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Preferential flow in the vadose zone brings challenges in characterizing water and solute transportation, mainly ascribed to the high spatial variability and anisotropy of porous medium. The dynamic instability of the preferential movement in soil lessens the contacting duration between the soil matrix and the solutes, arising the risk of deep leakage of chemicals from the surface to the groundwater. Consequently, in agricultural practice, the preferential transportation will negatively impact the hydraulic activities in fields thus generating low water-fertilization utilization efficiency. Oasis agroecosystems as the economic pump in Xinjiang have been neglected regarding the preferential flow phenomenon, which potentially affects water use efficiency and groundwater pollution, eventually restricting agricultural development. In these regions, the consecutive land-reclamation has made some achievements for the increased irrigated arable land. Nevertheless, pressures coexist due to the desertification, the limited precipitation and poor land fertility; whether the natural conditions or the agronomic management will affect the soil preferential flow is uncertain. Therefore, a specific oasis planting area of Regiment 121 (R121) in Xinjiang of China was selected in this study to seek and discuss the underlying factors possibly causing the preferential flow and the proper quantifying techniques. In R121, generally, the potential initiating drivers, including the freeze-thaw cycle, residual film, cultivation modes, and soil salinization will change the soil porosity, and alter the soil structure, thus shaping the preferential flow pathways concerning the macropore flow. During the constant freezing-thawing processes, the soil proportion of solid soil water increases, putting on the soil porosity and soil volume; but the effects of freeze-thaw on the soil depend on the collecting time and conditions of the soil samples. In addition, the accumulating plastic fragments imped the subsurface water movement, retard the horizontal movement, thus accelerating the downward movement of the soil water. Furthermore, the returning cotton straws into the fields will signally have an impact on the water storage during sowing seasons, enhancing the penetration and permeability of the soil; on the other hand,the straws in the soil also elevate the development of soil pores which then are transferred to bigger pores, thus increasing the total porosity; with the extension of reclamation time, these effects will become much more obvious. Additionally, the soil type in this region is loam, whose water-repellency will weaken the influence of the capillary of the soil conduit, force the flow unstably selecting the area with higher water conductivity, and may trigger the finger flow. The techniques of quantifying the preferential flow have also been summarized and evaluated, in which the dye tracing imaging methods can appraise well the preferential flow for its direct expression of non-uniform infiltration process in the soil. Other methods such as micro-tension measurement and acoustic detection may not be applicable in this region. Moreover, future research needs to properly combine the micro-observation with the large-scale investigation for a thorough evaluation. This review is expected to provide a reference for the research on preferential flow in arid oasis ecosystems of Xinjiang and other similar parts around the world [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a group of complex neurodevelopment disorders with a strong genetic basis. Large scale sequencing studies have identified over one hundred ASD risk genes. Nevertheless, the vast majority of ASD risk genes remain to be discovered, as it is estimated that more than 1000 genes are likely to be involved in ASD risk. Prioritization of risk genes is an effective strategy to increase the power of identifying novel risk genes in genetics studies of ASD. As ASD risk genes are likely to exhibit distinct properties from multiple angles, we reason that integrating multiple levels of genomic data is a powerful approach to pinpoint genuine ASD risk genes. Results: We present BNScore, a Bayesian model selection framework to probabilistically prioritize ASD risk genes through explicitly integrating evidence from sequencing-identified ASD genes, biological annotations, and gene functional network. We demonstrate the validity of our approach and its improved performance over existing methods by examining the resulting top candidate ASD risk genes against sets of high-confidence benchmark genes and large-scale ASD genome-wide association studies. We assess the tissue-, cell type- and development stage-specific expression properties of top prioritized genes, and find strong expression specificity in brain tissues, striatal medium spiny neurons, and fetal developmental stages. Conclusions: In summary, we show that by integrating sequencing findings, functional annotation profiles, and gene-gene functional network, our proposed BNScore provides competitive performance compared to current state-of-the-art methods in prioritizing ASD genes. Our method offers a general and flexible strategy to risk gene prioritization that can potentially be applied to other complex traits as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although extracellular regulated protein kinases (ERKs) are considered important targets for the treatment of various cancers, the occurrence of severe side effects in clinical trials restricts the development of ERK inhibitors. Here, we developed the first series of photocaged ERK inhibitors, which can be selectively activated by UV irradiation to release a highly potent ERK inhibitor in multiple cancer cell lines including A375, A549 and HCT116, and Compound 2 demonstrated clear anticancer activity in a zebrafish xenograft model. In conclusion, photocaged ERK inhibitor 2 provides a new strategy for precise cancer therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central receiver concentrating solar power (CSP) plants based on particles as heat transfer fluid in solar circuits and supercritical CO 2 (S–CO 2) Brayton cycles can fulfil the requirements for next generation CSP to improve solar-to-electric efficiency and reduce energy storage costs. However, effective incorporation of these two concepts requires an in-depth understanding of their characteristics and an appropriate approach to match them. This paper addresses the importance of the design features and annualized performances of the optical subsystem (heliostat-receiver) and the thermal-to-electricity subsystem (solar receiver-energy storage-power block) on the global optimization of any integrated CSP plant. The analysis lies in a complete model of a particle-based CSP plant, which includes detailed modeling for the solar field, a cavity solar receiver with an up bubbling fluidized bed (UBFB) tubular panel, particles storage tanks and a recompression S–CO 2 Brayton cycle. The design incident irradiance on the receiver aperture (IR) and the particles temperature at the receiver outlet (T p) are identified as key parameters determining the solar-to-electric integration procedure and affecting the overall plant design and annual performance. Regarding subsystems located upstream and downstream of the receiver, the effects of heliostat and power block characteristics on the optimal IR and T p are also evaluated, represented by the heliostat beam quality and main compressor inlet temperature. Results show that IR around 1,200–1,500 W/m2 provides the maximum system design efficiency and annual efficiency. Improvements on heliostat beam quality and power block efficiency help to increase the optimal IR and overall system efficiency. In the optimal range of IR , increasing T p leads to higher system design efficiency, but lower system annual efficiency and annual electricity output. The optimal combination of IR and T p contributes to a minimum heliostat design area, representing the integration trade-off between the system optical and thermal characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The near-infrared reflectance of vegetation (NIRv) has been increasingly used as a proxy of gross primary production (GPP) across various temporal scales, ecosystems, and climate conditions. However, topography significantly distorts NIRv and GPP estimations over mountainous areas. We evaluated the topographic effects on NIRv and applied a path length correction (PLC) for improving its performance over mountainous areas. The proposed topographically corrected NIRv (referred to TCNIRv) was evaluated by multiple Landsat-8 operational land imager (OLI) images with concurrent ${ in}~{ situ}$ GPP measurements over the Lägeren mountainous forest area. TCNIRv reduced topographic effects in the original NIRv and it was comparable to the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and the green normalized difference vegetation index (GNDVI), which are often deemed to be independent of topographic effects. In addition, TCNIRv better agreed with GPP than the other vegetation indices (VIs): coefficient of determination $R^{2} $ = 0.90 and root mean square error RMSE = 1.40 $\text{g}\cdot $ Cm $^{-2} \cdot \text{d}$ −1 for TCNIRv compared to $R^{2} $ = 0.71 and RMSE = 2.47 $\text{g}\cdot $ Cm−2 $\cdot \text{d}$ −1 for NIRv. The evaluation shows that TCNIRv is a reliable proxy of GPP, and because of its simplicity and physical soundness, it will facilitate vegetation monitoring over complex topography mountainous areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drought is an event of shortages in the water supply, whether atmospheric, surface water or ground water. Prolonged droughts have negative impacts on ecosystems, agriculture, society, and the economy. Although existing drought index products are widely utilized in drought monitoring, the coarse spatial resolution greatly limits their applications on regional or local scales. Machine learning driven by remote sensing observations offers an opportunity to monitor regional scale droughts. However, the limited time range of remote sensing observations such as vegetation index (VI) resulted in a substantial gap in generating high resolution drought index products before 2000. This study generated spatiotemporally continuous Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) data spanning from 1901–2018 in southwestern China by machine learning. It indicated that four Classification and Regression Tree (CART) approaches, decision trees (DT), random forest (RF), gradient boosted regression trees (GBRT) and extra trees (ET), can provide valid local drought information by downscaling the Estación Experimental de Aula Dei (EEAD) data. The in-situ SPEI dataset produced by the Penman–Monteith method was used as a benchmark to evaluate the temporal and spatial performance of the downscaled SPEI. In addition, the necessity of VI in SPEI downscaling was also assessed. The results showed that: (1) the ET-based product has the best performance (R2 = 0.889, MAE = 0.232, RMSE = 0.432); (2) the VI provides no significant improvement for SPEI re-construction; (3) topography exerts an obvious influence on the downscaling process, and (4) the downscaled SPEI shows more consistency with the in-situ SPEI compared with EEAD SPEI. The proposed method can be easily extended to other areas without in-situ data and enhance the ability of long-term drought monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report describes the clinical and histological findings, genetic study, and treatment in a 1.3‐year‐old rhesus macaque with bilateral cataracts and unilateral secondary glaucoma. Intravitreal injection of gentamicin decreased the intraocular pressure from 56 to <2 mm Hg. A putative genetic cause of the cataracts was not identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high incidence and relapse rate of depression, as well comorbidity with other diseases, has made depression one of the primary causes of years of life lived with disability. Moreover, the unknown biological mechanism of depression has made treatment difficult. Neuroinflammation is important in the pathogenesis of depression. Neuroinflammation may affect depression by regulating the production of immune factors, immune cell activation, neuron generation, synaptic plasticity, and neurotransmission. Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) may be a breakthrough link between depression and neuroinflammation, as ncRNAs participate in these biological changes. We summarize the functions and mechanisms of ncRNAs in neuroinflammation and depression, and predict ncRNAs that may regulate the occurrence and progression of depression through neuritis. These findings not only broaden our understanding of the genetic regulation of depression and neuroinflammation but also provide a new perspective of the underlying mechanism and aid in the design of novel prevention, diagnosis, and treatment strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A second‐order time stepping scheme is developed for the binary fluid‐surfactant phase‐field model coupled with hydrodynamics by using the scalar auxiliary variable approach and pressure correction method. The free energy contains a double‐well potential, a nonlinear coupling entropy, and a Flory–Huggins potential. By introducing one scalar auxiliary variable, the system is transformed into an equivalent form so that the nonlinear terms can be treated semi‐explicitly. The scheme is linear and decoupled, and thus, they can be solved efficiently. We further prove that the semidiscretized scheme in time is unconditionally energy stable. Numerical experiments are performed to validate the accuracy and energy stability of the proposed scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PDCoV is an emerging enteropathogenic coronavirus that mainly causes acute diarrhea in piglets, seriously affecting pig breeding industries worldwide. To date, the molecular mechanisms of PDCoV-induced immune and inflammatory responses or host responses in LLC-PK cells in vitro are not well understood. HSP90 plays important roles in various viral infections. In this study, HSP90AB1 knockout cells (HSP90AB1KO) were constructed and a comparative transcriptomic analysis between PDCoV-infected HSP90AB1WT and HSP90AB1KO cells was conducted using RNA sequencing to explore the effect of HSP90AB1 on PDCoV infection. A total of 1295 and 3746 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in PDCoV-infected HSP90AB1WT and HSP90AB1KO cells, respectively. Moreover, most of the significantly enriched pathways were related to immune and inflammatory response-associated pathways upon PDCoV infection. The DEGs enriched in NF-κB pathways were specifically detected in HSP90AB1WT cells, and NF-κB inhibitors JSH-23, SC75741 and QNZ treatment reduced PDCoV infection. Further research revealed most cytokines associated with immune and inflammatory responses were upregulated during PDCoV infection. Knockout of HSP90AB1 altered the upregulated levels of some cytokines. Taken together, our findings provide new insights into the host response to PDCoV infection from the transcriptome perspective, which will contribute to illustrating the molecular basis of the interaction between PDCoV and HSP90AB1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposed a sustainable method to prepare cellulose I nanocrystals (CNCs I) from microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) in a mildly acidic lithium bromide trihydrate (MALBTH) system, a concentrated (50 wt%) solution of LiBr in water with recyclable formic acid (FA). First, the MCC was treated in the MALBTH system to generate CNCs with a uniform size, yield higher than 68.49% and crystallinity of 84.02%. Then, the CNCs could application for stabilizing Pickering emulsions for at least 15 days. Furthermore, FA was easily recycled from the MALBTH system, and the yield of the CNCs produced from the hydrolysis of MCC by using the recycled FA was still higher than 60%. Finally, this study provided a sustainable and green production of CNCs. A low-cost and environmentally friendly pathway to recover FA from the MALLBTH system at a high yield was still realized. [Display omitted] • Green and economical MALBTH system was developed for CNCs I. • MALBTH is an emerging process for economic production of CNCs I products. • CNCs I had higher yield, crystallinity index and smaller particle size. • The FA displayed good recyclability and stability in this system. • Pickering emulsion stabilized by CNCs I was storage stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reveals that the interannual variability of the western edge of the western North Pacific (WNP) subtropical high (WNPSH) in early summer experienced an interdecadal decrease around 1990. Correspondingly, the zonal movement of the WNPSH and the zonal extension of the high-pressure anomaly over the WNP (WNPHA) in abnormal years possess smaller ranges after 1990. The different influences of the tropical SSTAs are important for this interdecadal change, which exhibit slow El Niño decaying pattern before 1990 while rapid transformation from El Niño to La Niña after 1990. The early summer tropical SSTAs and the relevant atmospheric circulation anomalies present obvious interdecadal differences. Before 1990, the warm SSTAs over the northern Indian Ocean and southern South China Sea favor the WNPHA through eastward-propagating Kelvin wave and meridional-vertical circulation, respectively. Meanwhile, the warm SSTA over the tropical central Pacific induces anomalous ascent to its northwest through the Gill response, which could strengthen the anomalous descent over the WNP through meridional-vertical circulation and further favor the eastward extension of the WNPHA to central Pacific. After 1990, the warm SSTAs over the Maritime Continent and northern Indian Ocean cause the WNPHA through meridional-vertical and zonal-vertical circulation, respectively. Overall, the anomalous warm SSTs and ascent and the resultant anomalous descent over the WNP are located more westward and southward after 1990 than before 1990. Consequently, the WNPHA features narrower zonal range and less eastward extension after 1990, corresponding to the interdecadal decease in the interannual variability of the western edge of the WNPSH. On the other hand, the dominant oscillation period of ENSO experienced an interdecadal reduction around 1990, contributing to the change of the El Niño SSTA associated with the anomalous WNPSH from slow decaying type to rapid transformation type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We successfully prepared a highly effective flame-retardant additive called hsalbenzoguanamine phosphaphenanthrene (HDPD) through salicylaldehyde and nitrogen-rich benzoguanamine. The introduction of HDPD into epoxy resin (EP) sharply enhanced the flame retardancy of EP/HDPD thermosets. The introduction of 6 wt% HDPD into EP succeeded in reaching the V-0 rating. Limited oxygen index results revealed the high flame-retarding performance of HDPD. Cone calorimeter test data revealed that heat and smoke released from EP/6 wt% HDPD thermoset were significantly restrained. In addition, EP/6 wt% HDPD thermoset demonstrated excellent transmittance and mechanical strength. The transmittance of EP/6 wt% HDPD was assessed from 520 to 800 nm. The results showed that transmittance of EP/6 wt% HDPD were nearly 90% of the control group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evapotranspirative (ET) landfill covers release soil moisture stored therein by grass root–water uptake during the drying process. The reduction of soil water content during this process, however, would cause an increase in gas permeability and landfill gas emission. Few studies have focused on the mechanisms of water release and gas emission in ET covers under drying conditions and how different cover configurations might affect the water–gas transport mechanisms. In this study, a series of soil column tests were conducted to investigate the water and gas transport in three configurations of ET covers, namely monolithic cover, two‐layer capillary barrier cover (CBC), and three‐layer CBC. All columns were subjected to the same drying treatment for 42 h followed by the application of a constant gas pressure at the column base. Vertical distributions of pore water pressure, volumetric water content, and pore gas pressure, as well as any gas emission rate from the top of each cover were measured. Compared with the monolithic ET cover, the two‐layer capillary barrier ET cover did not adversely affect the cumulative amount of water release, but the presence of the coarse‐grained layer, which has relatively high gas permeability, caused a higher gas emission rate. In the three‐layer cover, the addition of a low‐permeability layer underneath the capillary barrier effectively minimized gas emission. On the other hand, the upper two‐layer capillary barrier can avoid desiccation cracks of the low‐permeability layer during the drying period. Core Ideas: The water‐release capacity of three ET landfill covers was similar.The presence of a coarse‐grained layer in the ET covers caused a higher gas emission rate.The addition of a low‐permeability layer to the ET covers effectively minimized gas emission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Haploinsufficiency is widely accepted as the pathogenic mechanism of spastic paraplegia type 4 (SPG4). However, there are some cases that cannot be explained by reduced function of the spastin protein encoded by SPAST. Objectives: To identify the causative gene of autosomal dominant hereditary spastic paraplegia in three large Chinese families and explore the pathological mechanism of a spastin variant. Methods: Three large Chinese hereditary spastic paraplegia families with a total of 247 individuals (67 patients) were investigated, of whom 59 members were recruited to the study. Genetic testing was performed to identify the causative gene. Western blotting and immunofluorescence were used to analyze the effects of the mutant proteins in vitro. Results: In the three hereditary spastic paraplegia families, of whom three index cases were misdiagnosed as other types of neurological diseases, a novel c.985dupA (p.Met329Asnfs*3) variant in SPAST was identified and was shown to cosegregate with the phenotype in the three families. The c.985dupA mutation produced two truncated mutants (mutant M1 and M87 isoforms) that accumulated to a higher level than their wild‐type counterparts. Furthermore, the mutant M1 isoform heavily decorated the microtubules and rendered them resistant to depolymerization. In contrast, the mutant M87 isoform was diffusely localized in both the nucleus and the cytoplasm, could not decorate microtubules, and was not able to promote microtubule disassembly. Conclusions: SPAST mutations leading to premature stop codons do not always act through haploinsufficiency. The truncated spastin may damage the corticospinal tracts through an isoform‐specific toxic effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Cervical cancer (CC) is the fourth aggressive tumor affecting women worldwide. Circular RNA (circRNA) is enrolled in CC process. This study aims to unveil the profiles of circ_101119 (circCDK17) in cell proliferation, migration, invasion, apoptosis and glycolysis in CC. Methods: The expression levels of circCDK17, microRNA-1294 (miR-1294) and tyrosine 3-monooxygenase/tryptophan 5-monooxygenase activation protein zeta (YWHAZ) mRNA were detected by quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). The protein expression levels of YWHAZ, recombinant glucose transporter 1 (GLUT1) and hexokinase 2 (HK2) were determined by western blot. Cell proliferation, migratory and invasive abilities and apoptosis were illustrated by cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) assay, transwell assay and flow cytometry analysis, respectively. Cell lactate production, glucose uptake and adenosine 5'-triphosphate (ATP) level were severally elucidated by lactate assay kit, glucose assay kit and ATP detection kit. Results: CircCDK17 expression and the mRNA and protein expression levels of YWHAZ were dramatically upregulated, while miR-1294 expression was obviously downregulated in CC tissues or cells compared with control groups. CircCDK17 silencing suppressed cell proliferation, migration, invasion and glycolysis, and induced cell apoptosis in CC; however, miR-1294 inhibitor restrained these effects. Additionally, circCDK17 was a sponge of miR-1294 and miR-1294 bound to YWHAZ. Furthermore, circCDK17 knockdown inhibited tumor formation in vivo. Conclusion: CircCDK17 knockdown repressed cell proliferation, migration, invasion and glycolysis, and promoted cell apoptosis via miR-1294/YWHAZ axis in CC. This finding provides a theoretical basis in studying circRNA-mediated therapy in CC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel three-dimensional homochiral porous coordination polymer was obtained by combining the luminescent component Eu(III) with an enantiomerically pure semirigid triangular organic ligand derived from (L)-α-leucine. Remarkably, it not only exhibited photoluminescence and fluorescence-based metal ion sensing properties, but also displayed enantioselective adsorption of (R)-and (S)-1-phenylethanamine and (R) and (S)-1-phenylethanol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temperature sensors are indispensable in healthcare, human-machine interface, robotics, and other areas. However, facile and rapid fabrication of flexible temperature sensors with good performance are still required. In this work, a fast-response flexible temperature sensors is fabricated in a facile manner on the basis of laser-reduced graphene oxide(GO) for contactless human-machine interface. The combined effects of the GO concentration and scan line spacing of the laser on the sensitivity of the temperature sensor are investigated systematically. The intrinsic correlation among the two critical process parameters, material properties, and sensor sensitivity is revealed. Results show that the temperature sensor achieves the highest sensitivity of 0.37% °C−1 when the GO concentration is 4 mg/mL and the scan line spacing is 0.12 mm. The temperature sensors fabricated using the optimized process parameter also have a fast response time, good linearity, small hysteresis, good repeatability, and stable performance, and are successfully used to monitor human breathing, blowing, and spatiotemporal temperature variation of a curved surface. The sensors can also detect finger proximity. In addition, a 3 × 3 flexible temperature sensor array is fabricated for contactless unlocking of a code lock. The fabricated array reveals the great potential of the sensors developed in this study for contactless human-machine interface. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interior resonance problem of time domain integral equations (TDIEs) formulated to analyze acoustic field interactions on penetrable objects is investigated. Two types of TDIEs are considered: The first equation, which is termed the time domain potential integral equation (TDPIE), suffers from the interior resonance problem, i.e., its solution is replete with spurious modes that are excited at the resonance frequencies of the acoustic cavity in the shape of the scatterer. Numerical experiments demonstrate that, unlike the frequency-domain integral equations, the amplitude of these modes in the time domain could be suppressed to a level that does not significantly affect the solution. This is achieved by increasing the numerical solution accuracy through the use of a higher-order discretization in space and the band limited approximate prolate spheroidal wave function with high interpolation accuracy as basis function in time. The second equation is obtained by linearly combining TDPIE with its normal derivative. The solution of this equation, which is termed the time domain combined potential integral equation (TDCPIE), does not involve any spurious interior resonance modes but it is not as accurate as the TDPIE solution at non-resonance frequencies. In addition, TDCPIE's discretization calls for treatment of hypersingular integrals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence has been emerging of the importance of long non‐coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in genome instability. However, no study has established how to classify such lncRNAs linked to genomic instability, and whether that connection poses a therapeutic significance. Here, we established a computational frame derived from mutator hypothesis by combining profiles of lncRNA expression and those of somatic mutations in a tumor genome, and identified 185 candidate lncRNAs associated with genomic instability in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). Through further studies, we established a six lncRNA‐based signature, which assigned patients to the high‐ and low‐risk groups with different prognosis. Further validation of this signature was performed in a number of separate cohorts of LUAD patients. In addition, the signature was found closely linked to genomic mutation rates in patients, indicating it could be a useful way to quantify genomic instability. In summary, this research offered a novel method by through which more studies may explore the function of lncRNAs and presented a possible new way for detecting biomarkers associated with genomic instability in cancers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development and practical application of 5G technology, the construction of smart cities has progressed into an entirely new level. Mobile wireless networks in smart cities provide people with ubiquitous network services, thereby making the entire city organic. However, the open character of such wireless networks results in network security issues. As a result, people suffer from potential network threats while enjoying the convenience of wireless networks. To solve this problem, various roaming authentication protocols for mobile network are proposed. We find that a contradiction exists between user anonymity and resistance to denial of service (DoS) attacks. Most current protocols attach importance to user privacy protection. Hence, they are vulnerable to DoS attacks, which cause network paralysis. We put forward an anonymous authentication protocol with DoS resistance for smart cities by overcoming the defects of the protocol of Xie et al. Then, two formal validation tools, namely, ProVerif and BAN logic, are introduced to verify the security of our scheme. Security analyses indicate that our protocol not only meets many known security properties but also shows higher efficiency compared with related works. In addition, the proposed protocol achieves a good balance between user anonymity and DoS attack resistance, while many other schemes failed to do so because they ignore this type of attack. Thus, it is more suitable for smart cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • ZnO/TiO 2 heterojunction was constructed, effectively separating photo-generated carriers. • ZnO should be electrodeposited by CV on high crystallinity TiO 2 nanorods that have been calcined. • Depositing ZnO facilitates rapid electron transfer. • Introducing oxygen-rich vacancy ZnO effectively enhances the photocatalytic performance of TiO 2 photoanode. This study presents a novel approach utilizing a simple, stable, reproducible CV (Cyclic Voltammetry) electrodeposition method to deposit varying amounts of ZnO onto ordered TiO 2 (Rutile) nanorod arrays. Comprehensive investigations were conducted on the morphology, semiconductor band-gap structure of different ZnO/Rutile composites, and their performance in photocatalytic (PC) and photoelectrochemical (PEC) hydrogen production. Results demonstrate that the ZnO/TiO 2 photoanodes fabricated in this manner exhibit outstanding PC/PEC hydrogen production capabilities. Particularly noteworthy is the Z/R-15 photoanode, showcasing superior PEC performance with a photocurrent density 3.5 times higher than that of the pristine TiO 2 photoanode under equivalent conditions. Furthermore, it was observed that depositing ZnO onto highly crystalline, annealed TiO 2 nanorods yields optimal photoelectrical properties. Incorporating oxygen-rich vacancies in ZnO significantly enhances the photoelectrocatalytic performance of TiO 2 photoanodes. The CV electrodeposition method offers valuable insights for developing efficient photocatalytic hydrogen production catalysts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Synthesizing Pt-Cu@CeO 2 /MWCNTs electrocatalysts used for methanol oxidation. • The mass activity of the Pt–Cu@CeO 2 /MWCNTs was 4.40 times that of the Pt–MWCNTs. • Detection of intermediates using in-situ Raman. • Mechanistic analysis was performed using density functional theory calculations. Achieved by introducing defect sites, enhances both the catalytic activity and stability of catalysts. This is crucial for advancing key applications in energy conversion and environmental protection. Here, we introduce a novel Pt-Cu@CeO 2 /MWCNTs electrocatalyst prepared by dual modulation of the oxygen vacancy anchoring point and the center of the alloying d-band. This catalyst significantly boosts the rate of methanol oxidation. The Pt-Cu@CeO 2 /MWCNTs catalyst demonstrates a mass activity 3.7 times higher than that of commercial Pt/C, along with exceptional durability. The electron transfer between the PtCu alloy and the oxygen vacancies effectively modulates the d-band center of Pt, leading to a "volcano" relationship between the catalyst's mass activity and the d-band center. This study advances the development of methanol electrooxidation catalysts by introducing a novel "double enhancement effect" model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Nonisothermal maximal gas conductivity (K g, max) of rooted soils was predicted. • The K g, max was used to predict gas conductivity function (GCF) of rooted soils. • The newly proposed GCF model was validated against the experiment results. In the landfills, the degradation of municipal solid wastes (MSWs) generates greenhouse gases and releases heat (i.e., self-heating). Although vegetation has been commonly found in the landfill cover system, there is no model to predict nonisothermal gas conductivity function (GCF), and how the elevation of temperature would affect gas transport of unsaturated rooted soils remains unknown. This study aims to propose a new model to predict the nonisothermal GCFs of unsaturated rooted soils considering temperature effects on soil thermodynamic properties and soil water retention curves. The newly proposed model was validated against the measured GCFs of unsaturated rooted sandy soil under different temperatures and degrees of saturation (S r) by a tailor-designed experimental apparatus. Test results showed that the gas conductivity (K g) increased by about one order of magnitude with the reductions in S r. There existed a threshold S r (approximately 0.65), above which the gas phase became discontinuous, causing a significant drop in K g. Moreover, K g reduced with increasing temperature, mainly because of increased gas dynamic viscosity; but the preferential path of gas transport induced by root shrinkage due to temperature elevation might counteract these effects to a certain extent. Unlike existing models requiring experimental data at different temperatures, the newly proposed model needs only one set of data measured at ambient temperature. The proposed GCF model could satisfactorily capture the temperature effects on unsaturated rooted soils (with average R2 and average RMSE of 0.903 and 1.88×10−7 m/s, respectively), especially for temperature range less than 323.15 K (50 °C) before potential root death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Naphthalimide with strong conjugation was first introduced into salamo-type compound. • The sensor is capable of relay fluorescence sensing of Cu2+ and CN−. • The process was elucidated by high selectivity, fast response & low detection limit. • Good sensing results were obtained for both Cu2+ and CN− in real water samples. A novel naphthalimide-appended salamo-type fluorescence sensor (E)-2-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde O -(2-((((E)-1-(3-(1,3-dioxo-1H-benzo[de]isoquinolin-2(3H)-yl)-2-hydroxyphenyl)ethylidene)amino)oxy)ethyl) oxime (H 2 L) for continuous identification of copper(II) and cyanide ions was constructed. The sensor H 2 L exhibited relatively high selectivity for Cu2+ in a 1:1 stoichiometric manner, and the increase of Cu2+ led to quenching of blue fluorescence, with a minimum detection limit of 9.37 × 10−9 M. In addition, the complex generated by the sensor H 2 L with Cu2+ could in situ recognize CN−, the L -Cu2+ complex coordinates with CN− in a 1:1 stoichiometric manner and exhibits high selectivity, and the addition of CN− results in enhanced blue fluorescence. The time response and pH effect tests demonstrated the advantages of H 2 L such as fast response for the continuum recognition of Cu2+ with CN− and wide pH test range. Based on the above results, an attempt was made to determine Cu2+ with CN− in spiked environmental water samples with good recoveries. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual water trade (VWT) is the trade of water 'embodied' in a product. This paper explores the extent to which bilateral tariffs, World Trade Organization (WTO), and Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) reshape the trade of water across nations and alleviate water scarcity issues. To achieve this goal, we built a panel database on blue (irrigation water) and green (rainwater) VWT among paired trading countries from 1998 to 2002. Using a standard gravity model, we study how the bilateral tariff and WTO/ RTA affect the intensity of blue and green VWT. The results indicate that, on average, a 1% tariff reduction increases the green virtual water trade by 0.219%. In most waterstressed countries, a 1% reduction in tariffs increased blue VWT by 0.416% and green VWT by 0.424%. By crops, we find that tariffs had a negative effect on VWT for the less water-intensive crops, but a positive effect or no effect on the more water-intensive crops. We further find in the most water-stressed countries, RTA facilitated VWT. As a climate mitigation strategy, water-scarce countries can increase VWT, thus reducing the production of water-intensive crops, by lowering tariff rates independently or through trade agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expanding tunneling has consistently been one of the approaches to enhance the on-state current (I o n) and performance of Tunnel Field-Effect Transistor (TFET). This paper proposes a novel structure for TFET called Step Tunneling Path TFET (STP TFET). The stepped tunneling path is achieved by preparing majority carrier channel and introducing pocket doping layers and lightly doped channel extension regions in the channel. Taking Germanium TFET as an example, the complementary structures, electrical parameters, DC and analog characteristics of STP TFET are investigated. Simulation results demonstrate that, compared to normal TFET, STP TFET exhibits significant improvements in I o n (n-TFET ∼ 18/p-TFET ∼ 45 times), cut-off frequency (n-TFET ∼ 6/p-TFET ∼ 16 times), Gain Bandwidth Product enhancement (n-TFET ∼ 22/p-TFET ∼ 16 times), and Transconductance Frequency Product enhancement (n-TFET ∼ 3/p-TFET ∼ 15 times). Furthermore, in the C-TFET inverter, the transient rise and fall times have decreased by 149 and 199 ns, respectively, while the voltage gain has increased by 6.7 times. The proposed device shows promising potential for applications in high-speed and low-power circuit designs. • By incorporating a pocket,the conventional point tunneling is enhanced to step tunneling.The on-state current of the TFETs is boosted. • The partially depleted operation mechanism enables STP-TFETs to obtain larger currents at lower gate voltages. • The lightly doping channel expansion region is used to eliminate the off state current deterioration caused by the large gate metal work function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Web crawler detection is critical for preventing unauthorized extraction of valuable information from websites. Current methods rely on heuristics, leading to time-consuming processes and inability to detect novel crawlers. Privacy protection and communication burdens during training are overlooked, resulting in potential privacy leaks. To address these issues, we propose a federated deep learning crawler detection model that analyzes access behaviors while preserving privacy. First, individual clients locally host website data, while the central server aggregates information for detection model parameters, eliminating raw user data transmission or access. We then develop an innovative algorithm constructing access path trees from user logs, effectively extracting temporal and spatial behavior features. Additionally, we propose a novel time series model with fused additive attention, enabling effective web crawler detection while preserving privacy and reducing data transmission. Finally, comprehensive evaluations on public datasets demonstrate robust privacy protection and effective detection of emerging crawler types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fire dynamics simulator (FDS) and Smokeview 3D (SMV) were used to recreate a fire disaster that occurred in Chiayi City, Taiwan, on May 02, 2012. The two buildings involved were traditional wooden constructions; however, one was repaired, and the roof was rebuilt with asbestos shingles and iron sheets. This study sought to verify the existing fire accident report and witness statements. A summary of relevant literature on the topic was provided to determine the optimal settings for the simulation and shortlist other influential factors from the current relevant reports. Furthermore, relevant parameters, such as the total heat release rate was 3000 kW of the fire source, the fire growing factor was 0.188 kW s−2, the mesh size parameters were 0.0–2.0 m on the x-axis, 0.0–5.0 m on the y-axis, and 0.0–5.0 m on the z-axis. Meanwhile, four different nominal sizes, namely 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, and 0.25, were also tested in the simulation to find the suitable simulation result when other parameter data were fixed and D* was divided by the nominal size, 0.1, with 14.62 yielded at least. The simulation results were compared with the fire accident report and witness statements. The area presumed as the initial ignition place in which the fire commenced to advance between the two buildings was not considered in the original fire accident report, and the simulation showed that this was fair and reasonable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capturing dynamic preference features from user historical behavioral data is widely applied to improve the accuracy of recommendations in sequential recommendation tasks. However, existing deep neural network-based sequential recommendation methods often ignore the noise information in user behavioral data that influence recommendation effectiveness, making recommendation models sensitive to noisy data. Additionally, these deep learning-based recommendation models often require a large number of parameters to capture user behavior patterns, leading to higher time complexity and susceptibility to overfitting due to noise fluctuations. To address these issues, in this paper, we apply the moving average concept from the field of time-series analysis to sequential recommendation tasks. The approach smooths sequence data, removes noise, making the data more stable and reliable, increases the model’s insensitivity to noise information, and better understands the evolution of user interests and behavioral patterns. Specifically, in our experiments, the moving average algorithm effectively denoises sequential data with low time complexity. Therefore, we propose a Sequential Recommendation with Exponential Moving Average with MLP architecture that makes the model more competitive in terms of time complexity. Experimental results conducted on two datasets demonstrate that EMARec outperforms state-of-the-art sequential recommendation methods across various common evaluation metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-performance metasurface polarization manipulation components have important applications in the fields of polarization imaging, polarization detection, and communication. Single-layered metasurface components have attracted a great deal of interest, but it is still a challenge to realize high-efficiency and dynamic polarization manipulation. Combined with coherent control techniques, we propose a single-layered hollowed S-shaped metasurface design that may accomplish multi-wavelength polarization switching in the optical to near-infrared band. The single-layered metasurface enables a real-time switchable effect between dual-wavelength and single-wavelength polarization properties by controlling the phase difference between two coherent counter-propagating lights. The physical mechanism of switchable multi-wavelength coherent polarization manipulation is elucidated based on the electric field distribution of the hollowed S-shaped structure. The effect of metal layer thickness on the switchable coherent polarization properties is investigated in detail. The proposed hollowed S-shaped metasurface significantly improves the polarization performance of the single-layered structure, which is expected to facilitate the development of switchable and compact polarization components. • We numerically demonstrated a multi-wavelength polarization switching in a single-layered hollowed S-shaped metasurface. • The polarization switching properties result from the interaction between the metasurface and the standing wave. • The proposed metasurface is expected to facilitate the development of switchable and compact polarization components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A portable NIRS quantification of 6-gingerol in ginger powder was developed. • Real ginger powder from different geographical origins were modeled and recognized. • NIRS analysis of ginger can be considered not just in lab but also at casual inspection. Ginger powder is an important spice that is susceptible to improper sales such as adulteration or geographical fraud. In this study, a portable near infrared spectroscopy was used to quantitatively predict the 6-gingerol content, an important quality index of ginger, as well as to identify the gingers from three origins in China. Specifically, the optimal preprocessing method was first investigated by comparing the predictions of models. Then three feature variable selection methods including PCA, CARS, and RFrog, on the quantitative analysis of 6-gingerol were also compared, respectively. After comparison, the PLS model established on the S-G combined with SNV preprocessing outperformed the others. The PLS regression of 6-gingerol with variables selected by RFrog possessed the R c 2 of 0.9463, R p 2 of 0.9497, and the RPD of 4.2257, respectively. Moreover, the results further verified that the LDA model by SPA variables extraction successfully identify gingers from different origins with 100 % accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Particulate of diameter ≤ 1 µm (PM 1) presents a novel risk factor of adverse health effects. Nevertheless, the association of PM 1 with the risk of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in the general population is not well understood, particularly in regions with high PM 1 levels like China. Based on a nationwide representative survey involving 47,204 adults and multi-source ambient air pollution inversion data, the present study evaluated the association of PM 1 with CKD prevalence in China. The two-year average PM 1 , particulate of diameter ≤ 2.5 µm (PM 2.5), and PM 1–2.5 values were accessed using a satellite-based random forest approach. CKD was defined as estimated glomerular filtration rate < 60 ml/min/1.73 m2 or albuminuria. The results suggested that a 10 μg/m3 rise in PM 1 was related to a higher CKD risk (odds ratio [OR], 1.13; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.08–1.18) and albuminuria (OR, 1.11; 95% CI, 1.05–1.17). The association between PM 1 and CKD was more evident among urban populations, older adults, and those without comorbidities such as diabetes or hypertension. Every 1% increase in the PM 1 /PM 2.5 ratio was related to the prevalence of CKD (OR, 1.03; 95% CI, 1.03–1.04), but no significant relationship was found for PM 1–2.5. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated long-term exposure to PM 1 was associated with an increased risk of CKD in the general population and PM 1 might play a leading role in the observed relationship of PM 2.5 with the risk of CKD. These findings provide crucial evidence for developing air pollution control strategies to reduce the burden of CKD. [Display omitted] • Long-term exposure to PM 1 was associated with an increased risk of CKD. • PM1 may play a leading role in the association between PM 2.5 and CKD risks. • CKD risks still increased at PM 1 concentrations below the Chinese standards for PM. • Urban population, the elderly, and those without comorbidities were more vulnerable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A highly selective and sensitive fluorescence sensor, using the decision tree (DT) machine learning, was successfully fabricated for the quantitative detection of Cu2+, which is based on near-infrared carbonized polymer dots (r-CPDs). Using o-phenylenediamine and 1,3,5-benzene tricarboxylic acid as raw materials first to synthesize the r-CPDs (quantum yield of 32.9%), which pyrrole NH ring can specifically form metal chelates with Cu2+ hiding the electron leap result in the fluorescence burst, by a one-step hydrothermal synthesis method. Furthermore, the fluorescence sensor based on the r-CPDs was fabricated for ultra-sensitively detect Cu2+ in the range of 0.5–80.0 nM (R2 =0.9986) in aqueous environments and aquatic products with relative standard deviation (RSD) below 4.4% and a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.24 nM. Combined with the machine learning algorithm model, the r-CPDs fluorescence color changes accompanied by different Cu2+ concentrations were classified. A self-developed smartphone application equipped with 3D printing technology to prepare portable cartridges successfully applied to rapid real-time detection of trace Cu2+ in various practical samples. The experimental results show that the method has not only convenient for calculating but also accurate. Generally, this study displayed a perfect fusion of r-CPDs fluorescence sensors with machine learning which applied to the determination of Cu2+ in environmental and aquatic products. [Display omitted] • r-CPDs with a high quantum yield of 32.9% enable visual detection traces of Cu2+. • Machine learning trained accurately extracts fluorescence colors of Cu2+ detection. • A dark box coupled with the smartphone app is used to detect Cu2+ in real samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• AlN thermal conductive skeletons for PCMs are prepared by a simple method. • All composites show good shape stability. • The composite has a high thermal conductivity of 9.1 W m−1 K−1 in the axial direction. • The composite exhibits an enthalpy value of 105 J g−1 and good thermal stability. Organic phase change materials (PCMs) suffer from low thermal conductivity and easy leakage, which limit their application in heat storage and thermal management. In this work, porous AlN skeletons were synthesized to solve these problems of paraffin PCM. Using Al powders as raw material, porous AlN skeletons were prepared through the ice-templated method and the direct nitridation reaction. The skeletons were impregnated with paraffin to prepare phase change composites (PCCs). The thermal conductivity of the PCC with 55.6 wt% AlN reaches 9.1 W m−1 K−1 in the axial direction, which is 4550 % of paraffin. This PCC retains a high enthalpy of 105 J g−1 and has good thermal stability. Moreover, the porous AlN skeletons can effectively absorb paraffin so that all PCCs maintain a stable shape. This study provides a simple and efficient method to synthesize porous AlN and to solve the heat conduction and leakage issues of PCMs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Processed meat products could constitute a relevant source of cadmium (Cd) and other toxic elements in the diet as they could contain organ meats (e.g. kidneys, liver) known to accumulate metals. Additionally, these products could be contaminated due to metal transfer from the machinery during processing and, in the case of canned meats, metal migration from the container could also occur. We analyzed Cd together with arsenic (As), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), tin (Sn) and zinc (Zn) in heavily processed meat products from low, medium, and high-cost US supermarkets (n = 75). These elements were analyzed using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and the results were expressed on a wet weight basis. The limits of detection (LOD) for the elements analyzed were: 2.8 μg/kg for As, 0.46 μg/kg for Cd, 2.3 μg/kg for Cr, 7.0 μg/kg for Cu, 41 μg/kg for Fe, 2.4 μg/kg for Ni, 0.83 μg/kg for Pb and 4.3 μg/kg for Sn and 5.6 μg/kg for Zn. Cd was detected in the vast majority of the samples presenting an overall median (IQR) concentration of 3.71 (2.10, 5.34) μg/kg. The products with the highest median Cd concentrations were beef franks and pork cheese sausages from the low-cost supermarket, while spam (from the low and medium-cost supermarkets) presented the lowest. The elements As, Sn and Pb were mainly undetectable. Cr and Ni were detected in most of the samples displaying overall median (IQR) concentrations of 18.39 (8.26, 36.18) μg/kg and 22.25 (12.66, 54.85) μg/kg, respectively. Cu, Fe and Zn were detectable in all the samples with overall median (IQR) concentrations of 312 (235, 493) μg/kg, 10.84 (7.36, 13.57) mg/kg and 13.73 (11.42, 18.12) mg/kg, respectively. Metal composition of these products does not evidence addition of organ meat nor Cd contamination during processing. Metal migration in canned meat (spam) is also unlikely. All processed meat samples presented metal concentrations below the maximum levels set by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations/World Health Organization (FAO/WHO) and the European Union (EU). The estimated Cd intake due to the consumption of these products represented a minimal percentage of the tolerable weekly intake (TWI). Processed meat products from the low and medium-cost supermarkets generally had higher levels of Cd and, in similar products, lower levels of Fe and Zn than those from the high-cost supermarket. • As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Ni, Pb, Sn and Zn were analyzed in processed meat from the USA. • Cd was generally detectable but lower than international maximum levels. • Cd exposure from these products represented a minimal percentage of tolerable intake. • It is unlikely that Cd comes from offal addition or metal transfer during processing. • Products from low/medium-cost supermarkets had higher Cd and lower Fe and Zn levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of advanced hydrogel scaffolds with good biocompatibility, mechanical strength and bioactive property is highly desirable in cell growth, proliferation, and differentiation for the cartilage tissue regeneration. Herein, we reported a simple, inexpensive, feasible, and environmentally benign strategy to synthesize a biocompatible polyethylene glycol-based methacrylate-modified chitosan (PCSMA) double network (DN) hydrogel via the reversible Schiff base reaction and successive photopolymerization between the tetra-poly (ethylene glycol) aldehyde (Tetra-PEG-CHO) and methacrylate-modified chitosan (CSMA) in mild conditions. The four-terminated CHO groups were hypothesized to not only construct the whole architectural network through the dynamic pH-responsive Schiff base but also contribute to the injectable behavior and good tissue adhesion, which may furnish the surgeon with the availability of injectable and shapeless ability to fill in the gaps. Compared to the single PCS hydrogel with the main similar components of the tetra-PEG-CHO and pure CS moieties, the post-fabrication of PCSMA DN hydrogel possessed slower degradation time, denser network, and stronger mechanical stability, which could facilitate the bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell (BMSCs) activity and promote the chondrogenic differentiation for facilitating cartilage regeneration. Our study highlights the positive effects on chondrogenic performance and supports the PCSMA hydrogel as a promising tissue-engineered scaffold for the cartilage defect repair. • A using simple, inexpensive, and environmentally benign strategy is used for preparation of high-performance DN hydrogel. • An injectable hydrogel is developed with sensitive pH response and tailorable sol-gel transition. • DN hydrogel possesses favorable morphological structure, adhesive strength and degradation behavior. • DN hydrogel can promote cell growth, proliferation and chondrogenic differentiation for cartilage repair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polyaromatic benzo[ a ]pyrene (B[ a ]P) is a toxic carcinogenic environmental pollutant, and the use of microorganisms to remediate B[ a ]P contamination is considered to be one of the most effective strategies. However, there is still a gap in studying the metabolic remodeling of microorganisms under B[ a ]P stress. In this study, our systematically investigated the effects of B[ a ]P on the metabolism of Bacillus subtilis MSC4 based on transcriptomic, molecular and biochemical analyses. The results showed that in response to B[ a ]P stress, MSC4 formed more biofilm matrix and endospores, the structure of the endospores also was changed, which led to a reduction in their resistance and made them more difficult to germinate. In addition to an increase in glycolysis activity, the activities of tricarboxylic acid cycle, pentose phosphate pathway and the electron transport chain were decreased. B[ a ]P stress forced MSC4 to strengthen arginine synthesis, urea cycle, and urea decomposition, meanwhile, synthesize more ribonucleotides. The activity of DNA replication, transcription activities and the expression of multiple ribosomal protein genes were reduced. Moreover, all of the reported enzymes involved in B[ a ]P degradation showed decreased transcript abundance, and the degradation of B[ a ]P caused significant up-regulation of the gene expression of the acid inducible enzyme OxdC and the synthesis of acetoin. In addition, the cytotoxicity of B[ a ]P to bacteria was directly displayed in four aspects: increased intracellular level of reactive oxygen species (ROS), elevated cell membrane permeability, up-regulation of the cell envelope stress-sensing two-component system LiaRS, and downregulation of siderophores biosynthesis. Finally, B[ a ]P also caused morphological changes in the cells, with some cells exhibiting significant deformation and concavity. These findings provide effective research directions for targeted improvement the cellular activity of B[ a ]P-degrading strains, and is beneficial for further application of microorganisms to remediate B[ a ]P -contaminated soils. [Display omitted] • B[ a ]P stress changed cell morphology and structure, increased ROS levels and cell membrane permeability. • Overall, the central carbon metabolic activity and the activity of Electron transport chain decreased under B[ a ]P stress. • B[ a ]P stress increased pyruvate to make the intracellular pH acidic, up-regulation of oxdC in response to this change. • Under B[ a ]P stress, the main destinations of pyruvate were the formation of lactic acid and acetoin. • Under B[ a ]P stress, the synthesis of nucleotide and arginine were up-regulated, urea cycle was more active. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The composite films boast superior mechanical properties over BC and CS films. • The composite films show efficient sterilization efficiency via CS and AIEgens. • The films extend beef shelf life, guiding new packaging material development. Food packaging is now widely used in everyday life to protect food from certain environmental factors. In this work, we have successfully prepared a bacterial cellulose/chitosan-TPE-COOH composite film (BC/CS-TPE), which can achieve broad-spectrum killing of bacteria through a variety of antibacterial mechanisms and ensure the freshness of the beef. In this complex film, CS acts as "advance team", responsible for breaking through the cell wall or outer membrane of bacteria, while the reactive oxygen species produced by photosensitizer under irradiation attacks bacteria, further increasing the destructive effect on the bacterial cell membrane. This allows the film to have outstanding antibacterial properties that can kill 108 CFU/mL pathogens in 10 min. At the same time, cell experiments and hemolysis experiments proved that the film has good biocompatibility. Therefore, BC/CS-TPE film, as the efficient functional food packaging film, has a broad future application prospect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to investigate the interaction effect between the transient wear behavior and the lubrication characteristics of the main bearing in low-speed diesel engine under the actual working condition, a coupling model of mixed elastohydrodynamic transient lubrication and time-varying wear is constructed. The transient lubrication model considering the journal misalignment and elastic-plastic asperity contact is used to consider the lubrication characteristics of the main bearing. The wear mechanism of the main bearing material (Babbitt alloy) is found to be surface fatigue wear mainly by the experiments under the equivalent lubrication state, thus the wear model is based on the fatigue damage theory. Several experiments were conducted to verify the accuracy of the coupled model. It is found that the wear gradually increases with increases with wear time, and meanwhile, the lubrication characteristics also change with the wear status. In addition, the effect of the parameters including radius clearance, rotation speed, journal misalignment and bearing loads on the properties of lubrication and wear were investigated. This work would provide practical support for the investigation of wear and lubrication behavior under actual low-speed diesel engine operation. • A coupling analysis model of mixed elastohydrodynamic transient lubrication and time-varying wear of the main bearing under actual dynamic load was established. • The wear mechanism of the main bearing material is found to be surface fatigue wear mainly by the experiments under the equivalent lubrication state of actual condition in low-speed diesel engine. • The verifications of axis orbit, friction coefficient and wear depth indicate the accuracy of the coupling model. • The improvement of bearing lubrication performance after stable wear under actual working conditions was revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A sum-of-redundancy index is introduced to enable the development of a variable-layering approach. • The variable-layering approach is used to identify the sequential impact of process variables during disturbances. • Granger causality tests within and between layers help reveal fault propagation paths. The Granger causality (GC) test is a widely utilized method for diagnosing process disturbances' root cause. However, its effectiveness is limited due to the challenge of handling variable redundancy, leading to potentially inaccurate results. To tackle this problem, this paper introduces a new redundancy detection technique incorporated into the GC test framework. The method introduces a sum-of-redundancy index, enabling the development of a variable-layering approach to identify the sequential impact of process variables during disturbances. Furthermore, a hierarchical analysis framework is established, within which GC tests are applied both within and between layers, effectively revealing the propagation paths of process disturbances. Case studies conducted on a benchmark simulation process demonstrate the enhanced accuracy and feasibility of the proposed framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-modal hashing has attracted significant attention in multimedia data similarity given its appealing computational cost and retrieval performance. Supervised hashing benefits from the auxiliary learning of a similarity matrix, which is usually predefined by inner product features or category labels. However, a predefined similarity matrix fails to reflect the real similarity relationship between image-text pairs. In addition, existing methods fix the weights to a value or update them by introducing sensitive dataset-related hyper-parameters. To overcome these problems, we propose a method to perform supervised adaptive similarity consistent latent representation hashing (SCLRH) that adaptively learns the similarity matrix during hashing learning. In SCLRH, we assume that multimodal data are observed and reconstructed from different perspectives of a common consistent latent representation. Instead of using a predefined similarity matrix, SCLRH adaptively learns this matrix to reflect the underlying manifold structure and describes the fine-grained similarity between consistent latent representations. In addition, SCLRH introduces a self-weighted learning strategy to update the weights based on the contributions of different modalities without involving additional hyper-parameters. Experimental results on three benchmark datasets demonstrate the superiority of the proposed SCLRH for cross-modal retrieval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate estimation of potential wildfire behavior characteristics (PWBC) can improve wildfire danger assessment. However, wildfire behavior has been estimated by most fire spread models with immeasurable uncertainties and difficulties in large-scale applications. In this study, a PWBC estimation model (named PWBC-QR-BiLSTM) was proposed by coupling the Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) and quantile regression (QR) methods. Multi-source data, including fuel, weather, topography, infrastructure, and landscape variables, were input into the PWBC-QR-BiLSTM model to estimate the potential rate of spread (ROS) and fire radiative power (FRP) over western Sichuan of China, and then to estimate the probability density of ROS and FRP. Daily ROS and FRP were extracted from the Global Fire Atlas and the MOD14A1/MYD14A1 product. The optimal PWBC-QR-BiLSTM model was determined using the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm Ⅱ (NAGA-Ⅱ). Results showed that the PWBC-QR-BiLSTM performed well in estimating potential ROS and FRP with high accuracy (ROS: R2 > 0.7 and MAPE<30%, FRP: R2 > 0.8 and MAPE<25%). The modal PWBC values extracted from the estimated probability density were closer to the observed values, which can be regarded as a good indicator for wildfire danger assessment. The variable importance analysis also verified that fuel and infrastructure variables played an important role in driving wildfire behavior. This study suggests the potential of utilizing artificial intelligence to estimate PWBC and its probability density to improve the guidance on wildfire management. • An excellent deep learning-based model was built to estimate potential wildfire behavior characteristics. • Fuel characteristics affect fire spread rate, and prefire dead fuel moisture was key to potential fire intensity modeling. • Probability density of potential wildfire behavior characteristics was robustly estimated to describe their uncertainties. • Modal wildfire behavior characteristics can better indicate wildfire danger according to the estimated probability density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work tends to research the stability of the discrete-time systems with a time-varying delay based on the Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional (LKF) method. In order to acquire a less conservative stability criterion, some techniques in this work are refined and taken into use. Firstly, to reduce the conservatism generated when estimating the forward difference of the LKF, a newly delay-variation-dependent summation inequality is constructed, which includes the existing free-matrix-based and Bessel function-based summation inequalities, using delay-variation-product relaxed matrices to provide more freedom for the estimation results. Secondly, to further show the influence of the introduced variation information in the time-varying delay, we give another selection of the allowable delay set for the delayed discrete-time systems. Thirdly, by taking advantages of the above method and by constructing a delay-product-type LKF, using extended free-weighting-matrices zero equations, and considering different allowable delay sets, two improved linear matrix inequality (LMI)-based delay-variation-dependent criteria for delayed discrete-time systems are formulated. Some classical numerical instances are presented to explain the effectiveness of these proposed stability criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We would like to submit the manuscript entitled "High-order relational generative adversarial network for video super-resolution", which we wish to be considered as a research article for publication in "Pattern Recognition". Because our contributed research covers the area" Image processing and representation", this manuscript belongs in this journal. No conflict of interest exits in the submission of this manuscript, and manuscript is approved by all authors for publication. • Both the instability of motion compensation and feature aggregation often undermine the SR results of videos. Only the global spatio-temporal dependencies of same scale features are considered as one-order relations, with difficulty in handling the complex motions and context variations. To deal with these issues, we argue that high-order relations should be modelled and applied in the generative strategies to exploit feature alignments and long-range information fusion. In fact, the high-order relations mean that the dependencies of features among pixel positions are mined not only from global feature representations but also through local patch interactions. Moreover, the stronger relations can be further revealed across different scales, by which the aggregation weight matrices with high-order statistics are adaptively determined. The videos are regarded as the complementary fusion of motion and context. Thus, simultaneously capturing the underlying relations of the motion and context is the key to video SR. In this paper, we propose a high-order relational generative adversarial network (HOR-GAN) for accurate video SR, which has strong capacity of alleviating the erroneous motion compensation and merging the useful information among the consecutive frames. • In summary, we highlight the main contributions of this paper as follows: We propose a HOR-GAN framework for highly accurate and realistic video SR. By exploiting high-order relations of feature patches under the construction of the pyramid graphs, the proposed HOR-GAN works well to produce a better feature alignment and fuse more spatio-temporal information. We adopt the dual discriminators to provide spatially coherent feedback to the generator, thus making the generator focus more on fine-grained features. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been justified through the extensive experiments. • We design a motion-aware relation module to accurately align neighboring frames with the reference ones. In this module, a patch-wise matching strategy is first used to build cross-scale correspondences of similar patches. The graph attention layers then adaptively aggregate the local patch features to further decrease the alignment error. We develop a context-aware relation module to make full use of high-order dependencies among all warped feature patches. We introduce the multi-scale graph convolution layers to mine contextual interaction relations for better fusing the spatio-temporal features, in which the position information is encoded to augment the detail recovery. Finally, each pixel is enhanced via a global self-attention. • We deeply appreciate your consideration of our manuscript, and we look forward to receiving comments from the reviewers. If you have any queries, please don't hesitate to contact me. Yours sincerely, Rui Chen Video super-resolution can reconstruct a sequence of high-resolution frames with temporally consistent contents from their corresponding low-resolution sequences. The key challenge for this task is how to effectively utilize both inter-frame temporal relations and intra-frame spatial relations. The existing methods for super-resolving the videos commonly estimate optical flows to align the features of multiple frames based on temporal correlations. However, motion estimation is often error-prone and hence largely hinders the recovery of plausible details. Moreover, high-order contextual dependencies in the feature space are rarely exploited for further enhancing the spatio-temporal information fusion. To this end, we propose a novel generative adversarial network to super-resolve low-resolution videos, which makes full use of patch embeddings and is effective in exploring high-order spatio-temporal relations of the feature patches. Specifically, a motion-aware relation module is designed to handle the alignment between neighboring frames and reference ones. Depending on a patch-matching strategy for adaptive selection of multiple most similar patches, the cross-scale graph is constructed to reliably aggregate these patches using a feature pyramid. Based on the structure of multi-scale graph, a context-aware relation module is developed to capture high-order dependencies among resulting warped patches for better leveraging long-range complementary contexts. To further enhance reconstruction ability, the temporal position information of video sequences is also encoded into this module. Dual discriminators with cycle consistent constraints are adopted to provide more informative feedback to the generator while maintaining the global coherence. Extensive experiments have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of quantitative and qualitative evaluation metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• T-shaped CFST column to U-shaped steel composite beam joints were tested under cyclic loads. • The joints with side plate connection showed plastic hinge damage at the beam ends. • The setting of truss reinforcement within the U-shaped steel beam could effectively improve the ductility of the member. • The design methods for the bending capacity of the joints have been proposed. U-shaped steel-concrete composite beams have the advantages of high bearing capacity, excellent fire resistance and quick construction, when it is used with special-shaped concrete-filled steel tube columns could achieve the architectural effect of no exposed beams and columns in the interior, showing great application potential in residential buildings. In this study, three full-scale T-shaped CFST column to U-shaped steel composite beam joints with different configurations were tested under cyclic loads. The damage modes, and hysteresis performance of the joint were discussed in detail. The test results indicated that the three joints with side plate connection all showed plastic hinge damage at the beam ends of which hysteresis curves show bowed shape, with excellent energy dissipation. The setting of truss reinforcement within the U-shaped steel beam could effectively improve the ductility of the member. Based on the validated finite element model, the effects of side plate configuration, the side plate position, and tube wall thickness on the seismic performance of the joints are investigated. The design methods for the bending capacity of the joints have also been proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intermediate neural progenitors (INPs) boost the number and diversity of neurons generated from neural stem cells (NSCs) by undergoing transient proliferation. In the developing Drosophila brains, INPs are generated from type II neuroblasts (NBs). In order to maintain type II NB identity and their capability to produce INPs, the proneural protein Asense (Ase) needs to be silenced by the Ets transcription factor pointed P1 (PntP1), a master regulator of type II NB development. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the PntP1-mediated suppression of Ase is still unclear. In this study, we utilized genetic and molecular approaches to determine the transcriptional property of PntP1 and identify the direct downstream effector of PntP1 and the cis-DNA elements that mediate the suppression of ase. Our results demonstrate that PntP1 directly activates the expression of the transcriptional repressor, Tailless (Tll), by binding to seven Ets-binding sites, and Tll in turn suppresses the expression of Ase in type II NBs by binding to two hexameric core half-site motifs. We further show that Tll provides positive feedback to maintain the expression of PntP1 and the identity of type II NBs. Thus, our study identifies a novel direct target of PntP1 and reveals mechanistic details of the specification and maintenance of the type II NB identity by PntP1. Author summary: Type II neuroblasts (NBs) are the neural stem cells (NSCs) in Drosophila central brains that produce neurons by generating intermediate neural progenitors (INPs) to boost brain complexity, as mammalian NSCs do during the development of neocortex. The key to the generation of INPs from type II NBs is the suppression of proneural protein Asense (Ase) in type II NBs by the Ets family transcription factor Pointed P1 (PntP1), but how PntP1 suppresses Ase expression remains unclear. In this study, we provided evidence to demonstrate that PntP1 directly activates the orphan nuclear receptor Tailless (Tll), which in turn suppresses Ase expression to maintain the capability of type II NBs to produce INPs. Meanwhile, Tll provides positive feedback to maintain the expression of PntP1 and type II NB identity. We further identified seven PntP1 binding sites in the tll enhancer regions and two Tll binding sites in the ase regulatory regions that mediate the activation of tll and the suppression of ase, respectively. Our work reveals detailed mechanisms of the specification and maintenance of the type II NB identity by PntP1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This research aimed to explore the association between the RIG-I-like receptor (RIG-I and MDA5 encoded by DDX58 and IFIH1, respectively) pathways and the risk or severity of hand, foot, and mouth disease caused by enterovirus 71 (EV71-HFMD). In this context, we explored the influence of gene methylation and polymorphism on EV71-HFMD. Methodology/Principal findings: 60 healthy controls and 120 EV71-HFMD patients, including 60 mild EV71-HFMD and 60 severe EV71-HFMD patients, were enrolled. First, MiSeq was performed to explore the methylation of CpG islands in the DDX58 and IFIH1 promoter regions. Then, DDX58 and IFIH1 expression were detected in PBMCs using RT-qPCR. Finally, imLDR was used to detect DDX58 and IFIH1 single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotypes. Severe EV71-HFMD patients exhibited higher DDX58 promoter methylation levels than healthy controls and mild EV71-HFMD patients. DDX58 promoter methylation was significantly associated with severe HFMD, sex, vomiting, high fever, neutrophil abundance, and lymphocyte abundance. DDX58 expression levels were significantly lower in mild patients than in healthy controls and lower in severe patients than in mild patients. Binary logistic regression analysis revealed statistically significant differences in the genotype frequencies of DDX58 rs3739674 between the mild and severe groups. GeneMANIA revealed that 19 proteins displayed correlations with DDX58, including DHX58, HERC5, MAVS, RAI14, WRNIP1 and ISG15, and 19 proteins displayed correlations with IFIH1, including TKFC, IDE, MAVS, DHX58, NLRC5, TSPAN6, USP3 and DDX58. Conclusions/Significance: DDX58 expression and promoter methylation were associated with EV71 infection progression, especially in severe EV71-HFMD patients. The effect of DDX58 in EV71-HFMD is worth further attention. Author summary: EV71-HFMD is now prevalent in many Asia countries, including China, which caused a lot of death over the last few years. Therefore, it's important to distinguish patients with a severe tendency. In this research, we investigated the association between the epigenetic mechanisms of RIG-I-like pattern recognition receptors (DDX58 and IFIH1) and EV71-HFMD. It showed that children with higher level of DDX58 promoter methylation were related to severe EV71-HFMD and other clinical indicators. The DDX58 mRNA expression level was significantly lower in severe patients. Besides, DDX58 polymorphisms played an important role in the severity of EV71-HFMD. Therefore, various epigenetic biomarkers of DDX58 may be used as indicators to help clinicians identify EV71-HFMD patients with a tendency towards severity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stabilized bismuth oxide material with fluorite structure (δ-Bi2O3) has been studied as a promising electrolyte material for intermediate temperature solid oxide fuel cells (IT-SOFCs) due to its high oxygen ion conductivity in mediate temperature. Especially, the ternary system Bi2O3-Er2O3-WO3 is widely concerned for its high ionic conductivity and thermal stability. In this study, regarding its low melting point, the possibility to deposit dense Bi2O3-Er2O3-WO3 ((Bi2O3)0.705 (Er2O3)0.245 (WO3)0.05, EWSB) electrolyte by plasma spraying was examined. It was confirmed that the sintered EWSB bulk presents a high ion conductivity of 0.34 S cm−1 at 750 °C and excellent stability that indicates no structure transformation and conductivity degradation after annealing at 600 °C for 1000 h. The phase structure and cross-sectional microstructure of plasma-sprayed EWSB were characterized by XRD and SEM. Results showed that the as-plasma-sprayed EWSB presents a dense microstructure with well bonded lamellae. The XRD showed the formation of EWSB with δ-phase and a trace of β-phase, while the β-phase disappeared after annealing at 750 °C for 10 h. The deposited EWSB electrolyte presented the excellent ionic conductivity of 0.26 S cm−1 at 750 °C which can be directly applied to SOFC at intermediate temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methamphetamine (METH) is an illicit amphetamine-like psychostimulant that is commonly abused. However, the modulation of METH-induced cardiac microvascular permeability is still not completely known. Previously, we discovered that the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) regulated the cardiotoxicity produced by METH. In this work, we looked into the effect of METH exposure on cardiac microvascular permeability via the VEGF-PI3K-Akt-eNOS signaling pathway, as well as the efficacy of Bevacizumab treatment in reducing this effect. The findings revealed that METH exposure enhanced cardiac microvascular permeability while also activating the VEGF-PI3K-Akt-eNOS signaling pathway. Furthermore, treatment with Bevacizumab has been shown to be effective in reversing the METH-induced phenomena. Briefly stated, our research may provide fresh insight into the molecular underpinnings of METH-induced cardiac microvascular permeability, and it may also provide evidence for a relationship between METH misuse and Bevacizumab medication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]