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Primary cilia play counterregulatory roles in cystogenesis—they inhibit cyst formation in the normal renal tubule but promote cyst growth when the function of polycystins is impaired. Key upstream cilia-specific signals and components involved in driving cystogenesis have remained elusive. Recent studies of the tubby family protein, Tubby-like protein 3 (TULP3), have provided new insights into the cilia-localized mechanisms that determine cyst growth. TULP3 is a key adapter of the intraflagellar transport complex A (IFT-A) in the trafficking of multiple proteins specifically into the ciliary membrane. Loss of TULP3 results in the selective exclusion of its cargoes from cilia without affecting their extraciliary pools and without disrupting cilia or IFT-A complex integrity. Epistasis analyses have indicated that TULP3 inhibits cystogenesis independently of the polycystins during kidney development but promotes cystogenesis in adults when polycystins are lacking. In this review, we discuss the current model of the cilia-dependent cyst activation (CDCA) mechanism in autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) and consider the possible roles of ciliary and extraciliary polycystins in regulating CDCA. We then describe the limitations of this model in not fully accounting for how cilia single knockouts cause significant cystic changes either in the presence or absence of polycystins. Based on available data from TULP3/IFT-A-mediated differential regulation of cystogenesis in kidneys with deletion of polycystins either during development or in adulthood, we hypothesize the existence of cilia-localized components of CDCA (cCDCA) and cilia-localized cyst inhibition (CLCI) signals. We develop the criteria for cCDCA/CLCI signals and discuss potential TULP3 cargoes as possible cilia-localized components that determine cystogenesis in kidneys during development and in adult mice.

Very few anti-Alzheimer’s disease (AD) drugs are clinically available at present due to the complex mechanism of Alzheimer’s disease. For the purpose of discovering potential anti-AD drugs in bisbenzylisoquinoline alkaloids, the anti-AD function and the mechanism of the function of berbamine hydrochloride (BBMH) were studied. Three kinds of AD model mice, double transgenic APP/PS1 AD mice, Gal-Alu AD mice induced by the intraperitoneal injection of d-galactose combined with the intragastric administration of aluminum trichloride, and Alu AD-like mice induced by stereotactic brain injection of aluminum trichloride, were administered with BBMH for 40 days at a dosage of 280 mg/kg/d. The effects of BBMH on the learning and memory behavior of the AD mice were studied through the Morris water maze experiment, and the influences of BBMH on the pathological features of AD, including the deposition of Aβ, the lesions of pyramidal cells (neurons), and the formation of neurofibrillary tangles, were studied by the immunohistochemical staining, hematoxylin-eosin staining, and silver staining of the brain tissues of the mice. The water maze experiment showed that BBMH could significantly improve the learning and memory abilities of three kinds of treated mice. Immunohistochemical staining showed that BBMH could significantly reduce the deposition of Aβ in the brain tissues of treated mice. Hematoxylin-eosin staining showed that BBMH could significantly alleviate the lesions of pyramidal cells in the hippocampal tissue of the mice. Silver staining showed that BBMH could significantly reduce the formation of neurofibrillary tangles in the hippocampal tissue of the mice. These results indicated that BBMH has significant anti-AD effects and the potential as an anti-AD drug. Western blot analysis of the brain tissue of the mice showed that the expression level of calpain, a Ca2+-dependent proteolytic enzyme, was significantly inhibited and the expression level of SelK, a selenoprotein mainly expressed in immune cells, was significantly increased. It is speculated that the anti-AD effect of BBMH is related to the improvement of the phagocytosis of microglial cells in brain tissues and macrophages migrated into the brain as well as the regulation of calcium homeostasis and calcium-dependent proteases in the brain tissues of the mice.

The core challenges to automatic full-horizon tracking are how to establish a potential local connection relationship between the horizon points, conduct accurate global diffusion in a three-dimensional space, and finally, how to form a complex horizon surface. The existing attribute-based horizon-tracking methods based on waveform similarity, dip guidance, and RGT (relative geological time) can not solve the problems of local connection and global diffusion at the same time. In view of this challenge, this paper proposes an automatic 3D seismic horizon-tracking method based on global corrugated diffusion, which can completely integrate local connection and global diffusion so that all horizons in the whole data volume can be interpreted simultaneously. For the problem of local horizon-point connection, this paper uses the correlation between seismic trace pairs based on DTW (dynamic time warping) correlation to mine the connection mode between horizon points. For the global diffusion problem, this paper proposes the realization of global modeling based on the relationship between seismic samples, constructing a complex 3D horizon through a central ripple-diffusion process. The example shows that the horizon tracked by this method well reflects the original stratum occurrence and stratum-contact relationship, retains the structural details, accurately reflects the structural shape, and realizes automatic tracking across faults.

The neuron loss caused by the progressive damage to the nervous system is proposed to be the main pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases. Ependyma is a layer of ciliated ependymal cells that participates in the formation of the brain-cerebrospinal fluid barrier (BCB). It functions to promotes the circulation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and the material exchange between CSF and brain interstitial fluid. Radiation-induced brain injury (RIBI) shows obvious impairments of the blood–brain barrier (BBB). In the neuroinflammatory processes after acute brain injury, a large amount of complement proteins and infiltrated immune cells are circulated in the CSF to resist brain damage and promote substance exchange through the BCB. However, as the protective barrier lining the brain ventricles, the ependyma is extremely vulnerable to cytotoxic and cytolytic immune responses. When the ependyma is damaged, the integrity of BCB is destroyed, and the CSF flow and material exchange is affected, leading to brain microenvironment imbalance, which plays a vital role in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases. Epidermal growth factor (EGF) and other neurotrophic factors promote the differentiation and maturation of ependymal cells to maintain the integrity of the ependyma and the activity of ependymal cilia, and may have therapeutic potential in restoring the homeostasis of the brain microenvironment after RIBI or during the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases.

Lithium batteries are being utilized more widely, increasing the focus on their thermal safety, which is primarily brought on by their thermal runaway. This paper’s focus is the energy storage power station’s 50 Ah lithium iron phosphate battery. An in situ eruption study was conducted in an inert environment, while a thermal runaway experiment was conducted utilizing sealed pressure containers and an external heating triggering mechanism. Both the amount of gas release and the battery’s maximum temperature were discovered. Using gas chromatography, the gas emission from the battery was examined. Its principal constituents included CO, H2, CO2, CH4, C2H4, and so on. Moreover, the experiment discovered a second eruption of lithium iron phosphate, and the stage of its eruption was separated by the pressure signal of the sealed experimental chamber, giving a theoretical foundation and technological backing for the thermal catastrophe safety of lithium batteries.

The thermal analysis kinetic method was employed to solve the activation energies of the thermal decomposition reactions of urea and cyanuric acid, with the purpose of understanding the formation of deposits in the diesel engine SCR system. The deposit reaction kinetic model was established by optimizing the reaction paths and reaction kinetic parameters based on the thermal analysis test data of the key components in the deposit. The result shows that the established deposit reaction kinetic model can accurately describe the decomposition process of the key components in the deposit. Compared to the Ebrahimian model, the simulation precision of the established deposit reaction kinetic model is significantly improved above 600 K. The activation energies of the urea and cyanuric acid decomposition reactions are 84 kJ/mol and 152 kJ/mol, respectively, after model parameters identification. The identified activation energies were closest to those of the Friedman one-interval method indicating that the Friedman one-interval method is reasonable to solve the activation energies of deposit reactions.

Cells are complex systems that make decisions biologists struggle to understand. Here, the authors use neural networks to approximate the solution of mathematical models that capture the history and randomness of biochemical processes in order to understand the principles of transcription control.

Pulmonary fibrosis is a group of life-threatening diseases with limited therapeutic options. The involvement of cannabinoid type 1 receptors (CB1R) has been indicated in fibrotic diseases, but whether or not the activation of CB1R can be a benefit for fibrosis treatment is controversial. In this study, we investigated the effects of arachidonoylcyclopropylamide (ACPA), as a selective CB1R agonist, on bleomycin (BLM)-induced pulmonary fibrosis. We showed that ACPA treatment significantly improved the survival rate of BLM-treated mice, alleviated BLM-induced pulmonary fibrosis, and inhibited the expressions of extracellular matrix (ECM) markers, such as collagen, fibronectin, and α-SMA. The enhanced expressions of ECM markers in transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β)-challenged primary lung fibroblasts isolated from mouse lung tissues were inhibited by ACPA treatment in a dose-dependent manner, and the fibroblast migration triggered by TGF-β was dose-dependently diminished after ACPA administration. Moreover, the increased mRNA levels of CB1R were observed in both lung fibroblasts of BLM-induced fibrotic mice in vivo and TGF-β-challenged primary lung fibroblasts in vitro. CB1R-specific agonist ACPA significantly diminished the activation of TGF-β–Smad2/3 signaling, i.e., the levels of p-Smad2 and p-Smad3, and decreased the expressions of downstream effector proteins including slug and snail, which regulate ECM production, in TGF-β-challenged primary lung fibroblasts. Collectively, these findings demonstrated that CB1R-specific agonist ACPA exhibited antifibrotic efficacy in both in vitro and in vivo models of pulmonary fibrosis, revealing a novel anti-fibrosis approach to fibroblast-selective inhibition of TGF-β-Smad2/3 signaling by targeting CB1R.

Land mobile satellite communication and physical layer security are considered as the promising paradigms in beyond 5G networks. In this paper, we establish the multi-relay hybrid satellite-terrestrial systems (HSTSs) with artificial noise (AN) to investigate the reliability and security, in which the satellite sends signals to the terrestrial destination through multiple decode-and-forward relays and there exists an eavesdropper trying to overhear the useful information. In order to improve the overall system performance, two relay selection (RS) schemes: i) optimal relay-receiver pair selection (ORRPS) and ii) suboptimal relay selection (SRS) are considered. ORRPS selects an optimal relay-receiver pair and an AN signal to maximize the corresponding signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios of ${R_{k}} \to D\left ({{R_{k} \to E} }\right)$ and the SRS refers to selecting a relay that optimize the instantaneous channel gain ${\left |{ {{h_{R_{k}D}}} }\right |^{2}}\left ({{{{\left |{ {{h_{R_{k}E}}} }\right |}^{2}}} }\right)$ among $K$ relays, with the traditional round-robin selection scheme as a benchmark for comparison. Furthermore, the exact closed-form analytical expressions of outage probability (OP) and intercept probability (IP) under different RS schemes are derived for AN and non-AN conditions. To obtain more insights, the asymptotic analysis for high signal-to-noise-ratio regime is carried out. Based on the asymptotic analysis of OP, the diversity orders of the HSTSs are obtained. The numerical results and theoretical analysis shown that: i) The reliability of TRRS scheme is the worst among the three RS schemes, and the reliability of ORRPS scheme is the best; ii) The AN technology can significantly improve the security of the system, although it has a little adverse affect on the reliability; iii) Infrequent light shadowing has the best reliability, frequent heavy shadowing has the worst outage performance, and the change of security is opposite; iv) The OP of SRS and ORRP schemes decreased with the increase of $K$ , while the IP changed on the contrary, and the reliability and security of TRRS scheme did not change obviously.

Urea line heating system is critical for Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) aftertreatment system under low temperature environment. Traditionally, the Electronic Control Unit (ECU) motivates urea lines heating command and diagnostics directly. This paper illustrates a Controller Area Network (CAN)-based line heater architecture development for the SCR aftertreatment system, as well as the diagnostics generation. The CAN-based line heater diagnostics is validated on vehicle experimental with four different given cases. It can be seen from the validation results that the diagnostics logic and algorithm are reasonable, and the line heater failure modes could be detected correctly including open circuit, short circuit and inducement. In addition, the failure modes are able to set or clear for each of the urea lines according to the diagnostics logic. ECU and ECU1 could communicate well between each other by CAN. This study introduces a new line heater architecture for SCR aftertreatment system which is meaningful for the whole vehicle assembly, which could be considered in the real application in future.

In the context of failure control of servo system driven by twin motors, there are still no available results to compensate unknown actuator failures which seem inevitable in practice by adaptive backstepping technique. Therefore, to rise the reliability of the system, we aim at addressing such a problem by proposing an adaptive robust actuator failure compensation control scheme based on backstepping technique for servo system driven by twin motors. Unlike the traditional backstepping, the estimation of unknown coefficient of intermediate state variable is introduced in coordinate changes. In addition, matching and non-matching uncertainties have been fully considered in the controller design. Simulation results show that the designed controller can ensure the boundedness of all the signals no matter actuator failures occur or not.

Tensor sparse coding (TSC) is a method used to excavate 3D volume structures extended by sparse coding (SC), which is increasingly applied in data noise attenuation. Existing TSC approaches control the intensity of noise attenuation by using a predetermined soft or hard threshold that relies on the noise variance. However, the noise variance in seismic data is unknown and varies with time and space, leading to the conventional TSC method not being able to track this change. To address this issue, we proposed a tensor sparse coding model with spatially adaptive coherent constraint (TSC-SAC) to find an optimal adjustable threshold without the demand for prior knowledge of the noise variance. The threshold is determined by the coherence of the residual with respect to the dictionary. Moreover, a tensor spatial coherence orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm (TSC-OMP) is developed for solving sparse representation. Unlike the existing threshold strategy in traditional TSC methods, TSC-OMP utilizes an ideal spatially adaptive coherence threshold to regulate the sparsity, which can effectively preserve the valuable information in processing for noise suppression. By comparing with four state-of-the-art denoising algorithms, we then demonstrated the superior performance of TSC-SAC on both a synthetic and two field data sets.

In the above article [1], we identified some mistakes which may cause confusion for readers but had no influence on the discussion and conclusion of the article.

Network alignment aims to identify the correspondence of nodes between two or more networks. It is the cornerstone of many network mining tasks, such as cross-platform recommendation and cross-network data aggregation. Recently, with the development of network representation learning techniques, researchers have proposed many embedding-based network alignment methods. The effect is better than traditional methods. However, several issues and challenges remain for network alignment tasks, such as lack of labeled data, mapping across network embedding spaces, and computational efficiency. Based on the graph neural network (GNN), we propose the URNA (unsupervised rapid network alignment) framework to achieve an effective balance between accuracy and efficiency. There are two phases: model training and network alignment. We exploit coarse networks to accelerate the training of GNN after first compressing the original networks into small networks. We also use parameter sharing to guarantee the consistency of embedding spaces and an unsupervised loss function to update the parameters. In the network alignment phase, we first use a once-pass forward propagation to learn node embeddings of original networks, and then we use multi-order embeddings from the outputs of all convolutional layers to calculate the similarity of nodes between the two networks via vector inner product for alignment. Experimental results on real-world datasets show that the proposed method can significantly reduce running time and memory requirements while guaranteeing alignment performance.

With the continuous increase in emphasis on the environmental protection industry, sewage treatment plants have been built in many places, and these sewage treatment plants undoubtedly occupy an important position in protecting the local environment. The sewage treatment process is generally complicated and the treatment environment is difficult, which means that the treatment plant must have an excellent control system. At this stage, the sewage treatment systems in many cities have the issue of possessing backward technology and huge costs, which hinder the development of urban sewage treatment. In this paper, a new intelligent control method for sewage treatment is proposed, combined with the multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) algorithm. The MOPSO algorithm is used to optimize the parameters and control rules of the controller globally, thereby improving the performance and work efficiency of the controller. Practice has shown that the intelligent control system combined with the MOPSO algorithm can make chemical oxygen demand (COD) in the sewage treatment quickly meet the expected requirements, and the control accuracy is also very accurate, which greatly improves the sewage treatment performance. Through our calculations, the new method improved the sewage treatment efficiency by 7.15%.

The fault branching phenomenon, which may heavily influence the patterns of rupture propagation in fault systems, is one of the geometric complexities of fault systems that is widely observed in nature. In this study, we investigate the effect of the branching angle on the rupture inclination and the interaction between branch planes in two-fork branching fault systems by numerical simulation and theoretical analysis based on Mohr’s circle. A friction law dependent on normal stress is used, and special attention is paid to studying how ruptures on the upper and lower branch planes affect the stress and rupture on each other separately. The results show that the two branch planes affect each other in different patterns and that the intensity of the effect changes with the branching angle. The rupture of the lower branch plane has a negative effect on the rupture of the upper branch plane in the case of a small branching angle but has almost no negative effect in the case of a large branching angle. The rupture of the upper branch plane, however, suppresses the rupture of the lower branch plane regardless of whether the branching angle is large or small.

Objective To investigate the effect of HK2 on the proliferation and migration of cervical cancer cell lines HeLa and related mechanism. Methods HeLa cells with stable HK2 expression were screened. Cell proliferation, viability and cell cycle were detected by cell growth curves, MTT assay and flow cytometry, respectively. Wound-healing assay and Transwell cell invasion assay were used to detect the effect of HK2 on the migration and invasion potential of HeLa cells. The expression of β-catenin, Cyclin D1, MMP7 and Slug were detected by Western blot and immunocytochemistry. The activity of Wnt/β-catenin signalling pathway was detected by TOP/FOP assay. Cell growth, migration and invasion were detected in HeLa-HK2 cells treated with Wnt/β-catenin inhibitor (XAV-939). Results HeLa cells lines that stably expressing HK2 were successfully constructed. HK2 overexpression promoted the proliferation, migration, invasion and viability of HeLa cells, accelerated the transition of cell cycle from G0/G1 phase to S phase, enhanced the activity of Wnt/β-catenin signalling pathway and up-regulated the protein expression of downstream factors, such as Cyclin D1, MMP7 and Slug. The promoted growth, migration and invasion of HeLa-HK2 cells were inhibited by Wnt/β-catenin inhibitor XAV-939. Conclusion HK2 could promote the proliferation, migration and invasion of HeLa cells by up-regulating the expression of Cyclin D1, MMP7 and Slug via Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway.

Background: The Chinese government has promoted the ‘tiered medical services’ policy in which diseases are classified by severity, mode of onset and difficulty of treatment since 2015 to optimize medical resources. We evaluated the diagnosis and treatment of acute exacerbation (AE) of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD) under the tiered system. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study. COPD characteristics and treatments were compared among hospitals in different tiers. Associations were examined by univariate and multivariable logistic regression analysis. In addition, multivariate logistic regression was performed to identify the possible influencing factors of antibiotics, glucocorticoids and anticoagulant usages. Results: Eligible COPD patients ( n = 432) were consecutively recruited from eight hospitals in different tiers in China. Patients in the countryside preferred the community hospitals, whereas patients in cities preferred second-tier and teaching hospitals when they suffer from AECOPD. It indicates most COPD patients are likely to treat their disease locally. The severity of COPD AE increased with tiers of hospitals ( p

Nanomaterials are gradually shining in the petroleum industry and have made great achievements in EOR, pipeline coating, fracturing, and other aspects. In practical application, they have the advantages of long validity period and more environmental friendliness. At the same time, due to the short effective period of conventional plugging removal measures such as acidizing and fracturing, which are not friendly to the environment, nanomaterials are gradually applied to reduce pressure and increase injection of injection wells, and good application results are obtained. In this study, a new biological nanomaterial with long-term injection enhancement characteristics was evaluated. To have a better understanding of the reservoir performance of water injection wells after pressure reduction and injection increase measures, it is necessary to establish the well test model after the step-down and injection increase measures of biological nanomaterials that are taken for water injection wells. In this paper, the influence of the injection amount of bionanomaterials on the permeability is studied, and the rule of the permeability around the injection well with the distance from the bottom of the well is analyzed. On this basis, the flow mathematical model of three zones (inner zone, transition zone, and outer zone) of bionanosolution is established. Then, using the basic principles of fluid mechanics and the Laplace transform principle, a mathematical model of the bottom hole pressure response of water injection wells in the third zone of the bionanosolution reservoir is obtained, and the influence of the key process parameters of the bionanosolution water injection on the bottom hole pressure is analyzed. The established well test interpretation model can be used to calculate the near wellbore permeability, reservoir skin factor, reservoir sweep radius, and reservoir resistance coefficient. Based on application examples, it was determined that the fitting results of the interpretation chart are in good agreement with the field test data, and the reservoir parameters obtained from the interpretation are reasonable and reliable. The findings of this study can help for better understanding of the dynamic change law of reservoir after injection of biological nanomaterials or similar plugging removal measures (the improvement effect varies with the distance from the bottom hole). To the best of our knowledge, it is the first paper on the application of biological nanomaterials in reducing pressure and increasing injection in injection wells.

BackgroundIt is unclear whether the dissection of pyloric lymph nodes (PLNs, No. 5 and No. 6 lymph nodes) is necessary for adenocarcinoma of the esophagogastric junction (AEG) with a tumor diameter >4 cm based on current guidelines. This study aimed at evaluating whether pyloric node lymphadenectomy is essential for patients with Siewert type II/III AEG according to different tumor diameters.MethodsThis study included 300 patients on whom transabdominal total gastrectomy was performed for Siewert type II/III AEG at a high-volume center in China from January 2006 to December 2015. The index of estimated benefit from lymph node dissection (IEBLD) was used to analyze the priority of pyloric lymphadenectomy.ResultsIn Siewert type II AEG, the 5-year overall survival (OS) and the 5-year disease-free survival (DFS) were similar between patients with PLN-positive cancer and patients of stage III AEG without PLN metastasis (23.1% vs. 30.6%, p = 0.505; 23.1% vs. 27.1%, p = 0.678). However, in Siewert type III AEG, the OS and the DFS of patients with PLN-positive cancer were significantly lower than that of patients with stage III without PLN metastasis (7.9% vs. 27.8%, p = 0.021; 0 vs. 26.8%, p = 0.005). According to the IEBLD, the dissection of PLNs did not appear to be beneficial in either Siewert type II AEG or type III AEG, whereas a stratified analysis revealed that PLN dissection yielded a high therapeutic benefit for Siewert type II AEG with tumor diameters >4 cm.ConclusionWe recommended that the PLNs be dissected in Siewert type II AEG when a tumor diameter is >4 cm. Total gastrectomy should be optional for Siewert type II AEG with a tumor diameter >4 cm and Siewert type III AEG.

Abstract Background Few studies have been designed to evaluate the short-term outcomes between robotic-assisted total gastrectomy (RATG) and laparoscopy-assisted total gastrectomy (LATG) for advanced gastric cancer (AGC). The purpose of this study was to assess the short-term outcomes of RATG compared with LATG for AGC. Methods We retrospectively evaluated 126 and 257 patients who underwent RATG or LATG, respectively. In addition, we performed propensity score matching (PSM) analysis between RATG and LATG for clinicopathological characteristics to reduce bias and compared short-term surgical outcomes. Results After PSM, the RATG group had a longer mean operation time (291.14 ± 59.18 vs. 270.34 ± 52.22 min, p = 0.003), less intraoperative bleeding (154.37 ± 89.68 vs. 183.77 ± 95.39 ml, p = 0.004) and more N2 tier RLNs (9.07 ± 5.34 vs. 7.56 ± 4.50, p = 0.016) than the LATG group. Additionally, the total RLNs of the RATG group were almost significantly different compared to that of the LATG group (34.90 ± 13.05 vs. 31.91 ± 12.46, p = 0.065). Moreover, no significant differences were found between the two groups in terms of the length of incision, proximal resection margin, distal resection margin, residual disease and postoperative hospital stay. There was no significant difference in the overall complication rate between the RATG and LATG groups after PSM (23.8% vs. 28.6%, p = 0.390). Grade II complications accounted for most of the complications in the two cohorts after PSM. The conversion rates were 4.55 and 8.54% in the RATG and LATG groups, respectively, with no significant difference (p = 0.145), and the ratio of splenectomy were 1.59 and 0.39% (p = 0.253). The mortality rates were 0.8 and 0.4% for the RATG and LATG groups, respectively (p = 1.000). Conclusion This study demonstrates that RATG is comparable to LATG in terms of short-term surgical outcomes.

The Three Gorges Reservoir region suffers from severe soil erosion that leads to serious soil degradation and eutrophication. Interrill erosion models are commonly used in developing soil erosion control measures. Laboratory simulation experiments were conducted to investigate the relationship between interrill erosion rate and three commonly hydraulic parameters (flow velocity V, shear stress τ and stream power W). The slope gradients ranged from 17.6% to 36.4%, and the rainfall intensities varied from 0.6 to 2.54 mm·min−1.

Pneumatic muscle as a relatively new pneumatic component is often applied to some precise and flexible control systems. The precise control accuracy puts forward higher requirements for the controller design of the pneumatic muscle system. To guarantee good performance, unknown input saturation which seems inevitable must be fully considered in the controller design. In this paper, such a control problem is investigated for a pneumatic muscle joint system with input saturation and external disturbance. The auxiliary signals are introduced to compensate for the effect caused by unknown saturation. Furthermore, a filter is constructed to estimate unmeasured system states. Then an output feedback control scheme has been proposed by these auxiliary signals and states filter. Finally, simulation studies are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.

In this paper, an adaptive control scheme is proposed based on backstepping approach for a class of second-order nonlinear systems with non-triangular uncertainties. The triangular form of the control system is destroyed by such uncertainties and the traditional backstepping can not be directly used in the controller design. Compared with the existing results, nonlinear terms and unknown parameters appear in every channel. Thus the linear type of relation between the state vector x and z is difficult to maintain. To overcome such difficulty, a new backatepping-based adaptive control scheme is proposed. A significance of our new scheme is to introduce the feedback gain term lizixi2 in virtual control signals. Under the proposed control scheme, not only the non-triangular uncertainties can be restrained effectively but also the estimation of parameter has been realized successfully. Finally simulation studies are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Pneumatic muscle is a relatively new pneumatic component in some precise and flexible control systems and such systems are needed to achieve a higher controlling performance. However, the existence of practical uncertainties will make it hard to achieve a higher control accuracy and better performance. In this paper, the adaptive control problem for the pneumatic muscle joint system with input saturation, external disturbance and modeling errors is investigated. The auxiliary signals r1, r2 and function ψsgn as an approximation of sign(·) function is introduced to deal with the unknown saturation and uncertainties caused by modeling errors. Then an adaptive control scheme is proposed by using these auxiliary signals and functions. Finally, simulation studies are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.

Validation of power system simulation models is essentially a similarity analysis problem based on multivariate time series. With the development of the internet of things (IoT) technology in the power system, the interoperability and integration of devices in the practical project are improved, and the cross interaction in the simulation process becomes more complex correspondingly. It is critical to explore the inherent correlation from the high dimensional data to evaluate the credibility and to locate the error of the simulation model. Thus, a model validation method based on factor analysis and the Prony method is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the multivariate time series of the simulation model and the practical/acknowledged system are replaced by a low number of common factors with physical meanings by factor analysis. Secondly, the modified adaptive Prony method is applied to extract the features of each common factor to ensure the best fitting of the non-stationary signal. Then the complete similarity evaluation model of the simulation system is established based on energy proportion, information entropy, and variance of the contribution rate. Finally, the error location is identified in the evaluation process based on the physical meaning of extracted features. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method are verified by an application in the simulation model of a power electronics system developed in PSASP.

In this paper, an adaptive backstepping control scheme is proposed for a class of nonlinear systems with unknown time delay. The unknown time delay in the system depends on all system states, which will inevitably destroy the triangular structure of the control system. Therefore, traditional backstepping can not be used to design the controller. In order to overcome the problem caused by “non-triangular structure”, we construct a linear projection between the state vector and its transform in controller design. Using inequality and adaptive backstepping control, we compensate the uncertainties caused by unknown time delays. Finally, the simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is effective.

Current research focus on the perovskites solar cells (PSCs) is mainly limited to the lead-based ones with bandgaps above 1.5 eV. Here Hu et al. report efficient and stable inorganic tin-containing PSCs, opening doors to exploring abundant perovskite materials with bandgaps lower than 1.4 eV.

Smart manufacturing is critical in improving the quality of the process industry. In smart manufacturing, there is a trend to incorporate different kinds of new-generation information technologies into process-safety analysis. At present, green manufacturing is facing major obstacles related to safety management, due to the usage of large amounts of hazardous chemicals, resulting in spatial inhomogeneity of chemical industrial processes and increasingly stringent safety and environmental regulations. Emerging information technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) are quite promising as a means of overcoming these difficulties. Based on state-of-the-art AI methods and the complex safety relations in the process industry, we identify and discuss several technical challenges associated with process safety: ① knowledge acquisition with scarce labels for process safety; ② knowledge-based reasoning for process safety; ③ accurate fusion of heterogeneous data from various sources; and ④ effective learning for dynamic risk assessment and aided decision-making. Current and future works are also discussed in this context. Keywords: Process industry, Smart manufacturing, Green manufacturing, Artificial intelligence

Abstract Background Gastric cancer is a common malignant tumor with high morbidity and mortality worldwide, which seriously affects human health. Gramicidin is a short peptide antibiotic which could be used for treating infection induced by bacteria or fungi. However, the anti-cancer effect of gramicidin on gastric cancer cells and its underlying mechanism remains largely unknown. Results Gastric cancer cells SGC-7901, BGC-823 and normal gastric mucosal cells GES-1 were treated with different concentrations of gramicidin respectively. The results of CCK-8 experiment revealed cellular toxicity of gramicidin to cancer cells while cell colony formation assay showed that gramicidin significantly inhibited the proliferation of gastric cancer cells, but had little effect on normal gastric mucosal cells. In addition, the wound healing assay showed that gramicidin inhibited the migration of SGC-7901 cell. Meanwhile, apoptosis and cell cycle analysis revealed that gramicidin induced cell apoptosis with G2/M cell cycle inhibition. Furthermore, western blot analysis demonstrated that gramicidin down-regulated the expression of cyclinD1 and Bcl-2 as well as the FoxO1 phosphorylation. Conclusions The current study illustrated the anti-tumor activity of gramicidin on gastric cancer cells, providing a possibility for gramicidin to be applied in clinical practice for the treatment of gastric cancer.

Abstract Seedling emergence and establishment are fragile processes that determine the direction and structure of forest succession and regeneration. However, seedling emergence and establishment are easily affected by biotic and abiotic (environmental) factors. A dense and expanding understory of dwarf bamboo is one such important factor that can seriously hinder the seedling regeneration. We conducted a field experiment to investigate the emergence and establishment of canopy tree seedlings under artificially controlled densities of dwarf bamboo. We found that understory dwarf bamboo obstructed seedling emergence but reduced the death of seedlings. Although understory dwarf bamboo reduced the median retention time of seedlings, dense bamboo increased the mean survival time of seedlings. Our results suggest that understory dwarf bamboo has multiple selectivities for tree seedling emergence and establishment: high‐density dwarf bamboo was beneficial to evergreen species but lower‐density of bamboo was conducive to the survival of deciduous species, it means the dwarf bamboo potentially alters successional trajectories of forest communities. Path analysis revealed that the most important factors affecting tree seedling emergence and death were the abundance of seeds in the seed bank and the density of emerged seedlings, and that the soil temperature promoted seedling emergence but increased seedling death, the thickness of litter limited seedling emergence, and the leaf area index of the bamboo canopy limited seedling death. The present study suggests that dwarf bamboo can directly alter the microenvironment, significantly reducing light levels and soil temperature but increasing the thickness of litter and soil humus, thereby indirectly impacting the regeneration of tree seedlings. Our results indicate that various factors affected seedling emergence, and there were complex indirect relationships among these factors. In general, biological factors had a stronger influence on tree seedling regeneration than environmental factors.

This paper investigates the damping performance of the main structure with a concentrated mass and particle dampers at different particle filling rates and sinusoidal sweep amplitudes under the same mass ratio by means of a controlled experiment, with the concentrated mass and particle dampers attached to the free end of the cantilever beam. As the order increases, the effect becomes progressively weaker. For cantilevered beam structures, a reasonable design with only a small mass ratio of particle dampers can effectively suppress the vibration of the first order. For the second- and third-order bending vibration, particle dampers with high mass ratios show a better damping effect, and when the strength of the excitation reaches a certain value, the damping performance of the particle dampers is basically better than that of the concentrated mass under the same conditions. The reason for this is that particle damping not only dampens the vibration by tuning the mass but also dissipates the energy of the main structure by means of collisions, impacts, and friction between the particles or between the particles and the damper cavity.

BackgroundLaparoscopic gastrectomy (LG) has been increasingly used for the treatment of locally advanced Siewert type II and III adenocarcinoma of the esophagogastric junction (AEG). However, whether LG can achieve the same short-term efficacy in the treatment of patients who receive neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) remains controversial. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the clinical outcomes of NACT combined with LG for Siewert type II and III AEG.MethodsThis retrospective study identified patients with locally advanced Siewert type II and III AEG diagnosed between May 2011 and October 2020 using the clinical tumor-node-metastasis (cTNM) staging system. The short-term outcomes were compared between the matched groups using a 1:3 propensity score matching (PSM) method, which was performed to reduce bias in patient selection.ResultsAfter PSM, 164 patients were selected, including 41 in the NACT group and 123 in the LG group. The baseline characteristics were similar between the two groups. Compared with the LG group, the NACT group exhibit a smaller tumor size and significantly less advanced pathological tumor classification and nodal classification stages. The time to first flatus of the NACT group was significantly shorter, but the hospital stay was significantly longer than that of the LG group. The NACT group showed similar overall (29.3% vs 25.2%, P=0.683), systemic (24.4% vs 21.1%, P=0.663), local (12.2% vs 9.8%, P=0.767), minor (19.5% vs 19.5%, P=1.000) and major (9.8% vs 5.7%, P=0.470) complications as the LG group. Subgroup analyses showed no significant differences in most stratified parameters. Operation time≥ 300 minutes was identified as an independent risk factor for overall complications. Age≥ 60 years was identified as an independent risk factor for major complications.ConclusionNACT combined with LG for AEG does not increase the risk of postoperative morbidity and mortality compared with LG.

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are widely used in electric vehicles (EV) and energy storage stations (ESS). However, combustion and explosion accidents during the thermal runaway (TR) process limit its further applications. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the uncontrolled TR exothermic reaction for safe battery system design. In this study, different LIBs are tested by lateral heating in a closed experimental chamber filled with nitrogen. Moreover, the relevant thermal characteristic parameters, gas composition, and deflagration limit during the battery TR process are calculated and compared. Results indicate that the TR behavior of NCM batteries is more severe than that of LFP batteries, and the TR reactions becomes more severe with the increase of energy density. Under the inert atmosphere of nitrogen, the primarily generated gases are H2, CO, CO2, and hydrocarbons. The TR gas deflagration limits and characteristic parameter calculations of different cathode materials are refined and summarized, guiding safe battery design and battery selection for power systems.

Objective: Celastrol is a compound extracted from a medicinal plant Tripterygium wilfordii which has a broad-spectrum anti-inflammatory effect in traditional medicine. However, the effect of celastrol on acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is still unknown. Methods: We reported that celastrol alleviated LPS-induced acute lung injury by H&E staining, MPO activity and the expression of cytokines in broncho-alveolar lavage fluid. The effect of celastrol on bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMDMs) after LPS treatment was measured by ELISA and Western blotting. Results: In vivo, celastrol reduced the LPS-induced lung edema and MPO activity of lung tissue. Furthermore, the production of inflammatory cytokines IL-6, TNF-α, and KC in bronchoalveolar lavage was reduced. In vitro, upon treatment of LPS, celastrol dose-dependently inhibited the expression of iNOS in BMDMs. Meanwhile, the expression of IL-6, TNF-α, and KC in BMDMs were also inhibited by celastrol treatment. Furthermore, we found that celastrol attenuated the phosphorylation of p38 MAPK and MK2, and inhibited the interaction between p38 MAPK and MK2. Conclusion: Our data indicate that celastrol has an anti-inflammatory effect on LPS-induced inflammatory response in vivo and in vitro, suggesting celastrol is a promising compound for the treatment of ALI and ARDS.

Schistosoma japonicum infection showed protective effects against allergic airway inflammation (AAI). However, controversial findings exist especially regarding the timing of the helminth infection and the underlying mechanisms. Most previous studies focused on understanding the preventive effect of S. japonicum infection on asthma (infection before allergen sensitization), whereas the protective effects of S. japonicum infection (allergen sensitization before infection) on asthma were rarely investigated. In this study, we investigated the protective effects of S. japonicum infection on AAI using a mouse model of OVA-induced asthma. To explore how the timing of S. japonicum infection influences its protective effect, the mice were percutaneously infected with cercaria of S. japonicum at either 1 day (infection at lung-stage during AAI) or 14 days before ovalbumin (OVA) challenge (infection at post–lung-stage during AAI). We found that lung-stage S. japonicum infection significantly ameliorated OVA-induced AAI, whereas post–lung-stage infection did not. Mechanistically, lung-stage S. japonicum infection significantly upregulated the frequency of regulatory T cells (Treg cells), especially OVA-specific Treg cells, in lung tissue, which negatively correlated with the level of OVA-specific immunoglobulin E (IgE). Depletion of Treg cells in vivo partially counteracted the protective effect of lung-stage S. japonicum infection on asthma. Furthermore, transcriptomic analysis of lung tissue showed that lung-stage S. japonicum infection during AAI shaped the microenvironment to favor Treg induction. In conclusion, our data showed that lung-stage S. japonicum infection could relieve OVA-induced asthma in a mouse model. The protective effect was mediated by the upregulated OVA-specific Treg cells, which suppressed IgE production. Our results may facilitate the discovery of a novel therapy for AAI.

The immunoregulatory enzyme, indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO1) and the PD-1/PD-L1 axis are potent mechanisms that impede effective anti-tumor immunity in ovarian cancer. However, whether the IDO pathway regulates PD-1 expression in T cells is currently unknown. Here we show that tumoral IDO1 expression led to profound changes in tryptophan, nicotinate/nicotinamide, and purine metabolic pathways in the ovarian tumor microenvironment, and to an increased frequency of PD-1+CD8+ tumor infiltrating T cells. We determined that activation of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) by kynurenine induced PD-1 expression, and this effect was significantly abrogated by the AHR antagonist CH223191. Mechanistically, kynurenine alters chromatin accessibility in regulatory regions of T cell inhibitory receptors, allowing AHR to bind to consensus XRE motifs in the promoter region of PD-1. These results enable the design of strategies to target the IDO1 and AHR pathways for enhancing anti-tumor immunity in ovarian cancer.

Abstract Background The aberrant expression of myotubularin-related protein 2 (MTMR2) has been found in some cancers, but little is known about the roles and clinical relevance. The present study aimed to investigate the roles and clinical relevance of MTMR2 as well as the underlying mechanisms in gastric cancer (GC). Methods MTMR2 expression was examined in 295 GC samples by using immunohistochemistry (IHC). The correlation between MTMR2 expression and clinicopathological features and outcomes of the patients was analyzed. The roles of MTMR2 in regulating the invasive and metastatic capabilities of GC cells were observed using gain-and loss-of-function assays both in vitro and in vivo. The pathways involved in MTMR2-regulating invasion and metastasis were selected and identified by using mRNA expression profiling. Functions and underlying mechanisms of MTMR2-mediated invasion and metastasis were further investigated in a series of in vitro studies. Results MTMR2 was highly expressed in human GC tissues compared to adjacent normal tissues and its expression levels were significantly correlated with depth of invasion, lymph node metastasis, and TNM stage. Patients with MTMR2high had significantly shorter lifespan than those with MTMR2low. Cox regression analysis showed that MTMR2 was an independent prognostic indicator for GC patients. Knockdown of MTMR2 significantly reduced migratory and invasive capabilities in vitro and metastases in vivo in GC cells, while overexpressing MTMR2 achieved the opposite results. MTMR2 knockdown and overexpression markedly inhibited and promoted the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), respectively. MTMR2 mediated EMT through the IFNγ/STAT1/IRF1 pathway to promote GC invasion and metastasis. Phosphorylation of STAT1 and IRF1 was increased by MTMR2 knockdown and decreased by MTMR2 overexpression accompanying with ZEB1 down-regulation and up-regulation, respectively. Silencing IRF1 upregulated ZEB1, which induced EMT and consequently enhanced invasion and metastasis in GC cells. Conclusions Our findings suggest that MTMR2 is an important promoter in GC invasion and metastasis by inactivating IFNγ/STAT1 signaling and may act as a new prognostic indicator and a potential therapeutic target for GC.

Adaptive backstepping control is an effective method for servo system driven by twin motors with unknown actuator failures, however, problems such as explosion of complexity make it can not be used in the actual control systems. In this paper, an algorithm of adaptive dynamic surface control is proposed for servo system driven by twin motors with unknown actuator failures, which can eliminate the expansion of the differential term and simplify calculations in the controller design. In addition, all parameters and disturbances in the system model are unknown, which require to be identified online. The simulation results also provided in order to show the effectiveness of the algorithm.

A dual-polarized continuous transverse stub (CTS) K-band antenna with reconfigurable four beams and low profile is proposed based on substrate-integrated-waveguide (SIW) design. It consists of a line source generator (LSG) on the bottom surface, a spherical-wave to plane-wave transforming part on the middle layer, and CTS radiators on the top surface. Particularly, the LSG has four SIW-based H-plane horns, and a chip is integrated to switch among the two pairs of horns, so as to transfer the quasi-TEM waves on the bottom surface by a ±10° deflection angle to the middle layer for the CTS radiators on the top surface, resulting in four reconfigurable scanning beams with 10° for two polarizations. The measurements show that it realizes four reconfigurable beams with a 25.8 dBi gain at 24 GHz, verifying the design. The proposed antenna takes into account the advantages of reconfigurable multi-beam, dual polarization, low side lobes, low profile, and high gain, which can be applied to K-band sensing, especially for wind profile radars.

Colorectal cancer is a serious threat to human health. Colonoscopy is the most effective procedure for the inspection of colorectal cancer. However, traditional colonoscopy may cause pain, which can lead to the patient’s fear of colonoscopy. The use of active-motion colonoscopy robots is expected to replace traditional colonoscopy procedures for colorectal cancer screening, without causing pain to patients. This paper proposes an inchworm-like soft colonoscopy robot based on a rubber spring. The motion mechanism of the robot consists of two anchoring units and an elongation unit. The elongation unit of the robot is driven by 3 cables during contraction and by its inherent elasticity during extension. The balloon is selected as the anchoring mechanism of the robot. It has soft contact with the colon and will not damage the colon wall, which means no discomfort is caused. The elastic force test of the rubber spring shows that the elongation unit of the robot has sufficient restorative force to drive the robot to move forward and backward. The influence of the balloon’s expansion size on the dexterity of the robot head is analyzed, and the functions of the balloons are expounded. The balloon can not only assist the robot in its locomotion but also assist the robot to perform a better inspection. The robot can move successfully in a horizontal, straight, and inclined isolated pig colon, showing great clinical application potential.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the deadliest diseases worldwide. Master-slave robotic systems have been widely used in vascular interventional surgery with the benefit of high safety, efficient operation, and procedural facilitation. This paper introduces a remote-controlled vascular interventional robot (RVIR) that aims to enable surgeons to perform complex vascular interventions reliably and accurately under a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) environment. The slave robot includes a guidewire manipulator (GM) and catheter manipulator (CM) that are mainly composed of a hollow driving mechanism and a linear motion platform. The hollow driving mechanism is based on a traveling wave-type hollow ultrasonic motor (HUM) which has high positional precision, fast response, and magnetic interference resistance and realizes the cooperation of the guidewire and catheter by omitting the redundant transmission mechanism and maintaining good coaxiality. The HUM stator, the core part of the RVIR, is optimized by an adaptive genetic algorithm for better quality and greater amplitude of traveling waves, which are beneficial to the drive efficiency and precision. The robot system features great cooperating performance, small hysteresis, and high kinematic accuracy and has been experimentally verified for its capability to precisely manipulate the guidewire and catheter.