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Fresh and clean water is highly demanded throughout the world. To effectively address the need, nanomaterials enabled nanotechnology has been explored as a means of more efficient, reliable, and environmentally friendly approach towards water treatment practices. One concern in adopting nanomaterials is how to retrieve them from water body to avoid secondary contamination. In this work, the earth abundant and sustainable wood, e.g., basswood, was selected and carbonized into porous carbon as host skeleton, and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), e.g., MOF-199 with extremely high surface area, were grown throughout all channels in the porous basswood carbon. Targeting the traditional organic pollutant, methyl orange (MO), the combination of MOFs and basswood carbon (MOFs@carbon) demonstrates a remarkable adsorption capacity, which is 243% and 454% higher than basswood carbon and MOF-199, respectively. Such an outstanding adsorption performance originates from that the positively charged carbon pulls MO molecules close to carbon surface, leading to a high MO molecule concentration, and then the concentration gradient drives the MO molecules to be stored inside MOFs, functioning like pockets. These findings highlight the potential application of coupled MOFs and biomass carbon in addressing water remediation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fix a prime number p and let E / F be a CM extension of number fields in which p splits relatively. Let π be an automorphic representation of a quasi-split unitary group of even rank with respect to E / F such that π is ordinary above p with respect to the Siegel parabolic subgroup. We construct the cyclotomic p -adic L -function of π , and a certain generating series of Selmer classes of special cycles on Shimura varieties. We show, under some conditions, that if the vanishing order of the p -adic L -function is 1, then our generating series is modular and yields explicit nonzero classes (called Selmer theta lifts) in the Selmer group of the Galois representation of E associated with π ; in particular, the rank of this Selmer group is at least 1. In fact, we prove a precise formula relating the p -adic heights of Selmer theta lifts to the derivative of the p -adic L -function. In parallel to Perrin-Riou's p -adic analogue of the Gross–Zagier formula, our formula is the p -adic analogue of the arithmetic inner product formula recently established by Chao Li and the second author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To explore the feasibility of pretreatment nonenhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in predicting insufficient biochemical response to ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) in patients with primary biliary cholangitis (PBC). Methods: From January 2009 to April 2022, consecutive PBC patients who were treated with UDCA and underwent nonenhanced MRI within 30 days before treatment were retrospectively enrolled. All MR images were independently evaluated by two blinded radiologists. Uni- and multivariable logistic regression analyses were performed to develop a predictive model for 12-month insufficient biochemical response. Model performances were evaluated by computing the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), sensitivity, and specificity. Results: A total of 74 patients (50.6 ± 11.9 years; 62 females) were included. Three pretreatment MRI features, including hepatomegaly (odds ratio [OR]: 4.580; p = 0.011), periportal hyperintensity on T2-weighted imaging (T2WI) (OR: 4.795, p = 0.008), and narrowing of the bile ducts (OR: 3.491; p = 0.027) were associated with 12-month insufficient biochemical response in the multivariable analysis. A predictive model based on the above indicators had an AUC of 0.781, sensitivity of 85.4%, and specificity of 61.5% for predicting insufficient biochemical response. Conclusions: A noninvasive model based on three pretreatment MRI features could accurately predict 12-month insufficient biochemical response to UDCA in patients with PBC. Early identification of PBC patients at increased risk for insufficient response can facilitate the timely initiation of additional treatment. Clinical relevance statement: A noninvasive predictive model constructed by incorporating three pretreatment MRI features may help identify patients with primary biliary cholangitis at high risk of insufficient biochemical response to ursodeoxycholic acid and facilitate the timely initiation of additional treatment. Key Points: • Noninvasive imaging features based on nonenhanced pretreatment MRI may predict an insufficient biochemical response to UDCA in PBC patients. • A combined model based on three MRI features (hepatomegaly, periportal hyperintensity on T2-weighted imaging, and narrowing of the bile ducts) further improved the predictive efficacy for an insufficient biochemical response to UDCA in PBC patients, with high sensitivity and specificity. • The nomogram of the combined model showed good calibration and predictive efficacy for an insufficient biochemical response to UDCA in PBC patients. In particular, the calibration curve visualised the clinical applicability of the prediction model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MQTT, a popular IoT messaging protocol, is frequently associated with numerous vulnerabilities, the majority of which are critical. Many IoT devices that utilize MQTT are susceptible to cyberattacks such as denial-of-service and buffer overflow. In this paper, we unveil a novel Denial of Service (DoS) attack in the MQTT protocol, referred to as Slow Subscribers, which has the potential to cause MQTT brokers to become single points of failure. Unlike existing MQTT DoS attacks, Slow Subscribers can occur on a single compromised node and could potentially disrupt a MQTT broker with minimal subscription permissions. We evaluated the reliability of Mosquitto and NanoMQ, two popular MQTT messaging brokers, to determine the effect of Slow Subscribers. According to the findings of our investigation, NanoMQ outperforms Mosquitto in response to the Slow Subscribers attack at QoS level 0. We also determine that the response to Slow Subscribers at QoS 2 is the worst for both broker implementations. In addition, the results of our experiments indicate that Eclipse Mosquitto achieves a higher rate of reliability than NanoMQ on cloud deployments whereas NanoMQ has proven to be well-suited for edge environments, especially edge IoT devices that require the use of QoS levels 0 and 1. Finally, we propose a Resilient Middleware for Message Queue Telemetry Transport (Remistry) framework that is capable of detecting misconfigurations while providing granular support of resource commitment errors, in particular the out-of-memory (OOM) problems for effectively mitigating the impact of Slow Subscribers attacks on MQTT brokers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scene recognition is a computer vision task that categorizes scenes from photographs. In this paper, we introuduce the Adaptive Local Recalibration Network (ALR-Net), a novel scene recognition method based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs). In comparison to the object classification task, the scene classification images have a more dispersed distribution of information. To solve this issue, we suggest an attention mechanism for locating the discriminative regions for scene recognition. Along with normal data augmentation, we use the regions to guide two additional data augmentation approaches, namely adaptive cropping and adaptive hiding, in order to capture local information more efficiently and specifically. Attention maps are also used to adaptively recalibrate scene feature maps so that discriminative regions receive more attention than others. In addition, we bring in a scene distribution label for each image, which is used to assist the training of attention maps. Extensive studies on two scene recognition benchmarks verified the proposed model's effectiveness: MIT67 (88.37%) and SUN397 (74.24%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sheathed post-and-beam wooden structures are distinct from light-wood structures. They allow for using sheathing panels that are smaller (0.91 m × 1.82 m) than standard-sized panels (1.22 m × 2.44 m or 2.44 m × 2.44 m). Evidence indicates that nail spacing and panel thickness determine the lateral capacity of the wood frame shear walls. To verify the lateral shear performance of wood frame shear walls with smaller panels, we subjected 13 shear walls, measuring 0.91 m in width and 2.925 m in height, to a low-cycle cyclic loading test with three kinds of nail spacing and three panel thicknesses. A nonlinear numerical simulation analysis of the wall was conducted using ABAQUS finite element (FE) software, where a custom nonlinear spring element was used to simulate the sheathing-frame connection. The results indicate that the hysteretic performance of the walls was mainly determined by the hysteretic performance of the sheathing-frame connection. When same nail specifications were adopted, the stiffness and bearing capacity of the walls were inversely related to the nail spacing and directly related to the panel thickness. The shear wall remained in the elastic stage when the drift was 1/250 rad and ductility coefficients were all greater than 2.5, which satisfied the deformation requirements of residential structures. Based on the test and FE analysis results, the shear strength of the post-and-beam wooden structures with sheathed walls was determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydroformylation is one of the largest industrially homogeneous processes that strongly relies on catalysts with phosphine ligands such as the Wilkinson's catalyst (triphenylphosphine coordinated Rh). Heterogeneous catalysts for olefin hydroformylation are highly desired but suffer from poor activity compared with homogeneous catalysts. Herein, we demonstrate that rhodium nanoparticles supported on siliceous MFI zeolite with abundant silanol nests are very active for hydroformylation, giving a turnover frequency as high as ~50,000 h−1 that even outperforms the classical Wilkinson's catalyst. Mechanism study reveals that the siliceous zeolite with silanol nests could efficiently enrich olefin molecules to adjacent rhodium nanoparticles, enhancing the hydroformylation reaction. Heterogeneous catalysts for olefin hydroformylation are highly desired but suffer from poor activity. Herein, the authors report that rhodium nanoparticles supported on siliceous MFI zeolite with abundant silanol nests are very active for hydroformylation, affording a turnover frequency that outperforms the classical Wilkinson's catalyst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP) is a rare liver disease occurring during pregnancy that is characterized by disordered bile acid (BA) metabolism. It is related to adverse clinical outcomes in both the mother and fetus. Our aim was to evaluate the BA metabolism profiles in different types of ICP and investigate the association between specific BAs and perinatal complications in ICP patients. We consecutively evaluated 95 patients with ICP, in which 53 patients were diagnosed with early-onset ICP (EICP) and 42 patients were diagnosed with late-onset ICP (LICP). Concentrations of 15 BA components were detected using high-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. Clinical information was abstracted from the medical records. The percentage of conjugated bile acids increased in ICP patients. Specifically, taurocholic acid (TCA) accumulated in LICP patients, and glycocholic acid (GCA) predominated in EICP patients. A higher preterm birth incidence was observed among ICP patients. Albumin, total bile acids, total bilirubin and GCA percentage values at ICP diagnosis predicts 83.5% of preterm birth in EICP, and the percentage of TCA in total bile acids at ICP diagnosis predicts 93.2% of preterm birth in LICP. This analysis showed that the BA metabolism profiles of EICP and LICP were distinct. Increased hepatic load was positively correlated with preterm birth in EICP. An elevated TCA percentage in total bile acids provides a biomarker to predict preterm birth in LICP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mg2SiO4:Eu2+ phosphors with olivine structure were prepared by the solid-state reaction under a reducing atmosphere, and their phase composition, crystal structure, microscopic morphology, and photoluminescence properties were investigated. It was suggested that Eu2+ ions occupied the lattice of Mg2+ ions, and a small amount of Eu2+ ions doping (0.05% ~ 0.2%) did not affect the crystal structure and morphology of the Mg2SiO4. The samples were crystallized into ellipsoidal particles with a size of 1–3 μm. The optimal doping concentration of Eu2+ ions in Mg2-xSiO4: xEu2+ phosphors is 0.1%. Upon the excitation of 275 nm ultraviolet light, the Mg2-xSiO4: xEu2+(x = 0.1%) sample exhibited a broad emission band with the maximum emission intensity at 453 nm, which is in the spectral absorption range of chlorophyll A and chlorophyll B, thus enabling the enhancement of the photosynthesis of the plant growth. The emission spectrum of the sample is decomposed into two subbands by the Gaussian method, which corresponds to the 5d-4f transitions of Eu2+ ions occupying the Mg1 and Mg2 lattice sites, respectively. In addition, the fluorescence decay behavior and thermal stability of the Mg2-xSiO4: xEu2+(x = 0.1%) sample were analyzed, and the sample showed good thermal stability. These results indicate that the Mg2SiO4:Eu2+ phosphor has enormous potential in plant lighting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primary ovarian insufficiency (POI) is a clinical syndrome of ovarian dysfunction characterized by premature exhaustion of primordial follicles. POI causes infertility, severe daily life disturbances and long-term health risks. However, the underlying mechanism remains largely unknown. We previously identified a Basonuclin 1 (BNC1) mutation from a large Chinese POI pedigree and found that mice with targeted Bnc1 mutation exhibit symptoms of POI. In this study, we found that BNC1 plays key roles in ovarian reserve and maintaining lipid metabolism and redox homeostasis in oocytes during follicle development. Deficiency of BNC1 results in premature follicular activation and excessive follicular atresia. Mechanistically, BNC1 deficiency triggers oocyte ferroptosis via the NF2-YAP pathway. We demonstrated that pharmacologic inhibition of YAP signaling or ferroptosis significantly rescues Bnc1 mutation-induced POI. These findings uncover a pathologic mechanism of POI based on BNC1 deficiency and suggest YAP and ferroptosis inhibitors as potential therapeutic targets for POI. Primary ovarian insufficiency (POI) is a clinical syndrome of ovarian dysfunction that results in infertility. Here they show that BCN1 mutation results in premature ovarian follicle activation and atresia through dysregulation of ferroptosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider an irreversible dynamic pricing situation in which a firm uses real-time inventory information to decide the most opportune time to raise its sales prices. Feng and Xiao (Oper Res 48:332–343, 2000b) has studied this problem along with the opposite markdown case. In quite symmetric fashions, they established the optimality of threshold policies for both cases. Though the earlier work has made dramatic advances in dynamic pricing and at the same time pioneered with many relevant techniques, we believe its treatment of the markup case warrants some revision. In particular, we find it is in possession of an erstwhile-unknown complementarity property between price flexibility and inventory, whose counterpart is not true for the markdown case. This property is needed in the derivation leading to the optimality of a threshold policy. Our development also allows demand to be time-dependent in a product form, and naturally leads to an efficient policy-computing algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the multiple stresses of global warming and human activities, land degradation in the Three River Source Region is becoming increasingly severe. However, the researches on large-scale land degradation monitoring models based on remote sensing are fewer and not yet mature. In this study, based on MODIS data products, five factors, including surface albedo, greenness index, heat index, topsoil grain size index, and salinity index, are introduced. These five factors are used to propose a novel large-scale land degradation remote sensing index based on the dynamic weighting method in Three River Source Region. Then the spatio-temporal evolution and driving mechanism of land degradation in the past 20 years are analyzed. The results showed that: (1) The land degradation remote sensing index model proposed in this study has good applicability, and its monitoring accuracy is 92.1%. (2) The average intensity of land degradation in the past 20 years in the Three River Source Region is 0.34, which generally belonged to the mild and moderate degradation. The Yangtze River Source Region has the most significant intensity of land degradation. (3) The gravity center of land degradation in the Three River Source Region during 2001–2020 generally shows a trend of eastward migration. (4) From 2001 to 2020, the change of land degradation intensity in the Three River Source Region was small, showing a trend of overall stability and a slight partial improvement. (5) The impacts of temperature, precipitation, and GDP density on land degradation are significantly different. From 2001 to 2020, the soil was the dominant factor determining land degradation, while the correlation between temperature and land degradation intensity in the study area was small. The results can provide relevant theoretical and technical support for land degradation management and ecological environment restoration in the Three River Source Region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we study the Beilinson–Bloch–Kato conjecture for motives associated to Rankin–Selberg products of conjugate self-dual automorphic representations, within the framework of the Gan–Gross–Prasad conjecture. We show that if the central critical value of the Rankin–Selberg L-function does not vanish, then the Bloch–Kato Selmer group with coefficients in a favorable field of the corresponding motive vanishes. We also show that if the class in the Bloch–Kato Selmer group constructed from a certain diagonal cycle does not vanish, which is conjecturally equivalent to the nonvanishing of the central critical first derivative of the Rankin–Selberg L-function, then the Bloch–Kato Selmer group is of rank one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for 30 provinces in China from 2006 to 2015 by using energy consumption per capita and nitrogen fertilizer per capita as complementary variables of nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions per capita. The panel unit root tests, Pedroni panel cointegration, long-term parameter estimates, and Dumitrescu–Hurlin (D–H) causality tests are used in the model. The results are consistent with the inverted U-shaped EKC hypothesis and show that the inverted U-shaped EKC exists between economic growth and NOx emissions. Energy consumption and nitrogen fertilizer has significantly positive effects on NOx emissions. These results give prominence to the need for decreasing NOx emissions and reducing energy consumption and nitrogen fertilizer. The novelty of this study is to add the nitrogen fertilizer as a new variable by a panel of 30 provinces in China covering 2006–2015 and extend the EKC model, which helps to fill the academic gap in the existing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Prediction of protein solubility is an indispensable prerequisite for pharmaceutical research and production. The general and specific objective of this work is to design a new model for predicting protein solubility by using protein sequence feature fusion and deep dual-channel convolutional neural networks (DDcCNN) to improve the performance of existing prediction models. Methods: The redundancy of raw protein is reduced by CD-HIT. The four subsequences are built from protein sequence: one global and three locals. The global subsequence is the entire protein sequence, and these local subsequences are obtained by moving a sliding window with some rules. Using G-gap to extract the features of the above four subsequences, a mixed matrix is constructed as the input of one channel which is composed of three-layer convolutional operating. Additional features are extracted by SCRATCH tool as input of another channel, which is consist of a single convolution in order to find hidden relationships and improve the accuracy of predictor. The outputs of two parallel channels are concatenated as the input of the hidden layer. And the prediction of protein solubility is obtained in the output layer. The best protein solubility prediction model is obtained by doing some comparative experiments of different frameworks. Results: The performance indicators of DDcCNN model (our designed) are as follows: accuracy of 77.82%, Matthew's correlation coefficient of 0.57, sensitivity of 76.13% and specificity of 79.32%. The results of some comparative experiments show that the overall performance of DDcCNN model is better than existing models (GCNN, LCNN and PCNN). The related models and data are publicly deposited at http://www.ddccnn.wang. Conclusion: The satisfactory performance of DDcCNN model reveals that these features and flexible computational methodologies can reinforce the existing prediction models for better prediction of protein solubility could be applied in several applications, such as to preselect initial targets that are soluble or to alter solubility of target proteins, thus can help to reduce the production cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electrochemical technology and the density functional theory can provide a new idea for the intelligent detection and protection of Chinese traditional appliances. Lithium-ion battery is a typical electrochemical energy storage system, which is used as the core power supply component of sensor equipment to ensure the normal operation of intelligent monitoring and protection of cultural relics. The first-principles calculation method theoretically can prove the experimental results. The electrochemical properties of Ni-rich LiNi1-x-yCoxMnyO2 cathode materials were studied by doping or coating modification methods for the power supply used for intelligent monitoring and protection sensors. The results show that the modified material has a high capacity retention rate. The heat generation of the modified Ni-rich LiNi1-x-yCoxMnyO2 material is low, which can meet the requirements of use. This improved technology can solve the problems related to electrical power in intelligent detection and protection of Bronze Buddha of Shang Dynasty in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the effect of pouring temperature on the microstructure, tensile properties and hot-tearing susceptibility (HTS) of a high-pressure die-cast (HPDC) Al–Zn–Mg–Cu alloy. The microstructure and pore defects of the HPDC samples were analyzed, and a semi-quantitative assessment method was proposed to evaluate HTS for HPDC. Results showed that the pouring temperature has pronounced influence on the tensile properties and HTS of the HPDC Al–Zn–Mg–Cu alloy. The tensile strength and elongation reach the highest point at the near-liquidus pouring temperature of 650 °C and decrease with higher or lower pouring temperature, whereas the HTS value presents the opposite trend. Microstructural investigation showed that all tear surfaces had pores and Fe-rich compounds were present at grain boundaries in samples poured at semi-solid temperature. Higher porosity levels occurred with higher or lower pouring temperatures than 650 °C. With consideration of the combined action of porosity and Fe-rich compounds, the effect of pouring temperature on the tensile properties and HTS of the HPDC Al–Zn–Mg–Cu alloy could be well explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autoimmune factors play an important role in premature ovarian insufficiency (POI). Human amniotic epithelial stem cells (hAESCs) have recently shown promising treatment effects on chemotherapy-induced POI. However, the therapeutic efficacy and underlying mechanisms of hAESCs in autoimmune POI remain to be investigated. In this study, we showed for the first time that intravenous transplantation of hAESCs could reside in the ovary of zona pellucida 3 peptide (pZP3) induced autoimmune POI mice model for at least 4 weeks. hAESCs could improve ovarian function and fertility, alleviate inflammation and reduce apoptosis of granulosa cells (GCs) in autoimmune POI mice. The transcriptome analysis of mice ovaries and in vitro co-cultivation experiments suggest that activation of the AKT and ERK pathways may be the key mechanism in the therapeutic effect of hAESCs. Our work provides the theoretical and experimental foundation for optimizing the administration of hAESCs, as well as the clinical application of hAESCs in autoimmune POI patients.Graphical Abstract: Autoimmune factors play an important role in premature ovarian insufficiency (POI). Human amniotic epithelial stem cells (hAESCs) have recently shown promising treatment effects on chemotherapy-induced POI. However, the therapeutic efficacy and underlying mechanisms of hAESCs in autoimmune POI remain to be investigated. In this study, we showed for the first time that intravenous transplantation of hAESCs could reside in the ovary of zona pellucida 3 peptide (pZP3) induced autoimmune POI mice model for at least 4 weeks. hAESCs could improve ovarian function and fertility, alleviate inflammation and reduce apoptosis of granulosa cells (GCs) in autoimmune POI mice. The transcriptome analysis of mice ovaries and in vitro co-cultivation experiments suggest that activation of the AKT and ERK pathways may be the key mechanism in the therapeutic effect of hAESCs. Our work provides the theoretical and experimental foundation for optimizing the administration of hAESCs, as well as the clinical application of hAESCs in autoimmune POI patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]