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Perennial groundcover (PGC) merges scalable soil and water conservation with high-yielding row crops, enhancing ecosystem services of annual grain crop production. However, ineffective groundcover suppression increases competition between the groundcover and row crop, reducing row crop grain yield. The objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of three Kentucky bluegrass (KBG) groundcover suppression methods each at narrow and wide widths on maize (Zea mays L.) growth and development in evenly spaced PGC, compared to alternating PGC swards and a no-PGC conventional tillage control. Suppression methods for evenly spaced PGC included two different strip tillage implements, completing either shallow or deep soil fracture, for mechanical suppression and a banded sprayer for no-tillage chemical suppression. We measured weekly for maize plant height, phenological stage of development, reflected red:far-red (R:FR) ratio, early vegetative and final plant density, grain and stover yield, yield components of kernel rows ear−1, kernels row−1, kernels ear−1, ear length, kernel weight, grass frequency, and weed community. In 2020, maize grain yield in the alternating PGC swards (11.38 Mg ha−1) was similar to the control (12.78 Mg ha−1) and greater than in the evenly spaced groundcover (9.62 Mg ha−1). Maize grain yield was similar for systems in 2021 (7.41 Mg ha−1), due to drought and high coefficient of variation. Weed community was similar for systems in both years. A maize competition response was observed for both suppression widths across methods. Groundcover dormancy may be needed in conjunction with effective chemical and/or mechanical groundcover suppression to support maize production in PGC.

The incidence of colorectal cancer (CRC) is closely related to dietary factors. Dietary factors greatly affect the structure and function of intestinal microorganisms. In the process of cholesterol bile acid metabolism, the gut microbes participate in the conversion of primary bile acid to secondary bile acid and play an important role in the occurrence and development of CRC. Erchen decoction (ECD) has been widely used in basic research and clinical treatment as a traditional Chinese medical prescription, particularly for patients who are overweight and exhibit dyslipidemia. It is widely used in clinical practice in patients with phlegm syndrome in early colorectal cancer. However, the effects of this treatment on microorganisms and the underlying metabolic mechanisms are still unclear. In this study, a model of high-fat diet and azoxymethane combined with dextran sodium sulfate (AOM/DSS) was established, and ECD intervention was administered to investigate the incidence rate of CRC under different dietary conditions, as well as the effect of ECD intervention on CRC mice fed a high-fat diet. The results showed that the incidence rate of colorectal neoplasms increased under conditions of a high-fat diet, and ECD could reduce the incidence of CRC by regulating abnormal lipid metabolism and improving the structure and function of the intestinal flora.

Our work focuses on the assessment of trends, erosion states and causal risk factors for soil erosion of the Asfalou watershed through the use of the Priority Actions Program/Regional Activity Center (PAP/RAC). This qualitative study model for water erosion makes it possible to assess susceptibility and determine potential fragile areas in order to diagnose the state of soil degradation. We adopted the PAP/RAC crossed matrices, the geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) to develop the classical modelling. This method is based on three main approaches: predictive, descriptive and integration. Introducing soil types, slope length (LS) and climatic factors into our model, including rainfall erosivity (R), slope exposure, soil moisture index (SMI) and land surface temperature (LST), improved the reliability of our model. The correlation analysis identified these factors that explain erosion states and the risk of soil erosion. The coefficients of determination (R2) of the various erosive states resulting from the modified PAP/RAC approach explain respectively 98.30%, 77% and 49.3% of the observed variability of the erosive states. These factors provide information on the current state of soil degradation depending on the degree of influence of the different factors that control erosion. The descriptive approach has shown that soil loss manifests itself in different forms, whether for sheet erosion (L) and ravines (C1) successively affecting 79.95% and 17.84% of the land. The integration approach identifies factors and areas requiring intervention to counter the effects of soil erosion in the Asfalou watershed effectively and sustainably.

Meta-devices have gained significant attention and have been widely utilized in optical systems for focusing and imaging, owing to their lightweight, high-integration, and exceptional-flexibility capabilities. However, based on the assumption of local phase approximation, traditional design method neglect the local lattice coupling effect between adjacent meta-atoms, thus harming the practical performance of meta-devices. Using physics-driven or data-driven optimization algorithms can effectively solve the aforementioned problems. Nevertheless, both of the methods either involve considerable time costs or require a substantial amount of data sets. Here, we propose a physics-data-driven approach based "intelligent optimizer" that enables us to adaptively modify the sizes of the studied meta-atom according to the sizes of its surrounding ones. Such a scheme allows to mitigate the undesired local lattice coupling effect, and the proposed network model works well on thousands of datasets with a validation loss of 3*10-3. Experimental results show that the 1-mm-diameter metalens designed with the "intelligent optimizer" possesses a relative focusing efficiency of 93.4% (as compared to ideal focusing) and a Strehl ratio of 0.94. In contrast to the previous inverse design method, our method significantly boosts designing efficiency with five orders of magnitude reduction in time. Our design approach may sets a new paradigm for devising large-scale meta-devices., Comment: manuscripts:19 pages, 4 figures; Supplementary Information: 11 pages, 12 figures

Learning from a large corpus of data, pre-trained models have achieved impressive progress nowadays. As popular generative pre-training, diffusion models capture both low-level visual knowledge and high-level semantic relations. In this paper, we propose to exploit such knowledgeable diffusion models for mainstream discriminative tasks, i.e., unsupervised object discovery: saliency segmentation and object localization. However, the challenges exist as there is one structural difference between generative and discriminative models, which limits the direct use. Besides, the lack of explicitly labeled data significantly limits performance in unsupervised settings. To tackle these issues, we introduce DiffusionSeg, one novel synthesis-exploitation framework containing two-stage strategies. To alleviate data insufficiency, we synthesize abundant images, and propose a novel training-free AttentionCut to obtain masks in the first synthesis stage. In the second exploitation stage, to bridge the structural gap, we use the inversion technique, to map the given image back to diffusion features. These features can be directly used by downstream architectures. Extensive experiments and ablation studies demonstrate the superiority of adapting diffusion for unsupervised object discovery.

This paper studies a new problem, \emph{active learning with partial labels} (ALPL). In this setting, an oracle annotates the query samples with partial labels, relaxing the oracle from the demanding accurate labeling process. To address ALPL, we first build an intuitive baseline that can be seamlessly incorporated into existing AL frameworks. Though effective, this baseline is still susceptible to the \emph{overfitting}, and falls short of the representative partial-label-based samples during the query process. Drawing inspiration from human inference in cognitive science, where accurate inferences can be explicitly derived from \emph{counter-examples} (CEs), our objective is to leverage this human-like learning pattern to tackle the \emph{overfitting} while enhancing the process of selecting representative samples in ALPL. Specifically, we construct CEs by reversing the partial labels for each instance, and then we propose a simple but effective WorseNet to directly learn from this complementary pattern. By leveraging the distribution gap between WorseNet and the predictor, this adversarial evaluation manner could enhance both the performance of the predictor itself and the sample selection process, allowing the predictor to capture more accurate patterns in the data. Experimental results on five real-world datasets and four benchmark datasets show that our proposed method achieves comprehensive improvements over ten representative AL frameworks, highlighting the superiority of WorseNet. The source code will be available at \url{https://github.com/Ferenas/APLL}., Comment: 29 pages, Under review

A series of Hafnium dioxide (HfO2) thin films with nominal thickness of 5–350 nm were reactively deposited on silicon（100）substrates at 200 °C using electron-beam evaporation. Based on the measurement and characterization techniques of spectroscopic ellipsometry, X ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy, the effect of growth thickness on the refractive index and crystallization of HfO2 film grown under the same conditions was studied. The results indicate that the change of refractive index of HfO2 film is closely related to the change of microstructure i.e., grain size and crystallization which change obviously with the increasing growth thickness. The average refractive index at 633 nm decreases about from 1.97 to 1.84 with the increase of the average size about from 0.5 nm to 7~8 nm and the crystallinity from zero to 74% when the thickness of HfO2 film increases from 5 nm to 350 nm. Meanwhile, a critical growth thickness of HfO2 film, somewhere on order of 130 nm, is confirmed at which the film transforms from an amorphous to a polycrystalline monoclinic structure. The sharp change of microstructure near the critical thickness value of HfO2 film leads to the abrupt change of optical properties of HfO2 film, such as the turning behaviors of the refractive index curve. The correlation between phase transformation, size and orientation of crystallite, packing density and hence the refractive index is established. The possible interpretations are proposed to well understand the underlying mechanism of the evolution of optical properties in HfO2 film-forming process.

In plants, glucose (Glc) plays important roles, as a nutrient and signal molecule, in the regulation of growth and development. However, the function of Glc in fiber development of upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) is unclear. Here, using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), we found that the Glc content in fibers was higher than that in ovules during the fiber elongation stage. In vitro ovule culture revealed that lower Glc concentrations promoted cotton fiber elongation, while higher concentrations had inhibitory effects. The hexokinase inhibitor N-acetylglucosamine (NAG) inhibited cotton fiber elongation in the cultured ovules, indicating that Glc-mediated fiber elongation depends on the Glc signal transduced by hexokinase. RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) analysis and hormone content detection showed that 150mM Glc significantly activated brassinosteroid (BR) biosynthesis, and the expression of signaling-related genes was also increased, which promoted fiber elongation. In vitro ovule culture clarified that BR induced cotton fiber elongation in a dose-dependent manner. In hormone recovery experiments, only BR compensated for the inhibitory effects of NAG on fiber elongation in a Glc-containing medium. However, the ovules cultured with the BR biosynthetic inhibitor brassinazole and from the BR-deficient cotton mutant pag1 had greatly reduced fiber elongation at all the Glc concentrations tested. This demonstrates that Glc does not compensate for the inhibition of fiber elongation caused by BR biosynthetic defects, suggesting that the BR signaling pathway works downstream of Glc during cotton fiber elongation. Altogether, our study showed that Glc plays an important role in cotton fibre elongation, and crosstalk occurs between Glc and BR signaling during modulation of fiber elongation.

Bone morphogenetic protein receptor type-1B (BMPR1B) is one of the major gene for sheep prolificacy. However, few studies investigated its regulatory region. In this study, we reported that miR-1306 is a direct inhibitor of BMPR1B gene in the ovine granulosa cells (ovine GCs). We detected a miRNA response element of miR-1306 in the 3’ untranslated region of the ovine BMPR1B gene. Luciferase assay showed that the ovine BMPR1B gene is a direct target of miR-1306. qPCR and western blotting revealed that miR-1306 reduces the expression of BMPR1B mRNA and protein in the ovine granulosa cells. Furthermore, miR-1306 promoted cell apoptosis by suppressing BMPR1B expression in the ovine granulosa cells. Overall, our results suggest that miR-1306 is an epigenetic regulator of BMPR1B, and may serve as a potential target to improve the fecundity of sheep.

Diacylglycerol acyltransferases (DGAT) function as the key rate-limiting enzymes in de novo biosynthesis of triacylglycerol (TAG) by transferring an acyl group from acyl-CoA to sn-3 of diacylglycerol (DAG) to form TAG. Here, two members of the type 3 DGAT gene family, GmDGAT3-1 and GmDGAT3-2, were identified from the soybean (Glycine max) genome. Both of them were predicted to encode soluble cytosolic proteins containing the typical thioredoxin-like ferredoxin domain. Quantitative PCR analysis revealed that GmDGAT3-2 expression was much higher than GmDGAT3-1's in various soybean tissues such as leaves, flowers, and seeds. Functional complementation assay using TAG-deficient yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) mutant H1246 demonstrated that GmDGAT3-2 fully restored TAG biosynthesis in the yeast and preferentially incorporated monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs), especially oleic acid (C18:1) into TAGs. This substrate specificity was further verified by fatty-acid feeding assays and in vitro enzyme activity characterization. Notably, transgenic tobacco (Nicotiana benthamiana) data showed that heterogeneous expression of GmDGAT3-2 resulted in a significant increase in seed oil and C18:1 levels but little change in contents of protein and starch compared to the EV-transformed tobacco plants. Taken together, GmDGAT3-2 displayed a strong enzymatic activity to catalyze TAG assembly with high substrate specificity for MUFAs, particularly C18:1, playing an important role in the cytosolic pathway of TAG synthesis in soybean. The present findings provide a scientific reference for improving oil yield and FA composition in soybean through gene modification, further expanding our knowledge of TAG biosynthesis and its regulatory mechanism in oilseeds.

Under the impact of seismic forces, the strain of conventional anchor cables tended to increase sharply in an instant, which could easily cause the anchor cables to fail due to stress overload. This study aimed to optimize the design of rock supporting methods under dynamic disaster events such as earthquakes and rock bursts. A scale model specimen with a mechanical sliding device was designed based on an anti-seismic anchor cable. The working mechanism and seismic strain response of anti-seismic anchor cables were studied using static and shaking table model tests. The results show that under a static force, the anti-seismic anchor cables undergo in sequence a first elastic deformation stage, a slipping stage, a second elastic deformation stage, a plastic strengthening stage, and a brittle failure stage. In the slipping stage, the anchor cables start frictional sliding while keeping the axial force unchanged so as to adapt to the large deformation of the rock mass. The anti-seismic anchor cables exhibit the three situations of no-slip, instantaneous slip, and gradual and accumulative slip under seismic excitation. With a large constant resistance to slippage, the anchor cables do not slip, which can easily cause the anchor cables to break due to stress overload. With a small constant resistance to slippage, the reserved slipping distance is instantly exhausted; a step-shaped jump appears in the time history curves of the strain of the anchor cables. In the engineering design, a preset constant resistance to slippage is needed to match the seismic force for the anchor cables to exhibit the mechanism of multiple accumulated slips. During each slipping process, the strain of the anchor cables first decreases and then increases, with the peak strain decreasing significantly. This mechanism effectively cushions the instantaneous impact force of the earthquake, releases rock deformation, and dissipates seismic energy.

The development of nitrogen fertilizer green and efficient application technology by exploring the mechanism of efficient sorghum N use is important for sustainable development of sorghum industry as well as barren marginal land development and utilization. This study was conducted in 2018, 2019, and 2020 at Shenyang, China, using the nitrogen-efficient sorghum variety Liaonian No. 3 as material. The correlation between soil microbial species, diversity, and metabolic pathways with photosynthetic parameters and yield traits was analyzed to elucidate the mechanisms of nitrogen utilization and photosynthetic material production in sorghum under four fertilizer application patterns. The results showed that 17 populations of soil inter-root microorganisms were active in the organic fertilizer + 0 kg per hm2 of nitrogen (N0Y) model, and the abundance of two key populations, Comamonadaceae and Ellin5301, was significantly increased. Soil microorganisms regulated sorghum growth mainly through 30 pathways, focus including ko00540, ko00471, ko00072 and ko00550, of which ko02030 (Bacterial chemotaxis) and ko00072 (Synthesis and degradation of ketone bodies) played the most critical role. The functional analysis of soil microbial populations revealed that N0Y fertilizer model significantly reduced the intracellular trafficking, secretion. In addition, vesicular transport of microorganisms, amino acid transport and metabolism and nucleotide transport and metabolism played a key role in the regulation of population function. Overall, the N0Y model of N-efficient sorghum can achieve high levels of photosynthetic material production and higher yield formation through regulation of population activities and metabolic pathways of loamy microorganisms, resulting in reduced chemical N application and efficient green production of sorghum.

Anti-interference and high-precision measurement are two important indicators of the performance of a satellite navigation receiver. However, current receiver designs do not simultaneously satisfy these two criteria. While the carrier-phase ranging technique is necessary for high-precision receivers, frequency domain interference suppression (FDIS) results in tracking error biases for nonideal analog receiver channels. Importantly, as the FDIS filter is adaptive, the bias will vary with the jamming pattern, particularly when the frequency of interference varies. For precision navigation applications, this bias must be mitigated. Therefore, a new FDIS filter based on the mirror frequency amplitude compensation (MFAC) method is proposed in this paper. The amplitude at the symmetry position of the notch frequency is doubled in the MFAC method to mitigate this carrier-phase bias. The simulation results showed that the MFAC method can reduce the range of the carrier-phase bias by more than 60% for different interference bandwidths, which substantially exceeds that achieved using the conventional FDIS and calibration filter methods of 20 orders.

Inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) is one of the most powerful techniques for multiplex nucleotide assay owing to the virtue of the high resolution of multiple-elements' mass to charge ratio, in a mass spectrum. Here, a small sized (less than 20 nm) noble-metal nanoparticle labelled ICP-MS (NP-ICP-MS) is proposed for high-throughput microRNA (miRNA) determination. Three miRNA targets - miR-486-5p, miR-221, and miR-21 - in serum, were distinguished by single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) probes labelled with a small sized noble-metal nanoparticle - silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), platinum nanoparticles (PtNPs), and gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). The counting isotopes ion intensity per second (CPS) of the noble-metal label versus internal standard isotope intensity of 115In and 209Bi, exhibited good linearity in the range 0.25 pM to 100 pM with correlation coefficients (R2) of 0.9680, 0.9305, and 0.9418. The specific sandwich-type miRNA assay using the sensitive NP-ICP-MS readout pushed the detection limits down to 0.18 pM for miR-221, 0.23 pM for miR-486-5p, and 0.22 pM for miR-21. And the relative standard deviations (RSDs) for 10 pM target miRNA were less than 3.7%. This work promises a potential ultrasensitive ICP-MS bioassay of multiplex miRNA biomarkers for clinical serum diagnosis.

In this paper, a new method is developed to investigate the anti-penetration performance of the steel/nylon sandwich plate, which incorporates experimental method with numerical simulation. Constitutive parameters of the steel/nylon sandwich plate are measured by the Hopkinson Pressure Bar, and LS-DYNA is applied to simulate the penetration process of projectiles into the sandwich plate. The dynamic response, failure modes and energy absorption coefficients are obtained, and the penetration tests are conducted to verify the numerical method. Results show: results obtained by experimental and numerical methods have very high agreement, which demonstrates that the method proposed can be applicable for predicting the anti-penetration performance of the sandwich plate.

The harvesting period is a critical period for the accumulation of flavonoids in the leaves of the important medicinal plant Epimedium sagittatum. In this study, we conducted an experiment on E. sagittatum leaves sprayed with mineral elements with the aim of improving the quality of the herbal leafage during the harvesting period. We elucidated the changes in flavonoids (icariin, epimedin A, epimedin B, and epimedin C) in E. sagittatum leaves. The sum of main flavonoids content reached a maximum (11.74%) at 20 days after the high-concentration Fe2+ (2500 mg·L−1) treatment. We analyzed the FT-IR spectra characteristics of E. sagittatum leaf samples using the FT-IR technique, and constructed an OPLS-DA model and identified characteristic peaks to achieve differentiated identification of E. sagittatum. Further, widely untargeted metabolomic analysis identified different classes of metabolites. As the most important characteristic flavonoids, the relative contents of icariin, icaritin, icariside I, and icariside II were found to be up-regulated by high-Fe2+ treatment. Our experimental results demonstrate that high-concentration Fe2+ treatment is an effective measure to increase the flavonoids content in E. sagittatum leaves during the harvesting period, which can provide a scientific basis for the improvement of E. sagittatum leaf cultivation agronomic measures.

Partial discharge (PD) is not only the main cause of insulation fault for power equipment, but also an important sign of insulation defects. Using the PD detection system based on ultra-high frequency (UHF) antenna array, the PD localization can be realized in air-insulation substation. At present, the methods commonly used in PD detection system localization include time difference of arrival (TDOA) method and spatial spectrum estimation (SSE) method. This paper introduced the principles of these two methods, and proposed a simulation system for PD direction finding. Using this system, the direction finding performance of the TDOA method and the SSE method under different signal-to-noise ratio, incident azimuth angle, rising edge time and array element spacing are compared. The conclusion shows that when the SNR is less than 0 dB or the element spacing is less than 0.23 m, the SSE system has better direction finding performance. When the element spacing is greater than 0.23 m, the SSE system will be fuzzy in direction finding. At this time, the TDOA algorithm can achieve higher direction finding accuracy.

Monoculture cropping systems currently dominate temperate agroecosystems. However, intercropping can provide valuable benefits, including greater yield stability, increased total productivity, and resilience in the face of pest and disease outbreaks. Plant breeding efforts in temperate field crops are largely focused on monoculture production, but as intercropping becomes more widespread, there is a need for cultivars adapted to these cropping systems. Cultivar development for intercropping systems requires a systems approach, from the decision to breed for intercropping systems through the final stages of variety testing and release. Design of a breeding scheme should include information about species variation for performance in intercropping, presence of genotype × management interaction, observation of key traits conferring success in intercropping systems, and the specificity of intercropping performance. Together this information can help to identify an optimal selection scheme. Agronomic and ecological knowledge are critical in the design of selection schemes in cropping systems with greater complexity, and interaction with other researchers and key stakeholders inform breeding decisions throughout the process. This review explores the above considerations through three case studies: (1) forage mixtures, (2) perennial groundcover systems (PGC), and (3) soybean-pennycress intercropping. We provide an overview of each cropping system, identify relevant considerations for plant breeding efforts, describe previous breeding focused on the cropping system, examine the extent to which proposed theoretical approaches have been implemented in breeding programs, and identify areas for future development.

Additional file 3: Supplementary Table 1. The 8 selected genes to construct prognostic risk model and their weight coefficient in the model.

Additional file 1: Key population quantitative questionnaires.

Additional file 1. Maternal quantitative questionnaires.

Additional file 1: Table S1. The primers used for qRT-PCR in this study. Table S2. The sequence of siRNAs target ACE2 and HIF-1α used in this study. Table S3. The sequence for shACE2 used in this study. Table S4. Clinicopathological characteristics of healthy donors and breast cancer patients enrolled in this study. Table S5. IC50 of breast cancer, colorectal cancer and pancreatic cancer cell lines in GDSC.

Additional file 6: Supplementary Table 4. Immune score of each advanced renal cell carcinoma downloaded from TIMER platform (TIMER: The Tumor Immune Assessment Resource TCGA: The Cancer Genome Atlas).

Additional file 6: Supplementary Table 4. Immune score of each advanced renal cell carcinoma downloaded from TIMER platform (TIMER: The Tumor Immune Assessment Resource TCGA: The Cancer Genome Atlas).

Additional file 5: Supplementary Table 3. The risk score and group of each advanced RCC sample from ICGC database calculated by the prognostic risk model with genes combination (ICGC: International Cancer Genome Consortium).

Earthquakes are indeed triggered by fault dislocations, but whether this process alone can produce the actual earthquake energy released by the mainshock has long been questioned. Therefore, exploring the true source of energy that causes earthquakes after the first motion is necessary. Based on analyses of the waveforms and ray paths at seismic stations close to the epicenter, it is considered that strong earthquake vibrations may not be caused by S-waves. It is also proposed that the reservoirs in sedimentary strata contain large amounts of high-pressure fluids, whose pressures can be released under certain conditions; this release of pressure may be an important component of the main earthquake energy. When a natural fault ruptures and penetrates a reservoir with a large area, the elastic energy produced by the release of pressure can reach the energy released by an earthquake of magnitude 8.0. Artificial engineering activities can lead to small-scale fluid pressure release phenomena, such as blowouts during drilling and earthquakes induced by hydraulic fracturing. Much direct and indirect evidence, such as the characteristics of seismic waves in the time and frequency domains recorded during the Wenchuan earthquake, explosion phenomena observed on the ground and cores obtained by scientific drilling, indicates the possibility of such energy release. We propose that seismicity can be divided into three stages: the microfracturing stage, in which there is fluid activity and can produce an electrokinetic effect; the significant fracturing stage after the initial movement; and the strong earthquake stage caused by fluid pressure release., Comment: 31 pages, 10 figures

Additional file 2: Table S1. Model fitness for three STI among pregnant women in southwest China, 2009–2018.

Additional file 5: Supplementary Table 3. The risk score and group of each advanced RCC sample from ICGC database calculated by the prognostic risk model with genes combination (ICGC: International Cancer Genome Consortium).

Additional file 1: Supplementary Fig. 1.

Additional file 4: Supplementary Table 2. The clinical outcomes and risk score of each advanced RCC sample from TCGA database calculated by the prognostic risk model with genes combination (TCGA: The Cancer Genome Atlas; RCC: renal cell carcinoma; OS: overall survival).

Supplementary information of Broadband and high-efficiency photonic spin-Hall effect with all-metallic metasurfaces

Additional file 4: Supplementary Table 2. The clinical outcomes and risk score of each advanced RCC sample from TCGA database calculated by the prognostic risk model with genes combination (TCGA: The Cancer Genome Atlas; RCC: renal cell carcinoma; OS: overall survival).

Additional file 3: Supplementary Table 1. The 8 selected genes to construct prognostic risk model and their weight coefficient in the model.

Nested Newmark model (NNM) can obtain the post-earthquake profile of the slopes in limit equilibrium or limit analysis method. The purpose of this study is to extend the NNM from the limit equilibrium method to a limit analysis method, and then involve the dynamic response of slopes into the prediction of the permanent displacement based on decoupled analysis. Parametric studies are carried out to further investigate the influences of slope height, soil shear wave velocity and input ground motion. The calculated results indicate that neglecting the dynamic response of slopes can underestimate the post-earthquake displacements. As the slope height increases or shear wave velocity reduces, the underestimation is more significant. At the fundamental natural period of the site, the underestimation is particularly remarkable. For induced earthquake waves with a small value of mean period, the influence of the dynamic response can be ignored when the fundamental period deviates from the mean period.

Vegetable oils have been widely used in food, surfactants, lubricants, biodiesel, coatings, and other fields due to their advantages such as renewable, abundant, suitable for further processing, and biodegradable. On the other hand, microwave technology has attracted extensive attention in organic and polymeric chemistry because the technology can greatly shorten the reaction time, improve the yield of products, reduce side reactions, etc. This paper summarized recent advances on the microwave-assisted modification of vegetable oils or their derivatives, such as esterification of free fatty acids, transesterification of triglycerides, epoxidation, and polymerization.

Gene flow patterns and the genetic structure of domesticated crops like cotton are not well understood. Furthermore, marker-assisted breeding of cotton has lagged far behind that of other major crops because the loci associated with cotton traits such as fiber yield and quality have scarcely been identified. In this study, we used 19 microsatellites to first determine the population genetic structure and patterns of gene flow of superior germplasm resources in upland cotton. We then used association analysis to identify which markers were associated with 15 agronomic traits (including ten yield and five fiber quality traits). The results showed that the upland cotton accessions have low levels of genetic diversity (polymorphism information content = 0.427), although extensive gene flow occurred among different ecological and geographic regions. Bayesian clustering analysis indicated that the cotton resources used in this study did not belong to obvious geographic populations, which may be the consequence of a single source of domestication followed by frequent genetic introgression mediated by human transference. A total of 82 maker–trait associations were examined in association analysis and the related ratios for phenotypic variations ranged from 3.04% to 47.14%. Interestingly, nine SSR markers were detected in more than one environmental condition. In addition, 14 SSR markers were co-associated with two or more different traits. It was noteworthy that NAU4860 and NAU5077 markers detected at least in two environments were simultaneously associated with three fiber quality traits (uniformity index, specific breaking strength and micronaire value). In conclusion, these findings provide new insights into the population structure and genetic exchange pattern of cultivated cotton accessions. The quantitative trait loci of domesticated cotton identified will also be very useful for improvement of yield and fiber quality of cotton in molecular breeding programs.

Objectives Metabolic reprogramming is well accepted as a hallmark of cancer. This study aimed to explore the role of Kruppel-like factor 2 (KLF2) in aerobic glycolysis and glutamine consumption of energy metabolism in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells. Methods Two different NSCLC cells, A549 and NCI-H1299, were used to investigate the role of KLF2 in glycolysis and glutamine consumption by tracer technique and KLF2 transfection. Key findings The results showed that overexpression KLF could inhibit the energy metabolism and proliferation of NSCLC cells, but had no significant effect on glycolysis reaction and only affected the glutamine consumption of NSCLC cells. In NSCLC cells exposed to glutamine deprivation, the effect of overexpression of KLF2 on cell proliferation and energy metabolism disappeared. It was found that KLF2 could inhibit the expression of glutaminase (GLS) by metabolite tracing technique and so on. However, when GLS inhibitors were given to overexpressing KLF2 NSCLC cells, the intervention effect of KLF2 disappeared. Conclusions Kruppel-like factor 2 could decrease the level of glutamine, participate in the consumption of glutamine by cancer cells, and then inhibit the energy metabolism of cancer cells.

Precise DNA sizing can boost sequencing efficiency, reduce cost, improve data quality, and even allow sequencing of low-input samples, while current pervasive DNA sizing approaches are incapable of differentiating DNA fragments under 200 bp with high resolution (20 bp). In non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT), the size distribution of cell-free fetal DNA in maternal plasma (main peak at 143 bp) is significantly different from that of maternal cell-free DNA (main peak at 166 bp). The current pervasive workflow of NIPT and DNA sizing is unable to take advantage of this 20 bp difference, resulting in sample rejection, test inaccuracy, and restricted clinical utility. Here we report a simple, automatable, high-resolution DNA size enrichment workflow, named MiniEnrich, on a magnetic nano-platform to exploit this 20 bp size difference and to enrich fetal DNA fragments from maternal blood. Two types of magnetic nanoparticles were developed, with one able to filter high-molecular-weight DNA with high resolution and the other able to recover the remaining DNA fragments under the size threshold of interest with95% yield. Using this method, the average fetal fraction was increased from 13% to 20% after the enrichment, as measured by plasma DNA sequencing. This approach provides a new tool for high-resolution DNA size enrichment under 200 bp, which may improve NIPT accuracy by rescuing rejected non-reportable clinical samples, and enable NIPT earlier in pregnancy. It also has the potential to improve non-invasive screening for fetal monogenic disorders, differentiate tumor-related DNA in liquid biopsy and find more applications in autoimmune disease diagnosis.

Thiol compounds exist widely on the Earth and have certain significance in the fields of the circulation of the sulfur element and industrial production. However, the odor and biological toxicity of thiol compounds make them pollutants that seriously threaten the environmental safety and the living quality of human. In this study, a novel triplet induced fluorescence "turn-off" strategy was designed for the detection of thiol pollutants via a glutathione-stabilized copper nanocluster (GSH-Cu NC) probe. The as-prepared GSH-Cu NCs not only have small size and good water-solubility, but also exhibit strong red-emitting fluorescence at 630 nm, which could be quenched quantitatively with the increase of the concentration of thiol pollutants. So they were employed to detect thioglycolic acid (TGA), 3-mercaptopropionic acid (MPA), 2-mercaptoethanol (ME) and 2-(diethylamino)ethanethiol (2-AT) in a wide linear range of 1-100 μM with detection limits of 0.73 μM, 0.43 μM, 0.37 μM, and 0.69 μM, respectively. This method was successfully applied to detect the above thiol pollutants in lake water with good recoveries. Moreover, their further application was also expanded as luminous test strips based on the excellent fluorescence characteristics of GSH-Cu NCs for fast real-time detection of thiol pollutants.

Key to adult females of Colopalpus 1. Opisthosoma with 6 pairs of dorsolateral setae (setae f 2 absent)................................................. 2 - Opisthosoma with 7 pairs of dorsolateral setae (setae f 2 present)................................................ 4 2. Palp 3-segmented; propodosomal setae v 2 and sc 1 long, strongly barbed, sc 2 setiform.................. C. hibiscus sp. nov. - Palp 1 or 2-segmented; propodosomal setae v 2, sc 1 and sc 2 barbed or setiform...................................... 3 3. Palp 1-segmented; genua I–IV with 3, 3, 1, 1 setae; tibiae I–IV with 5, 5, 3, 3 setae.............. C. mansoni Collyer, 1973 - Palp 2-segmented; genua I–IV with 3, 3, 0, 0 setae; tibiae I–IV with 5, 5, 2, 2 setae.. C. matthyssei Pritchard and Baker, 1958 4. Tibiae I–IV with 5, 5, 3, 2 setae; propodosoma with three distinct shield type structure, each with faint irregular wrinkles.................................................................................... C. pedrus Manson, 1963 - Tibiae I–IV with 5, 5, 3, 3 setae; propodosoma divided into three area by two wrinkles... C. nambii (Castro and Feres, 2013)

Key to adult females of Colopalpus 1. Opisthosoma with 6 pairs of dorsolateral setae (setae f 2 absent)................................................. 2 - Opisthosoma with 7 pairs of dorsolateral setae (setae f 2 present)................................................ 4 2. Palp 3-segmented; propodosomal setae v 2 and sc 1 long, strongly barbed, sc 2 setiform.................. C. hibiscus sp. nov. - Palp 1 or 2-segmented; propodosomal setae v 2, sc 1 and sc 2 barbed or setiform...................................... 3 3. Palp 1-segmented; genua I���IV with 3, 3, 1, 1 setae; tibiae I���IV with 5, 5, 3, 3 setae.............. C. mansoni Collyer, 1973 - Palp 2-segmented; genua I���IV with 3, 3, 0, 0 setae; tibiae I���IV with 5, 5, 2, 2 setae.. C. matthyssei Pritchard and Baker, 1958 4. Tibiae I���IV with 5, 5, 3, 2 setae; propodosoma with three distinct shield type structure, each with faint irregular wrinkles.................................................................................... C. pedrus Manson, 1963 - Tibiae I���IV with 5, 5, 3, 3 setae; propodosoma divided into three area by two wrinkles... C. nambii (Castro and Feres, 2013), Published as part of Xu, Yun & Zhang, Fei-Ping, 2021, A new species of the genus Colopalpus Pritchard and Baker (Trombidiformes Tenuipalpidae) from China, with ontogenetic patterns in chaetotaxy, pp. 135-156 in Zootaxa 5086 (1) on page 154, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5086.1.10, http://zenodo.org/record/5814365, {"references":["Collyer, E. (1973) Two new species of the genus Colopalpus (Acarina: Tenuipalpidae). New Zealand Journal of Science, 16, 529 - 532.","Pritchard, A. E. & Baker, E. W. (1958) The false spider mites (Acarina: Tenuipalpidae). University of California Publications in Entomology, 14 (3), 175 - 274.","Manson, D. C. (1963) Seven new species of false spider mites (Tenuipalpidae: Acarina). Acarologia, 5 (2), 213 - 224.","Castro, E. B. de & Feres, R. J. F. (2013) New species of Tenuipalpus (Acari: Tenuipalpidae) from semidecidual forest remnants in the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Zootaxa, 3716 (3), 475 - 493. https: // doi. org / 10.11646 / zootaxa. 3716.3.9"]}