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• A SPMM with eight stable equilibrium states is proposed. • The kinetostatic model and the multi-stability topologies of SPMM are developed. • The stabilities and switching paths are verified by experiments. A multi-stable flexible mechanism is a mechanical device that can switch to different stable equilibrium states under external power. Most existing multi-stable mechanisms are achieved by splicing bi-stable mechanisms. This paper proposes a novel Spatial Parallel Multi-stable Mechanism (SPMM) without bi-stable mechanisms connected, which even could achieve eight stable equilibrium states and meanwhile contain bi-stable mechanisms' advantages such like simple structure and reliable abilities. To identify the equilibrium states, the paper develops a kinetostatic model using the Energy-Kinematics Differential Equations (EKDE) for the proposed SPMM. Based on the equilibrium states, the multi-stability topologies are drawn referring to direct groups, including the distribution of various equilibrium states and the switching paths between every two stable states. At last, the paper shows the experimental results of a 3D printed prototype and verify the eight-stability behaviors and the switching paths through unstable equilibrium states. A concept of the application in deformable cable protection shell using the SPMM is introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic retinal image registration is still a great challenge in computer aided diagnosis and screening system. In this paper, a new retinal image registration method is proposed based on the combination of blood vessel segmentation and scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) feature. The algorithm includes two stages: retinal image segmentation and registration. In the segmentation stage, the blood vessel is segmented by using the guided filter to enhance the vessel structure and the bottom-hat transformation to extract blood vessel. In the registration stage, the SIFT algorithm is adopted to detect the feature of vessel segmentation image, complemented by using a random sample consensus (RANSAC) algorithm to eliminate incorrect matches. We evaluate our method from both segmentation and registration aspects. For segmentation evaluation, we test our method on DRIVE database, which provides manually labeled images from two specialists. The experimental results show that our method achieves 0.9562 in accuracy (Acc), which presents competitive performance compare to other existing segmentation methods. For registration evaluation, we test our method on STARE database, and the experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method, which makes the algorithm a suitable tool for automated retinal image analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new negative-index metamaterial (NIM) structure is proposed by designing the metallic holes of traditional double-fishnet (DF) structures from uniform sizes to several different sizes. Numerical results demonstrate that the new metamaterial, as an improved variant of the DF structure, achieved a multi-band negative refractive index across a wide range of visible frequencies from 470 THz to 540 THz, which covers the red, orange, yellow, and green regions of the visible spectra. Meanwhile, a low-profile nanostrctured absorber was obtained when one side of the perforated metal layer of this multi-band NIM was substituted with a continuous metal film with the same thickness. The absorber showed the high absorption of more than 95% at multiple frequencies of 511, 520, 523, 525, and 527 THz. The behavior of multi-frequency response effectively broadened the working bandwidth. Finally, the physical mechanism of the multi-band operating characteristics of NIM and absorber was analyzed with the distributions of current intensity at different resonant frequencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A design method of parallel flexible mechanisms is proposed. • Principles of stiffness superposition and joint type determination are deduced. • A design example of the RCC and the final structure are presented. Parallel flexible mechanisms with joints can better avoid stress concentration and achieve large motion range compared with integrated-structure ones. However, because of the lack of a mathematical model that can describe the stiffness contribution from the joints to the whole mechanism, the mechanism design is difficult and needs to be addressed. This paper proposes a synchronous design method involving stiffness and topology for parallel flexible mechanisms. To introduce and explain this method, this paper deduces two fundamental principles, namely, "Linear Stiffness Superposition Principle (LSSP)" and "Joint Type Determination Principle (JTDP)", and their deduction processes serve as the cores of the design method. To verify the method's effectiveness, a design process of a Remote Central Compliance (RCC) is presented as an example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nonlinear sliding-mode (SLM) controller based on the maximum jerk and time-optimal step response has been developed for the control of servo-solenoid valves, which exhibits its performance advantages when compared to traditional PID controller. However, the experiments shows the responses of the SLM control under only jerk constraint will largely vary with different damping and loads, leading to the large overshoot and breakdown under some working conditions (e.g., large viscous damping coefficient). Thus, an improved SLM controller is developed in this paper to deal with the existing drawbacks, where a novel nonlinear SLM surface is proposed by taking into account both spool’s acceleration and jerk limitation. Firstly, the nominal model of servo-solenoid valve is built by linearizing the dynamics on the null position, and the system identification is carried out to achieve the model parameters and their variation ranges. Subsequently, the valve constraints under the power limitation are analyzed through the frequency response of the identified model, which comes out the maximum available velocity, acceleration and jerk. Finally, the improved SLM control algorithm is proposed, where the novel SLM surface considers the maximum plus jerk, the maximum minus jerk and the maximum acceleration. Experimental studies are conducted and the results show that the improved SLM controller under both acceleration and jerk constraints can achieve the continuous and stable sliding mode state, realize the time-optimal step response of the valve, and exhibit strong disturbance rejection abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The effects of intravascular ultrasound (IVUS)-guided drug-eluting stent (DES) implantation in patients with complex coronary artery lesions remains to be controversial. This study sought to evaluate the outcomes of IVUS guidance in these patients. Methods: The EMBASE, Medline, and other internet sources were searched for relevant articles. The primary endpoint was major adverse cardiac events (MACE), including all-cause mortality, myocardial infarction (MI), and target-vessel revascularization (TVR). The incidence of definite/probable stent thrombosis (ST) was analyzed as the safety endpoint. Results: Fifteen clinical trials involving 8.084 patients were analyzed. MACE risk was significantly decreased following IVUS-guided DES implantation compared with coronary angiography (CAG) guidance (odds ratio [OR] 0.63, 95% confidence intervals [CI]: 0.53-0.73, p<0.001), which might mainly result from the lower all-cause mortality risk (OR 0.52, 95% CI: 0.40-0.67, p<0.001), MI (OR 0.70, 95% CI: 0.56-0.86, p=0.001), and TVR (OR 0.53, 95% CI: 0.40-0.70, p<0.001). The subgroup analyses indicated better outcomes of IVUS guidance in DES implantation for these patients with left main disease or bifurcation lesions. Conclusion: IVUS guidance in DES implantation is associated with a significant reduction in MACE risk in patients with complex lesions, particularly those with left main disease or bifurcation lesions. More large and powerful randomized trials are still warranted to guide stenting decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heterogeneous findings across studies of structural abnormality in schizophrenia (SZ) have impeded the development a unified theory of white matter pathology. As a cardinal symptom of SZ, auditory verbal hallucination (AVH) has been suspected to be associated with improper communication among several brain regions, which might indicated white matter pathology. Participants comprised 25 first-episode (FE) patients with AVH, 25 patients without AVH and 25 healthy subjects. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) measures were calculated using the TBSS of FSL. Voxel-based ANOVA tests were performed among the three groups and threshold-free cluster enhancement (TFCE) method correction was used for multiple comparisons. Voxel-based one-way ANOVA showed significant group effects for fractional anisotropy (FA) and radial diffusivity (RD) values. Post-hoc t -tests indicated that schizophrenia patients had lower FA and higher RD values in the internal capsule and anterior corona radiata than control subjects. Post-hoc analyses exhibited more widespread fiber disruptions in AVH patients than non-AVH patients. These results hinted on the important role of projection fiber disruption in schizophrenia patients. In addition, the current study also suggested that direct comparison between studies using patients with different symptom profiles should be interpreted with caution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper proposes a structure of a planar three-limb flexible mechanism. • The determination of equilibrium and stability by contour maps is introduced. • The variation of the multi-stability topology of the mechanism is analyzed. In general, the classical multi-stable mechanisms are made of single-loop bi-stable mechanism elements, but this paper proposes a novel structure of a planar three-limb flexible mechanism whose multi-stability is dependent on the structure parameters. The structure of this flexible mechanism is ingeniously designed to have a large selection range of the original limb length, resulting in the variation of the multi-stability distribution and the possible switching paths. To analyze the variation of this flexible mechanism, the paper introduces a method avoiding computational singularity to determine the stability by contour map and a method to draw the multi-stability topology to seek for the possible switching paths. Using these methods, the paper presents the variation of the multi-stability topology of an axisymmetric and two mirror-symmetric planar three-limb flexible mechanisms as the original length of the limbs increases. The results shows the mulita-stability of this flexible mechanism can be determined by the original length of the limbs and limb arrangement. The whole statements provide a theoretical basis for designing and applying such type of flexible multi-stable mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The effects of intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP) usage in patients with acute myocardial infarction remain controversial. This study sought to evaluate the outcomes of IABP usage in these patients. Methods: Medline, EMBASE, and other internet sources were searched for relevant clinical trials. The primary efficacy endpoints (in-hospital, midterm, and long-term mortality) and secondary endpoints (reinfarction, recurrent ischemia, and new heart failure in the hospital) as well as safety endpoints (severe bleeding requiring blood transfusion and stroke in-hospital) were subsequently analyzed. Results: Thirty-three clinical trials involving 18,889 patients were identified. The risk of longterm mortality in patients suffering from acute myocardial infarction was significantly decreased following IABP use (odds ratio [OR] 0.66, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.48-0.91, P=0.010). Both in-hospital and midterm mortality did not differ significantly between the IABP use group and no IABP use group (in-hospital: OR 0.87, 95% CI: 0.59-1.28, P=0.479; midterm: OR 1.12, 95% CI: 0.53-2.38, P=0.768). IABP insertion was not associated with the risk reduction of reinfarction, recurrent ischemia, or new heart failure. However, IABP use increased the risk of severe bleeding requiring blood transfusion (OR 2.05, 95% CI: 1.29-3.25, P=0.002) and stroke (OR 1.71, 95% CI: 1.04-2.82, P=0.035). In the thrombolytic therapy and cardiogenic shock subgroups, reduced mortality rates following IABP use were observed. Conclusion: IABP insertion is associated with feasible benefits with respect to long-term survival rates in patients suffering from acute myocardial infarction, particularly those suffering from cardiogenic shock and receiving thrombolytic therapy, but at the cost of higher incidence of severe bleeding and stroke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hurst exponent is an important measure of nonlinearity of dynamical time series. In this paper, using rescaled-range (/) analysis, multi-fractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA) methods, the multiscale Hurst exponent (MHE) and the multiscale generalized Hurst exponent (MGHE) of coarse-grained silicon content ([Si]) time series in blast furnace (BF) hot metal were calculated. First, we collected these [Si] time series from No. 1 BF of Nanchang Iron and Steel Co. and No. 10 BF of Xinyu Iron and Steel Co. in Jiangxi Province, China. Then, we analyzed and compared the estimated Hurst exponents and the generalized Hurst exponent of these observed time series with some simulated time series. Our results show that the observed time series from these BFs have negative correlation with the Hurst exponent less than 0.5, the generalized Hurst exponent is a nonlinear function of , and such negative correlation and local various structure persist in their moving averages of the observed time series up to lag 5 or 10. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current transmission efficiency in a conical transition magnetically insulated transmission line (MITL) has been studied experimentally on a 1.0-MV linear transformer driver system, which has 10 identical cavities connected in series with MITL. Transmission efficiencies of anode current as high as 98.4% and 93.1% could be achieved when the MITL operates at load-limited and self-limited flows, respectively. As for the cathode current, because of the sufficient length of conical transition MITL, cathode current is also able to sustain high transmission efficiency. But as long as the diode gap is too large, many of the electrons will be launched into the anode–cathode gap and the cathode current near the diode drastically decreases. Particle-in-cell simulations were conducted to validate the conclusions. The simulation results agree with experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Summary: Trachactinolaimus nanjingensis n. sp. isolated from mosses at the Yangshan Quarry Park in Nanjing, P.R. China, is described. It is characterised by 3.01 (2.64-3.42) mm long female and 2.84 (2.50-3.22) mm long male, four onchia with numerous mural denticles (>100), vulva with a transverse slit, 15-19 contiguous ventromedian supplements, spicules length of 61.5 (54.6-64.3) μ m, and female and male both having long tail, with c′ values equal to 5.0-9.2 and 2.3-3.5, respectively. The new species was morphologically compared with T. brevicaudatus , T. dominicus , T. montanus and T. radulatus. The sequences of 18S and 28S rRNA genes of the new species were obtained using regular PCR amplification, while the ITS and mt COI sequences were extracted from the whole genome sequencing assembly. The phylogenetic relationships of the new species were reconstructed using 18S and 28S sequences and the status of the new species was discussed. The 18S and 28S sequences of a population of genus Westindicus recovered during the present study were also obtained. This is the first time to present the ITS and mt COI sequences of family Actinolaimidae. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The prediction bias is mainly caused by data imbalance. • Curriculum coefficients are useful for mining hard samples and improving model generalization. • Teacher-student network ensures unbiased glaucoma diagnoses and evidence map predictions. • The evidence map output by the student network can provide more detailed information. Glaucoma is a disease that causes irreversible damage to the optic nerve. Research on accurate automatic screening algorithms is essential for the prevention and treatment of glaucoma. However, due to the imbalance of existing datasets and the existence of some hard samples that accompany other diverse and complex fundus diseases, the performance of current glaucoma screening algorithms is limited. In addition, the lack of interpretability also makes it difficult for the current algorithms to meet the requirements of clinical applications. In this paper, we propose a new multitask curriculum learning framework (MTCLF) for unbiased glaucoma screenings and visualizations of model decision-making areas. MTCLF is a teacher-student framework. The teacher network is used to generate the label evidence map. The student network can diagnose glaucoma and predict the evidence map at the same time with the well-designed dual-branch CNN structure and collaborative learning module. We design two curriculum coefficients θ and σ to guide the training process of the student network in the sample space so that the student network can adaptively balance the sample contribution, reduce the prediction bias and mine hard samples. The experimental results show that the accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, AUC and F 2 -score of MTCLF based on the LAG dataset for glaucoma diagnoses are 0.967, 0.961, 0.970, 0.996, and 0.958, respectively. These results are superior to those of the state-of-the-art methods. MTCLF not only achieves the best performance for unbiased glaucoma diagnoses but also generates a reliable evidence map to help clinicians explore fine lesion areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Dilated convolutions ensure better feature transfer and accurate classification that result in a sensitivity boost. • Dilated convolutions serve as the main constituents of decoder, encoder blocks and skip connections. • Dilated convolutions of different rates are more effective at capturing dynamically complex blood vessels. • Proposed Weighted multi-output fusion retrieves high fidelity vascular map by extracting critical features from each output block. Retinal image segmentation can help clinicians detect pathological disorders by studying changes in retinal blood vessels. This early detection can help prevent blindness and many other vision impairments. So far, several supervised and unsupervised methods have been proposed for the task of automatic blood vessel segmentation. However, the sensitivity and the robustness of these methods can be improved by correctly classifying more vessel pixels. We proposed an automatic, retinal blood vessel segmentation method based on the U-net architecture. This end-to-end framework utilizes preprocessing and a data augmentation pipeline for training. The architecture utilizes multiscale input and multioutput modules with improved skip connections and the correct use of dilated convolutions for effective feature extraction. In multiscale input, the input image is scaled down and concatenated with the output of convolutional blocks at different points in the encoder path to ensure the feature transfer of the original image. The multioutput module obtains upsampled outputs from each decoder block that are combined to obtain the final output. Skip paths connect each encoder block with the corresponding decoder block, and the whole architecture utilizes different dilation rates to improve the overall feature extraction. The proposed method achieved an accuracy: of 0.9680, 0.9694, and 0.9701; sensitivity of 0.8837, 0.8263, and 0.8713; and Intersection Over Union (IOU) of 0.8698, 0.7951, and 0.8184 with three publicly available datasets: DRIVE, STARE, and CHASE, respectively. An ablation study is performed to show the contribution of each proposed module and technique. The evaluation metrics revealed that the performance of the proposed method is higher than that of the original U-net and other U-net-based architectures, as well as many other state-of-the-art segmentation techniques, and that the proposed method is robust to noise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Germ cells are vital for transmitting genetic information from one generation to the next and for maintaining the continuation of species. Here, we analyze the transcriptome of human primordial germ cells (PGCs) from the migrating stage to the gonadal stage at single-cell and single-base resolutions. Human PGCs show unique transcription patterns involving the simultaneous expression of both pluripotency genes and germline-specific genes, with a subset of them displaying developmental-stage-specific features. Furthermore, we analyze the DNA methylome of human PGCs and find global demethylation of their genomes. Approximately 10 to 11 weeks after gestation, the PGCs are nearly devoid of any DNA methylation, with only 7.8% and 6.0% of the median methylation levels in male and female PGCs, respectively. Our work paves the way toward deciphering the complex epigenetic reprogramming of the germline with the aim of restoring totipotency in fertilized oocytes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a method to recognize gestures made by Chinese traffic police in complex scenes based on a max-covering scheme for driver assistance systems and intelligent vehicles. Gesture recognition is made possible by upper-body-part detection with a five-part body model. First, the police's torso and arms are extracted from a complex traffic scene as the foreground region by using dark channel prior and kernel density estimation. Then the coordinates of pixels in the upper arms and forearms are determined using the proposed max-covering scheme, which is based on a key observation that body-part tiles maximally cover the foreground region and satisfy a body plan. Finally, the rotation joint angle or Gabor feature-based two-dimensional principal component analysis is used to recognize the gestures made by Chinese traffic police. A comparative study is proposed with other human pose estimation methods, which demonstrates that better recognition results can be obtained using the proposed method on a number of video sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese ink painting is a traditional art form that is highly regarded throughout the world for its theory, expression, technicality, and artistry. In this paper, we present a method to convert a photograph into a Chinese ink painting. First, the structure description map (SDM) for a photo is estimated to build the object appearance depiction. To make the converted Chinese painting's color be consistent with traditional color requirement of Chinese ink painting, a color transform algorithm is proposed to put color on the SDM. A qualitative evaluation approach is also proposed to carry out a comparative study with other simulation methods. Conversion results demonstrate that, using the proposed method, one can produce very beautiful Chinese ink painting from a photo with less user interaction and much faster conversion speed compared to other approaches. © 2015 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new type of organic dyad that can induce low-energy photosensitization has been developed; electron donor and electron acceptor units are boron dipyrromethene (BODIPY) and ortho-carborane (o-Cb), respectively. The new dyads consist of a V-shaped BODIPY-(o-Cb)-BODIPY molecular array in which two BODIPY units are substituted onto two adjacent carbon atoms of the central o-Cb. In the presence of the o-Cb unit, as an electron acceptor, significant fluorescence quenching was observed which indicated that photoinduced electron transfer (PET) had occurred from the end-on BODIPY units to the central o-Cb with PET efficiencies of 63–71%. As a result, the corresponding cationic and anionic species that are responsible for the charge transfer state were detected by the serial spectroelectrochemical studies: cationic BODIPY radicals at 400 nm at the applied voltage of 1.44 V and broad absorption bands of anionic o-Cb radicals in the range of 250–490 nm at −1.84 V. Transient absorption studies further confirmed the BODIPY radical anion at 540 nm and the o-Cb radical anion at 350–475 nm with a structureless broad band. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flowerlike Bi2S3 microspheres have been successfully synthesized via a facile wet chemical route in air at 110 °C for 10 min, employing bismuth nitrate and thiourea in a molar ratio of 1 : 2 as the starting reactants, ethylene glycol as the reaction medium and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as the structure-directing reagent. Electron microscopy observations showed that the as-obtained product looked like an Asteraceae plant called Echinops Sphaerocephalus Linn in nature. The N2 sorption–desorption experiments showed that the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) area of the flowerlike microspheres was 32.4 m2 g−1. Some factors influencing the formation of flowerlike Bi2S3 microspheres were investigated, including the reaction temperature, and the sort and amount of the surfactant. The experiments showed that the Bi2S3 micro/nanostructures prepared in the present work could be used as new-type catalysts for the reduction of some aromatic nitro compounds, such as 4-nitroaniline, 2-nitrophenol and 4-nitrophenol. It was found that the as-obtained flowerlike Bi2S3 microspheres contributed to the best catalytic activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Mannose delayed the decline of chlorophyll content. • Mannose regulated the gene expressions of chlorophyll catabolic enzymes. • Mannose retarded the PCD in broccoli by a mitochondria-dependent pathway. The effect of mannose treatment on chlorophyll catabolism and programmed cell death (PCD) in broccoli florets during storage at 20 ℃ has been investigated. The results showed that mannose treatment efficiently restrained chlorophyll degradation in broccoli florets via regulating chlorophyll catabolism genes (BoPPH, BoPAO, BoRCCR, BoSGR1 and BoSGR2). Meanwhile, mannose treatment efficiently suppressed the occurrence of PCD through the mitochondria-dependent pathway in broccoli florets. Less reactive oxygen species content observed in mannose-treated broccoli florets delayed the increase of mitochondrial membrane potential and inhibited unfolding of mitochondria permeability transition pore, which was associated with the inhibition of cytochrome c liberation in mitochondria and the maintenance of high levels of cytochrome c/a and the ratio of Ca2+ content, the activities of cytochrome c oxidase and alternative oxidase. These results suggested that mannose treatment inhibited senescence of broccoli florets through suppressing the chlorophyll degradation and the appearance of PCD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by the structure of corn, a NiFe Prussian blue analogue nanocages decorated magnesium hydroxide composite was synthesized for the first time using magnesium hydroxide rods (RMH) as the "corn cob", a Prussian blue analogue (PBA) as the "corn kernels" and polydopamine (PDA) as the membrane linking RMH and PBA. Subsequently, the RMH@PDA@PBA composite was introduced into epoxy resin (EP) to improve its fire retardancy and mechanical properties. The composition, structure and morphology of the RMH@PDA@PBA-incorporated EP composite were investigated. The tensile strength of EP with 3 wt.% RMH@PDA@PBA reached 41.77 MPa, which is higher than that of neat EP (40.51 MPa). The fire-retardant assessments illustrated that the limiting oxygen index and vertical burning tests (UL-94) of EP composite with 3 wt.% RMH@PDA@PBA progressed to 32.3% and the V-0 level as compared to those of virgin EP (24.4% and no rating). In addition, as compared to virgin EP, the peak heat release rate, peak smoke production rate, total heat release at 200 s and total smoke production at 200 s of EP/3RMH@PDA@PBA decreased by 43.1%, 50.0%, 43.9% and 56.3%, respectively. The investigation of the underlying mechanism revealed that the flame retardancy and smoke suppression of EP/3RMH@PDA@PBA were attributed to the endothermic decomposition of RMH, "gauze barrier" mechanism of MgO/FeO, catalytic charring effect of Fe derivatives (MgO/FeO, FeNi 3 , Fe 5 C 2 , Fe 2 N, etc.) and free radical scavenging effect of PBA@Fe[Ⅲ]. Thus, this study on bio-inspired hierarchical nanostructures paves a new pathway for the efficient production of fire-safe polymers. [Display omitted] • A novel low-cost RMH@PDA@PBA with corn structure was first prepared. • The RMH@PDA@PBA significantly improves the fire safety of epoxy resin. • 3 wt.% RMH@PDA@PBA endowed epoxy resin with UL-94 V-0 and reduced smoke production. • The addition of RMH@PDA@PBA enhanced the mechanical properties of epoxy resin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Nanohybrids GPM with different GO content were synthesized via one-step hydrothermal method. • GPM improved the fire safety of EP with significantly reducing the PHRR, THR, PCOP and TSP with only 3 wt% loading. • Excellent fire safety of EP/GPM attributed to the comprehensive synergistic effect of Mg(OH) 2 and GO. • GPM exhibited superior mechanical properties compared to that of Mg(OH) 2. With the rapid development of Graphene based hybrid materials, various of them were fabricated to improve the fire safety of EP. However, the effect of GO content in the hybrid material on flame retardancy of EP composites is rarely reported. In order to find the optimal ratio of GO/Mg(OH) 2 , platelet-like Mg(OH) 2 functioned graphene (GPM) were synthesized with diverse content GO substance and then presented into EP resin for improving its fire retardancy. Various characterizations confirmed its composition, structure and morphology. The incorporation of GPM contains about 1% GO increased the tensile strength by 31.6% compared to that of untreated Mg(OH) 2. The GPM contains about 5% GO exhibited the finest fire safety in various EP composites. The fire-retardant assessments illustrated that the limiting oxygen index (LOI) of EP composite with 3 wt% GPM progressed to 27.8% compared with virgin EP (24.4%). In parallel, compared to virgin EP, the peak heat release rate, peak smoke production rate, total smoke production and peak CO production rate of EP/5GPM were diminished by 50.9%, 44.0 %, 25.5% and 53.1%, separately. The mechanism investigation revealed that the prominent flame retardancy and smoke suppression were attributed to the physical barrier of GO, the endothermic decomposition of Mg(OH) 2 , the barrier effect of MgO and synergistic effect between GO and Mg(OH) 2 toward the optimized carbonization. In perspective, hierarchical platelet structure with synergistic effect offered an effective approach for the fire-safe polymer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sustainable development of tungsten and molybdenum resources requires a new clean and recyclable separation technology. This work proposes a recyclable clean separation technology of tungsten and molybdenum with a porous amine resin. The resin was well prepared by assembling amine groups on trioctylamine (TOA) and the porous resin matrix D301 by the dipping method. Here, pH 7.8, temperature 25 °C, and reaction time 240 min was used as optimum condition, resulting in the highest sorption capacity 236 mg g−1, and it has a good cycle performance, exhibiting a retention rate of 90% after five cycles. Experimental spectroscopy combined theoretical calculation confirmed that this sustainable sorption behavior is substantially related to the amine functional groups on the resin. Experimental spectroscopy illustrated that the Cl− ions in the amine resin and the MoS 4 2− ions were subjected to ion exchange. Theoretical investigations further confirm that the sorption site is at the N atoms, the sorption behavior is chemical binding with the binding energy −0.055 Ha, and the bonding method is the s orbit of the N atoms in the amine resin hybridized with the s orbit of the S atoms in the amine resin. Owing to such an excellent performance in the selective sorption of molybdenum from the tungstate solution, the amine resin is greatly promising in the tungsten and molybdenum waste recovery field. [Display omitted] • A porous amine resin with 236 mg g−1 sorption capacity for molybdenum was prepared. • Experimental spectra confirmed the ion exchange mechanism between Cl− and MoS 4 2−. • Theoretical calculations determined the sorption site and bonding behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using numerical simulations of charged-particles propagating in the heliospheric magnetic field, we study small-scale gradients, or “dropouts,” in the intensity of solar energetic particles seen at 1 AU. We use two turbulence models, the foot-point random motion model and the two-component model, to generate fluctuating magnetic fields similar to spacecraft observations at 1 AU. The turbulence models include a Kolmogorov-like magnetic field power spectrum containing a broad range of spatial scales from those that lead to large-scale field-line random walk to small scales leading to resonant pitch-angle scattering of energetic particles. We release energetic protons (20 keV-10 MeV) from a spatially compact and instantaneous source. The trajectories of energetic charged particles in turbulent magnetic fields are numerically integrated. Spacecraft observations are mimicked by collecting particles in small windows when they pass the windows at a distance of 1 AU. We show that small-scale gradients in the intensity of energetic particles and velocity dispersions observed by spacecraft can be reproduced using the foot-point random motion model. However, no dropouts are seen in simulations using the two-component magnetic turbulence model. We also show that particle scattering in the solar wind magnetic field needs to be infrequent for intensity dropouts to form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With increasing demands of three-dimensional (3D) contents, the conversion of many two-dimensional (2D) contents to 3D contents has become a focus in 3D image processing. The most important and difficult problem in 2D-to-3D conversion is the estimation of the depth map using only a single-view image. Therefore, a novel method for estimating a depth map for stereoscopic conversion is proposed in this paper. A simulated haze image generated by adding a haze veil on the input image is used to represent salient region segmentation. The 3D stereoscopic image is generated on the basis of the depth map estimated by the haze removal algorithm without any heuristic cues or user interaction. A comparative study and quantitative evaluation with some other state of the art conversion methods are carried out, which demonstrate that using the proposed approach, similar or better-quality results may be obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT A series of novel cyclic olefin copolymers (COCs), including ethylene/tricyclo[4.3.0.12,5]deca-3-ene (TDE), ethylene/tricyclo[4.4.0.12,5]undec-3-ene (TUE), and ethylene/tricyclo[6.4.0.19,12]tridec-10-ene (TTE) copolymers, have been synthesized via effective copolymerizations of ethylene with bulk cyclic olefin comonomers using bis(β-enaminoketonato) titanium catalysts ( 1a [PhNC(CH3)CHC(CF3)O]2TiCl2; 1b: [PhNC(CF3)CHC(Ph)O]2TiCl2). With modified methylaluminoxane as a cocatalyst, both catalysts exhibit high catalytic activities, producing high molecular weight copolymers with high comonomer incorporations and unimodal molecular weight distributions. The microstructures of obtained ethylene/COCs are established by combination of 1H, 13C NMR, 13C DEPT, HSQC 1H13C, and 1H1H COSY NMR spectra. DSC analyses indicate that the glass transition temperature ( Tg) increases with the enhancement of comonomer volume (TDE < TUE < TTE). High Tg value up to 180 °C is easily attained in ethylene/TTE copolymer with the low content of 35.8 mol %. TGA analyses reveal that these copolymers all possess high thermal stability with degradation temperatures ( Td) higher than 370 °C in N2 and air. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2013, 51, 3144-3152 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims In acute stroke, neurological damage is due to oxidative stress and neuronal apoptotic death. This study investigated whether Nogo-A 290-562 residues region (M9), fused to the transduction domain of the HIV trans-activator ( TAT) protein, is neuroprotective against cerebral ischemia and the mechanisms. Methods Transient focal cerebral ischemia was induced by middle cerebral artery occlusion in male C57 BL/6J mice. TAT-M9, its mutation or vehicle was applied via intraperitoneal injection at the onset of reperfusion. The neurobehavioral scores, infarction volumes, neuronal apoptosis, and the ratio of Bax/Bcl-2 were evaluated. Malondialdehyde ( MDA), reactive oxygen species ( ROS) levels, and NADPH oxidase activation were measured in the presence or absence of the NADPH oxidase inhibitor apocynin or activator tetrabromocinnamic acid ( TBCA). Results Immunofluorescence results confirmed that TAT-M9 was transduced into brain parenchyma, and it significantly improved neurological behavior, reduced infarct volumes, protected neuronal cells from apoptosis, inhibited activation of NADPH oxidase, and decreased MDA and ROS contents. Furthermore, apocynin imitated the beneficial effects of TAT-M9, while TBCA abolished them. Conclusions Our results demonstrate that TAT-M9 administration attenuates cerebral ischemia by inhibiting NADPH oxidase-mediated oxidative damage and neuronal apoptosis in mice. TAT-M9 may be a potential treatment for cerebrovascular disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to investigate the protective effect of the M9 region (residues 290-562) of amino-Nogo-A fused to the human immunodeficiency virus trans-activator TAT in an in vitro model of ischemia-reperfusion induced by oxygen-glucose deprivation (OGD) in HT22 hippocampal neurons, and to investigate the role of NADPH oxidase in this protection. Transduction of TAT-M9 was analyzed by immunofluorescence staining and western blot. The biologic activity of TAT-M9 was assessed by its effects against OGD-induced HT22 cell damage, compared with a mutant M9 fusion protein or vehicle. Cellular viability and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release were assessed. Neuronal apoptosis was evaluated by flow cytometry. The Bax/Bcl-2 ratio was determined by western blotting. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels and NADPH oxidase activity were also measured in the presence or absence of an inhibitor or activator of NADPH oxidase. Our results confirmed the delivery of the protein into HT22 cells by immunofluorescence and western blot. Addition of 0.4 μmol/L TAT-M9 to the culture medium effectively improved neuronal cell viability and reduced LDH release induced by OGD. The fusion protein also protected HT22 cells from apoptosis, suppressed overexpression of Bax, and inhibited the reduction in Bcl-2 expression. Furthermore, TAT-M9, as well as apocynin, decreased NADPH oxidase activity and ROS content. The protective effects of the TAT-M9 were reversed by TBCA, an agonist of NADPH oxidase. In conclusion, TAT-M9 could be successfully transduced into HT22 cells, and protected HT22 cells against OGD damage by inhibiting NADPH oxidase-mediated oxidative stress. These findings suggest that the TAT-M9 protein may be an efficient therapeutic agent for neuroprotection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Novel field emitters with α-Fe2O3 nanorods/CNTs composites were simply prepared by dipping the iron into the oxalic acid solution, drop-coating CNTs to the iron substrate followed by in situ thermal oxidation. The surface morphology of the products has been characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM). And further the composition was analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The results of SEM, XRD and XPS showed that CNTs have been homogenously dispersed and partly wrapped on α-Fe2O3 nanorods. α-Fe2O3 nanorods/CNTs composites had exhibited greatly enhanced field emission properties with low turn-on field (about 1.211V/μm), and high field enhancement factor of 8658. Therefore, the α-Fe2O3 nanorods/CNTs composites are promising field emitters for field emission applications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A new efficient step-by-step process of extracting vanadium and silicium from stone coal cinder was proposed, which overcomes the tendency of stone coal slag to contain vanadium and high silicium during the power generation process in China. The results show that when the stone coal cinder blending with the right amount of sodium carbonate is melted at 1 400 °C for two hours and then is poured into water, then the resulting cinder is leached in sodium hydroxide solution at 100 °C,water glass solution can be produced, and the leaching rate of silicium in raw material is 80. 5%. At the same time, the obtained alkaline leaching residue is leached in 10% sulfuric acid solution at 60 °C, adding small amount of oxidant, the leaching rate of vanadium is 93.1%. As well as effectively extracting vanadium, this process could realize the comprehensive utilization of silicium in stone coal, and reduce tailing by 70%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: When rhegmatogenous retinal detachment occurs, tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) among other cytokines leaks into the subretinal space, induces resident retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells to migrate, which is the initial step of proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR). In the current study, we aim to understand how this is regulated by focusing the cellular mechanisms involved. Here we indentified an Akt/Tuberous sclerosis protein 2 (TSC2)/mTOR complex1 (mTORC1) signaling pathway after TNF-α treatment to mediate RPE cell migration. Suppression of mTORC1 activation, either by its inhibitor rapamycin, or by activation of its suppressor AMP activated protein kinase (AMPK), inhibited TNF-α-mediated RPE cell migration, while RNA interference (RNAi)-mediated knocking-down of SIN1 or Rictor, two key components of mTOR complex 2 (mTORC2), had no significant effect on TNF-α-induced RPE cell migration. Our data provide initial evidence that TNF-α-mediated in vitro RPE cell migration mainly requires Akt/mTORC1, but not mTORC2 signaling. The results of this study may lead to indentify novel signaling targets against PVR. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) promotes in vitro retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cell migration to initiate proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR). Here we report that TNF-α promotes human RPE cell migration by inducing matrix metallopeptidase 9 (MMP-9) expression. Inhibition of MMP-9 by its inhibitor or its neutralizing antibody inhibited TNF-α-induced in vitro RPE cell migration. Reversely, exogenously-added active MMP-9 promoted RPE cell migration. Suppression Akt/mTOR complex 1(mTORC1) activation by LY 294002 and rapamycin inhibited TNF-α-mediated MMP-9 expression. To introduce a constitutively active Akt (CA-Akt) in cultured RPE cells increased MMP-9 expression, and to block mTORC1 activation by rapamycin inhibited its effect. RNA interference (RNAi)-mediated silencing of SIN1, a key component of mTOR complex 2 (mTORC2), had no effect on MMP-9 expression or secretion. In conclusion, this study suggest that TNF-α promotes RPE cell migration by inducing MMP-9 expression through activation of Akt/ mTORC1, but not mTORC2 signaling. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Objectives. Schizophrenia (SCZ) is associated with disrupted functional brain connectivity, and antipsychotic medications are the primary and most commonly used treatment for schizophrenia. However, not all patients respond to antipsychotic medications. Methods. The study is aimed at investigating whether the graph-theory-based degree centrality (DC), derived from resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI), can predict the treatment outcomes. rs-fMRI data from 38 SCZ patients were collected and compared with findings from 38 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (HCs). The patients were treated with antipsychotic medications for 16 weeks before undergoing a second rs-fMRI scan. DC data were processed using DPABI and SPM12 software. Results. SCZ patients at baseline showed increased DC in the frontal and temporal gyrus, anterior cingulate cortex, and precuneus and reduced DC in bilateral subcortical gray matter structures. However, those abnormalities showed a clear renormalization after antipsychotic medication treatments. Support vector machine analysis using leave-one-out cross-validation achieved a correct classification rate of 84.2% (sensitivity 78.9%, specificity 89.5%, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) 0.925) for differentiating effective subjects from ineffective subjects. Brain areas that contributed most to the classification model were mainly located within the bilateral putamen, left inferior frontal gyrus, left middle occipital cortex, bilateral middle frontal gyrus, left cerebellum, left medial frontal gyrus, left inferior temporal gyrus, and left angular. Furthermore, the DC change within the bilateral putamen is negatively correlated with the symptom improvements after treatment. Conclusions. Our study confirmed that graph-theory-based measures, combined with machine-learning algorithms, can provide crucial insights into pathophysiological mechanisms and the effectiveness of antipsychotic medications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The incorporation of Sc3+ can stabilize calcite-phase LuBO3:Ce3+ to grow large-sized single crystals but leads to the significant degradation of scintillation performance. In the present work, alkali metal ion (A+ = Li+, Na+, K+)-incorporated (Lu, A, Sc)BO3:Ce was rapidly synthesized in batches via a high-throughput sol–gel method. The aliovalent substitution of Lu3+ with A+ is balanced by the generation of oxygen vacancies by forming complexes. Thanks to the increased oxygen vacancies, the luminescence and XEL intensity of (Lu, Li, Sc)BO3:Ce are significantly enhanced by 2.2 times and 1.9 times, respectively. Further, the incorporation of A+ is attributed to the improved transition efficiency of charge carriers. The prepared scintillation screen fabricated with LASBO:Ce and PMMA shows that the spatial resolution can reach 8.6 lp mm−1, indicating its potential application in efficient and low-cost non-destructive X-ray detection. This work is of great significance in improving the luminescence and scintillation performance of (Lu, Sc)BO3:Ce single crystals and thin films and their application in the scintillation field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Patients with age related macular degeneration (AMD) have a loss of vision in the center of the visual field. Oxidative stress plays an important role in this progress. Nerve growth factor (NGF) is important for the survival and maintenance of sympathetic and sensory neurons and NGF eye drops improve visual acuity and electro-functional activity in patients with AMD. However, the molecular mechanisms and signaling events involved in this have not been fully investigated. Using cultured human retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells, we demonstrate here that NGF protects RPE cells against hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)-induced cell apoptosis. NGF also induces RPE cell migration, the latter is important for retinal regeneration and the recovery from AMD. H2O2 decreases S6 phosphorylation and cell viability, which is restored by NGF. Rapamycin, the pharmacologic inhibitor of mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), diminished NGF-induced S6 phosphorylation, cell migration and protective effects against oxidative stress. Collectively, we conclude that activation of rapamycin sensitive mTOR signaling mediates NGF induced cell migration and pro-survival effects in H2O2 treated RPE cells. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Sperm and eggs carry distinctive epigenetic modifications that are adjusted by reprogramming after fertilization. The paternal genome in a zygote undergoes active DNA demethylation before the first mitosis. The biological significance and mechanisms of this paternal epigenome remodelling have remained unclear. Here we report that, within mouse zygotes, oxidation of 5-methylcytosine (5mC) occurs on the paternal genome, changing 5mC into 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC). Furthermore, we demonstrate that the dioxygenase Tet3 (ref. 5) is enriched specifically in the male pronucleus. In Tet3-deficient zygotes from conditional knockout mice, paternal-genome conversion of 5mC into 5hmC fails to occur and the level of 5mC remains constant. Deficiency of Tet3 also impedes the demethylation process of the paternal Oct4 and Nanog genes and delays the subsequent activation of a paternally derived Oct4 transgene in early embryos. Female mice depleted of Tet3 in the germ line show severely reduced fecundity and their heterozygous mutant offspring lacking maternal Tet3 suffer an increased incidence of developmental failure. Oocytes lacking Tet3 also seem to have a reduced ability to reprogram the injected nuclei from somatic cells. Therefore, Tet3-mediated DNA hydroxylation is involved in epigenetic reprogramming of the zygotic paternal DNA following natural fertilization and may also contribute to somatic cell nuclear reprogramming during animal cloning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: o-Carboranyl aminoalcohols were synthesized using a standard Mannich reaction, and were tested for their anticancer properties using an in vitro test for CT26 cancer cells. The polar periphery of the aminoalcohols benefited from the high boron uptake in CT26 cancer cells with low toxicity, indicating their potential as BNCT agents. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We perform 2.5-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations to investigate the nonlinear evolution of the lower hybrid drift instability (LHDI) in Harris current sheet. Due to the drift motion of electrons in the electric field of the excited low hybrid drift (LHD) waves, the electrons accumulate at the outer layer, and therefore there is net positive charge at the inner edge of the current sheet. This redistribution of charge can create an electrostatic field along the z direction, which then modifies the motions of the electrons along the y direction by E × B drift. This effect strongly changes the structure of the current sheet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Synthesis, structural characterization, and biological activity studies of o-carborane-substituted 1,3,5-triazines (9–12) containing polar functional groups such as methoxyethyl and t-butoxycarbonylmethyl amine units are described. De-methylation of di(methoxyethyl)amine functionalized triazines 9 and 10 resulted in the production of di(hydroxyethyl)amine derivatives 13 and 14. NMR (1H and 13C) and X-ray crystallographic studies confirmed the structures derived from the sequential o-carborane substitution on the 1,3,5-triazine core. Preliminary in vitro studies revealed that compounds 9, 10, 13, and 14, despite their low cytotoxicity, accumulated at high levels in B-16 melanoma cells. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The morphological transformation process from CdS nanorods to hexagonal CdS flakes was investigated in detail by transmission electron microscope (TEM). The CdS flakes were liable to form with the alkalinity being increased and the reaction time being prolonged. Using this transformation, hexagonal CdS flakes with diameters of 0.3cm were grown via a recrystallization process in 6mol/L sodium hydroxide solution at 250°C. And the formation mechanism of CdS flakes is suggested based on the growth habits of polar crystals under proper basic hydrothermal conditions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Considerations on conserving biodiversity are presently of central concern to ecologists and are also frequently debated among aquatic biologists and resource use scientists. In this paper we provide an overview of the state of knowledge on the biodiversity, mainly of fish species in the upper Yangtze River system and their level of endangered status as well as some overall data on other taxa (primarily of the benthos). Habitat issues are briefly addressed while also options for biodiversity management are discussed. Of specific concern is the Chinese paddlefish. Also, new hydro dams are being constructed, requiring further mitigation measures. An expanded concept of creating a new much more comprehensive reserve complex within which and the existing natural reserve is included, maintained and adjusted for a better and additional protection of the upper Yangtze River fish bioresources is introduced in this paper. It is clear that no reserve installation can fully compensate the loss of habitat and ecosystem structures caused by damming, however, it is hoped that the mitigation effect is substantial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: An alcohol-thermal route has been developed to the growth of single crystals of yellow metastable PbO in largest dimensions of 11×1×0.1mm3, using freshly synthesized β-PbO crystallites as seeds. The transformation of metastable β-PbO to stable form (α-PbO) can be slowed down by choosing appropriate solvent as the growth medium. The obtained β-PbO crystals have a strong orientational growth parallel to the (001) plane and exhibit a lath shape. Studies found that cooling rate and NaOH concentration also have great influence on the crystallographic forms of the final products during the alcohol-thermal process. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Powdered zirconium nitride (ZrN) has been prepared via a benzene-thermal synthesis via the reaction of anhydrous zirconium tetrachloride (ZrCl4) and lithium nitride (Li3N) at a temperature of 380–400 °C. The product was analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and the results show the mole ratio of Zr/N is 1:0.87. X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern can be indexed to the cubic cell of ZrN with the lattice constant a=4.5675 A˚. Transmission electron microscope (TEM) images indicate that average particle size is about 180 nm in diameter. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Particle acceleration during magnetic reconnection is a long-standing topic in space, solar, and astrophysical plasmas. Recent 3D particle-in-cell simulations of magnetic reconnection show that particles can leave flux ropes due to 3D field-line chaos, allowing particles to access additional acceleration sites, gain more energy through Fermi acceleration, and develop a power-law energy distribution. This 3D effect does not exist in traditional 2D simulations, where particles are artificially confined to magnetic islands due to their restricted motions across field lines. Full 3D simulations, however, are prohibitively expensive for most studies. Here, we attempt to reproduce 3D results in 2D simulations by introducing ad hoc pitch-angle scattering to a small fraction of the particles. We show that scattered particles are able to transport out of 2D islands and achieve more efficient Fermi acceleration, leading to a significant increase of energetic particle flux. We also study how the scattering frequency influences the nonthermal particle spectra. This study helps achieve a complete picture of particle acceleration in magnetic reconnection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The information unavailability of a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) for geo‐localization in many military and tourism applications implies the need to employ other applicable types of information, such as automatic image‐based location recognition. Unlike most existing localization methods that use GNSS information to locate an initial position, this paper proposes an automatic geo‐localization framework that does not require GNSS data. The proposed framework is a two‐stage pipeline that uses a query image and digital elevation model (DEM) data as input. The authors frame automatic geo‐localization without GNSS recordings as a skyline matching problem. By extracting the skyline from the DEM data and query images, the query image can be localized by matching the query skyline feature to the DEM skyline database. It has been demonstrated that this low‐cost approach can perform efficiently in mountainous or hilly areas to produce reliable localization results. The system was tested on 50 testing site points within a large‐scale area (China, 202.6 km2), and an average position error of 43.13 m was detected within 4.5 s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • A way to efficiently utilize BPS was found by batch and semi-continuous experiments. • AcoD showed synergistic effect, with best result noted with a BPS:CM ratio of 4:1. • The advantage of AcoD over AD is amplified with increasing OLR. • AcoD enhanced the coordination and efficiency among the key digestion bacteria. This study aimed to investigate the interactions between banana pseudo-stems (BPS) and chicken manure (CM) during anaerobic co-digestion (AcoD) in batch and semi-continuous experiments. The batch experiments results showed that the methane yield was the highest (193.7 mL/g VS) in AcoD with BPS: CM ratio of 4:1, which was increased by 57.2% and 66.1%, respectively. Semi-continuous experiments revealed that AcoD resulted in higher methane production. Monitoring of the system parameters indicated that AcoD could better adapt to the increasing organic loading rate, with better system stability and methane production efficiency. The microbial analysis illustrated that AcoD increased the relative abundance of hydrolytic bacteria such as Firmicutes, Patescibacteria, and Bacteroidetes. With regard to archaea, AcoD improved the abundance of Methanosaeta , the major acetoclastic methanogens. These changes in the microbial flora allowed AcoD to remain stable while efficiently producing methane and improved the BPS and CM processing efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Under the JITL framework, GMVAE is utilized to extract latent representations with multimode characteristics by considering Gaussian mixture models in the latent space. • Each latent variable can be described through a Gaussian mixture distribution. Subsequently, a MSKL divergence is utilized to measure its similarity. • Based on the MSKL divergence, weighted input and output historical data are obtained, and then a local model is established. • The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through a numerical example along with simulation on the TE benchmark process. Industrial data are often high-dimensional, nonlinear and multiple-modal. This paper develops a soft sensor model based on Gaussian mixture Variational Autoencoder (GMVAE) under the just-in-time learning (JITL) framework. To extract latent representations with multimode characteristics, GMVAE as a deep neural network model is utilized by considering Gaussian mixture models (GMM) in the latent space. After training the GMVAE model, each latent (or feature) variable can be described through a Gaussian mixture distribution. Subsequently, when a new sample arrives, a mixture symmetric Kullback-Leibler (MSKL) divergence is utilized to measure its similarity with historical data samples. MSKL divergence can measure similarity between two Gaussian mixture probability density functions. Based on the MSKL divergence, weighted input and output historical data are obtained, and then a local model is established. The effectiveness of the proposed soft sensor modeling method is validated through a numerical example along with simulation on the Tennessee Eastman benchmark process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Pectolinarigenin exhibited antifibrotic activity in TGFβ1-induced fibroblasts. • Pectolinarigenin alleviated kidney fibrosis in mice after UUO surgery. • Pectolinarigenin suppressed SMAD3 phosphorylation in kidneys of UUO mice. • Pectolinarigenin inhibited STAT3 activation in kidneys of UUO mice. Renal fibrosis is a final common manifestation of CKD resulting in progressive loss of kidney function. The activation of SMAD3 and STAT3 played central roles in the pathogenesis of renal fibrosis, which has been recognized as potential targets for antifibrotic therapy. As we known, the potential of natural products as the candidates for drug discovery has been well recognized. Here, we identified that pectolinarigenin (PEC), as a natural flavonoid and a reported STAT3 inhibitor, dose-dependently suppressed TGFβ/SMADs activity in HEK293 cells by luciferase reporter assay. In TGFβ1-stimulated NRK-49F fibroblast, PEC blocked the phosphorylation of SMAD3 and STAT3, and downregulated the major fibrotic gene and protein expression of TGFβ, α-SMA, COL-1, and FN. Notably, oral administration of PEC at a dose of 25 mg/kg/d for 7 days or 14 days effectively ameliorated kidney injury and tubulointerstitial fibrosis after unilateral ureteral obstruction (UUO) surgery in mice. Mechanically, PEC treatment inhibited the phosphorylated activation of SMAD3 and STAT3, which further reduced the protein expression of TGFβ, α-SMA, COL-1, and FN in the obstructed kidneys of UUO mice. In summary, our results suggested that pectolinarigenin alleviated tubulointerstitial fibrosis by inhibiting the activation of SMAD3 and STAT3 signaling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]