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Cement is a widely used construction material globally. Its manufacturing contributes to anthropogenic CO2 emissions significantly. However, its alkaline compounds can absorb CO2 from the surrounding environment and engage in a carbonation reaction, thereby functioning as a carbon sink. As a major cement producer and consumer, China has an important responsibility to rigorously investigate and accurately account for cement carbon uptake. This study presents a comprehensive analytical model of cement carbon uptake from China, revealing a substantial increase in carbon uptake from 1930 to 2021, peaking at 426.77 MtCO2 (95% Confidence Interval: 317.67–874.33 Mt CO2) in 2021. The uptake accounts for 8.10% to 45.40% of China's annual land sink and 2.51% to 4.54% of the global land sink. The cumulative carbon uptake by cement is approximately 7.06 Gt CO2 (95% CI: 5.22–9.44 Gt CO2) during this period, offsetting 50.7% of the total emissions (13.91 Gt CO2, 95% CI: 12.44–17.00 Gt CO2) from the cement industry. Notably, cement mortar contributed to most absorption (65.64%). From a life cycle perspective, the service stage of cement materials is the period where the largest CO2 sink is formed, accounting for 90.03% of the total. Therefore, the potential for carbon sequestration in cement materials and their waste is enormous. Additionally, the model improves the accuracy of cement carbon accounting, supporting both China and global carbon neutrality assessments. Thus, it is crucial for China to achieve its carbon neutrality goals sooner by prioritizing the environmental benefits of cement materials and wastes, and accelerating the development and commercialization of CO2 sequestration technologies for cement and its by-products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to evaluate the prognostic value of controlling nutritional status (CONUT) score in determining the prognosis of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) treated with conventional transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (cTACE). Methods: This study retrospectively analyzed 936 patients who underwent cTACE for HCC between January 2012 and December 2018, and divided them into two groups based on their CONUT score. To balance the bias in baseline characteristics, propensity score matched (PSM) analysis was conducted. The Kaplan–Meier method was used to establish a cumulative survival curve, and the log-rank test was employed to determine differences in overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) among the CONUT score groups. Furthermore, the Cox proportional hazard model was employed to assess the correlation between CONUT score and OS and PFS, whereby hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) were computed. Results: Before PSM, the median OS for the low (≤ 3) and high (≥ 4) CONUT group (558 vs. 378 patients) was 21.7 and 15.6 months, respectively, and the median PFS was 5.7 and 5 months. Following PSM, both the low and high CONUT score groups comprised 142 patients. The low CONUT score group exhibited a significantly longer OS compared to the high CONUT score group, as determined by the log-rank test (median OS 22.2 vs. 17.0 months, P = 0.014). No significant association was observed between CONUT group and PFS (median PFS 6.4 vs. 4.7 months, log-rank test, P = 0.121). Cox proportional hazard regression analysis revealed that a CONUT score of ≥ 4 was an independent risk factor for OS in patients with HCC who underwent cTACE (HR = 1.361; 95% CI: 1.047–1.771; P = 0.022). These findings were consistent across most subgroup analyses. Conclusion: A high CONUT score has been found to be a prognostic factor for poorer OS in patients with HCC who underwent cTACE. Level of Evidence: Level 3, Non-randomized controlled cohort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to analyze the topological structure dynamics of the complex network of stocks before and after the outbreak of the COVID-19, so as to provide a basis for preventing financial risks. We calculate Pearson correlation coefficient between enterprises according to logarithmic rate of return and trading volume ratio of enterprises' stocks, and then constructed a complex network of stock market price and volume before and after the outbreak of the COVID-19. First, through thresholding and heat map imaging of the correlation matrix, the change characteristics of the correlation between various industries in 2019 and 2020 are studied. Second, the node degree, average weighted degree, graph density, clustering coefficient, and average clustering coefficient are used to study the topological structure change of the complex network of stock correlation. Third, the principle of node betweenness centrality is used to analyze the characteristics of a complex network after removing the core nodes. The research shows that, first, under the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the correlation among industries has the characteristics of industrial clusters, that is, the correlation in a industry is strengthened. In addition to banking, the correlation between industries has weakened, and the correlation between the banking industry and other industries has strengthened. Second, the node difference in betweenness centrality of core nodes in 2020 is higher than that in 2019, indicating that the network stability in 2019 is higher than that in 2020. These two points indicate that under the influence of the COVID-19 epidemic, the complex network topology of China's entire stock market has changed, and companies need to undertake countermeasures in the face of the crisis to effectively prevent and control systemic risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to reconstruct signals that are sparse with a tight frame from undersampled data by using the ℓ q -minimization method. This problem can be cast as a ℓ q -minimization problem with a tight frame subjected to an undersampled measurement with a known noise bound. We proved that if the measurement matrix satisfies the restricted isometry property with δ 2 s ≤ 1 / 2 , there exists a value q 0 such that for any q ∈ (0 , q 0 ] , any signal that is s-sparse with a tight frame can be robustly recovered to the true signal. We estimated q 0 as q 0 = 2 / 3 in the case of δ 2 s ≤ 1 / 2 and discussed that the value of q 0 can be much higher. We also showed that when δ 2 s ≤ 0.3317 , for any q ∈ (0 , 1 ] , robust recovery for signals via ℓ q -minimization holds, which is consistent with the case of ℓ q -minimization without a tight frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The induced magnetic anisotropy, domain structure and magnetic properties of nanocrystallized Fe72.9Si15.8B6.9Nb3.2Cu1Co0.2 materials by continuous stress-annealing at 803–903 K under 0–75 MPa were systematically investigated. It was found that the tensile stress applied during annealing is beneficial to reduce the coercivity and core loss by refining the grain size of α-Fe phase. The remanence and permeability for the annealed samples at 853–903 K are negatively correlated with the induced anisotropy, which increases with the applied tensile stress. The stress-annealed samples yield magnetic easy plane perpendicular to the stress axis with an induced anisotropy constant greater than 1200 J/m3. The nanocrystalline cores with a low AC coercivity of 6.0 A/m and low core loss of 16.1 W/kg in combination with a high DC bias capability was successfully fabricated by stress-annealing the amorphous precursor at 878 K under 40 MPa. The current nanocrystalline material has potential for the application as anti-DC transformers in the electronic field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), a highly aggressive and heterogeneous subtype of breast cancer, lacks effective treatment options. Sophora flavescens Aiton, a Chinese medicinal plant, is often used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat cancer. Matrine (MAT) is an alkaloid extracted from Sophora flavescens. It has good anticancer effects, and thus can be explored as a new therapeutic agent in TNBC research. We performed bioinformatics analysis to analyze the differentially expressed genes between normal breast tissues and TNBC tissues, and comprehensive network pharmacology analyses. The activity and invasion ability of TNBC cells treated with MAT were analyzed. Apoptosis and cell cycle progression were determined using cytometry. We used Monodansylcadaverine (MDC) staining to determine the condition of autophagosomes. Finally, the expression levels of the key target proteins of the PI3K/AKT pathway were determined using western blotting. The proliferation and invasion ability of MDA-MB-231 and MDA-MB-468 can be effectively inhibited by MAT. The results of flow cytometry indicated that MAT arrested the TNBC cell cycle and induced apoptosis. In addition, we confirmed that MAT inhibited the expression of BCL-2 while up-regulating the expression of cleaved caspase-3. Moreover, enhanced intensity of MDC staining and high LC3-II expression were observed, which confirmed that MAT induced autophagy in TNBC cells. Western blotting showed that MAT inhibited the PI3K/AKT pathway and downregulated the expressions of PI3K, AKT, p-AKT, and PGK1. This study provides feasible methods, which include bioinformatics analysis and in vitro experiments, for the identification of compounds with anti-TNBC properties. MAT inhibited the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway, arrested cell cycle, as well as promoted cell apoptosis and autophagy. These experiments provide evidence for the anti-TNBC effect of MAT and identified potential targets against TNBC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Hepatic artery intervention combined with immunotarget therapy exerts excellent disease control and prolongs survival. However, the arrangement of hepatic artery intervention and systemic therapy confuses clinical decisions. Methods: A two-center, retrospective clinical study was approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee. From December 2018 to February 2022, patients with Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer stage C (BCLC-C) hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who received targeted therapy plus PD-1 inhibitors with or without hepatic artery intervention were included. According to the treatment mode, the patients were assigned to three groups: initial hepatic artery intervention combined with immunotarget therapy, immunotarget therapy sequential hepatic artery interventional therapy, and immunotarget therapy only. The survival, response, and adverse events were compared among the three groups. Subgroup analysis and univariate and multivariate prognostic analyses were also evaluated. Results: The median follow-up time was 18.3 months (95% CI 16.7 to 20.0 months). A total of 163 patients with BCLC-C stage HCC were assigned to three groups: initial hepatic artery intervention plus PD-1 inhibitors plus targeted therapy (HPT, n = 66), PD-1 inhibitors plus targeted therapy followed by hepatic artery intervention (PTH, n = 56) and PD-1 inhibitors plus targeted therapy (PT, n = 41). The median progression-free survival was 8.37 months (95% CI 6.35–10.39) with HPT versus 5.3 months (95% CI 3.48–7.12) with PTH versus 6.33 months (95% CI 3.75–8.92) with PT. The progression-free survival of the HPT group was better than that of the PTH group (HR 0.66, 95% CI 0.45–0.97, p = 0.027) and PT group (HR 0.60, 95% CI 0.39–0.92, p = 0.01). The median overall survival was 14.6 months (95% CI 10.6–18.7) with HPT, 10.0 months (95% CI 8.2–11.8) with PTH and 11.3 months (95% CI 8.3–14.3) with PT. The 1-year overall survival (OS) rates in the HPT, PTH and PT groups were 50%, 33.9%, and 34.1%, respectively. Overall survival was significantly longer in the HTP group than in the PT group (HR 0.60, 95% CI 0.361–0.996, p = 0.032). Compared with the PTH group, the overall survival of the HTP group had a prolonged survival trend (HR 0.66, 95% CI 0.416–1.032, p = 0.059). All treatment modalities were deemed equally safe. Multivariate analysis suggested that the mode of treatment, albumin level, Child‒Pugh grade and hepatectomy history were independent prognostic factors for BCLC-C HCC patients. Conclusions: Initial hepatic artery intervention combined with immunotarget therapy gained survival benefits with tolerable side effects compared with immunotarget sequential hepatic artery intervention and immunotarget therapy alone. Multivariate analysis suggested that liver reserve function was closely correlated with prognosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doping heteroatoms into graphene is effective to open the energy bandgap and increase the free carrier density, thereby improving its electronic and electrochemical properties. In this paper, CO was selected as the carbon source for the preparation of graphene through the self-propagating reaction. During the reaction, a variety of hexamethyltetramine were used to dope N atoms into the graphene when different ratios of MgO/Mg were compared. Microstructural and electrochemical characterizations were conducted to study the effects of nitrogen doping as well as MgO/Mg ratio on the performance of the graphene as supercapacitor electrode. The Raman spectra show the presence of graphene after self-propagating reaction. The graphene doped from hexamethyltetramine shows the existence of pyridinic-N, pyrrolic-N, and graphitic-N. In general, the percentages of pyridinic-N in the materials increased with the usage of hexamethyltetramine. Given the same condition, the pyridinic-N content of the samples based on MgO/Mg ratio of 8 was higher than that of the samples using MgO/Mg ratio of 4. Besides, the specific surface areas of the samples increase as MgO/Mg increased. The introduction of nitrogen atoms in the graphene increased the active sites on its surface and consequently, the specific capacity, capacity retention rate and energy density of the supercapacitor. At the current density of 1Ag−1, the specific capacity of N-SHS-8-3 was 153 Fg−1 and the capacity retention rate was 60% as the current density increased to 20Ag−1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of evidence suggests that bariatric surgery is associated with a reduced risk of some cancers. This meta-analysis aims to determine whether bariatric surgery affects pancreatic cancer risk. We conducted a comprehensive literature search of PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science databases. Fixed-effect models were used to estimate pooled data and presented as odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). Heterogeneity was assessed using the Cochran Q test and I2 test. A total of 9 cohort studies involving 1,147,473 patients were included in the analysis. The pooled OR was 0.76 (95% CI = 0.64-0.90). The Cochran Q test and I2 test indicated only mild heterogeneity (P = 0.12, I2 = 38%). In the subgroup analyses, the pooled OR was 0.67 (95% CI = 0.54–0.82) for North America. In the subgroup analyses by mean follow-up time, the pooled OR was 0.46 (95% CI = 0.28–0.74) for less than 5 years. In conclusion, bariatric surgery has a positive effect on pancreatic cancer reduction, especially in North America. This effect may diminish or disappear with time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Particle size governs the electronic and geometric structure of metal nanoparticles (NPs), shaping their catalytic performances in heterogeneous catalysis. However, precisely controlling the size of active metal NPs and thereafter their catalytic activities remain an affordable challenge in ultra-deep oxidative desulfurization (ODS) field. Herein, a series of highly-efficient VOx/boron nitride nanosheets (BNNS)@TiO2 heterostructures, therein, cetyltrimethylammonium bromide cationic surfactants serving as intercalation agent, BNNS and MXene as precursors, with various VOx NP sizes were designed and controllably constructed by a facile intercalation confinement strategy. The properties and structures of the prepared catalysts were systematically characterized by different technical methods, and their catalytic activities were investigated for aerobic ODS of dibenzothiophene (DBT). The results show that the size of VOx NPs and V5+/V4+ play decisive roles in the catalytic aerobic ODS of VOx/BNNS@TiO2 catalysts and that VOx/BNNS@TiO2-2 exhibits the highest ODS activity with 93.7% DBT conversion within 60 min under the reaction temperature of 130 °C and oxygen flow rate of 200 mL·min−1, which is due to its optimal VOx dispersion, excellent reducibility and abundant active species. Therefore, the finding here may contribute to the fundamental understanding of structure-activity in ultra-deep ODS and inspire the advancement of highly-efficient catalyst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-task learning (MTL) aims at tackling multiple tasks through one single network while guarantee all tasks can reach good performance. The main challenge in MTL is how to extract task-specific feature effectively. Existing task-specific feature extraction methods predominantly combine and stack convolutional neural networks (CNNs). However, these methods ignore two points: the geometric variations of the target object have different effects on each task; discriminative features for each task lack a mechanism to ensure they are focused on. In this work, we propose a Deformable-Attention Multi-Task Network (DAMTN) to improve the capability of extracting geometric invariance discriminative features. In particular, deformable convolution is introduced to learn geometric variation rules of the target object for different tasks, and attention mechanism helps task-specific networks focus on discriminative parts. The proposed DAMTN can be trained end-to-end. We empirically analyze the contribution of different components in the proposed method and demonstrate state-of-the-art performance on multiple classification tasks as well as semantic segmentation task and depth estimation task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims at the problem of reconstruction the unknown links in debt networks among enterprises. We use the topological matrix of the enterprise debt network as the object of reconstruction and use the time series data of accounts receivable and payable as input and output information in the debt network to establish an underdetermined linear system about the topological matrix of the debt network. We establish an iteratively reweighted least-squares algorithm, which is an algorithm in compressed sensing. This algorithm uses reweighted ℓ 2 -minimization to approximate ℓ 1 -norm of the target vectors. We solve the ℓ 1 -minimization problem of the underdetermined linear system using the iteratively reweighted least-squares algorithm and obtain the reconstructed topological matrix of the debt network. Simulation experiments show that the topology matrix reconstruction method of enterprise debt networks based on compressed sensing can reconstruct over 70% of the unknown network links, and the error is controlled within 2%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML) is an aggressive pediatric myeloproliferative disease, and newly diagnosed patients frequently cannot tolerate hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) at diagnosis due to their poor condition. This retrospective analysis aimed to explore the short-term effect of decitabine-dominant therapy on improving the condition of JMML patients before HSCT. The subjects were 10 JMML patients. All patients were treated with decitabine after low-dose chemotherapy with an interval of 4 weeks before bridging to HSCT. The median treatment course was 3 cycles, and the overall response rate (ORR) was 70.0% after one cycle and 71.4% after three cycles. White blood cell (WBC) and monocyte counts were significantly lower after treatment, and spleen volume was also lower, though not significantly lower. The 12 month progression-free survival rate (PFS) was 80.0 ± 12.6%. Decitabine-dominant therapy was beneficial for reducing tumor burden and improving clinical condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The absence of two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) ferromagnetic crystals with both above-room-temperature strong intrinsic ferromagnetism and large perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) severely hinders practical applications of 2D vdW crystals in next-generation low-power magnetoelectronic and spintronic devices. Here, we report a vdW intrinsic ferromagnetic crystal Fe3GaTe2 that exhibits record-high above-room-temperature Curie temperature (Tc, ~350-380 K) for known 2D vdW intrinsic ferromagnets, high saturation magnetic moment (40.11 emu/g), large PMA energy density (~4.79 × 105 J/m3), and large anomalous Hall angle (3%) at room temperature. Such large room-temperature PMA is better than conventional widely-used ferromagnetic films like CoFeB, and one order of magnitude larger than known 2D vdW intrinsic ferromagnets. Room-temperature thickness and angle-dependent anomalous Hall devices and direct magnetic domains imaging based on Fe3GaTe2 nanosheet have been realized. This work provides an avenue for room-temperature 2D ferromagnetism, electrical control of 2D ferromagnetism and promote the practical applications of 2D-vdW-integrated spintronic devices. In isotropic two dimensional systems, long range ferromagnetic order is supressed by thermal fluctuations, and it is due to magnetic anisotropy that van der Waals magnetic materials can have ferromagnetic ordering at finite temperatures. Usually this magnetic anisotropy is relatively small, but in this manuscript Zhang et al make a two dimensional van der Waals material with exceptionally large perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and ferromagnetic ordering that exits up to 350 K. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we focus on the semi-supervised person re-identification (re-ID) task, where the training data includes some labeled data and most unlabeled data. Since the re-ID task is used for cross-camera scenes, learning camera invariant deep features become critical. We propose a novel end-to-end semi-supervised person re-ID method by introducing the context information, i.e., the camera information (camera ID) which could be easily collected without any manual annotation. Specifically, we design a camera-based hard triplet loss for (pseudo-) labeled data to learn the camera invariant features. The loss not only learns the similar features between the cross-camera anchor and the hard positive sample but also learns the distinguishing features between the within-camera anchor and the hard negative sample. For unlabeled data, we use both diversity loss and similarity loss to diversify unlabeled data features and mine similar samples. And we design an adaptive feature fusion module, which could adaptively combine the Global Average Pooling (GAP) and Global Max Pooling (GMP) features to learn person-specific discriminative information in a global-local manner. Furthermore, to validate the effectiveness of our approach, we conduct extensive experiments on two large-scale image re-ID datasets, including Market-1501 and DukeMTMC-reID. The experimental results demonstrate that our approach outperforms the state-of-the-art method by 4.8% on Market-1501, and 7.2% on DukeMTMC-reID. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

FBXW2 is a poorly characterized F-box protein, as a tumor suppressor that inhibits growth and metastasis of lung cancer by promoting ubiquitylation and degradation of oncogenic proteins, including SKP2 and β-catenin. However, what the biological functions of FBXW2 in prostate cancer cells and whether FBXW2 targets other substrates to involve in progression of prostate cancer is still unclear. Here, we reported that overexpression of FBXW2 attenuated proliferation and metastasis of PCa models both in vitro and in vivo, while FBXW2 depletion exhibited the opposite effects. Intriguingly, FBXW2 was an E3 ligase for EGFR in prostate cancer. EGFR protein level and its half-life were extended by FBXW2 depletion, while EGFR protein level was decreased, and its half-life was shortened upon overexpression of FBXW2, but not its dominant-negative mutant. Importantly, FBXW2 bond to EGFR via its consensus degron motif (TSNNST), and ubiquitylated and degraded EGFR, resulting in repression of EGF function. Thus, our data uncover a novel that FBXW2 as a tumor suppressor of prostate cancer, inhibits EGFR downstream by promoting EGFR ubiquitination and degradation, resulting in repression of cell proliferation and metastasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effector T cells, which are abundant but are short-lived after reinfusion into the body, are generally used for T-cell therapy, and antitumor immunity is typically not maintained over the long term. Genetic modification by early differentiated T cells and reinfusion has been shown to enhance antitumor immunity in vivo. This study overexpressed the characteristic transcription factors of differentiated early T cells by transfecting effector T cells with transcription factor recombinant lentivirus (S6 group: BCL6, EOMES, FOXP1, LEF1, TCF7, KLF7; S1 group: BCL6, EOMES, FOXP1, KLF7; S3 group: BCL6, EOMES, FOXP1, LEF1) to induce a sufficient number of effector T cells to dedifferentiate and optimize the transcription factor system. The results revealed that overexpression of early characteristic transcription factors in effector T cells upregulated the expression of early T cell differentiation markers (CCR7 and CD62L), with the S1 group having the highest expression level, while the rising trend of late differentiation marker (CD45RO) expression was suppressed. Moreover, the expression of early differentiation-related genes (ACTN1, CERS6, BCL2) was significantly increased, while the expression of late differentiation-related genes (KLRG-1) and effector function-related genes (GNLY, GZMB, PRF1) was significantly decreased; this difference in expression was more significant in the S1 group than in the other two experimental groups. The antiapoptotic ability of each experimental group was significantly enhanced, while the secretion ability of TNF-α and IFN-γ was weakened, with the effector cytokine secretion ability of the S1 group being the weakest. Transcriptomic analysis showed that the gene expression profile of each experimental group was significantly different from that of the control group, with differences in the gene expression pattern and number of differentially expressed genes in the S1 group compared with the other two experimental groups. The differentially expressed gene enrichment pathways were basically related to the cell cycle, cell division, and immune function. In conclusion, overexpression of early characteristic transcription factors in effector T cells induces their dedifferentiation, and induction of dedifferentiation by the S1 group may be more effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We focus on the one-example person re-identification (Re-ID) task, where each identity has only one labeled example along with many unlabeled examples. Since each identity has only one labeled example, the number of initialized label examples is small, and the body parts of person are not aligned due to changes in person pose and camera angle under the camera. Therefore, the distinguishing information of learning labeled and unlabeled examples is challenging. To overcome these problems, we propose an end-to-end multi-task training network for semi-supervised Re-ID. First, we impose a part segmentation (PS) constraint on feature maps, forcing a module to predict part labels from the feature maps and enhance alignment. Second, we carefully design the network named Multiple Branch Network (MBN). MBN is a multi-branch deep network architecture, which consisting of one branch for global feature representation and two branches for local feature representation, local feature representation that including horizontal stripes representation and PS representation, respectively. Finally, loss function fusion is designed to learn discriminative features for semi-supervised Re-ID. Specifically, the MBN model is optimized by mining the object classification loss, exclusive loss and PS loss simultaneously. We validate the effectiveness of our approach by demonstrating its superiority over the state-of-the-art methods on the standard benchmark datasets, including Market-1501, DukeMTMC-reID. Notably, the rank-1 accuracy of our method outperforms the state-of-the-art method by 15.9 points (absolute, i.e., 71.7% vs. 55.8%) on Market-1501 and 8.9 points on DukeMTMC-reID. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State-of-the-art Re-ID methods based on unsupervised domain adaption transferred the domain knowledge by pre-training model on labeled source domain and fine-tuned the pre-trained model with pseudo labels generated by clustering samples on unlabeled target domain. Unfortunately, compared with supervised Re-ID methods, the performance of exiting clustering-based UDA Re-ID methods dropped sharply, since these methods utilized a not good enough baseline and seldom handled the noisy pseudo labels generated by clustering algorithm. In this paper, we try to address the UDA problem by designing a Strong Clustering-based Unsupervised Re-ID (SCURID) baseline for further research at first. Then, we integrate the hard labels and soft multilabels to learn more discriminative features on a unified angular regularized metric space. Specifically, we design the angular margin losses consisting of Hard Angular Margin Identification (HAMI) loss and Soft Angular Margin Identification (SAMI) loss. The HAMI loss can learn generalizable and discriminative features through hard pseudo labels generated by clustering on unlabeled target domain. The SAMI loss is proposed to refine the hard noisy pseudo labels through the soft multilabels obtained from peer network. Benefited from SCURID baseline and two angular margin losses, it enables the clustering-based UDA Re-ID model to alleviate the negative effect of noisy labels and toward more discriminability. Comprehensive and extensive experiments on three public available Re-ID datasets, e.g., Matket-1501, DukeMTMC-reID and MSMT17, demonstrate that our proposed method can outperform the state-of-the-art results on UDA Re-ID task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The key of fine-grained image categorization is to locate discriminative regions and feature extraction from these regions correspond to subtle visual traits. Some of the current methods use the attention mechanism to identify the discriminative region, but ignore that there is still a large amount of non-foreground noise information in these regions. In this work, we propose a Subtler Mixed Attention Network (SMA-Net), which contains two modules: 1) Discriminative region location module uses the channel attention mechanism to construct a feature pyramid network to locate the discriminative regions. And use the positive effect of classification to screen a group of the most discriminative regions and learn through rank to learn. 2) Mixed attention module (MAM) of feature extraction that can focus on subtler and differentiated regions. We divide the feature map into intervals according to regions, and learn attention features according to regional orientation. Then the attention maps are multiplied to the input feature map for adaptive features reinforce. At the same time, MAM is a lightweight module that can be easily integrated into advanced networks without increasing too much calculation. We validated our SMA-Net through substantial experiments on Caltech-UCSD Birds (CUB-200-2011), Stanford Cars, CIFAR-10, Fish4Knowledge and Flower17. In particular, the accuracy on two widely used fine-grained datasets, CUB-2011 and Stanford Cars, reached 87.71% and 94.37%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a famous hole transporting material, nickle oxide (NiOx) has drawn enormous attention due to its low cost and superior stability. However, the relatively low conductivity and high-density surface trap states of NiOx severely limit device performance in solar cell applications. Interfacial engineering is an efficient approach to achieve remarkable hole-transporting performance by surface passivation. Herein, the efficient NiOx hole transport layer was prepared by surface passivation engineering strategy via facile solution processes with cesium iodide (CsI). It is demonstrated that CsI plays a super-effective dual-function role in inverted solar cell device: On one hand, the presence of CsI hugely passivates the surface trap states at the NiOx/perovskite interface along with obviously improved conductivity by the incorporated Cs+; on the other hand, the ions immigration is significantly suppressed by the presence of I ion for high-quality perovskite films, resulting in a stable contact interface. The ameliorative interface leads to largely reduced carrier non-radiative recombination, attributing to boosted carrier extraction efficiency. As a result, decent power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 18.48% with a noticeable fill factor (FF) beyond 80% was achieved. This facile and efficient surface engineering approach with dual-function shows excellent potential for the design of high-performance functional interfacial modification layer to achieve high-performance solar cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of the bubble on the heat transfer between liquid and walls extensively exists in industrial fields such as pressurized water, large capacity electronic equipment cooling nuclear reactor and heat exchanger under different gravity environment. Therefore, it is very significance to explore and understand the contribution of the bubble to these heat transfer phenomena. In this paper, the fluid volume (VOF) method is used to study the influence of the bubble on the heat transfer between liquid and a hot wall under complex shears. The influence of the bubble on the heat transfer (including temperature field and heat transfer coefficient) on the hot wall under different gravity levels and shear rates is analyzed in detail. To obtain some mechanism explanations, the bubble shape and the flow field around it are presented. The results show that the bubble shape has a direct dependence on the magnitude of shear rate and gravity level, and it directly affects the flow and temperature fields, and the heat transfer on the wall. When the shear rate is a constant, the increase of gravity level will make the bubble shape tend to be symmetric. When the gravity level is constant, the bubble is stretched along the shear direction. When both shear are and gravity level are maximum at the same time, the bubble shape is the most complex, similar to the tadpole shape. Under the pure shear, the heat transfer mode changes from heat conduction to heat convection with the increase of shear rate. Under the simultaneous action of gravity and shear, the heat transfer is enhanced in the downstream region of the bubble; but the heat transfer decrease at the bubble position and in the downstream region, and the decrease degree of the heat transfer is related to the distance between the bubble and the wall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The oscillation characteristics of a single droplet after normal collision with smooth surfaces are numerically investigated by using volume of fluid (VOF) method. An adaptive mesh refinement technique is used to guarantee the high computational accuracy of the interaction between the falling liquid droplet and the solid surface. The results of VOF simulations are consonant with the previously reported experiments. The effects of seven key issues on the oscillation characteristics of a liquid droplet advancing/recoiling onto both hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces are studied quantitatively with the help of dimensionless wetting length, average amplitude ratio and average oscillation period. These issues include impact velocity, contact angle, slip length, surface tension, droplet density, liquid viscosity and droplet diameter. Especially, surface and interface effects gradually become a primary factor that controls the droplet behavior as droplet size is reduced, and therefore the oscillation concerning micrometer-size droplet may be damped more rapidly. The presented study can contribute to provide more insight into the wetting kinetics of droplet collision, the interface interaction between the liquid droplet and the solid surface, and the oscillation features of the droplet spreading/receding after droplet impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Control of ferromagnetism is of critical importance for a variety of proposed spintronic and topological quantum technologies. Inducing long-range ferromagnetic order in ultrathin 2D crystals will provide more functional possibility to combine their unique electronic, optical and mechanical properties to develop new multifunctional coupled applications. Recently discovered intrinsic 2D ferromagnetic crystals such as Cr2Ge2Te6, CrI3 and Fe3GeTe2 are intrinsically ferromagnetic only below room temperature, mostly far below room temperature (Curie temperature, ~20–207 K). Here we develop a scalable method to prepare freestanding non-van der Waals ultrathin 2D crystals down to mono- and few unit cells (UC) and report unexpected strong, intrinsic, ambient-air-robust, room-temperature ferromagnetism with TC up to ~367 K in freestanding non-van der Waals 2D CrTe crystals. Freestanding 2D CrTe crystals show comparable or better ferromagnetic properties to widely-used Fe, Co, Ni and BaFe12O19, promising as new platforms for room-temperature intrinsically-ferromagnetic 2D crystals and integrated 2D devices. Van der Waals crystals have recently been shown to exhibit ferromagnetism, however the Curie temperature is typically quite low. Herein, Wu et al succeed in producing mono and few layer crystals of CrTe, a non-van der Waals crystal, and demonstrate strong intrinsic room temperature ferromagnetism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hierarchical Fe-MFI were synthesized by post-treatment with TPAOH and applied as catalysts in liquid phase dehydration of 1-phenylethanol. The catalysts were characterized by XRD, TEM and N2 physisorption et al. After treatment, more ferric ions occupied zeolite framework sites, leading to increase in Brønsted acid sites content. Moreover, secondary pores with pore size range in 8–100 nm were introduced into inside zeolite. The secondary pores improved the accessibility of active centers and diffusion properties of reactants. The conversion of 1-phenylethanol reached 90% with 99% styrene selectivity in 1.5 h at 80 °C, while the reaction time of hierarchical Fe-MFI is only a half of microporous Fe-MFI zeolite. Moreover, the hierarchical Fe-MFI could be reused for at least five times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weather recognition is a significant technique for many potential computer vision applications in our daily lives. Generally, most existing works treat weather recognition as a single-label classification task, which cannot describe the weather conditions comprehensively due to the complex co-occurrence dependencies between different weather conditions. In this paper, we propose a novel Graph Convolution Networks with Attention (GCN-A) model for multi-label weather recognition. To our best knowledge, this is the first attempt to introduce GCN into weather recognition. Specifically, we employ GCN to capture weather co-occurrence dependencies via a directed graph. The graph is built over weather labels, where each node (weather label) is represented by word embeddings of a weather label. Furthermore, we design a re-weighted mechanism to build weather correlation matrix for information propagation among different nodes in GCN. In addition, we develop a channel-wise attention module to extract informative semantic features of weather for effective model training. Compared with the state-of-the-art methods, experiment results on two widely used benchmark datasets demonstrate that our proposed GCN-A model achieves promising performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Person re-identification plays important roles in many practical applications. Due to various human poses, complex backgrounds and similarity of person clothes, person re-identification is still a challenging task. In this paper, we mainly focus on the robust and discriminative appearance feature representation and proposed a novel multi-appearance method for person re-identification. First, we proposed a deep feature fusion method and get the multi-appearance feature by combining two Convolutional Neural Networks. Then, in order to further enhance the representation of the appearance feature, the multi-part model was constructed by combining the whole body and the six body parts. Additionally, we optimized the feature extraction process by adding a pooling layer. Comprehensive and comparative experiments with the state-of-the-art methods over publicly available datasets demonstrated that the proposed method can get promising results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fine-grained recognition is a very challenging issue, since it is difficulty to mine discriminative and subtle feature for objects with similar visual appearance. Because massive manual annotations (e.g., bounding box for discriminative regions) are time-consuming and labor-consuming, existing methods designed single form of attention model outputted discriminative regions in a weakly supervised way. In this paper, we proposed a novel method named a Spatial-Channel Aware Attention Filters (SCAF) to address the weakly supervised fine-grained recognition problem. Compared with the previous attention models, SCAF can obtain attentions-aware features from two dimensions, i.e., the spatial location of image and the channel of feature maps. With the proposed SCAF, the model can enhance the discriminative regions on both spatial and channel dimensions simultaneously. In addition, the multi-channel network multi-level structure are designed to extract richer regional features. Moreover, focal loss is introduced to balance the samples' distribution of fine-grained image dataset. Comprehensive and comparable experiments are conducted in publicly available datasets, and the experimental results show that our method can achieve the state-of-the-art performance on fine-grained recognition tasks. For instance, we achieve 99.370%, 80.749% accuracy on two underwater datasets respectively, i.e., Fish4Knowlege and Wild Fish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing immunoassay for absolute quantitation of protein biomarkers in Formalin Fixed Paraffin Embedded (FFPE) samples promises improved objectivity, consistency and accuracy in daily clinical practice. The feasibility of Quantitative Dot Blot (QDB) method for this purpose was explored in this study. We were able to measure HER2 protein levels using 0.5 µg/sample total protein lysate extracted from 2 × 5 µm FFPE slices absolutely and quantitatively using QDB method in 332 breast cancer FFPE samples. HER2 levels measured using two clinically validated antibodies for immunohistochemistry respectively were highly correlated (r = 0.963). We also achieved area under the curve (AUC) at 0.9998 ± 0.0002 (p < 0.0001, n = 224) with IHC analysis, and 0.9942 ± 0.0031 (p < 0.0001, n = 319) with combined results from IHC and Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) analyses when analyzed with Receiver Operative Characteristics analysis (ROC) respectively. When the results were converted dichotomously with optimized cutoffs from ROC analyses, we achieved 99.5% concordance with IHC; and 96.9% with combined results from both IHC and FISH analyses. Therefore, we were able to demonstrate QDB method as the first immunoassay platform for absolute quantitation of protein biomarkers in FFPE samples to meet the need of daily clinical practice, especially for local laboratories or laboratories in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given any subset selection Z for posets, we study two weakenings of the known concept of Z -predistributivity, namely, Z -quasidistributivity and Z -meet-distributivity. The former generalizes quasicontinuity, and the latter meet-continuity of complete lattices. We show for global completions Z that the Z -quasidistributive and Z -meet-distributive posets are the Z -predistributive ones. For the Z -Δ-ideal completion Z Δ P = { Y ⊆ P : Δ Z Y = Y } , P -quasidistributivity is Z -quasidistributivity plus Z Δ -quasidistributivity, provided Δ Z is idempotent. For Z -continuous normal completions e : P → N, we show that Z -quasidistributivity of P implies that of N, and the converse holds as well if e is Z -initial. This supplements the corresponding results, due to Erné, on the completion-invariance of Z -predistributivity and Z -meet-distributivity. If Z is a subset system and the Z -below relation on the subsets of a poset P has the interpolation property then P is Z -quasidistributive and may be embedded in a cube by a map that is Z Δ -continuous and continuous for the lower topologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metal hybrid halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are very sensitive to air, and it is challenging to obtain air-processed, air-stable, and highly crystalline perovskite films. Photovoltaic performance decays dramatically due to air humidity influence with power conversion efficiency (PCE) of most air-processed PSCs < 15%. In this work, we develop a facile method to air-processed, highly crystalline (MA0.2FA0.8PbI3)1.0(CsPbBr3)0.05 perovskite films in ambient air with large grain size and low trap density based on mix-cation single crystal engineering. This method shows 75% increase in grain size and 28% decrease in trap density than conventional molecule/ion solution mixing-processed method. The large grain, low trap density, andhigh crystalline perovskite films result in high-efficient and air-stable PSCs. Consequently, the PCE increases to 36.7% from 12.56% for conventional molecule/ion solution mixing-processed devices and to 17.17% for single crystal engineering-based ones. Furthermore, benefiting from high moisture resistance of mix-cation single crystal engineering-based films, the PSC air stability has been improved significantly and 72% of the initial performance retains after 40 days of storage in ambient environment with a relative humidity of 60% at 25 °C without any encapsulation, with a 26% slower degradation rate than conventional solution-mixing method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel Zn2+ fluorescent probe Nʹ-((4′-(diphenylamino)-4-hydroxy-[1,1′-biphenyl]-3-yl)methylene)-2-hydroxybenzohydrazide (TPA-HPH) with a larger Stokes shift (210 nm) was designed and synthesized, which was seen to be highly selective and sensitive to Zn2+ ion over other metal ions in the system of MeCN:H2O (V/V = 6:4, pH = 7.0). Meanwhile, it was observed that the TPA-HPH solution changed from colorless to yellow by "naked eye" when Zn2+ was added. Under optimized conditions, the fluorescence intensity of the probe showed a good linear relationship with Zn2+ ion concentration in the range of 0–10 μM with a low detection limit of 7.3 × 10−10 M. The fluorescent mechanism was proposed. Most importantly, TPA-HPH could realize on-site monitor and live cell imaging for Zn2+ ion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of Li dendrites and the instability of the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) layer during plating/stripping has hindered the practical application of high-energy-density batteries based on a lithium metal anode. Building a stable interfacial layer is effective in preventing lithium corrosion by the electrolyte and controlling the deposition of lithium metal. Here, we present a robust polydopamine-Cu ion (PDA-Cu2+) coating layer formed by the aggregation of nanoparticles and Cu ions, which can be obtained by a subtle immersion strategy. We demonstrate that the PDA-Cu2+ protective layer, with a unique structure comprising nanoparticles, can regulate and guide Li metal deposition, and together with Cu ions, forms a lubricating surface to facilitate uniform Li ion diffusion and induce stable SEI layer formation. Li anodes with this PDA-Cu2+ layer modification ultimately achieve higher Coulombic efficiencies, which are consistently stable for over 650 cycles at 0.5 mA·cm−2 without Li dendrites. The introduced PDA-Cu2+ coating can adhere to any material of any shape; additionally, the operation can be realized on a large scale because of its simplicity. These merits provide a promising approach for developing stable and safe lithium metal batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-performance perovskite solar cell processed in ambient air is a big challenge due to the sensitivity of perovskite films to air. Many defects are generated easily at grain boundaries and in the perovskite films by conventional molecular/ion precursor solution mixing methods (i.e., solution mixing-based method), which restrict its stability in air and photovoltaic performance with most power conversion efficiency less than 15%. In this work, we develop a facile method for air-processed, highly crystalline, quasi-3D perovskite film with large grain size (over 6.6 times bigger than that from control conventional method) and improved ambient air stability by phenylethylammonium (PEA)-doped MA1−xPEAxPbI3 perovskite crystal engineering. Furthermore, benefiting from PEA+ doping and crystal engineering, the trap density decreases 50% compared with control. Consequently, with the optimal concentration of PEA doping, the power conversion efficiency increases from 15.6% for conventional solution mixing-based perovskite solar cells to 17.6% for crystal engineering-based ones with significantly improved moisture stability. The perovskite crystal engineering-based solar cells without any encapsulation retain 75% of the initial performance after 30-day storage in ambient air under a relative humidity of 50 ± 10%, and two times faster degradation rate is observed for control, conventional solution mixing-based perovskite solar cells when compared with crystal engineering-based ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The magnetic properties of (Pr1−xSmx)2Fe14B melt-spun ribbons with varying x from 0 to 1.0 have been studied. The optimum magnetic property of Pr2Fe14B ribbon could be obtained with the surface velocity of copper wheel of 30 m/s. By melt spinning method, the formation of α-Fe impurity phase in the (Pr1−xSmx)2Fe14B samples could be inhibited, and the grain could be aligned. Sm element could be incorporated into Pr2Fe14B main crystalline phase and formed (Pr,Sm)2Fe14B phase with space group P42/mnm. The Curie temperature (Tc) of the (Pr1−xSmx)2Fe14B ribbons increases gradually from 555 to 617 K with the increase of Sm content x. Both the coercivity (Hc) and remanence ratio (Mr/Ms) decrease firstly and then increase with the Sm content increasing. As long as the Sm content x does not exceed 0.1, the squareness of demagnetization curve remains good. The critical value of transition from easy c-axis to easy plane for (Pr1−xSmx)2Fe14B ribbons is x= 0.6. When the Sm content x is up to 0.6, all the Hc and Mr/Ms achieved the minimum value, i.e., 243 Oe and 0.346, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Fram Strait (FS) is the primary region of sea ice export from the Arctic Ocean and thus plays an important role in regulating the amount of sea ice and fresh water entering the North Atlantic seas. A 5 a (2011-2015) sea ice thickness record retrieved from CryoSat-2 observations is used to derive a sea ice volume flux via the FS. Over this period, a mean winter accumulative volume flux (WAVF) based on sea ice drift data derived from passivemicrowave measurements, which are provided by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and the Institut Francais de Recherche pour d’Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER), amounts to 1 029 km3 (NSIDC) and 1 463 km3 (IFREMER), respectively. For this period, a mean monthly volume flux (area flux) difference between the estimates derived from the NSIDC and IFREMER drift data is-62 km3 per month (-18×106 km2 per month). Analysis reveals that this negative bias is mainly attributable to faster IFREMER drift speeds in comparison with slower NSIDC drift data. NSIDC-based sea ice volume flux estimates are compared with the results from the University of Bremen (UB), and the two products agree relatively well with a mean monthly bias of (5.7±45.9) km3 per month for the period from January 2011 to August 2013. IFREMER-based volume flux is also in good agreement with previous results of the 1990s. Compared with P1 (1990/1991-1993/1994) and P2 (2003/2004-2007/2008), the WAVF estimates indicate a decline of more than 600 km3 in P3 (2011/2012-2014/2015). Over the three periods, the variability and the decline in the sea ice volume flux are mainly attributable to sea ice motion changes, and second to sea ice thickness changes, and the least to sea ice concentration variations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

3-Hydroxy-1-propanesulfonic acid (HPSA) was applied as a modification layer on poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly (styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) film via spin-coating, resulting in a massive boost of the conductivity of PEDOT:PSS film, and thus the as-formed PEDOT:PSS/HPSA bilayer film was successfully used as a transparent electrode for ITO-free polymer solar cells (PSCs). Under the optimized concentration of HPSA (0.2 mol L−1), the PEDOT:PSS/HPSA bilayer film has a conductivity of 1020 S cm−1, which is improved by about 1400 times of the pristine PEDOT:PSS film (0.7 S cm−1). The sheet resistance of the PEDOT:PSS/HPSA bilayer film was 98 Ω sq−1, and its transparency in the visible range was over 80%. Both parameters are comparable to those of ITO, enabling its suitability as the transparent electrode. According to atomic force microscopy (AFM), UV-Vis and Raman spectroscopic measurements, the conductivity enhancement was resulted from the removal of PSS moiety by methanol solvent and HPSA-induced segregation of insulating PSS chains along with the conformation transition of the conductive PEDOT chains within PEDOT:PSS. Upon applying PEDOT:PSS/HPSA bilayer film as the transparent electrode substituting ITO, the ITO-free polymer solar cells (PSCs) based on poly[N-9″-hepta-decanyl-2,7-carbazole-alt-5,5-(4′,7′-di-2-thienyl-2′,1′,3′-benzothiadiazole)]:[6,6]-phenyl C71-butyric acid methyl ester (PC71BM) (PCDTBT:PC71BM) active layer exhibited a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 5.52%, which is comparable to that of the traditional ITO-based devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nitrogen-doped hierarchical porous carbon materials were simply prepared from phenolic formaldehyde resin using sodium citrate as activation agent and hexamethylenetetramine as nitrogen source. The hierarchical porous structure of the obtained carbon samples is helpful for ion transport and greatly promote the capacitance properties of the carbon materials. The physical and chemical properties tests show that the as-prepared materials have characteristics of amorphous carbons. The low-temperature N2 sorption experiment shows that the maximum BET specific area of the as-prepared samples can be up to 1256 m2 g−1, with an ideal hierarchical porous structure comprised of a large number of micropores and a certain amount of mesopores and macropores. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy demonstrates the NHPCs have high doping (1.56–6.19 wt%) and oxygen content (6.43–11.88 at.%). Benefitting from both the high specific surface area and distinct hierarchical porous structure, the obtained samples exhibit excellent electrochemical performances when used as electrode materials. The optimal sample exhibits a high specific capacitance (CSP) of 261 F g−1 at a 0.05 A g−1, with a good rate capability of 71% (185 F g−1 at 20 A g−1). The carbon material also shows an excellent long cycle stability (98% capacitance retention after 5000 cycles). All results indicate that the work sheds light on the technological innovation in carbon materials for energy storage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phase relations in the RFeB-YFeB (R = Nd and Pr) systems have been investigated by means of X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), differential thermal analysis (DTA), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) equipped with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). Crystal structure parameters for all studied alloys (RY)FeB (R = Nd and Pr) have been determined by Rietveld refinements. Their structures are similar to that of the NdFeB phase with tetragonal structure (space group P4/mnm). The continuous solid solutions are formed in these systems. The lattice parameters and unit cell volumes of the (RY)FeB (R = Nd and Pr) solid solutions decrease gradually with increasing Y content. The DTA results present that the decomposition temperature of (RY)FeB (R = Nd and Pr) rises with x ranging from 0 to 1.0. The vertical sections of the RFeB-YFeB (R = Nd and Pr) systems are presented in this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inflammation induced by high-fat diet (HFD) is of critical importance in the development of hepatic steatosis. The role of chemerin in the progress of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) remains controversial. Here, we have evaluated the effects and mechanism of chemerin on insulin sensitivity and inflammation. An inhibitor (wortmannin) and agonist (insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) of phosphatidyl inositol 3-kinase (PI3K) were applied to Kupffer cells (KCs) after treatment with a concentration gradient of chemerin in vitro. Mice were subjected to both HFD and intra-peritoneal injections of wortmannin and IGF-1 for 12 weeks. Levels of cytokines were evaluated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays and the mRNA and protein levels in the KCs were tested by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and western blotting, respectively. Our data suggested that levels of interleukin 1β (IL-1β) and IL-18 in the KCs and mice treated with wortmannin were significantly lower than that of IGF-1. Consistently, the expression of chemokine-like receptor 1 (CMKLR1) and nucleotide oligomerization domain (NOD)-like receptor family pyrin domain containing 3 (NLRP3) was significantly lower in the KCs and mice treated with wortmannin than those treated with IGF-1. Consistently, liver function, insulin resistance, and hepatic steatosis were much more severe in mice treated with IGF-1 than those treated with wortmannin. In conclusions, PI3K inhibition attenuates hepatic steatosis and KC-mediated inflammation via down-regulation of CMKLR1 and NLRP3 in HFD mice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the concept of Frink quasicontinuous posets is introduced. The main results are: (1) a poset is a Frink quasicontinuous poset if and only if its normal completion is a quasicontinuous lattice; (2) a poset is precontinuous if and only if it is Frink quasicontinuous and meet precontinuous; (3) when a Frink quasicontinuous poset satisfies certain conditions, the way below relation has the interpolation property; (4) the category of quasicontinuous lattices with complete homomorphisms is a full reflective subcategory of the category of Frink quasicontinuous posets with cut-stable maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One debate in mathematical cognition centers on the single-representation model versus the two-representation model. Using an improved number Stroop paradigm (i.e., systematically manipulating physical size distance), in the present study we tested the predictions of the two models for number magnitude processing. The results supported the single-representation model and, more importantly, explained how a design problem (failure to manipulate physical size distance) and an analytical problem (failure to consider the interaction between congruity and task-irrelevant numerical distance) might have contributed to the evidence used to support the two-representation model. This study, therefore, can help settle the debate between the single-representation and two-representation models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concepts of hypercontinuous posets and generalized completely continuous posets are introduced. It is proved that for a poset P the following three conditions are equivalent: (1) P is hypercontinuous; (2) the dual of P is generalized completely continuous; (3) the normal completion of P is a hypercontinuous lattice. In addition, the relational representation and the intrinsic characterization of hypercontinuous posets are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Olfactory dysfunction is a major non-motor symptom that appears during the early stages of Parkinson's Disease (PD), a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra (SN). Depletion of SN dopaminergic neurons by 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) is widely used as a model for PD and ultimately results in motor deficits. However, it is largely unknown whether olfactory behavior and, more importantly, neural activity in the olfactory bulb (OB) are impaired prior to the appearance of motor deficits. We partially depleted the SN dopaminergic population in mice by injection of 6-OHDA. Seven days after injection of 6-OHDA, motor ability was unchanged but olfactory-driven behaviors were significantly impaired. Injection of 6-OHDA into the SN significantly increased the power of the ongoing local field potential in the OB for all frequency bands, and decreased odor-evoked excitatory beta responses and inhibitory high-gamma responses. Moreover, 6-OHDA treatment led to increased odor-evoked calcium responses in the mitral cells in the OB of awake mice. These data suggest that the olfactory deficits caused by depletion of the SN dopaminergic population are likely due to abnormal hyperactivity of the mitral cells in the OB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long-standing issue of lithium dendrite growth during repeated deposition or dissolution processes hinders the practical use of lithium-metal anodes for high-energy density batteries. Here, we demonstrate a promising lithiophilic-lithiophobic gradient interfacial layer strategy in which the bottom lithiophilic zinc oxide/carbon nanotube sublayer tightly anchors the whole layer onto the lithium foil, facilitating the formation of a stable solid electrolyte interphase, and prevents the formation of an intermediate mossy lithium corrosion layer. Together with the top lithiophobic carbon nanotube sublayer, this gradient interfacial layer can effectively suppress dendrite growth and ensure ultralong-term stable lithium stripping/plating. This strategy is further demonstrated to provide substantially improved cycle performance in copper current collector, 10 cm2 pouch cell and lithium-sulfur batteries, which, coupled with a simple fabrication process and wide applicability in various materials for lithium-metal protection, makes the lithiophilic-lithiophobic gradient interfacial layer a favored strategy for next-generation lithium-metal batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]