Search

Converting solar energy to evaporative energy to obtain clean water has been intensively studied. However, the efficiency of the reported solar evaporators remains limited, and their construction is complex and challenging to control. Here, we report a facile method for constructing efficient solar evaporators by utilizing a thin-layer, highly concentrated polyelectrolyte solution as the evaporation layer. Under an electric field, a single layer of polyelectrolyte–shelled micelles is grafted onto a hydrogel surface, controllably and stably modifying highly concentrated polyelectrolyte chains on the outermost surface. These chains, with their low chemical potential, efficiently absorb water to form the evaporation layer. Theoretical calculations indicate that the water molecules in the evaporation layer possess high energy as the hydrogen bonds between them are significantly disrupted, thus minimizing the evaporation energy. Consequently, for simulated seawater and under 1 kW m–2irradiation, the as-prepared evaporator without a photothermal component achieves a high evaporation rate of 3.74 kg m–2h–1(1.5 times the highest nonphotothermal hydrogels) and that with photothermal particles β-Ti3O5reaches a record-breaking value (6.92 kg m–2h–1). Remarkably, the ion rejection ratio is as high as 99.97% due to repulsion from the positively charged polyelectrolyte.

Electrolyzers are widely used in renewable energy hydrogen production, and the performance of electrolyzers is directly related to dc–dc converters. To realize the high-efficiency operation of the electrolyzer, new challenges, such as a high step-down ratio and low output current ripple, are put forward for the dc–dc converter. In this article, we propose a novel type of dc–dc converter for hydrogen production. The topology is simple and has the advantages of higher step-down gain and low switching stress. In addition, the scheme can achieve ultralow output current ripple without active devices. Finally, the topology connects the electrolyzer hydrogen production load in the experiment to verify the scheme's effectiveness.

The polysaccharides of edible mushrooms are excellent phytochemicals for adjuvant treatment of metabolic diseases, but the potential mechanisms of synergistic effects are unclear. In this work, we discovered that NAP-3 enhanced the efficiency of metformin in lipid and glucose metabolism in type 2 diabetic (T2D) mice in a gut microbiome-dependent way. NAP-3 remodeled the intestinal microbial, resulting in the decreased activity of bile salt hydrolases and upregulation of CYP27A1 and CYP7B1 functions in the alternative pathway of bile acid synthesis, which leads to accumulation of the conjugated bile acids in ileum, specifically TβMCA and TUDCA. The accumulated conjugated bile acids either blocked or stimulated the nuclear receptors Farnesoid-X-receptor and TGR5, inducing the release of GLP-1 and ultimately enhanced glucose metabolism in mice. Collectively, our research indicated that edible mushroom polysaccharide NAP-3 may serve as a promising adjunctive oral therapeutic agent for T2D.

The risk of early recurrent events after stroke remains high despite currently established secondary prevention strategies1. Risk is particularly high in patients with atherosclerosis, with more than 10% of patients experiencing early recurrent events1,2. However, despite the enormous medical burden of this clinical phenomenon, the underlying mechanisms leading to increased vascular risk and recurrent stroke are largely unknown. Here, using a novel mouse model of stroke-induced recurrent ischaemia, we show that stroke leads to activation of the AIM2 inflammasome in vulnerable atherosclerotic plaques via an increase of circulating cell-free DNA. Enhanced plaque inflammation post-stroke results in plaque destabilization and atherothrombosis, finally leading to arterioarterial embolism and recurrent stroke within days after the index stroke. We confirm key steps of plaque destabilization also after experimental myocardial infarction and in carotid artery plaque samples from patients with acute stroke. Rapid neutrophil NETosis was identified as the main source of cell-free DNA after stroke and NET–DNA as the causative agent leading to AIM2 inflammasome activation. Neutralization of cell-free DNA by DNase treatment or inhibition of inflammasome activation reduced the rate of stroke recurrence after experimental stroke. Our findings present an explanation for the high recurrence rate after incident ischaemic events in patients with atherosclerosis. The detailed mechanisms uncovered here provide clinically uncharted therapeutic targets for which we show high efficacy to prevent recurrent events. Targeting DNA-mediated inflammasome activation after remote tissue injury represents a promising avenue for further clinical development in the prevention of early recurrent events.

Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) hold great potential to improve traffic efficiency, emissions and safety in freeway on-ramp bottlenecks through coordination between mainstream and on-ramp vehicles. This study proposes a bi-level coordination strategy for freeway on-ramp merging of mixed traffic consisting of CAVs and human-driven vehicles (HDVs) to optimize the overall traffic efficiency and safety in congested traffic scenarios at the traffic flow level instead of platoon levels. The macro level employs an optimization model based on fundamental diagrams and shock wave theories to make optimal coordination decisions, including optimal minimum merging platoon size to trigger merging coordination and optimal coordination speed, based on macroscopic traffic state in mainline and ramp (i.e., traffic volume and penetration rates of CAVs). Furthermore, the micro level determines the real platoon size in each merging cycle as per random arrival patterns and designs the coordinated trajectories of the mainline facilitating vehicle and ramp platoon. A receding horizon scheme is implemented to accommodate human drivers’ stochastics as well. The developed bi-level strategy is tested in terms of improving efficiency and safety in a simulation-based case study under various traffic volumes and CAV penetration rates. The results show the proposed coordination addresses the uncertainties in mixed traffic as expected and substantially improves ramp merging operation in terms of merging efficiency and traffic robustness, and reducing collision risk and emissions, especially under high traffic volume conditions.

• The EBSD characterization and SEM images indicated that grain boundaries that existed as defects with high energy were preferentially corroded and exposed compared with the internal grains. • The (oxy)hydroxides layer on the surface enhanced the catalytic efficiency and surface wettability, endowing the electrode facile access to the electrolytes. • The high mechanical strength between the substrate and (oxy)hydroxides layer prevented the detachment of the hydroxide layer, ensuring high stability. • Benefiting from its unique structure and constructed surface, CrCoNiFe-12 exhibited a high OER (η 10 = 285 mV) and UOR performance (η 10 = 250 mV). Corrosion engineering is an effective way to improve the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity of alloys. However, the impact of grain boundary corrosion on the structure and electrochemical performance of alloy is still unknown. Herein, the vacuum arc-melted CrCoNiFe alloys with interlaced network structures via grain boundary corrosion methods were fabricated. The grain boundaries that existed as defects were severely corroded and an interlaced network structure was formed, promoting the exposure of the active site and the release of gas bubbles. Besides, the (oxy)hydroxides layer (25 nm) on the surface could act as the true active center and improve the surface wettability. Benefiting from the unique structure and constructed surface, the CrCoNiFe-12 affords a high urea oxidation reaction (UOR) performance with the lowest overpotential of 250 mV at 10 mA/cm2 in 1 M KOH adding 0.33 M urea. The CrCoNiFe-12||Pt only required a cell voltage of 1.485 V to afford 10 mA/cm2 for UOR and long-term stability of 100 h at 10 mA/cm2 (27.6 mV decrease). These findings offer a facile strategy for designing bulk multiple-principal-element alloy electrodes for energy conversion. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the paper, the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) path planning and task offloading problem in UAV-assisted mobile edge computing (MEC) systems is investigated. A bi-criterion ant colony optimization (bi-ACO) framework is proposed for the considered problem with the objectives of minimizing the total cost and the completion time, meanwhile satisfying the energy, deadline, location, and priority constraints. In the bi-ACO framework, multiple heterogeneous colonies are introduced with different preferences of objectives. Each colony maintains five pairs of pheromone matrices for constructing feasible solutions. Besides the colony settings, three key components of bi-ACO are delicately designed: feasible solution generation method (FSGM) to construct a feasible solution, solution division method (SDM) to improve obtained solutions of good quality, and pheromone update method (PUM) to updates pheromone matrices by pheromone evaporation operation and pheromone enhancement operation based on the preferences of colonies. Four Pareto-based metrics are introduced to evaluate the performance of the compared algorithms. Experimental results show that the proposal outperforms the compared baseline algorithms in effectiveness and robustness.

The vaginal epithelium plays pivotal roles in host defense against pathogen invasion, contributing to the maintenance of an acidic microenvironment within the vaginal lumen through the activity of acid-base transport proteins. However, the precise defense mechanisms of the vaginal epithelium after a bacterial infection remain incompletely understood. This study showed that bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) potentiated net proton efflux by up-regulating the expression of Na+-H+exchanger 1 (NHE1) in vaginal epithelial cells. Pharmacologic inhibition or genetic knockdown of Toll-like receptor-4 and the extracellular signal–regulated protein kinase signaling pathway effectively counteracted the up-regulation of NHE1 and the enhanced proton efflux triggered by LPS in vaginal epithelial cells. In vivostudies revealed that LPS administration led to luminal acidification through the up-regulation of NHE1 expression in the rat vagina. Moreover, inhibition of NHE exhibited an impaired defense against acute bacterial infection in the rat vagina. These findings collectively indicate the active involvement of vaginal epithelial cells in facilitating luminal acidification during acute bacterial infection, offering potential insights into the treatment of bacterial vaginosis.

A new class of Ru-sulfonamidate precatalysts for sp3C–H hydroxylation is described along with a versatile process for assembling unique heteroleptic Ru(II) complexes. The latter has enabled structure–performance studies to identify an optimal precatalyst, 2h, bearing one 4,4′-di-tert-butylbipyridine (dtbpy) and one pyridylsulfonamidate ligand. Single-crystal X-ray analysis confirmed the structure and stereochemistry of this adduct. Catalytic hydroxylation reactions are conveniently performed in an aqueous, biphasic solvent mixture with 1 mol % 2hand ceric ammonium nitrate as the terminal oxidant and deliver oxidized products in yields ranging from 37 to 90%. A comparative mechanistic investigation of 2hagainst a related homoleptic precatalyst, [Ru(dtbpy)2(MeCN)2](OTf)2, convincingly establishes that the former generates one or more surprisingly long-lived active species under the reaction conditions, thus accounting for the high turnover numbers. Structure–performance, kinetics, mass spectrometric, and electrochemical analyses reveal that ligand oxidation is a prerequisite for catalyst activation. Our findings sharply contrast a large body of prior art showing that ligand oxidation is detrimental to catalyst function. We expect these results to stimulate future innovations in C–H oxidation research.

Aliphatic strained rings have been increasingly applied in medicinal chemistry due to their beneficial physicochemical and pharmacokinetic properties. However, the divergent synthesis of enantioenriched cyclobutane derivatives with various structural patterns continues to be a significant challenge. Here, we disclose a palladium-catalyzed enantioselective desymmetrization of cyclobutenes, resulting in a series of hydroarylation and 1,2- and 1,3-diarylation products via the interceptions of a common Heck intermediate. Mechanistic investigations provide valuable insights into understanding the catalytic mode of the palladium catalysts and the observed variations in the deuterium-responsive behavior during reactions. Furthermore, the synthetic utility is demonstrated in the syntheses of deuterated drug candidate belaperidone skeletons and pseudosymmetrical truxinic acid-type derivatives.

To facilitate depolymerization of cellulose into fermentable sugars, a novel deep eutectic solvent (DES)–mediated Fenton-like system was developed for efficient removal of hemicellulose and lignin components from lignocellulosic biomass. Water hyacinth (WH) was treated with the newly synthesized DES (choline chloride-ethylene glycol-FeCl3; ChCl-EG-FeCl3) at 140 °C for 2 h and then subjected to treatment with 32 mL 30 wt% H2O2(Fe3+: H2O2= 1:50 mol·mol–1) for 1 h in a Fenton-like reaction system (DES/H2O2). Hydrolysate containing 28 g·L–1glucose was obtained, which was 19.6- and 1.6-fold of raw WH and WH pretreated by DES, respectively. The DES/H2O2-WH hydrolysate was further evaluated for butanol fermentation; no significant inhibition was observed on butanol production, giving butanol titer of 8.3 g·L–1, along with a yield of 0.18 g·g–1glucose and a productivity of 0.12 g·L–1·h–1. Remarkably, DES could be recovered and recycled for five consecutive batches.

In the artificial intelligence age, multifunctional and intelligent fireproof fabric-based electronics are urgently needed. Herein, a novel thread-shaped all-fabric-based piezoresistive sensor (denoted as TAFPS) with properties such as flame retardancy, fire-warning, and piezoresistivity is proposed, which is composed of an inner nickel-plated fabric electrode, a multifunctional double helix fabric, and an external flame-retardant encapsulation fabric. Owing to the multiple flame-retardant properties of glass fiber tubular fabric, aminated carbon nanotubes (ACNTs), and ammonium polyphosphate, the char residue of the TAFPS reaches 40.3 wt% at 800°C. In addition, the heat-sensitive effect of ACNTs during combustion causes a rapid decrease in the TAFPS resistance, triggering the fire alarm system within 2 s. Additionally, benefiting from the force-sensitive behavior of the double helix layer and tightly wrapped pattern of the external heat-shrinkable tubular fabric, TAFPS demonstrated a high sensitivity of 4.40 kPa−1(0–5.81 kPa) and good stability for 10000 s. Considering its excellent flame resistance, high sensitivity, and agreeable stability, the developed TAFPS can be integrated into fire suits to monitor the exercise training process and the external fire environment. This work offers a novel approach for fabricating all-fabric-based piezoresistive sensors in the future for fire prevention and fire alarms, with promising applications in fire protection, the Internet of Things, and smart apparel.

To evaluate the autophagy status of cumulus cells (CCs) in women with poor ovarian response (POR).

Worldwide, type 2 diabetes is predominant form of diabetes, and it is mainly affected by the environment. Furthermore, the offspring of patients with type 2 diabetes and metabolic disorder syndrome may have a higher risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease, which indicates that the environmental impact on diabetes prevalence can be transmitted across generations. In the process of diabetes onset and intergenerational transmission, the genetic structure of the individual is not directly changed but is regulated by epigenetics. In this process, genes or histones are modified, resulting in selective expression of proteins. This modification will affect not only the onset of diabetes but also the related onset of atherosclerosis. Acetylation and deacetylation may be important regulatory factors for the above lesions. Therefore, in this review, based on the whole process of atherosclerosis evolution, we explored the possible existence of acetylation/deacetylation caused by diabetes. However, because of the lack of atherosclerosis-related acetylation studies directly based on diabetic models, we also used a small number of experiments involving nondiabetic models of related molecular mechanisms.

The transformation of aldose to ketose or common sugars into rare saccharides, including rare ketoses and aldoses, is of great value and interest to the food industry and for saccharidic biomass utilization, medicine, and the synthesis of drugs. Nowadays, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is industrially produced in more than 10 million tons annually using immobilized glucose isomerase. Some low-calorie saccharides such as tagatose and psicose, which are becoming popular sweeteners, have also been produced on a pilot scale in order to replace sucrose and HFCS. However, current catalysts and catalytic processes are still difficult to utilize in biomass conversion and also have strong substrate dependence in producing high-value, rare sugars. Considering the specific reaction properties of saccharides and catalysts, since the pioneering discovery by Fischer, various catalysts and catalytic systems have been discovered or developed in attempts to extend the reaction pathways, improve the reaction efficiency, and to potentially produce commercial products. In this review, we trace the history of sugar isomerization/epimerization reactions and summarize the important breakthroughs for each reaction as well as the difficulties that remain unresolved to date.

ABSTRACTGlobal urbanization has led to severe damage and even disappearance of traditional villages in large numbers, significantly impacting the diversity of cultural landscapes. To effectively protect and inherit the cultural landscape of traditional villages, this study proposes the “culture-landscape genes” theory and its double-chain model. Taking the traditional Tujia villages in Shizhu County, Chongqing Municipality, China as an example, we identify, extract, correspond, encode, and comprehensively evaluate their culture-landscape genes. Based on the evaluation and analysis results, corresponding protection and development strategies are formulated. The study indicates that: firstly, the identification, extraction, and correlation of genes directly influence the construction of the evaluation system and the assessment of the protection level. Secondly, the comprehensive evaluation system under the double-chain model is more scientific and reasonable compared to the single-gene model of cultural or landscape genes. The culture-landscape genes theory proposed in this study promotes the development of the gene theory of traditional villages, and its double-chain research model effectively supplements the current methods for the protection and sustainable development of traditional villages, demonstrating a wide range of application value.

•Testing the impact of different primer selections on fish diversity detection results.•Identifying the differences in primer selection monitoring results in different aquatic ecosystems. Emphasizing the superiority of the MiFish primer

Age at menarche (AAM) is a sign of puberty of females. It is a heritable trait associated with various adult diseases. However, the genetic mechanism that determines AAM and links it to disease risk is poorly understood. Aiming to uncover the genetic basis for AAM, we conducted a joint association study in up to 438,089 women from 3 genome-wide association studies of European and East Asian ancestries. A series of bioinformatical analyses and causal inference were then followed to explore in-depth annotations at the associated loci and infer the causal relationship between AAM and other complex traits/diseases. This largest meta-analysis identified a total of 21 novel AAM associated loci at the genome wide significance level (P< 5.0  × 10−8), 4 of which were European ancestry-specific loci. Functional annotations prioritized 33 candidate genes at newly identified loci. Significant genetic correlations were observed between AAM and 67 complex traits. Further causal inference demonstrated the effects of AAM on 13 traits, including forced vital capacity (FVC), high blood pressure, age at first live birth, etc, indicating that earlier AAM causes lower FVC, worse lung function, hypertension and earlier age at first (last) live birth. Enrichment analysis identified 5 enriched tissues, including the hypothalamus middle, hypothalamo hypophyseal system, neurosecretory systems, hypothalamus and retina. Our findings may provide useful insights that elucidate the mechanisms determining AAM and the genetic interplay between AAM and some traits of women.

In this paper, we are concerned with the Riesz transform on the direct product manifold ℍn× M, where ℍnis the n-dimensional real hyperbolic space and Mis a connected complete non-compact Riemannian manifold satisfying the volume doubling property and generalized Gaussian or sub-Gaussian upper estimates for the heat kernel. We establish its weak type (1, 1) property. In addition, we obtain the weak type (1, 1) of the heat maximal operator in the same setting. Our arguments also work for a large class of direct product manifolds with exponential volume growth. Particularly, we provide a simpler proof of weak type (1, 1) boundedness of some operators considered in the work of Li et al. (2016).

Robot-assisted minimally invasive needle percutaneous intervention promotes the biopsy operation accuracy and speed as well. Yet, Leksell-based needle displacement platform is bulky and unsuitable for certain applications such as MRI-guided surgery. Also, controllers such as joysticks or keyboards conventionally used by surgeons to command robotic systems require extra preoperative training and intraoperative sterilization. As a step forward to improve the current robot-assisted biopsy system, a compact four degree of freedom (DoF) needle deployment robot is designed, and a deep learning-based eye gaze control method, using only one camera, is derived to facilitate the interaction efficiency and efficacy. A first-generation prototype is constructed to evaluate the performance of the proposed eye-gaze-controlled needle deployment method. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system can achieve satisfactory positioning precision, with a maximum average error of $\boldsymbol {0.3883}^{\circ }$ , and it is capable of tracking the eye fixation angle in real-time.

The real-time monitoring of strain processes that can simultaneously realize a wide range and high spatial resolution has always been a huge challenge and cannot be satisfied by traditional electrical and noncontact measurement methods. In this article, the optical frequency domain reflection (OFDR) collocated with weak reflection fiber bragg grating (FBG) sensors (WRFBGs) was proposed to actively carry out multiple experiments on the nonstandard reinforcement samples with complex strain processes in order to overcome this challenge. According to the result analysis, the complex strain variation law of the surface of the sample and the large span strain of adjacent locations during the whole process of tensile can be obtained by this method. The yield point (YP) can be accurately captured and positioned with millimeter-level horizontal precision. At the same time, real-time monitoring can be realized for the step process, when the strain of the point increases to more than 25000- $\mu \varepsilon $ instantly. The method can also realize the strain detection capability with a response speed of 38 Hz and a 1.28-mm high spatial resolution by monitoring the real-time high-density and large strain distribution.

Freeway on-ramps are typical bottlenecks in the freeway network due to the frequent disturbances caused by their associated merging, weaving, and lane-changing behaviors. With real-time communication and precise motion control, Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) provide an opportunity to substantially enhance the traffic operational performance of on-ramp bottlenecks. In this paper, we propose an upper-level control strategy to coordinate the two traffic streams at on-ramp merging through proactive gap creation and platoon formation. The coordination consists of three components: 1) mainline vehicles proactively decelerate to create large merging gaps; 2) ramp vehicles form platoons before entering the main road; 3) the gaps created on the main road and the platoons formed on the ramp are coordinated with each other in terms of size, speed, and arrival time. The coordination is formulated as a constrained optimization problem, incorporating both macroscopic and microscopic traffic flow models. The model uses traffic state parameters as inputs and determines the optimal coordination plan adaptive to real-time traffic conditions. The benefits of the proposed coordination are demonstrated through an illustrative case study. Results show that the coordination is compatible with real-world implementation and can substantially improve the overall efficiency of on-ramp merging, especially under high traffic volume conditions, where recurrent traffic congestion is prevented, and merging throughput increased.

In recent years, graph neural networks (GNNs) have been widely applied in recommender systems. However, existing recommendation algorithms based on GNNs still face challenges in node aggregation and feature extraction processes because they often lack the ability to capture the interactions between users and items, as well as users’ multiple intentions. This hinders accurate understanding of users’ needs. To address the aforementioned issues, we propose a recommendation model called multi-intent-aware interactive graph convolutional network (Multi-IAIGCN). This model is capable of integrating multiple user intents and adopts an interactive convolution approach to better capture the information on the interaction between users and items. First, before the interaction between users and items begins, user intents are divided and mapped into a graph. Next, interactive convolutions are applied to the user and item trees. Finally, by aggregating different features of user intents, predictions of user preferences are made. Extensive experiments on three publicly available datasets demonstrate that Multi-IAIGCN outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods or can achieve results comparable to those of existing state-of-the-art methods in terms of recall and NDCG, thus verifying the effectiveness of Multi-IAIGCN.

The low tight bend-loss of antiresonant hollow-core fibers (AR-HCFs) is critical for many practical applications. In this paper, we provide an approximate analytical formula for the nested AR-HCFs to predict its critical bend radius for the first time, deepening physical insight of its bending mechanism and allowing straightforward design of low tight bend-loss nested AR-HCFs. We further carried out fabrication experiments of nested AR-HCFs and characterized their bending performance. A low bend loss of 0.039 dB/m at 1550 nm under a tightest bend radius of 1.8 cm is achieved. Our theoretical and experimental investigation of tight bend loss in nested AR-HCFs can provide useful design strategies and enhance the applicability of nested AR-HCFs in tight bend circumstances.

Most existing learning-based methods for stereoscopic image super-resolution rely on a great number of high-resolution stereoscopic images as labels. To alleviate the problem of data dependency, this paper proposes a self-supervised pretraining-based method for stereoscopic image super-resolution (SelfSSR). Specifically, to develop a self-supervised pretext task for stereoscopic images, a parallax-aware masking strategy (PAMS) is designed to adaptively mask matching areas of the left and right views. With PAMS, the network is encouraged to effectively predict missing information of input images. Besides, a cross-view Transformer module (CVTM) is presented to aggregate the intra-view and inter-view information simultaneously for stereoscopic image reconstruction. Meanwhile, the cross-attention map learned by CVTM is utilized to guide the masking process in PAMS. Comparative results on four datasets show that the proposed SelfSSR achieves state-of-the-art performance by using only 10% of labeled training data.

The size of deep learning models in artificial intelligence (AI) software is increasing rapidly, hindering the large-scale deployment on resource-restricted devices (e.g., smartphones). To mitigate this issue, AI software compression plays a crucial role, which aims to compress model size while keeping high performance. However, the intrinsic defects in a big model may be inherited by the compressed one. Such defects may be easily leveraged by adversaries, since a compressed model is usually deployed in a large number of devices without adequate protection. In this article, we aim to address the safe model compression problem from the perspective of safety-performance co-optimization. Specifically, inspired by the test-driven development (TDD) paradigm in software engineering, we propose a test-driven sparse training framework called SafeCompress. By simulating the attack mechanism as safety testing, SafeCompress can automatically compress a big model to a small one following the dynamic sparse training paradigm. Then, considering two kinds of representative and heterogeneous attack mechanisms, i.e., black-box membership inference attack and white-box membership inference attack, we develop two concrete instances called BMIA-SafeCompress and WMIA-SafeCompress. Further, we implement another instance called MMIA-SafeCompress by extending SafeCompress to defend against the occasion when adversaries conduct black-box and white-box membership inference attacks simultaneously. We conduct extensive experiments on five datasets for both computer vision and natural language processing tasks. The results show the effectiveness and generalizability of our framework. We also discuss how to adapt SafeCompress to other attacks besides membership inference attack, demonstrating the flexibility of SafeCompress.

Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS) is an acute inflammatory polyradiculoneuropathy; a disease involving the peripheral nervous system which is the most common cause of acute flaccid paralysis worldwide. So far, it is still lack of a comprehensive overview and understanding of the national epidemiological, clinical characteristics, and the risk factors of GBS in China, as well as differences between China and other countries and regions in these respects. With the global outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), an epidemiological or phenotypic association between severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and GBS has attracted great attention. In this review, we outlined the current clinical data of GBS in China by retrieving literature, extracting and synthesizing the data of GBS in China from 2010 to 2021. Besides, we compared the characteristics of epidemiology, preceding events and clinical profiles of GBS between China and other countries and regions. Furthermore, in addition to conventional intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) and plasma exchange (PE) therapy, the potential therapeutic effects with novel medications in GBS, such as complement inhibitors, etc., have become the research focus in treatments. We found that epidemiological and clinical findings of GBS in China are approximately consistent with those in the International GBS Outcome Study (IGOS) cohort. We provided an overall picture of the present clinical status of GBS in China and summarized the global research progress of GBS, aiming to further understand the characteristics of GBS and improve the future work of GBS worldwide, especially in countries with the middle and low incomes.

In this contribution, we rationally designed and controllably fabricated a NiMo/Al2O3-montmorillonite (3D-NiMo/Al2O3-MMT) monolithic catalyst via a 3D printing strategy with economical montmorillonite (MMT) as a binder. The catalytic performance of the resulting NiMo/Al2O3-MMT for 4,6-dimethyldibenzothiophene (4,6-DMDBT) hydrodesulfurization (HDS) was evaluated. The experimental results unveil that the 3D-NiMo/Al2O3-MMT monolithic catalyst exhibits robust stability and exceptional HDS activity with 99.2% 4,6-DMDBT conversion (residual 4 ppm of S), which is remarkably superior to that of conventional NiMo/Al2O3(61.5%), NiMo/MMT (63.2%), and even NiMo/Al2O3-MMT (76.5%) prepared by the mechanical-mixing method. This should be ascribed to the synthetic effect between the MMT binder and the Al2O3substrate, which effectively weakens the interaction between the Mo species and the Lewis acids on the original Al2O3surface, thereby significantly increasing the content of reducible Mo species and considerably facilitating the formation of more highly active NiMoS phase (Type II) with optimal average stacking layers and thereafter remarkably enhancing the ultradeep HDS activity of the 3D-NiMo/Al2O3-MMT monolithic catalyst.

Electrochemically converting CO2into specified high-value products is critical for carbon neutral economics. However, governing the product distribution of the CO2electroreduction on Cu-based catalysts remains challenging. Herein, we put forward an anion enrichment strategy to efficiently dictate the route of *CO reduction by a pulsed electrolysis strategy. Upon periodically applying a positive potential on the cathode, the anion concentration in the vicinity of the electrode increases apparently. By adopting KF, KCl, and KHCO3as electrolytes, the dominant CO2electroreduction product on commercial Cu foil can be tuned into CO (53% ± 2.5), C2+ (76.6 ± 2.1%), and CH4(42.6 ± 2.1%) under pulsed electrolysis. Notably, one can delicately tailor the ratios of CO/CH4, CH4/C2+, and C2+/CO by simply changing the composition of the electrolyte. Density functional theory calculations demonstrate that locally enriched anions can affect the key CO2RR intermediates in different ways owing to their specific electronegativity and volume, which leads to the distinct selectivity. The present study highlights the importance of tuning ionic species at the electrode–electrolyte interface for customizing the CO2electroreduction products.

Despite the continuous advancement of surgical resection techniques, postoperative tumor recurrence and metastasis remain a huge challenge. Here, we constructed an injectable curcumin/doxorubicin-loaded nanoparticle (NanoCD) hydrogel, which could effectively inhibit tumor regrowth and metastasis viareshaping the tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) for highly effective postsurgical cancer treatment. NanoCD was prepared by the controlled assembly of curcumin (CUR) and doxorubicin (DOX) viaπ–π stacking and hydrogen bonding in the presence of human serum albumin. To facilitate prolonged treatment of postsurgical tumors, NanoCD was further incorporated into the temperature-sensitive Poloxamer 407 gel (NanoCD@Gel) for intracavity administration. Mechanistically, DOX induced the generation of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) and CUR reduced the ROS metabolism by inhibiting thioredoxin reductase (TrxR). The synergy of DOX and CUR amplified intracellular ROS levels and thus resulted in enhanced immunogenic cell death (ICD) of tumor cells. Upon being injected into the tumor cavity after resection, the in situ-generated NanoCD@Gel allowed the local release of CUR and DOX in a controlled manner to induce local chemotherapy and persistently activate the antitumor immune response, thereby achieving enhanced immunogenic chemotherapy with reduced systemic toxicity. Our work provides an elegant strategy for persistently stimulating effective antitumor immunity to prevent postsurgical tumor recurrence and metastasis.

Duck hepatitis B virus (DHBV) infection model was frequently used as the experimental model for human hepatitis B virus (HBV) research. In order to decipher the genetic characteristics of DHBVs from Anhui province of China, 120 duck liver tissue samples were collected and subjected to PCR screening, and 28 samples were detected as DHBV positive. Subsequently, five DHBV-positive samples were selected for genome-wide amplification and a comprehensive analysis. Comparative analysis of complete genome sequences using the MegAlign program showed that five strains of DHBVs shared 94.5–96.3% with each other and 93.2–98.7% with other reference strains in GenBank. The phylogenetic analysis showed that all five DHBV strains belonged to the evolutionary branch of “Chinese DHBV” isolates or DHBV-2. Importantly, three potential intra-genotypic recombination events, between strains AAU-6 and Guilin, strains AAU-1 and GD3, and strains AAU-6 and AAU-1, were respectively found using the RDP and SimPlot softwares and considered the first report in avihepadnaviruses. These results not only improve our understanding for molecular prevalence status of DHBV among ducks, but also provide a reference for recombination mechanism of HBV.

This article presents the design and fabrication of magnetoelectric (ME) coupling cantilever beam devices and enhanced magneto-mechano-electric (MME) coupling cantilever beam devices for potential applications in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The ME cantilever beam device, composed of directionally solidified FeGa alloy and PZT piezoelectric ceramics, exhibits a high-ME coupling coefficient of 156.2 V/(cm $\cdot $ Oe) at its resonance frequency when combined with a dc bias magnetic field. It also demonstrates a maximum ME output power of 0.21 mW under a weak ac magnetic field of 1.40 Oe. Furthermore, the MME cantilever beam devices with tip mass exhibit enhanced weak magnetic field coupling ability at zero dc bias magnetic field due to the stress concentration (SC) effect. The superposition of the magnetic torque and the ME bending moment caused by the magnetostrictive layer leads to the MME device with a tip magnet mass of 18 g shows an approximately 100 times increase in output voltage compared with the device without a tip mass. These findings indicate the potential of ME and MME devices in serving as micropower sources for WSNs by detecting and harvesting stray weak ac magnetic fields.

Estate & Gift Tax Planning Considerations for Cross-border Families 'I'm retiring and moving to Italy.' 'We're applying for green cards and moving to America.' 'I was assigned to work in [...]

To investigate the relationship between serum progesterone (P) levels on the day of blastocyst transfer and pregnancy outcomes in frozen-thawed embryo transfer (FET) cycles using hormone replacement therapy (HRT) with oral dydrogesterone for strengthened luteal phase support (LPS).

Formation of monodisperse right trigonal-bipyramidal (rTriBP) and cube-shaped CdSe nanocrystals─both being encased with six (100) facets─is found to be dictated by type of stacking faults along the (111) direction of the zinc-blende structure and an ideal facet-ligand pairing for the (100) facets. During growth with little kinetic overdriving, seeds with single twin boundary (TB) and single intrinsic stacking fault (ISF) grow into rTriBP and cube-shaped nanocrystals, respectively, through two consecutive stages. During the facet-formation stage, each seed would grow rapidly into the smallest faceted one to contain the ∼3 nm seed, with cube-shaped ones growing much faster than rTriBP ones because of the stacking-fault-dependent seed location in the final faceted nanocrystals. In the following facet-growth stage, cube-shaped nanocrystals also grow faster, presumably due to the highly reactive stacking fault edges. Consistent with this hypothesis, growth of rTriBP nanocrystals can become faster than that of cube-shaped ones by intentionally introducing additional intrinsic stacking fault(s) in the seeds. Cube-shaped and rTriBP CdSe nanocrystals exhibit distinctive optical properties, representing two classes of optical materials.

While many published studies have explored the impact of spatial heterogeneity on land-use change, few have focused on regional differences in land-use transition rules caused by urban spatial structure. In this paper, we measured urban land-use diversity by developing self-adaptive kernel density estimation and entropy weight methods and determine the urban spatial structure (composed of urban regions, inner and outer urban-rural fringes, and a rural hinterland) by applying a spectral clustering method. Combining local neighborhood effects and environmental effects, the land-use transition rules of different types of regions were mined to construct a partitioned vector cellular automata (CA) model that zonally simulates urban land-use change. The proposed model was applied to the simulation of the land-use change process in Jiangyin City, China, from 2007 to 2017. The resulting simulation accuracy was higher than that of other well-accepted CA models that do not consider urban spatial structure, and the conventional neighborhood assimilation rule was found not to be applicable to the conversion of construction land. The results and findings demonstrate that the proposed model is an effective means for urban planners to simulate and analyze urban evolution processes of cities with urban spatial structures that fit a concentric circle model.

ABSTRACT Raised intracranial pressure is a hallmark of cryptococcal meningitis and is associated with increased mortality. Continuous drainage of lumbar cerebrospinal fluid is suggested to control intracranial pressure. The complications [...]

We establish a novel definition of the fractional gradient and divergence of order α∈(0,1)through the use of Riesz potential on homogeneous Carnot groups. We introduce and investigate the distributional fractional Sobolev space and the space of fractional BVfunctions in this context. Additionally, we provide a definition of fractional Caccioppoli sets on homogeneous Carnot groups and demonstrate their blow-up property, using similar methods as outlined in [13].

The development of a competitive-cost and high-efficiency NiMo/Al2O3hydrodesulfurization (HDS) catalyst remains challenging in the field of petrochemical industry. Herein, a highly efficient NiMo/Al2O3monolithic HDS catalyst was elaborately designed and successfully fabricated via a one-pot three-dimensional (3D) printing strategy, and its HDS activity was examined for 4,6-dimethyldibenzothiophene conversion. The results unveil that the NiMo/Al2O3monolithic catalyst prepared by the 3D printing strategy (3D-NiMo/Al2O3) exhibits hierarchical structure due to the combustion of hydroxymethyl cellulose serving as adhesive, which endows the weaker metal-support-interaction between Mo oxides and Al2O3, remarkably promoting sulfidation of both Mo and Ni species and the formation of “Type II” NiMoS active phase, thereby reducing the apparent activation energy (Ea= 109.2 kJ·mol–1) and increasing the catalytic activity (TOF = 4.0 h–1) and thereafter dramatically boosting the HDS performance of 3D-NiMo/Al2O3compared with that of NiMo/Al2O3(Ea= 150.6 kJ·mol–1and TOF = 2.1 h–1) counterpart synthesized by conventional method with P123 serving as the mesoporous template. Therefore, this study offers a facile and straightforward strategy to fabricate an efficient HDS catalyst with hierarchical structures.