temporal expression analysis revealed that PpEIN3 was expressed at high levels in the late stage of fruit development vs. the early stage. In transgenic tomato, PpEIIN3 showed overexpression and the key ethylene biosynthesis genes SlACO1, SlACS1, and SlSAMS1 were upregulated and promoted early maturation in fruit. By contrast, PpEIIN3 silencing delayed ripening and reduced SlEIN3 expression in tomato. The results confirmed that PpEIN3 is a positive regulator of the ethylene signal transduction pathway, which promoted fruit ripening. Our findings provide valuable insight to the roles in ethylene signal components in the modulation of peach fruit ripening.