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Abstract Expansion Microscopy (ExM) is an innovative and cost-effective super-resolution microscopy technique that has become popular in cell biology research. It achieves super-resolution by physically expanding specimens. Since its introduction, ExM has undergone continuous methodological developments to enhance its resolution and labeling capabilities. However, ExM imaging often encounters sample drift during image acquisition due to the physical movement of the expanded hydrogel, posing a significant challenge for accurate image reconstruction. Despite many proposed experimental solutions to mitigate sample drift, a universal solution has yet to be established. In response to this challenge, we developed 3D-Aligner, an advanced and user-friendly image analysis tool designed to computationally correct drift in ExM images for precise three-dimensional image reconstruction and downstream quantification. We demonstrate that 3D-Aligner effectively determines and corrects drift in ExM images with different expansion rates and various fluorescently labeled biological targets, showcasing its capabilities and robustness in drift correction. Additionally, we validate the precision of 3D-Aligner by comparing drift values across different labeled targets and highlight the importance of drift correction in quantification of biological structures.

A method to remove stripes from remote sensing images is proposed based on statistics and a new image enhancement method. The overall processing steps for improving the quality of remote sensing images are introduced to provide a general baseline. Due to the differences in satellite sensors when producing images, subtle but inherent stripes can appear at the stitching positions between the sensors. These stitchingstripes cannot be eliminated by conventional relative radiometric calibration. The inherent stitching stripes cause difficulties in downstream tasks such as the segmentation, classification and interpretation of remote sensing images. Therefore, a method to remove the stripes based on statistics and a new image enhancement approach are proposed in this paper. First, the inconsistency in grayscales around stripes is eliminated with the statistical method. Second, the pixels within stripes are weighted and averaged based on updated pixel values to enhance the uniformity of the overall image radiation quality. Finally, the details of the images are highlighted by a new image enhancement method, which makes the whole image clearer. Comprehensive experiments are performed, and the results indicate that the proposed method outperforms the baseline approach in terms of visual quality and radiation correction accuracy.

The interfacial effect is important for anodes of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) to achieve superior lithium-ion storage performance. In this paper, a MoS2/FeS2 heterojunction is synthesized by a simple hydrothermal reaction to construct the interface effect, and the heterostructure introduces an inherent electric field that accelerates the de-embedding process of lithium ions, improves the electron transfer capability, and effectively mitigates volume expansion. XPS analysis confirms evident chemical interaction between MoS2 and FeS2 via an interfacial covalent bond (Mo–S–Fe). This MoS2/FeS2 anode shows a distinct interfacial effect for efficient interatomic electron migration. The electrochemical performance demonstrated that the discharge capacity can reach up to 1217.8 mA h g−1 at 0.1 A g−1 after 200 cycles, with a capacity retention rate of 72.9%. After 2000 cycles, the capacity retention is about 61.6% at 1.0 A g−1, and the discharge capacity can still reach 638.9 mA h g−1. Electrochemical kinetic analysis indicated an enhanced pseudocapacitance contribution and that the MoS2/FeS2 had sufficient adsorption of lithium ions. This paper therefore argues that this interfacial engineering is an effective solution for designing sulfide-based anodes with good electrochemical properties.

Abstract Magnetoelectric materials hold untapped potential to revolutionize biomedical technologies. Sensing of biophysical processes in the brain is a particularly attractive application, with the prospect of using magnetoelectric nanoparticles (MENPs) as injectable agents for rapid brain-wide modulation and recording. Recent studies have demonstrated wireless brain stimulation in vivo using MENPs synthesized from cobalt ferrite (CFO) cores coated with piezoelectric barium titanate (BTO) shells. CFO–BTO core–shell MENPs have a relatively high magnetoelectric coefficient and have been proposed for direct magnetic particle imaging (MPI) of brain electrophysiology. However, the feasibility of acquiring such readouts has not been demonstrated or methodically quantified. Here we present the results of implementing a strain-based finite element magnetoelectric model of CFO–BTO core–shell MENPs and apply the model to quantify magnetization in response to neural electric fields. We use the model to determine optimal MENPs-mediated electrophysiological readouts both at the single neuron level and for MENPs diffusing in bulk neural tissue for in vivo scenarios. Our results lay the groundwork for MENP recording of electrophysiological signals and provide a broad analytical infrastructure to validate MENPs for biomedical applications.

The roadheader is a core piece of equipment for underground mining. The roadheader bearing, as its key component, often works under complex working conditions and bears large radial and axial forces. Its health is critical to efficient and safe underground operation. The early failure of a roadheader bearing has weak impact characteristics and is often submerged in complex and strong background noise. Therefore, a fault diagnosis strategy that combines variational mode decomposition and a domain adaptive convolutional neural network is proposed in this paper. To start with, VMD is utilized to decompose the collected vibration signals to obtain the sub-component IMF. Then, the kurtosis index of IMF is calculated, with the maximum index value chosen as the input of the neural network. A deep transfer learning strategy is introduced to solve the problem of the different distributions of vibration data for roadheader bearings under variable working conditions. This method was implemented in the actual bearing fault diagnosis of a roadheader. The experimental results indicate that the method is superior in terms of diagnostic accuracy and has practical engineering application value.

This paper proposes a network anomaly detection model of direct batch growing hierarchical self-organizing mapping based on entropy, which facilitates clear topology representation for the asymmetrically-distributed data. Since the entropy-defined parameters dynamically vary with the incident dataset, that is, follow a data-adaptive manner, the proposed model is naturally valid in all cases with various data types. For fine-grained data distinguishing, a resemble entropy parameter is proposed for the first time to our best knowledge. The experimental results validate that the proposed model achieves a more efficient network anomaly detection than the conventional models, especially for real-world applications with unexpected anomaly data updating.

Abstract Genome‐wide association studies (GWAS) have identified some single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with the risk of gastric cancer (GCa). However, currently, there is no published predictive model to assess the risk of GCa. In the present study, risk‐associated SNPs derived from GWAS and large meta‐analyses were selected to construct a predictive model to assess the risk of GCa. A total of 1115 GCa cases and 1172 controls from the eastern Chinese population were included. Logistic regression models were used to identify SNPs that correlated with the risk of GCa. A predictive model to assess the risk of GCa was established by receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. Multifactor dimensionality reduction (MDR) and classification and regression tree (CART) were applied to calculate the effect of high‐order gene‐environment interactions on risk of the cancer. A total of 42 SNPs were selected for further analysis. The results revealed that ASH1L rs80142782, PKLR rs3762272, PRKAA1 rs13361707, MUC1 rs4072037, PSCA rs2294008, and PLCE1 rs2274223 polymorphisms were associated with a risk of GCa. The area under curve considering both genetic factors and BMI was 3.10% higher than that of BMI alone. MDR analysis revealed that rs13361707 and rs4072307 variants and BMI had interaction effects on susceptibility to GCa, with the highest predictive accuracy (61.23%) and cross‐validation consistency (100/100). CART analysis also supported this interaction model that non‐overweight status and a six SNP panel could synergistically increase the susceptibility to GCa. The six SNP panel for predicting the risk of GCa may provide new tools for prevention of the cancer based on GWAS and large meta‐analyses derived genetic variants.

Abstract Constructing heterojunction is an effective strategy to enhance photocatalytic performance of photocatalysts. Herein, we fabricated ZnTiO3/Bi4NbO8Cl heterojunction with improved performance via a typical mechanical mixing method. The rhodamine (RhB) degradation rate over heterojunction is higher than that of individual ZnTiO3 or Bi4NbO8Cl under Xenon-arc lamp irradiation. Combining ZnTiO3 with Bi4NbO8Cl can inhibit the recombination of photo-excited carriers. The improved quantum efficiency was demonstrated by transient-photocurrent responses (PC), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), photoluminescence (PL) spectra, and time-resolved PL (TRPL) spectra. This research may be valuable for photocatalysts in the industrial application.

A new evaluation mechanism was proposed to enhance the representation of data topology in the directed batch growth hierarchical self-organizing mapping. In the proposed mechanism, the growth threshold and the correlation worked in a case-sensitive manner through the statistic calculation of the input data. Since the proposed model enabled a more thorough representation of data topology from both the horizontal and the vertical directions, it naturally held great potential in detecting various traffic attacks. Numerical experiments of network intrusion detection were carried out on the datasets of KDD99, Moore and CICIDS2017, where the good performance validated the superiority of the proposed method.

Heterogeneous photocatalytic system are widely applied to degrade organic pollutants or converse into high value-added chemicals. Both environmental and energy aspects should be considered to improve these chemical processes, favoring reaction conditions that involve room temperature and ambient O2 pressure. In the present work, hollow titanium dioxide nanospheres were fabricated via template-free method. The prepared samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction, N2 adsorption–desorption isotherms, transmission electron microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The photocatalytic activity was evaluated by photocatalytic oxidation of benzyl alcohol to benzaldehyde with visible light under atmospheric pressure at room temperature. The designed hollow structure (2%Pt–TiO2–5) not only exhibited a very high surface area, but also promoted photonic behavior and multiple light scattering, which as an efficient photocatalyst performed moderate conversion (about 20%) and high selectivity (> 99%) for oxidation of benzyl alcohol to benzaldehyde at room temperature with visible light in solvent of toluene. This work suggests that both hollow structure and Pt nanoparticles have great potential for execution of oxidative transformations under visible light. Keywords: Titanium dioxide, Hollow nanospheres, Photocatalytic oxidation, Benzyl alcohol, Visible light

Abstract Hollow and heterostructured architectures are recognized as an effective approach to improve photocatalytic performance. In this work, ternary TiO2/CdTe/BiOI with hollow structure was constructed via a step-by-step method. In addition, the effect of TiO2 structural regulation and the energy band alignment of BiOI and CdTe quantum dots (CdTe QDs) with TiO2 in TiO2/CdTe/BiOI on photocatalytic dye removal were also studied. The results reveal that the TiO2/CdTe/BiOI heterostructures with hollow substrates exhibit much higher photocatalytic activities than pure TiO2, P25, TiO2/CdTe, and TiO2/BiOI and ternary TiO2/CdTe/BiOI with solid substrates. For TiO2(H)/CdTe/BiOI, several synergistic factors may be responsible for the remarkable visible-light photodegradation performance, such as strong visible-light absorption by BiOI and larger specific surface area.

As an artificial neural network method, self-organizing mapping facilities efficient complete and visualize high-dimensional data topology representation, valid in a number of applications such as network intrusion detection. However, there remains a challenge to accurately depict the topology of network traffic data with unbalanced distribution, which deteriorates the performance of e.g. DoS attack detection. Hence, we propose a new model of the “statistic-enhanced directed batch growth self-organizing mapping”, renew the definition of the growth threshold used to evaluate/control neuron expansion, and first introduce the inner distribution factor for fine-grained data distinguishing. The numerical experiments based on two datasets, KDD99, and CICIDS2017, demonstrate that the key performance in DoS attack detection including the detection rate, the false positive rate, and the training time are greatly enhanced thanks to the statistic concepts consulted in the proposed model.

BackgroundCutaneous melanoma (CM) is one of the most aggressive cancers with highly metastatic ability. To make things worse, there are limited effective therapies to treat advanced CM. Our study aimed to investigate new biomarkers for CM prognosis and establish a novel risk score system in CM.MethodsGene expression data of CM from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) datasets were downloaded and analyzed to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs). The overlapped DEGs were then verified for prognosis analysis by univariate and multivariate COX regression in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) datasets. Based on the gene signature of multiple survival associated DEGs, a risk score model was established, and its prognostic and predictive role was estimated through Kaplan-Meier (K-M) analysis and log-rank test. Furthermore, the correlations between prognosis related genes expression and immune infiltrates were analyzed via Tumor Immune Estimation Resource (TIMER) site.ResultsA total of 103 DEGs were obtained based on GEO cohorts, and four genes were verified in TCGA datasets. Subsequently, four genes (ADAMDEC1, GNLY, HSPA13, and TRIM29) model was developed by univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses. The K-M plots showed that the high-risk group was associated with shortened survival than that in the low-risk group (P < 0.0001). Multivariate analysis suggested that the model was an independent prognostic factor (high-risk vs. low-risk, HR= 2.06, P < 0.001). Meanwhile, the high-risk group was prone to have larger breslow depth (P< 0.001) and ulceration (P< 0.001).ConclusionsThe four-gene risk score model functions well in predicting the prognosis and treatment response in CM and will be useful for guiding therapeutic strategies for CM patients. Additional clinical trials are needed to verify our findings.

In this paper, TiO2 photoanodes were doped with yttrium under different doping concentrations via hydrothermal method and further employed to assemble dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). XRD, XPS, SEM, TEM, UV–Vis DRS and PL measurements were carried out to investigate the yttrium doping effects on crystal structure, chemical status, optical properties and dye loading capacity of the photoanodes. The photovoltaic performance of the photoanodes with various yttrium doping concentration was measured by recording the photocurrent-photovoltaic curves, and the result indicated that TiO2:0.006 Y exhibited the best power conversion efficiency with high short circuit current density (Jsc) and open circuit voltage (Voc). This improvement may be due to the enhanced visible light harvesting, increased dye loading capacity and reduced photoelectron recombination. Keywords: Dye sensitized solar cells, TiO2 photoanode, Rare earth doping, Yttrium

Past studies have found that the facial width-to-height ratio (FWHR) is associated with a range of traits and behaviors that are possibly important to dyadic negotiations. However, it is unknown whether the FWHR would have an impact on intergroup negotiations, which happen frequently and often have higher stakes in the real world. To examine this question, in the current study, we randomly assigned 1,337 Chinese business executives into 288 groups and they completed a multi-issue negotiation exercise against each other. Results showed that groups with larger maximum individual FWHRs achieved objectively better negotiation outcomes. We conclude that groups containing individuals with relatively large FWHRs can claim more value in negotiations between groups.

This study explored the mechanism underlying long non-coding RNA ROR regulating autophagy on Tamoxifen resistance in breast cancer. Cancer tissues and adjacent normal tissues were collected from 74 breast cancer patients. Human breast cancer BT474 cells were assigned into blank, phosphate buffered saline, Tamoxifen, negative control + Tamoxifen, siROR + Tamoxifen, 3-methyladenine + Tamoxifen, and siROR + 3-methyladenine + TA groups. The expression of long non-coding RNA ROR and expressions of multi-drug resistance-associated P-glycoprotein and glutathione S-transferase-π messenger RNA were detected using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. The expressions of light chain 3, Beclin 1, multi-drug resistance-associated P-glycoprotein, and glutathione S-transferase-π protein were determined using western blotting. Cell proliferation, invasion, and migration abilities were measured using 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay, Transwell assay, and scratch test, respectively. The long non-coding RNA ROR expression was higher in the breast cancer tissues than that in the adjacent normal tissues. Compared with the blank group, light chain 3 and Beclin 1 expressions were increased in the siROR + Tamoxifen group but decreased in the 3-methyladenine + Tamoxifen group; these data indicated that downregulated long non-coding RNA ROR promoted autophagy. In comparison with the blank group, multi-drug resistance-associated P-glycoprotein and glutathione S-transferase-π messenger RNA and protein expressions were reduced in the siROR + Tamoxifen group but elevated in the 3-methyladenine + Tamoxifen group, suggesting that downregulated long non-coding RNA ROR suppressed the drug resistance to Tamoxifen and the inhibition of autophagy reversed the effect of long non-coding RNA ROR on drug resistance. Compared with the Tamoxifen, negative control, and siROR + 3-methyladenine + Tamoxifen groups, the cell proliferation, invasion, and migration in the siROR + Tamoxifen group were much decreased; these results implied that downregulated long non-coding RNA ROR suppressed BT474 cell proliferation, invasion, and migration and reversed the effect of Tamoxifen on the BT474 cells. These results indicate that inhibition of long non-coding RNA ROR reverses resistance to Tamoxifen by inducing autophagy in breast cancer.

The widespread use of fluorescence microscopy has prompted the ongoing development of tools aiming to improve resolution and quantification accuracy for study of biological questions. Current calibration and quantification tools for fluorescence images face issues with usability/user experience, lack of automation, and comprehensive multidimensional measurement/correction capabilities. Here, we developed 3D-Speckler, a versatile, and high-throughput image analysis software that can provide fluorescent puncta quantification measurements such as 2D/3D particle size, spatial location/orientation, and intensities through semi-automation in a single, user-friendly interface. Integrated analysis options such as 2D/3D local background correction, chromatic aberration correction, and particle matching/filtering are also encompassed for improved precision and accuracy. We demonstrate 3D-Speckler microscope calibration capabilities by determining the chromatic aberrations, field illumination uniformity, and response to nanometer-scale emitters above and below the diffraction limit of our imaging system using multispectral beads. Furthermore, we demonstrated 3D-Speckler quantitative capabilities for offering insight into protein architectures and composition in cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe the results of a prospective observational study of the clinical natural history of human monkeypox (mpox) virus (MPXV) infections at the remote L'Hopital General de Reference de Kole (Kole hospital), the rainforest of the Congo River basin of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from March 2007 until August 2011. The research was conducted jointly by the Institute National de Recherche Biomedical (INRB) and the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). The Kole hospital was one of the two previous WHO Mpox study sites (1981-1986). The hospital is staffed by a Spanish Order of Catholic Nuns from La Congregation Des Soeurs Missionnaires Du Christ Jesus including two Spanish physicians, who were members of the Order as well, were part of the WHO study on human mpox. Of 244 patients admitted with a clinical diagnosis of MPXV infection, 216 were positive in both the Pan-Orthopox and MPXV specific PCR. The cardinal observations of these 216 patients are summarized in this report. There were three deaths (3/216) among these hospitalized patients; fetal death occurred in 3 of 4 patients who were pregnant at admission, with the placenta of one fetus demonstrating prominent MPXV infection of the chorionic villi. The most common complaints were rash (96.8%), malaise (85.2%), sore throat (78.2%), and lymphadenopathy/adenopathy (57.4%). The most common physical exam findings were mpox rash (99.5%) and lymphadenopathy (98.6%). The single patient without the classic mpox rash had been previously vaccinated against smallpox. Age group of less than 5 years had the highest lesion count. Primary household cases tended to have higher lesion counts than secondary or later same household cases. Of the 216 patients, 200 were tested for IgM & IgG antibodies (Abs) to Orthopoxviruses. All 200 patients had anti-orthopoxvirus IgG Abs; whereas 189/200 were positive for IgM. Patients with hypoalbuminemia had a high risk of severe disease. Patients with fatal disease had higher maximum geometric mean values than survivors for the following variables, respectively: viral DNA in blood (DNAemia); maximum lesion count; day of admission mean AST and ALT.

In this study, TiO2 photoanodes doped with samarium ions via a method of hydrothermal treatment were used to fabricate dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Different doping concentrations were investigated on the effects of the cell’s performance. Some techniques including XRD, scanning electron microscopy, HRTEM, XPS, UV-Vis, photoluminescence were used to characterize the morphology, structure, and optic properties of the prepared photoanodes. The photovoltaic performance of the fabricated cells was further evaluated by measuring the current density–voltage (J–V) curves. It was found that: (1) The down-conversion luminescence effect derived from samarium doping could enhance the light-harvesting ability. (2) Compared with the undoped sample, the samarium-doped cells exhibited enhanced photovoltaic performance. Among the cells with different doping concentrations, the cell TiO2:0.015 Sm showed the best power conversion efficiency of 6.08% with a high open-circuit voltage (Voc) and a short-circuit current density (Jsc). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, TiO2/ZrO2 coaxial core-shell composite nanotubes were synthesized with the anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) template by a new "two-step method": Zr(NO3)4 sol was first deposited on the nanochannels of the AAO template to form a layer of ZrO2 nanotubes, and the TiO2/ZrO2 composite nanotubes were obtained after TiF4 sol was covered on the ZrO2 precursor. The process was suitable to produce large size and well-ordered nanotube arrays. The photocatalytic activities of the samples in AAO template were evaluated by the degradation of a model dye, methyl orange (MO). Compared with TiO2 nanotubes and ZrO2 nanotubes, the TiO2/ZrO2 composite nanotubes exhibited the better photocatalytic activity. Findings from this study suggested that TiO2 nanotube arrays with enhanced photocatalytic activity could be obtained, which opened a new pathway to construct nanostructured TiO2-based composite materials for photocatalytic applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The porous anodic alumina was fabricated by means of electrochemical oxidation using Al foil as a substrate in oxalic acid under constant anodic voltage at room temperature. Prior to anodization, the substrate surface with roughness in microscale was obtained through electrochemical treatment. The tube growth on the substrate was investigated using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The results showed that the tube growth behavior of the porous anodic alumina was strongly dependent on the surface roughness. In presence of sphere-shaped cavities in microscale (diameter of 5∼30 µm) on the surface of the substrate, the nanotubes were growing essentially away from the center of curvature of each cavity, forming individual growing regions separated by visible interface. The tube branching and tube cutoff were evidently observed in the growing regions and along the interface, respectively. Anisotropic growth of porous anodic alumina suggested its potential application in three-dimensional nanostructure construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heterostructured photocatalysts play a significant role in the removal of contaminants by decreasing the recombination of the photo-induced charges. Herein, we presented novel TiO2/C/BiVO4 ternary hybrids employing a 2D layered Ti3C2 MXene precursor, overcoming the lattice mismatching of TiO2/BiVO4 binary heterostructures simultaneously. Raman and XPS analyses proved the strong coupling effects of TiO2, carbon and BiVO4 components, and the heterostructures were identified from high-resolution transmission electron microscopy results. Moreover, the ternary TiO2/C/BiVO4 composites exhibit excellent photocatalytic performance of Rhodamine B degradation, which is about four times higher than pure BiVO4 and twice that of binary TiO2/BiVO4 heterostructures, reaching a reaction constant of 13.7 × 10−3 min−1 under visible-light irradiation (λ > 420 nm). In addition, for the possible mechanism for dye elimination it was proposed that RhB molecule be directly oxidized by photo-induced holes (h+) on the BiVO4 components and superoxide radical () generated from conduction band electrons of the heterostructures. This work will provide possibilities for developing visible-light responsive nanomaterials for efficient solar utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]