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Tea can improve the progression of some metabolic diseases through anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, but its impact on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is still controversial. The aim of this paper is to identify the relationship between tea and NAFLD by Mendelian randomisation (MR) and complete clinical validation using National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) database. MR used data from Genome Wide Association Study, with inverse-variance weighted (IVW) as principal analytical methods. The reliability of the results was verified by a series of sensitivity and heterogeneity tests. Subsequently, clinical validation was conducted using NHANES (2005–2018), involving 22 257 participants, grouped by the type of tea. Green tea drinkers were categorised into four groups (Q1–Q4) by quartiles of green tea intake, from lowest to highest (similar for black tea drinkers and other tea drinkers). Models were constructed by logistic regression to estimate the role of tea consumption (Q1–4) on NAFLD. Finally, using fibrosis-4 index (FIB-4) to evaluate the severity of hepatic fibrosis, the effect of tea consumption (Q1–4) on the degree of hepatic fibrosis was investigated by linear regression. IVW method (OR = 0·43, 95 % CI: 0·21, 0·85, P = 0·01) and weighted median method (OR = 0·35, 95 % CI: 0·14, 0·91, P = 0·03) revealed there was a causal relationship between tea and NAFLD. An array of sensitivity analyses validated the reliability of results. Analysis of NHANES indicated tea drinker present a slightly lower prevalence of NAFLD than non-tea drinker (green tea drinkers: 47·6 %, black tea drinkers: 46·3 %, other tea drinker: 43·2 %, non-tea drinkers: 48·1 %, P < 0·05). After adjusting for confounders, compared with the lowest black tea consumption (Q1), the population with the highest black tea consumption (Q4) was independently related to lower presence of NAFLD (Q4: OR = 0·69, 95 % CI: 0·50, 0·93, P < 0·05), such association remained stable in the overweight subgroup. As further analysed, Q4 also displayed a significant negative correlation with the level of hepatic fibrosis in patients with NAFLD (β = –0·073, 95 % CI: –0·126, −0·020, P < 0·01).Tea reduces the morbidity of NAFLD and ameliorates hepatic fibrosis degree in those already suffering from the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planar hypercoordinate motifs represent an intriguing frontier in chemistry, challenging traditional bonding norms. As electronegativity of the central atom increases, achieving planar hypercoordination becomes more difficult due to restricted delocalization, making the design of planar hypercoordinate halogens particularly puzzling. Here, we conduct an extensive computational survey of LinXn+1− (n=4, 5, 6; X=F, Cl, Br, I) clusters, revealing a starlike D5h‐symmetry global minimum in Li5X6− (X=F, Cl, Br) with a planar pentacoordinate halogen (ppX), where X− is located at the center of Li5X5 crown. The clusters are stabilized predominantly through electrostatic interactions between X− and Li5X5, complemented by weak covalent bonding from dative interaction. Due to the weak orbital overlap, ppX clusters exhibit localized diatropic ring currents around X and Li. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A quad-band microstrip bandpass filter (BPF) based on a 13-mode resonator is proposed in this article with compact size, high band‐to‐band isolation, and multiple transmission zeros (TZs). The proposed filter is constructed by two transmission paths from the input to the output port, which employs the transversal cancellation mechanism of two transition paths to introduce extra nine TZs. Therefore, a total of 12 TZs are located at 0.2, 1.8, 2, 3.88, 4.61, 5.24, 5.9, 9.26, 9.51, 12.32, 12.75, and 13.27 GHz, respectively, realizing high selectivity. Moreover, the designed filter can achieve quad passbands with centered frequency at 0.95, 2.78, 7.32, and 10.63 GHz for the requirement of multi-service in modern communication systems, with wide bandwidth of 235, 790, 2200, and 1540 MHz, respectively. The measured results agree well with the simulation results, which proves the feasibility of the design method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have reported inconsistent results with positive, negative, and J-shaped associations between alcohol consumption and the hazard of aortic aneurysm and dissection (AAD). This study aimed to examine the connections between weekly alcohol consumption and the subsequent risk of AAD. METHODS: The UK Biobank study is a population-based cohort study. Weekly alcohol consumption was assessed using self-reported questionnaires and the congenital risk of alcohol consumption was also evaluated using genetic risk score (GRS). Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the associations between alcohol consumption and AAD. Several sensitivity analyses were performed to assess the robustness of the results. RESULTS: Among the 388,955 participants (mean age: 57.1 years, 47.4% male), 2,895 incident AAD cases were documented during a median follow-up of 12.5 years. Compared with neverdrinkers, moderate drinkers (adjusted HR: 0.797, 95%CI: 0.646-0.984, P<0.05) and moderateheavy drinkers (adjusted HR: 0.794, 95%CI: 0.635-0.992, P<0.05) were significantly associated with a decreased risk of incident AAD. Interaction-based subgroup analysis revealed that the protective effect of moderate drinking was reflected mainly in participants younger than 65 years and women. CONCLUSION: Our findings support a protective effect of moderate alcohol consumption on AAD, but are limited to participants younger than 65 years and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: This study investigates how calcium oxalate crystals interact with renal tubular epithelial cells and contribute to kidney stone formation. By using transcriptome sequencing, the study identifies 629 differentially expressed genes when renal tubular epithelial cells are exposed to calcium oxalate crystals, with a significant number of these genes linked to endoplasmic reticulum stress and unfolded protein response. The study also highlights the potential crucial role of two specific genes, CHAC1 and FGF21, which were found to be significantly up-regulated in both cell models and kidney tissues from patients with calcium oxalate stones. The study suggests that targeting endoplasmic reticulum stress-related molecules and pathways could offer new therapeutic strategies to prevent stone formation and recurrence. Our study aimed to elucidate the mechanisms behind the interaction between calcium oxalate (CaOx) crystals and renal tubular epithelial cells through transcriptome sequencing analysis. HK-2 cells were stimulated with or without CaOx monohydrate crystals and subjected to RNA-seq to assess the effects of CaOx crystals on gene expression changes, key pathways, and molecular players during this interaction. A total of 629 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified between the control group and experimental group, with 491 genes up-regulated and 138 down-regulated. Functional enrichment analysis indicated that the DEGs were significantly associated with endoplasmic reticulum stress (ERS) and unfolded protein response. To validate our findings, we compared our results with the public dataset GSE73680 and confirmed the increased expression of two ERS-related DEGs, CHAC1 and FGF21, in renal papillary tissues from patients with CaOx stones. Collectively, these findings suggest that ERS plays a crucial role in the crystal–cell interaction and highlight the potential for developing therapeutic strategies aimed at reducing CaOx stone formation by targeting ERS-related molecules and pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The technology of military equipment entity extraction, a crucial component in constructing military knowledge bases, holds significant research value and theoretical importance for guiding the development and improvement of equipment support forces. In the military domain, equipment entities exhibit a phenomenon of nesting, where one entity is contained within another, and abbreviations or codes are frequently used to represent these entities. To address this complexity, this paper proposes a method named CoTNER for extracting entities. Initially, a large-scale language model is used to perform data augmentation with chain-of-thought on the original dataset, providing additional semantic and contextual information. Subsequently, the augmented dataset is fine-tuned on a small-scale language model to adapt it to the task of military equipment entity extraction and to enhance its ability to learn complex rules specific to the domain of military equipment. Additionally, a high-quality data filtering strategy based on instruction-following difficulty scoring is proposed to address the catastrophic forgetting issue that may occur during the fine-tuning of large language models. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed military equipment entity extraction method outperforms mainstream traditional deep learning methods, validating the effectiveness of CoTNER. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge graph completion is one of the steps of knowledge graph construction. It aims to complete the incomplete triple data in the initially constructed knowledge graph and make the data in the knowledge graph more abundant and complete. At present, there are few studies on knowledge graph completion in the equipment field, and the attribute and relationship samples in the equipment knowledge graph are prone to uneven distribution, while the traditional knowledge graph completion method is difficult to solve the problem of uneven distribution of attribute and relationship samples. Therefore, this paper proposes an internal instance type completion method of equipment knowledge graph based on EP2TP-TRT. First, the TransE model is used to embed the relationship and attributes of the equipment instance, respectively. Then, the EP2TP model is used to map the instance attributes, and the TRT model is used to map the type relationship. Finally, the scores of the EP2TP and TRT models are integrated by designing different weights, and the training prediction is carried out to enhance the representation ability of instance information and type information. Compared with the mainstream advanced models, this method improves the MRR and HITS @ 1 indicators by about 0.89% and 2.1%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rhythmic transcripts play pivotal roles in driving the daily oscillations of various biological processes. Genetic or environmental disruptions can lead to alterations in the rhythmicity of transcripts, ultimately impacting downstream circadian outputs, including metabolic processes and even behavior. To statistically compare the differences in transcript rhythms between 2 or more conditions, several algorithms have been developed to analyze circadian transcriptomic data, each with distinct features. In this study, we compared the performance of 7 algorithms that were specifically designed to detect differential rhythmicity (DODR, LimoRhyde, CircaCompare, compareRhythms, diffCircadian, dryR, and RepeatedCircadian). We found that even when applying the same statistical threshold, these algorithms yielded varying numbers of differentially rhythmic transcripts, most likely because each algorithm defines rhythmic and differentially rhythmic transcripts differently. Nevertheless, the output for the differential phase and amplitude were identical between dryR and compareRhyhms, and diffCircadian and CircaCompare, while the output from LimoRhyde2 was highly correlated with that from diffCircadian and CircaCompare. Because each algorithm has unique requirements for input data and reports different information as an output, it is crucial to ensure the compatibility of input data with the chosen algorithm and assess whether the algorithm's output fits the user's needs when selecting an algorithm for analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Cardiac abnormalities have been observed in patients with mucopolysaccharidosis type II (MPS II). The aim of this study was to investigate the cardiac features and natural progression of Taiwanese patients with MPS II, and evaluate the impact of enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) on cardiac structure and function. Methods The medical records and echocardiograms of 48 Taiwanese patients with MPS II (median age, 6.9 years; age range, 0.1–27.9 years) were reviewed. The relationships between age and each echocardiographic parameter were analyzed. Results The mean z-scores of left ventricular mass index (LVMI), interventricular septum diameter in diastole (IVSd), left ventricular posterior wall diameter in diastole (LVPWd), and aortic diameter were 1.10, 2.70, 0.95 and 1.91, respectively. Z scores > 2 were identified in 33%, 54%, 13%, and 46% for LVMI, IVSd, LVPWd, and aortic diameter, respectively. The most prevalent cardiac valve abnormality was mitral regurgitation (MR) (56%), followed by aortic regurgitation (AR) (33%). The severity of mitral stenosis (MS), MR, aortic stenosis (AS), AR, and the existence of valvular heart disease were all positively correlated with increasing age (p 0.05). Conclusions High prevalence rates of valvular heart disease and cardiac hypertrophy were observed in the MPS II patients in this study. The existence and severity of cardiac hypertrophy and valvular heart disease in these patients worsened with increasing age, reinforcing the concept of the progressive nature of this disease. ERT for MPS II appeared to be effective in stabilizing or reducing the progression of cardiac hypertrophy, but it only had a limited effect on valvulopathy.

ABSTRACT Coprinopsis cinerea has seven homologs of the Aspergillus nidulans transcription factor NsdD. Of these, CcNsdD1 and CcNsdD2 from C. cinerea show the best identities of 62 and 50% to A. nidulans NsdD, respectively. After 4 days of constant darkness cultivation, CcnsdD2, but not CcnsdD1, was upregulated on the first day of light/dark cultivation to induce fruiting bodies, and overexpression of CcnsdD2, but not CcnsdD1, produced more fruiting bodies under a light/dark rhythm. Although single knockdown of CcnsdD2 did not affect fruiting body production due to upregulation of its homolog CcnsdD1, the double-knockdown CcNsdD1/NsdD2-RNAi transformant showed defects in fruiting body formation under a light/dark rhythm. Knockdown of CcnsdD1/nsdD2 led to the differentiation of primary hyphal knots into sclerotia rather than secondary hyphal knots under a light/dark rhythm, similar to the differentiation of primary hyphal knots into sclerotia of the wild-type strain under darkness. The CcNsdD2-overexpressing transformant produced more primary hyphal knots, secondary hyphal knots, and fruiting bodies under a light/dark rhythm but only more primary hyphal knots and sclerotia under darkness. RNA-seq revealed that some genes reported previously to be involved in formation of hyphal knots and primordia, cyclopropane-fatty-acyl-phospholipid synthases cfs1-3, galectins cgl1-3, and hydrophobins hyd1-3 were downregulated in the CcNsdD1/NsdD2-RNAi transformant compared to the mock transformant. ChIP-seq and electrophoretic mobility shift assay demonstrated that CcNsdD2 bound to promoter regulatory sequences containing a GATC motif in cfs1, cfs2, cgl1, and hyd1. A molecular mechanism by which CcNsdD2 regulates the developmental fate of C. cinerea under dark or light conditions is proposed. IMPORTANCE The model mushroom Coprinopsis cinerea exhibits remarkable photomorphogenesis during fruiting body development. This study reports that the C. cinerea transcription factor CcNsdD2 promotes primary hyphal knot formation by upregulating cfs1, cfs2, cgl1, and hyd1. Although the induction of CcnsdD2 is not under direct control of light and photoreceptors, the CcNsdD2-mediated developmental fates of the primary hyphal knots depend on the following light/dark rhythm cultivation or dark cultivation after full growth of mycelia in the constant dark cultivation. This study provides new insight into the molecular mechanism by which CcNsdD2 regulates the developmental fate of C. cinerea under dark or light conditions. In addition, the result that overexpression of CcnsdD2 induced more secondary hyphal knots, primordia, and fruiting bodies under light/dark rhythm cultivation conditions has potential applied value in the edible mushroom industry.

Tea tree oil (TTO) plays an important role in regulating lipid metabolism and has anti-inflammatory properties. In postpartum dairy cows, dry matter intake (DMI) is dramatically decreased, resulting in lipid metabolism disorder and the systemic pro-inflammatory response. However, the effects of TTO on glucolipid metabolism and immunity in postpartum dairy cows remain uninvestigated. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the effects of TTO on production performance, serum biochemical indicators, and immunity in postpartum dairy cows. Our results demonstrate that DMI tended to increase (p = 0.07) in the total mixed ration (TMR) diets supplemented with 0.01% TTO/dry matter (DM) basis relative to that in the control group. The 4% fat-corrected milk (FCM) content in the 0.01% and 0.02% TTO groups showed an increase (p = 0.09) compared with that in the control. Remarkably, the levels of globulin (GLO) and immunoglobulin G (IgG) were elevated (p < 0.05) in the TMR diet supplemented with 0.02% TTO compared to those in the control group. The TTO caused no profound changes in cholesterol (CHO), triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or low-density lipoprotein (LDL). Notably, 0.02% TTO increased (p < 0.05) the serum glucose concentration relative to that in the control group. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that TTO could improve glucolipid metabolism and enhance immunity in postpartum dairy cows. It may be a novel resolution strategy for body condition recovery and the improvement of milk performance.

Biliary tract cancer (BTC) represents a challenging malignancy characterized by aggressive behavior, high relapse rates, and poor prognosis. In recent years, immunotherapy has revolutionized the treatment landscape for various cancers, but its efficacy in BTC remains limited. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the advances in preclinical and clinical studies of immunotherapy for BTC. We explore the potential of immune checkpoint inhibitors in reshaping the management of BTC. Despite disappointing results thus far, ongoing clinical trials are investigating the combination of immunotherapy with other treatment modalities. Furthermore, research on the tumor microenvironment has unveiled novel targets for immunotherapeutic interventions. By understanding the current state of immunotherapy in BTC and highlighting future directions, this article aims to fuel further exploration and ultimately improve patient outcomes in this challenging disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]