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SoxB subfamily is an important branch of Sox family and plays a key role in animal physiological process, but little is known about their function in planarian regeneration. This study aims to evaluate the function of DjSoxB family genes in intact and regenerating planarians Dugesia japonica. Here, we amplify the full-length cDNA of DjSoxB1 and DjSoxB2 in D. japonica by rapid amplification of the cDNA ends (RACE), detect the expression of DjSoxB family genes in planarian. The results show that DjSoxBs are expressed in parenchymal tissue and the hybridization signals partially disappear after irradiation indicates DjSoxB family genes are expressed in neoblasts. After the RNA interference (RNAi) of DjSoxB1, DjSoxB2 and DjSoxB3 separately, the numbers of proliferative cells are all reduced that causes planarians show slower growth of blastema in the early stage of regeneration, and nerves of planarians are affected that the movement speed of planarians decreases in varying degrees. Specially, planarians in the DjSoxB3 RNAi group show shrinkage and twisting. Overall, this study reveals that DjSoxB family genes play a role in cell proliferation during regeneration. They also play an important role in the maintenance of normal nerve function and nerve regeneration. These results provide directions for the functional study of SoxB family genes and provide an important foundation for planarian regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Catalytic olefin metathesis represents a vital reaction in the chemical industry, as it provides a feasible route for the interconversion of olefins. However, traditional supported catalysts usually suffer from low activity due to sluggish kinetics for the formation of catalytically active metal‐carbene species. This work tackles this issue by taking phosphoric acid as a promoter and constructing a Brønsted acidic site to cooperate with the MoOx sites, thus facilitating the formation of Mo‐carbene. It turns out that the turnover frequency of propene metathesis over the Mo−P/Al2O3 catalyst is 7.1 times higher than that over the unmodified Mo/Al2O3 catalyst. The combined characterization reveals the promotion of phosphorus results from the alignment of olefin toward adjacent MoOx and thus facilitates formation of active Mo‐carbene species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrestrial silicate weathering records from the tectonically active Tibetan Plateau are crucial to explore the interactions among climate change, tectonic uplift and chemical weathering during the Cenozoic. However, the complex sedimentary facies changes and frequent occurrence of coarse lithologies related to intense tectonic uplift of the Tibetan Plateau have largely limited the reliability of bulk chemical weathering indexes to reveal the silicate weathering history. Here, we present detailed records of clay minerals and geochemical compositions from clay-sized (< 2 μm) sediments collected from the well-dated Huaitoutala section (ca. 15.3–1.8 Ma) in the NE Qaidam Basin to reconstruct the chemical weathering history of the NE Tibetan Plateau during the late Cenozoic. The relatively high (illite–smectite mixed layers + smectite)/(chlorite + illite) ratio indicates a strong silicate weathering intensity from 15.3 to 12.6. Ma, while a continuous decrease in this ratio since 12.6 Ma reflects a long-term decreasing intensity of silicate weathering. By comparing the clay mineral records with the climatic reconstruction and the tectonic events in the NE Tibetan Plateau, the results reveal that middle Miocene global cooling-related drying exerted a significant influence on the decreasing weathering intensity since ca. 12.6 Ma. Furthermore, the late Cenozoic episodic and persistent uplift of the NE Tibetan Plateau may have exerted an additional influence on the long-term decrease in weathering intensity. Specifically, the dramatic fluctuation in the silicate weathering intensity during ∼11–9.6 Ma is mainly due to uplift-induced provenance changes. Moreover, the fluctuating increase in the silicate weathering intensity during ∼8–5 Ma may have been caused by intensified East Asian summer monsoon precipitation. Our study suggests that both climate change and tectonic deformation controlled the chemical weathering intensity in the NE Tibetan Plateau during the late Cenozoic. • Detailed 15.3–1.8 Ma clay minerals records from the northeastern Qaidam Basin. • Long-term continuous weakening of silicate weathering intensity since 12.6 Ma. • Global cooling-related drying mainly caused weakening of silicate weathering. • Uplift-induced provenance change influenced weathering proxy during 11–9.6 Ma. • Increase in silicate weathering intensity during ∼8–5 Ma caused by monsoon rainfall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cenozoic basin sediments on the Tibetan Plateau are commonly characterized by frequent changes in sediment facies and coarse lithologies, which largely limits our understanding of the relationship between the Tibetan Plateau uplift and its environmental impacts. The monomineral index derived from those sediments can effectively eliminate the effects of grain size and sedimentary facies changes. Here, we present detailed mineralogical, spectroscopic, and micromorphological investigations of smectites collected from the Hongliugou section of the Qaidam Basin to explore the relationship between climate change and the Tibetan Plateau uplift in the early–middle Eocene. Multiple methods involving X–ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, 27Al nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy collectively show that the smectites in the Hongliugou section are mixtures of montmorillonites and beidellites. The origin of the beidellites was likely the weathering product of illite, as indicated by the presence of illite–beidellite mixed layers (an intermediate product of the alteration of illite to beidellite). The long–term decreasing trend of beidellite/smectite ratios from the highest values (∼1.1–82.0%, averaging 14.8%) in the Early Eocene Climate Optimum (∼52.0–49.5 Ma) to generally <2% at 49.5–43.9 Ma suggested a long–term climatic drying. This climate change history deduced from the variation of beidellite content is consistent with other climate records and supports that global climate change was the driving factor regulating regional climate change. Our study thus suggests that the monomineral index of smectite may serve as an effective method for reconstructing regional climate change, especially within complex sedimentary environments. • Both beidellite and montmorillonite were identified in the Qaidam Basin. • A continuous drying trend is shown by the beidellite content at ∼53–43.9 Ma. • Global climate change mainly regulated regional climate change during ∼53–43.9 Ma. • Smectite monomineral index reveals climate change in complex sedimentary settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • A dense seismic array deployed 18 days is used to image a 3D Vs model. • Three LVZs are revealed in the shallow crust beneath the Shiziyang Waterway area. • Three cross-cutting fault zones in the sedimentary basement are identified. • Two-stage differential fault movements dominated the opening of the Shiziyang Waterway. The Shiziyang Waterway, located in the northern continental margin of the South China Sea, has developed a complex fault system owing to the coupling action of the oceanic crust and continental crust. However, the geological structure in the shallow crust beneath the Shiziyang Waterway and the relationship between faults and waterway development are still unclear, resulting in difficulty in assessing the earthquake risk to the surrounding cities. In this study, based on a high-density short-period seismic array that was recently deployed around the Shiziyang Waterway, a high-resolution shear wave velocity model is inverted to as shallow as 4 km by the ambient noise tomography method. The results showed that at depths ranging from 0.2 to 4 km, three sets of low-velocity zones (LVZs), trending east–west, northeast, and northwest, are revealed, which are speculated to be the Shougouling fault (SGLF), Xinhui-Shiqiao fault (XSF), and Shiziyang fault bundle (SZYFb), respectively. The shear-wave velocity anomalies illustrate that the SGLF stopped extending east at the north endpoint of the Wenchong-Zhujiangkou fault (WZF). The two-stage differential vertical movements of the WZF, Nangang-Humen fault (NHF), and Hualong-Haioudao fault (HHF) dominated the opening of the Shiziyang Waterway. This study provides new seismological evidence of the opening process for the Shiziyang Waterway and reveals that internal fault activity dominated the development and evolution of the Pearl River Delta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ultrahigh-performance concrete (UHPC) is susceptible to various forms of abrasion during its service life. This study is an investigation of the abrasion resistance of UHPC, focusing on two primary causes of wear: dynamic traffic loads and hydraulic impacts. To enhance the material's resistance to abrasion, milling steel fibres were utilised. For comparative purposes, straight steel fibres and hybrid milling–straight steel fibres were also employed. The protective function of the steel fibres primarily comes into effect once the concrete cover has experienced wear. When subjected to traffic and hydraulic loads, UHPC containing milling fibres exhibited superior resistance, compared with that containing straight fibres, while maintaining favourable workability. Notably, the UHPC incorporating hybrid steel fibres, which form a composite skeleton, owing to the presence of two fibre types, demonstrated even greater effectiveness in resisting external abrasion. Furthermore, the abrasion resistances observed under both traffic and hydraulic conditions displayed a positive linear correlation, with R2 > 0.8. These findings suggest the feasibility of evaluating the material's abrasion resistance under various wearing causes using a single test method. The outcomes of this study hold promise in advancing the development of UHPC and promoting its utilisation in conditions characterised by severe abrasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of the curing methods on the flexural performances of the milling steel fiber reinforced ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) with a high fiber content was systematically evaluated in this study, alongside the flowability and compressive strength. The UHPC specimens were subjected to standard curing and steam curing, employing three steel fiber reinforcing schedules: single milling fiber, single straight fiber, and a combination of both. The flowability of the UHPC was found to be less affected by the milling fiber compared to the straight fiber. Steam curing significantly enhanced the compressive strength but had a slight negative effect on the flexural behavior. However, this adverse effect could be mitigated as the fiber content increased. The flexural strength and toughness of the UHPC with milling fiber were minimally influenced by steam curing, suggesting that standard curing was sufficient for the milling fiber-reinforced UHPC. Conversely, steam curing exhibited an improvement in the flexural behavior of the UHPC containing a hybrid combination of milling and straight fibers. In addition to developing an empirical model for compressive and flexural strengths, we proposed a data-driven model called Gaussian process regression (GPR) to predict the flexural behaviors of the UHPC with varying fiber content, types, and curing methods. The data-driven model demonstrated high accuracy, with an R2 value of 1.0 when compared to the experimental data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non‐noble Ni−Cu alloys serve as an alternative catalytic material for noble metal‐based catalysts that could be applied in the efficient conversion of levulinic acid (LA) into the high value γ‐valerolactone (GVL). However, maintaining the catalytic stability for Ni−Cu nanoparticles in the LA hydrogenation process remains a substantial challenge, Herein, this problem is solved by constructing carbon‐protected catalytic sites within carbon layer‐coated Ni−Cu nanoalloy composite via pyrolysis of NiCux(OH)/glucose precursor. The optimized NiCu0.68@C catalyst exhibits excellent stability and selectivity to GVL (>99 %) in the hydrogenation of LA reaction. Various characterization indicates that the enhancement in stability originates from the protective effect of the carbon layer, which prevents the metal leaching, oxidation and aggregation of Ni−Cu nanoparticles during the reaction process. This work greatly advances non‐noble metal‐catalyzed conversion of LA to GVL and helps the rational design of bimetallic catalysts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the early performance and potential issues of ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) light-weight composite decks (LCBDs) used in municipal highway bridge design. The major objective of this research was to understand the complex evolution of temperature and humidity within immature UHPC thin layers, which can lead to deformation and secondary stress, potentially causing cracks and threatening the long-term applicability and safety of steel-concrete composite bridges. Understanding of the mechanism of this process will be the basis for subsequent work. The early performance of UHPC with ordinary concrete is compared. Besides, discussions are conducted on the basic thermal conductivity theory of three-dimensional porous media and the hydration mechanism of cement-based materials that are appropriate for early-stage UHPC. Subsequently, a refined thermo-mechanical coupling analysis method for steel-UHPC LCBD was proposed, implemented using ABAQUS, and validated through a UHPC composite beam test. This method was applied to calculate the early shrinkage of the UHPC layer in a steel-UHPC LCBD and evaluate the risk of cracking in an actual bridge expansion project, providing a rationality evaluation of a bridge design and its construction procedure. • An approach for early shrinkage and crack assessment of UHPC light-weight composite bridge decks (LCBD) is suggested. • The aforementioned method is validated by an existing experiment and data therein. • Parametric analysis based on varying curing conditions of the composite beam is performed. • The design of the upper deck is evaluated, and construction & maintenance tips for a certain bridge project are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Molecular diffusion is a fundamental mass transport phenomenon crucial to many scientific and industrial fields. Its accurate description relies on diffusion coefficients that can be either experimentally measured or theoretically estimated. The constant volume diffusion (CVD) method is a widely used approach to measure liquid-phase diffusion coefficients at high pressures. However, it requires analytical or numerical solutions to interpret the measured data. In this study, we described in detail a legacy CVD simulation code developed by Michael L. Michelsen and showed how his algorithm can determine constant or composition-dependent diffusion coefficients from the CVD data using the orthogonal collocation method. We further coupled the code with five diffusion coefficient correlations, including the Wilke-Chang (WC), Hayduk–Minhas (HM), extended Sigmund (ES), Riazi–Whitson (RW), and Leahy-Dios-Firoozabadi (LDF), to investigate their performance in terms of predicting and regressing the CVD data for methane-n-alkane and nitrogen-n-alkane systems. We found that the CVD results are insensitive to the gas-phase diffusion coefficients. The simple WC and HM give the closest predictions despite their empirical nature and inherent inconsistency. In contrast, the predictions by LDF under the rigorous Maxwell-Stefan framework are not satisfactory. The regression results using different correlations and a constant liquid-phase diffusion coefficient are almost the same. Different correlations result in different ranges of the regressed coefficients, and those determined using the assumption of constant diffusion coefficients are always within these ranges. We also compared and illustrated the differences in the profiles of diffusion coefficients between these correlations. The study demonstrates that Michelsen's algorithm is an effective tool for processing CVD data, and it also highlights how the interpretation of CVD data depends on the assumed composition-dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we focus on exploring effective methods for faster and accurate semantic segmentation. A common practice to improve the performance is to attain high-resolution feature maps with strong semantic representation. Two strategies are widely used: atrous convolutions and feature pyramid fusion, while both are either computationally intensive or ineffective. Inspired by the Optical Flow for motion alignment between adjacent video frames, we propose a Flow Alignment Module (FAM) to learn Semantic Flow between feature maps of adjacent levels and broadcast high-level features to high-resolution features effectively and efficiently. Furthermore, integrating our FAM to a standard feature pyramid structure exhibits superior performance over other real-time methods, even on lightweight backbone networks, such as ResNet-18 and DFNet. Then to further speed up the inference procedure, we also present a novel Gated Dual Flow Alignment Module to directly align high-resolution feature maps and low-resolution feature maps where we term the improved version network as SFNet-Lite. Extensive experiments are conducted on several challenging datasets, where results show the effectiveness of both SFNet and SFNet-Lite. In particular, when using Cityscapes test set, the SFNet-Lite series achieve 80.1 mIoU while running at 60 FPS using ResNet-18 backbone and 78.8 mIoU while running at 120 FPS using STDC backbone on RTX-3090. Moreover, we unify four challenging driving datasets (i.e., Cityscapes, Mapillary, IDD, and BDD) into one large dataset, which we named Unified Driving Segmentation (UDS) dataset. It contains diverse domain and style information. We benchmark several representative works on UDS. Both SFNet and SFNet-Lite still achieve the best speed and accuracy trade-off on UDS, which serves as a strong baseline in such a challenging setting. The code and models are publicly available at https://github.com/lxtGH/SFSegNets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] The Indo-Pacific warm pool (IPWP) is crucial for regional and global climates. However, the development of the IPWP and its effect on the regional climate during the Cenozoic remain unclear. Here, using a compilation of sea surface temperature (SST) records (mainly since the middle Miocene) and multimodel paleoclimate simulations, our results indicated that the extent, intensity and warmest temperature position of the IPWP changed markedly during the Cenozoic. Specifically, its extent decreased, its intensity weakened, and its warmest temperature position shifted from the Indian to western Pacific Ocean over time. The atmospheric CO 2 dominated its extent and intensity, while paleogeography, by restricting the distribution of the Indian Ocean and the width of the tropical seaways, controlled the shift in its warmest temperature position. In particular, the eastward shift to the western Pacific Ocean from the middle to late Miocene inferred from compiled SST records likely resulted from the constriction of tropical seaways. Furthermore, by changing the atmospheric thermal structure and atmospheric circulation, the reduced extent and intensity of the IPWP decreased the annual precipitation in the western Indian Ocean, eastern Asia and Australia, while the shift in the warmest temperature position from the Indian to western Pacific Ocean promoted aridification in Australia. Qualitative model-data agreements are obtained for both the IPWP SST and regional climate. From the perspective of past warm climates with high concentrations of atmospheric CO 2 , the expansion and strengthening of the IPWP will occur in a warmer future and favor excessive precipitation in eastern Asia and Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tectonically active NE Tibetan Plateau, which is located at the confluent area of the humid Asian monsoon region and dry Asian inlands, provides excellent archives of drainage pattern evolution in response to regional changes in topography and climate. However, the uplift of the NE Tibetan Plateau and formation of modern drainage patterns are still disputed. In this study, based on the Sr Nd isotopic distribution in modern surface water and sediments, we present integrated records of 87Sr/86Sr ratios in carbonate and 87Sr/86Sr-ε Nd (0) values in silicate of the Huaitoutala section in the northern Qaidam Basin to reveal the source-to-sink history of particulate and dissolved loads since ∼15 Ma. Our results show that changes in Sr Nd isotopes at ca. 10 Ma and ca. 5 Ma are indicative of two stages of source alteration and reorganization of the drainage system. Specifically, a remarkable increase in 87Sr/86Sr ratios in carbonate and silicate together with a decrease in ε Nd (0) values since ca. 10 Ma suggests a tectonic denudation event of Qilian Shan at ∼10 Ma. The subsequent declines in 87Sr/86Sr ratios in carbonate and silicate together with an increase in ε Nd (0) values since ca. 5 Ma, which approach the modern 87Sr/86Sr ratios near the study section site, suggest that a modern-like drainage pattern in the northern Qaidam Basin might have formed in response to tectonic uplift of Qilian Shan at ca. 5 Ma. Using coupled carbonate Sr-silicate Sr Nd isotopes, we provide reliable provenance tracers of drainage reorganization and the evolution of source-to-sink systems caused by tectonic deformation. • Carbonate and silicate Sr-Nd isotopic records since ∼15 Ma in the North Qaidam Basin. • Sr-Nd isotopic records show a three-phase evolution with shifts at ∼10 Ma and ∼ 5 Ma. • Particulate and dissolved loads with distinct Sr-Nd isotope changes synchronously. • Drainage reorganization caused by uplift and denudation of the Qilian Shan. • Modern-like drainage patterns in the North Qaidam Basin may have formed after ∼5 Ma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by biological evolution, this paper explains the rationality of Vision Transformer by analogy with the proven practical evolutionary algorithm (EA) and derives that both have consistent mathematical formulation. Then inspired by effective EA variants, we propose a novel pyramid EATFormer backbone that only contains the proposed EA-based transformer (EAT) block, which consists of three residual parts, i.e., Multi-scale region aggregation, global and local interaction, and feed-forward network modules, to model multi-scale, interactive, and individual information separately. Moreover, we design a task-related head docked with transformer backbone to complete final information fusion more flexibly and improve a modulated deformable MSA to dynamically model irregular locations. Massive quantitative and quantitative experiments on image classification, downstream tasks, and explanatory experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of our approach over state-of-the-art methods. E.g., our Mobile (1.8 M), Tiny (6.1 M), Small (24.3 M), and Base (49.0 M) models achieve 69.4, 78.4, 83.1, and 83.9 Top-1 only trained on ImageNet-1K with naive training recipe; EATFormer-Tiny/Small/Base armed Mask-R-CNN obtain 45.4/47.4/49.0 box AP and 41.4/42.9/44.2 mask AP on COCO detection, surpassing contemporary MPViT-T, Swin-T, and Swin-S by 0.6/1.4/0.5 box AP and 0.4/1.3/0.9 mask AP separately with less FLOPs; Our EATFormer-Small/Base achieve 47.3/49.3 mIoU on ADE20K by Upernet that exceeds Swin-T/S by 2.8/1.7. Code is available at https://github.com/zhangzjn/EATFormer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chip-scale external-cavity lasers with a wide tuning range and a narrow linewidth are widely used in optical communication, optical sensing, and optical detection systems. The reflector cavities of such lasers typically consist of Vernier ring structure, but conventional design with wide tuning range is difficult to achieve a high side mode suppression ratio. Here, we use a novel radius optimization method to achieve the product of side mode suppression ratio and tuning range 2141.2 and firstly analyze how the method works. And the external cavity laser simulation obtains side mode suppression ratio about 80 dB, tuning range 106 nm and power above 10 dBm. This result is ahead of the result obtained by conventional design method. It promotes the development of external-cavity lasers by realizing reflector cavities with high side mode suppression ratio and wide tuning range. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]