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Objective The Ordos block, with typical boundary zone activity, is located in the center of mainland China. Influenced by the remote action of the Tibetan Plateau in the southwest and the Pacific Plate in the east, each boundary zone of the Ordos Block exhibits distinct tectonic activity and deformation characteristics. This study aims to provide insights into the characteristics of strong earthquake generation and the future seismic risk along the boundaries of the Ordos active block. Methods This study systematically summarizes research achievements made in the study of active faults and the seismogenic mechanism of strong earthquakes around the Ordos Block over the past few decades, providing a systematic overview of the characteristics of fault activity and seismic generation mechanisms along the block' s periphery. Conslusion The differences in fault activity in each boundary zone determined the differences in the earthquake-breeding strong tectonic environments. In the southern section of the western boundary, the faults are mainly characterized by strike-slip, reverse strike-slip, and thrust owing to the influence of the northward compression and expansion of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, resulting in complex structural deformation styles within the boundary zone. In the northern section of the western boundary, the latest expansion boundary of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is characterized by dextral movement along the Sanguankou-Niushoushan fault. The Yinchuan Basin in the northern section of the western boundary zone is a typical fault basin with basin-controlling faults exhibiting dextral strike-slip characteristics, and earthquakes are primarily of the standard strike-slip type. The Hetao Basin on the northern boundary is controlled by normal faults on its northern side, with historical and ancient earthquakes concentrated on the northern boundary faults. The Weihe Basin on the southern boundary exhibits relatively complex structural features, comprising two sets of normal faults. Historical major earthquakes mostly occur at the southern edge of the basin, with moderate seismic activity in the central-northern part of the basin. The Shanxi Graben system on the eastern boundary comprises multiple rift-type basins. Historical major earthquakes exhibit a pattern of stronger activity in the south and weaker activity in the north. The northern basins are influenced by the Zhang-Bo tectonic belt, resulting in significant changes in basin trend and fault movement characteristics, often possessing the structural conditions necessary for earthquakes of around M 7.0. Overall, in the typical fault activity zones surrounding the Ordos active block, future strong earthquakes are more likely to occur in seismic gaps or transition zones of fault systems, where significant time has passed since the occurrence of major earthquakes or at the intersections of tectonic zones.

Conversion of sputum from positive to negative is one of the indicators to evaluate the efficacy of anti-tuberculosis treatment (ATT). We investigate the factors associated with delayed sputum conversion after 2 or 5 months of ATT from the perspectives of bacteriology and genomics. A retrospective study of sputum conversion in sputum positive 1782 pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) was conducted from 2021 to 2022 in Beijing, China. We also designed a case-matched study including 24 pairs of delayed-sputum-conversion patients (DSCPs) and timely-sputum-conversion patients (TSCPs), and collect clinical isolates from DSCPs before and after ATT and initial isolates of TSCPs who successfully achieved sputum conversion to negative after 2 months of ATT. A total of 75 strains were conducted drug sensitivity testing (DST) of 13 anti-TB drugs and whole-genome sequencing (WGS) to analyze the risk factors of delayed conversion and the dynamics changes of drug resistance and genomics of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) during ATT. We found TSCPs have better treatment outcomes and whose initial isolates show lower levels of drug resistance. Clinical isolates of DSCPs showed dynamically changing of resistance phenotypes and intra-host heterogeneity. Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) profiles showed large differences between groups. The study provided insight into the bacteriological and genomic variation of delayed sputum conversion. It would be helpful for early indication of sputum conversion and guidance on ATT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tuberculosis (TB), a disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) infection, remains a major threat to global public health. To facilitate early TB diagnosis, an IS6110 gene-based recombinase aided amplification (RAA) assay was coupled to a clustered, regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-Cas13a fluorescence assay to create a rapid MTB detection assay (named RAA-CRISPR-MTB). Its diagnostic efficacy was evaluated for sensitivity and specificity through sequential testing of recombinant plasmids, mycobacterium strains, and clinical specimens. RAA-CRISPR detected IS6110 genes at levels approaching 1 copy/μL with pUC57-6110 as the template and 10 copies/μL with H37Rv as the template. There was no observed cross detection of non-tuberculosis mycobacteria (NTM) with either template. Furthermore, RAA-CRISPR testing of 151 clinical specimens yielded a diagnostic specificity rate of 100% and a diagnostic sensitivity rate of 69% that exceeded the corresponding Xpert MTB/RIF assay rate (60%). In conclusion, we established a novel RAA-CRISPR assay that achieved highly sensitive and specific MTB detection for use as a clinical TB diagnostic tool in resource-poor settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present tectonic regime of the Qilian Shan is dominated by large northeast and northwest striking strike‐slip faults and northwest striking thrust faults. Deformation distribution between the subparallel Haiyuan Strike‐slip Fault and the Minle‐Damaying Thrust Fault (MDF) is crucial for understanding the orogenic mechanism of the northeastern Tibetan Plateau. However, the uncertain kinematics of the MDF and the stress variation along the strike‐varying Haiyuan Fault inhibit further discussion of their relationship. Five key sites along the MDF were selected for analysis of terrace abandonment ages and vertical offsets to determine the slip rates. Two finite element models were constructed to calculate the stress‐strain relationship between the Haiyuan Fault and MDF. We find that the activity of the MDF can be divided into two segments by a stepover with less activity and lower terrain at the Xida River site. Shortening rates of the MDF vary between 0.2 and 2.4 mm/a since the late Pleistocene with trapezoidal trends on both fault segments. The two finite element models and GPS data reveal that the strain rates are lower at the Xida River site but higher at the Menyuan Bend on the Haiyuan Fault. We infer that long‐term strain accumulation at the Menyuan Bend may have mitigated the tectonic activity northeast to the bend under the northeastward stress field, including the activity of the MDF at the Xida River site, and resulted in the segmentation of the MDF. Plain Language Summary: The Haiyuan strike‐slip fault and the Minle‐Damaying thrust fault (MDF) are two important parallel faults that help us understand the growth of the Qilian Shan. The influence of multiple bends of the Haiyuan fault on the activities of its adjacent faults has not been clearly studied. Therefore, we investigated in detail the terraces of five rivers that were offset by the MDF, and determined the spatial variation of the MDF activity rates based on the vertical separations and abandonment ages of the terraces. We also established two finite element models showing the deformation distribution between the Haiyuan Fault and MDF on the upper crustal and crustal scales, respectively. We have found that the Menyuan Bend of the Haiyuan Fault absorbs a significant amount of shortening deformation under the regional northeastward stress field and probably causes the very low activity rate of the MDF at the Xida River site in the northeast of the bend, in contrast to the obvious higher activity rates on both sides of the site, indicating that the activity of the MDF is segmented at the Xida River. The relationship and seismic risk between the two faults are worthy of continuous attention. Key Points: The slip rates of the Minle‐Damaying Thrust Fault (MDF) show its segmentation at stepover near the Xida River with trapezoidal variation trends on both segmentsThe strain rate is lower at the Xida River site but higher at the Menyuan Bend on the Haiyuan FaultStrain accumulation at the Menyuan Bend has reduced the activity of the MDF at the Xida River site [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ganzi–Xianshuihe Fault Zone is a large-scale sinistral strike-slip fault zone on the eastern Tibet. As the boundary fault zone of the Bayankala Block and the Chuandian Block, it controls the clockwise rotation of the southeastern Tibet. However, there is still controversy regarding the activity changes between fault zones. Therefore, accurately determining the slip rates of faults in the area is crucial for characterizing regional plate motions and assessing associated seismic hazards. We focused on studying four fault segments near the Ganzi–Xianshuihe Fault Zone, including the Manigango, Ganzi, Luhuo, and Daofu segments. In each segment, we selected typical sinistral piercing points and carried out Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) photogrammetry to obtain high-resolution terrain data. We utilized LaDiCaoz_V2.2 and GlobalMapper software (LaDiCaoz_V2.2 and Global Mapper v17.0) to measure the offsets, together with optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating, to constrain the timing of fault activity. The estimated slip rates for the Manigango, Ganzi, Luhuo, and Daofu segments are as follows: 9.2 ± 0.75 mm/yr, 9.59 ± 1.7 mm/yr, 4.23 ± 0.66 mm/yr, and 7.69 ± 0.76 mm/yr, respectively. Integrating previous results with slip rates estimated in this study, our analysis suggests the slip rate of the Ganzi–Xianshuihe Fault Zone is around 8–10 mm/year, exhibiting a consistent slip rate from northwest to southeast. This reflects the overall coordination of the movement on the eastern Tibet, with the strike-slip fault zone only controlling the direction of movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have shown remarkable advantages in a wide range of domains at the expense of huge parameters and computations. Modern CNNs still tend to be more complex and larger to achieve better inference accuracy. However, the complex and large structures of CNNs could slow down the inference speed. Recently, Compressing the convolutional weights to be sparse by pruning the unimportant parameters has been demonstrated as an efficient way to reduce the computations of CNNs. On the other hand, field‐programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) have been a popular hardware platform to accelerate CNN inference. In this paper, we propose an algorithm/hardware co‐optimized method for accelerating CNN inference on FPGAs. For the algorithm, we take advantage of unstructured and structured parameter sparsifying methods to achieve high sparsity and keep the regularity of convolutional weights. Correspondingly, hardware‐friendly index representations of sparse convolutional weights are proposed. For the hardware architecture, we propose row‐wise input‐stationary dataflow, which is tightly coupled with the algorithm. A row‐wise computing engine (RConv Engine) is proposed, which is based on the dataflow. Inside the RConv Engine, the scalar‐vector structure is applied to implement the basic processing elements (PEs). To flexibly calculate the feature map with various sizes, the PEs are organized in a 2D structure with two work modes. The experimental results demonstrate that our co‐optimized method implements high sparsity of convolutional weights, and the computing engine achieves high computation efficiency. Compared with other accelerators, our co‐optimized method implements a 10.9×$$ \times $$ speedup on FPS at most with the highest sparsity of convolutional weights and negligible accuracy loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Soil nitrogen (N) significantly influences the interaction between plants and pathogens, yet its impact on host defenses and pathogen strategies via alterations in plant metabolism remains unclear. Through metabolic and genetic studies, this research demonstrates that high‐N‐input exacerbates tomato bacterial wilt by altering γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA) metabolism of host plants. Under high‐N conditions, the nitrate sensor NIN‐like protein 7 (SlNLP7) promotes the glutamate decarboxylase 2/4 (SlGAD2/4) transcription and GABA synthesis by directly binding to the promoters of SlGAD2/4. The tomato plants with enhanced GABA levels showed stronger immune responses but remained susceptible to Ralstonia solanacearum. This led to the discovery that GABA produced by the host actually heightens the pathogen's virulence. We identified the R. solanacearum LysR‐type transcriptional regulator OxyR protein, which senses host‐derived GABA and, upon interaction, triggers a response involving protein dimerization that enhances the pathogen's oxidative stress tolerance by activating the expression of catalase (katE/katGa). These findings reveal GABA's dual role in activating host immunity and enhancing pathogen tolerance to oxidative stress, highlighting the complex relationship between tomato plants and R. solanacearum, influenced by soil N status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) stands as the second most prevalent infectious agent-related cause of death worldwide in 2022, trailing only COVID-19. With 1.13 million reported deaths, this figure is more than half of the mortality associated with human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), which accounted for 0.63 million deaths. Diagnosing Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) infection remains a formidable challenge due to the inability to isolate and detect MTB in sputum and within the human body. The absence of universally reliable diagnostic criteria for MTB infection globally poses a significant obstacle to preventing the progression of tuberculosis from the MTB infection stage., Methods: In this study, our objective was to formulate a diagnostic biomarker cluster capable of discerning the progression of MTB infection and disease. This was achieved through a comprehensive joint multiomics analysis, encompassing transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome, conducted on lung tissue samples obtained from both normal control mice and those infected with MTB., Results: A total of 1690 differentially expressed genes and 94 differentially expressed proteins were systematically screened. From this pool, 10 core genes were singled out. Additionally, eight long non-coding ribonucleic acids and eight metabolites linked to these core genes were identified to establish a cohesive cluster of biomarkers. This multiomics-based biomarker cluster demonstrated its capability to differentiate uninfected samples from MTB-infected samples effectively in both principle component analysis and the construction of a random forest model., Conclusion: The outcomes of our study strongly suggest that the multiomics-based biomarker cluster holds significant potential for enhancing the diagnosis of MTB infection.