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Background: Dihydroartemisinin (DHA), a natural agent, exhibits potent anticancer activity. However, its biological activity on prostate cancer (PCa) 22Rv1 cells has not been previously investigated.Objectives: In this study, we demonstrate that DHA induces anticancer effects through the induction of apoptosis and autophagy.Methods: Cell viability and proliferation rate were assessed using the CCK-8 assay and cell clone formation assay. The generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) was detected by flow cytometry. The molecular mechanism of DHA-induced apoptosis and autophagy was examined using Western blot and RT-qPCR. The formation of autophagosomes and the changes in autophagy flux were observed using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and confocal microscopy. The effect of DHA combined with Chloroquine (CQ) was assessed using the EdU assay and flow cytometry. The expressions of ROS/AMPK/mTOR-related proteins were detected using Western blot. The interaction between Beclin-1 and Bcl-2 was examined using Co-IP.Results: DHA inhibited 22Rv1 cell proliferation and induced apoptosis. DHA exerted its antiprostate cancer effects by increasing ROS levels. DHA promoted autophagy progression in 22Rv1 cells. Inhibition of autophagy enhanced the pro-apoptotic effect of DHA. DHA-induced autophagy initiation depended on the ROS/AMPK/mTOR pathway. After DHA treatment, the impact of Beclin- 1 on Bcl-2 was weakened, and its binding with Vps34 was enhanced.Conclusion: DHA induces apoptosis and autophagy in 22Rv1 cells. The underlying mechanism may involve the regulation of ROS/AMPK/mTOR signaling pathways and the interaction between Beclin-1 and Bcl-2 proteins. Additionally, the combination of DHA and CQ may enhance the efficacy of DHA in inhibiting tumor cell activity.

Bayesian inversion is capable of integrating seismic data, well-log data, and geological data to obtain a posterior probability distribution function (PPDF) of elastic parameters. Due to the absorption of strata, amplitude attenuation and phase distortion inevitably occur during the propagation of seismic wave, resulting in low resolution of seismic data. The traditional linear Bayesian inversion method is based on the stationary convolution model, and amplitude compensation and phase correction are needed to be conducted in advance. Uncertainties exist in both compensation and inversion, and the inversion results cannot account for the uncertainties in the directly observed seismic data resulting in accurate inversion results. To estimate uncertainty more accurately and improve inversion accuracy, in this article, we develop a nonstationary prestack linear Bayesian stochastic inversion (NSPLBSI) method. Through the proposed method, prior information from well-log data can be effectively introduced to constrain inversion. Compensation and inversion are integrated into one procedure, which can estimate the posterior uncertainties more accurately directly from seismic data compared with traditional two-step inversion methods, i.e., first compensating attenuation and second performing inversion. Also, more accurate inversion results are obtained. In order to verify the rationality and effectiveness of our proposed method, we conduct inversions using synthetic seismic data on the Marmousi model and a field seismic dataset. Numerical examples show that it can not only compensate amplitude well but also obtain high-precision inversion results with smaller prediction interval.

The interface has a significant influence on the macroscopic mechanical behaviors of composite materials, with interface cracking being a typical failure event. The ability to precisely describe the mechanical behavior of the interface is critical for analyzing the failure of composite materials. Based on plasticity theory and damage mechanics, an elastic-plastic interface constitutive model is developed to simulate the irreversible plastic deformation at the interface under the cyclic loading condition. Furthermore, by incorporating a damage factor in scalar form, the model is able to simulate mixed loading forms (Modes I and II). The influence of interfacial strength and toughness on the overall mechanical properties of unidirectional fiber reinforced composites under transverse loading is studied with this model. The simulation results are consistent with the experimental data in the literature, demonstrating the model’s effectiveness. The model can be used to simulate the mechanical behavior of composites with interfaces under cyclic loading, and it is helpful for understanding the plastic behavior and damage accumulation at the interfaces in the composites.

Surgical action triplet recognition plays a significant role in helping surgeons facilitate scene analysis and decision-making in computer-assisted surgeries. Compared to traditional context-aware tasks such as phase recognition, surgical action triplets, comprising the instrument, verb, and target, can offer more comprehensive and detailed information. However, current triplet recognition methods fall short in distinguishing the fine-grained subclasses and disregard temporal correlation in action triplets. In this article, we propose a multi-task fine-grained spatial-temporal framework for surgical action triplet recognition named MT-FiST. The proposed method utilizes a multi-label mutual channel loss, which consists of diversity and discriminative components. This loss function decouples global task features into class-aligned features, enabling the learning of more local details from the surgical scene. The proposed framework utilizes partial shared-parameters LSTM units to capture temporal correlations between adjacent frames. We conducted experiments on the CholecT50 dataset proposed in the MICCAI 2021 Surgical Action Triplet Recognition Challenge. Our framework is evaluated on the private test set of the challenge to ensure fair comparisons. Our model apparently outperformed state-of-the-art models in instrument, verb, target, and action triplet recognition tasks, with mAPs of 82.1% (+4.6%), 51.5% (+4.0%), 45.50% (+7.8%), and 35.8% (+3.1%), respectively. The proposed MT-FiST boosts the recognition of surgical action triplets in a context-aware surgical assistant system, further solving multi-task recognition by effective temporal aggregation and fine-grained features.

With the increasing diversity of mobile apps, users install many apps in their smartphones and often use several apps together to meet a specific requirement. Because of the evolution of user habits and app functions, the set of apps using at the same time, i.e., app usage context, may change over time, which represents the dynamic correlation of different apps and even the evolution trend of the whole app ecosystem. Therefore, understanding how an app’s usage context changes over time is very meaningful. In this paper, based on a seven-year app usage dataset, we explore the long-term app usage context dynamics and understand the underlying reasons and influence factors behind. Specifically, we build app co-occurrence graphs in different periods and learn app embeddings accordingly by leveraging graph embedding algorithm. We then measure the change of app usage context by the distance between neighboring app embeddings. As for the whole app ecosystem, we find that the change rate of app usage context undergoes up and down phrases, and varies in different app-categories. Furthermore, we explore three influence factors correlated with such dynamics. These results will be helpful for stakeholders to better understand the evolution of mobile users' app usage behavior.

In nuclear collisions at RHIC energies, an excess of Ωhyperons over Ω¯is observed, indicating that Ωhas a net baryon number despite sand s¯quarks being produced in pairs. The baryon number in Ωmay have been transported from the incident nuclei and/or produced in the baryon-pair production of Ωwith other types of anti-hyperons such as Ξ¯. To investigate these two scenarios, we propose to measure the correlations between Ωand Kand between Ωand anti-hyperons. We use two versions, the default and string-melting, of a multiphase transport (AMPT) model to illustrate the method for measuring the correlation and to demonstrate the general shape of the correlation. We present the Ω-hadron correlations from simulated Au+Au collisions at sNN=7.7and 14.6GeVand discuss the dependence on the collision energy and on the hadronization scheme in these two AMPT versions. These correlations can be used to explore the mechanism of baryon number transport and the effects of baryon number and strangeness conservation on nuclear collisions.

Purpose: Automatic workflow recognition from surgical videos is fundamental and significant for developing context-aware systems in modern operating rooms. Although many approaches have been proposed to tackle challenges in this complex task, there are still many problems such as the fine-grained characteristics and spatial–temporal discrepancies in surgical videos. Methods: We propose a contrastive learning-based convolutional recurrent network with multi-level prediction to tackle these problems. Specifically, split-attention blocks are employed to extract spatial features. Through a mapping function in the step-phase branch, the current workflow can be predicted on two mutual-boosting levels. Furthermore, a contrastive branch is introduced to learn the spatial–temporal features that eliminate irrelevant changes in the environment. Results: We evaluate our method on the Cataract-101 dataset. The results show that our method achieves an accuracy of 96.37% with only surgical step labels, which outperforms other state-of-the-art approaches. Conclusion: The proposed convolutional recurrent network based on step-phase prediction and contrastive learning can leverage fine-grained characteristics and alleviate spatial–temporal discrepancies to improve the performance of surgical workflow recognition.

Slightly acidic electrolyzed water (SAEW) is well-known for its highly potent antibacterial properties and safe residue-free nature. In this study, a comprehensive evaluation was conducted on 2 disinfection methods for waterline cleaning in poultry houses: (1) continuously add SAEW into the waterline and (2) the conventional waterline disinfection method, which includes regular use of high-concentration chemical disinfectant for soaking the waterline and flushing with water. The evaluation focused on the effects of these methods on bacteria levels in laying hens' drinking water, the fecal normal rate of laying hens, egg quality, as well as the economic costs and water footprint associated with each method. The results show that the inhibition rate of the control group was 52.45% to 80.36%, which used 1500 mg/L sodium dichloroisocyanurate (DCCNa) for soaking and then flushing with water. The bacterial levels in the waterline returned to pre-treatment levels 26 h after cleaning. However, the experimental group with an available chlorine concentration (ACC) of 0.3 mg/L SAEW showed a higher inhibition rate (99.90%) than the control group (P< 0.05) and exhibited a sustained antimicrobial effect. Regarding eggshell thickness, eggshell strength, and Haugh units of the egg, there were no significant differences between the experimental and control groups. However, the experimental group had higher egg weight and darker yolk color (P< 0.05) than those of the control group. Besides, the experimental group exhibited a higher fecal normal rate and a lower water footprint than those of the control group. Hence, SAEW represents a favorable choice for disinfecting drinking water in poultry houses due to its ease of preparation, lack of residue, energy efficiency, and efficient antibacterial properties. To ensure adequate sanitation, it is recommended to incorporate SAEW with an ACC of 0.3 mg/L into the daily management of the drinking water system for laying hens.

Wearable energy storage electronics with high safety and long life have been promising candidates in recent years. Herein, all-solid-state planar micro-supercapacitors (MSCs) were demonstrated by inkjet printing of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) electrodes. The preprinted PEDOT: PSS film on PI (Polyimide) substrate prepared with a simple and low-cost desktop inkjet printer can greatly improve the electrode conductivity. Additionally, the obtained planar MSCs show good electrochemical performance with high areal capacitance of 323 µF cm-2and areal energy density of 0.016 µWh cm-2. More importantly, the MSCs exhibit outstanding flexibility with almost no degradation under various bending angles. The capacitance retention can still be maintained at 88.5% even after 8000 cycles, indicating good cycle stability of MSCs. The in-plane flexible MSCs hold great application potential for wearable and integrated energy storage electronics.All-solid-state planar micro-supercapacitors (MSCs) were demonstrated by inkjet printing of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) electrodes. The preprinted PEDOT: PSS film on PI (Polyimide) substrate by simple and low-cost desktop inkjet printer can greatly improve the electrode conductivity. Additionally, the obtained planar MSCs show good electrochemical performance. More importantly, the MSCs exhibit outstanding flexibility with almost no degradation under various bending angles.

In 2009, China strengthened its public health service system. Since then, the country has made remarkable achievements in community-based chronic disease prevention and control; however, certain groups still have unmet needs. During 2019 to 2029, China will consolidate the top-level design of its medical health system. During this period, the coordination of department policies, improvement of service delivery mechanisms, building an integrated health service system, and other issues will be highlighted. This study will provide a basis for designing China's chronic disease prevention and control system during the next stage of development. We will consider the unmet needs of patients with chronic diseases as an indicator for remodeling the prediction system in combination with the elements and structural theories of complex health systems. In this article, we first introduce the definition and measurement methods of unmet needs. Second, we identify the existing unmet needs found among patients with chronic diseases with reference to the chronic disease prevention and control policies of China as well as current service items. Finally, we propose the design of community chronic disease service package for the next development stage based on unmet needs of patients with chronic diseases. We also provide suggestions for how to improve China's chronic care delivery system.

The wearable and integrated sensing platform is a promising choice for developing real-time analytic electronics with clear advantages but still poses challenges, such as the realization of high precision, low limit of detection (LOD), moderate mechanical capacity, integration, and miniaturization. In this work, a simple printed wearable smartsensor has been fabricated with the aid of electrochemical plating methods with bismuth (Bi) films. The excellent sensing behaviors, including linear relationship, selectivity, stability, repeatability, and the LOD at ppb levels, have been obtained by this smartsensor. Additionally, the highly flexible textile-based sensor exhibits potential application on the substrates of daily cloth, sports T-shirt, and sports wristbands, and it maintains good stability under repeated deformations of washing and twisting. Importantly, integrated with printed circuit board, single chip micyoco, and Bluetooth modules, a smartsensing platform is successfully acquired for real-time detection of heavy metals (e.g., Zn, Cd, Pb, etc.). Finally, actual samples of human sweat, seawater, cosmetics, and drinking water have been remotely successfully demonstrated for detection by this smartsensor, enabling a great promise for fast on-site screening of samples in practical application.

Flexible and wearable energy storage microdevice systems with high performance and safety are promising candidates for the electronics of on-chip integration. Herein, we demonstrate inkjet-printed ultrathin electrodes based on molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) nanosheets for flexible and all-solid-state in-plane microsupercapacitors (MSCs) with high capacitance. The MoS2nanosheets were uniformly dispersed in the low-boiling point and nontoxic solvent isopropanol to form highly concentrated inks suitable for inkjet printing. The MSCs were assembled by printing the highly concentrated MoS2inks on a polyimide substrate with appropriate surface tension using a simple and low-cost desktop inkjet printer. Because of the two-dimensional structure of MoS2nanosheets, the as-assembled planar MSCs have high loadings of active materials per unit area, resulting in more flexibility and thinness than the capacitors with a traditional sandwich structure. These planar MSCs can not only possess any collapsible shape through the computer design but also exhibit excellent electrochemical performance (with a maximum energy density of 0.215 mW h cm–3and a high-power energy density of 0.079 W cm–3), outstanding mechanical flexibility (almost no degradation of capacitance at different bending radii), good cycle stability (85.6% capacitance retention even after 10,000 charge–discharge cycles), and easy scale-up. Moreover, a blue light-emitting diode can be powered using five MSCs connected in series. The in-plane and low-cost MSCs with high energy densities have great application potential for integrated energy storage systems including wearable planar solar cells and other electronics.

Herein, we described an efficient copper-catalyzed chemo-divergent tandem reaction of N-(ortho-alkynyl)aryl-pyrrole and (iso)indoles, delivering ring-fused N-heterocycles in good yields in an atom-economical manner. N-(ortho-alkynyl)aryl-pyrrole and indoles undergo the tandem cyclization/migration reaction, in which the group at 2-position was migrated to 3-position. In contrast, the dearomative cyclization of N-(ortho-alkynyl)aryl-isoindoles would occur to deliver the N-fused tetracyclic products efficiently.

To obtain a larger spin signal for use in graphene-based spintronic devices, the spin injection efficiency needs to be enhanced. Previously researchers can increase the efficiency by inserting a tunnel barrier such as Al2O3 or MgO between ferromagnet and graphene. However, the key value in spin transport is still very low because of the conductance mismatch as well as the limit to fabricate a high-quality tunnel barrier at the junction surface. Here we use a highly spin-polarized ferromagnetic material—Heusler alloy Co2MnGe as a substitutional scheme without the tunnel barrier. The spin injection efficiency of our Co2MnGe (111)/graphene junction can be as high as 73% which is much higher than 1% of ferromagnet/graphene or 30% of ferromagnet/oxide/graphene using first-principles study. The large spin polarization can be explicated by analyzing the transmission spectrum at the nonequilibrium state.

In this work, we report the electronic transport properties of an atomic carbon chain sandwiched between two ferromagnetic zigzag graphene nanoribbon electrodes with symmetrical nitrogen-vacancy defects using the density functional theory combining with the non-equilibrium Green’s function method. Our results show that a perfect spin filter is observed with almost 100% spin polarization. Moreover, we also see the negative differential resistance effect from the spin-up current under a low positive voltage bias. These results may promise potential applications in spintronic devices with multi-function in the future.

Introduction:Occupational physical activity (OPA) has been linked to adverse cardiovascular outcomes and mortality among workers, but underlying mechanisms are not clear. Allostatic load (AL) presents a measure of the accumulative burden of chronic stress and may play a role in the association of OPA with cardiovascular outcomes. We hypothesized that OPA was positively associated with AL in workers.Methods:Analyses were conducted in 6487 United States (U.S.) workers (i.e., working at a job or business) aged 20-60 years who were not pregnant, had data on moderate-to-vigorous OPA and biomarkers for AL calculation using a national representative sample, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2007-2018). OPA was dichotomized primarily by time spent on moderate-to-vigorous OPA (i.e., high: ≥ 150 vs. low: < 150; min/week) and secondarily by energy spent on it (i.e., high: ≥ median vs. low: < median; kcal/week). AL score was calculated using a common method from 9 biomarkers with a range of 0-9. Associations of OPA with AL were assessed using multivariable linear regression models with sampling weights applied to represent U.S. workers.Results:AL score was significantly higher among workers who spent higher time on moderate-to-vigorous OPA (β = 0.11, P = 0.02) or had higher energy on it (β = 0.10, P = 0.05) than their counterparts. When stratified by gender and age, the positive associations of OPA with AL remained significant only among females aged 20-40 years (β = 0.16, P = 0.02 for higher time on moderate-to-vigorous OPA; β = 0.35, P < 0.001 for higher energy on moderate-to-vigorous OPA), but such associations were not observed in other groups (females aged 41-60 years, males aged 20-40 years, and males aged 41-60 years).Conclusions:We found that OPA was positively associated with AL among U.S. workers, particularly in young female workers. Our findings are novel and worthy of further studies to confirm the role of OPA in explaining cardiometabolic disorders.

Asthma is a chronic disease that needs long-term control for secondary prevention. Health-related expenditures resulting from asthma are rising in the United States, and medication nonadherence is associated with adverse health outcomes in patients with asthma.

Novel methylthiophene/benzo[b]thiophene perylene bisimide thiol-precursors that would generate thiols via a green-light-induced (λexc= 530 nm, φre= 0.33) photorearrangement are presented herein. The “no-wash”, photoreleased thiols thus enabled a subsequent thiol–ene click ligation with electron-deficient substrates. Moreover, by virtue of the intrinsic fluorescence evolution from the rearrangement of perylene bisimide scaffolds, the whole process of thiol formation could be self-reported, further potentiating themselves with application versatilities.

The catalytic transformation of methanol to aromatics (MTA) over gallium-modified zeolites has been widely developed as an important technology to produce aromatics such as benzene, toluene, and xylene (BTX) in the petrochemical industry. However, the reaction mechanisms of the MTA process at the atomic level remain unclear but are valuable to experimentally design more efficient catalysts. In this study, the MTA mechanisms on gallium-modified acidic FAU (Ga-FAU) zeolite have been theoretically investigated by a two-layer our Own N-layered Integrated molecular Orbital and molecular Mechanics (ONIOM) method. The MTA process includes methanol to benzene (MTB) and methylation of benzene to hexamethylbenzene (BTH). Their rate-determining steps are the intermolecular proton transfer of cyclohexene for MTB and the methylation step of methylbenzene for BTH. The different elementary steps in the MTB pathway could occur in the following order of reactivity: deprotonation ≥ intramolecular proton transfer > cyclization > intramolecular CH3shift > methylation > intermolecular proton transfer. In BTH, the deprotonation step is more favorable than the methylation step. In the MTB pathway, the deprotonation, intramolecular proton transfer, and CH3-shift steps are generally entropy-increased, but the cyclization, methylation, and intermolecular proton transfer steps are entropy-decreased. All elementary steps in the BTH pathway are entropy-decreased. Overall, MTB and BTH have almost the same reactivity on the Ga-FAU zeolite. The entire MTA reaction proceeds in the direction of reducing free energies. Differential charge density maps (DCD), local orbital localization maps (LOL), and reduction density gradient maps (RDG) reveal the nature of transition states (TSs) from the viewpoint of electron migration and explain the complicated attractive and repulsive interactions between different molecular fragments in TSs. The wave function analysis suggests that spatial hindrance and van der Waals (VDW) attractive forces generally coexist in the TS fragments. There are clear partial covalent interactions and moderate VDW interactions between the atoms in the forming/breaking chemical bonds.

Many active galaxies exhibit soft X-ray excess in the 0.2-2 keV band with a photon index $\alpha _\mathrm{s} \sim 2.38 \pm 0.25$, much higher than that of the hard X-ray (2-10 keV) band with $\alpha _\mathrm{h} \sim 1.7$. Different theoretical models have been proposed to reproduce and explain the spectra, but the complexity of all these models tends to make the situation even more confused. Here we present results using our newly-proposed synchro-curvature mechanism, which we show can reproduce the soft X-ray excess by a simple fitting process. Such a model may be helpful in considering the physical processes taking place in these objects.

The SnO2 nanomaterial for highly reversible lithium storage was successfully synthesized via a simple solvothermal route at a low temperature. According to the XRD and TEM analysis, the nanostructure and the morphology of the obtained samples were constructed by ultrathin SnO2 nanorods with diameter of about 10 nm and length of 30 nm. When used as anode materials for lithium ion batteries, the prepared SnO2 nanomaterial exhibited a relatively high reversible capacity of 950.9 mAh·g-1 and excellent cycling stability. The enhanced electrochemical performance of the SnO2 nanomaterial could be attributed to the unique nanostructure, which could accommodate the large volume change during cycling and provide an excellent electronic conduction pathway.

•Pyroptosis genes were differentially expressed between HNSCC and normal tissue.•Developed a model for prognostic prediction of HNSCC based on pyroptosis genes.•The risk-score model was proved to be promising and reliable in practical patients.

Background:Physical activity (PA) is a key components of energy expenditure and can alter fat metabolism. Maternal polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), particularly endogenous PUFA, plays critical roles on maternal health and fetal development. However, studies investigating the longitudinal association of PA with PUFA during pregnancy are scarce.Objective:To examine the prospective associations of PA with PUFA among pregnant women.Methods:This study used longitudinal data from a nested gestational diabetes mellitus case-control study (n=321) within the NICHD Fetal Growth Studies-Singletons. Plasma phospholipid PUFA and PA were measured at 4 time-points during pregnancy (10-14, 15-26, 23-31, and 33-39 GW). Total PA was calculated as energy expenditure in metabolic equivalent (METs-hour) and physically active was defined as spending ≥150 min on moderate-to-vigorous exercise per week. Associations of PA with total n-3, n-6, and individual PUFAs were examined using generalized linear models where the sample was weighted to represent the entire cohort.Results:Total PA was positively associated with EDA, but inversely associated with ALA and GLA, independent of maternal age, race, parity, pre-pregnancy BMI, and dietary intake of FA. Being physically active was inversely associated with total n-3 PUFA but positively associated with total n-6 PUFA. However, the direction of the associations of individual PUFA varied: an inverse association for ALA (n-3) and LA (n-6); a positive association for DHA (n-3), AA (n-6) and DPA (n-6).Conclusions:Findings from this study indicate that PA may alter PUFA metabolism in pregnant women. The inverse association between total PA and GLA (an endogenous PUFA) is novel and merits confirmation in future studies.