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Binaural beats can entrain neural oscillations and modulate behavioral states. However, the effect of binaural beats, particularly those with slow frequencies (< 1 Hz), on sleep remains poorly understood. We hypothesized that 0.25-Hz beats can entrain neural oscillations and enhance slow-wave sleep by shortening its latency or increasing its duration. To investigate this, we included 12 healthy participants (six women; mean age, 25.4 ± 2.6 years) who underwent four 90-min afternoon nap sessions, comprising a sham condition (without acoustic stimulation) and three binaural-beat conditions (0, 0.25, or 1 Hz) with a 250-Hz carrier tone. The acoustic stimuli, delivered through earphones, were sustained throughout the 90-min nap period. Both N2- and N3- latencies were shorter in the 0.25-Hz binaural beats condition than in the sham condition. We observed no significant results regarding neural entrainment at slow frequencies, such as 0.25 and 1 Hz, and the modulation of sleep oscillations, including delta and sigma activity, by binaural beats. In conclusion, this study demonstrated the potential of binaural beats at slow frequencies, specifically 0.25 Hz, for inducing slow-wave sleep in generally healthy populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bamboo has attracted widespread attention owing to its strong mechanical properties, availability in numerous regions, and green and low-carbon nature. However, the hydrophilic nature and susceptibility to mold growth limit its wide application. Therefore, this study uses green biological enzyme technology to improve the hydrophobic performance of bamboo, grafting hydrophobic monomer octadecylamine (OA) onto bamboo surfaces under the catalysis of laccase. The optimum reaction conditions such as the amounts of OA monomer and laccase, reaction time, and temperature were determined. Under these optimized conditions, the contact angle of treated bamboo reached 121°± 3°, which was six times higher than that of untreated bamboo, and its hydrophobicity is very stable compared to that of OA-bamboo, could withstand soaking and washing with hot water, ethanol and acetone, and the change rate of contact angle during 180s test was ∼1%. Moreover, as the water absorption rate of bamboo decreased, the defects of bamboo susceptible to mildew growth also considerably improved. The hydrophobic modification mechanism was studied using SEM (scanning electron microscopy), 1H-NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance), and XPS (X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy), this analysis confirmed that OA grafting onto bamboo under laccase catalysis resulted in stable hydrophobicity. Moreover, OA chemically reacted with lignin in bamboo, possibly forming a C–N bond. This study provides valuable insights into the expanding applications of bamboo as sustainable materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The co-salient object detection (Co-SOD) aims to discover common, salient objects from a group of images. With the development of convolutional neural networks, the performance of Co-SOD methods has been significantly improved. However, some models cannot construct collaborative relationships across images optimally and lack effective retention of collaborative features in the top-down decoding process. In this paper, we propose a novel group attention retention network (GARNet), which captures excellent collaborative features and retains them. First, a group attention module is designed to construct the inter-image relationships. Second, an attention retention module and a spatial attention module are designed to retain inter-image relationships for protecting them from being diluted and filter out the cluttered context during feature fusion, respectively. Finally, considering the intra-group consistency and inter-group separability of images, an embedding loss is additionally designed to discriminate between real collaborative objects and distracting objects. The experiments on four datasets (iCoSeg, CoSal2015, CoSoD3k, and CoCA) show that our GARNet outperforms previous state-of-the-art methods. The source code is available at . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing metamaterials with the required band structure, topology and chirality using nano-fabrication technology revolutionise modern science. The approach of this work to the metamaterial theme is, however, different. We report that a periodic sequence, i.e., metacrystal, of the dissipative optical solitons rotating in a ring microresonator acts as an effective metamaterial in the radio to terahertz frequency range. The metacrystal unit cell consists of the bound pair of solitons, where the inter-soliton distance is used as a control parameter. We investigate the soliton metacrystal band structure and topological properties. The latter is confirmed by the π steps experienced by the crystal phonons' geometrical (Zak) phase. Furthermore, we found the phononic edge states in the metacrystals with defects made by removing several solitons. Optical frequency combs corresponding to the soliton metacrystals hide the spectral butterfly pattern serving as a signature of the spatio-temporal chirality and bearing a resemblance to the natural occurrences of chirality. Topological photonics and time crystals push frontiers of modern physics and promise a host of applications. Here, we report the bandgap structure and topological properties of the soliton trains in Kerr microresonators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sensitive and accurate detection of DNA methyltransferase (MTase) is conducive to the understanding of the fundamental biological processes related to DNA methylation, clinical disease diagnosis, and drug discovery. Herein, a new fluorescence transducer based on Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) between the donor upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) and the efficient acceptor gold nanorods (AuNRs) for MTase activity analysis and its inhibitor screening is presented. A double-strand DNA linker between UCNPs and AuNRs could be digested by restriction endonuclease HhaI, preventing the FRET process and recovering the upconversion luminescence (UCL) intensity. With the treatment of MTase, the cutting site was disturbed by the methylation of cytosine, blocking the enzyme digestion. The transducer presented here showed an excellent analytical performance toward MTase M.HhaI in the concentration range 0.08~24 U mL−1 with a detection limit of 0.057 U mL−1 calculated according to the UCL intensity changes at 656 nm excited by 980 nm CW laser, which is superior to most of the reported methods. Furthermore, the as-fabricated transducer also demonstrated high testing and screening capability toward enzyme inhibitors' evaluation. The method takes the advantage of low background fluorescence of UCNPs to improve the accuracy of the measurement, which can be developed as a general strategy for the analysis of various disease-related methyltransferase activity and their corresponding inhibitors, offering a promising strategy for high-performance diagnosis, high-efficient drug exploitation, and treatment effectiveness evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, several studies have indicated that the intestinal microbiota can be regulated by the individual attributes, and even the alternation of circadian rhythm. Inspired by this, we speculated that seasonal variation might also have some effect on the intestinal microbiota. A total of 11 Sprague-Dawley male rats, weighing 250-280 g, were divided into summer group (n = 5) and winter group (n = 6). Cages were individually ventilated at 20 ± 2 °C and 45-65% relative humidity with a circadian rhythm of 12/12 h. After 1 week of adaptively feeding, mucosal contents of jejunum, terminal ileum, and ascending colon were collected and analyzed by 16S rRNA Gene Amplicon Pyrosequencing. The results showed that intestinal microbiota of rats for the same strain were affected by season change under the same feeding condition and living environment. We should take seasonal factor into account in the future experimental design based on intestinal microbiome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have demonstrated that empathizing with pain involves both cognitive and affective components of pain. How does empathetic pain impact cognition? To investigate this question, in the present study, participants performed a classic color-word Stroop task that followed a pain portraying or a corresponding control image. We found that observing pain experience in another had a basic slowing down effect on Reaction times (RTs) during neutral Stroop trials. Further, it affected cognition in a way that it decreased interference and increased facilitation. Moreover, our findings revealed that RTs during the incongruent and congruent trials were essentially unchanged by pain observing (empathy vs. control). The data are best accounted by a two-opposing effect model that empathetic pain impacts cognition through two different ways: it slows down performance in general, and facilitates performance during incongruent and congruent trials in particular. In this way, the present study also lends support to an idea that all components of empathy should be understood from an integrative approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deficits in both empathy and cognition have been reported widely in patients with schizophrenia. However, little is known about how these deficits interact among such patients. In the present study, we used pain portraying pictures preceding a color-word Stroop task to investigate the effect of empathetic pain observation on cognition among patients with schizophrenia. Twenty patients with schizophrenia and twenty healthy controls were included. The control group showed increased Stroop facilitation and decreased interference during the empathetic pain condition compared with the non-empathetic condition. Although patients with schizophrenia exhibited deficits in cognition, they demonstrated a similar empathy effect to controls on Stroop facilitation, but a somewhat larger empathy effect on Stroop interference (a more decreased effect). In particular, the groups did not differ in either automatic or controlled processing during the non-empathetic condition, suggesting general rather than specific cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. Together, we interpret our findings in terms of two opposing effects of empathy on cognition in schizophrenia, with possible neuromodulatory mechanism. Whereas prior studies showed empathy to be impaired, our outcomes indicate that at least some components of empathetic pain processing are preserved in such patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aims: In communities, plants often simultaneously interact with intra- and inter-specific neighbours and heterogeneous nutrients. How plants respond under these conditions and then affect the structure and function of communities remain important questions. Methods: Maize ( Zea mays L.) was intercropped with potatoes ( Solanum tuberosum L.). In the field experiment, we applied fertilizer both homogeneously and heterogeneously under monocropping and intercropping conditions. The heterogeneous nutrient treatment in intercropping was designed with different fertilizer placements, at intraspecific and interspecific rows, respectively. In the pot experiment, crops were grown under both homogeneous and heterogeneous nitrogen conditions with single plant, intraspecific and interspecific competition. Shoot and root biomass and yield were measured to analyse crop performance. Results: In the field experiment, the heterogeneous nitrogen, compared with the homogenous one, enhanced the performance of the intercropped crop. Importantly, this effect of heterogeneous nitrogen was greater when fertilizer was applied at interspecific rows, rather than at intraspecific rows. Moreover, in pot experiments, the root foraging precision of the two crops was increased by interspecific neighbours, but only that of potatoes was increased by intraspecific neighbours. Conclusions: The integrated responses of plants to heterogeneous neighbours and nutrients depend on the position of nutrient-rich patches, which deepen our understanding of the function of plant diversity, and show that fertilizer placement within multi-cropping systems merits more attention. Moreover, the enhanced utilization of heterogeneous nitrogen could drive overyielding in multi-cropping systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inhibition of return refers to the lengthening of reaction times (RTs) to a target when a preceding stimulus has occupied the same location in space. Recently, we observed a robust inhibitory effect for color and shape in moderately complex displays: It is more difficult to detect a target with a particular nonspatial attribute if a stimulus with the same attribute was recently the focus of attention. Such nonspatial inhibitory effects have not generally been found in simpler displays. In the present study, we test how location-based and nonspatial inhibitory effects vary as a function of display complexity (eight, six, four, and two locations). The results demonstrated that (1) location-based inhibition effects were much stronger in more complex displays, whereas the nonspatial inhibition was only slightly stronger in more complex displays; (2) nonspatial inhibitory effects emerged at longer stimulus onset asynchronies than did location-based effects; and (3) nonspatial inhibition appeared only when cues and targets occurred in the same locations, confirming that pure feature repetition does not produce a cost. Taken together, the results are consistent with perceptual processes based on object files that are organized by spatial location. Using somewhat more complex displays than are most commonly employed provides a more sensitive method for observing the role of inhibitory processes in facilitating visual search. In addition, using a relatively wide set of cue–target timing relationships is necessary in order to clearly see how inhibitory effects operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Merremia boisiana (Gagnep) van Ooststr. is a noxious fast growing woody vine and is able to grow overtop other plants, causing the death of plants underneath and forming monospecies stands. To formulate management responses, we assessed its seed and vegetative reproduction efficacy through indoor and field experiments. The number of flowers counted from bagged infructescences in Guangzhou ranged from 25 to 172, with an average of 80.80. Counting the seeds of bagged infructescences had shown that there were only 1.58 hard testa seeds in each infructescence. Seed vitality tests using red ink indicated that only 68.6% of hard testa and filled seeds were viable. The emergence rate of scarified hard testa seeds in the sand bed was 31.96%. Under imitated natural conditions, 8% of hard testa seeds could germinate, and 9% still retained their germination potential in one year. Thus, seedlings should be monitored and removed in a timely fashion after any attempt of clearing. Moving soil or transplanting plant from infested patches should be strictly prohibited at least for several years. All considered, an infructescence contributed 0.3 seedlings. The investigation in the field found no seedlings either inside or at the perimeter of the patch, suggesting scant expansion by means of seed dispersal. Therefore, the elimination effort could be focused on a relatively restricted scale of patches. Of 630 cuttings of young shoots, old shoots and old lying shoots with or without growth regulators, there were only four (or 0.63%) established individuals. Air-layering shoots all died in two months. Poor cuttings and air-layering reproduction indicated that regeneration from fragments of removed stems or accidentally dropped ones was quite unlikely, and thus mechanical removal was safe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fatigue flexural behavior of corroded reinforced concrete (RC) beams was experimentally and analytically examined. Seven beams were constructed and tested, and an analytical fatigue prediction model (FPM) was proposed to assess the fatigue behavior of the corroded beams. After validating the FPM with the experimental test results, the FPM was then extended to better understand the effects of the degree of steel corrosion, the corrosion pit geometry, and the fatigue load level on the performance of corroded RC beams. The results show that the fatigue behavior of the corroded steel bars determines the fatigue behavior of the beams. Rebar corrosion has a significant detrimental effect on the fatigue performance of RC beams due to stress concentration, loss of steel cross-sectional area, and diminished bonding at the steel–concrete interface. The stress concentrations increase with increasing pit width-to-length and depth-to-diameter ratios. Differences in pit geometry and the resulting changes in stress concentrations due to corrosion should be considered when assessing fatigue performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]