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Background: Thyroid surgery has undergone significant transformation with the introduction of minimally invasive techniques, particularly robotic and endoscopic thyroidectomy. These advancements offer improved precision and faster recovery but also present unique challenges. This study aims to compare the learning curves, operational efficiencies, and patient outcomes of robotic versus endoscopic thyroidectomy. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted, analyzing 258 robotic (da Vinci) and 214 endoscopic thyroidectomy cases. Key metrics such as operation duration, drainage volume, lymph node dissection outcomes, and hypoparathyroidism incidence were assessed to understand surgical learning curves and efficiency. Results: Robotic thyroidectomy showed a longer learning curve with initially longer operation times and higher drainage volumes but superior lymph node dissection outcomes. Both techniques were safe, with no permanent hypoparathyroidism or recurrent laryngeal nerve damage reported. The study delineated four distinct stages in the robotic and endoscopic surgery learning curve, each marked by specific improvements in proficiency. Endoscopic thyroidectomy displayed a shorter learning curve, leading to quicker operational efficiency gains. Conclusion: Robotic and endoscopic thyroidectomies are viable minimally invasive approaches, each with its learning curves and efficiency metrics. Despite initial challenges and a longer learning period for robotic surgery, its benefits in complex dissections may justify specialized training. Structured training programs tailored to each technique are crucial for improving outcomes and efficiency. Future research should focus on optimizing training protocols and increasing accessibility to these technologies, enhancing patient care in thyroid surgery.

An aerobic copper-catalyzed oxysulfonylation of vinylarenes with sodium sulfinates is described. This protocol features mild reaction conditions, convenient operation, and broad substrate scope with respect to vinylarenes and sodium sulfinates. Notably, the protocol demonstrates excellent tolerance of functional groups such as chloro, bromo, ester, cyano, and nitro groups. Mechanistic investigations indicated that the reaction should undergo radical cascades involving a sulfonyl radical generated from sodium sulfinate with air as the terminal oxidant, addition across alkene to deliver a benzylic radical, and subsequent cross-coupling with air.

In this brief, a rectifier with wide input power dynamic range (WIPDR) is proposed for radio frequency energy harvesting (RFEH). It is composed of a quadrature coupler (QC) and two different sub-rectifiers ( ${R}$ ectH and ${R}$ ectL). Here, ${R}$ ectH and ${R}$ ectL have different optimal input power levels and they are connected to the two output ports of the QC. In the proposed topology, the reflected power of two sub-rectifiers can be recycled to sub-rectifiers and rectified again due to the feature of the QC. Besides, in each sub-rectifier, three transmission line sections are employed to further extend the dynamic range of input power. Theoretical analysis is carried out. To validate the proposed approach, we design and implement a 2.45 GHz WIPDR rectifier. The measurement results show that the dynamic range of input power for RF-DC power conversion efficiency (PCE) higher than 50% is from 3.7 to 30.7 dBm (27 dB). In addition, its bandwidth (for $S_{11}$ <−10 dB) is from 1.74 to 2.8 GHz with a 16 dBm input power $(P_{in})$ . These results indicate that the proposed rectifier not only achieves a broad operating band but also has a WIPDR.

A nickel-catalyzed direct sulfonylation of alkenes with sulfonyl chlorides has been developed using 1,10-phenanthroline-5,6-dione as the ligand. Unactivated alkenes and styrenes including 1,1-, 1,2-disubstituted alkenes can be subjected to the protocol, and a wide range of vinyl sulfones was obtained in high to excellent yields with good functional group compatibility. Notably, the process did not allow the desulfonylation of sulfonyl chloride or chlorosulfonylation of alkenes. Radical-trapping experiment supported that a sulfonyl free-radical was likely produced and triggered subsequent transformation in the process.

Vascular diseases seriously threaten human life and health. Exogenous delivery of nitric oxide (NO) represents an effective approach for maintaining vascular homeostasis during pathological events. However, the overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) at vascular injury sites would react with NO to produce damaging peroxynitrite (ONOO−) species and limit the therapeutic effect of NO. Hence, we design a ROS-responsive NO nanomedicine (t-PBA&NO NP) with ROS scavenging ability to solve the dilemma of NO-based therapy. t-PBA&NO NP targets NO and anti-oxidant ethyl caffeate (ECA) to the injury sites via collagen IV homing peptide. The ROS-triggered ROS depletion and ECA release potently alleviate local oxidative stress via ROS scavenging, endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondrial regulation. It subsequently maximizes vascular modulation effects of NO, without production of harmful compounds, reactive nitrogen species (RNS). Therefore, it significantly increases competitiveness of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) over human aortic smooth muscle cells (HASMCs) both in vitro and in vivo. The strategy proved effective in inducing faster re-endothelialization, inhibiting neointimal formation and restoring vascular homeostasis. The synergy between ROS depletion and NO therapy served as a new inspiration for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases and other ROS-associated illnesses.

Poria cocos(PC) is a famous traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and a widely used healthcare ingredient, which has antiobesity, enhancing immunity and improving sleep effects. Traditionally, only water-soluble poria polysaccharide (WSP) is extracted and applied for clinical application, while insoluble polysaccharide (alkali-soluble poria polysaccharide, ASP) is discarded as herb residue. However, the whole PC has also been historically utilized as functional herbal food. Considering the beneficial role of dietary fiber and the traditional use of PC, ASP may also contribute substantially to the therapy function of PC. Compared to WSP, little attention has been paid to ASP and ASP modified product carboxymethyl poria polysaccharide (CMP) which has been used as an antitumor adjuvant drug. In this study, the oil, cholesterol, metal ions and polyphenols adsorption ability, in vitrosimulated digestive and the gut microbiota fermentation characteristics of WSP, ASP and CMP were studied to evaluate the functional values of three P. cocospolysaccharides (PCPs). The results showed that all three PCPs had good adsorption capacity on cholesterol, polyphenols and metal ions (Cd2+/Zn2+/Mg2+), among which ASP showed the highest capacity than WSP and CMP. The adsorption capacity of all three PCPs on heavy metal ions (Cd2+/Zn2+) was stronger than that of non-heavy metal ions (Mg2+); The in vitrodigestibility of all three PCPs was very low, but WSP was slightly higher than ASP and CMP; Moreover, the indigestible residue of all three PCPs could improve the richness and diversity of gut microbiota, among which ASP had the greatest influence. In general, ASP and CMP could significantly promote the proliferation of some probiotics and inhibit the growth of some harmful bacteria. The gut microbiota diversity of CMP was reduced, but the richness of probiotics, especially Parabacteroides distasoniswas significantly enhanced compared with the ASP group, and the growth of harmful bacteria Klebsiella pneumoniaewas inhibited after CMP treatment. The short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) analysis results showed that all three PCPs could significantly promote the production of acetic acid, propionic acid and the total acid content compared with blank control group, and SCFAs producing activity was positively correlated with the proliferative capacity of probiotics. Taken together, the good adsorption characteristics and gut microbiota regulatory activity of ASP may lay foundation for its lipid-lowering and immune-improving function. Additionally, the probiotic effect of CMP and ASP indicated that except for only use the water extract of PC in clinic, CMP and ASP also can be used in healthcare to take full advantage of this valuable medicine.

Implantable biomaterials and biosensors are integral components of modern medical systems but often encounter hindrances due to the foreign body response (FBR). Herein, we report an albumin coating strategy aimed at addressing this challenge. Using a facile and scalable silane coupling strategy, human serum albumin (HSA) is covalently grafted to the surface of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) implants. This covalently grafted albumin coating remains stable and resistant to displacement by other proteins. Notably, the PDMS with covalently grafted HSA strongly resists the fibrotic capsule formation following a 180-day subcutaneous implantation in C57BL/6 mice. Furthermore, the albumin coating led to reduced recruitment of macrophages and triggered a mild immune activation pattern. Exploration of albumin coatings sourced from various mammalian species has shown that only HSA exhibited a promising anti-FBR effect. The albumin coating method reported here holds the potential to improve and extend the function of silicone-based implants by mitigating the host responses to subcutaneously implanted biomaterials.

Bacterial diseases could severely harm agricultural production. To develop new antibacterial agents, the secondary metabolites of a deep-sea-derived fungus Simplicillium obclavatumEIODSF 020 with antibacterial activities against plant and fish pathogens were investigated by a bioassay-guided approach, which led to the isolation of 11 new peptaibiotics, simplicpeptaibs A–K (1–11). They contain 16–19 residues, including β-alanine, tyrosine, or tyrosine O-sulfate, that were rarely present in peptaibiotics. Their structures were elucidated by spectroscopic analyses (NMR, HRMS, HRMS2, and ECD) and Marfey’s method. The primary and secondary structures of novel sulfated peptaibiotic 9were reconfirmed by single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis. Genome sequencing of S. obclavatumEIODSF 020 allowed the detection of a gene cluster encoding two individual NRPSs (totally containing 19 modules) that was closely related to simplicpeptaib biosynthesis. Antibacterial investigations of 1–11together with the previously isolated linear and cyclic peptides from this strain suggested the antibacterial property of this fungus was attributed to the peptaibiotics and cyclic lipopeptides. Among them, compounds 4, 6, 7, and 9showed significant activity against the tobacco pathogen Ralstonia solanacearumor tilapia pathogens Streptococcus iniaeand Streptococcus agalactiae. The antibacterial activity of 6against R. solanacearumcould be enhanced by the addition of 1% NaCl. The structure–bioactivity relationship of simplicpeptaibs was discussed.

Purpose: This paper is concerned with the H∞optimization design of passive and active dynamic vibration absorbers (DVAs) attached to an undamped or damped primary system. Methods: The proposed optimization method is an efficient non-smooth H∞-synthesis algorithm that is utilized to solve structured H∞-synthesis in control engineering. This method can conveniently achieve the optimal design for the amplitude magnification factors of both the absolute and the relative displacements of a DVA using the proposed dual H∞design, and implement co-design of H∞-optimal proportional-integral-differential controllers and passive parameters of an active DVA. Results: Two active DVAs and two variant passive DVAs reported in the literature are taken as examples for design improvement. The optimization results indicate that the proposed method has significant advantages over the conventional fixed-points-theory-based methods and many numerical global optimization methods. Conclusions: The proposed H∞optimization design yields much better vibration suppression result for proportional-integral-differential control based active DVAs and variant passive DVAs with complicated structures. It is directly based on their equations of motion in state-space forms, and explicit formulations of various amplitude magnification factors, such as those on the absolute and the relative displacements and active force, need not be derived in the MATLAB environment. A possible situation of occurrence of large amplitude of the relative displacement in DVAs rarely considered in the literature can be handled by using the proposed dual H∞design.

This paper integrates research on positive psychology and effectuation, a concept representative of the entrepreneurial mind. We review the current development of effectuation research and emphasize the importance and uniqueness of each effectuation principle. Drawing on hedonic theory, desire theory, and eudaimonic account, we posit that three positive factors within positive psychology, positive affect, positive evaluation, and positive functioning, when considered collectively, might have significant differential effects on the levels of the four principles of effectuation individuals adopt. We test our hypotheses using survey data from a sample of CEOs in China, and the findings indicate that positive functioning is the only dimension of positive psychology that is positively related to all four effectual logics and could be an indispensable cause of effectuation. Positive affect was found to be negatively related to the affordable loss principle only, and positive evaluation was just negatively related to the lemonade or leveraging-surprise principle. Theoretical and managerial implications of our study are discussed in the end.

Data-free quantization effectively compresses deep learning models with privacy guarantees. However, previous data-free quantization methods applied to keyword spotting models have the following issues: (1) The synthesized samples are excessively similar, leading to severe homogenization problems; (2) The low-quality samples during the initial training hinder model fine-tuning. To address these issues, this paper proposes a novel framework called Data-Free Quantization with Dual Generator (DQDG). Our framework introduces Dual Generators with Center Distance Constraint (DGCDC) to enhance the intra-class heterogeneity of synthesized samples, and utilizes a selector to select high-quality samples to assist in model fine-tuning. Additionally, allowing the quantized model to infer complete data from masked data, we adopt Time Masking Quantization Distillation (TMQD) to improve the understanding of the data distribution. Experimental results demonstrate that DQDG outperforms existing data-free quantization methods by a large margin.

The physical stability of solid‒liquid fuel is a factor that needs to be considered for fuel product practicability for storage and transportation. To determine the Influence of liquid bridge force on physical stability, two detection devices were designed. The laws obtained from microscopic experiments are used to verify the physical stability of fuel under different component ratios. The liquid bridge force is found to increase with the droplet volume. Multiliquid bridges above one critical saturation can generate significant resultant forces compared to single-liquid bridges of the same volume. There exist four states of solid‒liquid mixed fuel with increasing liquid saturation rate. The liquid bridge force between the solid and liquid plays a dominant role in the physical stability of the first three states. There may be two stages involved in the stratification process for state 4 fuel, and the liquid viscosity is another factor that cannot be ignored. In the process of selecting a fuel ratio, a larger liquid bridge force between the components can be obtained by properly improving the wetting effect so that the fuel shows better physical stability.

Background: Long-term nursing home (NH) care helps NH residents with their daily activities and improves their quality of life, but negatively affects their independent physical activities and increases the risk of dangerous events. Dangerous events in the elderly usually occur in the conversion of walking periods when forward striding has already happened, but the body has not yet entered a completely steady walking. Objectives: Compare the gait characteristics in Chinese long-term NH residents and community-living elderly during the walking Transitional Period (TP) and Stabilization Period (SP). Methods: 32 long-term NH residents and 33 age- and sex-matched community-living elderly were recruited. The 30-Second Chair Stand Test (30-s CST), Timed Up and Go Test (TUGT), and Modified Falls Efficacy Scale (MFES) were used to assess their body function. The Xsens MVN BIOMECH system was used to collect and analyze the gait parameters of participants. Results: Compared to community-living elderly, NH residents had fewer numbers of 30-s CST, took more time to complete TUGT, and lower MEFS scores. NH residents showed slower gait speed (P&lt; 0.001), less peak hip flexion (P= 0.022) and extension (P= 0.003), knee internal rotation (P= 0.023), and ankle plantarflexion (P= 0.001) and internal rotation (P= 0.007) angles during walking. When walking progressed from TP to SP, NH residents showed increased ankle dorsiflexion (P&lt; 0.001), decreased hip internal rotation (P&lt; 0.001), and community-living elderly had increased hip extension (P= 0.005) angles. Conclusions: Chinese long-term NH residents had reduced lower extremities strength and postural balance, and higher fear of falling compared to community-living elderly. Their walking performance also showed high fall risk. Besides, long-term NH residents adopted a distal strategy to propel the body forward, which may be a compensatory measure to compensate for inadequate proximal joint control from forward walking to stable walking, and long-term NH residents have reduced postural stability during this process.

Chemodynamic therapy (CDT) has emerged as a promising strategy for cancer treatment. However, its effectiveness has been hindered by insufficient hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and high reductive glutathione (GSH) within tumors, which are the two main reasons for the inefficiency of Fenton/Fenton-like reaction-based CDT. Herein, we present a H2O2boost-GSH depletion strategy for enhanced CDT to fight against melanoma through a microneedle (MN)-based transcutaneous delivery method. The MN system is composed of dissolvable polyvinylpyrrolidone integrated with stimuli-responsive prodrugs. Under an intracellular acidic environment, the smart release of H2O2boosting components is triggered, subsequently initiating nitric oxide (NO) release and enhancing the Fenton-like reaction in a cascade manner. The generation of hydroxyl radicals (•OH), along with the depletion of GSH by NO, amplifies the oxidative stress within tumor cells, promoting apoptosis and ferroptosis. The antitumor efficacy of the MN patch is validated in an A375 mouse melanoma model. This “H2O2boost-GSH depletion-Fenton killing” strategy expands the options for superficial tumor treatment through MN-mediated enhanced CDT.

Most El Niño events occur sporadically and peak in a single winter1–3, whereas La Niña tends to develop after an El Niño and last for two years or longer4–7. Relative to single-year La Niña, consecutive La Niña features meridionally broader easterly winds and hence a slower heat recharge of the equatorial Pacific6,7, enabling the cold anomalies to persist, exerting prolonged impacts on global climate, ecosystems and agriculture8–13. Future changes to multi-year-long La Niña events remain unknown. Here, using climate models under future greenhouse-gas forcings14, we find an increased frequency of consecutive La Niña ranging from 19 ± 11% in a low-emission scenario to 33 ± 13% in a high-emission scenario, supported by an inter-model consensus stronger in higher-emission scenarios. Under greenhouse warming, a mean-state warming maximum in the subtropical northeastern Pacific enhances the regional thermodynamic response to perturbations, generating anomalous easterlies that are further northward than in the twentieth century in response to El Niño warm anomalies. The sensitivity of the northward-broadened anomaly pattern is further increased by a warming maximum in the equatorial eastern Pacific. The slower heat recharge associated with the northward-broadened easterly anomalies facilitates the cold anomalies of the first-year La Niña to persist into a second-year La Niña. Thus, climate extremes as seen during historical consecutive La Niña episodes probably occur more frequently in the twenty-first century.

Antarctic shelf ocean warming affects melt of ice shelf/sheets and sea ice but projected changes vary vastly across climate models. A projected increase in El Niño variability has been found to slow future mid-latitude Southern Ocean warming but how this impacts the Antarctic shelf ocean is unknown. Here we show that a projected increase in El Niño variability accelerates Antarctic shelf ocean warming, hastening ice shelf/sheet melt but slowing sea ice reduction.

Oxide-dispersion- strengthened nickel alloys with Hf additions are expected to present high temperature mechanical properties and durable helium resistance based on first-principles density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Energetic and charge density evaluations of the helium behaviors were performed in Ni matrix, Y2Hf2O7oxide and the oxide/matrix interface. With the presence of coherent Y2Hf2O7in Ni matrix, chances of helium bubbles in Ni can be greatly diminished. The helium atoms shall occupy the interfacial site initially, then diffuse into in the octahedral sites of Y2Hf2O7, and these oxide-captured He atoms prefer to separate individually. Much higher diffusion barrier of He in Y2Hf2O7than in nickel is related to the strong hybridization between interstitial He-1s and nearest-neighboring O-2p orbitals.

This brief presents a radio frequency (RF) rectifier with wide-incident-angle (WIA) of incoming waves based on quadrature coupler (QC). The proposed rectifier mainly consists of a QC, two identical sub-rectifiers (RectA and RectB) and a direct current (DC) power combining circuit. Two RF power sources (RF1 and RF2) with identical power and a phase difference ( $\boldsymbol{\Delta }\boldsymbol{\varphi }$ ) are connected to the input and isolated ports of the QC. In addition, RectA and RectB are connected to the two output ports of the QC. Then, the DC output of RectA and Rect $_{B}$ are combined by a DC power combining circuit. Finally, the obtained DC power is transmitted to the DC load. Theoretical analysis is carried out. For validation, a rectifier operating at 2.45 GHz is designed, fabricated and measured. The measured results show that the peak RF-to-DC power conversion efficiency (PCE) is 73.4 % and the PCE varies from 64.7 % to 73.4 % when $\boldsymbol{\Delta }\boldsymbol{\varphi }$ varies in the range of 0°-360°. These results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in designing WIA rectifier.

Conventional single-layer homogeneous impedance-sheet models (ISMs) for single-layer metasurface (MTS) antenna elements cannot handle multi-layer inhomogeneous MTS antenna arrays of local field inhomogeneity caused by loadings and feedings. In this communication, a hybrid ISM is proposed to overcome the above challenge with the aid of characteristic mode analysis (CMA). For proof of concept, a wideband multilayer MTS antenna array (MAA) is designed, where capacitive loading is further proposed to manipulate the frequency interval of desired modes for bandwidth improvement. With an element width of $0.29\lambda _{0}$ and an overall size of $0.70\lambda _{0} \times 0.70\lambda _{0} \times 0.08\lambda _{0}$ ( $\lambda _{0}$ is the wavelength in free space at 3.5 GHz), the proposed four-element MAA achieves a measured impedance bandwidth of 17.8% with $\vert S_{11}\vert &lt; -10$ dB, a gain of 9.1–12 dBi, and a least front-to-back ratio of 25 dB. The proposed method extends the application of CMA from MTS antenna elements (MAEs) to MAAs, by enabling advanced mode manipulation techniques for simultaneous antenna miniaturization and bandwidth enhancement.

In this letter, a broadband rectifier with a wide-incident-angle (WIA) property is proposed. The circuit is composed of a broadband quadrature coupler (BQC) and two broadband subrectifiers (RectA and RectB). Here, RectA and RectB are connected to the two output ports of the BQC and combined by a direct current (dc) power combiner. Then, the obtained dc power is transmitted to the load resistor. Besides, two RF sources (RF1 and RF2) with identical input power and a phase difference ( $\Delta \varphi$ ) are connected to the input and isolated ports of the BQC. A detailed theoretical analysis is carried out. To validate the proposed scheme, we design a broadband (1.6–2.8 GHz) WIA rectifier. Measurement results show that the power conversion efficiency (PCE) exceeded 60% in the frequency range from 1.6 to 2.8 GHz at 13.1 dBm of the input power. Additionally, at 2.45 GHz, the PCE varies in the range of 60.8% and 72.6% within the entire $\Delta \varphi $ range (0°–360°). Thus, the obtained PCE variation ( $\Delta \eta$ ) is 11.8%. Considering its excellent broadband and WIA features, it is very suitable for high-efficiency radio-frequency (RF) energy harvesting (RFEH) systems.

Restenosis induced by neointimal hyperplasia is one of the key reasons limiting the long-term success of cardiovascular interventional therapy. However, it remains a serious challenge to completely overcome restenosis because of the dilemma of simultaneously activating human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) and inhibiting human aortic smooth muscle cells (HASMCs). Herein, we developed a targeted nanomedicine encapsulating the liver X receptor (LXR) agonist, T0901317, for differentially regulating the behaviors of HUVECs and HASMCs. The stimulatory effect on HUVEC proliferation/migration and the inhibitory effect on HASMC proliferation/migration were confirmed in vitro, respectively. In the co-culture system, the competitiveness of HUVECs over HASMCs was notably improved after being treated with T0901317-loaded liposomes. Compared to free T0901317 and non-targeted liposomes, the type IV collagen (Col-IV) targeted liposomes could accumulate in the vascular injured area more effectively and inhibit neointimal hyperplasia in a balloon-induced rat carotid artery injury model. Therefore, targeted delivery of LXR agonist might be a very promising therapeutic strategy for anti-restenosis therapy.

The Atlantic Niño/Niña is a dominant mode of interannual variability peaking in boreal summer with substantial climate impacts. How the Atlantic Niño/Niña sea surface temperature (SST) variability may change under greenhouse warming remains unclear. Here we find a robust suppression in future Atlantic Niño/Niña variability in models that simulate a reasonable mean climatology of the equatorial Atlantic. Under greenhouse warming, the equatorial Atlantic atmosphere becomes more stable, reducing sensitivity of the equatorial zonal winds to the zonal SST gradient; further, weakened trade winds lead to a deepened thermocline in the east, reducing SST sensitivity to thermocline anomalies. These changes feed into Bjerknes feedback to cause suppression in Atlantic Niño/Niña SST variability. These findings are in stark contrast to the Pacific and the Indian Ocean where El Niño/La Niña SST variability and strong Indian Ocean Dipole variability are projected to increase.

ABSTRACTDengue virus infection mainly causes dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) and/or dengue shock syndrome (DSS). However, ADE (antibody-dependent enhancement) is one of the main pathogenic factors, and its pathogenic mechanism has not been fully elucidated. Recently, with the development of high-throughput sequencing, an increased number of RNAs have been confirmed to play a vital regulatory role in the process of virus infection. However, there is a lack of research on dengue virus infection and ADE. In this study, we used RNA-Seq to detect differentially expressed RNAs (DE RNAs) profiles in mock-infected, DENV-3-infected, and ADE-infected THP-1 cells. Firstly, we found 69 circRNAs, 259 miRNAs, and 18 mRNAs were differentially expressed in THP-1 vs DENV-3. In THP-1 vs ADE, 94 circRNAs, 263 miRNAs, and 111 mRNAs were differentially expressed. In DENV-3 vs ADE, 68 circRNAs, 105 miRNAs, and 94 mRNAs were differentially expressed. Functional enrichment analysis of these DE RNAs mainly focused on immune system, viral infectious diseases, cytokine-cytokine receptor interactions, and NOD/RIG-I-like receptor signaling pathways. In DENV-3 vs ADE, notably, the expression of HBB was up-regulated, which was a Fcγ Receptor-mediated phagocytosis protein. Additionally, we predicted the encoding ability of DE circRNAs, and it was found that a small peptide was encoded by novel_circ_001562 and that its amino acid sequence was consistent with that of DDX60L, which is a class of interferon-stimulated genes. Finally, we constructed the ceRNA regulatory network pathway. Therefore, our study provides a new strategy for further investigation on DENV-host interactions.

The ability to collaborate with previously unseen human teammates is crucial for artificial agents to be effective in human-agent teams (HATs). Due to individual differences and complex team dynamics, it is hard to develop a single agent policy to match all potential teammates. In this article, we study both human-human and HAT in a dyadic cooperative task, Team Space Fortress. Results show that the team performance is influenced by both players’ individual skill level and their ability to collaborate with different teammates by adopting complementary policies. Based on human-human team results, we propose an adaptive agent that identifies different human policies and assigns a complementary partner policy to optimize team performance. The adaptation method relies on a novel similarity metric to infer human policy and then selects the most complementary policy from a pretrained library of exemplar policies. We conducted human-agent experiments to evaluate the adaptive agent and examine mutual adaptation in HAT. Results show that both human adaptation and agent adaptation contribute to team performance.

A majority of El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events are preceded by the North Pacific Meridional Mode (NPMM), a dominant coupled ocean–atmospheric mode of variability. How the precursory NPMM forcing on ENSO responds to greenhouse warming remains unknown. Here, using climate model ensembles under high-emissions warming scenarios, we find an enhanced future impact on ENSO by the NPMM. This is manifested by increased sensitivity of boreal-winter equatorial Pacific winds and sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies to the NPMM three seasons before. The enhanced NPMM impact translates into an increased frequency of NPMM that leads to an extreme El Niño or La Niña. Under greenhouse warming, higher background SSTs cause a nonlinear evaporation–SST relationship to more effectively induce surface wind anomalies in the equatorial western Pacific, conducive to ENSO development. Thus, NPMM contributes to an increased frequency of future extreme ENSO events and becomes a more influential precursor for their predictability.

Abstract: The high incidence of cardiovascular disease has led to significant demand for synthetic vascular grafts in clinical applications. Anti-proliferation drugs are usually loaded into devices to achieve desirable anti-thrombosis effects after implantation. However, the non-selectiveness of these conventional drugs can lead to the failure of blood vessel reconstruction, leading to potential complications in the long term. To address this issue, an asymmetric membrane was constructed through electro-spinning techniques. The bilayer membrane loaded and effectively released nitric oxide (NO), as hoped, from only one side. Due to the short diffusion distance of NO, it exerted negligible effects on the other side of the membrane, thus allowing selective regulation of different cells on both sides. The released NO boosted the growth of endothelial cells (ECs) over smooth muscle cells (SMCs)—while on the side where NO was absent, SMCs grew into multilayers. The overall structure resembled a native blood vessel, with confluent ECs as the inner layer and layers of SMCs to support it. In addition, the membrane preserved the normal function of ECs, and at the same time did not exacerbate inflammatory responses. By preparing this material type that regulates cell behavior differentially, we describe a new method for its application in the cardiovascular field such as for artificial blood vessels. Graphic abstract:

Data-driven decision making (DDDM) helps educators identify children not responding to intervention, individualize instruction, and monitor response to intervention in multitiered systems of support (MTSS). More prevalent in K–12 special education, MTSS practices are emerging in early childhood. In previous reports, we described the Making Online Decisions (MOD) web application to guide DDDM for educators serving families with infants and toddlers in Early Head Start home-visiting programs. Findings from randomized control trials indicated that children at risk for language delay achieved significantly larger growth on the Early Communication Indicator formative language measure if their home visitors used the MOD to guide DDDM, compared to children whose home visitors were self-guided in their DDDM. Here, we describe findings from a randomized control trial indicating that these superior MOD effects extend to children’s language growth on standardized, norm-referenced language outcomes administered by assessors who were blind to condition and that parents’ use of language promotion strategies at home mediated these effects. Implications and limitations are discussed.