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A critical element of accident reconstruction technology is the driver reaction time, which is also a key aspect of evaluating driver takeover time in autonomous driving. There are various factors affecting driver reaction time, including driver psychological factors, nondriving tasks, external environment, and other reasons. It is necessary to record and predict the driver reaction time to support the takeover time in the degraded takeover study because this paper is designed to conduct a degraded takeover study in the human-machine codriving stage with safety of the intended functionality. Therefore, a model based on PSO-BP neural network algorithm to predict driver reaction time is developed. A wavelet transform algorithm is used to denoise the signal first in order to improve the convergence speed and prediction accuracy of the model. Meanwhile, the BP neural network prediction model based on the PSO is established to optimize the weights and thresholds of the BP neural network to achieve the prediction of the driver reaction time. A total of six main feature parameters of driver’s HRV in the time and frequency domains were selected as input indicators and substituted into the input signal of PSO-BP neural network model for training and testing. The prediction results obtained from the PSO-BP neural network model were compared with that of the BP neural network prediction, and it demonstrated that the prediction results obtained in this paper have smaller error values, verifying the reasonableness and validity of the model.

With the continuous advancement of automation technology, autonomous driving assistance systems are gradually sharing the tasks during driving, but the driver still assumes the main driving tasks. In addition to driving activities, the advent of numerous new functions will have an indirect impact on the driver’s mental effort. However, determining the driver’s mental effort remains a difficult issue. In this paper, a method is proposed to assess the mental workload of drivers, combining real driver’s physiological data with the speed of his/her vehicle. The correlation coefficient and significance level are obtained by analyzing the correlation between physiological data and road types. The relevant data is then preprocessed to determine the characteristic index, with the mental workload as the input index. The driver’s mental workload is classified and the mental workload prediction model is constructed on the basis of the combination of the Fuzzy Pattern Recognition Algorithm and Genetic Algorithm. At the same time, the suggested approach is compared to the J48 Classification Algorithm and the Simulated Annealing Optimization Algorithm. The results demonstrate that the proposed method in this paper’s effectiveness for identifying the driver’s mental workload level is evidently better than other algorithms, which provides new theoretical support for assessing the L3+ driver’s mental workload level under the background of the safety of the intended functionality when they take over the control of the drive.

The early concept of knowledge graph originates from the idea of the Semantic Web, which aims at using structured graphs to model the knowledge of the world and record the relationships that exist between things. Currently publishing knowledge bases as open data on the Web has gained significant attention. In China, CIPS(Chinese Information Processing Society) launched the OpenKG in 2015 to foster the development of Chinese Open Knowledge Graphs. Unlike existing open knowledge-based programs, OpenKG chain is envisioned as a blockchain-based open knowledge infrastructure. This article introduces the first attempt at the implementation of sharing knowledge graphs on OpenKG chain, a blockchain-based trust network. We have completed the test of the underlying blockchain platform, as well as the on-chain test of OpenKG's dataset and toolset sharing as well as fine-grained knowledge crowdsourcing at the triple level. We have also proposed novel definitions: K-Point and OpenKG Token, which can be considered as a measurement of knowledge value and user value. 1033 knowledge contributors have been involved in two months of testing on the blockchain, and the cumulative number of on-chain recordings triggered by real knowledge consumers has reached 550,000 with an average daily peak value of more than 10,000. For the first time, We have tested and realized on-chain sharing of knowledge at entity/triple granularity level. At present, all operations on the datasets and toolset in OpenKG.CN, as well as the triplets in OpenBase, are recorded on the chain, and corresponding value will also be generated and assigned in a trusted mode. Via this effort, OpenKG chain looks to provide a more credible and traceable knowledge-sharing platform for the knowledge graph community.

Although 5-methylcytosine (m

The anammox bacteria (AnAOB) have been suggested to perform dissimilatory Fe0/Fe2+-dependent nitrate reduction to ammonium (DNRA), with nitrite as intermediate. However, evidence at genetic and tra...

Antiferromagnets (AFMs) possess great potential in spintronics because of their immunity to external magnetic disturbance, the absence of a stray field or the resonance in the terahertz range1,2. The coupling of insulating AFMs to spin–orbit materials3–7 enables spin transport via AFM magnons. In particular, spin transmission over several micrometres occurs in some AFMs with easy-axis anisotropy8,9. Easy-plane AFMs with two orthogonal, linearly polarized magnon eigenmodes own unique advantages for low-energy control of ultrafast magnetic dynamics2. However, it is commonly conceived that these magnon modes are less likely to transmit spins because of their vanishing angular momentum9–11. Here we report experimental evidence that an easy-plane insulating AFM, an α-Fe2O3 thin film, can efficiently transmit spins over micrometre distances. The spin decay length shows an unconventional temperature dependence that cannot be captured considering solely thermal magnon scatterings. We interpret our observations in terms of an interference of two linearly polarized, propagating magnons in analogy to the birefringence effect in optics. Furthermore, our devices can realize a bi-stable spin-current switch with a 100% on/off ratio under zero remnant magnetic field. These findings provide additional tools for non-volatile, low-field control of spin transport in AFM systems. Easy-plane antiferromagnet materials promise low-energy control of ultrafast magnetic dynamics in future spintronics applications, but host magnons with vanishing angular momentum, which makes spin transport via magnons unlikely. Through interference of two linearly polarized propagating magnons, spin transport over micrometre distances is yet possible.

Weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) is a research method in systematic biology. It is widely used to identify gene modules related to target traits in multi-sample transcriptome data. In order to further explore the molecular mechanism of potato response to drought stress, two cultivars (C16: CIP 397077.16 and C119: CIP 398098.119) introduced from the International Potato Center were used as experimental materials, and five drought stress gradients were treated for 0 h, 2 h, 6 h, 12 h, and 24 h, with the untreated material as a control. A total of 30 samples of root system were used for transcriptome sequencing, with three biological replicates. Based on the above transcriptome data, we constructed a co-expression network of weighted genes associated with stress-resistant physiological traits by WGCNA, and obtained 15 gene co-expression modules closely related to root drought resistance. In addition, a number of hub genes involved in drought stress regulation pathways were discovered from the four modules with the highest correlation with target traits. These results provide clues for further study on the molecular genetic mechanisms of potato root drought resistance.

Anammox bacteria are chemolithotrophic organisms growing on the conversion of ammonium and nitrite with bicarbonate as the sole carbon source. Meanwhile, anammox bacteria display a metabolic versatility to sustain their metabolism. However, there is less attention on the Fe0/Fe2+-dependent autotrophic denitrification by anammox consortia. In this study, the autotrophic nitrate reduction using different valence of iron (Fe0, Fe2+ and Fe0+ Fe2+, respectively) as electron donors by anammox consortia were firstly explored in continuous feeding mode. Results revealed anammox consortia showed high adaptability to the niche wherein containing nitrate and iron. They could generate nitrite and ammonium from iron-dependent nitrate reduction, and hence support their central metabolism. During 60-days operation, the maximum nitrate and total nitrogen removal efficiency reached 88.43% and 80.77%, respectively, with coexistence of Fe0 and Fe2+. The expression of key functional genes involved in nitrate reduction (including narG, napA and nrfA) in 16S rRNA level revealed the coupling of dissimilatory nitrate reduction to nitrite, dissimilatory nitrite reduction to ammonia (DNRA), and anammox processes possibly play pivotal role in nitrogen loss under Fe0/Fe2+ condition. Meanwhile, abiotic reduction by Fe0/Fe2+ also contributed nitrate reduction to provide nitrite and ammonium for anammox consortia. Activities of two vital enzymes hydrazine dehydrogenase (HDH) and nitrate oxidoreduetase (NAR) also inferred higher microbial activities with co-existence of Fe0 and Fe2+. The present study confirms and further extends the versatile metabolisms of Anammox consortia, also it can help to circumvent the accumulation of nitrate produced by anammox process itself and increase the quality of discharge.

The responses of anammox consortia to typical antibiotics sulfadiazine (SDZ) and chlortetracycline (CTC) were evaluated on the aspects of general performance, microbial activity, diversity and abundance of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), and microbial host of ARGs in anammox system. Results showed the anammox consortia had a stable performance and great resistance to 10 mg/L of SDZ, while 1 mg/L of CTC induced an unrecoverable inhibitory influence on nitrogen removal performance and anammox activity without any special treatment. The absolute abundances of anammox functional genes (nirS, hzsA and hdh) were stimulated by the acclimation to SDZ stress, however, they were much lower than the initial levels under CTC stress. In anammox consortia, ARGs comprised 18 types (94 subtypes) derived from over 20 genera. Strikingly, the anammox bacteria (AnAOB) "Ca. Brocadia" occupied 46.81% of the SDZ resistance genes (sul1 and sul2) and 38.63% of CTC resistance genes (tetX, tetG and rpsJ), and thus were identified as the dominant antibiotic resistance bacteria (ARB). Therefore, harboring the corresponding ARGs by AnAOB could be the primary protective mechanism to interpret the resistance of anammox consortia to antibiotics stress. Meanwhile, co-occurring of ARGs in anammox consortia suggested the synergistic cooperation of different ARGs could be an essential strategy to alleviate the SDZ and CTC stress. The present study proposed a new interpretation of possible mechanism that cause antibiotic resistance of anammox consortia.

We show that a class of $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetric non-Hermitian Hamiltonians realizing the Yang-Lee edge singularity exhibits an entanglement transition in the long-time steady state evolved under the Hamiltonian. Such a transition is induced by a level crossing triggered by the critical point associated with the Yang-Lee singularity and hence is first-order in nature. At the transition, the entanglement entropy of the steady state jumps discontinuously from a volume-law to an area-law scaling. We exemplify this mechanism using a one-dimensional transverse field Ising model with additional imaginary fields, as well as the spin-1 Blume-Capel model and the three-state Potts model. We further make a connection to the forced-measurement induced entanglement transition in a Floquet non-unitary circuit subject to continuous measurements followed by post-selections. Our results demonstrate a new mechanism for entanglement transitions in non-Hermitian systems harboring a critical point., Updated to published version

Event argument extraction (EAE) is an important task for information extraction to discover specific argument roles. In this study, we cast EAE as a question-based cloze task and empirically analyze fixed discrete token template performance. As generating human-annotated question templates is often time-consuming and labor-intensive, we further propose a novel approach called “Learning to Ask,” which can learn optimized question templates for EAE without human annotations. Experiments using the ACE-2005 dataset demonstrate that our method based on optimized questions achieves state-of-the-art performance in both the few-shot and supervised settings.

An innovative electro-Fenton enhanced membrane photobioreactor with satisfactory membrane fouling mitigation was constructed for microalgae harvesting. The porous carbon and carbon nanotubes hollow fiber membranes (PC-CHFMs) were used as the separation unit and cathode, simultaneously. H

Obesity is becoming a global problem. Research into the detailed mechanism of adipocyte development is crucial for the treatment of excess fat. Zinc finger protein 217 plays roles in adipogenesis. However, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Here, we demonstrated that ZFP217 knockdown prevented the mitotic clonal expansion process and caused adipogenesis inhibition. Depletion of ZFP217 increased the expression of the m6A methyltransferase METTL3, which upregulated the m6A level of cyclin D1 mRNA. METTL3 knockdown rescued the siZFP217-inhibited MCE and promoted CCND1 expression. YTH domain family 2 recognized and degraded the methylated CCND1 mRNA, leading to the downregulation of CCND1. Consequently, cell-cycle progression was blocked, and adipogenesis was inhibited. YTHDF2 knockdown relieved siZFP217-inhibited adipocyte differentiation. These findings reveal that ZFP217 knockdown-induced adipogenesis inhibition was caused by CCND1, which was mediated by METTL3 and YTHDF2 in an m6A-dependent manner. We have provided novel insight into the underlying molecular mechanisms by which m6A methylation is involved in the ZFP217 regulation of adipogenesis.

N6-methyladenosine (m6A), the most abundant internal mRNA modification in eukaryotes, plays a vital role in regulating adipogenesis. However, its underlying mechanism remains largely unknown. Here, we reveal that deletion of m6A demethylase FTO in porcine and mouse preadipocytes inhibits adipogenesis through JAK2-STAT3-C/EBPβ signaling. Mechanistically, FTO deficiency suppresses JAK2 expression and STAT3 phosphorylation, leading to attenuated transcription of C/EBPβ, which is essential for the early stage of adipocyte differentiation. Using dual-luciferase assay, we validate that knockdown of FTO reduces expression of JAK2 in an m6A-dependent manner. Furthermore, we find that m6A "reader" protein YTHDF2 directly targets m6A-modified transcripts of JAK2 and accelerates mRNA decay, which results in decreased JAK2 expression and inactivated JAK2-STAT3-C/EBPβ signaling, thereby inhibiting adipogenesis. Collectively, our results provide a novel insight into the molecular mechanism of m6A methylation in post-transcriptional regulation of JAK2-STAT3-C/EBPβ signaling axis and highlight the crucial role of m6A modification and its modulators in adipogenesis.

Swine enteric coronaviruses (SECoVs), including porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus (SADS-CoV), and porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV) have emerged and been prevalent in pig populations in China for the last several years. However, current traditional inactivated and attenuated PEDV vaccines are of limited efficacy against circulating PEDV variants, and there are no commercial vaccines for prevention of PDCoV and SADS-CoV. RNA interference (RNAi) is a powerful tool in therapeutic applications to inhibit viral replication in vitro. In this study, we developed a small interfering RNA generation system that expressed two different short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) targeting the M gene of PEDV and SADS-CoV and the N gene of PDCoV, respectively. Our results demonstrated that simultaneous expression of these specific shRNA molecules inhibited expression of PEDV M gene, SADS-CoV M gene, and PDCoV N gene RNA by 99.7%, 99.4%, and 98.8%, respectively, in infected cell cultures. In addition, shRNA molecules significantly restricted the expression of M and N protein, and impaired the replication of PEDV, SADS-CoV, and PDCoV simultaneously. Taken together, this shRNAs expression system not only is proved to be a novel approach for studying functions of various genes synchronously, but also developed to test aspects of a potential therapeutic option for treatment and prevention of multiple SECoV infections., Highlights • Two potential targets of antiviral molecules for the treatment of three swine enteric coronaviruses replication are tested. • The multiple-shRNA expression vector was constructed to effectively inhibit PEDV, SADS-CoV, and PDCoV. • A shRNA-based multiple-resistance antiviral strategy, significantly affecting viral replication, was evaluated in vitro.

To achieve the simultaneous removal of NH4+-N and NO3−-N in F−-containing semiconductor wastewater by coupled S0-driven autotrophic denitrification and Anammox process, the effect of variable F− concentration on the Anammox process was investigated by batch experiments. The denitrifying ammonium oxidation (Deamox) reactor was then started-up to explore the feasibility of the coupling of Anammox and sulfur autotrophic denitrification (SADN) for the treatment of semiconductor wastewater. Short-term variation of F− concentration has an obviously effect on the activity of Anammox sludge, but didn't affect the nitrogen conversion rate. The activity of Anammox obviously decreased after long-term operation of the Deamox reactor when influent F− concentrations reached 552 mg/L. The sensitivity of Anammox bacteria to F− concentration is stronger than that of SADN bacteria. Total nitrogen removal efficiency of 98% and total nitrogen removal rate of 4.11 kg/(m3·d) were achieved in the Deamox reactor, when the F− was pre-treated by calcium ions. Moreover, the high-throughput 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis indicated that variation in F− concentrations could influence the structure and functional of microbial communities in the Deamox process. Candidatus Kuenenia, Thiobacillus and Sulfurimonas were main functional bacteria that achieved symbiotic.

Bone marrow stem cells (BMSCs) are multipotent stem cells that can regenerate mesenchymal tissues, such as adipose tissue, bone, and muscle. Recent studies have shown that N6-methyladenosine (m6A) methylation, one of the most prevalent epigenetic modifications, is involved in the development process. However, whether it plays roles in BMSC differentiation is still elusive. Here, we found that the deletion of m6A "writer" protein methyltransferase-like (METTL)3 in porcine BMSCs (pBMSCs) could promote adipogenesis and janus kinase (JAK)1 protein expression via an m6A-dependent way. Knockdown of METTL3 decreased mRNA m6A levels of JAK1, leading to enhanced YTH m6A RNA binding protein 2 (YTHDF2)-dependent JAK1 mRNA stability. We further demonstrated that JAK1 activated signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) 5 through regulation of its phosphorylation to bind to the promoter of CCAAT/enhancer binding protein (C/EBP) β, which could ultimately lead to a modulated adipogenic process. Collectively, our results reveal an orchestrated network linking the m6A methylation and JAK1/STAT5/C/EBPβ pathway in pBMSCs adipogenic differentiation. Our findings provide novel insights into the underlying molecular mechanisms of m6A modification in the regulation of BMSCs differentiating into adipocytes, which may pave a way to develop more effective therapeutic strategies in stem cell regenerative medicine and the treatment of obesity.-Yao, Y., Bi, Z., Wu, R., Zhao, Y., Liu, Y., Liu, Q., Wang, Y., Wang, X. METTL3 inhibits BMSC adipogenic differentiation by targeting the JAK1/STAT5/C/EBPβ pathway via an m6A-YTHDF2-dependent manner.

N6 -methyladenosine (m6 A), as the most abundant RNA epigenetic modifications, has been shown to play critical roles in various biological functions. Research about enzymes that can catalyze and remove m6 A have revealed its comprehensive roles in messenger RNA (mRNA) metabolism and other physiological processes. The "readers" including YTH domain-containing proteins, hnRNPC, hnRNPG, hnRNPA2B1, IGF2BP1, IGF2BP2, and IGF2BP3, which can affect the fates of mRNA in an m6 A-dependent manner. In this review, we focus on recent advances in the research of the m6 A modifications, especially about the latest functions of its writers, erasers, readers in RNA metabolism, cancer, and lipid metabolism. In the end, we provide insights into the underlying molecular mechanisms of m6 A modifications.

N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is the most abundant-internal modification of eukaryotic mRNA. m6A can be installed and removed by specific enzymes. The "writer," "eraser," and "reader" of m6A modification have been reported. These discoveries facilitate our understanding of the functional significance of m6A. m6A plays an essential role in diverse biological processes by recruiting the corresponding YTH domain-containing proteins, as well as recruiting additional translation initiation factors. Here, we provide an update on the various aspects of YTH domain-containing proteins, including an introduction to the YTH domain, the categories, distribution in cells, and biological roles of YTH proteins. Then we focus on the mechanisms that YTH proteins recognize m6A and mediate the fate of methylated-RNAs in eukaryotic cells.

An efficient and stable combined denitrification-partial nitrification-Anammox process with a dual recycling system was used to remove nitrogen from mature landfill leachate. After 155 d of operation, the NO3− as the PN-Anammox byproduct was almost treated with biodegradable organic carbon in raw wastewater in a pre-denitrification reactor by external recycling system. When raw landfill leachate with NH4+-N concentration of 1900 mg/L was treated, an integrated reactor with airlift recycling was combined with the PN and Anammox reactions to efficiently remove NH4+ from the inflow. The total nitrogen concentration of effluent stabilized at 20 mg/L and total nitrogen removal efficiency was 99%. The maximum NO2− production rate in the aerobic zone was 2.2 kg/(m3·d) and the maximum nitrogen removal rate in the anaerobic zone was 21.4 kg/(m3·d). The most common phyla among the nitrification and the Anammox functional bacteria were Nitrosomonas, Candidatus Kuenenia, and Candidatus Brocadia after landfill leachate treatment.

N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is the most prevalent internal mRNA modification in eukaryotes. Loss of m6A demethylase FTO increases m6A levels and inhibits adipogenesis of preadipocytes. However, its underlying mechanism remains elusive. Here, we demonstrated that silencing FTO inhibited adipogenesis of preadipocytes through impairing cell cycle progression at the early stage of adipogenesis. FTO knockdown markedly decreased the expression of CCNA2 and CDK2, crucial cell cycle regulators, leading to delayed entry of MDI-induced cells into G2 phase. Furthermore, the m6A levels of CCNA2 and CDK2 mRNA were significantly upregulated following FTO knockdown. m6A-binding protein YTHDF2 recognized and decayed methylated mRNAs of CCNA2 and CDK2, leading to decreased protein expression, thereby prolonging cell cycle progression and suppressing adipogenesis. Our work unravels that FTO regulates adipogenesis by controlling cell cycle progression in an m6A-YTHDF2 dependent manner, which provides insights into critical roles of m6A methylation in adipogenesis.

Sulfate reduction with ammonium oxidation (SRAO) in laboratory ANAMMOX reactors was considered as an autotrophic process mediated by ANAMMOX bacteria (AnAOB), in which ammonium, as an electron donor, was oxidized by the electron acceptor sulfate. This process was developed based on the transformations of nitrogenous and sulfurous compounds observed in natural environments. Reported results vary widely for conversion mole ratios (ammonium/sulfate) as do intermediate and final products of the sulfate reduction. Thus, hypotheses surrounding biological conversion pathways of ammonium and sulfate in ANAMMOX consortia are implausible. In this study, continuous reactor experiments and batch tests were conducted under micro-aerobic (-100 mVORP0 mV, 0.5 mg·L

In the tip clearance flow, the dominant vortex is the tip leakage vortex (TLV), which has a significant impact on the hydraulic and cavitation performance of axial flow machineries. In order to reveal the impact mechanism of the gap size on the TLV, gap flows with two gap sizes, i.e., τ=0.2 (2 mm) and τ=1.0 (10 mm), are numerically investigated. A NACA0009 hydrofoil is selected to create the gap flow, with an incoming velocity of 10 m/s and an attack angle of 10 deg. The results show that the two flow cases are significantly different in terms of vortex feature and the leakage flow distribution. In the small gap, a type of jet-pattern flow appears, whereas a type of rolling-pattern flow passes over the large gap. The vertical velocity gradient of the leakage flow has a decisive influence on the TLV trajectory. In addition, for the large gap, the axial velocity in the vortex center exceeds the incoming flow. This jet-like state of axial velocity can be maintained for a long distance, making the vortex more stable. However, the axial velocity in the case of τ=0.2 cannot stay at the jet-like state and rapidly switches to a wake-like state.

Recent years have witnessed the prosperity of legal artificial intelligence with the development of technologies. In this paper, we propose a novel legal application of legal provision prediction (LPP), which aims to predict the related legal provisions of affairs. We formulate this task as a challenging knowledge graph completion problem, which requires not only text understanding but also graph reasoning. To this end, we propose a novel text-guided graph reasoning approach. We collect amounts of real-world legal provision data from the Guangdong government service website and construct a legal dataset called LegalLPP. Extensive experimental results on the dataset show that our approach achieves better performance compared with baselines. The code and dataset are available in https://github.com/zjunlp/LegalPP for reproducibility.

Fine-tuning pre-trained models have achieved impressive performance on standard natural language processing benchmarks. However, the resultant model generalizability remains poorly understood. We do not know, for example, how excellent performance can lead to the perfection of generalization models. In this study, we analyze a fine-tuned BERT model from different perspectives using relation extraction. We also characterize the differences in generalization techniques according to our proposed improvements. From empirical experimentation, we find that BERT suffers a bottleneck in terms of robustness by way of randomizations, adversarial and counterfactual tests, and biases (i.e., selection and semantic). These findings highlight opportunities for future improvements. Our open-sourced testbed DiagnoseRE is available in https://github.com/zjunlp/DiagnoseRE.

Recovery of phosphorus (P) from wastewater is of great significance for alleviating the shortage of P resources. At present, the P recovery process is faced with the problem of excessive organic carbon consumption when obtaining a P-concentrated recovery solution. This study proposed a new strategy to obtain a more highly concentrated P recovery solution with minimal carbon consumption by strengthening the P storage capacity of the biofilm. A biofilm sequencing batch reactor (BSBR) process was modified to treat synthetic wastewater. The effect of the dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration on the P storage capacity of the biofilm was investigated at DO concentrations of DO 3.5 mg/L (PL) and DO 6.5 mg/L (PH). The results showed a maximum P storage of 101.2 and 149.6 mg-P/g-mixed liquid suspended solids under the two conditions. Strengthening the P storage capacity of the biofilm resulted in a net increase in the P recovery rate, which was as high as 66.96% in a harvesting cycle, and total soluble P>220 mg/L in the P recovery solution was successfully achieved. Meanwhile, the carbon cost of P recovery in the BSBR was reduced to 41.57 g-chemical oxygen demand/g-P, and the carbon utilization efficiency was enhanced. To highlight the new strategy, the P recovery performance of the BSBR was given and the relationship between P content and anaerobic P release was discussed. In addition, the changes in the microbial communities under PL and PH conditions were analyzed.

The constituent particles of matter can arrange themselves in various ways, giving rise to emergent phenomena that can be surprisingly rich and often cannot be understood by studying only the individual constituents. Discovering and understanding the emergence of such phenomena in quantum materials-especially those in which multiple degrees of freedom or energy scales are delicately balanced-is of fundamental interest to condensed-matter research1,2. Here we report on the surprising observation of emergent ferroelectricity in graphene-based moire heterostructures. Ferroelectric materials show electrically switchable electric dipoles, which are usually formed by spatial separation between the average centres of positive and negative charge within the unit cell. On this basis, it is difficult to imagine graphene-a material composed of only carbon atoms-exhibiting ferroelectricity3. However, in this work we realize switchable ferroelectricity in Bernal-stacked bilayer graphene sandwiched between two hexagonal boron nitride layers. By introducing a moire superlattice potential (via aligning bilayer graphene with the top and/or bottom boron nitride crystals), we observe prominent and robust hysteretic behaviour of the graphene resistance with an externally applied out-of-plane displacement field. Our systematic transport measurements reveal a rich and striking response as a function of displacement field and electron filling, and beyond the framework of conventional ferroelectrics. We further directly probe the ferroelectric polarization through a non-local monolayer graphene sensor. Our results suggest an unconventional, odd-parity electronic ordering in the bilayer graphene/boron nitride moire system. This emergent moire ferroelectricity may enable ultrafast, programmable and atomically thin carbon-based memory devices.

We study the stability of the Wilson-Fisher fixed point of the quantum $\text{O}(2N)$ vector model to quenched disorder in the large-$N$ limit. While a random mass is strongly relevant at the Gaussian fixed point, its effect is screened by the strong interactions of the Wilson-Fisher fixed point. This enables a perturbative renormalization group study of the interplay of disorder and interactions about this fixed point. We show that, in contrast to the spiralling flows obtained in earlier double-$\ensuremath{\epsilon}$ expansions, the theory flows directly to a quantum critical point characterized by finite disorder and interactions. The critical exponents we obtain for this transition are in remarkable agreement with numerical studies of the superfluid-Mott glass transition. We additionally discuss the stability of this fixed point to scalar and vector potential disorder and use proposed boson-fermion dualities to make conjectures regarding the effects of weak disorder on dual Abelian Higgs and Chern-Simons-Dirac fermion theories when $N=1$.

Objectives A targeted surgical approach which accurately determines axillary status after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) may allow appropriate de-escalation of surgical treatment. It is postulated that the combined use of a particular marker clip, ULTRACOR®TWIRL™ (Bard, Inc.), and specific ultrasound settings for its identification, may overcome the challenges of pre-operative localisation with size diminution of nodes following NAC. Hence, this feasibility study was performed. Methods Three patients with locally advanced breast cancer (LABC), who had the Twirl marker clip placed in biopsy-proven metastatic axillary lymph nodes and completed treatment were included in this preliminary study. Preoperative sonographic identification of the clip and associated node was done on the day of surgery, confirmed by eliciting the ‘twinkle’ artifact, followed by hookwire localisation and resection. The ‘twinkle’ artifact was demonstrated within each specimen after resection. Results All three patients who completed treatment for LABC had successful identification and resection of clipped node aided by the ‘twinkle artifact’. Conclusion The ‘twinkle’ artifact is a novel and useful aid in identifying the Twirl™ clip marking a lymph node in the post-NAC setting, with the potential to be used intraoperatively.

Paramagnetic spin systems with spontaneously broken spatial symmetries, such as valence bond solid (VBS) phases, can host topological defects carrying non-trivial quantum numbers, which enables the paradigm of deconfined quantum criticality. In this work, we study the properties of topological defects in valence plaquette solid (VPS) phases on square and cubic lattices. We show that the defects of the VPS order parameter, in addition to possessing non-trivial quantum numbers, have fracton mobility constraints deep in the VPS phase, which has been overlooked previously. The spinon inside a single vortex cannot move freely in any direction, while a dipolar pair of vortices with spinon pairs can only move perpendicular to its dipole moment. These mobility constraints, while they persist, can potentially inhibit the condensation of vortices and preclude a continuous transition from the VPS to the N\'eel antiferromagnet. Instead, the VPS melting transition can be driven by proliferation of spinon dipoles. For example, we argue that a $2d$ VPS can melt into a stable gapless phase in the form of an algebraic bond liquid with algebraic correlations and long range entanglement. Such a bond liquid phase yields a concrete example of the elusive $2d$ Bose metal with symmetry fractionalization. We also study $3d$ valence plaquette and valence cube ordered phase, and demonstrate that the topological defects therein also have fractonic dynamics. Possible nearby phases after melting the valence plaquettes or cubes are also discussed.

For over two decades, sulfate reduction with ammonium oxidation (SRAO) had been reported from laboratory experiments. SRAO was considered an autotrophic process mediated by anammox bacteria, in which ammonium as electron donor was oxidized by the electron acceptor sulfate. This process had been attributed to observed transformations of nitrogenous and sulfurous compounds in natural environments. Results obtained differed largely for the conversion mole ratios (ammonium/sulfate), and even the intermediate and final products of sulfate reduction. Thus, the hypothesis of biological conversion pathways of ammonium and sulfate in anammox consortia is implausible. In this study, continuous reactor experiments (with working volume of 3.8L) and batch tests were conducted under normal anaerobic (0.2 ≤ DO > 0.5 mg/L) / strict anaerobic (DO > 0.2 mg/L) conditions with different biomass proportions to verify the SRAO phenomena and identify possible pathways behind substrate conversion. Key findings were that SRAO occurred only in cases of high amounts of inoculant biomass under normal anaerobic condition, while absent under strict anaerobic conditions for same anammox consortia. Mass balance and stoichiometry were checked based on experimental results and the thermodynamics proposed by previous studies were critically discussed. Thus anammox bacteria do not possess the ability to oxidize ammonium with sulfate as electron acceptor and the assumed SRAO could, in fact, be a combination of aerobic ammonium oxidation, anammox and heterotrophic sulfate reduction processes.

Natural language processing covers a wide variety of tasks with token-level or sentence-level understandings. In this paper, we provide a simple insight that most tasks can be represented in a single universal extraction format. We introduce a prototype model and provide an open-source and extensible toolkit called OpenUE for various extraction tasks. OpenUE allows developers to train custom models to extract information from the text and supports quick model validation for researchers. Besides, OpenUE provides various functional modules to maintain sufficient modularity and extensibility. Except for the toolkit, we also deploy an online demo with restful APIs to support real-time extraction without training and deploying. Additionally, the online system can extract information in various tasks, including relational triple extraction, slot & intent detection, event extraction, and so on. We release the source code, datasets, and pre-trained models to promote future researches in http://github.com/zjunlp/openue.

A continuous flow stirred tank reactor (CFSTR) was used to inoculate mixed sludge (with an ANAMMOX sludge to sewage concentrate sludge ratio of 1:1) to study the simultaneous conversion of NH

Fe

The feasibility of using Feammox coupled with nitrate-dependent Fe(II) oxidizing (NAFO) to cause the simultaneous conversion of NH4+ and NO3− was explored by inoculation with Feammox sludge and the use Fe cycling as catalyst. After 61 days operation, the simultaneous conversion of NO3− and NH4+ occurred with the presence of interconversion between Fe(III) and Fe(II). The conversion ratio of NH4+ to NO3− stabilized at 0.9–1. The results of isotopic tracing and microbial diversity analysis indicated that NH4+ was first oxidized to NO2− by Fe(III), then NO3− was reduced to NO2− and N2 by the Fe(II) produced in Feammox process, and finally, the NO2− produced in NAFO process underwent an Anammox process with the remaining NH4+ to yield N2. The results showed the simultaneous continuous conversion process of NO3− and NH4+ with limited Fe as a catalyst was a coupled process of Feammox, Anammox, and NAFO under the anaerobic conditions.

The phosphorus recovery efficiency in PAOs-biofilm system is so far limited to stimulating phosphorus release by adding concentrated organic carbon solution during the anaerobic stage. In present study, a PAOs-biofilm sequence batch reactor (BSBR) were operated to investigate whether increase of the phosphorus storage content via DO control can stimulate the release in the biofilm. During the operation of BSBR for 160 days, the phosphorus content in biofilm (Pbiofilm) was doubled via increasing dissolved oxygen (DO) from 4 to 6 mg/L. With the COD of 200 mg/L in the anaerobic phase, the phosphorus release was enhaced, resulting in an significant increase of phosphorus concentration from 94.85 to 179.5 mg/L in recirculated solution. Batch tests further clarified explicitly the increase of Pbiofilm stimulated a phosphorus release rate but this must be balanced since high Pbiofilm reduced the phosphorus removal capacity of the biofilm. With analysis of P31-NMR, Ortho-P and Poly-P were the main phosphorus species stored in biofilm. The microbial cell played a more important role than EPS in phosphorus storage. The dominant phylum in the master reactor was Proteobacteria with an abundance of 64.4%, in which the Rhodocyclaceae was the dominant PAOs with an abundance of 10.1%. The outcome of this study elucidated that increase of phosphorus storage via DO control which facilitated more efficient phosphorus release with much lower organic carbon source consumption during the enrichment of phosphorus. Meanwhile, we provided a new perspective for the recovery of phosphorus in future wastewater treatment plants.

The effects of salinity changes on nitrogen transformation efficiency and recoverability were studied by using a partial nitration (PN)- anaerobic ammonium oxidation (Anammox) integrated reactor. The changes of microbial community structure and population abundance during the increase and decrease of salinity were also analyzed by 16S rRNA gene high-throughput sequencing. The results showed that when the salinity was increased to 1.35%, the combined PN-Anammox process achieved the maximum stimulated and total nitrogen removal rate (TNRR) arrived at 1.1kg/(m3·d). When the salinity was higher than 1.35%, the activities of AOB and Anammox bacteria began to be inhibited. When the salinity reached 2.4%, the TNRR decreased to 60%. TNRR was fast restored, when salinity was reduced to 0.11%. The genes of AOB and Anammox bacteria indicated that the TNRR of the reactor was restored after salinity inhibition, but the functional microbial community structure and abundance had relatively large, irreversible changes.

The InGaN/GaN multi-quantum-wells (MQWs) solar cells employing the surficial GaN nanostructure as light traps were investigated. The performance of the InGaN/GaN MQWs solar cell with nano holes surface shows an obvious advantage over that with nano poles, much less than the planar one. From the measurements of EQE and photoluminescence spectra, the enhancement of photoelectric response contributes to the device performances. Because the effective light absorption is increased, the conversion efficiency significantly improves from 1.02% (planar surface) up to 2.235% (nano holes surface). Although the performance is still low, it is exactly an effective method to enhance the conversion efficiency via introducing nanostructures on the surface of the InGaN/GaN MQWs cells.

In this work, we report a method that the Si substrate is pre-treated in the atmosphere of high temperature AlN before the depositon of Al to improve the quality of GaN-on-Si, which is studied by few people. Compared to the untreated sample, the pre-treated one exhibits smoother surface morphology with a root mean square roughness (RMS) value of 0.580 nm and the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of GaN (102) plane also decreases from 1484 arcsec to 1303 arcsec. Moreover, we give an explanation for the extra shoulder peaks in the photoluminescence (PL) spectrum. This enhancement of quality and surface morphology of GaN can be attributed to the improvement of surface flatness of Si substrate, which contributes to the conversion of AlN to two-dimensional growth mode, leading to a smoother surface of GaN. And the reason for the improvement of Si substrate is also investigated in this work.

In this work, a novel nitrate (NO3−) reduction pathway by anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) biomass was firstly discovered with the intracellular carbon sources as the only electron donors. And the possible reaction mechanism was deduced to be intracellular dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium (DNRA) pathway according to the experimental results. In batch experiments, without any external electron donors, NO3−-N (about 50 mg/L) was reduced to N2 within 48 h, and a small amount of NO2−-N was detected (the maximum of 2 mg/L) with the anammox biomass concentration of 4400 mg/L. Acetylene (4.46 mmol/L) addition resulted in obvious NH4+ accumulation during NO3− degradation by anammox biomass, since acetylene mainly interfered in hydrazine (N2H4) generation from NH4+ and NO. Without HCO3− addition, the NO3−-N degradation rate was slower than that with HCO3− addition. Simultaneously, glycogen contents inside anammox biomass decreased to 133.22 ± 1.21 mg/g VSS and 129.79 ± 1.21 mg/g VSS with and without HCO3−, respectively, from 142.20 ± 0.61 mg/g VSS. In the long-term experiment, anammox biomass stably degraded NO3−-N without external electron donors addition, and the maximum removal efficiency of NO3−-N reached 55.4%. The above results indicated the anammox bacteria utilized the DNRA pathway to reduce NO3− to NO2− and further NH4+, then normal anammox metabolism would continue to convert the produced NO2− and NH4+ to N2. The intracellular stored carbon sources (e.g., glycogen) were supposed to be electron donors for NO3− degradation. This capability would enhance the viability and living space of anammox bacteria in different natural ecosystems, and make it plausible that complete nitrogen removal could be implemented only by the anammox process.

Simple Summary Porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV) is an emerging enteropathogen distributed globally, which causes substantial economic losses in the swine industry. The characterization of the receptor promiscuity may pose a risk of cross-species transmission. However, the options for pharmaceutical interventions are limited. In this study, the vectors expressing shRNAs targeting the nucleocapsid gene were generated to assess the inhibition effect of PDCoV reproduction. Our preliminary results demonstrate that a dual shRNA expression system is an effective strategy in combating PDCoV infection without cytotoxicity, which would facilitate the ongoing development of RNAi-based therapeutic drugs against viral diseases. Abstract Porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV) is a novel enteric coronavirus and is becoming one of the major causative agents of diarrhea in pig herds in recent years. To date, there are no commercial vaccines or antiviral pharmaceutical agents available to control PDCoV infection. Therefore, developing a reliable strategy against PDCoV is urgently needed. In this study, to observe the antiviral activity of RNA interference (RNAi), four short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) specific to the nucleocapsid (N) gene of PDCoV were designed and tested in vitro. Of these, a double-shRNA-expression vector, designated as pSil-double-shRNA-N1, was the most effectively expressed, and the inhibition of PDCoV replication was then further evaluated in neonatal piglets. Our preliminary results reveal that plasmid-based double-shRNA-expression targeting the N gene of PDCoV can significantly protect LLC-PK1 cells and piglets from pathological lesions induced by PDCoV. Our study could benefit the investigation of the specific functions of viral genes related to PDCoV infection and offer a possible methodology of RNAi-based therapeutics for PDCoV infection.