Search

Objective: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a common cancer that cannot be detected at an early stage and is a major challenge in oncology research. Studies have shown that vitamin D3 has some anti-cancer and preventive effects on colorectal cancer, but the exact anti-cancer mechanism is not clear. We applied the relevant research methods of network pharmacology to speculate and validate the possible potential pharmacological mechanisms of vitamin D3 for the prevention of colorectal cancer, and to provide more theoretical support for the clinical anticancer effects of vitamin D3.Methods: The relevant targets for vitamin D3 and CRC were obtained from the database of drug and disease targets, respectively. The target of vitamin D3 and the target of colorectal cancer were taken to intersect to obtain common targets. Then, the PPI network was constructed. In addition, the pathways of drug-disease interactions were predicted by GO and KEGG enrichment analysis. Finally, the obtained results were verified to ensure the reliability of the experiments.Results: 51 targets of vitamin D3 for the prevention of colorectal cancer were obtained. The 10 core targets were obtained from the PPI network. The 10 core targets include: ALB, SRC, MMP9, PPARG, HSP90AA1, IGF1, EGFR, MAPK1, MAP2K1 and IGF1R. The core targets were further validated by molecular docking and animal experiments. The results suggest that vitamin D3 plays a key role in the prevention of CRC through core targets, PI3K-Akt pathway, HIF-1 pathway, and FoxO pathway.Conclusion: This study will provide more theoretical support for vitamin D3 to reduce the incidence of CRC and is important to explore more pharmacological effects of vitamin D3.

For cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) system, a robust following control algorithm based on fuzzy PID principle is adopted in this paper. Firstly, a nonlinear vehicle dynamics model considering the lag of driving force and acceleration constraints was established. Then, with the vehicle’s control hierarchic, the upper controller takes the relative speed between vehicles and the spacing error as inputs to output the following vehicle's target acceleration, while the lower controller takes the target acceleration as inputs and the throttle opening and brake master cylinder pressure as outputs. For the setting of target spacing, this paper additionally considers the relative speed between vehicles and the acceleration of the front vehicle. Through testing, compared with the traditional variable safety distance model, the average distance reduces by 5.43% when leading vehicle is accelerating, while increases by 2.74% in deceleration. For the fixed-speed cruise mode, a set of logic judgment algorithm is used to replace the traditional method of designing an extra set of PID controller, which reduces the algorithm complexity while achieving the same control effect. Finally, Simulink/Carsim co-simulation test was carried out in different conditions. The distance error was less than 0.2m under the variable speed following condition, and the spacing error was less than 0.8m under the sudden braking condition where the acceleration of the pilot vehicle was -0.7g. The vehicle can easily switch smoothly between the following mode and the constant speed mode under the cutting-in and cutting-out conditions of the leading vehicle. Our system meets the safety requirements under all conditions, the changing trend of the speed curve and acceleration curve of the following car in each working condition and is more moderate than that of the front car, so as to ensure the comfort of passengers.

Sleeve lobectomy is recognized as an alternative surgical operation to pneumonectomy because it preserves the most pulmonary function and has a considerable prognosis. In this study, we aimed to investigate the implications of residual status for patients after sleeve lobectomy.In this retrospective cohort study, we summarized 58 242 patients who underwent surgeries from 2015 to 2018 in Shanghai Chest Hospital and found 456 eligible patients meeting the criteria. The status of R2 was excluded. The outcomes were overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS). We performed a subgroup analysis to further our investigation.After the propensity score match, the baseline characteristic was balanced between two groups. The survival analysis showed no significant difference of overall survival and recurrence-free survival between R0 and R1 groups (OS: p = 0.053; RFS: p = 0.14). In the multivariate Cox analysis, we found that the margin status was not a dependent risk factor to RFS (p = 0.119) and OS (p = 0.093). In the patients of R1, N stage and age were closely related to OS, but we did not find any significant risk variable in RFS for R1 status. In the subgroup analysis, R1 status may have a worse prognosis on patients with more lymph nodes examination. On further investigation, we demonstrated no differences among the four histological types of margin status.In our study, we confirmed that the margin status after sleeve lobectomies was not the risk factor to prognosis. However, patients with more lymph nodes resection should pay attention to the margin status.

There have been significant advancements in medical techniques in the present epoch, with the emergence of some novel operative substitutes. However, the treatment of tracheal defects still faces tremendous challenges and there is, as yet, no consensus on tracheal and carinal reconstruction. In addition, surgical outcomes vary in different individuals, which results in an ambiguous future for tracheal surgery. Although transplantation was once an effective and promising method, it is limited by a shortage of donors and immune rejection. The development of bioengineering has provided an alternative for the treatment of tracheal defects, but this discipline is full of ethical controversy and hindered by limited cognition in this area. Meanwhile, progression of this technique is blocked by a deficiency in ideal materials. The trachea together with the carina is still the last unpaired organ in thoracic surgery and propososal of a favorable scheme to remove this dilemma is urgently required. In this review, four main tracheal reconstruction methods, especially surgical techniques, are evaluated, and a thorough interpretation conducted., Tracheal and carinal reconstruction are still challenges in regenerative medicine although medical techniques have achieved significant advancements in the present epoch.

We describe a novel system for examining the mechanisms of AAV traversal of the BBB using a multi-chamber microplate wherein astrocytes and HBMECs are co-cultured, and subjected to shear fluid force similar to that under physiological conditions.

Objective: Curcumin is a plant polyphenol extracted from the Chinese herb turmeric. It was found that curcumin has good anti-cancer properties in a variety of cancers, but the exact mechanism is not clear. Based on the network pharmacology and molecular docking to deeply investigate the molecular mechanism of curcumin for the treatment of colon cancer, it provides a new research direction for the treatment of colon cancer.Methods: Curcumin-related targets were collected using PharmMapper, SwissTargetPrediction, Targetnet and SuperPred. Colon cancer related targets were obtained using OMIM, DisGeNET, GeneCards and GEO databases. Drug-disease intersection targets were obtained via Venny 2.1.0. GO and KEGG enrichment analysis of drug-disease common targets were performed using DAVID. Construct PPI network graphs of intersecting targets using STRING database as well as Cytoscape 3.9.0 and filter core targets. Molecular docking via AutoDockTools 1.5.7. The core targets were further analyzed by GEPIA, HPA, cBioPortal and TIMER databases.Results: A total of 73 potential targets of curcumin for the treatment of colon cancer were obtained. GO function enrichment analysis yielded 256 entries, including BP(Biological Progress):166, CC(celluar component):36 and MF(Molecular Function):54. The KEGG pathway enrichment analysis yielded 34 signaling pathways, mainly involved in Metabolic pathways, Nucleotide metabolism, Nitrogen metabolism, Drug metabolism - other enzymes, Pathways in cancer,PI3K-Akt signaling pathway, etc. CDK2, HSP90AA1, AURKB, CCNA2, TYMS, CHEK1, AURKA, DNMT1, TOP2A, and TK1 were identified as core targets by Cytoscape 3.9.0. Molecular docking results showed that the binding energies of curcumin to the core targets were all less than 0 kJ-mol-1, suggesting that curcumin binds spontaneously to the core targets. These results were further validated in terms of mRNA expression levels, protein expression levels and immune infiltration.Conclusion: Based on network pharmacology and molecular docking initially revealed that curcumin exerts its therapeutic effects on colon cancer with multi-target, multi-pathway. Curcumin may exert anticancer effects by binding to core targets. Curcumin may interfere with colon cancer cell proliferation and apoptosis by regulating signal transduction pathways such as PI3K-Akt signaling pathway,IL-17 signaling pathway, Cell cycle. This will deepen and enrich our understanding of the potential mechanism of curcumin against colon cancer and provide a theoretical basis for subsequent studies.

This letter discusses a special type of ${q}$ -ary spatially coupled low-density parity-check (SC-LDPC) codes with the potential for local decoding (LD). We demonstrate that ${q}$ -ary SC-LDPCL (suffix “L” stands for locality) code ensembles have better decoding thresholds than the corresponding binary ensembles. We also develop local window decoding (LWD) to improve local decoding performance. The ${q}$ -ary codes are constructed from low-order finite fields that guarantees relatively low complexity. The provided examples show that ${q}$ -ary SC-LDPCL codes outperform the corresponding binary codes in both global and local decoding.

Myocardial remodeling is a key pathophysiological basis of heart failure, which seriously threatens human health and causes a severe economic burden worldwide. During chronic stress, the heart undergoes myocardial remodeling, mainly manifested by cardiomyocyte hypertrophy, apoptosis, interstitial fibrosis, chamber enlargement, and cardiac dysfunction. The NADPH oxidase family (NOXs) are multisubunit transmembrane enzyme complexes involved in the generation of redox signals. Studies have shown that NOXs are highly expressed in the heart and are involved in the pathological development process of myocardial remodeling, which influences the development of heart failure. This review summarizes the progress of research on the pathophysiological processes related to the regulation of myocardial remodeling by NOXs, suggesting that NOXs-dependent regulatory mechanisms of myocardial remodeling are promising new therapeutic targets for the treatment of heart failure.

Although long polar codes with successive cancellation decoding can asymptotically achieve channel capacity, the performance of short blocklength polar codes is far from optimal. Recently, Arıkan proposed employing a convolutional pre-transformation before the polarization network, called polarization-adjusted convolutional (PAC) codes. In this paper, we focus on improving the performance of short PAC codes concatenated with a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) outer code, CRC-PAC codes, since error detection capability is essential in practical applications, such as the polar coding scheme for the control channel. We propose an enhanced adaptive belief propagation (ABP) decoding algorithm with the assistance of CRC bits for PAC codes. We also derive joint parity-check matrices of CRC-PAC codes suitable for iterative BP decoding. The proposed CRC-aided ABP (CA-ABP) decoding can effectively improve error performance when partial CRC bits are used in the decoding. Meanwhile, the error detection ability can still be guaranteed by the remaining CRC bits and adaptive decoding parameters. Moreover, compared with the conventional CRC-aided list (CA-List) decoding, our proposed scheme can significantly reduce computational complexity, to achieve a better trade-off between the performance and complexity for short PAC codes.

This letter presents a low-complexity error floors estimation method for bit-interleaved coded modulation with quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. Using surrogate bit-channels (SBCs) as hypothetic equivalent channels, the importance sampling method based on the stable trapping sets is applied to evaluate the error floors. It is shown that the error floors of bit-interleaved coded modulation systems can be effectively estimated, and the presented method is appropriate for various types of modulators and interleavers.

Exposure to particulate matter (PM) is associated with increased incidence of respiratory diseases. The present study aimed to investigate the roles of fibroblast growth factor 10 (FGF10) in PM-induced lung injury. Mice were intratracheally instilled with FGF10 or phosphate-buffered saline at one hour before instillation of PM for two consecutive days. In addition, the anti-inflammatory impact of FGF10 in vitro and its effect on the high-mobility group box 1 (HMGB1)-toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) pathway was investigated. It was found that PM exposure is associated with increased inflammatory cell infiltration into the lung and increased vascular protein leakage, while FGF10 pretreatment attenuated both of these effects. FGF10 also decreased the PM-induced expression of interleukin (IL)-6, IL-8, tumor necrosis factor-α and HMGB1 in murine bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and in the supernatants of human bronchial epithelial cells exposed to PM. FGF10 exerted anti-inflammatory and cytoprotective effects by inhibiting the HMGB1-TLR4 pathway. These results indicate that FGF10 may have therapeutic values for PM-induced lung injury.

Background The BOLA gene family, comprising three members, is mainly involved in regulating intracellular iron homeostasis. Emerging evidence suggests that BolA family member 2 plays a vital role in tumorigenesis and hepatic cellular carcinoma progression. However, there was less known about its role in ovarian cancer. Methods In the present study, we investigated the expression profiles, prognostic roles, and genetic alterations of three BolA family members in patients with ovarian cancer through several public databases, containing Oncomine and Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis, Human Protein Atlas, Kaplan–Meier plotter and cBioPortal. Then, we constructed the protein-protein interaction networks of BOLA proteins and their interactors by using the String database and Cytoscape software. In addition, we performed the Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment by the Annotation, Visualization, and Integrated Discovery database. Finally, we explored the mechanisms underlying BolA family members’ involvement in OC by using gene set enrichment analysis. Results The mRNA and protein expression levels of BOLA2 and BOLA3 were heavily higher in ovarian cancer tissues than in normal ovarian tissues. Dysregulated mRNA expressions of three BolA family members were significantly associated with prognosis in overall or subgroup analysis. Moreover, genetic alterations also occurred in three BolA family members in ovarian cancer. GO analysis indicated that BolA family members might regulate the function of metal ion binding and protein disulfide oxidoreductase activity. Gene set enrichment analysis indicated that BolA family members were mainly associated with oxidative phosphorylation, proteasome, protein export, and glutathione metabolism in ovarian cancer. Conclusion In brief, our finding may contribute to increasing currently limited prognostic biomarkers and treatment options for ovarian cancer.

The separation and extraction of associated rare earths from the Zhijin phosphorite mine is of great interest. Based on previous studies, the hydrolysis of phosphate ore using hydrochloric acid was systematically studied through extensive testing. Experiments were conducted to separate and recover the rare earths from the hydrolysis solution. Kinetic studies on the acidolysis of phosphorite using hydrochloric acid show that the use of hydrochloric acid in the acidolysis of phosphorite is mainly controlled by a chemical reaction and is also a diffusion-controlled reaction. When 210 L of HCL per 100 kg of phosphorite was used at 30 °C for 360 min, 96.1% of the P2O5 and 95.0% of the rare earths are leached from the phosphorite. After defluorination and purification, the pH of the phosphate-acid solution is adjusted to 2.1 using sodium hydroxide, and a rare earth concentrate with rare earth content of 1.76 wt% is obtained; i.e., 90.1% of the rare earths are recovered. The rare earth content is increased to more than 5 wt% through multiple enrichment processes, with a total yield of 59.5%.

The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by SARS-CoV-2, currently poses an urgent global medical crisis for which there remains a lack of affordable point-of-care testing (POCT). In particular, resource-limited areas need simple and easily disseminated testing solutions to manage the outbreak. In this work, a microfluidic-integrated lateral flow recombinase polymerase amplification (MI-IF-RPA) assay was developed for rapid and sensitive detection of SARS-CoV-2, which integrates the reverse transcription recombinase polymerase amplification (RT-RPA) and a universal lateral flow (LF) dipstick detection system into a single microfluidic chip. The single-chamber RT-RPA reaction components are mixed with running buffer, and then delivered to the LF detection strips for biotin- and FAM-labelled amplified analyte sequences, which can provide easily interpreted positive or negative results. Testing requires only a simple nucleic acid extraction and loading, then incubation to obtain results, approximately 30 minutes in total. SARS-CoV-2 armored RNA particles were used to validate the MI-IF-RPA system, which showed a limit of detection of 1 copy per μL, or 30 copies per sample. Chip performance was further evaluated using clinically diagnosed cases of COVID-19 and revealed a sensitivity of 97% and specificity of 100%, highly comparable to current reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)-based diagnostic assays. This MI-IF-RPA assay is portable and comprises affordable materials, enabling mass production and decreased risk of contamination. Without the need for specialized instrumentation and training, MI-IF-RPA assay can be used as a complement to RT-PCR for low-cost COVID-19 screening in resource-limited areas.

Background The tumor microenvironment (TME) is highly associated with cancer stem cells, and affects tumor initiation, progression, and metastasis. This study aimed to explore the underlying molecular mechanism of induction of A549 cancer cell stemness by THP-1-derived macrophages. Method The Hedgehog inhibitor (Vismodegib), Notch inhibitor Gamma Secretase Inhibitor (GSI), and Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription 3 (STAT3) inhibitor Cucurbitacin I (JSI-124) were added separately into the co-culture system of A549 cancer cell with THP-1-derived macrophages. Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) assay and the Cell-IQ continuous surveillance system were used to examine the cell growth and morphological changes of A549 cells. The messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) and protein expression levels of stem cell markers were respectively analyzed by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) and western blotting, and the activity of Acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) enzyme was assessed by flow cytometry analysis. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and qRT-PCR assays were performed to evaluate the activation and differentiation of macrophages. Results Results showed that the proliferation and stemness of A549 cells were significantly enhanced by co-culturing with THP-1-derived macrophages. The expression levels of Transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) and Interleukin-6 (IL-6) in macrophages were notably increased after co-culturing with A549 cells. Meanwhile, co-culturing with A549 cells induced the polarization of macrophages towards the M2 phenotype. Moreover, the inhibitors could reduce the proliferation and stemness of the co-culture system, and decrease the expression of TGF-β and IL-6. Conclusions These results suggested that co-culturing A549 cells with THP-1-derived macrophages could induce the stemness of A549 cells via multiple pro-tumorigenic pathways. Thus, inhibition of the interaction between macrophages and lung cancer stem cells may be a viable target for lung cancer treatment in the future.

Objective: The components of metabolic syndrome have been shown to be associated with lung cancer. Pulmonary nodules (PNs), early predictors of lung cancer, have become common incidental findings with the widespread use of low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) but few epidemiological studies have been performed. The present study aimed to determine the association between MetS and/or its components with PNs in Chinese adults.Methods:A total of 3,340 participants (51.4% women) aged 18 years or older were included from the Jidong communities. MetS was defined by the criteria from the American Heart Association, and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (AHA/NHLBI). PNs were detected using LDCT. Results:The prevalence rate of PNs was 19.2% in participants with MetS, while 12.8% in healthy controls (PP for trend =0.04). Moreover, individuals with MetS had an approximately 30% increased risk of PNs than those who did not meet the MetS diagnostic criteria (number of MetS componentsConclusion:The present study suggested that PNs was associated with abnormal MetS components in Chinese adults. Individuals with MetS might have a higher PNs risk than those without MetS.

Objective Development of biofluid‐based biomarkers is attractive for the diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) but still lacking. Thus, here we aimed to identify serum metabolic biomarkers for the diagnosis of COPD. Methods In this study, we investigated serum metabolic features between COPD patients (n = 54) and normal individuals (n = 74) using a 1H NMR‐based metabolomics approach and developed an integrated method of least‐squares support vector machine (LS‐SVM) and serum metabolic biomarkers to assist COPD diagnosis. Results We observed a hypometabolic state in serum of COPD patients, as indicated by decreases in N‐acetyl‐glycoprotein (NAG), lipoprotein (LOP, mainly LDL/VLDL), polyunsaturated fatty acid (pUFA), glucose, alanine, leucine, histidine, valine, and lactate. Using an integrated method of multivariable and univariate analyses, NAG and LOP were identified as two important metabolites for distinguishing between COPD patients and controls. Subsequently, we developed a LS‐SVM classifier using these two markers and found that LS‐SVM classifiers with linear and polynomial kernels performed better than the classifier with RBF kernel. Linear and polynomial LS‐SVM classifiers can achieve the total accuracy rates of 80.77% and 84.62% and the AUC values of 0.87 and 0.90 for COPD diagnosis, respectively. Conclusions This study suggests that artificial intelligence integrated with serum metabolic biomarkers has a great potential for auxiliary diagnosis of COPD., Development of biofluid‐based biomarkers is of great importance and interest for the diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) but still lacking. Here, we identified N‐acetyl‐glycoprotein (NAG) and lipoprotein (LOP) as two important metabolic biomarkers for distinguishing between COPD patients and healthy subjects. Then, we developed a LS‐SVM classifier based on NAG and LOP and found that LS‐SVM classifiers with linear and polynomial kernels performed better than the classifier with RBF kernel. Linear and polynomial LS‐SVM classifiers can achieve the total accuracy rates of 80.77% and 84.62% and the AUC values of 0.87 and 0.90 for COPD diagnosis, respectively. Thus, our study suggests that artificial intelligence with serum metabolic biomarkers might be a promising tool for auxiliary diagnosis of COPD.

High voltage terminals are enclosed with RTV560 silicone rubber. Space travelling wave tubes are exposed in irradiation environment. As one organic elastomer, silicone rubber is degraded by the radiation. In the paper, effect of electron irradiation on properties of RTV560 silicone rubber was investigation. The used electrons have an energy range 10~100 keV, and the irradiation fluence ranges from 1.0×106 rad to 1.0×107 rad. At last, roughness, hardness, DTA and TGA were measured and analyzed for all samples.

Here, a fully integrated multicolor immunosensor was developed for sensitive and reliable semiquantitative analysis of HIV-1 p24, which integrates the multistep reactions of horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-linked immunoassay and gold nanorod (AuNR)-based multicolor assay into a single microfluidic chip. The HRP-linked immunoassay functions by moving magnetic beads bound to a capture antibody through different aqueous phases containing immunoassay reagents. HRP-catalyzed oxidation of 3,3',5,5'-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) is used to mediate AuNRs etching for producing various color changes. Multiple etching processes can be activated by simple mixing of the reagents from the reagent storage reservoir. The fully integrated strategy with sample-in answer-out capability is initiated by simple chip manipulation and finally concluded by converting recognition of antigen-antibody into a vivid color variation for direct visualization and semiquantitative analysis. By bare eye observation, our integrated multicolor immunosensor allows sensitive and reliable semiquantitative analysis of HIV-1 p24 within 1 h. The microfluidic chip device demonstrated here simplifies the operation significantly and thus allows broader application of a multicolor immunosensor for point of care (POC) testing in low-resource settings.

Central nervous system (CNS) diseases are some of the most difficult to treat because the blood-brain barrier (BBB) almost entirely limits the passage of many therapeutic drugs into the CNS. Gene therapy based on the adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector has the potential to overcome this problem. For example, an AAV serotype AAV9 has been widely studied for its ability to cross the BBB to transduce astrocytes, but its efficiency is limited. The emergence of AAV directed evolution technology provides a solution, and the variants derived from AAV9 directed evolution have been shown to have significantly higher crossing efficiency than AAV9. However, the mechanisms by which AAV crosses the BBB are still unclear. In this review, we focus on recent advances in crossing the blood-brain barrier with AAV vectors. We first review the AAV serotypes that can be applied to treating CNS diseases. Recent progress in possible AAV crossing the BBB and transduction mechanisms are then summarized. Finally, the methods to improve the AAV transduction efficiency are discussed.

Zhijin phosphorus ore is a moderate and low-grade phosphorus rare-earth ore contained in mines. The separation and extraction of associated rare earth are important research topics. In this study, the migration behavior of rare earth during the thermal decomposition of Zhijin phosphorus ore and the separation and extraction of rare earth in phosphorus slag are discussed systematically. During the thermal decomposition process of phosphorus ore, almost all of the associated rare earth enters into the phosphorus slag phase but does not enter into the ferrophosphorus or gas phases. Amorphous calcium metasilicate and calcium fluosilicate are major components of phosphorus slag, and rare earth mainly exists as a calsil solid solution. Hydrochloric acid was used for acidolysis of the phosphorous slag. Under the following conditions, 96% of the rare earth in the phosphorous slag can be dissolved in the acidolysis solution: acid excess coefficient of 1.5, reaction time of 50 min and reaction temperature of 50 °C. The rare earth in the acidolysis solution was separated and recycled using oxalic acid as a precipitator and NaOH as a pH modifier. At pH of 1.7, rare-earth-enriched matter with rare-earth content of 2.1 wt% was obtained, and the recovery of the rare earth was 88%.

A sandwich-structured SnS2@reduced graphene oxide (SnS2@rGO) nanocomposite consisting of SnS2 sheets uniformly anchored on both sides of rGO sheets is presented. The SnS2@rGO nanocomposites, prepared through a dipping process combining with a hydrothermal method, show good electrochemical performance, including the high reversible capability of 959.2 mA h g−1 at 500 mA g−1 over 500 cycles, and superior rate performance. A full cell consisting of a commercial LiCoO2 cathode and the SnS2@rGO anode delivers the stable capacity of ∼821.3 mA h g−1 (anode basis) after 200 cycles at 100 mA g−1. The sandwich-structured SnS2@rGO nanocomposite accommodates volume changes during Li+ insertion and extraction and facilitates the rapid transport of ions and electrons. This high performance indicates that the presented SnS2@rGO nanocomposite is a promising anode candidate for practical application in Li-ion batteries.

In this study, CuIn1−xGaxSe2 (x = 0∼0.5) thin films were synthesized by using a multi-layer spray (MLS) process with Se powder and then CdS buffer layer deposited by CBD deposition process. The as-deposited CIGS thin films were selenized during the rapid thermal process (RTP) in order to improve the crystallization of films and to avoid their oxidation. The obtained samples were systematically characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray photoelectron (XPS) and UV-vis spectroscopy. The physicochemical properties of the prepared films were good enough to be used in CIGS solar cell devices on the basis of analytical results.

Demand response, as an important flexible interactive response model, provides an important way to improve wind power grid-connected power. This paper selects the RTP project in PBDR and the DLC and DSB projects in IBDR as the research direction. Combined with energy storage facilities, a wind power consumption model based on two types of DR projects, power generation plan and real-time scheduling. Exploring the feasibility of introducing DR and its impact on system operation and wind power consumption. The IEEE30-node 6-machine system is used as an analog system for case analysis. In this paper, the traditional unit combination model including large-scale wind power and the DR-based wind power consumption optimization scheduling model are compared to analyze the impact of DR on wind power consumption in order to simplify the analysis process.

In the bidding market of the electricity market, most thermal power enterprises compete on the basis of marginal cost. In order to meet the needs of reform and development, thermal power generation enterprises must set up a set of practical bidding strategies to maximize the interests of enterprises while tapping potential and increasing efficiency and reducing costs to provide the basis for their competition in the electricity market. This paper first explains the theoretical basis of marginal cost bidding function. Then the mathematical model of the quotation is established. Finally, a concrete algorithm based on the mixed strategy model is given. The optimal value of the expected return of the generator is obtained to form the basis of quotation for the generator.

This study investigates the impact of decision rights allocation in business groups on innovation performance. Using a sample of A-share manufacturing listed companies in China for 2009–2017, we find that group centralization has an inverted U-shaped relationship with innovation performance. This result suggests that moderate centralization is conducive to improving a group's innovation performance. Further, we determine that the relationship between group centralization and innovation performance varies according to the nature of ownership, growth opportunities, and market competition. State-owned property and growth opportunities of a group negatively moderate the relationship between group centralization and innovation performance; market competition positively moderates that relationship.

The porous structure within the cathode material influences the capacity and operating performance of Li S batteries. Here, we prepared special carbon material using sodium chloride as template/temporary space-holders to design mixture of micro−/meso−/macroporous structure with large surface area through a facile water bath and freeze-drying process. Such modification led to a high sulfur content of 73.2% with remarkable initial capacity of 1378 mAh g−1 at 0.1 A g−1, and maintains 48.6% after 100 cycles. Moreover, the Li S battery displayed superior rate capability of 807 mAh g−1 at 1.0 A g−1. This abundant micro−/meso−/macropores can improve the content of sulfur, relieve the loss of sulfur and exhibit superior cycling performance and rate capability.

During the rapid economic development of China, there are certain blind decisions made in the use of land resources, which poses a significant threat to sustainable development. With the help of the improved convolutional neural network model, this paper analyzes the land use of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region of China from 1995 to 2018, and provides a prediction for 2023. The research results show that: (1) There is still much room for improvement in the land use of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, with dry land taking up the largest proportion of land in these three locations; (2) Beijing’s development has been well protected in terms of land use. It is predicted that by 2023, the proportions of its woodland, grassland, and rivers, lakes, reservoirs and ponds would increase by 0.26%, 0.30%, and 0.61%, respectively, compared with their proportion in 2018; (3) the land use type in Tianjin during the research period was generally stable. In 2018, the proportion of its woodland and grassland had increased by 1.04% and 0.61%, respectively, compared with that of 1995; and (4) many ecological and environmental problems were exposed during the construction of highways in Hebei province. The area of sand land, saline-alkali land, marshland, bare land, and bare rock areas have all increased, and their total proportion is predicted to reach 1.48% by 2023.

The popularization of point-of-care (POC) testing is of great importance in healthcare diagnostics and other fields in the developing world, especially in resource-limited settings. To date, there are still great challenges in the development of simple, quick, affordable, yet highly effective and selective biosensors for POC testing. To meet the increasing need for POC testing, researchers need to consider biosensor miniaturization. In this review, we focus on recent advances in miniaturized biosensors for POC testing. We first review the miniaturization strategies, including handheld instruments and microfluidics-assisted miniaturized biosensing systems. Recent progress in recognition biosensing interactions for miniaturized biosensing systems is then summarized. We further describe how POC testing applications can be realized based on developments in integration, automation and multiplexing. Finally, the future prospects and remaining challenges of miniaturized biosensors for POC testing are discussed.

A long-standing problem in marker-based facial motion capture is what are the optimal facial mocap marker layouts. Despite its wide range of potential applications, this problem has not yet been systematically explored to date. This paper describes an approach to compute optimized marker layouts for facial motion acquisition as optimization of characteristic control points from a set of high-resolution, ground-truth facial mesh sequences. Specifically, the thin-shell linear deformation model is imposed onto the example pose reconstruction process via optional hard constraints such as symmetry and multiresolution constraints. Through our experiments and comparisons, we validate the effectiveness, robustness, and accuracy of our approach. Besides guiding minimal yet effective placement of facial mocap markers, we also describe and demonstrate its two selected applications: marker-based facial mesh skinning and multiresolution facial performance capture.

Content-based human motion retrieval is important for animators with the development of motion editing and synthesis, which need to search similar motions in large databases. Obtaining text-based representation from quantization of mocap data turned out to be efficient. It becomes a fundamental step of many researches in human motion analysis. Geometric features are one of these techniques, which involve much prior knowledge and reduce data redundancy of numerical data. We describe geometric features as basic unit to define human motions (also called mo-words) and view a human motion as a generative process. Therefore, we obtain topic motions, which possess more semantic information using latent Dirichlet allocation by learning from massive training examples in order to understand motions better. We combine probabilistic model with human motion retrieval and come up with a new representation of human motions and a new retrieval framework. Our experiments demonstrate its advantages, both for understanding motions and retrieval. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

There has been significant progress in gene and microRNA (miRNA) research with regard to the morbidity of Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL). However, the regulatory mechanisms of genes and miRNAs have yet to be determined. In the current study, the regulatory association between genes, miRNAs and transcription factors (TFs) was investigated to gain an understanding of the mechanisms and key pathways of HL. The association between TFs and miRNAs, miRNAs and target genes and miRNA and its host gene was examined. To show the regulatory correlation clearly, three regulatory networks were hierarchically constructed: Differentially expressed, associated and global networks. Following comparison and analysis of the similarities and differences among the three networks, a number of key pathways, which showed self-adaptation associations were identified. This included NFκB1 and hsa-miR-9, hsa-miR-196a-1 and its host gene HOXB7, which separately forms a self-adaptation association. The differentially expressed network illuminated the pathogenesis of HL. In addition, the associated network further described the regulatory mechanism associated with HL, including prevention, diagnosis, development and therapy. The current study systematically explains the regulatory mechanisms of HL and supplies comprehensive data associated with HL for further studies. With increasing knowledge of the occurrence, mechanism, improvement, metastasis and treatment, an increased understanding of HL may be achieved.

Human motion capture (mo-cap) data has been increasingly applied in animation, movies and games in recent years due to its visual realism, and large amounts of them were accumulated. How to effectively search logically similar motions from large data repositories is a new challenge. The major limitation of existing methods is the semantic level of the features is not high enough to well distinguish different motion categories. In this paper, we propose a text-like motion representation based on key-pose extraction and hierarchical clustering (HC). This motion representation is easy to be extended or combined with topic models to obtain higher semantic-level features for motion retrieval. Our experiments demonstrate its scalability and performance in several applications, including motion retrieval and motion segmentation.

3D die stacking integration technology offers a feasible and promising solution to overcome the barriers of interconnect efficiency and device scaling in modern systems. The emerging trend from 2D IC to 3D IC obtains better performance by getting more silicon area and shortening wire length. In 3D integration technologies, different layers of active devices are connected through vertical links. Currently, TSV is the most popular and practical way to implement vertical links. Yet, there exist difficulties at the technological level ensuring an acceptable yield number of vertical links. Therefore, the bandwidth of vertical links is often made smaller than horizontal links, which becomes a bottleneck of the whole system. This paper presents a traffic distributing adaptive routing algorithm for 3D systems with limited bandwidth in vertical links. Our simulation with synthetic traffic pattern reveals that in a 4×4×4 3D mesh network architecture, our proposed algorithm can achieve significant performance improvement in network latency and throughput compared to existing routing algorithms and is robust in that the performance is stable under different traffic patterns.

Utilizing network-on-chips for manycore SoCs has already been studied widely, as traditional bus-based architectures are unlikely to endure so many inter-core communications. Since device scaling has come to a limit, the technology trend now is stacking dies three-dimensionally to obtain more silicon area and shorter wire length. The most challenging part for making a 3D chip is inter-layer communication method. Currently, TSV is the most popular and promising technique to provide the best performance. However, it suffers from many problems due to inter-layer wiring. As a substitute, inductive coupling can be used as a reliable and non-expensive technology. In this work we use inductive coupling for the inter-layer communication to build a 3D NoC. We also propose a token bus protocol for an efficient implementation of multi-layer communications. Experimental results show that the proposed architecture achieves maximum throughput of 4.7 flits/cycle under uniform random traffic.