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To address the pressing need for intelligent and efficient control of circulating fluidized bed (CFB) units, it is crucial to develop a dynamic model for the key operating parameters of supercritical circulating fluidized bed (SCFB) units. Therefore, data-knowledge-driven dynamic model of bed temperature, load, and main steam pressure of the SCFB unit has been proposed. Firstly, A knowledge-driven method is employed to develop a dynamic model for key operating parameters of SCFB units. The model parameters are determined based on the operating data of the unit and continuously optimized in real time. Then, Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory combined with Convolutional Neural Network and Attention Mechanism is utilized to build the dynamic model of bed temperature, load, and main steam pressure. Finally, a collaboration and integration method based on the critic weight method and the variation coefficient method is proposed to establish data-knowledge-driven model of key operating parameters for SCFB units. The model displays great accuracy and fitting ability compared with other methods and effectively captures the dynamic characteristics, which can provide a research basis for the design of intelligent flexible control mode of SCFB unit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is limited knowledge about microbial communities and their ecological functions in karst caves with high CO2 concentrations. Here, we studied the microbial community compositions and functions in Shuiming Cave ("SMC", CO2 concentration 3 303 ppm) and Xueyu Cave ("XYC", CO2 concentration 8 753 ppm) using Illumina MiSeq high-throughput sequencing in combination with BIOLOG test. The results showed that Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Bacteroidetes were dominant phyla in these two caves, and Thaumarchaeota was the most abundant in the rock wall samples of SMC. The microbial diversity in the water samples decreased with increasing HCO3− concentration, and it was higher in XYC than that in SMC. The microbial community structures in the sediment and rock wall samples were quite different between the two caves. High concentrations of CO2 can reduce the microbial diversity on the rock walls in karst caves, probably through changing microbial preference for different types of carbon sources and decreasing the microbial utilization rate of carbon sources. These results expanded our understanding of microbial community and its response to environments in karst caves with high CO2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Functional telomeres protect chromosome ends and play important roles in stem cell maintenance and differentiation. Short telomeres negatively impact germ cell development and can contribute to age-associated infertility. Moreover, telomere syndrome resulting from mutations of telomerase or telomere-associated genes exhibits short telomeres and reduced fertility. It remains elusive whether and how telomere lengths affect germ cell specification. We report that functional telomere is required for the coordinated germ cell and somatic cell fate decisions. Using telomerase gene Terc deficient mice as a model, we show that short telomeres restrain germ cell specification of epiblast cells but promote differentiation towards somatic lineage. Short telomeres increase chromatin accessibility to elevate TGFβ and MAPK/ERK signaling for somatic cell differentiation. Notably, elevated Fst expression in TGFβ pathway represses the BMP4-pSmad signaling pathway, thus reducing germ cell formation. Re-elongation of telomeres by targeted knock-in of Terc restores normal chromatin accessibility to suppress TGFβ and MAPK signaling, thereby facilitating germ cell formation. Taken together, our data reveal that functional telomeres are required for germ cell specification by repressing TGFβ and MAPK signaling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is limited knowledge about microbial communities and their ecological functions in karst caves with high CO2 concentrations. Here, we studied the microbial community compositions and functions in Shuiming Cave ("SMC", CO2 concentration 3 303 ppm) and Xueyu Cave ("XYC", CO2 concentration 8 753 ppm) using Illumina MiSeq high-throughput sequencing in combination with BIOLOG test. The results showed that Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Bacteroidetes were dominant phyla in these two caves, and Thaumarchaeota was the most abundant in the rock wall samples of SMC. The microbial diversity in the water samples decreased with increasing HCO3− concentration, and it was higher in XYC than that in SMC. The microbial community structures in the sediment and rock wall samples were quite different between the two caves. High concentrations of CO2 can reduce the microbial diversity on the rock walls in karst caves, probably through changing microbial preference for different types of carbon sources and decreasing the microbial utilization rate of carbon sources. These results expanded our understanding of microbial community and its response to environments in karst caves with high CO2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atherosclerosis-associated cardiovascular disease is one of the main causes of death and disability among patients with diabetes mellitus. However, little is known about the impact of S-nitrosylation in diabetes-accelerated atherosclerosis. Here, we show increased levels of S-nitrosylation of guanine nucleotide-binding protein G(i) subunit alpha-2 (SNO-GNAI2) at Cysteine 66 in coronary artery samples from diabetic patients with atherosclerosis, consistently with results from mice. Mechanistically, SNO-GNAI2 acted by coupling with CXCR5 to dephosphorylate the Hippo pathway kinase LATS1, thereby leading to nuclear translocation of YAP and promoting an inflammatory response in endothelial cells. Furthermore, Cys-mutant GNAI2 refractory to S-nitrosylation abrogated GNAI2-CXCR5 coupling, alleviated atherosclerosis in diabetic mice, restored Hippo activity, and reduced endothelial inflammation. In addition, we showed that melatonin treatment restored endothelial function and protected against diabetes-accelerated atherosclerosis by preventing GNAI2 S-nitrosylation. In conclusion, SNO-GNAI2 drives diabetes-accelerated atherosclerosis by coupling with CXCR5 and activating YAP-dependent endothelial inflammation, and reducing SNO-GNAI2 is an efficient strategy for alleviating diabetes-accelerated atherosclerosis. S-nitrosylation can influence many pathophysiological processes. Here the authors show that the coupling efficiency of GNAI2 with CXCR5 is enhanced by S-nitrosylation of GNAI2, leading to Hippo-YAP dysfunction in endothelium, and plays a role in diabetes-accelerated atherosclerosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research showed that deep learning models are vulnerable to membership inference attacks, which aim to determine if an example is in the training set of the model. We propose a new framework to defend against this sort of attack. Our key insight is that if we retrain the original classifier with a new dataset that is independent of the original training set while their elements are sampled from the same distribution, the retrained classifier will leak no information that cannot be inferred from the distribution about the original training set. Our framework consists of three phases. First, we transferred the original classifier to a Joint Energy-based Model (JEM) to exploit the model's implicit generative power. Then, we sampled from the JEM to create a new dataset. Finally, we used the new dataset to retrain or fine-tune the original classifier. We empirically studied different transfer learning schemes for the JEM and fine-tuning/retraining strategies for the classifier against shadow-model attacks. Our evaluation shows that our framework can suppress the attacker's membership advantage to a negligible level while keeping the classifier's accuracy acceptable. We compared it with other state-of-the-art defenses considering adaptive attackers and showed our defense is effective even under the worst-case scenario. Besides, we also found that combining other defenses with our framework often achieves better robustness. Our code will be made available at https://github.com/ChenJiyu/meminf-defense.git. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mouth bar in the Yangtze estuarine waterways has a significant influence on navigational transport within the estuary, flood discharge and construction of the Shanghai Port. In this paper the morphological evolution and mechanisms of mouth bar formation of the Yangtze estuarine waterways are studied by analyzing hundreds of years of historical data and the latest profile maps of some or the main mouth bar channels in the Yangtze Estuary. The results are shown as follows: The mouth bars in the North Branch have moved gradually from outside the mouth to the inside and formed a huge sand bar. In the North Channel, the head of the mouth bar has migrated about 30 kilometers downstream, and a channel bar has been developing since 2001. Two mouth bar tops, which always existed in the North Passage, disappeared in 2010. The head of the mouth bar in the South Passage has migrated downstream about 14 km and the number of tops increased at first but is reduced to only one now. According to the results, we can conclude that the evolution of the mouth bars differs depending on their location. In the North Branch it is directly related to large-scale reclamation in Chongming Island, but in the North Passage it has a close relationship with regulation of the Yangtze Estuary Deepwater Channel. However, the evolution of mouth bars in the North Channel and South Passage is not only connected with the Yangtze Estuary Deepwater Channel Regulation Project, but also with the reclamation in the East Hengsha Shoal and the closure of the Qingcaosha Reservoir. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that the estuarine research in China has got great achievements since the past 50 years. The development of estuarine research in China and progress in fundamental study are presented firstly in this paper. Especially in the aspect of theoretic studies, a distinctive feature is the combination studies of dynamics, sedimentology and geomorphology, which obtain a series of achievements, such as estuarine diluted water, estuarine fronts, turbidity maximum, sediment movement, formation of mouth bar, estuarine discontinuity phenomena, estuarine development, etc. Then some successful applications are introduced taking the Qiantang River Estuary and Yangtze Estuary as examples. Finally, main directions of estuarine research are discussed on fundamental study, the impacts of human activities on estuaries, estuarine material flux, sediment movement, prediction of estuarine erosion and accretion, estuarine discontinuity, artificial estuaries, land reclamation and wetland protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]