Search

Water stable Zr-BTDB ultrathin nanosheets incorporated with benzothiadiazole moieties enable efficient aerobic oxidation of a wide range of sulfides to sulfoxides under visible light irradiation in water at room temperature. [Display omitted] • Ultrathin, water stable and photoactive Zr-MOF nanosheets were synthesized. • Zr-MOF nanosheets exhibit superior photocatalytic activity for aerobic oxidation of sulfides. • Singlet oxygen and superoxide radical are reactive oxygen species for the oxidation of sulfides. Ultrathin metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) nanosheets incorporating photochromic units are highly efficient heterogeneous photocatalysts, thanks to their highly exposed catalytic sites, short diffusion pathways, and efficient separation of photo-generated carriers. Herein, we report on the solvothermal synthesis of photoactive benzothiadiazole (BTz) functionalized Zr-MOF nanosheets (Zr-BTDB-NS), which are constructed from Zr 12 nodes linked by nine BTDB2− (BTDB = 4,4′-(benzo[c][1,2,5]thiadiazole-4,7-diyl)dibenzoate) ligands. The Zr-BTDB-NS exhibited superior photocatalytic activity towards the aerobic oxidation of a broad range of sulfides to their corresponding sulfoxides under visible light irradiation in water at room temperature, even in a gram-scale. The Zr-BTDB-NS can be efficiently recycled and reused for seven cycles without a decrease in conversion or selectivity. Detailed mechanism studies revealed that the Zr-BTDB-NS generates singlet oxygen (1O 2) and superoxide radical (O 2 –) reactive oxygen species under visible light irradiation, which are responsible for the oxidation of sulfides into their corresponding sulfoxides. The simplicity of the synthetic approach as well as the diversity of photoactive organic units hold great promise for designing ultrathin, water-stable, and photoactive Zr-MOF nanosheets. This work will also be of added value for selective photooxidation of sulfides under green and mild conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Individual response to drugs is crucial for personalized medicine. • We developed DREMO for predicting drug response in individuals. • 3 cell line similarity networks and 2 drug similarity networks were constructed. • The similarity information networks were fused with low-dimensional feature vectors. • DREMO addresses the "small n, large p" issue to a certain extent. Predicting the response of each individual patient to a drug is a key issue assailing personalized medicine. Our study predicted drug response based on the fusion of multiomics data with low-dimensional feature vector representation on a multilayer network model. We named this new method DREMO (D rug R esponse pr E diction based on M ulti O mics data fusion). DREMO fuses similarities between cell lines and similarities between drugs, thereby improving the ability to predict the response of cancer cell lines to therapeutic agents. First, a multilayer similarity network related to cell lines and drugs was constructed based on gene expression profiles, somatic mutation, copy number variation (CNV), drug chemical structures, and drug targets. Next, low-dimensional feature vector representation was used to fuse the biological information in the multilayer network. Then, a machine learning model was applied to predict new drug-cell line associations. Finally, our results were validated using the well-established GDSC/CCLE databases, literature, and the functional pathway database. Furthermore, a comparison was made between DREMO and other methods. Results of the comparison showed that DREMO improves predictive capabilities significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sperm cryopreservation is an essential approach for assisted reproduction and genetic resources conservation in captive giant pandas. Cryopreservation, however, leads to a significant decrease in sperm quality and, consequently, a low fertilization rate. Therefore, it is mandatory to disclose more suitable and efficient freezing strategies for sperm cryopreservation. In the present study, we compared for the first time the performance of two commercial freeze extender (INRA96 versus TEST) freezing methods on post-thawed semen quality. Semen cryopreserved with the INRA96 showed better total motility (73.00 ± 4.84% vs 57.56 ± 3.60%, P < 0.001), membrane integrity (60.92 ± 2.27% vs 40.53 ± 2.97%, P < 0.001) and acrosome integrity (90.39 ± 2.74% vs 84.26 ± 4.27%, P < 0.05) than stored with TEST. There was no significant difference in DNA integrity after thawing between the two extenders (95.69 ± 3.60% vs 94.26 ± 4.84%). In conclusion, the INRA96 method showed to be better for giant panda sperm cryopreservation and should therefore be recommended for use in order to increase success of artificial insemination. • INRA96 could increase post-thawed spermatozoa motility of giant panda. • INRA96 could increase post-thawed spermatozoa membrane integrity of giant panda. • INRA96 could increase post-thawed spermatozoa acrosome integrity of giant panda. • INRA96 benefit for giant panda semen cryopreservation and production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a noisy environment, the interested sound field is interfused with the non-stationary incoming field from the back side of the measurement plane and the scattered field caused by the incoming wave falling on the surface of the target source. In order to remove the non-stationary incoming and scattered fields simultaneously, a recovery method of the non-stationary free field with the pressure and particle acceleration measurements is proposed. First, the mixed time-evolving pressure and particle acceleration are firstly measured on one measurement plane, where the particle acceleration is obtained by the finite difference approximation with the aid of an auxiliary measurement plane; Then, two physical relations are employed to deduce a forward complete recovery formulation of the target source in the noisy environment. One relation contains two impulse response functions relating the time-wavenumber pressure spectrum to particle acceleration and pressure spectra, respectively, and the other is the surface reflection coefficient of the target source relating the scattered field to the incoming field. Finally, the mixed pressure and particle acceleration are substituted into the recovery formulation, and the time-evolving pressure radiated by the target source in free-field is recovered. Thereby, the proposed method possesses a significant feature of real-time recovery of the non-stationary free field. A circular piston fixed on an infinite rigid baffle and two monopole sources are designed in a numerical simulation to test the performance of the proposed method. The simulation results attest that the proposed method not only can recover the time-evolving pressure radiated by the target source in free-field at any space points, but also recover the space distribution of the non-stationary sound field of the target source in free-field at different time instants effectively. An experiment with two speakers embedded in a planar steel plate and a speaker is further employed to verify the validity of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fan noise has become an important noise component of civil aviation engines with the increasing bypass ratio. The mode identification method is the key to in-duct fan noise testing. The number of modes that can propagate through the duct increases dramatically for high-frequency in-duct fan noise, which requires a large number of microphones to measure the sound field in the duct. Since the number of modes is usually larger than the number of microphones, it is difficult to realize mode identification. A Sparse Bayesian Learning algorithm for mode identification is proposed to solve this problem in this paper. The in-duct sound field is described by a statistical model, and the inverse problem of mode identification is expressed in a Bayesian framework. The non-convex optimization problem of the cost function is considered, iteratively achieving the sparsest solution via a block coordinate descent algorithm in a majorization-minimization framework. The mode identification method based on Sparse Bayesian Learning has high sparsity and can achieve parameter adaptation. The effectiveness of the Sparse Bayesian Learning method for duct mode identification is verified by numerical simulations and experimental tests. The results show that the mode identification method of Sparse Bayesian Learning can accurately identify the target mode using fewer microphones. • Applying the Sparse Bayesian Learning (SBL) method for mode identification, the strong sparse induction performance of the SBL method is better at suppressing the non-target modes and identifying accurate sparse target modes. • The sparsest mode coefficient amplitudes are solved indirectly by estimating the hyperparameters. The optimal parameters can be determined adaptively by iterations without the need for manual selection of parameters. • It is verified through numerical simulations and experimental tests that the mode identification method of SBL can accurately identify target modes with a small number of microphones, and its results have strong sparsity and robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In a cable-stayed bridge, the employment of magnetorheological (MR) dampers among stay cables are steadily increasing for mitigation of rain-wind induced vibration. A major problem for the practical application of these devices is to develop a suitable algorithm that effectively suppresses the vibration of stay cables with basic calculations and minimal feedback requirement. This paper discusses an optimal equivalent control algorithm for vibration mitigation of stay cables based on the linear quadratic regulator (LQR). The control algorithm is anticipated to effectively reduce the risk of structural response amplification, which is due to the control forces along the direction of MR damper motion. Furthermore, this algorithm approximates the optimal LQR control forces through equivalent stiffness and damping, resulting in a significant reduction in the calculative effort of the optimal control forces. Hence, it is proved as a great significance for the MR semi-active control system application in the field of practical engineering. In the proposed equivalent control technique, control performance is evaluated by the vibration control problem faced by wind induced stay cable of the Second Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge. The results demonstrate that the MR semi-active control algorithm as proposed in this paper performs better than that of optimal passive control with almost achieving the level of LQR control with minimal feedbacks requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The reconstruction of sound sources is recognized as a typical inverse problem consisting of back-propagating the measurements of an array onto the sources plane based on the propagation function of the sound. In this paper, the reconstruction of the cyclostationary sources in noisy environment is investigated. The cyclostationary sources assumption covers a wide range of sound sources with a cyclic transfer of energy in time, which are usually generated from the repetitive physical mechanism of a rotating machine. The rotating machines are commonly assembled with the mechanical components generating the stationary sources. The proposed back-propagating cyclic wiener filter aims at reconstructing only the cyclostationary sources from the total measurements of with stationary noises. The proposed method can be considered as an extension of the classic cyclic wiener filter, where the latter can only filter the mixed signals in the time domain whereas the former can reconstruct the spatial sources by integrating the propagation function. Thus, it extended the classic cyclic Wiener filter from the filtration of measurements to the reconstruction of sources by a cascade of the cyclic wiener filter and the Bayesian focusing. The proposed method is first validated by a laboratory experiment in a semi-anechoic chamber. Next, an industrial application involving engine bay on-site measurements is investigated to validate the proposed method: a cyclostationary source on the High Pressure Pump (HPP) is reconstructed, free of the noise interference from the engine. Highlights • The reconstruction of cyclostationary sources with noisy measurements is investigated. • The back-propagating cyclic wiener filter is proposed. • Laboratory experiment and industrial example are given to demonstrate the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acoustic beamforming has been widely applied in the imaging of flow-induced aeroacoustic sound sources. However, the measured signals of the rotor blades often accompanied with the unwanted interference from other components of the experimental setup in the wind tunnel test (for example, the rotor shaft and the stand), which results in the undistinguished sources in the beamforming result. In this paper, the signals of rotor blades are defined first as the cyclostationary process based on the Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings (FW-H) equation in the form of Wold-Cramer decomposition, which connects the statistical definition of rotor blades signals with the wave propagation model of moving sources. Then the developed cyclostationary signal processing tools of a second order, specifically the reduced-rank cyclic Wiener filter, can be applied in the wind tunnel test of rotor blades. The rotor blades signals can be extracted from the noisy measurements with other interferences, which aide to purify the image results of beamforming in the final experiment of wind tunnel test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acoustical source reconstruction is a typical inverse problem, whose minimum frequency of reconstruction hinges on the size of the array and maximum frequency depends on the spacing distance between the microphones. For the sake of enlarging the frequency of reconstruction and reducing the cost of an acquisition system, Cyclic Projection (CP), a method of sequential measurements without reference, was recently investigated (JSV,2016,372:31-49). In this paper, the Propagation based Fast Iterative Shrinkage Thresholding Algorithm (Propagation-FISTA) is introduced, which improves CP in two aspects: (1) the number of acoustic sources is no longer needed and the only making assumption is that of a “weakly sparse” eigenvalue spectrum; (2) the construction of the spatial basis is much easier and adaptive to practical scenarios of acoustical measurements benefiting from the introduction of propagation based spatial basis. The proposed Propagation-FISTA is first investigated with different simulations and experimental setups and is next illustrated with an industrial case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The measurements of aero-engine fan noise are crucial to engine-noise reduction and silent-turbofan design. The duct mode identification is adpoted to decompose inner duct noises into spinning modes from acoustic pressure measured by a microphone array. However, modes identification of the aero-engine fan are difficult cause the number of modes is usually much larger than the number of microphones and leading to an ill-posed problem during the inverse process. A mode identification method based on Iterative Bayesian Focusing is used to solve this problem. The in-duct sound field is described by a statistical model, and the inverse problem of mode identification is expressed in a Bayesian framework. The sparsity of the target acoustic modes is applied as a priori condition, and a Mode Aperture Function (MAF) is developed. The aperture width of the MAFis automatically updated and contracted through iterations, after which mode coefficients are contracted to a sparsest solution. The used mode identification method is firstly validated through numerical simulations, and the effects of the number of microphones and SNR on mode identification results are discussed. Then the Iterative Bayesian Focusing-based mode identification method is experimentally verified through a well designed Spinning Mode Synthesizer. Both numerical and experimentalresults indicate that target modes can be accurately identified when the number of microphones are much less than the number of all propagating modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Helicopter detection is an important part of the safety and security during flight. Most of the aerodynamic noise of modern helicopters comes from the main rotor, the main rotor aerodynamic noise thus can be used for helicopter detection. However, the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of the measurement noise has always been quite small while the helicopter is flying over long distance away from the microphone. The current passive detection methods are not robust enough in the presence of substantial interference. A robust passive sound detection method is proposed to detect the far-field helicopter based on the cyclostationarity of the main rotor noise. The Sparsity-Enhanced Spectral Coherence (SESC) is derived from the spectral coherence decomposition to improve the detection robustness at far distances and low SNR. Furthermore, a global detector is constructed to detect helicopters adaptively by fusing the detection of multiple orders of BPF, which can be performed on the calculated SESC. More accurate and robust detection of the far-field helicopter can be obtained by the proposed SESC detector. The effectiveness of the proposed detection approach is demonstrated and contrasted by using simulation and far-field flight test measurements of the ROBINSON R22 helicopter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nucleolus is the cellular site of ribosomal (r)DNA transcription and ribosome biogenesis. The 58-kDa microspherule protein (MSP58) is a nucleolar protein involved in rDNA transcription and cell proliferation. However, regulation of MSP58-mediated rDNA transcription remains unknown. Using a yeast two-hybrid system with MSP58 as bait, we isolated complementary (c)DNA encoding Rad50-interacting protein 1 (RINT-1), as a MSP58-binding protein. RINT-1 was implicated in the cell cycle checkpoint, membrane trafficking, Golgi apparatus and centrosome dynamic integrity, and telomere length control. Both in vitro and in vivo interaction assays showed that MSP58 directly interacts with RINT-1. Interestingly, microscopic studies revealed the co-localization of MSP58, RINT-1, and the upstream binding factor (UBF), a rRNA transcription factor, in the nucleolus. We showed that ectopic expression of MSP58 or RINT-1 resulted in decreased rRNA expression and rDNA promoter activity, whereas knockdown of MSP58 or RINT-1 by siRNA exerted the opposite effect. Coexpression of MSP58 and RINT-1 robustly decreased rRNA synthesis compared to overexpression of either protein alone, whereas depletion of RINT-1 from MSP58-transfected cells enhanced rRNA synthesis. We also found that MSP58, RINT-1, and the UBF were associated with the rDNA promoter using a chromatin immunoprecipitation assay. Because aberrant ribosome biogenesis contributes to neoplastic transformation, our results revealed a novel protein complex involved in the regulation of rRNA gene expression, suggesting a role for MSP58 and RINT-1 in cancer development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gamma-proteobacteria is a class of gram-negative opportunistic pathogens existing in the intestinal flora, often leading to diarrhea and intestinal infectious diseases, and plays an important role in maintaining intestinal homeostasis. Type III secretion system (T3SS), an important virulence system, is closely related to the adhesion and invasion and pathogenicity to host cells. Therefore, anti-virulence agents targeting T3SS are important strategies for controlling pathogenic infections. In this study, the anti-Salmonella T3SS active compounds neochebulagic acid (1) , ellagic acid (2) and urolithin M5 (3) were isolated from seed extract of Terminalia citrina by activity-guided isolation method. Based on the fact that urolithins are the main and stable intestinal microbiota metabolites of hydrolysable tannins, we found that the metabolite urolithin B repressed translation and secretion of SipC through the Hha–H-NS–HilD–HilC–RtsA–HilA regulatory pathway. The results provide evidence for Terminalia seeds and ellagitannin-rich berries and nuts in regulating intestinal homeostasis and treating bacterial infection. [Display omitted] • Neochebulagic acid (1), ellagic acid (2) and urolithin M5 (3) are anti-T3SS compounds from Terminalia citrina. • ET-derived intestinal microbiota metabolite urolithin B was identified as a T3SS inhibitor of Salmonella. • Urolithin B represses the T3SS through the Hha–H-NS–HilD–HilC–RtsA–HilA regulatory pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fundamental limitation of the inverse acoustic problem is determined by the size of the array and the microphone density. A solution to achieve large array and/or high microphone density is to scan the object of interest by moving sequentially a small prototype array, which is referred to as sequential measurements. In comparison to a large array and/or high microphone density array that can acquire simultaneously all the information of the spectral matrix, in particular all cross-spectra, sequential measurements can only acquire a block diagonal spectral matrix, while the cross-spectra between the sequential measurements remain unknown due to the missing phase relationships between consecutive positions. Nevertheless, these unknown cross-spectra are necessary for sound source reconstruction. The objective of this paper is to propose an algorithm to recover the missing elements of the spectral matrix in the case where the acoustical field is highly coherent. This issue is shown to boil down to a matrix completion problem subject to given constraint of hermitian symmetry, measurements fitting, reduced rank and spatial continuity of the sound field. A Cyclic Projection (CP) algorithm is proposed in this work to find an optimal solution at the intersection between three predefined sets. The proposed method is analyzed through numerical simulations of diverse setups and is also validated experimentally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oxidative/nitrosative stress contributes to the etiology of the neurological disorders, including ischemic stroke and chronic neurodegeneration. Neurotoxic modifications mediated by reactive oxygen species (ROS) or reactive nitrogen species (RNS) are closely associated with the destruction of key macromolecules and inactivation of antioxidant enzymes, which compromises antioxidant defenses. Approaches to expel ROS/RNS and alleviate toxic oxidative/nitrosative stress in neurons have not completely been defined. Here, we aimed to evaluate the efficacy of various antioxidants that serve as the neuroprotectors under a toxic stress created by ROS plus nitric oxide (NO). Sublytic concentrations of hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) plus NO donor S-nitroso-N-acetyl-D, l -penicillamine (SNAP) enabled to induce a toxic oxidative/nitrosative stress through activating both p38 MAPK and p53 cascades, and cause DNA damage and protein tyrosine nitration in primary neuronal cultures. After comparing six antioxidants, including superoxide dimutase (SOD), catalase, 2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-1-piperidinoxyl (TEMPO), N-acetylcysteine, dimethylthiourea, and uric acid, TEMPO was the superior antioxidant that comprehensively and efficaciously decreased H 2 O 2 plus SNAP-evoked activation of stress cascades of p38 MAPK and p53, production of NO, ROS, and peroxynitrite, double-strand breaks of DNA, and nitration of protein tyrosine residues. SOD increased the peroxynitrite formation and was unable to reduce the level of protein nitration. All antioxidants tested, except SOD, effectively reduced neuronal damage and DNA breakage caused by the toxic H 2 O 2 /SNAP combination. In conclusion, these results suggest that TEMPO ensures excellent ROS/RNS clearance and stress-signaling inhibition, thus effectively rescuing neurons from ROS/H 2 O 2 plus NO/SNAP-induced insult. This study reveals a potential strategy for nitroxide antioxidants as a therapeutic agent against oxidative/nitrosative neurotoxicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proton exchange membrane (PEM) is one of the core materials which were widely used in the field of fuel cells (FCs). In recent years, the metal organic frameworks (MOFs) and polymer composite membranes as tunable proton-conducting materials have showed great potential in this field. Herein, a Cu(II)-based metal organic framework (Cu-MOF) with acid/base stability was introduced into poly(vinylpyrrolidone)/poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVP/PVDF, PP) to fabricate hybrid membranes(Cu-MOF@PP-X, where X is the % Cu-MOF content). The effects of Cu-MOF loading amounts on the conductive behavior of Cu-MOF@PP-X composites have been documented. It is worth noting that Cu-MOF@PP-50 exhibited the proton conductivity up to 4.36 ​× ​10−4 ​S ​cm−1 at 353 ​K and 98% relative humidity (RH). In addition, the value of proton conduction is about two orders of magnitude higher than that of the parent Cu-MOF (1.91 ​× ​10−6 ​S ​cm−1). This work contributes to driving further advances of MOF/polymer composites in proton-conducting apparatus. [Display omitted] • A Cu-MOF with acid/base stability was introduced into polymers (PVP/PVDF, PP) to fabricate hybrid membranes. • The effects of Cu-MOF loading amounts on the conductive behavior of Cu-MOF@PP-X composites have been documented. • Cu-MOF@PP-50 exhibited a super protonic conductivity up to 4.36 ​× ​10−4 ​S ​cm−1 at 353 ​K and 98% relative humidity (RH). • The value of proton conduction of Cu-MOF@PP-50 is about two orders of magnitude higher than that of the parent Cu-MOF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Helicopter rotor aerodynamic noise research has become essential as helicopters' reliability and comfort requirements have increased. Significant progress has been made in modeling the aerodynamically generated sound of helicopter rotors. The cyclostationary signal processing methods have been widely used for machine fault diagnosis, machinery system identification and mechanical source separation. However, the lack of a generally accepted formal definition of cyclostationarity based on the basic aerodynamic theory and wave propagation model limits cyclostationary methods' application to the helicopter rotor aerodynamic noise. A formal cyclostationary modeling process to the helicopter rotor aerodynamic noise based on aerodynamic and wave propagation theory is proposed in this paper for subsequent cyclostationary signal processing. The rotor blade noise is mathematically formulated as a cyclostationary process by imposing the periodic Green's function based on the Wold–Cramer decomposition form of the Ffowcs Williams–Hawkings (FW–H) equation, and the formal definition of the rotor blade noise cyclostationary process is derived. Then, the cyclostationarity is defined for both the tonal noise and the broadband noise of rotor aerodynamic noise, respectively. Furthermore, a periodic amplitude modulation (PAM) signal model is proposed to approximate the measured rotor aerodynamic noise signal. The proposed signal model is validated by the measurement in the wind tunnel test. • Cyclostationarity of the aerodynamically generated sound of helicopter rotors is proved. • A cyclostationary signal model is proposed for helicopter rotor aerodynamic noise. • The theory and signal model is validated by the measurement in the wind tunnel test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Space-snapshot representation for acoustic imaging in a complex, noisy environment is investigated. • Low rank and Mixture of Gaussian modeling are proposed to achieve significant denoising performance. • Comparisons with other methods are made in simulations and experiments to verify the effect of the state-of-the-art methods. The microphone array can simultaneously obtain the multi-dimensional information (space-time-frequency) of sound sources, which is recognized as a fundamental and powerful tool in acoustic imaging. Acoustic Beamforming is one of the widely used methods in acoustic imaging. However, most of the applications of beamforming are based on the Gaussian noise assumption, which is not always accurate in on-site measurements. For example, shock noise with a skewed probability density function (PDF) may appear on the signal record when the turbulent eddies are not controlled. Thus, in this paper, the conventional Gaussian noise model is extended to a Gaussian mixture noise model, which can approximate any probability distribution of the noise in theory. The space-snapshot representation of microphone array measurements is further modeled as a combination of the low-rank matrix part (measurements from the sound sources) and a Gaussian mixture matrix part (measurement noise). The signal from the sources of interest is finally recovered by the Expectation–maximization algorithm, which iterates between the low-rank approximation of the sound sources and the estimation of the parameter of the Gaussian mixture model. The proposed method is further investigated with simulations and compared with robust principal component analysis (RPCA) and Gaussian-based probabilistic factor analysis (PFA). It is concluded that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art denoising methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Leptin promotes the proliferation of neural stem cells isolated from embryonic mouse hippocampus. [•] Leptin reverses corticosterone-induced inhibition of neural stem cell proliferation. [•] The effects of leptin are partially mediated by upregulating NR2B subunits. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Background: The incidence of vascular injury after a cholecystectomy is often underestimated. Although injuries to the portal vein are rare, they are devastating. The aim of the present study was to analyze suitable therapeutic strategies regarding portal vein injury in the absence of biliary injury. Materials and methods: Eleven patients with portal vein injuries after laparoscopic or open cholecystectomy were referred to our hospital between 2004 and 2010. The clinical presentation, diagnosis, and management of patients with severe portal vein injuries were reviewed. All the patients were discharged without outstanding clinical conditions. During retrospective analysis, these patients were divided into early, middle, and late stages. Results: All the 11 patients had a portal vein and/or right hepatic artery injury, but no biliary injuries were observed. Among these patients, different management strategies were managed according to the stage of the injury. Eight patients received a direct suture at the time of injury by an experienced hepatobiliary surgeon. Two patients received thrombolytic and anticoagulation therapy after cholecystectomy, without additional surgery. One patient received a liver transplant 3 mo after the injury. After long-term follow-up, these patients had no clinical conditions. Conclusions: Direct repair or suture is important during the early stage of portal vein injury. Conservative thrombolytic and anticoagulation therapy may serve an important role in the treatment of acute massive thrombus in portal vein injury during the middle stage. Liver transplantation is a salvage therapy that should be used during the late stage. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The tunable luminescent materials based on photochromic reactions have received considerable interest due to its potential applications in switches and optical memory devices. However, constructing such materials with ideal properties remains a challenge. In this context, two rare viologen-based host guest materials, 2[MV]·[Zn 6 (PMA) 4 (H 2 O) 4 ] (1), 2[PBM]·[Zn 2 (PMA) 2 (H 2 O) 6 ] (2), (MV·2NO 3 ​= ​1,1'-dimethyl-(4,4'-bipyridine)-1,1'-diium dinitrate; PBM·2NO 3 ​= ​4,4'-(1,4-phenylene)bis(1-methylpyridin-1-ium) dinitrate; H 2 PMA ​= ​pyromellitic acid), have been prepared by encapsulating viologen derivatives into the anionic metal-organic frameworks produced from pyromellitic acid ligands and zinc cations. Due to the presence of photoactive guest MV2+/PBM2+ and the short O⋯N+ distances between the oxygen atom of carboxylate groups and pyridine ring of guest, both complexes display fast-responsive reversible naked photochromism from colorless to blue or yellow upon UV–Vis irradiation At the same time, these host-guest materials exhibit good fluorescence emission behavior and their fluorescence can be reversible modulation under light irradiation. These are rare examples of fluorescence switching materials based on host-guest system that involve the electron-transfer photochromic process. Two novel MOF-based host-guest compounds were prepared by incorporating the photoactive viologen derivatives into the anionic framework, which exhibit photochromism upon UV–Vis light irradiation and photocontrolled luminescence. [Display omitted] ● Two host-guest complexes are prepared by incorporating the viologen derivatives into the anionic MOFs. ● Complexes 1 and 2 exhibit fast-responsive photochromism upon UV–Vis light irradiation. ● Complexes 1 and 2 show good luminescent emission and reversible luminescence switching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Non-Synchronous Measurements is particularly effective at expanding the operating frequency range of a single microphone array. The completed cross-spectral matrix of the synthetic array, when combined with high-resolution imaging algorithms, can yield accurate sound source identification results. However, when matrix completion algorithms are applied to large synthetic arrays, their computational complexity increases significantly. Furthermore, existing integrations with high-resolution imaging algorithms often encounter difficulties in the presence of coherent sound sources. To address this problem, this paper introduces the accelerated gradient descent algorithm for the covariance matrix fitting by orthogonal least squares. The matrix completion model for non-synchronous measurements is initially simplified through matrix decomposition, thereby enabling the rapid completion of the cross-spectral matrix using the accelerated gradient descent algorithm. This is then followed by the application of the covariance matrix fitting by orthogonal least squares to achieve quick and precise identification of coherent sound sources employing the completed cross-spectral matrix. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using numerical simulations and validated through loudspeaker experiments in an anechoic chamber. The results from these simulations and experiments reveal that the proposed algorithm not only improves matrix completion performance on large synthetic arrays but also accurately identifies the locations and correlation coefficients of coherent sound sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Protein rich extruded products were prepared from soy protein isolate and corn flour blends using a twin screw extruder and the physical properties of the extruded product were evaluated and related to process variables: soy protein isolate (SPI) (32.2–66.6 g protein/100 dry matter), feed moisture (31.6–48.4 g/100 g) and process temperature (126.4–193.6 °C). A central composite rotate design (CCRD) and response surface methodology was used to evaluate the significance of independent and interaction effects of extrusion process variables on the product’s various physical properties (breaking stress, bulk density, expansion ratio, water solubility index, rehydration rate and color). Second order polynomial regression equations were developed to relate the product responses to process variables as well as to obtain the response surfaces plots. The independent variables had significant (p ≤ 0.05) effects on physical properties of extrudates: (i) higher SPI and feed moisture contents increased the breaking stress and bulk density, but decreased the expansion ratio, water solubility index, and rehydration rate, (ii) higher SPI content decreased the color L value, whereas higher feed moisture content increased it, (iii) higher temperatures increased breaking stress, expansion ratio, rehydration rate and L value, but decreased the bulk density and water solubility index. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Nitrogen-doped graphene (N-graphene) was reported to exhibit a good activity experimentally as an electrocatalyst of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) on the cathode of fuel cells under the condition of electropotential of ∼0.04V (vs. NHE) and pH of 14. This material is promising to replace or partially replace the conventionally used Pt. In order to understand the experimental results, ORR catalyzed by N-graphene is studied using density functional theory (DFT) calculations under experimental conditions taking the solvent, surface adsorbates, and coverages into consideration. Two mechanisms, i.e., dissociative and associative mechanisms, over different N-doping configurations are investigated. The results show that N-graphene surface is covered by O with 1/6 monolayer, which is used for reactions in this work. The transition state of each elementary step was identified using four different approaches, which give rise to a similar chemistry. A full energy profile including all the reaction barriers shows that the associative mechanism is more energetically favored than the dissociative one and the removal of O species from the surface is the rate-determining step. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We study oscillation in the prefix-free complexity of initial segments of 1-random reals. For upward oscillations, we prove that diverges iff for every 1-random . For downward oscillations, we characterize the functions g such that for almost every . The proof of this result uses an improvement of Chaitin''s counting theorem—we give a tight upper bound on the number of strings such that . The work on upward oscillations has applications to the K-degrees. Write to mean that . The induced structure is called the K-degrees. We prove that there are comparable () 1-random K-degrees. We also prove that every lower cone and some upper cones in the 1-random K-degrees have size continuum. Finally, we show that it is independent of ZFC, even assuming that the Continuum Hypothesis fails, whether all chains of 1-random K-degrees of size less than have a lower bound in the 1-random K-degrees. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A magnesium-based metal organic framework (MOF), also known as Mg-MOF-74, was successfully synthesized, characterized, and evaluated for adsorption equilibria and kinetics of CO2 and CH4. The Mg-MOF-74 crystals were characterized with scanning electron microscopy for crystal structure, powder X-ray diffraction for phase structure, and nitrogen adsorption for pore textural properties. Adsorption equilibrium and kinetics of CO2 and CH4 on the Mg-MOF-74 adsorbent were measured in a volumetric adsorption unit at 278, 298, and 318K and pressures up to 1bar. It was found that the Mg-MOF-74 adsorbent prepared in this work has a median pore width of 10.2Å, a BET specific surface area of 1174m2/g, CO2 and CH4 adsorption capacities of 8.61mmolg−1 (37.8wt.%) and 1.05mmolg−1 (1.7wt.%), respectively, at 298K and 1bar. Both CO2 and CH4 adsorption capacities are significantly higher than those of zeolite 13X under similar conditions. The pressure-dependent equilibrium selectivity of CO2 over CH4 (q CO2/q CH4) in the Mg-MOF-74 adsorbent showed a trend similar to that of zeolite 13X and the intrinsic selectivity of Mg-MOF-74 at zero adsorption loading is 283 at 298K. The initial heats of adsorption of CO2 and CH4 on the Mg-MOF-74 adsorbent were found to be 73.0 and 18.5kJmol−1, respectively. The adsorption kinetic measurements suggest that the diffusivities of CO2 and CH4 on Mg-MOF-74 were comparable to those on zeolite 13X. CH4 showed relatively faster adsorption kinetics than CO2 in both adsorbents. The diffusion time constants of CO2 and CH4 in the Mg-MOF-74 adsorbent at 298K were estimated to be 8.11×10−3 and 4.05×10−2 s−1, respectively, showing a modest kinetic selectivity of about 5 for the separation CH4 from CO2. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: HIV-1 has proved to be notoriously difficult to tackle despite the availability of more than 20 clinically approved drugs. The majority of these drugs, however, target viral genes and their continued use will select for drug-resistant strains. Since NF-κB signaling is critical for viral replication, we wanted to investigate the effect of proteasome inhibitors on viral gene expression. We herein demonstrate that proteasome and NF-κB inhibitors effectively shut down transcription from the HIV-1 LTR-promoter. We further show that replication of HIV-1 in PBMC was severely compromised following treatment with proteasome inhibitors alone or in combination with other antiretroviral drugs. Finally, incubation of PBMC with these drugs reduced expression of IL-2 inducible T cell kinase (Itk), a Tec-family kinase, recently shown to be required for HIV-1 replication. These results suggest that proteasome inhibitors suppress LTR-promoter activity by interfering with cellular targets required for viral replication. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Aim: To study the effect of resveratrol (RES) on the apoptosis of lymphocytes in allograft in a rat liver transplantation model. Methods: Male Sprague–Dawley (SD) rats were selected as donors and male Wistar rats as recipients for a rejection model. The recipients were divided into four groups after orthotopic liver transplantation (OLTx). In the RES A, B, and C groups, RES was given intraperitoneally once a day (25, 50, and 100mgkg−1, respectively) after OLTx, whereas in the control group vehicle buffer was given intraperitoneally once a day. The survival period, lymphocytes apoptosis, expressions of Bcl-2/Bax proteins in lymphocytes, and histopathological findings were then compared among these groups. Results: The mean survival period after OLTx in RES C group was significantly longer than that in control group (P <0.05). On the seventh post-transplant day, the apoptosis index (AI) of lymphocytes in portal area and the positive rate of Bax protein in lymphocytes in RES C group were significantly increased in comparison with those in control group (both P <0.05), whereas there is no obvious difference in the expression of Bcl-2 protein in lymphocytes between the control group and various drug groups (all P <0.05), and a histological examination revealed apparent difference in the severity of rejection between the RES C group and control group (P <0.05). Conclusion: RES has an immunosuppressive effect on lymphocytes under allograft rejection in rat. Inducing apoptosis of lymphocytes and upregulating the ratio of Bax/bcl-2 proteins in lymphocytes in allograft liver may be part of the mechanisms. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• A novel method was proposed to identify RNA m2G sites using hybrid features. • The over-sample method SMOTE was adopted to deal with the problem of data imbalance. • After using MRMD to select features, the performance of the model is improved. • The RFhy-m2G is superior to other methods, which can effective identify m2G sites. N2-methylguanosine is a post-transcriptional modification of RNA that is found in eukaryotes and archaea. The biological function of m2G modification discovered so far is to control and stabilize the three-dimensional structure of tRNA and the dynamic barrier of reverse transcription. To discover additional biological functions of m2G, it is necessary to develop time-saving and labor-saving calculation tools to identify m2G. In this paper, based on hybrid features and a random forest, a novel predictor, RFhy-m2G, was developed to identify the m2G modification sites for three species. The hybrid feature used by the predictor is used to fuse the three features of ENAC, PseDNC, and NPPS. These three features include primary sequence derivation properties, physicochemical properties, and position-specific properties. Since there are redundant features in hybrid features, MRMD2.0 is used for optimal feature selection. Through feature analysis, it is found that the optimal hybrid features obtained still contain three kinds of properties, and the hybrid features can more accurately identify m2G modification sites and improve prediction performance. Based on five-fold cross-validation and independent testing to evaluate the prediction model, the accuracies obtained were 0.9982 and 0.9417, respectively. The robustness of the predictor is demonstrated by comparisons with other predictors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assuming ZF, we prove that Turing determinacy (TD) implies the countable choice axiom for sets of reals (CC R). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Acoustic inverse problems in the framework of ADMM are investigated. • The iteration algorithms of ADMM in the complex domain have been derived. • ADMM has been systematically compared with the sparse holography. • Both simulation and experimentation have verified the performance of ADMM. Acoustic imaging is an important technique for sound source identification which is widely used in noise control and fault detection. It can be described as a method for reconstructing the amplitude and phase distribution of an acoustic field in a given plane. When the size of radiating object is huge and measurement environment is noisy, accuracy and efficiency of acoustic imaging algorithm deteriorate easily. In this paper, a novel computational framework is investigated to simplify the algorithm and balance computation speed with accuracy. It converts acoustic imaging into an inverse problem and then divides this problem into two parts including forward model and denoising model. This computation framework is based on the alternating direction method of multipliers, which makes parallel implementation and distributed optimization possible, especially for large scale measurements. It is assumed that the acoustic field is composed of a cluster of monopole sources and the equivalent source method is taken to solve the acoustic inverse problem. Both L 2 -norm penalization based on the minimal energy assumption and L p -norm (0 < p ⩽ 1) penalization based on the sparsity hypothesis are taken in this framework. Thus, the regularization parameter in the algorithm, which balances the standard least square error and the norm of the source solution, can be coupled with some pre-existing methods incluing L-curve, GCV and Bayesian strategies. Different regularization parameters are proposed and the comparison is made in this paper. The proposed method provides a general and convenient method for different type of sound source priors and it is validated with an experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noise source localization is considered a key technology for the low-noise design of machinery and equipment. The spatial resolution of conventional beamforming localization methods is effectively improved by the fast iterative shrinkage thresholding algorithm(FISTA). The application of FISTA for sound source localization in reverberant environments is limited by the selection of reflection parameters. In this paper, FISTA extends to FISTA-Net and is proposed to solve the problem of adaptive fitting of reflection parameters to improve the performance of sound source localization in a reverberant environment. In FISTA-Net, the network model can be established by expanding and truncating the FISTA algorithm based on a fixed number of iterations. The parameter iteration steps, shrinkage thresholds and update operators are updated in the FISTA-Net model by training. A series of simulations are conducted for various frequencies, reverberation times, and signal-to-noise ratios and compared to several de-reverberation algorithms to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The loudspeaker source localization experiment was conducted in a closed room to verify the effectiveness of FISTA-Net in real-world scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transfer learning techniques have been extensively developed for the intelligent diagnosis of rotating machinery as a critical and valuable tool dedicated to minimizing the distributional discrepancies between different working conditions of the machine. However, conditional probability information about fault classes and the geometric features of data distribution is rarely considered in traditional distance metrics, invalidating cross-domain diagnostic models when faced with significant distributional discrepancies. To address these issues, a new cross-domain diagnostic algorithm is proposed via joint conditional Wasserstein distance matching. First, the conditional Bures–Wasserstein distance is constructed based on the second-order statistic cross-covariance operator, approximating the distributions in the source and target domains while constraining the geometry. Then, to avoid losing first-order fault data information, the conditional probability 1-Wasserstein distance is embedded to construct a joint distance adaptation. The entropy loss is introduced into the training process to build reliable pseudo labels for the target domain samples. In the proposed method, the samples and label features of different domains are mapped to the reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS), and the Feature Extractor and Classifier modules of the model are jointly optimized to obtain a more robust diagnostic model. The proposed cross-domain diagnostic model is experimentally validated on bearing and gearbox datasets under variable loads and speeds with significant diagnostic performance compared to existing transfer models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urothelial carcinoma (UC) is one of the highest incidence cancers that rank the fourth commonly diagnosed tumors worldwide. The unresectable lesions that are resistant to therapeutic interventions is the major cause leading to death. Previous studies had shown that the resistance and metastatic consequence may arise from cancer stem-like cells population. The phytochemical flavonoids have promised bioactivity and potent anti-carcinogenic effects, and trap great attentions for cancer chemoprevention and/or adjuvant chemotherapy. However, the mechanisms of flavonoids on cancer stemness is still obscured. In this study, we analyzed the biofunctional effects of as-prepared flavonoid derivative-WYC0209 on T24, BFTC905 and BFTC909 human UC cell lines. Our results demonstrated that WYC0209 significantly induced anti-cell viability on UC cells through decreased Akt/NFkB signaling. Moreover, WYC0209 enhanced the cell apoptosis through activated the caspase-3 activity and inactivated Bcl-xL expression. Interestingly, WYC0209 dramatically inhibited the cancer stem cells (CSCs) traits, including attenuation of side population and tumorsphere formation in which were through declined EMT-CSCs markers including MDR1, ABCG2 and BMI-1. We further validated the effects of WYC0209 on several CSC surface markers including CD133, CD44, SOX-2 and Nanog. Our results showed that WYC0209 markedly inhibited CD133 expressions in both transcriptional and translational levels. High expression levels of CD133 was also demonstrated in human upper tract UC specimens. In summary, our study showed that WYC0209 may potentially as an adjuvant agent to against CD133-driven UC CSCs and provide a beneficial strategy to against UC cancer therapeutics resistant. Unlabelled Image • WYC0209-mediated anti-proliferation and cell apoptosis in UC cell lines. • WYC0209 dramatically inhibited the side population and tumorsphere formation. • WYC0209 markedly inhibited the CD133 expressions in mRNA and protein levels. • Highly levels of both mRNA and protein of CD133 were found in UTUC specimens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A multistep acoustic method is extended to suppress the reconstruction instability of instantaneous vibration of a structure. • The more serious time-domain instability of the reconstruction between the pressure and acceleration is proved. • The superiority of the extended M-TDPWSM is demonstrated by comparing with the S-TDPWSM. A multistep acoustic method is extended to suppress the more serious instability in the inverse process between the time-evolving pressure on the hologram plane and the time-wavenumber acceleration spectrum on the virtual source plane, and further stabilizes the reconstruction of the instantaneous vibration of an exciting planar structure. In the extended method, the solving equation relating the time-evolving pressure to the time-wavenumber acceleration spectrum at each time step is first established. Then, the established equations at several time steps are combined to constitute a new large solving equation. Finally, after one-time solving inverse calculation of the new equation, the time-wavenumber acceleration spectra at these several time steps are solved simultaneously. The multistep calculation in the expanded method not only can reduce the total number of solving the time-wavenumber acceleration spectra for reducing the accumulation errors in the time domain, but also can expand the dimension of the solving inverse matrix to add the number of the nonzero element for improving the filtering effect. A planar plate excited by a steel ball is designed as the numerical simulation to test the ability of the extended method in suppressing the instability of the inverse process of reconstructing the structural surface acceleration. In the simulation, some important parameters, such as the position of the virtual source plane, the sampling number in the wavenumber domain, the noise and the multistep number, are discussed. The simulation results demonstrate that in the reconstruction of the instantaneous vibration, the single-step time domain plane wave superposition method is more sensitive to these parameters and the divergence problem of its solution is more serious, but the extended method has a stronger adaptation ability in the changes of these parameters and can effectively suppress the reconstruction instability of the instantaneous vibration of an exciting structure for providing a more stable solution. An experiment with a steel plate excited by a steel ball is further employed to verify the superiority of the expanded method in suppressing the serious instability of the inverse process of reconstructing the instantaneous vibration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Non-synchronous measurements beamforming is investigated. • ALM and ADMM based fast implementation are presented. • Simulations and an industrial application are given. Acoustic beamforming is a technique to measure the sound field and then achieve the localization of the sound sources. It usually works at a high frequency because the size and density of the microphone array are limited. Differing from the traditional beamforming, non-synchronous measurements beamforming can widen the working frequency bandwidth with a movable microphone array. It generates a cross-spectral matrix of all the microphones in the sequential positions of measurements, and this matrix is incomplete due to the missing phase relationships between non-synchronous measurements. Thus the non-synchronous measurements beamforming can be regarded as a cross-spectral matrix completion problem. One application of the non-synchronous measurements beamforming is that it can immediately obtain a completed noise image by scanning a large sound source; then the primary sound sources are expected to be identified by the global image. However, it is still a challenge for the current non-synchronous measurements beamforming algorithm since the computation time is long when more numbers of measurements are involved. In this paper, two algorithms based on the augmented Lagrange multiplier method and alternating direction method of multipliers are proposed for achieving fast implementation. The proposed algorithms can improve the iteration speed of the non-synchronous measurements beamforming which is proved first in the simulation, and they are further applied in the on-site measurement of the vehicle engine compartment (the data missing cross-spectral matrix of 15 non-synchronous measurements for a given frequency can be completed only in a few seconds). This industrial application has shown the potential of the proposed methods to be further applied for the sound source imaging of large mechanical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• [1,2,4]Triazolo[1,5- a ]pyrimidines were prepared via an one-pot three-component process. • Readily available starting materials, good functional group tolerance. • 28 affected microtubule networks and exhibited tubulin inhibition with an IC 50 value of 9.9 μM. As restricted CA-4 analogues, a novel series of [1,2,4]triazolo[1,5- a ]pyrimidines possessing 3,4,5-trimethoxylphenyl groups has been achieved successfully via an efficient one-pot three-component reaction of 3-(3,4,5-trimethoxyphenyl)-1H-1,2,4-triazol-5-amine, 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds and aldehydes. Initial biological evaluation demonstrated some of target compounds displayed potent antitumor activity in vitro against three cancer cell lines. Among them, the most highly active analogue 26 inhibited the growth of HeLa, and A549 cell lines with IC 50 values at 0.75, and 1.02 μM, respectively, indicating excellent selectivity over non-tumoural cell line HEK-293 (IC 50 = 29.94 μM) which suggested that the target compounds might possess a high safety index. Moreover, cell cycle analysis illustrated that the analogue 26 significantly induced HeLa cells arrest in G2/M phase, meanwhile the compound could dramatically affect cell morphology and microtubule networks. In addition, compound 28 exhibited potent anti-tubulin activity with IC 50 values of 9.90 μM, and molecular docking studies revealed the analogue occupied the colchicine-binding site of tubulin. These observations suggest that [1,2,4]triazolo[1,5- a ]pyrimidines represent a new class of tubulin polymerization inhibitors and well worth further investigation aiming to generate potential anticancer agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fan noise is the primary component of aero-engine noise. Duct acoustic modal identification is essential for analyzing the mechanism of fan noise generation and propagation. The acoustic modal in the duct can be identified by the measurement of the microphone array mounted on the duct wall. It is generally assumed in the conventional modal identification methods that the modal coefficients are independent of each other. However, the realistic duct acoustic modal coefficients exhibit significant statistical dependence. A Boltzmann machine(BM) model considering the statistical dependence between modal coefficients is proposed for recovering the modal coefficients in this paper. The modal coefficients are estimated using a block coordinate optimization method in a Bayesian framework. Moreover, the modal Boltzmann parameters can be learned iteratively by the BM. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by numerical simulations and experimental tests. It turns out that the modal coefficients can be accurately identified by the proposed method, and a more significant sparsity is shown by the results. In addition, the statistical dependence between the modal coefficients can be captured by the BM. • A Boltzmann machine modeling method that considers the statistical dependence between the modal coefficients is proposed. • The modal coefficients and the modal Boltzmann parameters can be estimated adaptively and iteratively. • The accuracy and robustness of the modal identification results are analyzed. • The proposed method is evaluated in Spinning Mode Synthesizer experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The localization of cyclostationary sound sources is important for rotating machinery noise source identification and fault diagnosis. Cyclostationary sound sources are a special class of nonstationary sound sources, which exhibit periodic changes in statistics. Most of the conventional sound source identification methods are based on the stationary sound source assumption, which do not consider the cyclostationarity of the radiated sound field by rotating machinery. Thus, they are hard to localize the acoustic sources with different cyclic frequencies. In this paper, a novel technique of localizing the cyclostationary acoustic sources with different cyclic frequencies is proposed. First, the cyclostationary conventional beamforming (CSCBF) method is deviated. In CSCBF, the cyclic-cross-spectral matrix (CCSM) is defined considering all the cross cyclic spectral correlation (CSC) between different microphones in the array. The left steering vector and right steering vector are constructed to focus the CCSM on each scanning grid point at a given combination of cyclic frequency and spectral frequency. Then, the high resolution cyclostationary beamforming (HR-CSBF) is further developed to improve the spatial resolution of CSCBF. In HR-CSBF, two linear equations according to the property of CSC is established as the acoustic inverse problems. With the sparse distribution of the cyclostationary sources in the space as the prior knowledge, the iterated Bayesian focusing (IBF) is utilized to obtain a robust and sparse solution in HR-CSBF. Numerical simulations and experiments are conducted to validate the proposed methods. To explore the potential applications of the proposed methods, the localization of high pressure pump (HPP) and rolling bearing with outer-race failure are also used to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. It turns out that both CSCBF and HR-CSBF can localize the cyclostationary sources with different cyclic frequencies. Compared with CSCBF, HR-CSBF can achieve a higher spatial resolution in the obtained acoustic map. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligent mechanical fault diagnosis techniques have been extensively developed in recent years. Owing to the advantage of data privacy protection, federated learning has recently received increasing attention; this approach can utilize monitoring data from multiple local clients to train an optimal global diagnosis model. However, low-quality data are often present for some clients, including mislabeled data and incomplete data that lack some health states. Furthermore, the data distributions are usually different across different clients owing to variations in machine operating conditions. Therefore, the performance of the federated diagnostic model may be limited by low-quality data and data distribution discrepancies. To address this issue, a federated transfer learning method with low-quality knowledge filtering and dynamic model aggregation is proposed. First, a dynamic filter is designed by filtering out low label probabilities predicted by low-quality source domain models to construct high-confidence pseudo-labels for the target domain data. Then, the batch normalized maximum mean discrepancy (BN-MMD) distance metric is introduced into the training loss function to reduce the data distribution discrepancy between the source clients and the target client without private data leakage. While building the global model in each training round, a dynamic model aggregation algorithm is proposed to mitigate the influence of low-quality clients. This algorithm evaluates the weight of each client according to its contribution to the total consensus diagnostic knowledge and then aggregates the local models with adaptive weights. Consequently, it can overcome the drawback of the classical federated averaging (FedAvg) algorithm, where all local clients are assigned the same weight when constructing the global model. Experiments are conducted on three bearing datasets under various loads and speeds. Compared with some existing diagnostic methods, the proposed federated transfer learning method can reduce the impact of low-quality data and achieve higher diagnostic accuracy while preserving data privacy. • A novel federated transfer learning method is proposed for bearing fault diagnosis. • Low-quality knowledge of some source clients is eliminated by a dynamic filter. • A dynamic model aggregation algorithm is derived to obtain an optimal global model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim NLR family pyrin domain containing-3 (NLRP3) has been associated with inflammatory disorders. In response to exogenous and endogenous molecules, NLRP3 assemble an inflammasome containing the apoptosis-associated speck like protein containing a CARD (ASC) for activating caspase-1, inducing pyroptosis and processing interleukin (IL)-1β and IL-18. A recent model proposes that the assembly of the inflammasome is dependent on the cytoskeleton. As the protein kinase R (PKR) has been shown to regulate actin dynamics, we examined whether PKR regulates inflammasome activity. Methods Primary macrophages were isolated from the peritoneum, then primed with lipopolysaccharide and treated with NLRP3 inducers. Whole cells, lysates and culture supernatant were analyzed for the expression and spatial positions of constituents of the inflammasome and the production of cytokines. To investigate inflammation in vivo, mice were treated with dextran sodium sulphate (DSS) in their drinking water. After 9 days, intestinal tissue sections were isolated from different mouse strains and compared. Results We showed an increased interaction between NLRP3-ASC and related to this ASC speck formation, activation of caspase-1 and consequent processing of pro-IL-1β in PKR-ablated compared to wild-type macrophages. We demonstrated that this PKR-dependent repression of the inflammasome requires kinase activity by using cells from a kinase-dead PKR transgenic mouse. Consistently, we showed higher caspase-1 activity and increased pathology in PKR knockout compared to wild-type mice subjected to DSS. Mechanistically, we found that the increased proximity of NLRP3 and ASC in the absence of PKR reflected the juxtaposition of the endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondria. The spatial arrangement of these cellular organelles is mediated by microtubule-dependent affects. Consistent with this, we demonstrate that PKR interacts with microtubules in a kinase dependent fashion. Conclusion We demonstrated that PKR suppresses the NLRP3 inflammasome activation by modulating the cytoskeleton. These findings provide critical information to correctly develop therapeutic strategies to combat inflammatory disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hyperactivation of the latent transcription factor signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT)3 is frequently observed in inflammation-associated gastric cancer. However the full spectrum of downstream gene networks modulated by STAT3 during the pathogenesis of gastric tumourigenesis remains ill-defined. The gp130 F / F gastric cancer mouse model which recapitulates the hyperactive STAT3 signaling and tumor progression observed in human disease was therefore employed to identify novel STAT3-regulated microRNAs (miRNAs) associated with the onset of gastric tumours. Using a miRNA array approach coupled with miRNA real-time quantitative PCR validation, we identified that 2 miRNAs (miR-146b and miR-429) are consistently up in stomach tissue from gp130 F / F mice at 4 weeks (prior to tumour initiation) and 3 months (established tumour formation) of age compared to age-matched wild type mice. Consistent with our previous demonstration that interleukin (IL)-11/STAT3 signaling plays a causal role during gastric tumourigenesis in gp130 F / F mice, normalization of gastric STAT3 activation and IL-11 expression in gp130 F / F mice lacking the IL-11 ligand-binding receptor subunit (IL-11Ra) also normalized the expression of these miRNAs. We also found that in response to IL-11 treatment of wild-type mice, miR-146b and miR-429 are significantly increased along with STAT3 activation. Furthermore, these 2 miRs are upregulated in human intestinal-type gastric cancer biopsies characterized by increased STAT3 signaling. Collectively, our data reveal 2 novel STAT3-regulated miRNAs in gastric tumourigenesis, and therefore suggest that the regulation of specific miRNAs may represent an additional mechanism by which STAT3 promotes oncogenesis in the stomach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The microphone array is widely used in acoustics as a non-contact measurement tool, which can obtain multi-dimensional information about the sound source, such as spatial, time, and frequency. The microphone array is not always used in an ideal anechoic chamber environment, making the sound source signal contaminated with the background interference. The separation of the sound source signal from the complex background interference is very challenging, especially when arrays are used in wind tunnel measurements. A probability model on the time–frequency matrix is constructed in this paper to address this issue. The background interference is constructed by the Gaussian mixture model to fit its complex probability distributions adaptively. The sound source signal is constructed as a low-rank model according to its correlation characteristics on the microphones. The distributions of parameters involved in the low-rank and Gaussian mixture model are estimated through variational Bayesian inference, which can realize the separation of the sound source signal from the complex background interference. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated by the numerical simulation and the DLR closed wind tunnel experimental. The robustness and the effectiveness of extracting the sound source signal from the complex background interference are also verified. • Complex interference suppression in the microphone array measurement is investigated. • A hierarchical parametric framework is constructed based on the low-rank and Gaussian mixture model. • The optimal model parameters are adaptively determined by the Variational Bayesian inference. • The proposed method can effectively remove the interference for acoustic imaging in the DLR wind tunnel test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Non-Synchronous Measurements is an efficient technique to improve the acoustic image of conventional beamforming for sound source localization. It is unable to quickly reveal the sound sources of the large machinery which requires a large synthetic array with many microphones to capture enough sound pressure data. In this paper, four Non-Synchronous Measurement algorithms with improved computational efficiency are demonstrated. They are implemented by combining the Alternative Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) method with different randomization-based acceleration strategies. The new algorithms are developed firstly by (1) using Randomized Singular Value Decomposition (RSVD) to construct the projection basis, and then by (2) migrating the computation platform from the Central Processing Unit to the Graphics Processing Unit for the Cross-Spectral Matrix completion steps, (3) accelerating the soft threshold shrinkage operator with RSVD, or (4) replacing the soft threshold shrinkage with RSVD-enhanced optimal shrinkage in the Cross-Spectral Matrix completion steps. Numerical simulations are carried out under different conditions, including the number of sequential measurement positions, the step length between two sequential measurement positions, the frequency of the sound sources, and the Signal-to-Noise Ratio of the sound pressure signals measured by the microphones. The sound source localization performance of the improved algorithms is assessed by examining their acoustic maps, and the computational performance of these algorithms is compared through their Cross-Spectral Matrix reconstruction errors and time consumption. • Four accelerated Non-Synchronous Measurement algorithms are proposed. • Proposed algorithms are based on the Randomized Singular Value Decomposition. • The matrix completion accuracy of the original algorithm are optimized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A novel computational method identifies enhancers and their strengths at the sequence level. • A light gradient boost machine algorithm is used for feature selection. • In this paper, a new network structure called multiple Laplacian-regularized radial basis function network is proposed. • Compared with the existing methods, this method achieves more excellent performance. An enhancer is a short DNA sequence containing many binding sites of transcription factors that plays a crucial role in the gene expression of major eukaryotes. It is difficult to avoid the time consumption and high cost of experimental methods. Therefore, with the continuous development of genomics, it is an urgent task to identify enhancers and their intensities by computational methods. In this paper, we propose a two-layer model called iEnhancer-MRBF, wherein the first layer is used to identify enhancers, and the identified enhancers are divided into strong enhancers and weak enhancers according to their strength in the second layer. In iEnhancer-MRBF, a new classifier multiple Laplacian-regularized radial basis function network (MLR-RBFN) is proposed, and three feature representation methods, namely, kmer, nucleotide binary profiles (NBP) and ac-cumulated nucleotide frequency (ANF), as well as feature selection, are used to process DNA sequences. The experimental results show that the model is significantly better than the previous prediction models, and the test accuracy rates of the first and second layers of independent datasets are 79.75% and 83.50%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constructed wetlands (CWs) are often used to treat wastewater discharged from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), while emerging contaminants (such as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS)) have been commonly discovered in WWTPs. However, no research has examined whether PFOA/OS (i.e. PFOA and PFOS) affects the performance of CW. Therefore, this study compared the nutrient removal efficiencies of four CWs with varied configurations under PFOA/OS and no PFOA/OS stress conditions. We found that CW containing plants or/and iron-carbon had higher removal efficiency for nutrients (except NH 4 +–N) than conventional CW in stable operation under wastewater without PFOA/OS. Plants or/and iron increased the nutrient removal efficiency by plant uptake, chemical reaction, and co-precipitation of iron hydroxides. In contrast, the iron-carbon inhibited the nitrification of nitrifying bacteria by consuming dissolved oxygen, converting NO 3 −–N to NH 4 +–N. Although the removal efficiencies of nutrients by CWs differed after introducing PFOA/OS, the removal order was consistent with those before adding PFOA/OS. Plants or/and iron-carbon effectively increased CWs' resistance to PFOA/OS loading and toxicity, and the function of iron-carbon was superior to the plants. In addition, PFOA/OS reduced the abundances of microbes Hydrogenophaga , Pseudomonas , Sphingomonas , Nitrospira , and Candidatus_Accumulibacter that contributed to nutrient removal. [Display omitted] • Additions of iron-carbon increased the nutrient removal excepting NH 4 + − N. • The presence of PFOA/OS inhibited the nutrients removal efficiencies. • Iron-carbon improved the tolerance of CW to PFOA/OS loading and toxicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perfluoroalkyl acid (PFAA) exposure poses a potential hazard to wildlife and humans. Food consumption is one of the main routes of PFAA exposure for the general population, with aquatic organisms being the major contributors. To evaluate the risk of coastal residents' intake of wild aquatic organisms, 14 PFAAs were detected in crucian carp and oriental river prawn from 18 sampling sites from the lower reaches of Yangtze River. The total PFAA (∑PFAA) concentrations ranged from 5.9 to 51.3 ng/g wet weight (ww) in the muscle of crucian carp and river prawn, suggesting the potential risk to human and wildlife. Perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS), perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and long-chain PFAAs (C ≥ 10) were the main pollutants in the tissues of crucian carp and river prawn, which are known for their higher bioaccumulation capacity. The ∑PFAA concentration in all the samples showed an increasing trend from upstream to downstream and was higher in the south bank, owing to population density, prevailing winds, background pollution and industrial emission. Principal component analysis-multiple linear regression and Pearson correlation analysis showed that WWTP effluent, industrial pollution and surface runoff ware the main sources of PFAAs in the aquatic organisms and industrial pollution highest contributor, suggesting better regulation is needed to manage them. The assessment of risk to human health and wild life suggested a low risk for most residents of cities along the Yangtze River except for resident of Nantong, where frequent consumption of wild aquatic organisms may cause potential risk to human health, especially for traditional eaters and middle-aged people. • PFAAs were monitored in fish and shrimp along the lower Yangtze River, China. • ∑PFAA ranged from 5.9 to 51.3 ng/g in the muscle of fish and shrimp. • PFAA were higher downstream and near the southern shore, linked with mixed reasons. • Industrial pollution was the main potential source of PFAAs in aquatic products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A Kalman filter-based time domain plane wave superposition method is proposed. • The proposed KF-TDPWSM performs a forward process to improve the solving stability. • The superiority of the proposed KF-TDPWSM is proved by comparing with the TDPWSM. A Kalman-filter-based time-domain plane wave superposition method (KF-TDPWSM) is proposed for reconstructing the instantaneous sound field generated by a source. In the KF-TDPWSM, a discrete state formulation is first acquired using the superposition formula of time-varying pressure on a hologram plane, which forms a multiple-input and multiple-output acoustical system. Then, an eigensystem realization algorithm is implemented to obtain the minimum realization of this system. The process and measurement equations of the KF-TDPWSM are established by combining the equation of the first-order smoothness condition with the minimum realization. Finally, the forward iteration calculation of the Kalman filter is used to estimate the state vector, including the pressure time–wavenumber spectra on a virtual source plane. The spectra estimated at all times are employed to calculate the time-varying pressure on a reconstruction plane. The KF-TDPWSM utilizes a forward iteration calculation and does not use the inverse calculation with the time-marching characteristic to improve the reconstruction stability of the instantaneous sound field. A numerical simulation is designed to investigate the reconstruction performance of the KF-TDPWSM. Simulation results confirm that the KF-TDPWSM effectively reconstructs the instantaneous sound field of a source in the time and space domains. The effects of certain parameters of the KF-TDPWSM are examined through simulations, and it is shown that its reconstruction accuracy is superior to that of the time-domain plane wave superposition method. An experiment is conducted to further validate the KF-TDPWSM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To enhance rice straw degradation and improve biogas production in a two-stage anaerobic system, rice straw was treated with either dilute alkali or acid. Firstly, the effects of NaOH or HCl concentration, temperature and time on glucose conversion, degradation of cellulose and hemi-cellulose were investigated. It was found that glucose conversion rate and the organic matter content were greater with alkali rather than acid pretreatment. Suitable conditions for hydrolysis using NaOH pretreatment were 2% (w/w), 60 h and 60 °C. With these conditions the glucose conversion rate was 55.5%. Secondly, the hydrolysate was used as substrate for batch anaerobic fermentation tests at different organic loadings. The maximum methane yield of hydrolysate from NaOH pretreatment was 193.2 ml g −1 [COD]. For the HCl pretreatment, the maximum methane production rate was 287.0 ml g −1 [COD] which was 43.89% higher than with NaOH. Although the NaOH solution was more efficient in improving rice straw hydrolysis, the hydrolysate from the HCl pretreatment had greater methane production at a similar organic loading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Photocatalytic Z-schemes are built for SiSe/SnSe 2 and SiSe/SnSSe heterostructures. • The STH efficiencies of the Z-schemes can reach 19.18%, 14.61%, and 14.24%. • NAMD simulations confirm photocatalytic activity of SiSe/SnSe 2 is well-protected. • Δ G s reveal both HER and OER with SiSe/SnSSe-I can spontaneously proceed. The direct Z-schemes of the photocatalytic overall water splitting with the SiSe/SnSe 2 , SiSe/SnSSe-I, and SiSe/SnSSe-II heterostructures are constructed based on the density functional theory calculations and nonadiabatic molecular dynamics (NAMD) simulations. The maximum solar-to-hydrogen efficiency (ηʹ STH) reaches 19.18% and can be promoted to 28.71% under tensile biaxial strains. NAMD simulations indicate the transfer of the electron for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and hole for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) for SiSe/SnSe 2 are apparently slower than those for the other two heterostructures, implicating the reduction and oxidation activities of this heterostructure are well-protected. Moreover, the shortest electron-hole recombination time is attributed to SiSe/SnSSe-I, indicating that it holds the best photocatalytic performance. Remarkably, the Gibbs free energies indicate that HER and OER with SiSe/SnSSe-I can spontaneously proceed, while OERs can but HERs cannot spontaneously proceed with the other two heterostructures. Therefore, the newfound heterostructures, especially SiSe/SnSSe-I, are promising candidates in photocatalytic overall water splitting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]