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Motivation Constructing a phylogenetic tree requires calculating the evolutionary distance between samples or species via large-scale resequencing data, a process that is both time-consuming and computationally demanding. Striking the right balance between accuracy and efficiency is a significant challenge. Results To address this, we introduce a new algorithm, MIKE (MinHash-based k -mer algorithm). This algorithm is designed for the swift calculation of the Jaccard coefficient directly from raw sequencing reads and enables the construction of phylogenetic trees based on the resultant Jaccard coefficient. Simulation results highlight the superior speed of MIKE compared to existing state-of-the-art methods. We used MIKE to reconstruct a phylogenetic tree, incorporating 238 yeast, 303 Zea , 141 Ficus , 67 Oryza , and 43 Saccharum spontaneum samples. MIKE demonstrated accurate performance across varying evolutionary scales, reproductive modes, and ploidy levels, proving itself as a powerful tool for phylogenetic tree construction. Availability and implementation MIKE is publicly available on Github at https://github.com/Argonum-Clever2/mike.git. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] Designing two-dimensional (2D) porous carbon nanosheets is expected to boost the water splitting efficiency of low-cost iron (Fe) and cobalt (Co)-based catalysts. Nevertheless, the aggregations, tedious preparation procedures, and expensive precursors for synthesizing 2D porous carbon nanosheets have hindered their widespread application. Herein, for the first time, we developed a low-cost method for large-scale and rapid synthesis of the three-dimensional (3D) hierarchically porous architectures self-assembled by the ultrafine FeCo nanoparticles embedded and boron/nitrogen-codoped 2D porous carbon nanosheets (denoted as FeCo@BNPCNS). The optimal FeCo@BNPCNS-900 exhibited abundant porous channels, a large surface area, and vast carbon edges/defects. Therefore, 8.10 at% electrochemically active boron (B)/nitrogen (N) centers were doped into the porous carbon nanosheets. In an alkaline solution, the optimal FeCo@BNPCNS-900 nanosheets revealed excellent hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) electrocatalytic activity, surpassing commercial 20 wt% Pt/C. For instance, the HER potential at 10 mA cm−2 [-50.6 mV vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE)] of FeCo@BNPCNS-900 was even 19.3 mV more positive than that of commercial 20 wt% Pt/C (-69.9 mV vs. RHE). Meanwhile, its oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalytic activity was just a little worse than ruthenium oxide (RuO 2). The water electrolysis cell of FeCo@BNPCNS-900 nanosheets just required a small voltage of 1.589 V for full water splitting to achieve 10 mA cm−2, even 70.3 mV more negative than that of the state-of-the-art 20 wt% Pt/C||RuO 2 benchmark (1.660 V) with outstanding stability. The perfect 3D hierarchically porous and honeycomb-like architecture, abundant porous channels/mesopores, and uniformly dispersed electrocatalytically active sites on FeCo@BNPCNS-900 nanosheets were responsible for the outstanding water splitting performance. Finally, this study provides an efficient strategy for the large-scale, rapid, and low-cost synthesis of 2D porous carbon nanosheets without using any template, surfactant, or expensive precursors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In nature, some semiaquatic arthropods evolve biomechanics for jumping on the water surface with the controlled burst of kinetic energy. Emulating these creatures, miniature jumping robots deployable on the water surface have been developed, but few of them achieve the controllability comparable to biological systems. The limited controllability and agility of miniature robots constrain their applications, especially in the biomedical field where dexterous and precise manipulation is required. Herein, an insect‐scale magnetoelastic robot with improved controllability is designed. The robot can adaptively regulate its energy output to generate controllable jumping motion by tuning magnetic and elastic strain energy. Dynamic and kinematic models are developed to predict the jumping trajectories of the robot. On‐demand actuation can thus be applied to precisely control the pose and motion of the robot during the flight phase. The robot is also capable of making adaptive amphibious locomotion and performing various tasks with integrated functional modules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Abscisic acid (ABA) receptor pyrabactin resistance 1/PYR1-like/regulatory components of ABA receptor proteins (PYR/PYL/RCARs) have been demonstrated to play pivotal roles in ABA signaling and in response to diverse environmental stimuli including drought, salinity and osmotic stress in Arabidopsis. However, whether and how GhPYL9-5D and GhPYR1-3A, the homologues of Arabidopsis PYL9 and PYR1 in cotton, function in responding to ABA and abiotic stresses are still unclear. Results: GhPYL9-5D and GhPYR1-3A were targeted to the cytoplasm and nucleus. Overexpression of GhPYL9-5D and GhPYR1-3A in Arabidopsis wild type and sextuple mutant pyr1pyl1pyl2pyl4pyl5pyl8 plants resulted in ABA hypersensitivity in terms of seed germination, root growth and stomatal closure, as well as seedling tolerance to water deficit, salt and osmotic stress. Moreover, the VIGS (Virus-induced gene silencing) cotton plants, in which GhPYL9-5D or GhPYR1-3A were knocked down, showed clearly reduced tolerance to polyethylene glycol 6000 (PEG)-induced drought, salinity and osmotic stresses compared with the controls. Additionally, transcriptomic data revealed that GhPYL9-5D was highly expressed in the root, and GhPYR1-3A was strongly expressed in the fiber and stem. GhPYL9-5D, GhPYR1-3A and their homologs in cotton were highly expressed after treatment with PEG or NaCl, and the two genes were co-expressed with redox signaling components, transcription factors and auxin signal components. These results suggest that GhPYL9-5D and GhPYR1-3A may serve important roles through interplaying with hormone and other signaling components in cotton adaptation to salt or osmotic stress. Conclusions: GhPYL9-5D and GhPYR1-3A positively regulate ABA-mediated seed germination, primary root growth and stomatal closure, as well as tolerance to drought, salt and osmotic stresses likely through affecting the expression of multiple downstream stress-associated genes in Arabidopsis and cotton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the role of histone demethylase KDM5 in the maturation of cardiomyocytes, which are heart muscle cells. The post-natal maturation of mammalian hearts involves significant changes at the structural, metabolic, and electrophysiological levels. The study found that inhibiting KDM5-mediated histone methylation in human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes led to changes in gene expression related to oxidative phosphorylation, fatty acid metabolism, and myogenesis, indicating a more advanced state of cardiomyocyte maturity. This research contributes to our understanding of the molecular drivers of cardiomyocyte maturation and has potential implications for cell-based therapy and the study of heart diseases. Further studies are needed to establish the physiological relevance of KDM5 in the maturation of mammalian hearts. [Extracted from the article]

In the acoustics-based power transformer fault diagnosis, a transformer acoustic signal collected by an acoustic sensor is generally mixed with a large number of interference signals. In order to separate transformer acoustic signals from mixed acoustic signals obtained by a small number of sensors, a blind source separation (BSS) method of transformer acoustic signal based on sparse component analysis (SCA) is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the mixed acoustic signals are transformed from time domain to time–frequency (TF) domain, and single source points (SSPs) in the TF plane are extracted by identifying the phase angle differences of the TF points. Then, the mixing matrix is estimated by clustering SSPs with a density clustering algorithm. Finally, the transformer acoustic signal is separated from the mixed acoustic signals based on the compressed sensing theory. The results of the simulation and experiment show that the proposed method can separate the transformer acoustic signal from the mixed acoustic signals in the case of underdetermination. Compared with the existing denoising methods of the transformer acoustic signal, the denoising results of the proposed method have less error and distortion. It will provide important data support for the acoustics-based power transformer fault diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the scattering of light and the influence of different water types, underwater images usually suffer from different type of hybrid degradation, e.g. color distortion, blurred details and low contrast. Existing underwater image enhancement methods are weak at handling hybrid degradation simultaneously, resulting in low quality results. Inspired by the fact that wavelet-based enhancement methods can correct color and enhance details in frequency domain and the color compensation prior can compensate missing color information in spatial domain, we design the Multi-level Wavelet-based Underwater Image Enhancement Network (MWEN) with the color compensation prior to enhance image in both frequency domain and spatial domain. Specifically, we integrate the multi-level wavelet transform and the color compensation prior into a multi-stage enhancement framework, where each stage consists of a Multi-level Wavelet-based Enhancement Module (MWEM), a Color Compensation Prior Extraction Module (CCPEM) and a color filter with prior-aware weights. The MWEM decomposes image features into low frequency and high frequency by a wavelet transform, and then enhances them by a low frequency enhancement branch and several high frequency enhancement branches, respectively. The low frequency reduces the color distortion of different water types using Instance Normalization for style transfer, while the high frequency enhancement enhances sparse details using a non-local sparse attention mechanism. After the inverse wavelet transform, the preliminary enhanced result by the MWEM is obtained. Then, the color filter whose weights are customized by the color compensation information extracted from the CCPEM dynamically is applied to output of the MWEM for color compensation. Such an operation enables network to adapt to hybrid degradation and achieve better performance. The experiments demonstrate MWEN outperforms existing UIE methods quantitatively and qualitatively. • A new Multi-level Wavelet-based Underwater Image Enhancement Network is proposed. • A new Multi-level Wavelet-based Enhancement Module is proposed. • A new Color filter inspired by color compensation prior is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fatty liver syndrome (FLS) is a kind of nutritional metabolic disease in laying hens. Revealing FLS pathogenesis during the early period is what really makes sense for the prevention or nutritional regulation strategies. In the study, 9 healthy or naturally occurring early FLS birds were screened based on visual inspection, liver index and morphologic analysis. Liver and fresh cecal content samples were collected. Then transcriptomic and 16S rRNA technologies are applied to investigate hepatic transcriptome and cecum microbiota composition. Unpaired Student t test and some omics methods were used for statistical analysis. Results showed higher liver weight and index were found in FLS group; morphologic analysis indicated that there existed more lipid droplets in the liver of birds with FLS. Based on DESeq2 analysis, there were 229 up- and 487 down-regulated genes in the FLS group, among which most genes related to de novo fatty acid synthesis were up-regulated such as acetyl-CoA carboxylase, fatty acid synthase, stearoyl-CoA desaturase, and ELOVL fatty acid elongase 6 (ELOVL6). Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analysis indicated that pathways associated with lipid metabolism and liver damage were affected. 16S rRNA sequencing analysis of cecum microbiota showed that there was a significant difference between the Con and FLS groups. LEfSe analysis revealed that the relative abundance of Coprococcus, Odoribacter, Collinsella, Turicibacter, YRC22, Enterococcus, Shigella , and Bifidobacterium were down-regulated in the FLS group, whereas the abundance of Bacteroides, Mucispirillum, Butyricicoccus, Campylobacter, Akkermansia , and Clostridium were up-regulated. The KEGG enrichment from differential microbiota suggested that some metabolism-related functions were altered to some extent. Taken together, during the developmental of early fatty liver of laying hens, lipogenesis was enhanced, whereas abnormal metabolism occurs not only in lipid transportation but also in hydrolysis, which caused structural damage to the liver organ. Moreover, the dysbiosis of the cecum microbiota occurred. All of these serve as targets or provide theoretical references for the development of probiotics for fatty liver prevention in laying hens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trehalose is a non-reducing disaccharide sugar that widely exists in a variety of organisms, such as bacteria and eukaryotes except the vertebrates. It plays an important role in a number of critical metabolic functions especially in response to stressful environmental conditions. However, the biosynthetic pathways of trehalose in cold-adapted yeast and its responses to temperature and salinity changes remain little understood. In this study, the genome of Antarctic-isolated Pseudozyma sp. NJ7 was generated from which we identified the gene coding for trehalose phosphate synthase (TPS1) and trehalose phosphate phosphatase (TPS2), the two enzymes most critical for trehalose production. The whole draft genome length of Pseudozyma sp. NJ7 was 18,021,233 bp, and encoded at least 34 rRNA operons and 72 tRNAs. The open reading frame of tps1 contained 1827 nucleotide encoding 608 amino acids with a molecular weight of 67.64 kDa, and an isoelectric point of 5.54, while tps2 contained 3948 nucleotide encoding 1315 amino acids with a molecular weight of 144.47 kDa and an isoelectric point of 6.36. The TPS1 and TPS2 protein sequences were highly homologous to Moesziomyces antarcticus T-34, but TPS2 had obvious specificity and differently with others which suggest species specificity and different evolutionary history. Expression level of tps1 gene was strongly influenced by temperature and high salinity. In addition, addition of 0.5% trehalose preserved yeast cells in the short term but was not effective for cryopreservation for more than 5 days, but still suggesting that exogenous trehalose could indeed significantly improve the survival of yeast cells under freezing conditions. Our results provided new insights on the molecular basis of cold adaptations of Antarctic Pseudozyma sp., and also generated new information on the roles trehalose play in yeast tolerance to extreme conditions in the extreme Antarctic environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trehalose is a non-reducing disaccharide sugar that widely exists in a variety of organisms, such as bacteria and eukaryotes except the vertebrates. It plays an important role in a number of critical metabolic functions especially in response to stressful environmental conditions. However, the biosynthetic pathways of trehalose in cold-adapted yeast and its responses to temperature and salinity changes remain little understood. In this study, the genome of Antarctic-isolated Pseudozyma sp. NJ7 was generated from which we identified the gene coding for trehalose phosphate synthase (TPS1) and trehalose phosphate phosphatase (TPS2), the two enzymes most critical for trehalose production. The whole draft genome length of Pseudozyma sp. NJ7 was 18,021,233 bp, and encoded at least 34 rRNA operons and 72 tRNAs. The open reading frame of tps1 contained 1827 nucleotide encoding 608 amino acids with a molecular weight of 67.64 kDa, and an isoelectric point of 5.54, while tps2 contained 3948 nucleotide encoding 1315 amino acids with a molecular weight of 144.47 kDa and an isoelectric point of 6.36. The TPS1 and TPS2 protein sequences were highly homologous to Moesziomyces antarcticus T-34, but TPS2 had obvious specificity and differently with others which suggest species specificity and different evolutionary history. Expression level of tps1 gene was strongly influenced by temperature and high salinity. In addition, addition of 0.5% trehalose preserved yeast cells in the short term but was not effective for cryopreservation for more than 5 days, but still suggesting that exogenous trehalose could indeed significantly improve the survival of yeast cells under freezing conditions. Our results provided new insights on the molecular basis of cold adaptations of Antarctic Pseudozyma sp., and also generated new information on the roles trehalose play in yeast tolerance to extreme conditions in the extreme Antarctic environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large amounts of potassium and silicon elements contained in biomass ashes can substitute for equivalent quality of raw materials to make agricultural or industrial products. In this study, a multi-step extracting method for straw/woody biomass ashes is developed to enhance their utilization efficiencies. After the same treatment processes, different products are obtained from biomass ashes at 500 °C and also characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF). In addition, the slagging/fouling tendencies of three kinds of biomass ashes were well evaluated by adapting the coupling approach, which considering two compositional ternary diagrams, some empirical indices and soluble salts content. Moreover, it was also in comparison with that of fifty three kinds of biomasses from references. The results show that potassium element in extractive products from biomass ashes mainly exists as potassium chlorides and sulfates, such as KCl, K 2 SO 4 , KNaSO 4 and KNa 3 (SO 4 ) 2 . More potassium salts could be recycled from ashes by decreasing the burning temperature of straw/woody biomass. The extracting ratio of potassium salts from cotton straw ashes and sawdust ashes increases sharply at first, then tends to smooth. The initial extraction ratio of 64.04% for cotton straw ashes is larger than that of wheat straw ashes and sawdust ashes. The order in the total accumulated extracting ratio of potassium from ashes is cotton straw > wheat straw > sawdust. This method could be suggested as a feasible and sustainable utilization option for biomass solid wastes. In addition, the high deposition and corrosion risk are estimated for wheat straw, and the medium one for cotton straw and sawdust with the coupling approach, if they will be used as input material for boilers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metabolic remodeling is a hall-mark of cardiac maturation and pathology. The switch of substrate utilization from glucose to fatty acid is observed during post-natal maturation period in developing heart, but the process is reversed from fatty acids to glucose in the failing hearts across different clinic and experimental models. Majority of the current investigations have been focusing on the regulatory mechanism and functional impact of this metabolic reprogramming involving fatty acids and carbohydrates. Recent progress in metabolomics and transcriptomic analysis, however, revealed another significant remodeled metabolic branch associated with cardiac development and disease, i.e. Branched-Chain Amino Acid (BCAA) catabolism. These findings have established BCAA catabolic deficiency as a novel metabolic feature in failing hearts with potentially significant impact on the progression of pathological remodeling and dysfunction. In this review, we will evaluate the current evidence and potential implication of these discoveries in the context of heart diseases and novel therapies. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: The role of post-translational protein modifications on heart and vascular metabolism edited by Jason R.B. Dyck & Jan F.C. Glatz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

p38 kinases are members of the mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) with established contribution to a wide range of signaling pathways and different biological processes. The prototypic p38 MAPK, p38α was originally identified as an essential signaling kinase for inflammatory cytokine production Extensive studies have now revealed that p38s have critical roles in many different tissues far beyond immune regulation and inflammatory responses. In this review, we will focus on the structure and molecular biology of p38s, and their specific roles in heart, especially regarding myocyte proliferation, apoptosis, and hypertrophic responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A micropolarizer array (MPA) that can be integrated into a scientific camera is proposed as a real-time polarimeter that is capable of extracting the polarization parameters. The MPA is based on highly aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) films inspired by their typical anisotropy and selectivity for light propagation over a wide spectral range. The MPA contains a dual-tier CNT pixel plane with 0° and 45° orientations. The thickness of the dual-tier structure of the CNT-based MPA is limited to less than 2 μm with a pixel size of 7.45 μm × 7.45 μm. The degree of polarization of the CNT-MPA reached 93% at a 632 nm wavelength. The specific designs in structure and semiconductor fabrication procedures are described. Compared with customary MPAs, CNT-based MPA holds great potential in decreasing the cross-talk risk associated with lower film thickness and can be extended to a wide spectral range. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Amine elimination of rare earth metal tris(silylamide) complexes Ln[N(SiHMe2)2]3(THF)2 with 1 equiv of the pyridyl-functionalized indenyl ligand C9H7CMe2CH2C5H4N-α afforded the neutral mono-indenyl-ligated rare earth metal bis(silylamide) complexes (C9H6CMe2CH2C5H4N-α)Ln[N(SiHMe2)2]2 (Ln = Sc (1), Y (2), Nd (3)) in 70–82% isolated yields. These complexes were characterized by elemental analysis, FT-IR, NMR, and X-ray single crystal structural diffraction. X-ray determination showed that the metal centers are coordinated by one indenyl ring, one nitrogen atom from the pendent pyridyl group, and two amide groups to form a distorted tetrahedral geometry. In the presence of excess Al i Bu3 and on activation with 1 equiv of [Ph3C][B(C6F5)4] in toluene, 1–3 became active for syndiospecific polymerization of styrene in toluene at room temperature. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Proposed an attention based neural network model for rice disease diagnosis. • Combined Bayesian optimization for hyperparameters tuning. • Achieved rice disease classification accuracy of 94.65%. • Outperformed the performance of existing models in the literature. • Analyzed the explainability of the proposed model. In this research, an attention-based depthwise separable neural network with Bayesian optimization (ADSNN-BO) is proposed to detect and classify rice disease from rice leaf images. Rice diseases frequently result in 20–40% corp production loss in yield and is highly related to the global economy. Rapid disease identification is critical to plan treatment promptly and reduce the corp losses. Rice disease diagnosis is still mainly performed manually. To achieve AI assisted rapid and accurate disease detection, we proposed the ADSNN-BO model based on MobileNet structure and augmented attention mechanism. Moreover, Bayesian optimization method is applied to tune hyper-parameters of the model. Cross-validated classification experiments are conducted based on a public rice disease dataset with four categories in total. The experimental results demonstrate that our mobile compatible ADSNN-BO model achieves a test accuracy of 94.65%, which outperforms all of the state-of-the-art models tested. To check the interpretability of our proposed model, feature analysis including activation map and filters visualization approach are also conducted. Results show that our proposed attention-based mechanism can more effectively guide the ADSNN-BO model to learn informative features. The outcome of this research will promote the implementation of artificial intelligence for fast plant disease diagnosis and control in the agricultural field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) exonic splicing silencers (ESSs) inhibit production of certain spliced viral RNAs by repressing alternative splicing of the viral precursor RNA. Several HIV-1 ESSs interfere with spliceosome assembly by binding cellular hnRNP A/B proteins. Here, we have further characterized the mechanism of splicing repression using a representative HIV-1 hnRNP A/B-dependent ESS, ESSV, which regulates splicing at the vpr 3' splice site. We show that hnRNP A/B proteins bound to ESSV are necessary to inhibit E complex assembly by competing with the binding of U2AF65 to the polypyrimidine tracts of repressed 3' splice sites. We further show evidence suggesting that U1 snRNP binds the 5' splice site despite an almost complete block of splicing by ESSV. Possible splicing-independent functions of U1 snRNP-5' splice site interactions during virus replication are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes the regulation of atrial-chamber-specific expression of sarcolipin during hypertrophic remodeling. Relation of intracellular calcium ion regulation to the development of pathologic hearts; Role of phospholamban in atrial and venticular myocardia.

A homogeneous polysaccharide coded as CPP−1 was extracted and purified from the root of Codonopsis pilosula (Franch.) Nannf. by water extraction, ethanol precipitation, and column chromatography. Its structure was analyzed by HPGPC-ELSD, HPLC, GC-MS, FT-IR, and NMR techniques. The results indicated that CPP−1 was composed of mannose (Man), glucose (Glc), galactose (Gal), and arabinose (Ara) at a molar ratio of 5.86 : 51.69 : 34.34 : 8.08. The methylation analysis revealed that the main glycosidic linkage types of CPP−1 were (1→)-linked-Glc residue, (1→3)-linked-Glc residues, (1→4)-linked-Gal residue, (1→2,3,4)-linked-Glc residue, (1→)-linked-Man residue, (1→3,4)-linked-Glc residue, and (1→)-linked-Ara residue. In vivo efficacy trial illustrated that CPP−1 supplements could alleviate HFD-induced mice obesity significantly, as well as improve obesity-induced disorders of glucose metabolism, alleviate insulin resistance, and improve the effects of lipid metabolism. The findings indicate that this polysaccharide has the potential for the treatment of obesity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the contribution of the Pax protein (PBS) to binding and activation of the N-CAM promoter by Pax-6, a protein containing both a paired domain and a homeodomain. Homology between the PBS and a Pax-6 sequence selected from random oligonculeotides; Molar excess; DNA and protein complexes.

Epigenetic modifications including DNA methylation, histone modifications, and chromatin remodeling are crucial regulators of chromatin architecture and gene expression in plants. Their dynamics are significantly influenced by oxidants, such as reactive oxygen species (ROS) and nitric oxide (NO), and antioxidants, like pyridine nucleotides and glutathione in plants. These redox intermediates regulate the activities and expression of many enzymes involved in DNA methylation, histone methylation and acetylation, and chromatin remodeling, consequently controlling plant growth and development, and responses to diverse environmental stresses. In recent years, much progress has been made in understanding the functional mechanisms of epigenetic modifications and the roles of redox mediators in controlling gene expression in plants. However, the integrated view of the mechanisms for redox regulation of the epigenetic marks is limited. In this review, we summarize recent advances on the roles and mechanisms of redox components in regulating multiple epigenetic modifications, with a focus of the functions of ROS, NO, and multiple antioxidants in plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, convolutional neural network (CNN) based on the encoder-decoder structure have been successfully applied to image dehazing. However, these CNN based dehazing methods have two limitations: First, these dehazing models are large in size with enormous parameters, which not only consumes much GPU memory, but also is hard to train from scratch. Second, these models, which ignore the structural information at different resolutions of intermediate layers, cannot capture informative texture and edge information for dehazing by stacking more layers. In this paper, we propose a light-weight end-to-end network named the residual dense pyramid network (RDPN) to address the above problems. To exploit the structural information at different resolutions of intermediate layers fully, a new residual dense pyramid (RDP) is proposed as a building block. By introducing a dense information fusion layer and the residual learning module, the RDP can maximize the information flow and extract local features. Furthermore, the RDP further learns the structural information from intermediate layers via a multiscale pyramid fusion mechanism. To reduce the number of network parameters and to ease the training process, we use one RDP in the encoder and two RDPs in the decoder, following a multilevel pyramid pooling layer for incorporating global context features before estimating the final result. The extensive experimental results on a synthetic dataset and real-world images demonstrate that the new RDPN achieves favourable performance compared with some state-of-the-art methods, e.g., the recent densely connected pyramid dehazing network, the all-in-one dehazing network, the enhanced pix2pix dehazing network, pixel-based alpha blending, artificial multi-exposure image fusions and the genetic programming estimator, in terms of accuracy, run time and number of parameters. To be specific, RDPN outperforms all of the above methods in terms of PSNR by at least 4.25 dB. The run time of the proposed method is 0.021 s, and the number of parameters is 1,534,799, only 6% of that used by the densely connected pyramid dehazing network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To appraise the quality of guidelines on intravenous iodinated contrast media (ICM) use in patients with kidney disease, and to compare the recommendations among them. Methods: We searched four literature databases, eight guideline libraries, and ten homepages of radiological societies to identify English and Chinese guidelines on intravenous ICM use in patients with kidney disease published between January 2018 and June 2023. The quality of the guidelines was assessed with the Scientific, Transparent, and Applicable Rankings (STAR) tool. Results: Ten guidelines were included, with a median STAR score of 46.0 (range 28.5–61.5). The guidelines performed well in "Recommendations" domain (31/40, 78%), while poor in "Registry" (0/20, 0%) and "Protocol" domains (0/20, 0%). Nine guidelines recommended estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) < 30 mL/min/1.73 m2 as the cutoff for referring patients to discuss the risk-benefit balance of ICM administration. Three guidelines further suggested that patients with an eGFR < 45 mL/min/1.73 m2 and high-risk factors also need referring. Variable recommendations were seen in the acceptable time interval between renal function test and ICM administration, and that between scan and repeated scan. Nine guidelines recommended to use iso-osmolar or low-osmolar ICM, while no consensus has been reached for the dosing of ICM. Nine guidelines supported hydration after ICM use, but their protocols varied. Drugs or blood purification therapy were not recommended as preventative means. Conclusion: Guidelines on intravenous ICM use in patients with kidney disease have heterogeneous quality. The scientific societies may consider joint statements on controversial recommendations for variable timing and protocols. Critical relevance statement: The heterogeneous quality of guidelines, and their controversial recommendations, leave gaps in workflow timing, dosing, and post-administration hydration protocols of contrast-enhanced CT scans for patients with kidney diseases, calling for more evidence to establish a safer and more practicable workflow. Key points: • Guidelines concerning iodinated contrast media use in kidney disease patients vary. • Controversy remains in workflow timing, contrast dosing, and post-administration hydration protocols. • Investigations are encouraged to establish a safer iodinated contrast media use workflow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patients with COVID-19 have been reported to experience neurological complications, although the main cause of death in these patients was determined to be lung damage. Notably, SARS-CoV-2-induced pathological injuries in brains with a viral presence were also found in all fatal animal cases. Thus, an appropriate animal model that mimics severe infections in the lungs and brain needs to be developed. In this paper, we compared SARS-CoV-2 infection dynamics and pathological injuries between C57BL/6Smoc-Ace2em3(hACE2-flag-Wpre-pA)Smoc transgenic hACE2-C57 mice and Syrian hamsters. Importantly, the greatest viral distribution in mice occurred in the cerebral cortex neuron area, where pathological injuries and cell death were observed. In contrast, in hamsters, viral replication and distribution occurred mainly in the lungs but not in the cerebrum, although obvious ACE2 expression was validated in the cerebrum. Consistent with the spread of the virus, significant increases in IL-1β and IFN-γ were observed in the lungs of both animals. However, in hACE2-C57 mice, the cerebrum showed noticeable increases in IL-1β but only mild increases in IFN-γ. Notably, our findings revealed that both the cerebrum and the lungs were prominent infection sites in hACE2 mice infected with SARS-CoV-2 with obvious pathological damage. Furthermore, hamsters exhibited severe interstitial pneumonia from 3 dpi to 5 dpi, followed by gradual recovery. Conversely, all the hACE2-C57 mice experienced severe pathological injuries in the cerebrum and lungs, leading to mortality before 5 dpi. According to these results, transgenic hACE2-C57 mice may be valuable for studying SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis and clearance in the cerebrum. Additionally, a hamster model could serve as a crucial resource for exploring the mechanisms of recovery from infection at different dosage levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] Designing two-dimensional (2D) porous carbon nanosheets is a promising strategy for enhancing the water-splitting activities of non-noble metal catalysts. In this study, we developed a novel method for synthesizing the novel three-dimensional (3D) hierarchically porous iron–nickel (FeNi) nanoparticles encapsulated in boron (B) and nitrogen (N)-codoped porous carbon nanosheets (denoted as FeNi@BNPCNS). Owing to the advantages of morphology and structure of B and N, 10.31 atom % of B/N active centers were successfully doped into the optimal FeNi@BNPCNS-800 nanosheets. FeNi@BNPCNS-800 exhibited better hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalytic activities than control catalysts in an alkaline solution. However, the HER and OER electrocatalytic activities of FeNi@BNPCNS-800 were slightly lower than 20 wt% Pt/C and RuO 2. The FeNi@BNPCNS-800||FeNi@BNPCNS-800 electrolyzer achieved 10 mA cm−2 at 1.514 V, which was 73 mV lower than that of 20 wt% Pt/C||RuO 2 electrolyzer (1.587 V). The perfect 3D honeycomb-like architectures, abundant mesopores/defects, and abundant electrocatalytic active sites were attributed to the outstanding water-splitting performances of FeNi@BNPCNS-800 nanosheets. This study provides an efficient strategy for the large-scale, rapid, and low-cost fabrication of 2D porous carbon nanosheets without using any template, surfactant, or expensive raw material, thus presenting a simple approach to design advanced non-noble metal electrocatalysts for water splitting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phospholipase C Beta 1 (PLCB1) regulates the abundance of PI(4,5)P2 in the plasma membrane and is implicated in various kinds of cancers. This study aimed to investigate the role and underlying mechanisms of PLCB1 in gastric cancer. Herein, it was found that PLCB1 mRNA and protein were highly expressed in gastric cancer, and high levels of PLCB1 were correlated with poor outcomes of patients with gastric cancer via the GEPIA database. Moreover, our results revealed that PLCB1 depletion inhibited gastric cancer cell proliferation, migration, and invasion. Meanwhile, PLCB1 overexpression resulted in an inverse result. Furthermore, PLCB1 mediated actin cytoskeleton rearrangement and activated the RhoA/LIMK/Cofilin pathway. Besides, PLCB1 promoted the Epithelial–Mesenchymal transition process via activating ATK signaling. In conclusion, PLCB1 promoted gastric cancer cell migratory and invasive abilities via regulating actin cytoskeleton rearrangement and Epithelial–Mesenchymal transition process. These findings imply that targeting PLCB1 may be a potential strategy to improve the prognosis of gastric cancer patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing dehazing methods based on convolutional neural networks estimate the transmission map by treating channel‐wise features equally, which lacks flexibility in handling different types of haze information, leading to the poor representational ability of the network. Besides, the scene lights are predicted by an even illumination prior which does not work for a real situation. To solve these problems, the authors propose a dense residual channel attention network (DRCAN) for estimating the transmission map and use an image segmentation strategy to predict scene lights. Specifically, DRCAN is built based on the proposed dense residual block (DRB) and dense residual channel attention block (DRCAB). DRB extracts the hierarchical features with increasing receptive fields. DRCAB makes the network focus on the features containing heavy haze information. After the transmission map is estimated, fuzzy partition entropy combined with graph cuts is used to segment the transmission map into scene regions covered with varying scene lights. This strategy not only considers the fuzzy intensities of the low‐contrast transmission map but also takes spatial correlation into account. Finally, a clear image is obtained by the transmission map and varying scene lights. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method is comparable to most of existing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Xiang, Y.; Wei, Y.; Wang, Y., and Meng, K. 2018. Seismic resistance performance of shear wall structure of assembled coastal buildings. In: Liu, Z.L. and Mi, C. (eds.), Advances in Sustainable Port and Ocean Engineering. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 83, pp. 267–271. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. The seismic resistance bearing and deformation capacity of the traditional wall structure is poor, and the force is not uniform, which leads to the high risk of building collapse. In order to solve this problem, the seismic resistance performance of the shear wall structure of the assembled coastal buildings is analyzed in this paper. On the basis of monotonic load, the mechanical properties of the structure under cyclic loading are analyzed, and a nonlinear numerical model is constructed. The fitting degree of the seismic resistance bearing capacity of the assembled shear wall structure is calculated. On the basis of this, the displacement ductility coefficient and the equivalent viscous damping coefficient are studied. The stiffness of the shear wall structure of the assembled coastal buildings is obtained so as to study the seismic resistance performance. The experimental results show that the wall structure has good seismic resistance bearing capacity, strong deformation capacity and uniform force. It can build a seismic resistance line for the shear wall structure of assembled coastal buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low NO x burner redesign and deep air staging have been carried out to optimize the poor ignition and reduce the NO x emissions in a low volatile coal fired 330 MW e boiler. Residual swirling flow in the tangentially-fired furnace caused flue gas velocity deviations at furnace exit, leading to flow field unevenness in the SCR (selective catalytic reduction) system and poor denitrification efficiency. Numerical simulations on the velocity field in the SCR system were carried out to determine the optimal flow deflector arrangement to improve flow field uniformity of SCR system. Full-scale experiment was performed to investigate the effect of low NO x combustion and SCR flow field optimization. Compared with the results before the optimization, the NO x emissions at furnace exit decreased from 550 to 650 mg/Nm³ to 330–430 mg/Nm³. The sample standard deviation of the NO x emissions at the outlet section of SCR decreased from 34.8 mg/Nm³ to 7.8 mg/Nm³. The consumption of liquid ammonia reduced from 150 to 200 kg/h to 100–150 kg/h after optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), which play important roles in various complex biological processes, have received more attention in plants. However, little information is available on lncRNAs in woody fruit trees and their potential regulatory roles remain poorly understood, especially in apple. Here, a total of 1726 high-confidence lncRNAs (hc-lncRNAs) were identified in different tissues including young fruits, shoot tips, stem phloem and root tips using high-throughput sequencing. These lncRNAs are distributed across all 17 apple chromosomes, and >85% come from intergenic regions. The apple lncRNAs have longer transcript lengths and greater exon numbers than protein-coding genes. Additionally, among the 1726 hc-lncRNA, 850 are predicted to have target genes. These target genes are involved in many processes including hormone signaling, sugar metabolism, and the cell cycle and stress responses. Furthermore, 57, 74, 168 and 78 lncRNAs specifically expressed in root tips, shoot tips, young fruits and stem phloem were analyzed using the COG (cluster of orthologous group)and GO (gene ontology) databases. Young fruits contain the most unique lncRNAs, which are involved in biological processes such as energy production and conversion, carbohydrate transport and metabolism, posttranslational modification and protein turnover. Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) is employed to confirm the different expression levels among the four tissues. Moreover, the expression levels of eight fruit-related lncRNAs are investigated during different fruit development stages, which indicates they have important roles in fruit ripening and sugar metabolism. Overall, our genome-wide research on lncRNAs in different apple tissues provides valuable clues and information that can help elucidate the potential roles of lncRNAs in the growth and development of apple, as well as in other fruit trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study dissected 21 surface sediment samples collected from the vicinity of Dingzi Bay to understand the distribution and ecological risk of PAHs. The findings revealed that the concentration of PAHs in sediments ranged from 71.38 ng·g−1 to 163.28 ng·g−1, with an average of 106.43 ng·g−1. The main components were 3-ring PAHs. By using the diagnostic ratio and principal component analysis (PCA) approach, it was determined that the main sources of PAHs in the sediments in this region were biomass, coal combustion, and oil leaks. The majority of PAHs have low ecological risk, with just Acenaphthene having slightly higher concentrations than ERL, according to the effective range low and median approaches (ERL and ERM). The examination of the toxic equivalent approach revealed that PAHs in the research area had low levels of toxicity and ecological risk. [Display omitted] • The source of PAHs was explored using the diagnostic ratio and PCA approach. • Tricyclic PAHs were the main components of PAHs in sediments near Dingzi Bay. • Total PAHs in sediments were at a low ecological risk level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel methodology for promoting the topological carbon defects and B/N doping amounts of B/ N -enriched porous Co@BN-PCFs catalysts, which discloses a new direction for further boosting ORR catalytic efficiencies and stabilities of Co N C catalysts in both acids and bases. [Display omitted] • Carboxyl induced abundant mesopores and ultrahigh carbon topological defects in Co@BN-PCNFs. • Ultrahigh B and N doping amounts of 5.87 and 5.91 at.% with 8.70 at.% of B/N based electrocatalytic active centers. • The ORR E onset and E 1/2 values of Co@BN-PCNFs-900 are ∼ 64 and ∼ 63 mV more positive than 20 wt% Pt/C in 0.1 M KOH. • The ORR E onset and E 1/2 values of Co@BN-PCNFs-900 just ∼ 11 and ∼ 7 mV more negative than 20 wt% Pt/C in 0.1 M H 2 SO 4. • The comparatively stable topological edges, BC 3 and partial N C/Co N C induced excellent stability toward ORR. Transition metal-nitrogen-carbon (M N C) type catalysts have been considered a promising alternative to noble metals for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) electrocatalysis. Nevertheless, poor stabilities of M N C catalysts in acidic solutions limit their commercialization. In this study, we design and synthesize novel three-dimensional (3D) cobalt (Co) nanoparticles encapsulated in ultrahigh content of boron (B) and nitrogen (N) -doped hierarchically porous carbon nanofibers (denoted as Co@BN-PCNFs) by carbonizing the 3D acetic acid/cobalt nitrate/4-hydroxybenzeneboronic acid/polyvinylpyrrolidone precursor networks woven using electrospinning method under a nitrogen atmosphere. The optimal Co@BN-PCNFs-900 catalyst has abundant micro/mesopores and numerous topological defects and exhibits the largest surface area. Under the synergistic effect of oxygen-containing acetic acid molecules and the electrospinning technology, 5.87 at.% of B and 5.91 at.% of N atoms were doped into carbon nanofibers. Specifically, B/N electrocatalytic active centers (including BC 3 , pyridinic-N/Co N C, pyrrolic-N, and graphitic-N) of approximately 8.70 at.% were successfully introduced into the skeletons of Co@BN-PCNFs-900. In 0.1 M KOH, the ORR onset potential (E onset) and half-wave potential (E 1/2) of Co@BN-PCNFs-900 were ∼ 64 and ∼ 63 mV, respectively, more positive than those of 20 wt% Pt/C. Additionally, in 0.5 M H 2 SO 4 , the ORR E onset and E 1/2 values of Co@BN-PCNFs-900 were only ∼ 11 and ∼ 7 mV, respectively, more negative than those of 20 wt% Pt/C. As the 3D hierarchically porous architectures, topological carbon edges, BC 3 , and partial N C/Co N C are relatively stable, the Co@BN-PCNFs-900 exhibits excellent stability toward ORR catalysis in both acidic and basic media. These favorable properties of Co@BN-PCNFs-900 nanofibers make them the best non-noble metal-based carbonaceous electrocatalysts for ORR in acidic electrolytes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To solve the problem of snow on steel bridge areas endangering traffic safety and low road traffic efficiency in winter, conductive gussasphait concrete (CGA) was prepared by mixing conductive phase materials (graphene and carbon fiber) into Gussasphalt (GA). First, through high-temperature rutting test, low-temperature bending test, immersion Marshall test, freeze–thaw splitting test and fatigue test, the high-temperature stability, low-temperature crack resistance, water stability and fatigue performance of CGA with different conductive phase materials were systematically studied. Second, the influence of different content of conductive phase materials on the conductivity of CGA was studied through the electrical resistance test, and the microstructure characteristics were analyzed via SEM. Finally, the electrothermal properties of CGA with different conductive phase materials were studied via heating test and simulated ice-snow melting test. The results showed that the addition of graphene/carbon fiber can significantly improve the high-temperature stability, low-temperature crack resistance, water stability and fatigue performance of CGA. The contact resistance between electrode and specimen can be effectively reduced when the graphite distribution is 600 g/m2. The resistivity of 0.3% carbon fiber + 0.5% graphene rutting plate specimen can reach 4.70 Ω·m. Graphene and carbon fiber in asphalt mortar construct a complete conductive network. The heating efficiency of 0.3% carbon fiber + 0.5% graphene rutting plate specimen is 71.4%, and the ice-snow melting efficiency is 28.73%, demonstrating good electrothermal performance and ice-snow melting effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims Heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) is a leading cause of mortality worldwide, requiring novel therapeutic and lifestyle interventions. Metabolic alterations and energy production deficit are hallmarks and thereby promising therapeutic targets for this complex clinical syndrome. We aim to study the molecular mechanisms and effects on cardiac function in rodents with HFrEF of a designer diet in which free essential amino acids—in specifically designed percentages—substituted for protein. Methods and results Wild-type mice were subjected to transverse aortic constriction (TAC) to induce left ventricle (LV) pressure overload or sham surgery. Whole-body glucose homeostasis was studied with glucose tolerance test, while myocardial dysfunction and fibrosis were measured with echocardiogram and histological analysis. Mitochondrial bioenergetics and morphology were investigated with oxygen consumption rate measurement and electron microscopy evaluation. Circulating and cardiac non-targeted metabolite profiles were analyzed by ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectroscopy, while RNA-sequencing was used to identify signalling pathways mainly affected. The amino acid-substituted diet shows remarkable preventive and therapeutic effects. This dietary approach corrects the whole-body glucose metabolism and restores the unbalanced metabolic substrate usage—by improving mitochondrial fuel oxidation—in the failing heart. In particular, biochemical, molecular, and genetic approaches suggest that renormalization of branched-chain amino acid oxidation in cardiac tissue, which is suppressed in HFrEF, plays a relevant role. Beyond the changes of systemic metabolism, cell-autonomous processes may explain at least in part the diet's cardioprotective impact. Conclusion Collectively, these results suggest that manipulation of dietary amino acids, and especially essential amino acids, is a potential adjuvant therapeutic strategy to treat systolic dysfunction and HFrEF in humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the years, in order to enhance the thermal efficiency, coal-fired power plants have witnessed great improvements in water and waste heat recovery. This paper aims to investigate the water vapor and latent heat recovery from the low temperature flue gases exiting a limestone-gypsum wet desulfurization system. A pilot-scale testing system mainly composed of a two-stage fluorine plastic heat exchanger (FHE) was built in a 660 MW lignite-fired power plant in northern China. The additional FHE configuration was first developed and used for water and latent heat recovery based on the condensation mechanism of water vapor. Results showed that the FHE can overcome the shortcomings of the conventional metal heat exchanger, especially when flue gas temperature is below the acid dew point. The recovered latent heat accounted for more than 80% of the total heat recovered from low temperature flue gases, and the heat supply of 92 MW th was achieved. The overall heat transfer coefficient of the FHE reached up to 275 W/(m 2 •K). The water recovery efficiency increased with an increase in cooling water velocity and a decrease in flue gas velocity. The water recovery efficiency higher than 70% was reached when the flue gas velocity was less than 5 m/s and the cooling water velocity was greater than 0.24 m/s. The highest water recovery efficiency of the two-stage FHE was 85%, suggesting that this technology has a greater application potential in all industrial processes. The recovered water mass from the flue gas by condensation was nearly equal to, or even exceeded, the equivalent mass of supplemental water for the desulfurization system. The good water recovery performance of the FHE device implied that zero water consumption of the desulfurization system could be achieved, which is of great significance for power plants, especially in water scarce regions. This technology will offer an innovative and feasible solution to resolve the issue of water and heat recovery in the highly corrosive conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In deeper layers, ResNet heavily depends on skip connections and Relu. Although skip connections have demonstrated their usefulness in networks, a major issue arises when the dimensions between layers are not consistent. In such cases, it is necessary to use techniques such as zero-padding or projection to match the dimensions between layers. These adjustments increase the complexity of the network architecture, resulting in an increase in parameter number and a rise in computational costs. Another problem is the vanishing gradient caused by utilizing Relu. In our model, after making appropriate adjustments to the inception blocks, we replace the deeper layers of ResNet with modified inception blocks and Relu with our non-monotonic activation function (NMAF). To reduce parameter number, we use symmetric factorization and 1 × 1 convolutions. Utilizing these two techniques contributed to reducing the parameter number by around 6 M parameters, which has helped reduce the run time by 30 s/epoch. Unlike Relu, NMAF addresses the deactivation problem of the non-positive number by activating the negative values and outputting small negative numbers instead of zero in Relu, which helped in enhancing the convergence speed and increasing the accuracy by 5%, 15%, and 5% for the non-noisy datasets, and 5%, 6%, 21% for non-noisy datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel low-fired microwave dielectric ceramic with composition of Ba 4 CuTi 11 O 27 was prepared by a conventional solid-state reaction method. A single-phase Ba 4 CuTi 11 O 27 ceramic could be well densified after sintering above 950 °C for 4 h in air. A refinement using X-ray powder diffraction data was carried out in the Rietveld method using the parameters of Ba 4 Ti 12 O 27 as a starting model. Ba 4 CuTi 11 O 27 ceramic sintered at 975 °C has a monoclinic structure (C12/m1) with lattice parameters of a =19.8061(4) Å, b =11.4456(2) Å, c =9.9131(2) Å, β =108.8988(15) Å, V =2126.08(8) Å 3 , Z =4. The Ba 4 CuTi 11 O 27 ceramics exhibited a low sintering temperature (~975 °C) and good microwave dielectric properties with Q×f value of 15,040 GHz, ε r of 36.3 and τ f value 11.9 ppm/°C. More importantly, the Ba 4 CuTi 11 O 27 dielectrics demonstrated good chemical compatibility with Ag when sintered at 950 °C, keeping excellent microwave dielectric properties with Q×f =12,130 GHz, ε r =36.1, τ f =12.1 ppm/°C, which indicates that Ba 4 CuTi 11 O 27 ceramic is a candidate for LTCC devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY: Heterosis is extensively used to improve crop productivity, yet its allelic and chromatin regulation remains unclear. Based on our resolved genomes of the maternal TGY and paternal HD, we analyzed the contribution of allele‐specific expression (ASE) and chromatin accessibility of JGY and HGY, the artificial hybrids of oolong tea with the largest cultivated area in China. The ASE genes (ASEGs) of tea hybrids with maternal‐biased were mainly related to the energy and terpenoid metabolism pathways, whereas the ASEGs with paternal‐biased tend to be enriched in glutathione metabolism, and these parental bias of hybrids may coordinate and lead to the acquisition of heterosis in more biological pathways. ATAC‐seq results showed that hybrids have significantly higher accessible chromatin regions (ACRs) compared with their parents, which may confer broader and stronger transcriptional activity of genes in hybrids. The number of ACRs with significantly increased accessibility in hybrids was much greater than decreased, and the associated alleles were also affected by differential ACRs across different parents, suggesting enhanced positive chromatin regulation and potential genetic effects in hybrids. Core ASEGs of terpene and purine alkaloid metabolism pathways with significant positive heterosis have greater chromatin accessibility in hybrids, and were potentially regulated by several members of the MYB, DOF and TRB families. The binding motif of CsMYB85 in the promoter ACR of the rate‐limiting enzyme CsDXS was verified by DAP‐seq. These results suggest that higher numbers and more accessible ACRs in hybrids contribute to the regulation of ASEGs, thereby affecting the formation of heterotic metabolites. Significance Statement: The regulation of alleles and chromatin accessibility in plant heterosis formation remains unclear. Here, we explored the contribution of allele‐specific expression and chromatin accessibility to heterosis formation in two of the largest cultivated oolong tea hybrids in China compared with their parents, which will provide new insights into the formation and regulation of plant heterosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two-dimensional (2D) transition metal chalcogenides (TMDs) have shown tremendous feasibility as building blocks for the development of high-performance optoelectronic devices owing to their distinct electrical and optical properties. However, the relatively narrow sensing range as well as the complex fabrication technique impede their technological applications. Here, we demonstrate the mixed-dimensional van der Waals (vdW) WSe 2 /Si 2D-3D vertical heterojunction by in-situ fabrication of WSe 2 multilayer on pre-patterned Si, for broadband and fast-speed photodetection. Thanks to the novel high-quality vertical p-n heterojunction, the as-fabricated WSe 2 /Si photodetector shows an excellent rectifying characteristic and a prominent photovoltaic effect, making the device capable of light detection in self-driven mode. Additionally, the device reveals remarkable performance in terms of a high specific detectivity of ∼8.79 × 1013 Jones, a large responsivity of ∼294 mA/W, and a fast response time of 4.1 μs. Significantly, the device shows high sensitivity to a wide spectra (200–1550 nm) owing to the production of a type-II band structure of the WSe 2 /Si vertical heterojunction. The mechanism of photo-generated carriers separation and transfer in the heterojunction is analyzed by KPFM. Our work offers a potential route to the development of unique 2D-3D heterojunction for optoelectronic devices and system applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fire detection methods based on the Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have advantages of high accuracy, wide coverage and robustness, receiving significant attention from researchers. Among CNN‐based methods, ResNet has achieved better performance than other CNN frameworks in fire detection system, since it uses stacked residual blocks to enlarge the receptive field to overcome the vanishing gradient problem with residual learning. The merits of ResNet can be attributed to the similarity between ResNet and the single‐step explicit solver for Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs), for example, the Euler method. Motivated by the theory of numerical ODE that a multi‐step implicit solver has higher accuracy than a single‐step explicit solver, the Multi‐step Implicit Adams predictor‐corrector (MIAPC) network for fire detection is proposed. The MIAPC method is first mapped to a corresponding predictor‐corrector Adams block which achieves higher accuracy than a single‐step explicit solver. Then, Adaptive Feature Fusion (AFF) and the Spatial Attention Layer (SAL) are utilized to extract hierarchical features from stacked predictor‐corrector Adams blocks, forming the corresponding Adams module. Finally, the 4 Adams modules which are made of 4, 6, 8, 10 predictor‐corrector Adams blocks and followed by AFF and SAL form the crucial ODE‐based approximation part in the proposed network. By adding a simple feature extraction and detection in front of and after the ODE‐based approximation part, the MIAPC network is built. Experiments demonstrate that the method achieves 87% accuracy in the challenging test dataset, outperforming existing methods by at least 6%. Besides, the 5.3M model size with inference speed of 4.7 frames/second in CPU and 65.7 frames/second in GPU enables the proposed method to be used in practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Changes in spinal mobility after vertebral fusion are important factors contributing to adjacent vertebral disease (ASD). As an implant for spinal non-fusion, the motion-preserving prosthesis is an effective method to reduce the incidence of ASD, but its deficiencies hamper the application in clinical. This study designs a novel motion-preserving artificial cervical disc and vertebra complex with an anti-dislocation mechanism (MACDVC-AM) and verifies its effect on the cervical spine. Methods: The MACDVC-AM was designed on the data of healthy volunteers. The finite element intact model, fusion model, and MACDVC-AM model were constructed, and the range of motion (ROM) and stress of adjacent discs were compared. The biomechanical tests were performed on fifteen cervical specimens, and the stability index ROM (SI-ROM) were calculated. Results: Compared with the intervertebral ROMs of the intact model, the MACDVC-AM model reduced by 28–70% in adjacent segments and increased by 26–54% in operated segments, but the fusion model showed the opposite result. In contrast to the fusion model, the MACDVC-AM model diminished the stress of adjacent intervertebral discs. In biomechanical tests, the MACDVC-AM group showed no significant difference with the ROMs of the intact group (p > 0.05). The SI-ROM of the MACDVC-AM group is negative but close to zero and showed no significant difference with the intact group (p > 0.05). Conclusions: The MACDVC-AM was successfully designed. The results indicate that the MACDVC-AM can provide physiological mobility and stability, reduce adjacent intervertebral compensatory motion, and alleviate the stress change of adjacent discs, which contributes to protect adjacent discs and reduce the occurrence of ASD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient gene transfer with extended gene expression is essential for successful treatment of skin diseases using gene therapy. Previously we evaluated a physical gene transfer method (gene gun delivery) for its ability to transfect the epidermis in vivo. In this study, we tested two viral vectors for their ability to transduce murine epidermis through topical application. Both an adenoviral vector and a herpes simplex virus (HSV) amplicon vector transduced murine epidermis with high efficiency after topical application. Differences in amount and duration of transgene expression were compared between these two vectors. Quantitative analysis of reporter lacZ gene expression showed that the viral vector-mediated gene transfers were superior to gene-gun delivery of plasmid DNA. Significant necrosis and cytotoxicity, however, were observed in the HSV-treated skin. In addition, we show that murine epidermis developed hyperkeratosis and acanthosis 4 d after an adenoviral vector containing a human TGF-α expression unit was applied topically. Finally we demonstrate the feasibility of transduction of fetal skin in utero by intraamniotic injection of an adenovirus vector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate forecasting of cooling and heating loads is critical for optimizing the energy usage of devices and planning for energy storage in building district energy systems (BDESs). Data-driven models offering high prediction accuracy and efficiency are receiving significant attention for addressing short-term load prediction problems. However, load forecasting for district building levels, as well as interpretable studies of deep learning models, are still the minority of existed research. To satisfy the cooling and heating loads forecasting of an actual BDES, a framework that includes raw data acquisition, data processing, model development, and evaluation is developed and analyzed. The performance of a multi-input-multi-output prediction strategy evaluated using five data-driven models, namely extreme gradient boost (XGB), long short-term memory (LSTM), gated recurrent units (GRU), and attention-added LSTM/GRU, is investigated. The results show that XGB performs the best, with CV-RMSE values of 14.51% and 11.95% for the one-hour-ahead forecasting of cooling and heating loads, respectively. In terms of 24-hour ahead prediction, the most accurate condition is "48–24" attention-added LSTM in both cooling and heating loads forecasting, where the CV-RMSE values recorded are 26.61% and 27.58%, respectively. The accuracy and interpretability of the models improved after an attention mechanism is introduced. The most significant enhancement in the prediction accuracy is reflected by a reduction in the CV-RMSE by 2.01%. The visualized heat maps of attention weights indicate the mechanism by which the models learn and extract the load patterns, where LSTM and GRU indicate different priorities. Further analysis of the attention weight distribution reveals the effects of building thermal inertia and load periodicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cardiomyocyte hypertrophy is an integral part of cardiac remodeling that occurs under physiological or pathological stresses. It can lead to heart failure in a pathological form or oppose functional deterioration in a compensatory one. The mechanisms underlying an adaptive outcome of hypertrophy are ill defined. In this issue of the JCI, Kashihara et al. explored the role of the Yes-associated protein 1 (YAP) transcription factor in the heart, using cell culturing and mouse models. YAP activity was found to be associated with changes in genes of the glycolytic and auxiliary pathways under stress. Notably, YAP upregulated glucose transporter 1 (GLUT1), and inhibition of GLUT1 blocked YAP-induced hypertrophy but worsened heart function. These findings suggest that YAP is a regulator of metabolic reprogramming in the heart during compensatory hypertrophy. This insight may help in the development of future therapies for heart failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

However, in cases with rapid progression of clinical symptoms, the reason for the headache was confusing as there was an association of both PDA and TB (possibly leading to hypoxia and vasospasm). The patient was discharged well.{Figure 4} After 3 months, the patient visited the doctor for follow-up with weight gain to 26 kg, improved TB symptoms, disappeared headache at the clinic. Is Tuberculosis or PDA the Truth of the 11-Year-Old-Boy Headache?. [Extracted from the article]

In the mammalian heart, the left ventricle (LV) rapidly becomes more dominant in size and function over the right ventricle (RV) after birth. The molecular regulators responsible for this chamber-specific differential growth are largely unknown. We found that cardiomyocytes in the neonatal mouse RV had lower proliferation, more apoptosis, and a smaller average size compared with the LV. This chamber-specific growth pattern was associated with a selective activation of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) activity in the RV and simultaneous inactivation in the LV. Cardiomyocyte-specific deletion of both the Mapk14 and Mapk11 genes in mice resulted in loss of p38 MAPK expression and activity in the neonatal heart. Inactivation of p38 activity led to a marked increase in cardiomyocyte proliferation and hypertrophy but diminished cardiomyocyte apoptosis, specifically in the RV. Consequently, the p38-inactivated hearts showed RV-specific enlargement postnatally, progressing to pulmonary hypertension and right heart failure at the adult stage. Chamber-specific p38 activity was associated with differential expression of dual-specific phosphatases (DUSPs) in neonatal hearts, including DUSP26. Unbiased transcriptome analysis revealed that IRE1α/XBP1-mediated gene regulation contributed to p38 MAPK-dependent regulation of neonatal cardiomyocyte proliferation and binucleation. These findings establish an obligatory role of DUSP/p38/IRE1α signaling in cardiomyocytes for chamber-specific growth in the postnatal heart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]