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AimThis study aims to investigate the biological effects of polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA)-derived metabolites in seminal plasma on male fertility and to evaluate the potential of PUFA as a biomarker for normozoospermic male infertility.MethodsFrom September 2011 to April 2012, We collected semen samples from 564 men aged 18 to 50 years old (mean=32.28 years old)ch., residing in the Sandu County, Guizhou Province, China. The donors included 376 men with normozoospermia (fertile: n=267; infertile: n=109) and 188 men with oligoasthenozoospermia (fertile: n=121; infertile: n=67). The samples thus obtained were then analyzed by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) to detect the levels of PUFA-derived metabolites in April 2013. Data were analyzed from December 1, 2020, to May 15, 2022.ResultsOur analysis of propensity score-matched cohorts revealed that the concentrations of 9/26 and 7/26 metabolites differed significantly between fertile and infertile men with normozoospermia and oligoasthenozoospermia, respectively (FDR < 0.05). In men with normozoospermia, higher levels of 7(R)-MaR1 (HR: 0.4 (95% CI [0.24, 0.64]) and 11,12-DHET (0.36 (95% CI [0.21, 0.58]) were significantly associated with a decreased risk of infertility, while higher levels of 17(S)-HDHA (HR: 2.32 (95% CI [1.44, 3.79]), LXA5 (HR: 8.38 (95% CI [4.81, 15.24]), 15d-PGJ2 (HR: 1.71 (95% CI [1.06, 2.76]), and PGJ2 (HR: 2.28 (95% CI [1.42, 3.7]) correlated with an increased risk of infertility. Our ROC model using the differentially expressed metabolites showed the value of the area under the curve to be 0.744.ConclusionThe PUFA-derived metabolites 7(R)-MaR1, 11,12-DHET, 17(S)-HDHA, LXA5, and PGJ2 might be considered as potential diagnostic biomarkers of infertility in normozoospermic men.

Supplementary Materials

As an unconventional fluid medium, nanofluid has outstanding advantages in thermal conductivity and stability, which can not only be applied in the frontier field of engineering, but also bring technological innovation to the traditional manufacturing and construction industries. However, the water-based nanofluid has the problem of poor stability, leading to nanofluid failure and severely limiting the development of nanofluid. In this paper, the ‘Two-step method’ was used to prepare SiO2 nanofluid with mass fractions of 0.5%, 1.0%, and 1.5%. The stability of the SiO2 nanofluid was determined by four characterization methods: visual observation, absorbance test, viscosity test andsurface tension test. Finally, the three-stage time-varying process on stability of the water-based SiO2 nanofluid was proposed. The results showed that the initial stability of the nanofluid was worse with increasing concentration. This conclusion was in good agreement with the theoretical derivation. Moreover, the stability of the nanofluid still exhibited this characteristic in the period of 0–8 days. This study can provide useful information for revealing the nanofluidic stability theory and support the further development of nanofluid technologies

BackgroundEarly colorectal cancer (ECRC) refers to any size of colorectal cancer (CRC) whose depth of invasion is limited to the mucosa and submucosa. About 10% of patients with ECRC die from cancer after surgery. KRAS, NRAS, and BRAF mutations and microsatellite instability (MSI) are considered diagnostic and prognostic markers in CRC. However, their characteristics in ECRC and whether postoperative chemotherapy based on them will benefit ECRC patients or not remain unknown.Patients and MethodsPatients with ECRC and 298 patients with advanced colorectal cancer (ACRC) were collected in our hospital from January 2013 to December 2015. The Amplification Refractory Mutation System (ARMS)-PCR was used to perform the KRAS, NRAS, and BRAF mutant tests.ResultsIn ECRC patients, 43 cases of KRAS mutation were found, accounting for 69.35%. Interestingly, among KRAS mutations, there were 10 KRAS multi-site mutation patients (16.13% in 62 ECRC patients). Moreover, the NRAS mutation rate was 3.23% but no BRAF mutation was found and only 1 case of MSI-High was detected. KRAS mutation was only related to the depth of tumor invasion whereas KRAS multi-site mutations were related to mucus components and tumor size. As far as NRAS is concerned, mutations were associated with elevated CEA, mucus components, and the depth of tumor invasion. Notably, compared with 2.35% KRAS multi-site mutation in ACRC, the rate of KRAS multi-site mutation in ECRC was much higher. Furthermore, Cox regression analysis revealed that KRAS mutation could be an independent prognostic factor of ECRC in patients who have undergone endoscopic resection or surgery.ConclusionPatients with ECRC might benefit from KRAS mutation testing but not from postoperative chemotherapy.

The new physics of magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) motivated extensive studies of flat bands hosted by moiré superlattices in van der Waals structures, inspiring the investigations into their photonic counterparts with potential applications including Bose-Einstein condensation. However, correlation between photonic flat bands and bilayer photonic moiré systems remains unexplored, impeding further development of moiré photonics. In this work, we formulate a coupled-mode theory for low-angle twisted bilayer honeycomb photonic crystals as a close analogy of TBG, discovering magic-angle photonic flat bands with a non-Anderson-type localization. Moreover, the interlayer separation constitutes a convenient degree of freedom in tuning photonic moiré bands without high pressure. A phase diagram is constructed to correlate the twist angle and separation dependencies to the photonic magic angles. Our findings reveal a salient correspondence between fermionic and bosonic moiré systems and pave the avenue toward novel applications through advanced photonic band or state engineering.

Low permeability is the main constraint on the high-efficiency coalbed methane recovery in deep coal seams. Hydraulic slotting has been proved to be a favorable method to stimulate low-permeability coal seams. In this paper, the coal samples with various slot inclination angles and borehole-slot ratios were used to investigate the weakening effect of slot inclination angle and borehole-slot ratio on the mechanical property of the pre-cracked coal. Besides, the crack patterns of the slotted coal specimens were identified to reveal the slot weakening mechanism. It is revealed that the variations in compression strength, elastic modulus and Poisson’s ratio with the slot inclination angle generally conform to a Boltzmann function, logistic function and quadratic function, respectively. With the increase in the borehole-slot ratio, the curve clusters of compression strength and elastic modulus show the horizontal “V” with left opening, and the curve clusters of Poisson’s ratio show the trend of rapid increase after slow increase. Compared with elastic modulus, the slot weakening degrees of compression strength and Poisson’s ratio are more significant. Moreover, the tensile and shear cracks mainly appear in the coal samples with small and large slot inclination angles, respectively, which verify the fact that the slot weakening effect on mechanical property of the slotted coal samples with small slot inclination angles is more significant. The research achievements are attributed to the improvement in the efficiency of the hydraulic slotting-based enhanced coalbed methane recovery.

In the 1870s, Europe entered the era of electric revolution. Not only large enterprises, but also small enterprises have adopted new power - electric energy. At first, an engine equipment only supplies lighting power for a house or a street. People call this kind of power station a “household type” power station, which produces very little power. The power plant was originally direct current. Edison, a famous American inventor, started to build the central power plant in 1881. In 1882, two power plants with initial scale were put into operation. In January 1882, the Edison Company of Holland bridge in London began to generate electricity to supply the city cathedral and bridgehead hotel in the west of the post office bridge of the San Marco factory. Later, a water power station appeared on the fintan River in Petersburg, Russia. The power station was built on a barge to provide power for the lighting of Nevsky street. In the early stage of power production and transmission, there was a long and fierce debate about whether it was DC or AC. Edison advocated the use of DC, and people have thought about various ways to expand the scope of DC power supply, so that the power supply situation in small and medium-sized cities has been significantly improved. The use of nuclear energy to produce power plants, also known as nuclear power plants (NPPs). There is a strong binding force between the nuclei (neutrons and protons). When heavy nucleus splits and light nucleus polymerizes, it will release huge energy, which is called nuclear energy. The technology has been relatively mature, forming a scale of operation, but the nuclear power plant that produces electric energy from the nuclear energy released by heavy nuclear fission is analyzed from the point of view of energy conversion, which is a conversion process from heavy nuclear fission nuclear energy to heat energy to mechanical energy to electric energy. Now that we have more advanced nuclear power technology, this paper introduces a new power plant concept and its relationship with microphysics.

In recent years, sensing networks are widely used in the application of real-time monitoring. The change process of physical word is smoothing and continuous, but the sensing devices can only obtain the discrete data points. It is likely to lose the key points and distort the true curve if the discrete points are used simply to describe the physical world. Therefore, how to recover the approximate curve of physical world becomes a problem to be solved urgently. Based on this, an energy-efficient and smoothing-sensitive high-precision curve recovery algorithm for the sensing networks is proposed. Firstly, we recover the curve of physical world based on the existing physical-world-aware data acquisition algorithms preliminarily. And then a curve smoothing algorithm is proposed in order to acquire more key points (the inflexions are mainly considered in this paper) information which helps users better understand the change process of monitored physical world intuitively. Secondly, we propose an energy-efficient data source selection algorithm with residual energy of each data source and spatial correlation under consideration simultaneously. We select part of data sources to transmit data, maximize the lifetime of sensing network and minimize the error between the approximate curve and physical world. Finally, the effectiveness of our algorithms is verified by abundant experiments using both real and simulated data.