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Transportation and storage for hydrogen have garnered increasing attention in recent years because of the rapid development of low-carbon hydrogen energy. Pipeline is regarded as one of the most efficient ways for hydrogen transportation. However, many research found that the active hydrogen atoms can penetrate into the material and induce cracking on the pipe. As the initial hydrogen induced cracking is small, detecting these small defects can be challenging. To enhance the detectability of these small defects, we propose a novel capacitive sensor structure featuring two differential excitations. It is noted that the lift-off noise is always a challenging problem in electromagnetic NDE method. Fortunately, this problem can be alleviated by the proposed method. The simulation result shows the output signal will not be significantly influenced by the lift-off changing. Two metallic samples with defects are tested with a PCB-based prototype probe. Experiment result shows that the developed sensor can suppress the lift-off noise by 81.0% and increase the SNR by 592.28%, comparing to the results of a conventional sensor. A defects extraction algorithm is developed based on morphological image processing method to extract the defects from the raw data automatically. Size estimation is conducted and the average quantization error rate is 7.01% for 10 mm defects. Therefore, from the simulation and experimental results, the proposed capacitive sensing method can be a potential approach for hydrogen pipeline inspection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reusing agro-industrial co-products has been the research focus of sustainable development worldwide. To upcycle ethanol by-product and corncob into a balanced nutritional feed for pigs, Aspergillus niger , Trichoderma reesei , Bacillus subtilis , Bacillus coagulans , and Candida utilis were employed and investigated their nutrition and flavor improving abilities. The results showed that fermentation effectively improved the total protein content of distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS), and the highest increasing was 96.3%, by Aspergillus niger. The essential amino acids for pig growth, including lysine, isoleucine, threonine, arginine, and valine, were increased after Aspergillus niger fermentation, and it increased by 191%, 16.0%, 91.1%, 60.2% and 200%, respectively. The leucine content decreased by 44.5% after fermentation with Aspergillus niger. It provided an alternative solution for the problem of pig inhibiting digestion by high leucine content. The highest degradation rate of cellulose was 15.7% with Trichoderma reesei, while the highest degradation rate of hemicellulose was 19.4% with Aspergillus niger. Besides, the flavor of furanal in feed fermented by Aspergillus niger was increased, which would improve the feeding rate of pig since furanal is favorite for pigs. Consequently, co-fermentation of DDGS and corncob by Aspergillus niger or Trichoderma reesei have a better effect on nutrition and flavor. The results proved a viable way of producing nutritional-improved pig feed from agro-industrial co-products of corn. • The first limiting amino acid Lys was increased to 4%, 6.20 mg/g in fermented feed. • The soluble carbohydrate was increased by 207.3% via A. niger fermentation. • Furanal in feed improved to 14.2 ng/g, would be more favorable for pigs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the wide application of plastic products, microplastic pollution has become a major environmental issue of global concern. Microplastics in aquatic environments can interact with organic pollutants, causing a combined effect on submerged macrophytes. This study investigated the response mechanisms of the submerged plant Myriophyllum verticillatum and epiphytic biofilm to the antibiotic enrofloxacin, microplastics, and their combined exposure in a high nitrogen and phosphorus environment. The results indicated that Myriophyllum verticillatum was not sensitive to enrofloxacin of 1 mg L−1, while 10 and 50 mg L−1 enrofloxacin inhibited the uptake of nitrogen and phosphorus by the plants, as well as triggered oxidative stress in the plant leaves, causing irreversible damage to the plant cells. In addition, enrofloxacin altered the structure of the leaf epiphytic biofilm community. Interestingly, 1, 5, and 20 mg L−1 microplastics had no significant effect on the plant, while they facilitated the aggregation of microorganisms, increasing the abundance of the leaf epiphyte biofilm. The combination of enrofloxacin and microplastics induced a synergistic effect on Myriophyllum verticillatum. Specifically, the rate of nitrogen and phosphorus uptake by the plant was reduced, the content of photosynthetic pigments decreased, and antioxidant enzyme activity was further increased. In addition, the diversity of the leaf epiphytic biofilm community was similar to the single enrofloxacin exposure. These results demonstrated the differences between single and combined exposures and provided a new theoretical basis to evaluate the harmful effects of enrofloxacin and microplastics on submerged macrophytes. [Display omitted] • Microplastics have no ecotoxicological effects on M. verticillatum. • Microplastics contribute to the enrichment of leaf epiphytic biofilms. • Enrofloxacin has ecotoxicological effects on M. verticillatum. • Enrofloxacin alters leaf epiphytic biofilm structure. • Microplastics can exacerbate the toxicity of enrofloxacin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Relationship between frying methods and nutrient loss of hairtail was established. • Flavor formation of hairtail under different frying methods were analyzed. • More harmful substances generated during air frying than traditional frying. • Vacuum frying contributes to the lowest amount of HAAs of hairtail. • The balance regulation between aroma and hazards for fried hairtail was proposed. The balance regulation between characteristic aroma and hazards in high-temperature processed fish is a hot spot. This study was aimed to explore the interactive relationship between the nutritional value, microstructures, aroma, and harmful substances of hairtail under different frying methods including traditional frying (TF), air frying (AF), and vacuum frying (VF) via chemical pattern recognition. The results indicated that VF-prepared hairtail could form a crunchy mouthfeel and retain the highest content of protein (645.53 mg/g) and the lowest content of fat (242.03 mg/g). Vacuum frying reduced lipid oxidation in hairtail, resulting in the POV reaching 0.02 mg/g, significantly lower than that of TF (0.05 mg/g) and AF (0.21 mg/g), and TBARS reached 0.83 mg/g, significantly lower than that of AF (1.96 mg/g) (P < 0.05), respectively. Notable variations were observed in the aroma profile of hairtail prepared from different frying methods. Vacuum frying of hairtail resulted in higher levels of pyrazines and alcohols, whereas traditional frying and air frying were associated with the formation of aldehydes and ketones, respectively. Air frying was not a healthy way to cook hairtail which produced the highest concentration of harmful substances (up to 190.63 ng/g), significantly higher than VF (5.72 ng/g) and TF (52.78 ng/g) (P < 0.05), especially norharman (122.57 ng/g), significantly higher than VF (4.50 ng/g) and TF (32.63 ng/g) (P < 0.05). Norharman and acrylamide were the key harmful substances in hairtail treated with traditional frying. The vacuum frying method was an excellent alternative for deep-fried hairtail as a snack food with fewer harmful substances and a fine aroma, providing a theoretic guidance for preparing healthy hairtail food with high nutrition and superior sensory attraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impacts of weather shocks on athlete performance, focusing on soccer players in the Chinese Soccer Super League over three consecutive seasons from 2014 to 2016. Utilizing daily meteorological data, we construct the temperature and precipitation bin variables to explore the marginal effects on the physical and cognitive performance of soccer players. The empirical findings document a sizeable impact of high temperatures and heavy precipitation on players' performance indicators, including physical performance and cognitive performance. Specifically, relative to conditions with temperatures below 15 °C, the total running distances, the number of passes, and the number of fouls for soccer players significantly decrease by 7.6%, 6.0%, and 23.1%, respectively, when temperatures exceed 30 °C. The results for precipitation bins show that relative to conditions with precipitation below 0.1 mm, the total running distances, the number of passes, and the number of fouls for soccer players significantly decrease by 1.2%, 8.2%, and 4.7%, respectively, when precipitation exceeds 50 mm. Moreover, the heterogeneity analysis reveals that the negative effects of high temperatures and heavy precipitation are more pronounced and significant for older players, for matches performed away from home, and for matches performed in areas with higher temperatures or more precipitation. Evidence of player adaptations suggests that players from regions with higher temperatures or more precipitation perform better in terms of physical and cognitive abilities when playing in areas with lower temperatures or less precipitation compared to players from regions with lower temperatures or less precipitation when they compete in areas with higher temperatures or more precipitation. Finally, policy suggestions are proposed to mitigate the impact of weather shocks on soccer players and to promote the sustainability of the soccer industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The degradation of systems in service, including pipelines, over time highlights the critical need for reliable and accurate defect detection to ensure safe operations. However, single modality-based Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) data used in practical applications often suffers from noise contamination and errors caused by various factors like lift-off/standoff distances, probe drift, scanning speed, variation in data acquisition rates, and poor sensor sensitivity. The presence of agnostic noise types poses a challenge in extracting defect signals. To address these challenges, this paper presents an automated NDE theory-based data fusion framework aimed at enhancing the detection of surface and near-surface defects in magnetizable and conductive specimens. The Magnetic Flux Leakage (MFL) and Eddy Current (EC) based NDE sensing methods demonstrate the highly heterogeneous nature of noise distributions. Given the heterogeneity of the inspection methods, a screening rule is proposed to determine the conditions under which fusion would be beneficial. An important aspect of the proposed fusion method is registration, which ensures accurate alignment of multi-sensor image data. Two registration methods are proposed in this study as performing blind fusion without registration leads to erroneous results. The first registration method is translational, whereas the second method is registration based on linear optimal transport (OT) which proves to be effective in the boundary conditions. Finally, the registered source images from the EC and MFL modalities are fused using pixel-based fusion algorithms, including transform domain and spatial domain-based methods. Qualitative and quantitative assessments demonstrate that the registered fusion results exhibit higher accuracy and reliability compared to unregistered fused results and source images. Although the fusion method is applied to MFL and EC data in this paper, it is also suitable for other NDE modalities. • Heterogeneous Fusion. • Registration based on Optimal Transport. • Near field NDE sensors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • The tail exhibited lower moisture and higher protein, ash, carbohydrate content. • The middle part of eel had higher hardness and good water-holding capacity. • The tail possessed a higher proportion of n − 3/n − 6 polyunsaturated fatty acids. • DGs and MGs bond to saturated fatty acids were primarily existed near the tail. With the diversity of consumer demands for healthy food, stricter requirements have been put forward for the product quality of sea eel (Astroconger myriaster). From the common experience, remarkable differences could be observed between different parts of the sea eel. The textures, basic nutritional compositions, and lipid compositions from seven parts of sea eel were investigated to reach a comprehensive evaluation of the nutritional value. Sea eel was high-fat fish which contained 21.65% to 22.84% crude fat from part one to part seven. The seventh segment exhibited a lower moisture content (51.32%) and higher contents of protein (22.76%), ash (2.46%), carbohydrate (0.80%). The third and fourth parts remained higher hardness and good water-holding capacity. Sea eel had sixteen fatty acids, and the tail possessed a higher proportion of n − 3/n − 6 polyunsaturated fatty acids. Twenty-seven lipid species were determined in sea eel, and highly unsaturated fatty acids mainly stemmed from triglycerides, while saturated fatty acids mainly existed as diglycerides. Section six and seven were primarily diglycerides and monoglycerides. According to the characteristics of different parts, it can provide support for standardized segmentation of sea eel and quality control of different parts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • The tail exhibited lower moisture and higher protein, ash, carbohydrate content. • The middle part of eel had higher hardness and good water-holding capacity. • The tail possessed a higher proportion of n − 3/n − 6 polyunsaturated fatty acids. • DGs and MGs bond to saturated fatty acids were primarily existed near the tail. With the diversity of consumer demands for healthy food, stricter requirements have been put forward for the product quality of sea eel (Astroconger myriaster). From the common experience, remarkable differences could be observed between different parts of the sea eel. The textures, basic nutritional compositions, and lipid compositions from seven parts of sea eel were investigated to reach a comprehensive evaluation of the nutritional value. Sea eel was high-fat fish which contained 21.65% to 22.84% crude fat from part one to part seven. The seventh segment exhibited a lower moisture content (51.32%) and higher contents of protein (22.76%), ash (2.46%), carbohydrate (0.80%). The third and fourth parts remained higher hardness and good water-holding capacity. Sea eel had sixteen fatty acids, and the tail possessed a higher proportion of n − 3/n − 6 polyunsaturated fatty acids. Twenty-seven lipid species were determined in sea eel, and highly unsaturated fatty acids mainly stemmed from triglycerides, while saturated fatty acids mainly existed as diglycerides. Section six and seven were primarily diglycerides and monoglycerides. According to the characteristics of different parts, it can provide support for standardized segmentation of sea eel and quality control of different parts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tobacco is an agricultural product with extremely high economic value. Manufacturers have realized that the chemical nature of fresh tobacco leaves influences the flavor properties of tobacco products. To explore the key components that cause the differences in tobacco leaves, high-precision mass spectrometry was employed for multi-omics analysis of three groups (upper, middle, and lower parts) of tobacco leaves. The results showed that the fresh leaves from different parts of Yunyan 87 tobacco plant had significant differences. It was not unique compounds that caused these differences, but more likely variations in shared compounds. The species of glycerolipids, glycerophospholipids, and fatty acyls were the most numerous, their numbers account for 76.68% of total lipids components. The number of glycerolipids accounted for 70% of the identified key lipid components, with the majority being polyunsaturated glycerolipids. It suggested that the disparities in polyunsaturated glycerolipids were the primary cause of lipids differentiation in fresh leaves from different parts. Glycerolipids are effective storage forms of carbon and energy. Carbohydrates and carbohydrate conjugates are the main products of tobacco photosynthesis. In key components, they had the highest relative abundance in the lower leaves. In addition, terpenoids, and organic oxygen compounds, all exhibit high relative abundances in the lower leaves. Amino acids, peptides, and analogues were more abundant in the upper leaves. Differences in the chemical composition of fresh tobacco will result in different sensory qualities and styles. In addition to providing insights into the differences and diversity of tobacco leaves in various parts of the plant during growth, the results present potentially rewarding information for directional cultivation of tobacco plants, grading of tobacco leaves, and optimization of resource utilization. [Display omitted] • The chemical composition of fresh tobacco is the basis of product sensory. • Tobacco underwent a multi-omics analysis via high-precision mass spectrometry. • Screening key components to analyze fresh tobacco differences further. • The study can guide tobacco cultivation and application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We propose a joint training framework where the knowledge of ANN is consistently transferred to the SNN during training. • We factorize the parameters of both ANN and SNN and restrict them to have the same singular vectors while learning different singular values. • Extensive experiments are conducted on vision benchmarks, demonstrating that our method reaches SOTA. Emerged as a biology-inspired method, Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) mimic the spiking nature of brain neurons and have received lots of research attention. SNNs deal with binary spikes as their activation and therefore derive extreme energy efficiency on hardware. However, it also leads to an intrinsic obstacle that training SNNs from scratch requires a re-definition of the firing function for computing gradient. Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), however, are fully differentiable to be trained with gradient descent. In this paper, we propose a joint training framework of ANN and SNN, in which the ANN can guide the SNN's optimization. This joint framework contains two parts: First, the knowledge inside ANN is distilled to SNN by using multiple branches from the networks. Second, we restrict the parameters of ANN and SNN, where they share partial parameters and learn different singular weights. Extensive experiments over several widely used network structures show that our method consistently outperforms many other state-of-the-art training methods. For example, on the CIFAR100 classification task, the spiking ResNet-18 model trained by our method can reach to 77.39 % top-1 accuracy with only 4 time steps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• ATRA decreased Hepa1-6 tumor burden and tumor angiogenesis and fibrosis. • ATRA decreased the population of MDSCs. • ATRA decreased H22 tumor burden and tumor angiogenesis and fibrosis. • ATRA decreased protumor myeloid immune subsets. • ATRA increased cytotoxic T cell infiltration. Hepatocellular carcinoma is characterized by a high infiltration of myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC), which are key drivers of maintaining the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. Therefore, targeting MDSCs will improve immunotherapies for cancers. It has been shown that all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) can differentiate MDSCs into mature myeloid cells. However, whether ATRA suppression of MDSCs function could inhibit the growth of liver cancer remains unknown. Here we found that ATRA significantly inhibited hepatocellular carcinoma promotion, tumor cell proliferation, and angiogenesis markers. Moreover, ATRA decreased the number of mononuclear myeloid-derived suppressor cells (M−MDSCs), granulocytic myeloid-derived suppressor cells (G-MDSCs) and tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) in spleens. In addition, ATRA significantly reduced the intratumoral infiltrating G-MDSCs and the expression of protumor immunosuppressive molecules (arginase 1, iNOS, IDO and S100A8 + A9), which was accompanied by increased cytotoxic T cell infiltration. Our study demonstrates that ATRA not only has direct intrinsic inhibitory effect on tumor angiogenesis and fibrosis, but also reeducates the tumor microenvironment toward an antitumor phenotype by altering the relative proportion between protumor and antitumor immune cells. This information introduces ATRA as a potential druggable target for treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We propose a three-stage clustering framework based on the pre-computed k nearest neighbors matrix. • A CD metric is developed in this paper to quantify the possibility of each data point as a boundary point. • The BS strategy completes the allocation of labels by shrinking the boundary points inwards. Locating the centers before assigning clustering labels is a traditional routine of clustering methods, which also limits the development of new clustering ideas. In this paper, we achieve the clustering task by firstly identifying the boundary points in the feature space, and then we shrink the boundary points to allocate the un-clustered points. Concretely, we propose a Centroid Drift (CD) metric and a Boundary Shrinkage (BS) strategy to detect boundary points in the feature space and allocate labels for un-clustered points, respectively. Both the CD and BS are closely related to the pre-computed k-nearest neighbor matrix, contributing to the decrease of algorithm parameters. Moreover, the common problems of noise points and non-uniform density distribution of data points in clustering task can also be alleviated with our proposed large value suppression and normalization of k-nearest neighbor distance techniques. The experiments on synthetic datasets, real-world face image datasets and hyperspectral images demonstrate the superiorities of our proposed clustering framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considerable evidence implicates myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) promote tumor progression and drug resistance. Sorafenib is the standard first-line therapy for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Clinical evidence indicates that sorafenib resistance is associated with increased MDSCs, by which MDSCs exerts these effects is obscure. This study aimed to investigate the mechanism of sorafenib resistance mediated by MDSCs. A syngeneic mouse-liver cancer cell line BNL was subcutaneously injected to build a tumor-bearing mouse model, and syngeneic MDSCs were adoptive transferred into the tumor-bearing mouse. Tumor tissue was obtained, and transcriptomic analysis of the tumor was carried out on RNAseq data. A coculture system was used to verify the crosstalk between MDSCs and BNL cells. Adoptive MDSCs transfer into tumor-bearing mice induced an increase of tumor-infiltrating MDSCs, which led to tumor growth and impaired antitumor activity of sorafenib in BNL HCC models. MDSCs transfer contributed to tumor fibrosis and tumor-associated fibroblast (CAF) activation, associated with fibroblast growth factor (FGF1) upregulation. In contrast, MDSC depletion by anti-Ly6G+ reduced fibrosis and increased sorafenib antitumor efficacy. Intriguingly, tumor-infiltrating MDSCs barely expressed FGF1. IL-6 derived from MDSCs increased FGF1 expression in BNL liver cancer cells, and anti-IL-6 attenuated this effect in vitro. MAPK pathway, one of the sorafenib targets, is the downstream signaling of FGF1 and is reactivated by MDSCs-mediated FGF1 upregulation. Our finding demonstrated that MDSCs led to tumor growth and sorafenib resistance via FGF1 upregulation and subsequent indirect CAF activation. We offered a novel mechanism of MDSCs-driven HCC progression and sorafenib resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Favipiravir (T-705) has been developed as a potent anti-influenza drug and exhibited a strong inhibition effect against a broad spectrum of RNA viruses. Its active form, ribofuranosyl-triphosphate (T-705-RTP), functions as a competitive substrate for the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) of the influenza A virus (IAV). However, the exact inhibitory mechanisms of T-705 remain elusive and subject to a long-standing debate. Although T-705 has been proposed to inhibit transcription by acting as a chain terminator, it is also paradoxically suggested to be a mutagen towards IAV RdRp by inducing mutations due to its ambiguous base pairing of C and U. Here, we combined biochemical assay with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to elucidate the molecular mechanism underlying the inhibitory functions exerted by T-705 in IAV RdRp. Our in vitro transcription assay illustrated that IAV RdRp could recognize T-705 as a purine analogue and incorporate it into the nascent RNA strand. Incorporating a single T-705 is incapable of inhibiting transcription as extra natural nucleotides can be progressively added. However, when two consecutive T-705 are incorporated, viral transcription is completely terminated. MD simulations reveal that the sequential appearance of two T-705 in the nascent strand destabilizes the active site and disrupts the base stacking of the nascent RNA. Altogether, our results provide a plausible explanation for the inhibitory roles of T-705 targeting IAV RdRp by integrating the computational and experimental methods. Our study also offers a comprehensive platform to investigate the inhibition effect of antivirals and a novel explanation for the designing of anti-flu drugs. [Display omitted] • Single T-705 could be incorporated by flu RdRp. • Double T-705 choke the transcription of flu RdRp. • T-705 inhibits polyadenylation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]