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To understand the self‐priming characteristics of a self‐priming pump, a closed‐loop piping system that includes the self‐priming pump, valve, tank, and piping system is established. The acceleration–constant speed operation processes of the impeller are controlled through a user‐defined function that ensures that the computational model and startup conditions are consistent with the real situation. Based on numerical calculations of the self‐priming process with two different self‐priming heights, the gas–liquid distributions during the self‐priming startup process are obtained. The results show that the self‐priming startup process can be divided into three stages: rapid inhalation, oscillating exhaust, and accelerated exhaust. Under the two self‐priming heights, the time required for the rapid inhalation and accelerated exhaust stages is basically the same. Thus, the difference in self‐priming time is mainly concentrated in the oscillating exhaust stage. The rate at which the liquid level rises in the vertical pipe is not proportional to the self‐priming height, and the difference in the self‐priming time is not proportional to the change in the self‐priming height. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the flow characteristics in front chamber and rear chamber in pump mode and pump as turbine mode, a 3D computational model of a centrifugal pump was established, including the front and rear chamber. Based on Realizable k-ε turbulence model, numerical calculations of incompressible flow were carried out for internal viscous flow in two operating modes. Further analysis was conducted on the flow stability and hydraulic losses under two modes using energy gradient theory and entropy production theory. The numerical simulation results are within reasonable error compared to the experimental results in pump operation mode, which ensures the reliability of the numerical calculation method. The results indicate that the volumetric efficiency in both two modes is on an upward trend with increasing flow, but the volumetric efficiency of the pump mode is more significantly affected by changes in flow; the distribution patterns of dimensionless circumferential velocity and dimensionless radial velocity in the front and rear chambers under two operating modes are similar, but the distribution pattern of dimensionless radial velocity in the front chamber in turbine mode is significantly different from other operating conditions; flow instability is most likely to occur at the outlet of impeller, and the energy loss in clearance of wear-rings is greater than that in the pump chamber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the unsteady Bernoulli equation for the piping system and the angular momentum equation for the rotor, derives here a theoretical model to predict the startup performance of a pump as turbine (PAT). This model is effective for predicting the instantaneous evolution characteristics of the main performance parameters of PAT during startup, and these changings are initially faster and then slowly as a whole. The effect of the rotor moment of inertia and the final stabilized rotational speed of PAT on evolution characteristics of parameters is opposite. The rotational speed, head, hydraulic power, and conversion efficiency show a upward rising trend with the startup time, whereas the flow rate and hydraulic head loss display a downward trend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tryptophan (Trp) metabolism plays a crucial role in influencing the development of digestive system tumors. Dysregulation of Trp and its metabolites has been identified in various digestive system cancers, including esophageal, gastric, liver, colorectal, and pancreatic cancers. Aberrantly expressed Trp metabolites are associated with diverse clinical features in digestive system tumors. Moreover, the levels of these metabolites can serve as prognostic indicators and predictors of recurrence risk in patients with digestive system tumors. Trp metabolites exert their influence on tumor growth and metastasis through multiple mechanisms, including immune evasion, angiogenesis promotion, and drug resistance enhancement. Suppressing the expression of key enzymes in Trp metabolism can reduce the accumulation of these metabolites, effectively impacting their role in the promotion of tumor progression and metastasis. Strategies targeting Trp metabolism through specific enzyme inhibitors or tailored drugs exhibit considerable promise in enhancing therapeutic outcomes for digestive system tumors. In addition, integrating these approaches with immunotherapy holds the potential to further enhance treatment efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A single injection of local anaesthetic (LA) in the erector spinae plane block (ESPB) can reduce pain after modified radical mastectomy (MRM) surgery, but the duration of analgesia is affected by the duration of the LA. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of continuous ESPB on acute and chronic pain and inflammatory response after MRM surgery. Methods: In this prospective, randomised, controlled trial, we will recruit 160 patients, aged 18–80 years, scheduled for elective MRM surgery under general anaesthesia. They will be randomly assigned to two groups: a continuous ESPB group (group E) and a sham block group (group C). Both groups of patients will have a nerve block (group C pretended to puncture) and an indwelling catheter fixed prior to surgery. Electronic pumps containing LA are shielded. The primary outcome is the total consumption of analgesic agents. The secondary outcomes include the levels of inflammation-related cytokines; the occurrence of chronic pain (post-mastectomy pain syndrome, PMPS); static and dynamic pain scores at 2, 6, 12, 24 and 48 h postoperatively; and post-operative and post-puncture adverse reactions. Discussion: Analgesia after MRM surgery is important and chronic pain can develop when acute pain is prolonged, but the analgesic effect of a nerve block with a single injection of LA is limited by the duration of drug action. The aim of this trial is to investigate whether continuous ESPB can reduce acute pain after MRM surgery and reduce the incidence of chronic pain (PMPS), with fewer postoperative analgesic drug-related complications and less inflammatory response. Continuous ESPB and up to 12 months of follow-up are two innovations of this trial. Trial registration: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (https://www.chictr.org.cn/) ChiCTR2200061935. Registered on 11 July 2022. This trial is a prospective registry with the following registry names: Effect of ultrasound-guided continuous erector spinae plane block on postoperative pain and inflammatory response in patients undergoing modified radical mastectomy for breast cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work aims to investigate the cultural and psychological factors that significantly affect teachers' intention to accept VR technology and use it long-term in their classes in elementary and secondary schools. The extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2) model effectively measured such factors in this context. We conducted a questionnaire survey with 351 elementary and secondary school teachers in four provinces in China and analyzed their responses utilizing Partial Least Squares (PLS) technique. The results of this work showed that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, and hedonic motivation significantly impacted continued usage intention. However, the habit did not promote continued usage intention. Based on the results, research on VR classroom application guidance and teachers' professional development with VR technology applications should be strengthened. Meanwhile, increasing the publicity of integrating VR technology into classroom teaching, creating a favorable climate for VR technology adoption, and enhancing the fun of VR technology can also contribute to teachers' continued VR technology usage intention in classroom teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the majority of data mining tasks, feature selection serves as an essential pre-processing step. The most important attributes are selected to lower the dimensionality reduction of data set and enhance the precision of classification. Natural heuristic algorithms are extensively employed in the realm of encapsulated feature selection. Based on the wrapper feature selection method, seven natural heuristic algorithms are used to solve feature selection problems and perform performance comparison, which include Slime Mold Algorithm (SMA), Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA), Harris Hawks Optimization Algorithm (HHO), Marine Predator Algorithm (MPA), Butterfly Optimization Algorithm (BOA), Cuckoo Search (CS) and Firefly Algorithm (FA). At the same time, performance tests are carried out on 21 standard UCI data sets to verily the functionality of various algorithms, and the convergence curves and accuracy boxplots of 7 natural heuristic algorithms on 21 data sets are given. The simulation outcomes were assessed utilizing the mean and standard deviation of fitness, as well as the number of chosen features, and the running time, with the optimal value in bold. By comparing the comprehensive performance indexes, MPA obtained the maximum mean fitness value in most data sets (16 data sets), followed by FA (6 data sets). SMA obtained the best performance and finds the minimum eigenvalues (20 data sets) in multiple data sets and has an advantage in computing time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Severe erosion wear is found on valve spools, which threatens the safety and reliability of these units. The use of the plasma beam spraying surfacing method can significantly improve the corrosion resistance and sealing performance of hydraulic valve spools, reduce material waste, and reduce maintenance costs. The effects of the co-addition of CeO2 and SiC particles on the morphology, surface cracks, microstructure, precipitated phases, and wear property of plasma-beam-sprayed Fe55-based coatings on 1025 steel were investigated using OM, EDS, ultra-deep field microscopy, and a wet sand rubber wheel friction tester, respectively. The dendrite exhibited a directional growth pattern perpendicular to the substrate and the transitional states of the microstructure with the co-addition of CeO2 and SiC particles. CeO2 or SiC reduced the liquid phase diffusion coefficient DL of Cr and C and resulted in a decrease in the G/R ratio. The dendrites changed into equiaxed grains. The main phase composition of the Fe55 welding layer was Cr7C3, γ-Fe. The martensite in the surfacing layer and the carbides formed Cr7C3, which can improve the hardness of the surfacing layer. The grain boundaries consisted mainly of a reticular eutectic structure. The uniform distribution of the Cr7C3 hard phase in the Fe55+1.5 wt% SiC+0.01 wt% CeO2 resulted in a uniformly worn surface. The sub-wear mechanisms during the friction process were micro-ploughing and micro-cutting. The hardness and toughness of Fe55+1.5 wt% SiC+0.01 wt% CeO2 were well-matched, avoiding excessive micro-cutting and microplastic deformation. A low content of CeO2 could lead to the formation of equiaxed grain and effectively improve the uniformity of the microstructure. The wear-resistant layer of Fe55+1.5 wt% SiC+0.01 wt% CeO2 can effectively improve the service life and long-term sealing performance of the valve spools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study on transient characteristics of pump as turbines during atypical startup has not been deeply explored yet. In order to reveal the transient characteristics of a small centrifugal pump reversing as turbine during startup process in this paper, the transient hydraulic performance experiments are conducted for three steady rotational speed cases. Under the condition of each case, three, five and, three valve opening scenarios are completed to measure the performance. The dimensionless analysis are also employed so as to better reveal transient behavior of the pump as turbine during atypical startup. The results show that the rise rate of each performance parameter is different, wherein the shaft power and rotational speed have the fastest rising rate, followed by the flow rate, and the head rise is the slowest. It is clearly seen that the shock phenomenon in static pressure easily occurs at the outlet of pump as turbine. With the increase of valve opening, the dimensionless flow rate, head and, power coefficient all show the evolution trend of gradually increasing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Influenza A viruses (IAV) utilize sialic acid (Sia) containing cell surface glycoconjugates for host cell infection, and IAV strains from different host species show preferences for structurally distinct Sia at the termini of glycoconjugates. Various types of cell surface glycoconjugates (N-glycans, O-glycans, glycolipids) display significant diversity in both structure and carbohydrate composition. To define the types of sialylglycoconjugates that facilitate IAV infection, we utilized the CRISPR/Cas9 technique to truncate the three major types of glycoconjugates, either individually or in combination, by targeting glycosyltransferases essential to glycan biosynthesis in a human lung epithelial cell line. Our studies show that both human and avian IAV strains do not display strict preferences for a specific type of glycoconjugate. Interestingly, truncation of the three major types of glycoconjugates significantly decreased replication of human IAV strains, yet did not impact replication of avian IAV strains. Unlike human IAV strains, avian IAV strains were able to efficiently utilize other less prevalent shorter glycoconjugates such as sialyl Tn and sialyl T antigens. Taken together, our studies demonstrate that avian IAV strains utilize a broader repertoire of glycoconjugates for host cell infection as compared to human IAV strains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The recommended operation for cecum cancer (CC) is right hemicolectomy (RH) in some Western countries while the principle of D3 lymphadenectomy in Japan recommends resecting approximately 10 cm from the tumor edge. Therefore, the optimal surgical approach for cecum cancer (CC) remains controversial. We conducted this retrospective study to explore the pattern of lymph node metastasis and better surgical procedures for CC. Methods: A total of 224 cecum cancer patients from January 1, 2014, to December 31, 2021, were retrospectively included in the final study. The pattern of lymph node metastasis (LNM) was investigated. Results: A total of 113 (50.4%, 113/224) patients had pathologically confirmed LNM. The most frequent metastatic site was no. 201 lymph node (46%, 103/224), while 20 (8.9%, 20/224) patients had LNM in no. 202 lymph node, and 8 (3.6%, 8/224) patients had LNM in no. 203 lymph node. Only 1 (0.4%, 1/224) patient had LNM in no. 221 lymph node, four (1.8, 4/224%) patients had LNM in no. 223 lymph node, and no patients had LNM in no. 222 lymph node. LNM in no. 223 lymph node was significantly associated with a poor prognosis. Multivariate analysis indicated that LNM in no. 223 lymph node (HR = 4.59, 95% CI 1.18–17.86, P = 0.028) was the only independent risk factor associated with worse disease-free survival (DFS). Conclusions: The LNM in no. 223 lymph node for cecum cancer was rare. Therefore, standard right hemicolectomy excision is too extensive for most CC cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to improve the efficiency of the self-priming pump in the outdoor emergency rescue mobile pump truck, this paper took the key energy conversion component-impeller as the target and used the orthogonal experimental design method to optimize its hydraulic performance. Firstly the numerical calculations were compared with the experimental results to confirm the reliability of the calculation method. Then, L9 (34) orthogonal design was applied to investigate the influence of the impeller diameter, the blade outlet width, the blade wrap angle and the number of blades on the hydraulic performance of the self-priming pump. Through range analysis, the order of influence of each influencing factor on the head and efficiency of the self-priming pump was determined, and finally obtained the optimal parameter combination scheme. The results show that the optimized self-priming pump exceeds the head of the prototype pump at all flow conditions, and the efficiency curve at high flow conditions is significantly improved and has a wide high efficiency zone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obesity-related diseases have been on the rise, making it important to promote physical activity. Smart sports watches are popular among young people and can play a role in this regard. This study aims to evaluate the impact of different watch head design types on the visual image of smart sports watches. Based on sales data, seven sports smartwatches with sales of over 2000 units were selected from a sample of 50 as representative samples. A factor analysis and questionnaire survey were used to identify four groups of adjectives that describe watch heads: Sporty and Smart, precious and exquisite, distinctive and avant-garde, and trendy and technological. College students evaluated the seven watches using these adjectives, and using triangular fuzzy mathematics theory, the watches were divided into three categories. The results show that the seven watches had significant differences in appearing "Sporty and Smart" and "precious and exquisite", while the visual imagery of "distinctive and avant-garde" and "trendy and technological" had no significant difference. Based on the grouping analysis of the seven samples, it is concluded that: the slim and compact shape without excessive decoration has a sense of sportiness and simplicity; the square shape combined with left and right buttons has a sense of sportiness and fashion; the unique connection between the round shape, the watch strap, and the watch head, as well as the strong mechanical feeling, have a sense of value. To substantiate the validity of our research findings, we devised three novel specimens based on the morphological elements of sports watches and conducted surveys accordingly. Statistical analysis revealed a fundamental coherence between the performance of these specimens in four stylistic domains and the expression of style-forming elements, confirming the reference value of these findings in the stylistic design of sports smartwatches. This study provides designers with references for improving the design and development efficiency of smart sports watches, promoting their sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To study the effect of the width-to-narrow ratio on the forward and reverse flow characteristics of the Tesla valve, five different models of the Tesla valve with different width-to-narrow ratios are established in this paper. The numerical calculations of forward and reverse flow under different working conditions are carried out by the CFD method in the laminar flow regime, and the reliability of the numerical calculation method is verified by comparing it with the experimental results. The results show that: in forward flow, the main flow-through channel is not related to the width-to-narrow ratio, the flow rate of the straight channel increases with the increase of the width-to-narrow ratio, and the static pressure in the diversion section is in the shape of "∞"; while in reverse flow, the main flow-through channel is weakly related to the width-to-narrow ratio, the flow rate of the arc channel is not increased with the increase of the width-to-narrow ratio, and the static pressure in the diversion section is in the shape of "bench". As the width-to-narrow ratio decreases, the pressure drop during forward and reverse flow becomes more significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The pathogen of angiostrongyliasis is the parasite Angiostrongylus cantonensis, and the transcriptome profiling of the male adult was unclear. We aimed to understand how the male adults adapt, so the expression profile of A. cantonensis adult males was analyzed. Methods: In order to improve the understanding of the transcriptome of adult males, RNA from three groups of male adult A. cantonensis was extracted and reverse transcribed to construct cDNA libraries. After sequencing, annotation of unigenes and transcripts was performed by querying the NR (Non- Redundant Protein Sequence Database), GO (Gene Ontology) and COG/ KOG (Clusters of Orthologous Groups of proteins/euKaryotic Ortholog Groups) databases. Results: For each group of adults, 43,260,894 raw reads and 43,200,341 clean reads were obtained. After successful assembly, 87,649 unigenes and 146,895 transcripts were obtained. Annotation of the unigenes and transcripts was identical and male adults expressed a series of genes encoding proteins specific to the male gender at the adult stage, such as proteins involved in energy metabolism, energy synthesis and transport. Expression of the ribosome pathway suggests a relationship with the physical activities during the adult male stage. Conclusion: The transcriptome analysis is a good reference to understand further the expression profile of male adult A. cantonensis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metal nanoparticles are widely used in catalysis. Loading metal nanoparticles into polymer brushes has aroused wide attention, but regulation of catalytic performance still needs to be improved. The novel diblock polymer brushes, polystyrene@sodium polystyrene sulfonate-b-poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) (PSV@PSS-b-PNIPA) and PSV@PNIPA-b-PSS with reversed block sequence, were prepared by surface initiated photoiniferter-mediated polymerization (SI-PIMP) and used as nanoreactors to load silver nanoparticles (AgNPs). The block sequence caused the difference of conformation and further affected the catalytic performance. PSV@PNIPA-b-PSS@Ag was found to be able to control the amount of AgNPs exposed to external reactant of 4-nitrophenol at different temperatures to achieve regulation of the reaction rate due to the hydrogen bonds and further physical crosslinking between PNIPA and PSS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to reveal the influence of starting acceleration on starting process of a pump as turbine system, this paper carries out a numerical calculation of the three-dimensional viscous unsteady flow of pump as turbine circulating piping system under three starting acceleration conditions, and obtains the external and internal flow characteristics of each overflow component during the starting process, and also analyzes the energy loss of each component in the piping system in depth with the help of entropy production method and Q criterion method. The results show that during system start-up, the flow rate and outlet static pressure curves of the pump as turbine are hysteresis relative to the rotational speed, the head curve is similar to a linear rise during slow and medium speed start-up, while it shows a parabolic rise during rapid start-up, the entropy production and vorticity in the impeller domain of the pump as turbine are mainly distributed between the blades, and the distribution decreases during start-up. In addition, the pump similarity law does not apply to the performance prediction during the transient start of the pump as turbine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Dexmedetomidine (DEX) has been thought to be an effective adjuvant to local anesthetics (LAs) in erector spinae plane block (ESPB), however, this method of use is not recorded in the drug instructions. Hence, our meta-analysis will evaluate its efficacy and safety for the first time. Methods: A systematic search of published articles was conducted in the PubMed, Embase, Web of science, and Cochrane Library databases up to July 17, 2022, using specific keywords related to our aims. The time first to request rescue analgesia, number of patient controlled intravenous analgesia (PCIA) presses, rate of rescue analgesia use, postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV), arrhythmia, and hypotension were calculated by using random-effect models. This systematic review and meta-analysis was registered with PROSPERO (registration number: CRD42022345488). Results: Numerous electronic databases were searched and finally 8 studies with a total of 570 patients, 303 in the DEX arm, 267 in the control arm were included. As an adjuvant to LAs, DEX significantly increased the time to first request of rescue analgesia (mean difference [MD] = 8.40, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 4.70–12.10, P < 0.00001), reduced the number of PCIA presses (MD = -4.12, 95% CI = -7.79 to -0.45, P = 0.03) and the rate of rescue analgesia (odds ratio [OR] = 0.33, 95% CI = 0.17–0.65, P = 0.002). Moreover, the combination reduced the risk of PONV (OR = 0.57, 95% CI = 0.36–0.91, P = 0.02). In addition, there was no difference in the incidence of hypotension (OR = 1.01, 95% CI = 0.37–2.74, P = 0.99) and arrhythmia (OR = 0.76, 95% CI = 0.19–3.07, P = 0.70). Conclusion: DEX can reduce analgesic requirements after various surgical procedures when used as an adjuvant to LAs for ESPB. Moreover, there was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of safety indicators (arrhythmia, hypotension). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation The emergence of drug-resistant bacteria makes the discovery of new antibiotics an urgent issue, but finding new molecules with the desired antibacterial activity is an extremely difficult task. To address this challenge, we established a framework, MDAGS (Molecular Design via Attribute-Guided Search), to optimize and generate potent antibiotic molecules. Results By designing the antibacterial activity latent space and guiding the optimization of functional compounds based on this space, the model MDAGS can generate novel compounds with desirable antibacterial activity without the need for extensive expensive and time-consuming evaluations. Compared with existing antibiotics, candidate antibacterial compounds generated by MDAGS always possessed significantly better antibacterial activity and ensured high similarity. Furthermore, although without explicit constraints on similarity to known antibiotics, these candidate antibacterial compounds all exhibited the highest structural similarity to antibiotics of expected function in the DrugBank database query. Overall, our approach provides a viable solution to the problem of bacterial drug resistance. Availability and implementation Code of the model and datasets can be downloaded from GitHub (https://github.com/LiangYu-Xidian/MDAGS). Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To explore the association between ovulation induction drugs and ovarian cancer. Design: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Setting: Not applicable. Patient(s): Women without ovarian cancer who ever or never underwent ovarian induction. Intervention(s): An extensive electronic search of the following databases was performed: PubMed, EMBASE, MEDLINE, Google Scholar, Cochrane Library and CNKI, from inception until January 2022. A total of 34 studies fulfilled our inclusion criteria and were included in the final meta-analysis. The odds ratio (OR) and random-effects model were used to estimate the pooled effects. The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale was used to assess the quality of included studies. Funnel plots and Egger tests were used to assess publication bias. Main outcomes: New diagnosed borderline ovarian tumor (BOT) and invasive ovarian cancer (IOC) between ovulation induction (OI) group and control (CT) group considering fertility outcome, OI cycles and specific OI drugs. Results: Primarily, there was no significant difference in the incidence of IOC and BOT between the OI and CT groups. Secondly, OI treatment did not increase the risk of IOC and BOT in the multiparous women, nor did it increase the risk of IOC in the nulliparous women. However, the risk of BOT appeared to be higher in nulliparous women treated with OI treatment. Thirdly, among women exposed to OI, the risk of IOC and BOT was higher in nulliparous women than in multiparous women. Fourthly, the risk of IOC did not increase with increasing OI cycles. Lastly, exposure to specific OI drugs also did not contribute to the risk of IOC and BOT. Conclusion: Overall, OI treatment did not increase the risk of IOC and BOT in most women, regardless of OI drug type and OI cycle. However, nulliparous women treated with OI showed a higher risk of ovarian cancer, necessitating their rigorous monitoring and ongoing follow-up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, an Al2O33D/5083 Al composite was fabricated by infiltrating a molten 5083 Al alloy into a three-dimensional alumina reticulated porosity ceramics skeleton preform (Al2O33D) using a pressureless infiltration method. The corrosion resistance of 5083 Al alloy and Al2O33D/5083 Al in NaCl solution were compared via electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), dynamic polarization potential (PDP), and neutral salt spray (NSS) tests. The microstructure of the two materials were investigated by 3D X-ray microscope and scanning electron microscopy aiming at understanding the corrosion mechanisms. Results show that an Al2O33D/5083 Al composite consists of interpenetrating structure of 3D-continuous matrices of continuous networks 5083 Al alloy and Al2O33D phase. A large area of strong interfaces of 5083 Al and Al2O33D exist in the Al2O33D/5083 Al composite. The corrosion development process can be divided into the initial period, the development period, and the stability period. Al2O33D used as reinforcement in Al2O33D/5083 Al composite improves the corrosion resistance of Al2O33D/5083 Al composite via electrochemistry tests. Thus, the corrosion resistance of Al2O33D/5083 Al is higher than that of 5083 Al alloy. The NSS test results indicate that the corrosion resistance of Al2O33D/5083 Al was lower than that of 5083 Al alloy during the initial period, higher than that of 5083 Al alloy during the development period, and there was no obvious difference in corrosion resistance during the stability period. It is considered that the elements in 5083 Al alloy infiltrated into the Al2O33D/5083 Al composite are segregated, and the uniform distribution of the segregated elements leads to galvanic corrosion during the corrosion initial period. The perfect combination of interfaces of Al2O33D and the 5083 Al alloy matrix promotes excellent corrosion resistance during the stability period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Mitigating the possible adverse environmental impacts caused by transgene flow from genetically engineered crops to their wild/weedy relatives is an ideal strategy for resolving biosafety problems. To explore a transgene mitigation system in rice, we edited the seed-shattering genes (SH4 and qSH1) of a weedy rice line with strong seed shattering. The results showed substantially reduced seed shattering in the gene-edited weedy rice lines. The single gene-edited weedy rice lines displayed an inconsistent reduction in seed size-related traits. Reduced seed shattering was closely linked with a lack of abscission layers and reduced abscisic acid (ABA). In addition, most examined genes that were closely associated with ABA biosynthesis, ABA signaling transduction, and cell wall hydrolysis were downregulated in the gene-edited weedy rice lines. These findings can assist in exploring the underlying mechanisms of reduced seed shattering in weedy rice plants, in addition to practical applications for mitigating environmental impacts caused by transgene flow and for controlling the infestation of weedy rice. Mitigating the function of acquired transgenes in crop wild/weedy relatives can provide an ideal strategy to reduce the possible undesired environmental impacts of pollen-mediated transgene flow from genetically engineered (GE) crops. To explore a transgene mitigation system in rice, we edited the seed-shattering genes, SH4 and qSH1, using a weedy rice line ("C9") that originally had strong seed shattering. We also analyzed seed size-related traits, the total genomic transcriptomic data, and RT-qPCR expression of the SH4 or qSH1 gene-edited and SH4/qSH1 gene-edited weedy rice lines. Substantially reduced seed shattering was observed in all gene-edited weedy rice lines. The single gene-edited weedy rice lines, either the SH4 or qSH1 gene, did not show a consistent reduction in their seed size-related traits. In addition, reduced seed shattering was closely linked with the weakness and absence of abscission layers and reduced abscisic acid (ABA). Additionally, the genes closely associated with ABA biosynthesis and signaling transduction, as well as cell-wall hydrolysis, were downregulated in all gene-edited weedy rice lines. These findings facilitate our deep insights into the underlying mechanisms of reduced seed shattering in plants in the rice genus Oryza. In addition, such a mitigating technology also has practical applications for reducing the potential adverse environmental impacts caused by transgene flow and for managing the infestation of weedy rice by acquiring the mitigator from GE rice cultivars through natural gene flow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence and risk factors of overactive bladder (OAB) in young adults and to explore the influence of OAB on mental health. Methods: Between October 2019 and January 2020, 14,010 anonymous questionnaires were distributed to freshmen at 2 universities in Henan, China. The students came from all over the country. The questionnaire included general items and information necessary to calculate the overactive bladder symptom score, the Chinese version of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) score, Self-Esteem Scale (SES) score, and Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) score. The relationships between the prevalence of OAB and its risk factors were evaluated. Results: The overall prevalence of OAB was 6.0%, with 4.3% of participants characterized as having dry OAB and 1.7% as having wet OAB. The prevalence of mild OAB was 5.5%, and that of moderate OAB was 0.5%; no severe OAB was observed. Higher prevalence rates of OAB were found among women, respondents with constipation, and respondents with primary nocturnal enuresis (PNE) (P<0.05). Compared to healthy controls, the OAB group exhibited a higher mean SDS score (52.12±8.986 vs. 47.71±9.399, P<0.001) and mean PSQI score (5.28±2.486 vs. 4.27±2.431, P<0.001), but a lower mean SES score (27.78±3.599 vs. 29.57±4.109, P<0.001). Conclusions: OAB significantly affects the mental health of young adults. Female sex, constipation, and PNE are risk factors for OAB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regulation of high sea fishing would not be successful without cooperation among the states in the current international society, without a world government. However, the ongoing quest for cooperation in the field of fishery governance focuses too much on the unilateral responsibility of a state to cooperate with a RFMO, overlooking the responsibility of state parties of an RFMO or the state seeking to regulate IUU fishing. This essay reveals that the equitable consideration of fishery governance is sometimes prejudiced in the name of conservation. Fishery governance involves food security, employment, free trade, and the environment. An ideal regime of high sea fishing is expected to balance the conflicting values and bring an end to the fragmentation of international law. The systemic interpretation approach, which is based on Article 31, paragraph 3(c) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, contributes to a fairer governance of high sea fishing. Such an approach revives the obligation of the state to cooperate in the fishery sector by referring to external legal sources, including human rights laws, WTO laws, and environmental laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopaminergic neurons, which are well known for their central roles in reward and motivation-related behaviors, have been shown to participate in itch processing via their projection to the nucleus accumbens (NAc). However, the functional roles of different dopamine receptor subtypes in subregions of the NAc during itch processing remain unknown. With pharmacological approaches, we found that the blockade of dopamine D1 receptors (D1R), but not dopamine D2 receptors (D2R), in the lateral shell (LaSh) of the NAc impaired pruritogen-induced scratching behavior in male mice. In contrast, pharmacological activation of D2R in both the LaSh and medial shell (MeSh) of the NAc attenuated the scratching behavior induced by pruritogens. Consistently, we found that dopamine release, as detected by a dopamine sensor, was elevated in the LaSh rather than the MeSh of the NAc at the onset of scratching behavior. Furthermore, the elevation of dopamine release in the LaSh of the NAc persisted even though itch-relieving behavior was blocked, suggesting that the dopamine signal in the NAc LaSh represents a motivational component of itch processing. Our study revealed different dynamics of dopamine release that target neurons expressing two dopamine receptors subtypes within different subregions of the NAc, and emphasized that D1R in the LaSh of the NAc is important in itch signal processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between clutch thermodynamic characteristics and contact states of friction components is explored numerically and experimentally. The clutch thermodynamic numerical model is developed with consideration of the contact state and oil film between friction pairs. The clutch bench test is conducted to verify the variation of the clutch thermodynamic characteristics from the uniform contact (UCS) to the intermittent contact (ICS). The results show that the oil film decreases gradually with increasing temperature; the lubrication state finally changes from hydrodynamic lubrication to dry friction, where the friction coefficient shows an increasing trend before a decrease. Thus, the friction torque in UCS gradually increases after the applied pressure stabilizes. When the contact state changes to ICS, the contact pressure increases suddenly and the oil film decreases rapidly in the local contact area, bringing about a sharp increase in friction torque; subsequently, the circumferential and radial temperature differences of friction components expand dramatically. However, if the contact zone is already in the dry friction state, friction torque declines directly, resulting in clutch failure. The conclusions can potentially be used for online monitoring and fault diagnosis of the clutch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The startup process of pump as turbine (PAT) is actually unavoidable. In order to reveal the transient behavior of a small centrifugal pump reversing as a turbine during an atypical startup, transient experiments are carried out on PAT test rig in the case of two valve openings and four rotational speeds so as to obtain the evolution characteristic of the external performance parameters over time. Meanwhile, three dimensionless parameters are also employed to deeply reveal the transient characteristics. It is found that the shock phenomena in static pressure are prevalent at the outlet of PAT, and that it tends to lag and weaken with increasing stable rotational speed. All three dimensionless factors have maximum values at the initial stage of PAT startup, whereafter they demonstrate the different evolution characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying disease-related miRNAs can improve the understanding of complex diseases. However, experimentally finding the association between miRNAs and diseases is expensive in terms of time and resources. The computational screening of reliable miRNA–disease associations has thus become a necessary tool to guide biological experiments. "Similar miRNAs will be associated with the same disease" is the assumption on which most current miRNA–disease association prediction methods rely; however, biased prior knowledge, and incomplete and inaccurate miRNA similarity data and disease similarity data limit the performance of the model. Here, we propose heuristic learning based on graph neural networks to predict microRNA–disease associations (HLGNN-MDA). We learn the local graph topology features of the predicted miRNA–disease node pairs using graph neural networks. In particular, our improvements to the graph convolution layer of the graph neural network enable it to learn information among homogeneous nodes and among heterogeneous nodes. We illustrate the performance of HLGNN-MDA by performing tenfold cross-validation against excellent baseline models. The results show that we have promising performance in multiple metrics. We also focus on the role of the improvements to the graph convolution layer in the model. The case studies are supported by evidence on breast cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma and renal cell carcinoma. Given the above, the experiments demonstrate that HLGNN-MDA can serve as a reliable method to identify novel miRNA–disease associations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The oxygen deficiency-rich TiO 2 /oxygen deficiency-poor TiO 2 stacking structure grown by mist chemical vapor deposition method is used as resistive switching layers of resistive random access memory. Three different annealing temperatures of 500, 600, and 700oC are used to grow the oxygen deficiency-poor TiO 2. The experimental results indicate that the resistances of the oxygen deficiency-rich TiO 2 /oxygen deficiency-poor TiO 2 and the single-layer TiO 2 resistive random access memories are switchable by forming and rupturing the filament paths which are composed of oxygen deficiencies. The number of the filament paths is limited by the oxygen deficiency-poor TiO 2 layer, which improves the memory window and endurance of the resistive random access memory. The stacked structure with the oxygen deficiency-poor TiO 2 which is annealed at 600oC has the largest memory window of 7.8 × 105, endurable switching operation (>103 voltage loops), and long retention time (>104 s). In addition, the current conduction mechanism at the high resistance state of the RRAM with the stacked structure as the resistive switching layer is different from the one using the as-deposited TiO 2 as the resistive switching layer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation Approaches for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases often adopt the multidrug therapy method because it can increase the efficacy or reduce the toxic side effects of drugs. Using different drugs simultaneously may trigger unexpected pharmacological effects. Therefore, efficient identification of drug interactions is essential for the treatment of complex diseases. Currently proposed calculation methods are often limited by the collection of redundant drug features, a small amount of labeled data and low model generalization capabilities. Meanwhile, there is also a lack of unique methods for multidrug representation learning, which makes it more difficult to take full advantage of the originally scarce data. Results Inspired by graph models and pretraining models, we integrated a large amount of unlabeled drug molecular graph information and target information, then designed a pretraining framework, MGP-DR (Molecular Graph Pretraining for Drug Representation), specifically for drug pair representation learning. The model uses self-supervised learning strategies to mine the contextual information within and between drug molecules to predict drug–drug interactions and drug combinations. The results achieved promising performance across multiple metrics compared with other state-of-the-art methods. Our MGP-DR model can be used to provide a reliable candidate set for the combined use of multiple drugs. Availability and implementation Code of the model, datasets and results can be downloaded from GitHub (https://github.com/LiangYu-Xidian/MGP-DR). Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Micro air vehicles and vertical-takeoff-and-landing drones usually operate at relatively low values of the Reynolds number (Re=104-105). In the present study, three airfoils from different categories (AG14, BE50, and SD7032) are studied at Re=40,000-80,000. How the behavior of the laminar separation bubble changes with the Reynolds number is investigated and is found to give rise to differing aerodynamic forces that can severely degrade the aerodynamic performance of low-Reynolds-number airfoils. To obtain airfoils with satisfactory aerodynamic performance over a wide range of low Reynolds number, a multi-objective optimization approach is proposed and implemented with different design considerations. The airfoils optimized at these Reynolds numbers have a geometric dimple, as confirmed by unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulations with a transition model, and by particle image velocimetry wind-tunnel testing. The dimple is effective in restricting the location and size of the laminar separation bubble, leading to robust and significantly improved aerodynamic performance. Also studied is how the number of nonuniform rational B-spline control points affects the optimum airfoil results, and the dimple always appears in the optimum geometry for Re=40,000-80,000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the current problems in the safety monitoring of urban manhole covers, this paper proposes a safety monitoring system for manhole covers based on smart light poles. The system uses STM32F103C8T6 as the microcontroller, and processes and controls the movement, loss, tilt, flooding, and positioning data of the manhole cover. Then, the data frame is sent to the LoRa gateway of the nearby smart light pole through the LoRa communication protocol, and the LoRa gateway will transmit the abnormal state of the manhole cover to the large screen display of the smart light pole through the bus. At the same time, a voice broadcast is carried out to remind localized road vehicles and pedestrians. Besides, it is sent to the IoT cloud platform KitLink, and the cloud platform will push the abnormal status data to the subscribed management user, and the user will quickly process it according to the positioning data. Among them, the terminal sensing control device of the manhole cover adopts an integrated package, and at the same time, it is installed at the center point under the manhole cover by using a waterproof material. It can not only carry out reliable and accurate installation without changing the original components but also can effectively monitor the safety. Through the design and implementation test of the system, it can be seen that the system can efficiently and accurately realize all-round and multi-modal safety linkage monitoring of urban manhole covers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. To explore the role and mechanism of interleukin-8-mediated autophagy regulation of gastric cancer (GC) cells in GC. Methods. After cell culture, the SGC7901 cell line was separated into the control group and IL-8 (20 ng/mL) group, IL-8 (40 ng/mL) group, and IL-8 (60 ng/mL) group, to verify the effects of the PI3K/Akt signal path on the modulation of autophagy in GC cells. Western blot detected autophagy markers, ATG12-ATG5 complexes, autophagy-associated pathways, and apoptosis-associated factors in GC cells. Transwell was utilized to identify invasion capability. Results. Compared with the control group, the expression of LC3II, Atg5, ATG7, Beclin1, Bax, C-cas3, C-cas9, P-PI3K, P-Akt, and ATG12-ATG5 was remarkably elevated in the IL-8 (60 ng/mL) group, IL-8 (20 ng/mL) group, and the IL-8 (40 ng/mL) group. The expression of P62 and Bcl-2 in the IL-8 (60 ng/mL) group was also lower than that of the IL-8 (20 ng/mL) group and IL-8 (40 ng/mL) group, in contrast to the controls. The invasive quantity of GC SGC7901 cells in the IL-8 (60 ng/mL) group was also remarkably higher in contrast to the IL-8 (20 ng/mL) and IL-8 (40 ng/mL) groups. The relative expressions of LC3II, Atg5, ATG7, Beclin1, Bax, C-cas3, C-cas9, P-PI3K, P-Akt, and ATG12-ATG5 complex proteins in LY294002 group were considerably elevated. LC3II, Atg5, ATG7, Beclin1, Bax, C-cas3, C-cas9, P-PI3K, P-Akt, and ATG12-ATG5 were decreased in the IL-8 + LY294002 group. The relative expressions of P62 and Bcl-2 proteins in the IL-8 + LY294002 group were remarkably elevated, and the invasion of SGC7901 cells in the IL-8 group was elevated. In contrast to the IL-8 group, the invasion quantity of gastric cancer SGC7901 cells in the IL-8 + LY294002 group was considerably decreased. Conclusion. IL-8 promotes autophagy and aggression and suppresses apoptosis of GC SGC7901 cells by regulating PI3K/AKT pathway phosphorylation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. To study the development process of the human retina, we analyzed the development track of main cell types and transitional cell populations, identifying the retinal organoid cell differentiation-related genes (RDRGs). Methods. Single-cell RNA sequencing data (scRNA-Seq) of human retinal organoids were downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database in this study. Data were processed with quality analysis and analysis of variance. Principal component analysis and t -distributed stochastic neighbor embedding were used to conduct dimension reduction analysis and type annotation for the screened data. Marker genes and RDRGs were identified by differential analysis. Cell differentiation characteristics were determined by trajectory analysis. Enrichment pathways were analyzed by Gene Ontology(GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes(KEGG), and functional modules were obtained by protein-protein interaction (PPI) network analysis. Results. iPSCs were mainly located at the root of differentiation trajectory, while neurons and astrocytes were distributed in different branches, respectively. Meanwhile, 220 RDRGs were obtained. They were involved in the biological functions related to vision and visual development, as well as significantly enriched in signaling pathways associated with retinal vascular development and retinal neuroregulation. Protein-protein interaction network construction and functional subnetwork analysis were conducted on RDRGs, and two functional submodules were obtained. The enrichment analysis presented that the two submodules played a vital role in retinal development, visual perception, and cell respiration. Conclusions. This study identified RDRGs and revealed the biological functions involved in these genes, which are expected to provide evidence for researching retinal development and diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Urothelial carcinoma (UC) of the bladder is the most common malignancy in dialysis patients in Taiwan compared with renal cell carcinoma in Western countries. Radical cystectomy is the standard of care for localized muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC), as well as for selected patients with high-risk non-MIBC. Despite improvements in anesthetic competency, surgical techniques, and postoperative care, dialysis patients undergoing radical cystectomy are at a higher risk of perioperative morbidity and mortality than non-dialysis patients. Due to the relative rarity of the condition, published data on predictors of outcome in ESRD patients undergoing radical cystectomy are scant. Our study revealed that accurate reporting of complications is necessary for preoperative counseling, identifying modifiable risk factors, and planning risk mitigation strategies. High comorbidity and low-volume surgeons were interrelated as notable risk factors for major complications. In addition to tumor-related factors, male sex, older age, and major complications significantly influence survival. Background: We investigated the use of a standardized reporting system to study perioperative complications and oncologic outcomes after radical cystectomy in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients with bladder cancer. Methods: We reviewed retrospective outcomes in 141 ESRD patients with bladder cancer who underwent radical cystectomy between 2004 and 2015. Complications were graded using the Clavien–Dindo classification system with 0–2 classified as "No Major Complications" and Clavien 3–5 as "Major Complications". Low-volume surgeons were classified as those performing fewer than nine cases during the study. Fisher's exact test along with the chi-squared test, two-tailed t tests, logistic regression, and the Cox proportional hazard model were used to evaluate all clinically meaningful covariates. Results: Ninety-nine (99, 70.2%) patients had no major complications, and forty-two (29.8%) patients had major complications. Patients in the major complications group were older, had a higher Charlson comorbidity index (CCI), and had a longer hospitalization duration than those in the no major complications group (all, p < 0.05). Major complications were also more common when the procedure was performed by low-volume surgeons (p = 0.003). In multivariate logistic regression models, CCI ≥ 5 (p = 0.006) and low-volume surgeon (p = 0.004) were independent predictors of major complications. According to multivariate analysis with the Cox hazards regression, male sex, age > 70 years, CCI ≥ 5, bladder cancer stage ≥ 3, lymphovascular invasion, and experiencing major complications were significant poor prognostic factors for overall survival (all, p < 0.05). Conclusions: Accurate reporting of complications is necessary for preoperative counseling, identifying modifiable risk factors, and planning risk mitigation strategies. High comorbidity and low-volume surgeons were interrelated as notable risk factors for major complications. In addition to tumor-related factors, male sex, older age, and major complications significantly influence overall survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cancer-related anorexia/cachexia is known to be associated with worsened quality of life and survival; however, limited treatment options exist. Although megestrol acetate (MA) is often used off-label to stimulate appetite and improve anorexia/cachexia in patients with advanced cancers, the benefits are controversial. The present meta-analysis aimed to better elucidate the clinical benefits of MA in patients with cancer-related anorexia/cachexia. A systematic search of PubMed, EMBASE, OVID Medline, Clinicaltrials.gov, and Google Scholar databases found 23 clinical trials examining the use of MA in cancer-related anorexia. The available randomized, controlled trials were appraised using Version 2 of the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool (RoB 2) and they had moderate-to-high risk of bias. A total of eight studies provided sufficient data on weight change for meta-analysis. The studies were divided into high-dose treatment (>320 mg/day) and low-dose treatment (≤320 mg/day). The overall pooled mean change in weight among cancer patients treated with MA, regardless of dosage was 0.75 kg (95% CI = −1.64 to 3.15, τ2 = 9.35, I2 = 96%). Patients who received high-dose MA tended to have weight loss rather than weight gain. There were insufficient studies to perform a meta-analysis for the change in tricep skinfold, midarm circumference, or quality of life measures. MA was generally well-tolerated, except for a clear thromboembolic risk, especially with higher doses. On balance, MA did not appear to be effective in providing the symptomatic improvement of anorexia/cachexia in patients with advanced cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of health-related texts can be used to detect adverse drug reactions (ADR). The greatest challenge for ADR detection lies in imbalanced data distributions where words related to ADR symptoms are often minority classes. As a result, trained models tend to converge to a point that strongly biases towards the majority class and then ignores the minority class. Since the most used cross-entropy criteria is an approximation to accuracy, the model focuses more readily on the majority class to achieve high accuracy. To address this issue, existing methods apply either oversampling or down-sampling strategies to balance the data distribution and exploit the most difficult samples of the minority class. However, increasing or reducing the number of individual tokens alone in sequence labeling tasks will result in the loss of the syntactic relations of the sentence. This paper proposes a weighted variant of conditional random field (CRF) for data-imbalanced sequence labeling tasks. Such a weighting strategy can alleviate data distribution imbalances between majority and minority classes. Instead of using softmax in the output layer, the CRF can capture the relationship of labels between tokens. The locally interpretable model-agnostic explanations (LIME) algorithm was applied to investigate performance differences between models with and without the weighted loss function. Experimental results on two different ADR tasks show that the proposed model outperforms previously proposed sequence labeling methods. Author summary: Post-marketing drug safety surveillance offers the chance to detect serious ADRs resulting in hospitalization and ADRs occurring in patients, e.g., patients with high comorbidity and receiving drugs that are administered only in hospitals. This monitoring has traditionally been accomplished by surveying users. Recently, the automatically recording ADR of users in social media can greatly help biopharmaceutical enterprises to improve their products. Previous methods of name entity recognition in natural language processing were usually performed on the corpora with a balanced data distribution. Conversely, the datasets for ADR detection are extremely imbalanced. As a result, the detector tends to ignore the ADR symptoms and the related indications, which are more important. In this study, we propose a weighted CRF model based on BERT for the detection task of ADR. A weighted variant of the Viterbi Algorithm is implemented to assign more weight to the minority class, forcing the model to pay more attention to minority classes to ensure effective detection. The results suggested that the proposed method provides a significant performance boost without changing the model architecture in imbalanced-data tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the malignancies with an extremely inferior prognosis in the abdominal cavity, making it essential to develop more effective biomarkers for HCC. Although GNG5 has been linked to increased patient survival in a variety of human malignancies, no evidence has been found for its involvement in the development of HCC yet. Our study first analyzed the expression and prognosis of GNG5 in HCC using The Cancer Genome Atlas database (TCGA database) with the Gene Expression Omnibus database (GEO database) and found that GNG5 has a potential oncogenic role. Based on survival analysis, the clinical importance and prognostic value of the GNG5 gene were studied. Relying on tumor Immune Estimation Resource database (TIMER database), we analyzed the correlation between the GNG5 gene and HCC Immune infiltration cells. GNG5 expression levels were significantly higher in HCC tissues compared to normal liver tissues. HCC patients with high GNG5 expression had significantly reduced overall survival time and affected multiple immune cell infiltrates. Additionally, KEGG functional enrichment analysis indicated the PI3K-Akt signaling pathway as the most promising carcinogenic pathway associated with GNG5. This is the first comprehensive revelation of GNG5 as a possible new biological marker associated with immune infiltration in HCC. Additionally, it holds promise as an emerging target for HCC immunotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to grasp the distribution characteristics of the pressure field on the inner wall of the volute casing of an atypical open impeller centrifugal pump, the instantaneous pressure at different operating conditions was experimentally measured under four operating rotational speeds to obtain the distribution characteristics of the average static pressure field in the volute casing of this pump model. The pressure pulsation amplitude and pressure pulsation intensity were also analyzed at different rotational speed cases, and the standard deviation analysis was performed. The results showed that the instantaneous pressure pulsation on the inner wall of the volute casing strongly fluctuates during the pump operating, and the closer to the volute casing outlet, the more intense the pressure pulsation was. After increasing the pump shaft speed, the fluctuation amplitude gradually decreased. The pressure pulsation on the wall of tip clearance is more intense than that on the inner wall of the volute shell. The intensity of the pressure pulsation on the wall of tip clearance decreases with the increase of the rotational speed, and the higher the speed, the less intense the pressure pulsation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep learning models have achieved high performance across different domains, such as medical decision-making, autonomous vehicles, decision support systems, among many others. However, despite this success, the inner mechanisms of these models are opaque because their internal representations are too complex for a human to understand. This opacity makes it hard to understand the how or the why of the predictions of deep learning models. There has been a growing interest in model-agnostic methods that make deep learning models more transparent and explainable to humans. Some researchers recently argued that for a machine to achieve human-level explainability, this machine needs to provide human causally understandable explanations, also known as causability. A specific class of algorithms that have the potential to provide causability are counterfactuals. This paper presents an in-depth systematic review of the diverse existing literature on counterfactuals and causability for explainable artificial intelligence (AI). We performed a Latent Dirichlet topic modelling analysis (LDA) under a Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework to find the most relevant literature articles. This analysis yielded a novel taxonomy that considers the grounding theories of the surveyed algorithms, together with their underlying properties and applications to real-world data. Our research suggests that current model-agnostic counterfactual algorithms for explainable AI are not grounded on a causal theoretical formalism and, consequently, cannot promote causability to a human decision-maker. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the explanations derived from popular algorithms in the literature provide spurious correlations rather than cause/effects relationships, leading to sub-optimal, erroneous, or even biased explanations. Thus, this paper also advances the literature with new directions and challenges on promoting causability in model-agnostic approaches for explainable AI. • A survey on model-agnostic counterfactual approaches for XAI. • A novel taxonomy for model-agnostic counterfactual approaches for XAI. • A set of properties for causability systems for XAI. • Opportunities and challenges for causability systems based on modelagnostic counterfactual approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With an in-depth understanding of noncoding ribonucleic acid (RNA), many studies have shown that microRNA (miRNA) plays an important role in human diseases. Because traditional biological experiments are time-consuming and laborious, new calculation methods have recently been developed to predict associations between miRNA and diseases. In this review, we collected various miRNA–disease association prediction models proposed in recent years and used two common data sets to evaluate the performance of the prediction models. First, we systematically summarized the commonly used databases and similarity data for predicting miRNA–disease associations, and then divided the various calculation models into four categories for summary and detailed introduction. In this study, two independent datasets (D 5430 and D 6088) were compiled to systematically evaluate 11 publicly available prediction tools for miRNA–disease associations. The experimental results indicate that the methods based on information dissemination and the method based on scoring function require shorter running time. The method based on matrix transformation often requires a longer running time, but the overall prediction result is better than the previous two methods. We hope that the summary of work related to miRNA and disease will provide comprehensive knowledge for predicting the relationship between miRNA and disease and contribute to advanced computation tools in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the robust control problem of uncertain nonlinear systems subject to magnitude and rate saturation (MRS) is investigated via active disturbance rejection control. To this purpose, we propose a novel robust controller that involves an improved extended state observer (IESO), a composite loop, and two anti-windup loops. The IESO is designed to estimate the state and the total disturbance, which includes the uncertain dynamics and external disturbance. Compared with the traditional ESO, IESO absorbs an anti-windup loop to ensure accurate estimation under MRS. The convergence analysis of IESO is further carried out to theoretically verify the accurate estimation of IESO. The composite loop is generalized to cancel the total disturbance based on the output of IESO. Moreover, a rate anti-windup loop is designed to attenuate the effect of rate saturation on the estimation/cancellation of total disturbance. An algorithm for anti-windup gains computation is correspondingly established, in order to minimize the effect of external disturbance in terms of $L_{2}$ gain while guaranteeing the local asymptotic stability. Finally, the proposed method is applied to aeroengine, which involves large uncertainty and suffers from disturbance and MRS. The experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transient startup and shutdown of centrifugal pumps is inevitable and its transient performance has thus attracted increasing attention in recent years. This study aims to reveal the transient characteristics of centrifugal pumps during the start-stop process by using the dimensionless analysis method and quasi-steady-state method. The research objects are three typical centrifugal pumps with an impeller structure. The startup process includes quick and slow startup, and the shutdown process includes low-speed and high-speed idle rotation. Results show that the similarity law of centrifugal pumps can be applied to transient hydraulic performance prediction under full flow conditions during slow startup and under small flow conditions during quick startup and idle shutdown. Quick or slow startup does not affect the evolution of the dimensionless power coefficients. The research result may be useful for the design of the new fluidmachinery equipment by utilizing transient hydraulic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since miRNAs can participate in the posttranscriptional regulation of gene expression, they may provide ideas for the development of new drugs or become new biomarkers for drug targets or disease diagnosis. In this work, we propose an miRNA–disease association prediction method based on meta-paths (MDPBMP). First, an miRNA–disease–gene heterogeneous information network was constructed, and seven symmetrical meta-paths were defined according to different semantics. After constructing the initial feature vector for the node, the vector information carried by all nodes on the meta-path instance is extracted and aggregated to update the feature vector of the starting node. Then, the vector information obtained by the nodes on different meta-paths is aggregated. Finally, miRNA and disease embedding feature vectors are used to calculate their associated scores. Compared with the other methods, MDPBMP obtained the highest AUC value of 0.9214. Among the top 50 predicted miRNAs for lung neoplasms, esophageal neoplasms, colon neoplasms and breast neoplasms, 49, 48, 49 and 50 have been verified. Furthermore, for breast neoplasms, we deleted all the known associations between breast neoplasms and miRNAs from the training set. These results also show that for new diseases without known related miRNA information, our model can predict their potential miRNAs. Code and data are available at https://github.com/LiangYu-Xidian/MDPBMP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water stable Zr-BTDB ultrathin nanosheets incorporated with benzothiadiazole moieties enable efficient aerobic oxidation of a wide range of sulfides to sulfoxides under visible light irradiation in water at room temperature. [Display omitted] • Ultrathin, water stable and photoactive Zr-MOF nanosheets were synthesized. • Zr-MOF nanosheets exhibit superior photocatalytic activity for aerobic oxidation of sulfides. • Singlet oxygen and superoxide radical are reactive oxygen species for the oxidation of sulfides. Ultrathin metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) nanosheets incorporating photochromic units are highly efficient heterogeneous photocatalysts, thanks to their highly exposed catalytic sites, short diffusion pathways, and efficient separation of photo-generated carriers. Herein, we report on the solvothermal synthesis of photoactive benzothiadiazole (BTz) functionalized Zr-MOF nanosheets (Zr-BTDB-NS), which are constructed from Zr 12 nodes linked by nine BTDB2− (BTDB = 4,4′-(benzo[c][1,2,5]thiadiazole-4,7-diyl)dibenzoate) ligands. The Zr-BTDB-NS exhibited superior photocatalytic activity towards the aerobic oxidation of a broad range of sulfides to their corresponding sulfoxides under visible light irradiation in water at room temperature, even in a gram-scale. The Zr-BTDB-NS can be efficiently recycled and reused for seven cycles without a decrease in conversion or selectivity. Detailed mechanism studies revealed that the Zr-BTDB-NS generates singlet oxygen (1O 2) and superoxide radical (O 2 –) reactive oxygen species under visible light irradiation, which are responsible for the oxidation of sulfides into their corresponding sulfoxides. The simplicity of the synthetic approach as well as the diversity of photoactive organic units hold great promise for designing ultrathin, water-stable, and photoactive Zr-MOF nanosheets. This work will also be of added value for selective photooxidation of sulfides under green and mild conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small nucleolar RNA H/ACA Box 51 (SNORA51) is involved in progression of multiple cancers. However, its role in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is still unclear. The aim of the present study was to analyze the expression of SNORA51 in HCC and its clinical significance. A total of 136 patients with HCC who underwent surgery from January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2018 were included. The expression of SNORA51 in cancer tissues and adjacent tissues was compared using reverse transcription-quantitative PCR and bioinformatics methods. Methylation of the SNORA51 promoter in cancer and adjacent tissues was compared using bioinformatics. The relationship between SNORA51 expression levels and clinicopathological characteristics of patients with HCC, in addition to prognosis, was analyzed. The expression of SNORA51 in HCC was significantly higher compared with that in adjacent tissues (P<0.05). starBase demonstrated that higher expression levels of SNORA51 were associated with a significantly worse prognosis of patients with HCC compared with those who had lower expression levels of SNORA51 (P<0.05). Bioinformatics analysis using The University of Alabama at Birmingham Cancer Data Analysis Portal demonstrated that methylation of the SNORA51 promoter region in HCC was significantly decreased compared with adjacent tissues (P<0.05). A high expression of SNORA51 was significantly associated with portal vein tumor thrombus, vascular invasion and TNM stage (P<0.05). The median survival time of patients with high SNORA51 expression was significantly lower compared with those who had low SNORA51 expression (P<0.05). Both uni- and multivariate Cox regression analysis demonstrated that SNORA51 expression was an independent risk factor that significantly worsened the prognosis of patients with HCC (P<0.05). The overexpression of SNORA51 in patients with HCC was significantly associated with a poor prognosis and may be related to the reduced methylation of the SNORA51 promoter region. Therefore, SNORA51 may be a promising biomarker for prediction of the prognosis of patients with HCC and may be a therapeutic target for the treatment of HCC in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tectonic evolution of the Paleo‐Jinshajiang Ocean, and in particular the time of its closure, is debated. Here we present new constraints on the evolution of this region from an integrated paleomagnetic and geochronologic study of the Late Triassic Batang Group volcanic rocks in Qamdo, Eastern Qiangtang Terrane (EQT). Two zircon U‐Pb ages indicate that the volcanic rocks erupted at ∼227–222 Ma. New paleomagnetic results yield a robust Late Triassic paleopole of 57.6°N, 176.4°E (A95 = 7.8°), corresponding to a paleolatitude of 32.5 ± 7.8°N for the study area. Integrated with other lines of paleomagnetic and geological evidence, we show that the northward drift of the EQT placed it at the same paleolatitude as the Tarim Block by ∼227–222 Ma, which suggests that the Paleo‐Jinshajiang Ocean in the Qamdo region closed before that time, and likely around ∼230 Ma. Plain Language Summary: The closure of the Paleo‐Jinshajiang Ocean, which was one of the most important ancient oceans of Asia, closed when the Qiangtang Terrane (QT) collided with the terranes now located to the north of it. However, the evolution of this ocean, and especially the timing of its closure, are still debated. The drift history of the QT is a key to understanding the evolution of the Paleo‐Jinshajiang Ocean. We present here new constraints on the evolution of this region from an integrated paleomagnetic and zircon U‐Pb geochronologic study of Late Triassic volcanic rocks in Qamdo, Eastern QT. Two zircon U‐Pb geochronologic results indicate that the volcanic rocks erupted at ∼227–222 Ma. New paleomagnetic results yield a robust Late Triassic paleopole of 57.6°N and 176.4°E, and indicate that the study area was then located at a paleolatitude of 32.5 ± 7.8°N. In integrating these data with other lines of evidence, we show that a northward drift of the EQT since the early Permian brought it to the same paleolatitude as the Tarim Block by ∼227–222 Ma. This implies that the closure of the Paleo‐Jinshajiang Ocean in the Qamdo region occurred before 227–222 Ma, and likely around ∼230 Ma. Key Points: Volcanic rocks of the Late Triassic Batang Group are dated by U‐Pb on zircon to ∼227–222 MaPaleomagnetic data from these rocks yield a robust Late Triassic paleopole of 57.6°N, 176.4°E(A95 = 7.8°)Closure of the Paleo‐Jinshajiang Ocean occurred before 227–222 Ma, and likely around ∼230 Ma [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drug combination is a sensible strategy for disease treatment because it improves the treatment efficacy and reduces concomitant side effects. Due to the large number of possible combinations among candidate compounds, exhaustive screening is prohibitive. Currently, a large number of studies have focused on predicting potential drug combinations. However, these methods are not entirely satisfactory in terms of performance and scalability. In this paper, we proposed a Network Embedding frameWork in MultIplex Network (NEWMIN) to predict synthetic drug combinations. Based on a multiplex drug similarity network, we offered alternative methods to integrate useful information from different aspects and to decide the quantitative importance of each network. For drug combination prediction, we found seven novel drug combinations that have been validated by external sources among the top-ranked predictions of our model. To verify the feasibility of NEWMIN, we compared NEWMIN with other five methods, for which it showed better performance than other methods in terms of the area under the precision-recall curve and receiver operating characteristic curve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A generalized Euler equation of pump as turbine is derived, and the transient hydraulic performance of a centrifugal pump as turbine during an atypical startup period is measured. Meanwhile, the dimensionless analysis and the additional theoretical head calculation are also conducted. It is found that the transient characteristics of pump as turbine during atypical startup period mainly come from the rotational acceleration effect, rather than the flow inertia effect. The final stable values of dimensionless flowrate coefficient and dimensionless head coefficient are both closely related to the steady rotating speed and flowrate after startup process, but the dimensionless power coefficient is not remarkably related to them. In an atypical startup, the impact phenomena occur in both flowrate curve and outlet static pressure curve. At the same steady rotating speed, the larger the steady flowrate is, the more serious the flowrate impact is. Under the same steady flowrate, the lower the steady rotating speed is, the more remarkable the static pressure impact at the outlet is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]