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Simple Summary Porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV) is an emerging enteropathogen distributed globally, which causes substantial economic losses in the swine industry. The characterization of the receptor promiscuity may pose a risk of cross-species transmission. However, the options for pharmaceutical interventions are limited. In this study, the vectors expressing shRNAs targeting the nucleocapsid gene were generated to assess the inhibition effect of PDCoV reproduction. Our preliminary results demonstrate that a dual shRNA expression system is an effective strategy in combating PDCoV infection without cytotoxicity, which would facilitate the ongoing development of RNAi-based therapeutic drugs against viral diseases. Abstract Porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV) is a novel enteric coronavirus and is becoming one of the major causative agents of diarrhea in pig herds in recent years. To date, there are no commercial vaccines or antiviral pharmaceutical agents available to control PDCoV infection. Therefore, developing a reliable strategy against PDCoV is urgently needed. In this study, to observe the antiviral activity of RNA interference (RNAi), four short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) specific to the nucleocapsid (N) gene of PDCoV were designed and tested in vitro. Of these, a double-shRNA-expression vector, designated as pSil-double-shRNA-N1, was the most effectively expressed, and the inhibition of PDCoV replication was then further evaluated in neonatal piglets. Our preliminary results reveal that plasmid-based double-shRNA-expression targeting the N gene of PDCoV can significantly protect LLC-PK1 cells and piglets from pathological lesions induced by PDCoV. Our study could benefit the investigation of the specific functions of viral genes related to PDCoV infection and offer a possible methodology of RNAi-based therapeutics for PDCoV infection.

An InGaN/GaN solar cell including a dual multiple quantum wells (MQWs) structure is investigated. It shows an obvious advantage over the conventional InGaN/GaN cell, which only contains a single MQWs structure. Because the short current density ( ${J} _{\mathrm { {sc}}})$ increases, the 1 sun power conversion efficiency significantly improves from 0.62% (single MQWs cell) to 1.02% (dual MQWs cell). From the measurement of EQE and PL spectra, the enhancement of effective photoelectric response within the solar spectrum mainly contributes to the high device performance, due to the introduced upper MQWs of higher In content.

Author(s): Kozii, V; Bi, Z; Ruhman, J | Abstract: The experimental observation of superconductivity in doped semimetals and semiconductors, where the Fermi energy is comparable to or smaller than the characteristic phonon frequencies, is not captured by the conventional theory. In this paper, we propose a mechanism for superconductivity in ultralow-density three-dimensional Dirac materials based on the proximity to a ferroelectric quantum critical point. We derive a low-energy theory that takes into account both the strong Coulomb interaction and the direct coupling between the electrons and the soft phonon modes. We show that the Coulomb repulsion is strongly screened by the lattice polarization near the critical point even in the case of a vanishing carrier density. Using a renormalization group analysis, we demonstrate that the effective electron-electron interaction is dominantly mediated by the transverse phonon mode. We find that the system generically flows towards strong electron-phonon coupling. Hence, we propose a new mechanism to simultaneously produce an attractive interaction and suppress strong Coulomb repulsion, which does not require retardation. For comparison, we perform the same analysis for covalent crystals, where lattice polarization is negligible. We obtain qualitatively similar results, though the screening of the Coulomb repulsion is much weaker. We then apply our results to study superconductivity in the low-density limit. We find a strong enhancement of the transition temperature upon approaching the quantum critical point. Finally, we also discuss scenarios to realize a topological p-wave superconducting state in covalent crystals close to the critical point.

Obesity is becoming a global problem. Research into the detailed mechanism of adipocyte development is crucial for the treatment of excess fat. Zinc finger protein 217 plays roles in adipogenesis. However, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Here, we demonstrated that ZFP217 knockdown prevented the mitotic clonal expansion process and caused adipogenesis inhibition. Depletion of ZFP217 increased the expression of the m(6)A methyltransferase METTL3, which upregulated the m(6)A level of cyclin D1 mRNA. METTL3 knockdown rescued the siZFP217-inhibited MCE and promoted CCND1 expression. YTH domain family 2 recognized and degraded the methylated CCND1 mRNA, leading to the downregulation of CCND1. Consequently, cell-cycle progression was blocked, and adipogenesis was inhibited. YTHDF2 knockdown relieved siZFP217-inhibited adipocyte differentiation. These findings reveal that ZFP217 knockdown–induced adipogenesis inhibition was caused by CCND1, which was mediated by METTL3 and YTHDF2 in an m(6)A-dependent manner. We have provided novel insight into the underlying molecular mechanisms by which m(6)A methylation is involved in the ZFP217 regulation of adipogenesis.

A nanomembrane with optical nanocavity structure was investigated employing finite difference time domain method in this paper. The nanomembrane with a typical thickness less than a few hundred nanometers can promote optical absorption sharply by introducing nanocavity structure. Geometrical parameters of the structure have a profound impact on the optical absorption of nanomembrane, which was studied in this paper. It was found that the nanocavity structure can enhance the absorption of visible light with different wavelengths by adjusting the thickness of different layers.

A new theoretical analysis explores quantum phase transitions in the absence of symmetry breaking and identifies several strange and surprising quantum critical phenomena.

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We study the effects of heterostrain on moir\'e bands in twisted bilayer graphene and bilayer transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) systems. For bilayer graphene with twist angle near $1^\circ$, we show that heterostrain significantly increases the energy separation between conduction and valence bands as well as the Dirac velocity at charge neutrality, which resolves several puzzles in scanning tunneling spectroscopy and quantum oscillation experiments at once. For bilayer TMD, we show that applying small heterostrain generally leads to flat moir\'e bands that are highly tunable., Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures

For municipal wastewater with low temperature and ammonium, conventional oxygen-limited have difficulty achieving long-term stable inhibition of nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NOB) and stable nitritation. So a partial nitrification-anaerobic ammonium oxidation integrated reactor with independent partitions was used to investigate the feasibility of adding an auto-recycling system to promote low exposure of nitrite in the aerobic zone and to inhibit the NOB activity. The results showed that nitrite produced in the aerobic zone could be timely transported to the anaerobic zone for Anammox utilization, and the nitrite nitrogen concentration was diluted to keep within 1 mg/L in the aerobic zone by the effluent recycling. NOB growth was inhibited by nitrite deficiency. The maximum nitrogen removal rate of the reactor was 0.29 kg/(m3·d), and the nitrate nitrogen production rate of NOB was controlled within 0.04 kg/(m3·d). Nitrosomonas and Candidatus Kuenenia were found as functional species of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria and Anammox bacteria, respectively.

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) hold great promise for regenerative medicine, disease treatment, and organ transplantation. As the ethical issue of human ESCs and similarity of pig in human genome and physiological characteristics, the porcine iPSCs (piPSCs) have become an ideal alternative study model. N6-methyladenosine (m6A) methylation is the most prevalent modification in eukaryotic mRNAs, regulating the self-renewal and differentiation of pluripotency stem cells. However, the explicit m6A-regulating machinery remains controversial. Here, we demonstrate that m6A modification and its modulators play a crucial role in mediating piPSCs pluripotency. In brief, loss of METTL3 significantly impairs self-renewal and triggers differentiation of piPSCs by interfering JAK2 and SOCS3 expression, further inactivating JAK2–STAT3 pathway, which then blocks the transcription of KLF4 and SOX2. We identify that both of JAK2 and SOSC3 have m6A modification at 3′UTR by m6A-seq analysis. Dual-luciferase assay shows that METTL3 regulates JAK2 and SOCS3 expression in an m6A-dependent way. RIP-qPCR validates JAK2 and SOCS3 are the targets of YTHDF1 and YTHDF2, respectively. SiMETTL3 induced lower m6A levels of JAK2 and SOCS3 lead to the inhibition of YTHDF1-mediated JAK2 translation and the block of YTHDF2-dependent SOCS3 mRNA decay. Subsequently, the altered protein expressions of JAK2 and SOCS3 inhibit JAK2–STAT3 pathway and then the pluripotency of piPSCs. Collectively, our work uncovers the critical role of m6A modification and its modulators in regulating piPSCs pluripotency and provides insight into an orchestrated network linking the m6A methylation and SOCS3/JAK2/STAT3 pathway in pluripotency regulation.

Highlights • RT-LAMP assay was established for the simple and rapid detection of PPgV. • RT-LAMP assay showed strong specificity with high sensitivity. • RT-LAMP assay provides an extremely valuable screening tool for the surveillance of PPgV in field conditions., A simple and accurate reverse transcription-loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) assay was developed and evaluated for the detection of porcine pegivirus (PPgV). The specific RT-LAMP primers targeting the conserved regions of NS5A genes were designed and used to detect PPgV. The optimal reaction parameter for RT-LAMP assay was 63℃ for 60 min. The detection limit of the RT-LAMP assay was 10 copies of PPgV genome, which was 100 times more sensitive than that of the conventional RT-PCR and comparable to nested RT-PCR and quantitative RT-PCR (qRT-PCR). There was no cross amplification with other related RNA viruses. In the clinical evaluation, the RT-LAMP assay exhibited a similar sensitivity with nested RT-PCR and qRT-PCR. The results indicated that RT-LAMP assay developed in this study could be a highly specific, sensitive, and cost-effective alternative for a rapid detection of PPgV in field settings.

Recently $SU(2)$ Yang-Mills theory with one massless adjoint Dirac quark flavor emerges as a novel critical theory that can describe the evolution between a trivial insulator and a topological insulator in AIII class in $3+1$ dimensions. There are several classes of conjectured infrared dynamics for this theory. One possibility is that the theory undergoes spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking, with two massless Goldstone bosons (the scalar diquark and its antiparticle) in the infrared. Another scenario, which is suggested by previous lattice studies by Athenodorou et al., is that the IR sector of the theory is a strongly interacting conformal field theory as the quark mass vanishes. The most recent theoretical proposals argue for a case that in the infrared a composite fermion composed of two quarks and an antiquark becomes massless and non-interacting as the quark mass goes to zero, while other sectors are decoupled from this low-energy fermion. This work expands upon previous studies by including the composite fermion to investigate which of these three potential scenarios captures the infrared behavior of this theory., Comment: presented at the 37th Annual International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (LATTICE2019)

Based on discretized electrode, a novel piezoelectric ceramic disk with a new form of electrode coating is proposed, where the created multiple electrical ports are linked into a series configuration. Combined with the Mason equivalent circuit, the electrical model of the discrete series electrode structure is established, and the electrical output characteristics of the model based on the thickness mode are analyzed. The simulation of the finite element method (FEM) and numerical analysis results show that the novel structure presented can apparently improve the output voltage of the acoustic-electrical conversion transducer which showing a promising potential that the output voltage of the receiving system can be adjusted and controlled.

The full-length genome sequence of a novel swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus (SADS-CoV), CH/FJWT/2018, was determined, which was genetically most closely related to CN/GDWT/2017, recently discovered in Fujian, China. The indel sites of the spike (S) gene of CH/FJWT/2018 were most similar to those of bat-origin SADS-related coronaviruses.

To achieve the simultaneous removal of NH

In the tip clearance flow, the dominant vortex is the tip leakage vortex (TLV), which has a significant impact on the hydraulic and cavitation performance of axial flow machinery. Thus, the suppression methods of the TLV are necessary in turbomachinery. Casing groove is an effective and economical technique among many control methods. However, its mechanism is still not completely understood. In order to reveal the effect mechanism of the casing groove on the TLV, numerical investigations of gap flow with groove configurations are carried out. A NACA0009 hydrofoil with tip gap is selected as the research object. Two typical groove types (vertical groove and horizontal groove) are applied on the solid wall respectively. Efforts are made to analyze the difference of velocity distributions between the two groove cases and the smooth wall case. Combing with the vortex stability theory, the suppression mechanisms of the two types of casing groove are distinguished and uncovered. For the vertical groove, the TLV intensity is reinforced via the secondary leakage vortex (SLV) at first, and then the supply of the axial momentum in the TLV center is cut off, leading to a less stable TLV. For the horizontal groove, the dissipation effect caused by viscosity on the TLV is strong, resulting in a weakened TLV.

A mathematic model was developed for describing the nitrogen and organic carbon removal via the simultaneous anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) and heterotrophic denitrification (SAD) process. The model considered anammox bacteria, heterotrophic denitrifying bacteria, ammonium, nitrite, nitrate, and readily biodegradable carbon. The model parameters were calibrated by using the experimental data in the single batch reactors inoculated with anammox sludge of 190 mg-VSS/L and activated sludge of 110 or 220 mg-VSS/L for treating wastewater containing ammonium of 30 mg-N/L and nitrate of 40 mg-N/L. The rapid depletion of nitrate and acetate as the sole carbon source were observed in the reactor. Subsequently, the temporarily accumulated nitrite was removed with ammonium. The initial C/N ratio of 1.5–2.0 and the population ratio of heterotrophic denitrifying bacteria to anammox bacteria within 0.3–0.4 were suitable conditions for the batch SAD process. The sensitivity analysis of kinetic parameters revealed that the most influential parameters for the nitrogen and organic carbon removal were the half-saturation constants for nitrite of heterotrophic bacteria and anammox bacteria and the anoxic reduction factors of heterotrophic bacteria on the nitrate-reducing rate and the nitrite-reducing rate, which closely associated with nitrite accumulation in the SAD process.

The distribution of line load rate and the node's inhomogeneity to withstand the transmission of power will have an important impact on the self-organized critical state of the system. For the characteristic of load rate distribution of transmission lines, an improved average semi-variance index is used to characterize changes in the self-organized critical state of the power system. Simulation calculations show that under the same nodal power flow distribution, the larger the value of the average semi-variance, the higher the probability of a large-scale power outage. The curve of probability distribution of blackouts obtained by simulation shows that with the increase of variance value, the tail gradually rises, and the system tends to evolve in the self-organized critical state. The improvement of the average semi-variance index has a good identification effect on the system state after the cascading failure.

In this work we explore the interplay between global symmetry and the mobility of quasiparticle excitations. We show that fractonic matter naturally appears in a three dimensional U(1) gauge theory, enriched by global U(1) and translational symmetries, via the mechanism of anyonic spin-orbital coupling. We develop a systematic understanding of such symmetry-enforced mobility restrictions in terms of the classification of U(1) gauge theories enriched by U(1) and translational symmetries. We provide a unified construction of these phases by gauging layered symmetry-protected topological phases., 13 pages, 3 figures; v2 published version

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The phenomenon of simultaneous transformation of ammonium and sulfate under the conditions of inoculating ANAMMOX culture has gotten the attention of researchers. However, there are some problems and doubts reported in the related literature. In this study, the characteristics of ammonium and sulfate synchronous transformation were investigated in a CFSTR via inoculation with ANAMMOX culture. Under the condition of oxygen removal and non-filling, in the unfilled sealed fermentation tank, the average conversion of NH

The ammonium oxidation by potential electron acceptors(NO

Automatic aeration and recirculation of effluent were used to start CANON process with up flow sludge bed reactor, and the start-up and operation characteristics of the process were studied. The results showed that the CANON process could be started quickly and stably by the method of reoxygenation reflux under the conditions of sludge volume fraction 25%, NH

In this study, ternary Cu2SnS3 (CTS) nanostructure materials with high crystallinity were successfully prepared via a facile solvothermal method, which was followed by high-temperature treatment. The morphology of the as-synthesized samples is uniform flower-like spheres, with these spheres consisting of hierarchical nanosheets and possessing network features. Sodium storage measurements demonstrate that the annealed CTS electrodes have high initial reversible capacity (447.7 mAh&middot, g&minus, 1 at a current density of 100 mA&middot, 1), good capacity retention (200.6 mAh&middot, 1 after 50 cycles at a current density of 100 mA&middot, 1) and considerable rate capability because of their high crystallinity and unique morphology. Such good performances indicate that the high crystallinity CTS is a promising anode material for sodium ion batteries.

The lattice construction of Euclidean path integrals has been a successful approach of deriving 2+1D field theory dualities with a U$(1)$ gauge field. In this work, we generalize this lattice construction to dualities with non-Abelian gauge fields. We construct the Euclidean spacetime lattice path integral for a theory with strongly-interacting $SO(3)$ vector bosons and Majorana fermions coupled to an $SO(3)$ gauge field and derive an exact duality between this theory and the theory of a free Majorana fermion on the spacetime lattice. We argue that this lattice duality implies the desired infrared duality between the field theory with an $SO(3)$ vector critical boson coupled to an $SO(3)_1$ Chern-Simons gauge theory, and a free massless Majorana fermion in 2+1D. We also generalize the lattice construction of dualities to models with $O(3)$ gauge fields., 7 pages+Appendix

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The feasibility of using Feammox coupled with nitrate-dependent Fe(II) oxidizing (NAFO) to cause the simultaneous conversion of NH

AlGaN/AlN/GaN heterojunctions were irradiated by 3 MeV protons with different fluences. Hall and C-V measurements showed that the density and mobility of 2DEG for heterojunctions decreased after proton irradiation. The crystal quality and optical properties of AlGaN/GaN heterojunctions were characterized by the variations of the micro-Raman scattering spectra, XRD and photo luminescence (PL) spectra with proton fluence. It has been obtained that the strain and dislocation of GaN and AlGaN were not affected by the proton injected. The proton irradiation caused the increase of structural defects in HT-AlN buffer layer, which lead to the red shift of ${{\rm A}_1}$ (LO) mode. The higher tails of XRD rocking curve indicated the introduction of point defects by irradiation. The full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of ${\rm E}_2^{\rm high}$ phonon mode broadened, which was consistent with change of FWHM of PL near-band-edge emission (BE). The spectra of yellow band normalized to the intensity of BE demonstrated a great increase of Ga vacancies related defects, which may be the main reason for the degradation of optical properties.

The differences in the physiological characteristics between AOB and ANAMMOX bacteria lead to suboptimal performance when used in a single reactor. In this study, aerobic and anaerobic zones with different survival environments were constructed in a single reactor to realize partitioned culture of AOB and ANAMMOX bacteria. An external air-lift reflux system was formed which used the exhaust from the aeration zone as power to return the effluent to the aeration zone. The reflux system effectively alleviated the large pH fluctuations and promoted NO2--N to rapidly use by ANAMMOX bacteria, effectively inhibiting the activity of NOB. After 95d of running, the nitrogen removal rate increased from the initial 0.21kg/(m3·d) to 3.1kg/(m3·d). FISH analyses further demonstrated that AOB and ANAMMOX bacteria acquired efficient enrichment in the corresponding zone. Thus, this type of integrative reactor may create the environments needed for the partial nitritation-ANAMMOX processing.

We propose a $d-$dimensional interacting Majorana fermion model with quenched disorder, which gives us a continuous quantum phase transition between a diffusive thermal metal phase with a finite entropy density to an insulator phase with zero entropy density. This model is based on coupled Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model clusters, and hence has a controlled large-$N$ limit. The metal-insulator transition is accompanied by a spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking. We perform controlled calculations to show that the diffusion constant jumps to zero discontinuously at the metal-insulator transition, while the time-reversal symmetry breaking order parameter increases continuously., Comment: 11 pages

We ask whether a local Hamiltonian with a featureless (fully gapped and nondegenerate) ground state could exist in certain quantum spin systems. We address this question by mapping the vicinity of certain quantum critical point (or gapless phase) of the $d-$dimensional spin system under study to the boundary of a $(d+1)-$dimensional bulk state, and the lattice symmetry of the spin system acts as an on-site symmetry in the field theory that describes both the selected critical point of the spin system, and the corresponding boundary state of the $(d+1)-$dimensional bulk. If the symmetry action of the field theory is nonanomalous, i.e. the corresponding bulk state is a trivial state instead of a bosonic symmetry protected topological (SPT) state, then a featureless ground state of the spin system is allowed; if the corresponding bulk state is indeed a nontrivial SPT state, then it likely excludes the existence of a featureless ground state of the spin system. From this perspective we identify the spin systems with SU($N$) and SO($N$) symmetries on one, two and three dimensional lattices that permit a featureless ground state. We also verify our conclusions by other methods, including an explicit construction of these featureless spin states., Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures

In this work we propose a theory for the deconfined quantum critical point (DQCP) for spin-1/2 systems on a triangular lattice, which is a direct unfine-tuned quantum phase transition between the standard ``$\sqrt{3}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}\sqrt{3}$'' noncollinear antiferromagnetic order (or the so-called ${120}^{\ensuremath{\circ}}$ state) and the ``$\sqrt{12}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}\sqrt{12}$'' valence solid bond (VBS) order, both of which are very standard ordered phases often observed in numerical simulations. This transition is beyond the standard Landau-Ginzburg paradigm and is also fundamentally different from the original DQCP theory on the square lattice due to the very different structures of both the magnetic and VBS order on frustrated lattices. We first propose a topological term in the effective-field theory that captures the ``intertwinement'' between the $\sqrt{3}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}\sqrt{3}$ antiferromagnetic order and the $\sqrt{12}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}\sqrt{12}$ VBS order. Then using a controlled renormalization-group calculation, we demonstrate that an unfine-tuned direct continuous DQCP exists between the two ordered phases mentioned above. This DQCP is described by the ${N}_{f}=4$ quantum electrodynamics (QED) with an emergent PSU(4)=SU(4)/${Z}_{4}$ symmetry only at the critical point. The aforementioned topological term is also naturally derived from the ${N}_{f}=4$ QED. We also point out that physics around this DQCP is analogous to the boundary of a $3d$ bosonic symmetry- protected topological state with only on-site symmetries.

We study a series of perturbations on the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model. We show that the chaotic non-Fermi liquid phase described by the ordinary $q = 4$ SYK model has marginally relevant/irrelevant (depending on the sign of the coupling constants) four-fermion perturbations allowed by symmetry. Changing the sign of one of these four-fermion perturbations leads to a continuous chaotic-nonchaotic quantum phase transition of the system accompanied by a spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking. Starting with the SYK$_q$ model with a $q-$fermion interaction, similar perturbations can lead to a series of new interacting conformal field theory fixed points., Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures

This study investigated the inhibitory effects of Cd, Ag, Hg and Pb on Anammox biomass by batch experiments. Inhibition effects and recovery performance were monitored in sequence over 24 h and 72 h experimental runs. The IC50 (the 50% inhibitory concentration of nitrogen removal rate) values were calculated as follows: 11.16 ± 0.42 mg/L for Cd; 11.52 ± 0.49 mg/L for Ag; 60.35 ± 2.47 mg/L for Hg. Pb caused only 7.19% decrease on nitrogen removal rate (NRR) even at a dose of 40 mg/L. Hence, the order of the inhibitory effect was determined as Cd > Ag > Hg > Pb. Furthermore, the crude enzyme (hydrazine dehydrogenase) activity and heme c concentration were also depressed under heavy metals exposure. Among four metals, Cd and Hg could exert sustained toxicity on Anammox biomass, but mal-effects of Ag and Pb could resume to a large extent after removing these two metals within 96 h.