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Identifying the thresholds for the positive responses of total net primary productivity (NPP) to nitrogen (N) enrichment is an essential prerequisite for predicting the benefits of N deposition on ecosystem carbon sequestration. However, the responses of below-ground NPP (BNPP) to N enrichment are unknown in many ecosystems, which limits our ability to understand the carbon cycling under the scenario of increasing N availability. We examined the changes in above-ground NPP (ANPP), BNPP, and NPP of a temperate meadow steppe across a wide-ranging N addition gradient (0, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 g N m -2 year -1 ) during 5 years. Both ANPP and NPP increased nonlinearly with N addition rates. The N saturation threshold for ANPP (T A ) and NPP (T N ) was at the rate of 13.11 and 6.70 g N m -2 year -1 , respectively. BNPP decreased with increasing N addition when N addition rates ˃5 g N m -2 year -1 , resulting in much lower T N than T A . Soil N enrichment played a key role in driving the negative impacts of high N addition rates on BNPP, and consequently on the earlier occurrence of N saturation threshold for NPP. Our results highlight the negative effects of soil N enrichment on NPP in natural grasslands super-saturated with N. Furthermore, by considering ANPP and BNPP simultaneously, our results indicate that previous findings from above-ground might have over-estimated the positive effects of N deposition on primary productivity.

BACKGROUND: Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) has been traditionally used as food, spice, and medicine. Crocetin (CRT), as main bioactive component of saffron, has accumulated pieces of beneficial evidence on myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. However, the mechanisms are poorly explored. This study aims to investigate the effects of CRT on H9c2 cells under hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R) and elucidated the possible underlying mechanism. METHODS: H/R attack was performed on H9c2 cells. Cell counting kit-8 was used to detect the cell viability. Cell samples and culture supernatants were evaluated via commercial kits to measure the superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, malondialdehyde (MDA) content, and cellular adenosine triphosphate (ATP) content. Various fluorescent probes were used to detect cell apoptosis, intracellular and mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS) content, mitochondrial morphology, mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP), and mitochondrial permeability transition pore (mPTP) opening. Proteins were evaluated via Western Blot. RESULTS: H/R exposure severely reduced cell viability and increased LDH leakage. Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ coactivator-1α (PGC-1α) suppression and dynamin-related protein 1 (Drp1) activation were coincided with excessive mitochondrial fission, mitochondrial permeability transition pore (mPTP) opening and mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) collapse in H9c2 cells treated with H/R. Mitochondria fragmentation under H/R injury induced ROS over-production, oxidative stress, and cell apoptosis. Notably, CRT treatment significantly prevented mitochondrial fission, mPTP opening, MMP loss, and cell apoptosis. Moreover, CRT sufficiently activated PGC-1α and inactivated Drp1. Interestingly, mitochondrial fission inhibition with mdivi-1 similarly suppressed mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress and cell apoptosis. However, silencing PGC-1α with small interfering RNA (siRNA) abolished the beneficial effects of CRT on H9c2 cells under H/R injury, accompanied with increased Drp1 and p-Drp1(ser616) levels. Furthermore, over-expression of PGC-1α with adenovirus transfection replicated the beneficial effects of CRT on H9c2 cells. CONCLUSIONS: Our study identified PGC-1α as a master regulator in H/R-injured H9c2 cells via Drp1-mediated mitochondrial fission. We also presented the evidence that PGC-1α might be a novel target against cardiomyocyte H/R injury. Our data revealed the role of CRT in regulating PGC-1α/Drp1/mitochondrial fission process in H9c2 cells under the burden of H/R attack, and we suggested that modulation of PGC-1α level may provide a therapeutic target for treating cardiac I/R injury.

Using a nondestructive testing method based on hysteresis behavior, the structural-mechanical dependence of the coercive force of 35CrMo steel components was compared with that of standard specimens. As described in the magnetic Jiles–Atherton model, the magnetic coercive force of the cylinders was inversely proportional to the grain refinement, which was validated by means of metallographic examination and hardness tests. Simultaneously, this study presented an experimental validation by destructive testing for determining the relationship between the measured magnetic parameter and the property of concern and a linear correlation between coercive force and hardness. These observations provide a method to quickly and nondestructively evaluate the mechanical properties of steel components.

In this work we study the quasi-two-body decays $B_c \to \ K^{*} h \to K \pi h (h = D, D_s, K, \pi, \eta, \eta')$ in the perturbative QCD (PQCD) approach. The two-meson distribution amplitudes (DAs) $\Phi^{\text{P-wave}}_{K\pi}$ are introduced to describe the final state interactions of the K \pi pair, which involve the time-like form factors F_{K\pi}(s) parameterized by the relativistic Breit-Wigner function and the Gegenbauer polynomials. We calculate the branching ratios for these quasi-two-body decays, from which one can obtain the branching raios for the corresponding two-body decays under the narrow width approximation relation. We find that $B^+_c\to K^{*+}D^0$ and $B^+_c\to K^{*0}D^+$ have the largest branching ratios, which can reach up to $10^{-6}$, while the branching ratios for other two-body decays are very small and only about $10^{-8}\sim10^{-7}$. As we expected that the branching ratios of the pure annihilation decays are usually small, while in our considered such type of decays, the channel $B_c^+ \to \bar K^{*0}K^{+}$ has the largest branching ratio, which is near $10^{-6}$. These results are consistent with the previously PQCD calculations obtained in the two-body framework, which can be tested by the future LHCb experiments. For the decays $B_c^+ \to K^{*+} D^{0}\to K^{0}\pi^+D^{0} , B_c^+ \to K^{*0}D^{+}\to K^{+}\pi^-D^{+}$ and $B_c^+ \to \bar K^{*0}D_s^{+}\to K^{-}\pi^+D_s^{+}$, we calculate their direct CP violations and find that $A_{CP}(B_c^+ \to K^{*+}D^{0}\to K^{0}\pi^+D^{0})=(-14.6_{-1.12}^{+9.19})\%$ is the largest one, which is possible measured by the present LHCb experiments. For the pure annihilation type decays, there is no CP violations because only the tree operators are involved. Furthermore, we also give the differential distributions of the branching ratios and the direct CP violations for the decays $B_c\to K^* D_{(s)}\to K \pi D_{(s)}$., Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables

In this work, we investigate the quasi-two-body decays $ B_c\to D^*h\to D\pi h $ with $ B_c\to D^*h\to D\pi h $ using the perturbative QCD (PQCD) approach. The description of final state interactions of the $ B_c\to D^*h\to D\pi h $ pair is achieved through the two-meson distribution amplitudes (DAs), which are normalized to the time-like form factor. The PQCD predictions on the branching ratios of the quasi-two-body decays $ B_c\to D^*h\to D\pi h $ show an obvious hierarchy: $ B_c\to D^*h\to D\pi h $ $ B_c\to D^*h\to D\pi h $ $ B_c\to D^*h\to D\pi h $ and $ B_c\to D^*h\to D\pi h $ . From the invariant mass $ B_c\to D^*h\to D\pi h $ -dependence of the decay spectrum for each channel, one can find that the branching fraction is concentrated in a narrow region around the $ B_c\to D^*h\to D\pi h $ pole mass. Thus, one can obtain the branching ratios for the corresponding two-body decays $ B_c\to D^*h\to D\pi h $ under the narrow-width approximation. We find that the branching ratios of the decays $ B_c\to D^*h\to D\pi h $ are consistent with the previous PQCD calculations within errors. These predictions will be tested in future experiments.

In this work, we investigate the form factors of $$B_c$$ B c decays into $$J/\Psi , \psi (2S,3S),\eta _c,$$ J / Ψ , ψ ( 2 S , 3 S ) , η c , $$ \eta _c(2\,S,3\,S), \chi _{c0}, \chi _{c1}, h_c$$ η c ( 2 S , 3 S ) , χ c 0 , χ c 1 , h c , and X(3872) mesons in the covariant light-front quark model (CLFQM). For the purpose of the branching ratio calculation, the form factors of $$B_c\rightarrow D^{(*)}, D^{(*)}_s$$ B c → D ( ∗ ) , D s ( ∗ ) transitions are also included. In order to obtain the form factors for the physical transition processes, we need to extend these form factors from the space-like region to the time-like region. The $$q^2$$ q 2 dependence for each transition form factor is also plotted. Then, using the factorization method, we calculate the branching ratios of 80 $$B_c$$ B c decay channels with a charmonium involved in each mode. Most of our predictions are comparable to the results given by other approaches. As to the decays with the radially excited-state S-wave charmonia involved, such as $$\psi (2S,3S)$$ ψ ( 2 S , 3 S ) and $$\eta _c(2S,3S)$$ η c ( 2 S , 3 S ) , two sets of parameters for their light-front wave functions, corresponding to scenario I (SI) and scenario II (SII), are adopted to calculate the branching ratios. By comparing with the future experimental data, one can discriminate which parameters are more favored.

Glaucoma is a kind of optic neuropathy mainly manifested in the permanent death of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), atrophy of the optic nerve, and loss of visual ability. The main risk factors for glaucoma consist of the pathological elevation of intraocular pressure (IOP) and aging. Although the mechanism of glaucoma remains an open question, a theory related to mitochondrial dysfunction has been emerging in the last decade. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) from the mitochondrial respiratory chain are abnormally produced as a result of mitochondrial dysfunction. Oxidative stress takes place when the cellular antioxidant system fails to remove excessive ROS promptly. Meanwhile, more and more studies show that there are other common features of mitochondrial dysfunction in glaucoma, including damage of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), defective mitochondrial quality control, ATP reduction, and other cellular changes, which are worth summarizing and further exploring. The purpose of this review is to explore mitochondrial dysfunction in the mechanism of glaucomatous optic neuropathy. Based on the mechanism, the existing therapeutic options are summarized, including medications, gene therapy, and red-light therapy, which are promising to provide feasible neuroprotective ideas for the treatment of glaucoma.

We study finite-coupling corrections on the energy loss of light quarks in strongly coupled $${\mathcal {N}}=4$$ N = 4 super Yang–Mills (SYM) plasma. We perform the analysis by computing the stopping distance of an image jet induced by a massless source field, characterized by a massless particle falling along the null geodesic in Einstein gravity with curvature-squared ($$R^2$$ R 2 ) corrections. It turns out that the stopping distance in the $$R^2$$ R 2 theories can be larger or smaller than its SYM counterpart depending on the higher-derivative coefficients. Moreover, we evaluate the stopping distance in the Gauss–Bonnet background and find that increasing $$\lambda _\textrm{GB}$$ λ GB (a dimensionless parameter in Gauss–Bonnet gravity) leads to a decrease in the stopping distance, thus enhancing the energy loss of light quarks, in agreement with previous findings for the drag force, jet quenching parameter, and the instantaneous energy loss of light quarks using shooting strings.

BACKGROUND: Liver metastasis is one of the important factors leading to poor prognosis of gastric cancer. According to the classic “seed soil theory”, it is speculated that the liver microenvironment at the invasion margin of gastric cancer liver metastases (GCLM) may have a crucial impact on tumor progression. However, few studies had stated the correlation between the patients’ prognosis and the densities of stromal cells infiltrating into the invasive margin, where our retrospective study designed to identify the role of infiltrating macrophages on the prognosis of GCLM as a reliable supplement of predictive tumor markers. METHODS: The material consisted of a group of 72 gastric cancer (GC) patients with liver metastasis diagnosed from February 2015 and December 2020. The CD68(+), CD206(+), and Clec4f(+) macrophages in their specimens were counted by immunohistochemistry (IHC), and the analysis area was the invasive margin of metastatic lesions. Clinical data were collected retrospectively. Overall survival (OS) was calculated from the date of initial diagnosis to the date of last follow-up or death. Survival analyses were performed using the Kaplan-Meier method and log-rank test. Multivariate Cox regression was performed to asses impact of macrophages on OS. RESULTS: The expression of CD206 could indicate the prognosis of patients with GCLM, and patients with high expression of CD206 had worse prognoses (P=0.0002). Univariate and multivariate analyses showed that CD206 was an independent risk factor for prognosis (HR 5.276, 95% CI: 1.730–16.089, P=0.003). CONCLUSIONS: The CD206(+) myeloid-derived tumor associated macrophages (TAMs) may predict whether patients could benefit from R1 resection of liver-metastatic lesions, which has important theoretical significance and practical value for accurately evaluating the clinical prognosis of patients with GCLM and guiding clinical treatment.

In this paper, we focus on the effect of mass-transfer between compact binaries like neutron-star-neutron-star (NS-NS) system and neutron-star-white-dwarf (NS-WD) system. We adopt the mass quadrupole formula with post-Newtonian approximation to calculate the gravitational wave (GW) radiation and the orbital evolution. Two kinds of mass-transfer processes are considered here. One is the tidal disruption model where the less dense star orbits into the other one's Roche limit and its mass flows toward the more compact star as a beam of incompressible fluid. The other is common envelope evolution model. We divide the mass-loss of the companion star into the mass-inflow to the primary star and the mass-background winding in the Roche lobe of the primary star. Viewing this envelope as a background, the GW of its spin can be calculated as a rotating non-spherically symmetric star. Assuming a mass-inflow parameter $\alpha$, we eventually obtained the radiation power and the GWs strain, then corrected gravitational wave form (GWF) templates for different initial mass ratios in the inspiral phase.

In this work, we treat Λc(2910)+ and Λc(2940)+ as the conventional udc cores dressed with the D*N channel. We provide a possible interpretation to both Λc(2910)+ and Λc(2940)+ within the same framework. In the study, we consider not only the effects between the conventional triquark core and the D*N channel but also the D*N−D*N interactions. The mass of the Λc state with JP=1/2− is larger than that with JP=3/2− in this unquenched picture, which is very different from the prediction of the conventional quenched quark model. Based on the mass spectrum, the spin parity of Λc(2940)+ is more likely to be 1/2−, while Λc(2910)+ prefers 3/2−. We look forward to the future experiments that can test our results with more precise experimental data.

ObjectiveTo identify the gene subtypes related to immune cells of cholangiocarcinoma and construct an immune score model to predict the immunotherapy efficacy and prognosis for cholangiocarcinoma.MethodsBased on principal component analysis (PCA) algorithm, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)-cholangiocarcinoma, GSE107943 and E-MTAB-6389 datasets were combined as Joint data. Immune genes were downloaded from ImmPort. Univariate Cox survival analysis filtered prognostically associated immune genes, which would identify immune-related subtypes of cholangiocarcinoma. Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) further screened immune genes with prognosis values, and tumor immune score was calculated for patients with cholangiocarcinoma after the combination of the three datasets. Kaplan-Meier curve analysis determined the optimal cut-off value, which was applied for dividing cholangiocarcinoma patients into low and high immune score group. To explore the differences in tumor microenvironment and immunotherapy between immune cell-related subtypes and immune score groups of cholangiocarcinoma.Results34 prognostic immune genes and three immunocell-related subtypes with statistically significant prognosis (IC1, IC2 and IC3) were identified. Among them, IC1 and IC3 showed higher immune cell infiltration, and IC3 may be more suitable for immunotherapy and chemotherapy. 10 immune genes with prognostic significance were screened by LASSO regression analysis, and a tumor immune score model was constructed. Kaplan-Meier (KM) and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that RiskScore had excellent prognostic prediction ability. Immunohistochemical analysis showed that 6 gene (NLRX1, AKT1, CSRP1, LEP, MUC4 and SEMA4B) of 10 genes were abnormal expressions between cancer and paracancer tissue. Immune cells infiltration in high immune score group was generally increased, and it was more suitable for chemotherapy. In GSE112366-Crohn’s disease dataset, 6 of 10 immune genes had expression differences between Crohn’s disease and healthy control. The area under ROC obtained 0.671 based on 10-immune gene signature. Moreover, the model had a sound performance in Crohn’s disease.ConclusionThe prediction of tumor immune score model in predicting immune microenvironment, immunotherapy and chemotherapy in patients with cholangiocarcinoma has shown its potential for indicating the effect of immunotherapy on patients with cholangiocarcinoma.

Magnolia brunnescens is described and illustrated as a new species. This taxon belongs to Magnolia sect. Manglietia and is similar to M. dandyi, but differs from the latter by its brown-tomentose indument in buds, twigs, stipules, petioles and peduncles, elliptic-ovoid vegetative buds ca. 1.0 cm long, adaxially villous leaf blades, apically semi-orbicular anthers and sparsely villous carpels. A line illustration, photograph image and an estimate of preliminary conservation status for the new species are provided.

Temporal stability of net primary productivity (NPP) is important for predicting the reliable provisioning of ecosystem services under global changes. Although nitrogen (N) addition is known to affect the temporal stability of aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP), it is unclear how it impacts that of belowground net primary productivity (BNPP) and NPP, and whether such effects are scale dependent. Here, using experimental N addition in a grassland, we found different responses of ANPP and BNPP stability to N addition at the local scale and that these responses propagated to the larger spatial scale. That is, N addition significantly decreased the stability of ANPP but did not affect the stability of BNPP and NPP at the two scales investigated. Additionally, spatial asynchrony of both ANPP and BNPP among communities provided greater stability at the larger scale and was not affected by N addition. Our findings challenge the traditional view that N addition would reduce ecosystem stability based on results from aboveground dynamics, thus highlighting the importance of viewing ecosystem stability from a whole system perspective.

BACKGROUND Myopic foveoschisis (MF) is a common complication of pathological myopia. A macular hole (MH) usually results from the natural progression of MF and is a common complication of vitrectomy. Vitrectomy combined with residual internal limiting membrane (ILM) covering and autologous blood was effective for closing a secondary MH. CASE SUMMARY A 52-year-old woman presented to our clinic with a complaint of blurred vision in the right eye for 7 years. Her best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) was 20/100, axial length was 25.79 mm and standard equivalent refractive error was -10.5 dioptres. Preoperative optical coherence tomography revealed foveoschisis in the right eye. Vitrectomy with fovea-sparing ILM peeling was performed. An MH developed and gradually expanded 5 mo after the initial vitrectomy. Vitrectomy with residual ILM covering and autologous blood was performed. The MH closed 3 wk after the second vitrectomy. CONCLUSION Fovea-sparing ILM peeling can provide residual ILM for the treatment of MH secondary to vitrectomy for MF. Vitrectomy combined with residual ILM covering and autologous blood is effective for closing secondary MH and improving BCVA.

In this work, we investigate the form factors of $B_c$ decays into $J/\Psi, \psi(2S,3S)$, $\eta_c, \eta_c(2S,3S), \chi_{c0}, \chi_{c1}, h_c$ and $X(3872)$ mesons in the covariant light-front quark model (CLFQM). For the purpose of the branching ratio calculation, the form factors of $B_c\to D^{(*)}, D^{(*)}_s$ transitions are also included. In order to obtain the form factors for the physical transition processes, we need extend these form factors from the space-like region to the time-like region. The $q^2$-dependence for each transition form factor is also plotted. Then, under the factorization method, we calculate the branching ratios of 80 $B_c$ decay channels with a charmonium involved in each mode. Most of our predictions are comparable with the results given by most of other approaches. As to the decays with the radially excited state S-wave charmonia, such as $\psi(2S,3S)$ and $\eta_c(2S,3S)$, involved, there are two sets of parameters for their light-front wave functions, corresponding to scenario I (SI) and scenario II (SII), are adopted to calculate the branching ratios. Comparing with the future experimental data, one can discriminate which parameters are more favored., Comment: 39 pages, 11 figures, 17 tables. Comments are welcome

ObjectiveTo evaluate the safety and efficacy of interventional therapy (iodine-125[125I] seed strand and portal vein stent [PVS] implantation plus transarterial chemoembolization [TACE]) combined with systemic therapy (lenvatinib plus anti-PD-1 antibody) as first-line treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients with Vp4 portal vein tumor thrombus (PVTT).Patients and methodsFrom December 2018 to October 2021, 87 HCC patients with Vp4 PVTT were included in this single-center retrospective study. Forty-seven patients underwent interventional therapy combined with lenvatinib and anti-PD-1 antibody (group A), while 40 cases underwent interventional therapy combined with lenvatinib only (group B). Overall response rate (ORR), stent occlusion rates (SOR), median overall survival (OS), median progression-free survival (PFS) and median stent patency time (SPT) were compared between the 2 groups.ResultsThe mean intended dose (r = 10 mm; z = 0; 240 days) was 64.9 ± 1.0 Gy and 64.5 ± 1.1 Gy in group A and B, respectively (p = 0.133). ORR and SOR were significantly different between group A and B (ORR, 55.3% vs 17.5%, p < 0.001; SOR, 12.8% vs 35.0%, p = 0.014). In the propensity-score matching (PSM) cohort, the median OS, median PFS and median SPT were significantly longer in group A compared with group B (32 PSM pairs; OS, 17.7 ± 1.7 vs 12.0 ± 0.8 months, p = 0.010; PFS, 17.0 ± 4.3 vs 8.0 ± 0.7 months, p < 0.001; SPT, not-reached vs 12.5 ± 1.1 months, p = 0.028).ConclusionThis interventional therapy combined with lenvatinib and anti-PD-1 antibody is safe and effective for HCC patients with Vp4 PVTT.

In this work, we investigate the quasi-two-body decays $B_c\to D^*h\to Dπh$ with $h = (K^0,π^0,η,η^{\prime})$ using the perturbative QCD(PQCD) approach. The description of final state interactions between the $Dπ$ pair is achieved through the two-meson distribution amplitudes(DAs), which are normalized to the time-like form factor. The PQCD predictions on the branching ratios of the quasi-two-body decays $B_c\to D^*h\to Dπh$ show an obvious hierarchy: $Br(B_{c}^+ \to D^{*+} K^{0}\to D^0π^+K^{0})=({5.22}_{-0.74}^{+0.86})\times{10}^{-6}, Br(B_{c}^+ \to D^{*+} π^{0}\to D^0π^+π^{0})=(0.93\pm0.26)\times{10}^{-7}, Br(B_{c}^+ \to D^{*+} η\to D^0π^+η) =({2.83}_{-0.52}^{+0.59})\times{10}^{-8}$ and $Br(B_{c}^+ \to D^{*+} η^\prime\to D^0π^+η^\prime)=({1.89}_{-0.36}^{+0.40})\times{10}^{-8}$. From the invariant mass $m_{Dπ}$-dependence of the decay spectrum for each channel, one can find that the branching fraction is concentrated in a narrow region around the $D^{*}$ pole mass. So one can obtain the branching ratios for the corresponding two-body decays $B_c\to D^{*+}h$ under the narrow width approximation. We find that the branching ratios of the decays $B_c\to D^{*+}h$ are consistent well with the previous PQCD calculations within errors. These predictions will be tested by the future experiments., 12 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Chin. Phys. C

Recently, metasurfaces have experienced revolutionary growth in the sensing and superresolution imaging field, due to their enabling of subwavelength manipulation of electromagnetic waves. However, the addition of metasurfaces multiplies the complexity of retrieving target information from the detected fields. Besides, although the deep learning method affords a compelling platform for a series of electromagnetic problems, many studies mainly concentrate on resolving one single function and limit the research's versatility. In this study, a multifunctional deep neural network is demonstrated to reconstruct target information in a metasurface targets interactive system. Firstly, the interactive scenario is confirmed to tolerate the system noises in a primary verification experiment. Then, fed with the electric field distributions, the multitask deep neural network can not only sense the quantity and permittivity of targets but also generate superresolution images with high precision. The deep learning method provides another way to recover targets' diverse information in metasurface based target detection, accelerating the progression of target reconstruction areas. This methodology may also hold promise for inverse reconstruction or forward prediction problems in other electromagnetic scenarios.

Cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (CMARL) has shown to be promising for many real-world applications. Previous works mainly focus on improving coordination ability via solving MARL-specific challenges (e.g., non-stationarity, credit assignment, scalability), but ignore the policy perturbation issue when testing in a different environment. This issue hasn't been considered in problem formulation or efficient algorithm design. To address this issue, we firstly model the problem as a limited policy adversary Dec-POMDP (LPA-Dec-POMDP), where some coordinators from a team might accidentally and unpredictably encounter a limited number of malicious action attacks, but the regular coordinators still strive for the intended goal. Then, we propose Robust Multi-Agent Coordination via Evolutionary Generation of Auxiliary Adversarial Attackers (ROMANCE), which enables the trained policy to encounter diversified and strong auxiliary adversarial attacks during training, thus achieving high robustness under various policy perturbations. Concretely, to avoid the ego-system overfitting to a specific attacker, we maintain a set of attackers, which is optimized to guarantee the attackers high attacking quality and behavior diversity. The goal of quality is to minimize the ego-system coordination effect, and a novel diversity regularizer based on sparse action is applied to diversify the behaviors among attackers. The ego-system is then paired with a population of attackers selected from the maintained attacker set, and alternately trained against the constantly evolving attackers. Extensive experiments on multiple scenarios from SMAC indicate our ROMANCE provides comparable or better robustness and generalization ability than other baselines., Comment: In: Proceedings of the 37th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'23), 2023

Supplemental Material for Baricitinib is Effective in Treating Progressing Vitiligo in vivo and in vitro by Jie Dong, Xuan Huang, Li-Ping Ma, Fei Qi, Si-Nian Wang, Zi-Qin Zhang, Shi-Nan Wei, Ling Gao, and Fang Liu in Dose-Response

A large number of fast radio bursts (FRBs) detected with the CHIME telescope have enabled investigations of their energy distributions in different redshift intervals, incorporating the consideration of the selection effects of CHIME. As a result, we obtained a non-evolving energy function (EF) for the high-energy FRBs (HEFRBs) of energies $E\gtrsim2\times0^{38}$ erg, which takes the form of a power law with a low-energy exponential cutoff. On the contrary, the energy distribution of the low-energy FRBs (LEFRBs) obviously cannot be described by the same EF. Including the lowest dispersion measure (DM) samples, the LEFRBs are concentrated towards the Galactic plane and their latitude distribution is similar to that of Galactic rotational radio transients (RRATs). These indications hint that LEFRBs might compose a special type of RRATs, with relatively higher DMs and energies (i.e., $\sim10^{28-31}$ erg for a reference distance of $\sim10$ kpc if they belong to the Milky Way). Finally, we revisit the redshift-dependent event rate of HEFRBs and confirm that they could be produced by the remnants of cosmological compact binary mergers., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. Comments are welcome

The coexistence of quantum and classical light in the same fiber link is extremely desired in developing quantum communication. It has been implemented for different quantum information tasks, such as classical light coexisting with polarization-entangled photons at telecom O-band, and with quantum signal based quantum key distribution (QKD). In this work, we demonstrate the coexistence of energy-time entanglement based QKD and fiber optical communication at the telecom C-band. The property of noise from the classical channel is characterized with classical light at different wavelengths. With the largest noise, i.e., the worst case, the properties of energy-time entanglement are measured at different fiber optical communication rates. By measuring the two-photon interference of energy-time entanglement, our results show that a visibility of 82.01$\pm$1.10\% is achieved with a bidirectional 20 Gbps fiber optical communication over 40 km. Furthermore, by performing the BBM92 protocol for QKD, a secret key rate of 245 bits per second could be generated with a quantum bit error rate of 8.88\% with the coexisted energy-time entanglement.~Our demonstration paves the way for developing the infrastructure for quantum networks compatible with fiber optical communication., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

Additional file 1: Figure S1. SEM and TEM of MIL-101-NH2 NPs. Figure S2. The UV-Vis absorbance spectrum and standard curve of CCM. Figure S3. The fluorescence spectrum of MC NPs with different DLC(CCM) in siCy5 solution. Figure S4. Gel retardation assay of MCS with different DLCs of CCM. Figure S5. The standard curve line of CCM in PBS-Tween 80 with different pH values. Figure S6. The hydrodynamic diameters of MCS NPs incubated in PBS, DMEM/F12, and FBS for 14 days. Figure S7. The PXRD patterns of MCS NPs incubated in PBS, DMEM/F12, and FBS for 14 days. Figure S8. Live/dead assay of MCS NPs in chondrocytes. Figure S9. ROS generation of intracellular induced by MIL-101-NH2. Figure S10. Relative body weight changes of mice after DMM surgery. Table S1. The DLCs and DLEs of different weight ratios of MIL-101-NH2 and CCM. Table S2. Different siRNA and objectives used in the experiments. Table S3. DLS and zeta potential of MIL-101-NH2@CCM-siRNAX complexes at different weight ratios. Equation S1-2. Formulas to calculate loaded CCM (DLC and DLE) in MIL-101NH2. Equation S3. Formula to calculate percent of CCM and siRNA release.

Purpose: The Medical Imaging and Data Resource Center (MIDRC) open data commons was launched to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to help address the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to quantify longitudinal representativeness of the demographic characteristics of the primary imaging dataset compared to the United States general population (US Census) and COVID-19 positive case counts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Approach: The Jensen Shannon distance (JSD) was used to longitudinally measure the similarity of the distribution of (1) all unique patients in the MIDRC data to the 2020 US Census and (2) all unique COVID-19 positive patients in the MIDRC data to the case counts reported by the CDC. The distributions were evaluated in the demographic categories of age at index, sex, race, ethnicity, and the intersection of race and ethnicity. Results: Representativeness the MIDRC data by ethnicity and the intersection of race and ethnicity was impacted by the percentage of CDC case counts for which data in these categories is not reported. The distributions by sex and race have retained their level of representativeness over time. Conclusion: The representativeness of the open medical imaging datasets in the curated public data commons at MIDRC has evolved over time as both the number of contributing institutions and overall number of subjects has grown. The use of metrics such as the JSD support measurement of representativeness, one step needed for fair and generalizable AI algorithm development., Comment: 33 pages, 8 figures, 5 supplemental figures, submitted to Journal of Medical Imaging

Estimation of the expectation value of observables is a key subroutine in quantum computing and is also the bottleneck of the performance of many near-term quantum algorithms. Many works have been proposed to reduce the number of measurements needed for this task and they provide different measurement schemes for generating the measurements to perform. In this paper, we propose a new approach, composite measurement scheme, which composes multiple measurement schemes by distributing shots to them with a trainable ratio. As an example of our method, we study the case where only Pauli measurements are allowed and propose Composite-LBCS (C-LBCS), a composite measurement scheme made by composing locally-biased classical shadows. We numerically demonstrate C-LBCS on molecular systems up to $\mathrm{CO}_2$ (30 qubits) and show that C-LBCS outperforms the previous state-of-the-art methods despite its simplicity. We also show that C-LBCS can be efficiently optimized by stochastic gradient descent and is trainable even when the observable contains a large number of terms. We believe our method opens up a reliable way toward efficient observable estimation on large quantum systems., Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures

Traditional class action recognition methods focus on the recognition of interactive behavior itself,not the group discovery.Accurate positioning and discovery of interactive groups in class environment is the basis for further individual behavior recognition,but there is a problem of missing behavior data caused by occlusion.Skeletal data represent human behavior and motion trajectory,and have the advantages of not being disturbed by light and background,and simple data expression.Aiming at multi-person interactive group discovery of skeleton data,an interactive group discovery algorithm based on skeleton trajectory aggregation (IGSTA) is proposed.Firstly,this paper standardizes the skeleton data into the human-centered coordinate system to reduce the impact on recognition accuracy of different body size and initial position of person.Secondly,a skeleton trajectory aggregation model based on multi-core representation is proposed to accurately describe the changes of students' interactive beha-vior groups.Finally,the aggregated skeleton trajectories are clustered to realize the discovery of interactive group.Kinect is used to obtain the simulated video of classroom student interaction behavior.Experiments proves the validity of the method,that is,in the case of missing skeleton nodes,the interaction group of students can be accurately found in class environment.

In this work, we treat $\Lambda_c(2910)^+$ and $\Lambda_c(2940)^+$ as the conventional $udc$ cores dressed with the $D^*N$ channel. We provide a possible interpretation to both $\Lambda_c(2910)^+$ and $\Lambda_c(2940)^+$ within the same framework. In the study, we consider not only the effects between the conventional triquark core and the $D^*N$ channel but also the $D^*N$-$D^*N$ interactions. The mass of $\Lambda_c$ state with $J^P=1/2^-$ is larger than that with $J^P=3/2^-$ in this unquenched picture, which is very different from the prediction of the conventional quenched quark model. Based on the mass spectrum, the spin-parity of $\Lambda_c(2940)^+$ is more likely to be $1/2^-$ while $\Lambda_c(2910)^+$ prefers $3/2^-$. We look forward to the future experiments can test our results with more precise experimental data., Comment: 12 pages, 4 tables, 5 figures

To evaluate the effect of hydraulic fracturing in a low-permeability reservoir, a propagation path tracing method for hydraulically created fractures was established based on microseismic monitoring data. First, the numerical simulation of the wave propagation process, grid search, and error-weight coefficient method was combined to locate the microseismic source. Then, the moment tensor inversion method was used to determine the tensile angle and source mechanism of hydraulically created fractures. Next, the tensile angle was used as the weight-index to determine the size of the mixed-source mechanism fracture combined with the shear and tensile source size quantization model. Finally, the spatial topological relationship between fractures was determined by comprehensively considering the spatial location and radius of the fractures, to realize the propagation path tracing of hydraulically created fractures. These tracking results can be used as one of the bases for the evaluation of the hydraulic fracturing effect.

We study the decays $B_{c,u,d}\to X(3872)P$ in the perturbative QCD (PQCD) approach, where the puzzling resonance $X(3872)$ is involved and $P$ represents a light pseudoscalar meson $K$ and $\pi$. Assuming the $X(3872)$ as a $1^{++}$ charmonium state, we find the following results: (a) The branching ratios for the decays $B^+_c\to X(3872)\pi^+$ and $B^+_c\to X(3872) K^+$ agree with the results predicted by the covariant light-front approach within errors, but are larger than those given by the generalized factorization approach; (b) The branching ratio for the decay $B^+\to X(3872)K^+$ is predicted as $(3.8^{+1.1}_{-1.0})\times10^{-4}$, which is smaller than the previous PQCD calculation result, but still slightly larger than the upper limits set by Belle and BaBar. So we suggest that the decays $B^{0,+}\to X(3872)K^{0,+}$ should be precisely measured by the running LHCb and Belle II experiments, which is very helpful to probe the inner structure of the $X(3872)$; (c) Compared with the decays $B_{u,d}\to X(3872)K$, the decays $B_{u,d}\to X(3872)\pi$ have much smaller branching ratios, which drop to as low as $10^{-6}$; (d) The direct CP violations for these considered decays are very small, only $10^{-3}\sim 10^{-2}$, because the penguin contributions are loop suppressed compared with the tree contributions. Testing the results for the branching ratios and the CP violations including the implicit $SU(3)$ and isospin symmetries in these decays by experiments is helpful to probe the nature of the $X(3872)$., Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures

In this work we study the quasi-two-body decays $B\to K^*\gamma\to K\pi\gamma$ in the perturbative QCD (PQCD) approach. The two-meson distribution amplitudes (DAs) are introduced to describe the final state interactions of the $K\pi$ pair, which involve the time-like form factors and the Gegenbauer polynomials. We calculate the CP averaged branching ratios for the decays $B_{(s)}\to K^*\gamma\to K\pi\gamma$. Our results are in agreement with the new update data measured by Belle II, which suggests these quasi-two-body decays are more appropriate to be analyzed in three-body framework than in the two-body one. We also predict the direct CP-violation asymmetries for the considered decay modes and find that $A_{CP}(B_{u,d}\to K^*\gamma\to K\pi\gamma)$ is small and less than $1\%$ in magnitude, while $A_{CP}(B_{s}\to K^*\gamma\to K\pi\gamma)$ is larger and can arrive at a few percent. Our predictions can be tested by the future B meson experiments., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures

Influence maximization in complex networks, i.e., maximizing the size of influenced nodes via selecting K seed nodes for a given spreading process, has attracted great attention in recent years. However, the influence maximization problem in hypergraphs, in which the hyperedges are leveraged to represent the interactions among more than two nodes, is still an open question. In this paper, we propose an adaptive degree-based heuristic algorithm, i.e., Heuristic Degree Discount (HDD), which iteratively selects nodes with low influence overlap as seeds, to solve the influence maximization problem in hypergraphs. We further extend algorithms from ordinary networks as baselines and compare the performance of the proposed algorithm and baselines on both real data and synthetic hypergraphs. Results show that HDD outperforms the baselines in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency. Moreover, the experiments on synthetic hypergraphs indicate that HDD shows high performance, especially in hypergraphs with heterogeneous degree distribution.

Speech enhancement (SE) is usually required as a front end to improve the speech quality in noisy environments, while the enhanced speech might not be optimal for automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems due to speech distortion. On the other hand, it was shown that self-supervised pre-training enables the utilization of a large amount of unlabeled noisy data, which is rather beneficial for the noise robustness of ASR. However, the potential of the (optimal) integration of SE and self-supervised pre-training still remains unclear. In order to find an appropriate combination and reduce the impact of speech distortion caused by SE, in this paper we therefore propose a joint pre-training approach for the SE module and the self-supervised model. First, in the pre-training phase the original noisy waveform or the waveform obtained by SE is fed into the self-supervised model to learn the contextual representation, where the quantified clean speech acts as the target. Second, we propose a dual-attention fusion method to fuse the features of noisy and enhanced speeches, which can compensate the information loss caused by separately using individual modules. Due to the flexible exploitation of clean/noisy/enhanced branches, the proposed method turns out to be a generalization of some existing noise-robust ASR models, e.g., enhanced wav2vec2.0. Finally, experimental results on both synthetic and real noisy datasets show that the proposed joint training approach can improve the ASR performance under various noisy settings, leading to a stronger noise robustness., submitted to IEEE/ACM TASLP. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2201.08930

How to reduce the damage caused by myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (IR) in a timely manner to save patients' lives is still a great clinical challenge. Although dexmedetomidine (DEX) has been reported to protect the myocardium, the regulatory mechanism of gene translation responding to IR injury and DEX protection is poorly understood. In this study, IR rat model with DEX and the antagonist yohimbine (YOH) pretreatment were established, and RNA sequencing was carried out to seek the important regulators in differential expressed genes. A series of cytokines and chemokine as well as eukaryotic translation elongation factor 1 alpha 2 (EEF1A2) were induced by IR compared to control and compromised by DEX pretreatment compared to IR, then reversed by YOH. Immunoprecipitation was conducted to identify that peroxiredoxin 1 (PRDX1) interacted with EEF1A2 and contributed to the recruitment of EEF1A2 on mRNA molecules of cytokines and chemokine. Knockdown of PRDX1 could weaken the enhancive effect of EEF1A2 for gene translation of IL6, CXCL2 and CXCL11 under the IR condition, and indeed reduce cell apoptosis of cardiomyocytes. We also determined that the RNA motif “USCAGDCU” at 5′ UTR could be particularly recognized by PRDX1. Destruction of this motif at the 5’ UTR of IL6, CXCL2 and CXCL11 by CRISPR-CAS9 could result in the loss occupancies of EEF1A2 and PRDX1 on the mRNA of these three genes. Our observations showed the importance of PRDX1 in the reasonable control of cytokine and chemokine expression to prevent excessive inflammatory response to cell damage.

Using AdS/CFT correspondence, we study the imaginary part of heavy quarkonia potential from thermal fluctuations in a strongly coupled plasma. We perform the analysis in a rotating deformed AdS black-hole background. It is shown that the presence of angular velocity decreases the onset of imaginary potential thus enhancing quarkonia dissociation, in agreement with previous findings of the entropic force. Moreover, by increasing angular velocity, the thermal width becomes smaller.

A solar heat pump heating system with an aluminum tubular collector is proposed in this paper. Mathematical models are established for solar energy absorption and air energy absorption of the aluminum tubular collector, as well as the heat-absorption coefficient of the working substance. The electronic expansion valve is controlled via the fuzzy PID method to adjust the working substance flow rate, as well as to control the evaporator overheating and set the indoor heating temperature. TRNSYS is used to analyze the effects of the wind speed, solar radiation amount, environment temperature, and working substance flow rate on the heat transfer performance of the aluminum tubular collector. The results indicate that the heat transfer performance of the aluminum tubular collector is significantly affected not only by the solar radiation but also the wind speed. For wind speed > 2 m/s, the absorbed power of the collector increases rapidly with an increase in the wind speed; when the working-medium flow rate reaches 4 m/s, the collector absorption power tends to be saturated. Subsequently, an experimental heating system with a heating area of 170 m2 is constructed. Experiments revealed that the maximum coefficient of performance (COP) of the heating system is 4.46, and the average COP value is 3.95, indicating good heating effect.

Objective: To compare the changes of kinematics and dynamics indexes of deep squat, bench press and hard pull in order to provide basis for the application of these three kinds of resistance strength training methods. Methods: The kinematic and dynamic characteristics of 30 young men in deep squat, bench press and hard pull were measured by the real-time wireless sensor motion capture and mechanical evaluation system of the wearable FAB. Results: In terms of kinematic parameters under 40%1RM and 80%1RM load, there were significant differences(P

Magnolia brunnescens K.W.Luo & XiongLi, sp. nov. (Figs 1, 2) Type:— CHINA. Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region: Tian’e County, 25°04’08”N, 107°12’38”E, ca. 790 m, on the valley of broadleaved forest, flowering, 3 June 2021, Luo 21060301 (holotype: HIB!; isotypes: GXF!, IBK!). The new species is morphologically similar to M. dandyi Gagnepain (1939: 63), but mainly differs in buds, twigs, stipules, petioles and peduncles densely brown-tomentose (vs. long ferruginous), vegetative buds elliptic-ovoid, ca. 1.0 cm long (vs. oblong, usually over 2.0 cm long), leaf blades adaxially villous (vs. glabrous), anthers apically semi-orbicular (vs. triangular) and carpels sparsely villous (vs. glabrous). Evergreen trees up to 28 m high and 52 cm D. B. H., aromatic. Bark coarse with transverse lenticels when young, becoming smooth and longitudinally fissured with age. Trunk straight, branches nearly horizontal, slender, twigs robust, dotted with lenticels. Buds, twigs, stipules, petioles and peduncles densely brown-tomentose. Leaves clustered on twigs apex, vegetative buds elliptic-ovoid, ca. 1.0 cm long; blade leathery, green on both sides, oblong-elliptic to obovate-elliptic, base cuneate, apex acuminate to acute, 19–34 × 7.5–16 cm, brown villous on each side, especially thick on veins; veins conspicuous, prominent beneath, secondary veins 16–23 on each side of midvein, higher-order venation reticulate, anastomosing before margin, abaxially conspicuous, stipules caducous, petioles 2.5–5.3 cm, stipular scars 1.0– 1.8 cm long, extending 1/3–1/2 of petiole length. Flowers bisexual, solitary terminal, floral buds ellipsoid, ca. 4.0 × 3.2 cm; spathaceous bract 1, abaxially brown villous, peduncles robust, 2.5–3.3 cm long, ca. 0.8 cm in diameter; flower 9–13 cm in diameter, slightly fragrant, tepals 11(12), in 4 whorls, the outer 3 tepals green, elliptic, longitudinally 5-veined, abaxially villous at base, 5.0–7.0 × 2.8–3.5 cm, inner tepals becoming gradually smaller inwards, white, obovate to spathulate, 3.7–6.5 × 1.6–2.7 cm; stamens 250–400, purplish red, 13.4–15.0 × 2.4–3.5 mm, anthers 9.7–12.2 × 1.0– 1.5 mm, abaxially sparsely villous, introrsely dehiscent, connectives elongate into 1.0– 1.5 mm semi-orbicular appendages; gynoecium ovoid, ca. 2.4 × 1.6 cm, sparsely villous; carpels 60–80, long ca. 1.2 cm, ovules 5–6 in each side. Aggregate fruit ovoid when well-developed, ca. 8.0 × 6.0 cm, glabrous, mature follicles dehiscent along both dorsal and ventral sutures, beaks slightly recurved, seeds compressed ovoid, ca. 7.0 × 7.0 mm. Phenology:— Flowering late May–June, fruiting late August–September. Etymology:— From the Latin for brownish, referring to the dense, brown-tomentose indument of this plant. The Chinese name is hè-máo-mù-lián (ñ毛木Ϊ). Distribution and habitat:— Currently known from three localities: Tian’e County; Baojia Mountain, Nandan County, Hechi City; Jiayou Town, Lingyun County, Baise City, Guangxi, China. Magnolia brunnescens is found in broad-leaved forest at approximately 800 m, growing mostly on moderate slopes with deep humus-rich soil. Preliminary conservation status:— During fieldwork in the type locality, only two sites with a total of 16 individuals were observed, in which one critical community comprising 15 adult individuals occurs in an area not exceeding 100 m 2, and the other site has only a young tree. The prospects for this community are not optimistic. Given that most are canopy trees except for a few growing in forest margin, M. brunnescens appears to be a heliophilous species, and fewer flower buds and lower seed set are both observed on lower branches. No juveniles and seedlings were found in undergrowth and adjacent areas, indicating low natural regeneration. In addition, we noted flowering nearly overlaps the rainy season from May through August, which may contribute to difficult pollination. Furthermore, there are large plantations around the habitat in which Cunninghamia lanceolata, Phyllostachys edulis and other trees are planted. It should be noted that two other localities are c. 85 kilometres away, and only three localities with few individuals have been thus far recorded. In fact, suitable habitat in the adjacent area is both rare and fragmented owing to locally high proportion of karst (up to 40%) and reduction of available habitat mainly caused by the replacement of extensively artificial vegetation. In view of its small population size, restricted known range, poor seedling regeneration and fragmented habitat, we preliminarily consider this species as critically endangered (CR B1ab (iii) + 2ab (iii); D) using the IUCN categories and criteria (IUCN 2022). Further exploration and conservation studies are urgently needed. Notes:— Indument has been recognized as a key character for delimitation of taxa in M. sect. Manglietia (Hu 2011). In China, there are only a few species recorded with indument on carpels or stamens, and most of them also are densely tomentose on buds, twigs, stipules, peduncles and leaves: M. rufibarbata (Dandy 1928: 128) Kumar (2006: 185), M. ventii (Tiêṕ 1980: 560) Kumar (2006: 185), M. zhengyiana (Xia 2008: 55) Nooteboom (2008: 50), M. lawii (Xia & Liao 2009: 1) Callaghan & Png (2013: 3), M. dandyi and the new species. In addition, it needs to be mentioned that M. brunnescens is a potential aromatic plant because a strong, persistent fragrance is observed from dry branches and leaves. Additional specimens examined:— CHINA. Guangxi: Nandan County, Baojia Mountain, 6 Nov 1980, Fu 84 (IBK, online image); Lingyun County, Jiayou town, 804 m, 12 Mar 2014, Lingyun Expedition team 451027140312015 (GXMI, online image); Tian’e County, ca. 790 m, 20 Nov 2019, Luo 19112001 (HIB, GXF); ibidem, 11 May 2020, Luo & Li 20051101 (HIB, GXF); ibidem, 28 Aug 2021, fruit, Luo 210802801 (HIB, GXF).

Magnolia brunnescens K.W.Luo & XiongLi, sp. nov. (Figs 1, 2) Type:— CHINA. Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region: Tian’e County, 25°04’08”N, 107°12’38”E, ca. 790 m, on the valley of broadleaved forest, flowering, 3 June 2021, Luo 21060301 (holotype: HIB!; isotypes: GXF!, IBK!). The new species is morphologically similar to M. dandyi Gagnepain (1939: 63), but mainly differs in buds, twigs, stipules, petioles and peduncles densely brown-tomentose (vs. long ferruginous), vegetative buds elliptic-ovoid, ca. 1.0 cm long (vs. oblong, usually over 2.0 cm long), leaf blades adaxially villous (vs. glabrous), anthers apically semi-orbicular (vs. triangular) and carpels sparsely villous (vs. glabrous). Evergreen trees up to 28 m high and 52 cm D. B. H., aromatic. Bark coarse with transverse lenticels when young, becoming smooth and longitudinally fissured with age. Trunk straight, branches nearly horizontal, slender, twigs robust, dotted with lenticels. Buds, twigs, stipules, petioles and peduncles densely brown-tomentose. Leaves clustered on twigs apex, vegetative buds elliptic-ovoid, ca. 1.0 cm long; blade leathery, green on both sides, oblong-elliptic to obovate-elliptic, base cuneate, apex acuminate to acute, 19–34 × 7.5–16 cm, brown villous on each side, especially thick on veins; veins conspicuous, prominent beneath, secondary veins 16–23 on each side of midvein, higher-order venation reticulate, anastomosing before margin, abaxially conspicuous, stipules caducous, petioles 2.5–5.3 cm, stipular scars 1.0– 1.8 cm long, extending 1/3–1/2 of petiole length. Flowers bisexual, solitary terminal, floral buds ellipsoid, ca. 4.0 × 3.2 cm; spathaceous bract 1, abaxially brown villous, peduncles robust, 2.5–3.3 cm long, ca. 0.8 cm in diameter; flower 9–13 cm in diameter, slightly fragrant, tepals 11(12), in 4 whorls, the outer 3 tepals green, elliptic, longitudinally 5-veined, abaxially villous at base, 5.0–7.0 × 2.8–3.5 cm, inner tepals becoming gradually smaller inwards, white, obovate to spathulate, 3.7–6.5 × 1.6–2.7 cm; stamens 250–400, purplish red, 13.4–15.0 × 2.4–3.5 mm, anthers 9.7–12.2 × 1.0– 1.5 mm, abaxially sparsely villous, introrsely dehiscent, connectives elongate into 1.0– 1.5 mm semi-orbicular appendages; gynoecium ovoid, ca. 2.4 × 1.6 cm, sparsely villous; carpels 60–80, long ca. 1.2 cm, ovules 5–6 in each side. Aggregate fruit ovoid when well-developed, ca. 8.0 × 6.0 cm, glabrous, mature follicles dehiscent along both dorsal and ventral sutures, beaks slightly recurved, seeds compressed ovoid, ca. 7.0 × 7.0 mm. Phenology:— Flowering late May–June, fruiting late August–September. Etymology:— From the Latin for brownish, referring to the dense, brown-tomentose indument of this plant. The Chinese name is hè-máo-mù-lián (ñ毛木Ϊ). Distribution and habitat:— Currently known from three localities: Tian’e County; Baojia Mountain, Nandan County, Hechi City; Jiayou Town, Lingyun County, Baise City, Guangxi, China. Magnolia brunnescens is found in broad-leaved forest at approximately 800 m, growing mostly on moderate slopes with deep humus-rich soil. Preliminary conservation status:— During fieldwork in the type locality, only two sites with a total of 16 individuals were observed, in which one critical community comprising 15 adult individuals occurs in an area not exceeding 100 m 2, and the other site has only a young tree. The prospects for this community are not optimistic. Given that most are canopy trees except for a few growing in forest margin, M. brunnescens appears to be a heliophilous species, and fewer flower buds and lower seed set are both observed on lower branches. No juveniles and seedlings were found in undergrowth and adjacent areas, indicating low natural regeneration. In addition, we noted flowering nearly overlaps the rainy season from May through August, which may contribute to difficult pollination. Furthermore, there are large plantations around the habitat in which Cunninghamia lanceolata, Phyllostachys edulis and other trees are planted. It should be noted that two other localities are c. 85 kilometres away, and only three localities with few individuals have been thus far recorded. In fact, suitable habitat in the adjacent area is both rare and fragmented owing to locally high proportion of karst (up to 40%) and reduction of available habitat mainly caused by the replacement of extensively artificial vegetation. In view of its small population size, restricted known range, poor seedling regeneration and fragmented habitat, we preliminarily consider this species as critically endangered (CR B1ab (iii) + 2ab (iii); D) using the IUCN categories and criteria (IUCN 2022). Further exploration and conservation studies are urgently needed. Notes:— Indument has been recognized as a key character for delimitation of taxa in M. sect. Manglietia (Hu 2011). In China, there are only a few species recorded with indument on carpels or stamens, and most of them also are densely tomentose on buds, twigs, stipules, peduncles and leaves: M. rufibarbata (Dandy 1928: 128) Kumar (2006: 185), M. ventii (Tiêṕ 1980: 560) Kumar (2006: 185), M. zhengyiana (Xia 2008: 55) Nooteboom (2008: 50), M. lawii (Xia & Liao 2009: 1) Callaghan & Png (2013: 3), M. dandyi and the new species. In addition, it needs to be mentioned that M. brunnescens is a potential aromatic plant because a strong, persistent fragrance is observed from dry branches and leaves. Additional specimens examined:— CHINA. Guangxi: Nandan County, Baojia Mountain, 6 Nov 1980, Fu 84 (IBK, online image); Lingyun County, Jiayou town, 804 m, 12 Mar 2014, Lingyun Expedition team 451027140312015 (GXMI, online image); Tian’e County, ca. 790 m, 20 Nov 2019, Luo 19112001 (HIB, GXF); ibidem, 11 May 2020, Luo & Li 20051101 (HIB, GXF); ibidem, 28 Aug 2021, fruit, Luo 210802801 (HIB, GXF)., Published as part of Li, Xiong, Luo, Kai-Wen, Zhang, Zi-Bin, Tian, Jing & Wei, Xiao-Mei, 2022, Magnolia brunnescens (Magnoliaceae), a new species from Guangxi, China, pp. 201-206 in Phytotaxa 544 (2) on pages 202-203, DOI: 10.11646/phytotaxa.544.2.6, http://zenodo.org/record/6503907, {"references":["Gagnepain, F. (1939) Magnoliacees nouvelles ou litigieuses. Notulae Systematicae 8: 63 - 66.","IUCN (2022) Guidelines for using the IUCN Red List categories and criteria, version 15. IUCN Standards and Petitions Subcommittee. https: // www. iucnredlist. org / documents / RedListGuidelines. pdf","Dandy, J. E. (1928) New or noteworthy Chinese Magnolieae. Notes from the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh 16: 123 - 132.","Kumar, V. S. (2006) New combinations and new names in Asian Magnoliaceae. Kew Bulletin 61: 183 - 186.","Tie p, N. V. (1980) Beitrage zur Sippenstruktur der Gattung Manglietia BL. (Magnoliaceae). Feddes Repertorium 91: 497 - 576. https: // doi. org / 10.1002 / fedr. 19800910902","Xia, N. H., Law, Y. W. & Nooteboom, H. P. (2008) Magnoliaceae. In: Wu, Z. Y., Raven, P. H. & Hong, D. Y. (Eds.) Flora of China, vol 7. Science Press, Beijing and Missouri Botanical Garden Press, St. Louis, pp. 48 - 91.","Liao, W. F. & Xia, N. H. (2009) Manglietia lawii sp. nov. (Magnoliaceae) from Yunnan, China. Nordic Journal of Botany 27: 1 - 3. https: // doi. org / 10.1111 / j. 1756 - 1051.2008.00362. x"]}

In this paper, the design of a 4th-harmonic gyrotron with 1-kW-level output power at 1 terahertz (THz) is presented. A unique advantage of this design is that, with a well-optimized magnetic-cusp large-orbit electron gun, the designed gyrotron can operate from 1st harmonic to 4th harmonic in multiple discrete bands by varying the operating voltage. By carefully balancing the competing modes, the gyrotron can be tuned to operate at six candidate modes, including TE1,2 for fundamental harmonic, TE2,3 and TE2,4 for 2nd harmonic, TE3,5 and TE3,6 for 3rd harmonic, and TE4,8 for 4th harmonic interactions. As the main operating mode, the TE4,8 can generate a peak output power of 1.68 kW, with an efficiency of about 2.1%, and a magnetically controlled frequency tuning range of about 1.8 GHz around 1 THz. The impact of the longitudinal nonuniformity of the cavity at high-harmonic interaction was also studied. It shows a radial tolerance of several micrometers will significantly elevate the start-oscillation current and deteriorate output performance. This design is towards the development of a synthesizing THz source with ultra-wideband tuning capability ranging from the sub-millimeter-wave to 1-THz bands.

Temporal stability of net primary productivity (NPP) is important for predicting the reliable provisioning of ecosystem services under global changes. Although nitrogen (N) addition is known to affect the temporal stability of aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP), it is unclear how it impacts that of belowground net primary productivity (BNPP) and NPP, and whether such effects are scale dependent. Here, using experimental N addition in a grassland, we found different responses of ANPP and BNPP stability to N addition at the local scale and that these responses propagated to the larger spatial scale. That is, N addition significantly decreased the stability of ANPP but did not affect the stability of BNPP and NPP at the two scales investigated. Additionally, spatial asynchrony of both ANPP and BNPP among communities provided greater stability at the larger scale and was not affected by N addition. Our findings challenge the traditional view that N addition would reduce ecosystem stability based on results from aboveground dynamics, thus highlighting the importance of viewing ecosystem stability from a whole system perspective.

Artificial electromagnetic medium can effectively expand the absorption bandwidth of the absorber,which has aroused wide attention of researchers at home and abroad. The main typical structure and application of broadband absorbers based on artificial electromagnetic medium were reviewed in recent years. The mechanism of artificial electromagnetic medium structure in improving the absorption rate of the absorber was analyzed. The theoretical model of widening the bandwidth of the absorber based on lumped elements was introduced. The important role of artificial electromagnetic medium in expanding the absorbing bandwidth was emphasized. Finally, the application prospect of electromagnetic medium in the field of science and technology was prospected, and it was pointed out that the future development trend of broadband electromagnetic absorbers mainly focuses on coordinability, multi-physics coupling and low-cost production, especially the efficient large-area low-cost production process will become important for the future.

A simple synthetic method of poly(hexamethylene guanidine hydrochloride) grafted hollow nano-silica (HSN-PHMG), a novel antibacterial material, was proposed. The water dispersibility and antibacterial property of HSN grafting of PHMG were improved. The hollow structure of nano-silica was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and thermogravimetric analysis were used to characterize the successful grafting of PHMG and the mass fraction of PHMG is about 9.5% in HSN-PHMG. Antibacterial test using Escherichia coil (E.coil) and Staphylococcus aureus (S.aureus) as test strains and the results show that the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of HSN-PHMG on E.coil and S.aureus are all 32 mg/L; E.coil can be completely killed within 2 h when the concentration of HSN-PHMG is 64 mg/L.

Additional file 1.

Recently, several Vision Transformer (ViT) based methods have been proposed for Fine-Grained Visual Classification (FGVC).These methods significantly surpass existing CNN-based ones, demonstrating the effectiveness of ViT in FGVC tasks.However, there are some limitations when applying ViT directly to FGVC.First, ViT needs to split images into patches and calculate the attention of every pair, which may result in heavy redundant calculation and unsatisfying performance when handling fine-grained images with complex background and small objects.Second, a standard ViT only utilizes the class token in the final layer for classification, which is not enough to extract comprehensive fine-grained information. To address these issues, we propose a novel ViT based fine-grained object discriminator for FGVC tasks, ViT-FOD for short. Specifically, besides a ViT backbone, it further introduces three novel components, i.e, Attention Patch Combination (APC), Critical Regions Filter (CRF), and Complementary Tokens Integration (CTI). Thereinto, APC pieces informative patches from two images to generate a new image so that the redundant calculation can be reduced. CRF emphasizes tokens corresponding to discriminative regions to generate a new class token for subtle feature learning. To extract comprehensive information, CTI integrates complementary information captured by class tokens in different ViT layers. We conduct comprehensive experiments on widely used datasets and the results demonstrate that ViT-FOD is able to achieve state-of-the-art performance.

In this work, we treat $Λ_c(2910)^+$ and $Λ_c(2940)^+$ as the conventional $udc$ cores dressed with the $D^*N$ channel. We provide a possible interpretation to both $Λ_c(2910)^+$ and $Λ_c(2940)^+$ within the same framework. In the study, we consider not only the effects between the conventional triquark core and the $D^*N$ channel but also the $D^*N$-$D^*N$ interactions. The mass of $Λ_c$ state with $J^P=1/2^-$ is larger than that with $J^P=3/2^-$ in this unquenched picture, which is very different from the prediction of the conventional quenched quark model. Based on the mass spectrum, the spin-parity of $Λ_c(2940)^+$ is more likely to be $1/2^-$ while $Λ_c(2910)^+$ prefers $3/2^-$. We look forward to the future experiments can test our results with more precise experimental data., 12 pages, 4 tables, 5 figures