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Abstract Background The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of different thoracic radiotherapy doses on OS and incidence of radiation pneumonia which may provide some basis for optimizing the comprehensive treatment scheme of these patients with advanced EGFR mutant lung adenocarcinoma. Methods Data from 111 patients with EGFR-mutant lung adenocarcinoma who received thoracic radiotherapy were included in this retrospective study. Overall survival (OS) was the primary endpoints of the study. Kaplan–Meier method was used for the comparison of OS. The Cox proportional-hazard model was used for the multivariate and univariate analyses to determine the prognostic factors related to the disease. Results The mOS rates of the patients, who received radiotherapy dose scheme of less than 50 Gy, 50–60 Gy (including 50 Gy), and 60 Gy or more were 29.1 months, 34.4 months, and 51.0 months, respectively (log-rank P = 0.011). Although trend suggested a higher levels of pneumonia cases with increasing radiation doses, these lack statistical significance (χ2 = 1.331; P = 0.514). The multivariate analysis showed that the thoracic radiotherapy dose schemes were independently associated with the improved OS of patients (adjusted hazard ratio [HR], 0.606; 95% CI, 0.382 to 0.961; P = 0.033). Conclusions For the patients with advanced EGFR-mutant lung adenocarcinoma, the radical thoracic radiotherapy dose scheme (≥ 60 Gy) could significantly prolong the OS of patients during the whole course management.

With complex topographic and hydrological characteristics, the landslide-induced surge disaster chain readily develops in mountainous and gorge areas, posing a huge challenge for infrastructure construction. This landslide-induced surge disaster chain involves a complex fluid-solid coupling between the landslide mass and a water body and exhibits complex energy conversion and dissipation characteristics, which is challenging to deal with using traditional finite element analysis. In this study, the energy evolution characteristics in the whole process of the disaster chain were first investigated, and the momentum-conservation equations for different stages were established. Then, the two-phase double-point material point method (TPDP-MPM) was used to model the landslide-induced surge disaster chain, and an experiment involving block-induced surge was modeled and simulated to validate this method. Finally, three generalized models were established for the landslide-induced surge process in a U-shaped valley, including subaerial, partly submerged, and submarine scenarios. The interaction mechanism between the landslide mass and the water body in the disaster chain was revealed by defining the system energy conversion ratio and the mechanism of evolution of the disaster chain from the perspective of energy. The results help further evaluate the secondary disasters, given the submerged position of the landslide mass.

Abstract Background The accuracy of lymph node ratio (LNR) as a prognostic index remains to be proven for gastric cancer patients after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT). This study sought to investigate the prognostic value of LNR in locally advanced gastric cancer (LAGC) patients after NACT. Methods LAGC patients with clinical TNM stages 2–3, Her2(−), and Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group, scores 0–2 are routinely scheduled with NACT. Patients with LAGC after NACT and surgical operation between January 2012 and October 2020 were retrospectively reviewed. The correlation between LNR and survival was investigated. Results Overall, 148 patients were enrolled: 103 with low-LNR (LNR ≤ 30%) and 45 with high-LNR (LNR > 30%). Approximately, 50.5% and 24.4% patients responded to NACT at the primary site in the low-LNR and high-LNR groups, respectively. The overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) of low-LNR group were considerably better than those of high-LNR group (3-year OS: 81.9% vs 18.5%, P < 0.001; 3-year PFS: 72.6% vs 13.5%, P < 0.001). In the low-LNR group, OS and PFS were superior in patients with tumor regression grade (TRG) 0–2 than in those with TRG 3 (3-year OS: 89.2% vs 73.2%, P = 0.086; 3-year PFS: 80.3% vs 66.5%, P = 0.036). In association with OS and PFS, the degree of tumor differentiation, TRG, and LNR were identified as predictive factors, and LNR was identified as the independent prognostic factor in univariate and multivariate analyses, respectively. Conclusions LNR is a prospective index of prognosis in patients with LAGC after NACT.

Abstract Tyrosine kinase inhibitors represented by sorafenib are the first‐line treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but the low response rate of HCC patient has become a clinical pain‐point. Emerging evidences have revealed that metabolic reprogramming plays an important role in regulating the sensitivity of tumor cells to various chemotherapeutics including sorafenib. However, the underlying mechanisms are very complex and are not fully elucidated. By comparing the transcriptome sequencing data of sorafenib‐sensitive and ‐insensitive HCC patients, it is revealed that cofilin 1 (CFL1) is highly expressed in the tumor tissues of sorafenib‐insensitive HCC patients and closely correlated with their poor prognosis. Mechanically, CFL1 can promote phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase transcription and enhance serine synthesis and metabolism to accelerate the production of antioxidants for scavenging the excessive reactive oxygen species induced by sorafenib, thereby impairing the sorafenib sensitivity of HCC. To translate this finding and consider the severe side effects of sorafenib, a reduction‐responsive nanoplatform for systemic co‐delivery of CFL1 siRNA (siCFL1) and sorafenib is further developed, and its high efficacy in inhibiting HCC tumor growth without apparent toxicity is demonstrated. These results indicate that nanoparticles‐mediated co‐delivery of siCFL1 and sorafenib can be a new strategy for the treatment of advanced HCC.

Curcumin is a natural active ingredient from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) that has multi-target characteristics to exert extensive pharmacological activities and thus has been applied in the treatment of various diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, nervous system, and autoimmune disorders. As an important class of membranous organelles in the intracellular membrane system, lysosomes are involved in biological processes such as programmed cell death, cell metabolism, and immune regulation, thus affecting tumor initiation and progression. It has been shown that curcumin can modulate lysosomal function through the aforementioned pathways, thereby affecting tumor proliferation, invasion, metastasis, drug resistance, and immune function. This review briefly elaborated the regulatory mechanisms of lysosome biogenesis and summarized curcumin-related studies with its anti-tumor effect, providing a reference for the clinical application of curcumin and anti-tumor research targeting lysosomes.

Cancer is one of the most lethal diseases. Globally, the number of cancers is nearly 10 million per year. Gynecological cancers (for instance, ovarian, cervical, and endometrial), relying on hidden diseases, misdiagnoses, and high recurrence rates, have seriously affected women’s health. Traditional chemotherapy, hormone therapy, targeted therapy, and immunotherapy effectively improve the prognosis of gynecological cancer patients. However, with the emergence of adverse reactions and drug resistance, leading to the occurrence of complications and poor compliance of patients, we have to focus on the new treatment direction of gynecological cancers. Because of the potential effects of natural drugs in regulating immune function, protecting against oxidative damage, and improving the energy metabolism of the body, natural compounds represented by polysaccharides have also attracted extensive attention in recent years. More and more studies have shown that polysaccharides are effective in the treatment of various tumors and in reducing the burden of metastasis. In this review, we focus on the positive role of natural polysaccharides in the treatment of gynecologic cancer, the molecular mechanisms, and the available evidence, and discuss the potential use of new dosage forms derived from polysaccharides in gynecologic cancer. This study covers the most comprehensive discussion on applying natural polysaccharides and their novel preparations in gynecological cancers. By providing complete and valuable sources of information, we hope to promote more effective treatment solutions for clinical diagnosis and treatment of gynecological cancers.

BackgroundAngiopoietin-like 3 (ANGPTL3) is a secretory glycoprotein. It has been demonstrated that ANGPTL3 level was upregulated in minimal change nephrotic syndrome (MCNS) kidney tissues. Subsequently, our group found that ANGPTL3 level was closely correlated with nephropathy in vivo and in vitro. Hence, whether ANGPTL3 level could be correlated with the proteinuria level, and assessment of disease severity of nephrotic syndrome (NS) remained to be investigated. This study aimed to analyzed the correlation between the levels of ANGPTL3 in serum and urine of patients with nephrotic syndrome and proteinuria, and assessed the severity of the patients' disease. In future clinical translation, the level of ANGPTL3 in serum, urine will be used as a biomarker to better predict the development of nephrotic syndrome.MethodsA total of 200 NS patients and 80 healthy controls (age, 1–18 years) were admitted to our institution between 2021 and 2022. The etiology of NS included primary nephrotic syndrome (PNS, n = 144) and NS with other causes (n = 56). A total of 280 serum samples and 244 urinary samples were collected to determine ANGPTL3 level using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).ResultsSerum ANGPTL3 and urinary ANGPTL3/Cre were remarkably elevated in NS patients compared with those in healthy controls. Furthermore, serum ANGPTL3 and urinary ANGPTL3/Cre were significantly correlated with proteinuria level. Additionally, multivariate linear regression analysis demonstrated that serum ALB was independently correlated with serum ANGPTL3 and PRO/CR was independently correlated with urinary ANGPTL3/Cre in NS patients.ConclusionSerum ANGPTL3 and urinary ANGPTL3/Cre showed a promising performance in the diagnosis of NS, and served as novel potential noninvasive biomarkers to assess disease severity of NS. Further exploration of the role of ANGPTL3 level may shed a new light on the treatment of NS.

Grassland accounts for 67% of the land area in Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP) to sensitive to climate. This article carried out extensive temporal–spatial variations of grassland water deficit/surplus (GWDS) and net primary productivity (NPP) of QTP grassland using meteorological data of 1981–2018. The results indicate that precipitation’s temporal variations are not related to potential evapotranspiration (PET). The maximum monthly precipitation occurs in July, while the maximum monthly PET appears in June. Precipitation is the second highest in spring when PET is the highest. The water deficit (PET-precipitation) from March to June takes up 51.4% of the total year. Therefore, droughts are more likely to happen in spring and June. This is the most important period for grassland protection. Water deficit is higher in the central and west and the highest in the northwest of QTP grasslands. This indicates the place where the droughts are more likely to occur. The grassland’s annual NPP is high in the southeastern part of QTP and low in the west. This shows the central and western parts of QTP grassland should receive more attention. The specific time and region obtained in this study are important for environmental protection policy-making and reducing grassland degradation in QTP.

Abstract Background Interleukin‐15 (IL‐15) is a promising immunotherapeutic agent owing to its powerful immune‐activating effects. However, the clinical benefits of these treatments are limited. Crosstalk between tumor cells and immune cells plays an important role in immune escape and immunotherapy drug resistance. Herein, this study aimed to obtain in‐depth understanding of crosstalk in the tumor microenvironment for providing potential therapeutic strategies to prevent tumor progression. Methods T‐cell killing assays and co‐culture models were developed to determine the role of crosstalk between macrophages and tumor cells in breast cancer resistant to IL‐15. Western blotting, histological analysis, CRISPR‐Cas9 knockout, multi‐parameter flow cytometry, and tumor cell‐macrophage co‐injection mouse models were developed to examine the mechanism by which IL‐15Rα+ tumor‐associated macrophages (TAMs) regulate breast cancer cell resistance to IL‐15. Results We found that macrophages contributed to the resistance of tumor cells to IL‐15, and tumor cells induced macrophages to express high levels of the α subunit of the IL‐15 receptor (IL‐15Rα). Further investigation showed that IL‐15Rα+ TAMs reduced the protein levels of chemokine CX3C chemokine ligand 1 (CX3CL1) in tumor cells to inhibit the recruitment of CD8+ T cells by releasing the IL‐15/IL‐15Rα complex (IL‐15Rc). Administration of an IL‐15Rc blocking peptide markedly suppressed breast tumor growth and overcame the resistance of cancer cells to anti‐ programmed cell death protein 1 (PD‐1) antibody immunotherapy. Interestingly, Granulocyte‐macrophage colony‐stimulating factor (GMCSF) induced γ chain (γc) expression to promote tumor cell‐macrophage crosstalk, which facilitated tumor resistance to IL‐15. Additionally, we observed that the non‐transcriptional regulatory function of hypoxia inducible factor‐1alpha (HIF‐1α) was essential for IL‐15Rc to regulate CX3CL1 expression in tumor cells. Conclusions The IL‐15Rc‐HIF‐1α‐CX3CL1 signaling pathway serves as a crosstalk between macrophages and tumor cells in the tumor microenvironment of breast cancer. Targeting this pathway may provide a potential therapeutic strategy for enhancing the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy.

Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) biocomposites are usually plasticized to overcome the problem of poor ductility, which decreases the valuable tensile strength. In this study, novel nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC) was extracted to enhance the acetyl tributyl citrate (ATBC) plasticized PLA biocomposites. Interestingly, NFC not only exhibited an excellent strengthening effect but also showed a further toughening effect in the biocomposites. When 4 wt% NFC was added, the tensile strength, elongation at break, and impact strength of the biocomposites with 15 wt% ATBC and 20 wt% ATBC reached 52.6 MPa, 28.4%, 34.9 J/m and 35.8 MPa, 300.1%, 40 J/m, respectively. This is at least 1.1 folds higher in strength and 2.3 folds higher in impact toughness than the biocomposites without NFC. Glass transition and melting temperature slightly increased with NFC addition. More importantly, the mechanism of the strengthening and toughening effect was definitely elucidated, and the comprehensive performance of the application was evaluated. The findings of the study provide significant guidance for PLA application, such as in food packaging, medical engineering materials, and household products.

Abstract Background When researchers perform gene family analysis, they often analyze the structural characteristics of the gene, such as the distribution of introns and exons. At the same time, characteristic structural analysis of amino acid sequence is also essential, for example, motif and domain features. Researchers often integrate these analyses into one image to dig out more information, but the tools responsible for this integration are lacking. Results Here, we developed a tool (CFVisual) for drawing gene structure and protein architecture. CFVisual can draw the phylogenetic tree, gene structure, and protein architecture in one picture, and has rich interactive capabilities, which can meet the work needs of researchers. Furthermore, it also supports arbitrary stitching of the above analysis images. It has become a useful helper in gene family analysis. The CFVisual package was implemented in Python and is freely available from https://github.com/ChenHuilong1223/CFVisual/ . Conclusion CFVisual has been used by some researchers and cited by some articles. In the future, CFVisual will continue to serve as a good helper for researchers in the study of gene structure and protein architecture.

The security and stability control system is an important defense line to ensure the reliable operation of the power grid. Serious physical consequences can be caused by cyber attacks against the security and stability control system. In order to quantitatively evaluate the impact of cyber attacks on security and stability control system and solve the problem that the existing risk assessment methods do not fully consider the susceptibility of cyber attacks,a risk assessment method of security and stability control system considering the impact of cyber attacks is proposed. Firstly,the hierarchical structure of the security and stability control system is analyzed. Then,the risk points of cyber attacks on the stability control device body and device's inter-station communication from the three perspectives of attack object,attack methods,and attack consequences are analyzed. Secondly,the susceptibility of cyber attacks is quantified based on the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process,and a successful probability model of cyber attacks for security and stability control system is established combined with the defense unit model of cyber attacks built by Petri nets. Finally,the risk assessment is carried out on the standard and actual systems combined with the physical consequences and the probability of successful attacks. The risk values under two conditions of normal operation and cyber attack are calculated to verify the validity of the proposed model.

As a commercially available ingredient, the mono- and diglycerides (MDG) were widely used in a plant protein-based emulsion to provide effective, functional, emulsifying properties. The simultaneous addition of the MDG and pea protein isolate (PPI) was investigated by the methods of interfacial rheology and quantitative protein proteomics. The physicochemical quantitative analysis of the oil–water interface revealed an interfacial stability mechanism for the protein adsorption layer. For a low MDG concentration, the interfacial quantities of vicilin and albumin were increased, which could be attributed to the adsorption rate. For a high MDG concentration, both vicilin and albumin were displaced by MDG and desorbed from the interface, while legumin was more difficult to displace due to its slow adsorption and the complex structure of protein molecules. The protein molecules with the structural rearrangement interacted with MDG, exhibiting potential effects on the interfacial film structure. Combined with some nanotechnologies, the new comprehension of protein-emulsifier interactions may promote food delivery systems. The research aims to develop an in-depth analysis of interfacial proteins, and provide more innovative and tailored functionalities for the application of the plant protein emulsion.

The experiment aimed to investigate the effects of dietary lycopene on the growth performance, antioxidant capacity, meat quality, intestine histomorphology, and cecal microbiota in broiler chickens. We randomly divided five hundred and seventy-six one-day-old male broilers into four groups each with six replicates and 24 chickens in each replicate. The control group (CG) was fed the basal diet, and the other groups were given powder lycopene of 10, 20, and 30 mg/kg lycopene (LP10, LP20, and LP30, respectively). Compared with the control group, (1) the dietary lycopene increased (p = 0.001) the average daily gain and decreased (p = 0.033) the feed conversion ratio in the experimental groups; (2) the glutathione peroxidase enzyme contents in LP20 were higher (p =< 0.001) in myocardium; (3) the crude protein contents were higher (p = 0.007) in the group treated with 30 mg/kg dietary lycopene; (4) the jejunum villous height was higher (p = 0.040) in LP20; (5) the Unclassified-f-Ruminococcaceae relative abundance was significantly higher (p = 0.043) in LP20. In this study, adding 20 mg/kg dietary lycopene to the broiler chickens’ diets improved the growth performance, antioxidant capacity, meat quality, intestine histomorphology, and cecal microbiota in broiler chickens.

Given the complex interplay between economic and cultural–historical factors, this paper explores scene perception and its mechanism in individual and collective cognition of historical commercial streets. Based on a perception model constructed from scene theory, the study utilizes user scene experience feedback from Beijing Road, a commercial pedestrian street in Guangzhou. It conducts a systematic assessment using hierarchical analysis (AHP) across three dimensions: authenticity, theatricality, and legitimacy. The findings reveal the following: (1) according to visitors, traditional cuisine, cultural and creative arts, and Lingnan’s intangible cultural heritage received low ratings; (2) historical relics and traditional cuisine are dominant factors, highlighting public attention to cultural heritage, but the role of historical–cultural characteristics and festival activities is relatively marginalized; (3) cultural–historical relics and traditional cuisine are the leading factors that contribute to an authentic experience, while historical context and festival activities constitute secondary factors; (4) cultural landscapes and arts are central to theatrical experiences, with modern visual elements playing a lesser role; (5) diversified commercial formats and public services are the core factors influencing legitimacy experience, reflecting the role of market diversity and policy orientation in building consumer trust. The design of historical and cultural streets should prioritize the preferences of those experiencing them to promote cultural identity and historical continuity. Additionally, the synergy between commercial diversity and policy orientation should be strategically emphasized to form a business ecosystem supporting sustainable development. Future commercial street renewals should focus on the key role of visual narrative in shaping brand culture. This paper offers insights into the dynamic process of constructing scene experience from perspectives of spatial materialization and emotional empowerment to cultural identity, providing references for strategies in historical place renewal.

In order to study the deformation and stability of a fractured rock mass, existing research suggests that fracture deformation, which is usually obtained by evaluating the equivalent deformation modulus, dominates the deformation of a fractured rock mass. However, this parameter is difficult to obtain in theory and practice, which limits the application of rock mass deformation analysis methods. In order to calculate the deformation of fractured rock masses, the mass of the rock is regarded as a sponge-like material, and it is assumed that the deformation of a water-saturated fractured rock mass under external force load is approximately equal to the net flow of fracture water. Based on this assumption, firstly, the relationship between rock mass deformation and fracture flow is studied through a single-fracture rock mass model. The hydraulic properties of the fracture are characterized by the permeability coefficient, and the fracture deformation in the rock mass is equivalent to the fracture flow. The fracture deformation calculation formula is derived from the fracture hydraulics calculation formula, and this is compared with the measured data. The rationality of the calculation formula was verified. On this basis, the calculation formula for rock mass deformation, including multiple groups of fracture surfaces, is proposed, and the stress-strain constitutive relationship of a complex rock mass is established. The correctness of the calculation method was verified by comparing it with other theoretical calculation results.

The European Space Agency (ESA) developed the Sentinel-2 Multispectral Imager (MSI), which offers a higher spatial resolution and shorter repeat coverage, making it an important source for the remote-sensing monitoring of water bodies. Atmospheric correction is crucial for the monitoring of water quality. To compare the applicability of seven publicly available atmospheric correction processors (ACOLITE, C2RCC, C2XC, iCOR, POLYMER, SeaDAS, and Sen2Cor), we chose complex and diverse lakes in Qinghai Province, China, as the research area. The lakes were divided into three types based on the waveform characteristics of Rrs: turbid water bodies (class I lakes) represented by the Dabusun Lake (DBX), clean water bodies (class II lakes) represented by the Qinghai Lake (QHH), and relatively clean water bodies (class III lakes) represented by the Longyangxia Reservoir (LYX). Compared with the in situ Rrs, it was found that for the DBX, the Sen2Cor processor performed best. The POLYMER processor exhibited a good performance in the QHH. The C2XC processor performed well with the LYX. Using the Sen2Cor, POLYMER, and C2XC processors for classes I, II, and III, respectively, compared with the Sentinel-3 OLCI Level-2 Water Full Resolution (L2-WFR) products, it was found that the estimated Rrs from the POLYMER had the highest consistency. Slight deviations were observed in the estimation results for both the Sen2Cor and C2XC.

The urban heat island effect poses a growing threat to human society, especially in densely populated and developed megacities. With the introduction of the Local Climate Zones (LCZ) framework, new perspectives and findings have been brought to urban heat island studies. This study investigated the cooling effect of vegetation and albedo on the surface urban heat island (SUHI) in the classification system of LCZ during different seasons, using three Chinese megacities as case study areas. Single-factor linear regression and Pearson’s correlation coefficient were applied to analyze the seasonal cooling effect of both albedo and the NDVI on the SUHI within different LCZs. The results show that (1) the variability of the SUHI is reflected in its dominance and intensity within certain LCZs in different cities and in the efficiency of cooling factors; (2) the cooling effect of vegetation is dominant in each season, and the cooling effect produced by albedo within specific seasons can be differentiated by LCZs. This study provides valuable information for the mitigation of the SUHI magnitude in specific regions and at specific times of the year.

Abstract State estimation is the core function of distribution management system, and its estimation accuracy directly affects the operation of other advanced application functions of distribution management system. However, the access of a large number of distributed generation brings non‐Gaussian noise and bad data problems, which affect the accuracy of state estimation. Therefore, based on the conventional cubature particle filter (CPF), two new state estimation operators, robust cubature filter 1 (RCPF1) and robust cubature filter 2 (RCPF2), are proposed by introducing the Huber's M‐estimation theory into the CPF algorithm and integrating a time‐varying, multi‐dimensional scale factor with the CPF, respectively. The simulation results based on IEEE33 bus system showed that: (1) RCPF has better estimation accuracy and robustness than conventional cubature particle filter and cubature Kalman filter; (2) RCPF2 has better estimation performance than RCPF1 in the case of non‐Gaussian noise and bad data.

With the increase of various risk factors such as cesarean section and abortion, placenta accrete spectrum (PAS) disorder is happening more frequently year by year. Therefore, prenatal prediction of PAS is of crucial practical significance. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) quality will not be affected by fetal position, maternal size, amniotic fluid volume, etc., which has gradually become an important means for prenatal diagnosis of PAS. In clinical practice, T2-weighted imaging (T2WI) magnetic resonance (MR) images are used to reflect the placental signal and T1-weighted imaging (T1WI) MR images are used to reflect bleeding, both plays a key role in the diagnosis of PAS. However, it is difficult for traditional MR image analysis methods to extract multi-sequence MR image features simultaneously and assign corresponding weights to predict PAS according to their importance. To address this problem, we propose a dual-path neural network fused with a multi-head attention module to detect PAS. The model first uses a dual-path neural network to extract T2WI and T1WI MR image features separately, and then combines these features. The multi-head attention module learns multiple different attention weights to focus on different aspects of the placental image to generate highly discriminative final features. The experimental results on the dataset we constructed demonstrate a superior performance of the proposed method over state-of-the-art techniques in prenatal diagnosis of PAS. Specifically, the model we trained achieves 88.6% accuracy and 89.9% F1-score on the independent validation set, which shows a clear advantage over methods that only use a single sequence of MR images.

Carbon emissions from forest ecosystems are greatly impacted by the acceleration of fragmentation and edge effects. Understanding these effects requires accurate monitoring of changes in fragmented forest landscapes. However, these changes are often low-intensity and small-scale, making it difficult to detect them using medium spatial resolution satellite images (e.g., Landsat). To address this challenge, this study developed the Pure Forest Index (PFI), which uses a combination of the existing vegetation index (VI) and spectral mixture analysis (SMA) to more effectively detect and characterize the contribution of forests to the observed spectral response of a pixel. The PFI was applied to detect forest changes in the Amazon rainforest from 1986 to 2020 using the Continuous Change Detection and Classification (CCDC) algorithm (hereafter referred to as the CCDC-PFI algorithm). The results showed reliable performance in mapping forest changes, with an overall accuracy of 0.94 (±0.03) at the spatial scale and a temporal accuracy of 91.1 % (within a two-year window). Comparison with other indices revealed that the PFI improves the ability to monitor forest dynamics with an increased overall accuracy of 0.02–0.35. The PFI also demonstrated advantages in enhancing sub-pixel forest information and suppressing non-forest backgrounds in various scenes compared to conventional VIs. The proposed approach is expected to benefit further research on forests and ecosystems.

BackgroundCongenital Anomalies of the Kidney and Urinary Tract (CAKUT) are the primary cause of end-stage renal disease in children, early diagnosis and treatment can significantly improve the kidney function. Among CAKUT, renal pelvis dilatation (RPD) due to various causes has the highest detection rate, which can be detected early by postnatal ultrasound screening. Since 2010, the Children's Hospital of Fudan University (CHFU), together with the Minhang District Maternal and Child Health Hospital (MCH) and Community Health Centres (CHCs) of Minhang District has created a three-level referral system for urological ultrasound screening. This study aims to describe the operation of a three-level referral system for ultrasound screening of CAKUT and to select risk factors of RPD in high-risk children.MethodsThe operation of the three-level referral system was assessed by analyzing the screening volume, screening rate, referral rate, and follow-up rate; risk factors of RPD in high-risk children were selected by chi-square test and multivariate logistic regression.ResultsA total of 16,468 high-risk children were screened in ten years, and the screening volume was maintained at about 1,500 cases per year; the screening rate showed a linear increase, from 36.8% in 2010 to 98.2% in 2019; the referral rate from the CHCs to the MCH was 89.9% significantly higher after 2015 than that of 84.7% from 2010 to 2015; the follow-up rate after 2015 was 71.0% significantly higher than that of 46.3% from 2010 to 2015. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that the risk of RPD was 1.966 times higher in males than in females, and the risk of moderate to severe RPD was 2.570 times higher in males than in females; the risk of RPD in preterm children was 1.228 times higher than that of full-term children; and the risk of RPD was 1.218 times higher in twins than in singles.ConclusionsThe screening volume of the three-level referral system has remained stable over a decade, with significantly higher screening, referral, and follow-up rates. Males, preterm, and twins are risk factors of RPD in high-risk children; males are also risk factors for moderate to severe RPD in high-risk children.

The cutting hills to back ditches (CHBD) project has been widely implemented since urbanization in hilly areas is steadily rising. The stability of the high-filled slope and the problem of foundation settlement deformation has become one of the vital issues for safe construction. This paper focused on the deformation evolution law and stability assessment of the high-filled deposit slope composed of the soil-rock mixture (S-RM) in the CHBD project, in Shiyan City, Hubei Province as examples. First, large-scale direct shear tests of S-RM with different rock block proportions (RBPs) under different various normal stresses were carried out, and its mechanical properties were analyzed. Next, the finite element method was used to simulate the processes of the step-by-step filling, and the deformation evolution law was analyzed. Then, the limited equilibrium method (LEM) was used to obtain the potential sliding surfaces and the corresponding safety factors of the high-filled slope, and the safety of the construction was assessed. Finally, automated monitoring of the step-by-step settlement and deep soil deformation was computerized for the typical locations, and the long-term stability of the high-filled slope was studied. The results demonstrate that the first layer of backfill in the F area contains the largest incremental settlement displacement in the y-direction, whereas the value in the G area occurs at the site of the fill layer close to the slope surface at each filling timestep. The displacement response value steadily declines with the increasing filling depth and horizontal displacement, presenting a clear spatial influence range, with the site of maximum incremental displacement as the center. After filling, the safety factors of the potential sliding surface in the F and G areas are 2.531 and 1.118, respectively, and the slope is in a stable state. The monitoring data show that the deformation mostly takes place within 10 m of the surface. The study’s findings are thought to offer technical and practical knowledge for the slope risks.

ABSTRACT: Background: Clinical features and the dynamic changes of the immune response in coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) patients play essential roles in the disease courses. We hypothesized that clinical features and longitudinal dynamic immune response of COVID-19 patients might be associated with viral shedding duration. Methods: In this retrospective study, we documented 413 adult patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 from Wuhan Huoshenshan Hospital. Demographic, clinical, and laboratory data were extracted from electronic medical records. Risk factors associated with viral shedding duration were examined using odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) in the multivariable logistic regression models. Results: The median duration of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) viral shedding was 48 days (interquartile range, 40-58 days) among all patients. Fever symptom (OR, 2.23; 95% CI, 1.46-3.44), delayed admission after symptom onset (OR, 15.33; 95% CI, 9.14-26.65), CD8+ T cells (OR, 1.93; 95% CI, 1.10-3.44) were associated with prolonged viral shedding. In contrast, shorter viral shedding was associated with CD4+ T cells (OR, 0.38; 95% CI, 0.16-0.88), the ratios of CD4+ T cells to CD8+ T cells (OR, 0.79; 95% CI, 0.63-0.98). Longitudinal dynamic analyses demonstrate that sustained monocyte level was associated with shorter viral shedding (OR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.22-0.76). More importantly, the associations of CD4+ T cells, CD8+ T cells, the ratio of CD4+ T cells to CD8+ T cells, and sustained monocyte level were confined to male patients. Conclusions: Higher CD4+ T cells, sustained monocyte level, and lower CD8+ T cells might shorten the disease course. The male-specific associations supported the contribution of sex-dependent immune responses to the disease courses.

CoicisSemen is an important food product and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) derived from the dried and mature seeds of Coix lacryma-jobi L.var.ma-yuen (Roman.) Stapf. An increasing number of studies have investigated its use, either alone or in combination with other botanical drugs, to treat female reproductive system malignancies, and its pharmacological effects have been confirmed clinically. This review aims to provide an overview of Coicis Semen’s historical role in treating female reproductive system malignancies based on TCM theory, to summarize clinical trials results, and to analyze information pertaining to the main phytochemical components, pharmacokinetics, related anti-cancer pharmacological effects, and toxicology of Coicis Semen. Information on Coicis Semen was collected from internationally accepted scientific databases. Seventy-four clinical trials were identified that used Coicis Semen in combination with other Chinese medicine to treat female reproductive system malignancies, most of which demonstrated good anti-tumor efficacy and few adverse reactions. To date, more than 80 individual compounds have been isolated from this botanical drug. In terms of anti-tumor effects, Coix seed oil has been studied the most. Pharmacokinetic data suggest that the active ingredients in Coicis Semen are widely distributed after administration, and Coicis Semen and its active compounds play a beneficial role in treating female reproductive system malignancies. Mechanistically, the anti-cancer effects may be related to inhibition of tumor cell proliferation and promotion of apoptosis, inhibition of tumor angiogenesis, suppression of the chronic inflammatory microenvironment of tumors, modulation of immune function, and regulation of the female reproductive system. Most acute toxicity and genotoxicity studies have shown that Coicis Semen is non-toxic. However, the existing studies have many limitations, and the future research direction should emphasize 1) the relationship between drug concentration and pharmacological action as well as toxicity; 2) the structural modification or the synthesis of analogues led by the active ingredients of Coicis Semen to enhance pharmacological activities and bioavailability; 3) accurately revealing the anti-cancer pharmacological effects of Coicis Semen and its compounds through multi-omics technology. We hope that this review can determine future directions and inform novel drug development for treating female reproductive malignancies.

C16H30O5, monoclinic, P21 (no. 4), a = 5.6814(5) Å, b = 13.0181(12) Å, c = 22.833(2) Å, β = 96.473(2)°, V = 1677.9(3) Å3, Z = 4, R gt(F) = 0.0508, wRref (F 2) = 0.1346, T = 296(2) K.

Local climate zone (LCZ) has become a new standard classification scheme in urban landscapes and showed great potential in urban climate research. Traditional classifiers and ordinary neural networks only consider the spectral or local spatial features of the pixel, ignoring the effect of nonlocal information on the LCZ classification. The graph convolutional network (GCN) has been used to exploit the relationship between adjacent and global land covers owing to the ability to conduct flexible convolution over graphs. In this work, we integrated a convolutional neural network and two GCNs into an end-to-end hybrid framework and generated LCZs directly from the original images. Local-, regional-, and global-level features were extracted and grouped complementarily to foster better performance. Experiments were conducted in six cities around the world to verify the effectiveness of our method. Results showed that the average classification accuracy of the six cities reached 0.956 and performed better than any other comparable model. Ablation experiments also demonstrated the mutual promotion of the different modules. Finally, the small sample experiment provided a practical reference for the LCZ classification in the absence of samples in future.

In this study, we established, for the first time, an equivalent circuit model for coupled subwavelength periodic microstrip lines (CSPMLs) over a wide frequency range. The circuit composed of two identical and parallel subwavelength periodic microstrip lines has two fundamental modes, i.e., odd and even modes. Based on the two fundamental modes, the finite element method (FEM) is used to extract the circuit parameters, especially the frequency-dependent behavior of the mutual capacitance and mutual inductance for the CSPMLs. The $S$ -parameters evaluated by full-wave simulation and the circuit model were highly consistent with a maximum deviation of only 0.249 dB for transmission coefficient below 15GHz. Because of reduced the mutual capacitance and mutual inductance, the crosstalk between two adjacent microstrip lines could be suppressed by optimizing the subwavelength periodic structure. The measured characteristic impedances for differential and common signals of CSPMLs also agree well with the numerical results. Therefore, we expect that the application of circuit models of CSPMLs would accelerate the use of metamaterial technology in the existing high-speed circuit systems.

Floods are threatening agricultural production and causing enormous crop losses globally. In June–July 2020, the Yangtze and Huai River basins were hit again by exceptionally heavy rainfall and flooding, followed by massive inundation of croplands. However, quantitative studies on the impact of flooding on crops are still lacking. Therefore, quick and accurate mapping of flood and quantitative assessment of inundation impact on crops is vital. The main objectives of this article are to map the flooding areas and analyze the inundation impact on crops. The result of flood mapping with SAR images achieves an overall accuracy of 0.9023, which facilitates the analyses of phenological temporal change and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) losses of crops. It is found that the inundation resulted in a phenological lag in crops grown in the 2020 summer. The phenological lag resulted in a significant NDVI loss, especially in the earlier stage. With the extension of phenology latency, crops suffered even greater losses. Conversely, in the winter of 2020, the crops show obvious phenological advances, and compared with 2019, there was no obvious NDVI loss.

Objective To explore the hearing changes in an autism model mice [MeCP2-Tg1 mice, with overexpression of methyl-CpG binding protein 2 (MeCP2)] during development. Methods Three-chamber social test was used to assess the social ability of MeCP2-Tg1 mice and wild-type mice at 8 and 14 weeks after born. Auditory brainstem responses evoked by click and pure tone stimulus were recorded at 5 development nodes (4, 8, 12, 16 and 20 weeks) before and after the onset of abnormal social behaviors to assess hearing sensitivity (threshold), neural conduction velocity (latency) and response level (amplitude) in MeCP2-Tg1 mice at different developmental stages. Results ①Tg1 mice showed higher sensitivity to 24 kHz stimulus at 4 and 12 weeks (P < 0.05), and lower hearing threshold to 8 kHz stimulus at 20 weeks as compared with wild-type mice (P < 0.05), but the threshold reduction did not persist over the course of development. ②Tg1 mice had normal neural conduction velocity throughout development. ③ Compared with the wild-type mice, the amplitude of wave Ⅲ, which characterizes the superior olivary complex, was normal up to 8 weeks (inclusive) but showed a significant and persistent increase after 12 weeks (inclusive) (P < 0.05); the amplitude of wave V, which characterizes the auditory inferior colliculus, was significantly lower up to 8 weeks (inclusive) (P < 0.05) but showed normal after 12 weeks (inclusive). Conclusion The auditory brainstem responses of MeCP2-Tg1 mice are abnormal during development, mainly in the form of increased/decreased amplitude of responses to acoustic stimuli at different developmental periods, and the onset of hearing abnormalities precedes the onset of social behavior abnormalities.

Medium spatial resolution surface reflectance image series from the combination of Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager and Sentinel-2 Multispectral Imager observations have great importance to the land surface monitoring tasks, for which great efforts have been paid for blending the two data. However, most of the efforts focus on the image series with spatial resolution of 30 m, which cannot meet the data demand of some applications. Therefore, it is necessary to fuse Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 images to provide 10-m image series. Currently, there are three means to achieve that, including the area-to-point regression kriging fusion approach (ATPRK), spatiotemporal fusion methods, and deep-learning-based fusion models. However, the ATPRK and spatiotemporal fusion methods suffer from the limited fusion performance, while the deep-learning-based fusion models are hardware dependent, i.e., requiring the graphics processing units, which may not be satisfied sometimes. To address these issues, in this article, we develop a new pixel-wise local normalization-based fusion method (LN-FM) for fusing Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 images. The newly proposed LN-FM is compared to the ATPRK and three representative spatiotemporal fusion methods in experiments, which use imagery collected from both a rural area and an urban area. The experimental results demonstrate that the newly developed LN-FM exhibits excellent qualitative and quantitative performance, as well as remarkable spatial, spectral, and pixel distribution fidelity. Furthermore, this approach is fast, which may improve its applicability

Frequent and accurate object detection based on remote sensing images is an encouraging approach for monitoring dynamic of the interest object on earth surface. Transformer-based object detection was recently developed to cope with the tradeoff dilemma between large computation load and accuracy sacrifice confronted by region-proposal-based and regression-based object detection, and its self-attention mechanism can provide a global understanding that has potential ability for reasoning the location relationship within sparsely heterogeneously distributed geospatial objects. However, transformer-based object detection is essentially weak at modeling local feature hierarchy to compensate for the large scale variation of geospatial object, and it is extremely difficult to train due to the lack of inductive bias, resulting in a slow convergence. To overcome the problem, this article proposed a Dual network structure with InterweAved Global-local feature hierarchy based on the TRansformer architecture (DIAG-TR), to alleviate the incompatibility of global and local feature form, and hierarchically embed the local features into global representations. Besides, a learnable anchor box is incorporated into the positional query in the decoder part to provide a spatial prior, which can accelerate convergence. The proposed DIAG-TR is validated on the widely used optical remote sensing image DIOR dataset, and the results demonstrate that the global-local feature hierarchy contributes 3.4% mean average precision compared to the original transformer-based method, and the convergence time is shortened by 2.5-fold. State-of-the-art methods are also participated as benchmark for comparison, and DIAG-TR outperforms baseline method by 8.9%, which proves that DIAG-TR has great potential in earth observation community.

According to the common structure characteristics of the plug-in fillet weld, a new weld defect detecting method was presented in this paper. The flexible phased array probe was inserted into the internal surface of the tube under water immersion during the detection process. The beam focusing model of convex flexible phased array was theoretically analyzed. Meanwhile, the acoustic focus beam with CIVA software were simulated. The typical flaws were added to the model of plug-in fillet weld, and defect response were obtained. The sample of the plug-in fillet weld with artificial flaws is manufactured, the system was calibrated in the laboratory. The experiment results indicated that this technique can successfully detect the typical flaws of crack, slag and porosity. Finally, the technique was applied to the manufacture quality inspection of the products, one incomplete penetration and one porosity were detected. The detecting system can effectively ensure the general welding flaws of the product were detected.

Abstract Two-dimensional (2D) materials are promising candidates for uses in next-generation electronic and optoelectronic devices. However, only a few high-quality 2D materials have been mechanically exfoliated to date. One of the critical issues is that the exfoliability of 2D materials from their bulk precursors is unknown. To assess the exfoliability of potential 2D materials from their bulk counterparts, we derived an elasticity-based-exfoliability measure based on an exfoliation mechanics model. The proposed measure has a clear physical meaning and is universally applicable to all material systems. We used this measure to calculate the exfoliability of 10,812 crystals having a first-principles calculated elastic tensor. By setting the threshold values for easy and potential exfoliation based on already-exfoliated materials, we predicted 58 easily exfoliable bulk crystals and 90 potentially exfoliable bulk crystals for 2D materials. As evidence, a topology-based algorithm indicates that there is no interlayer bonding topology for 93% predicted exfoliable bulk crystals, and the analysis on packing ratios shows that 99% predicted exfoliable bulk crystals exhibit a relatively low packing ratio value. Moreover, literature survey shows that 34 predicted exfoliable bulk crystals have been experimentally exfoliated into 2D materials. In addition, the characteristics of these predicted 2D materials were discussed for practical use of such materials.

Abstract Background Fabry disease (FD) remains poorly recognized, especially in children in China. Considering the diversity and nonspecific clinical manifestations accompanying with life-threatening aspect of this disease, methods to improve effective screening and management of the suspects are needed. This study aims to explore how it can be done effectively from a multidisciplinary perspective for children with FD at a tertiary children’s hospital in China. Methods A multidisciplinary team (MDT) of pediatric FD experts was launched at Children’s Hospital of Fudan University. Children with high-risk characteristics were referred by the MDT screening team using the dried blood spot (DBS) triple-test (α-galactosidase A, globotriaosylsphingosine, GLA gene). For newborns who were undergoing genetic testing in the hospital, the GLA gene was listed as a routine analysis gene. Evaluation, family screening, and genetic counselling were implemented after screening by the MDT management team. Results Before the establishment of the MDT, no case was diagnosed with FD in the hospital. However, twelve months following the MDT program's implementation, thirty-five children with high-risk profiles were referred for screening by DBS triple-test, with a yield of diagnosis of 14.3% (5/35). These 5 diagnosed children were referred due to a high-risk profile of pain accompanied by dermatological angiokeratoma and hypohidrosis (n = 2), pain accompanied by abnormal liver function (n = 1), pain only (n = 1), and unexplained renal tubular dysfunction (n = 1). Two neonates were detected early with GLA mutations in the hospital, with a yield of detection of 0.14% (2/1420). Furthermore, another 3 children diagnosed with FD were referred from other hospitals. Family screening of these 10 diagnosed children indicated that 9 boys inherited it from their mothers and 1 girl inherited it from her father. Four of them started to receive enzyme replacement therapy. Conclusion Screening and management of children with FD is effective based on a defined screening protocol and a multidisciplinary approach. We should pay more attention to the high-risk profiles of pain, angiokeratoma, decreased sweating, and unexplained chronic kidney disease in children.

This study analyzes the spatiotemporal variations of heavy rainfall and explores its response relationship with wind speed before and after heavy rainfall.The research is of great significance for improving the understanding of heavy rainfall and its relationship with wind speed,as well as the prevention and mitigation of heavy rainfall-induced disasters such as flooding.The study takes the Pearl River Basin as the study area.Specifically,the spatiotemporal variations of daily heavy rainfall with wind speed are analyzed by methods such as Mann-Kendall given the daily rainfall and wind speed data from 183 meteorological stations from 1961 to 2018 in this area. In addition,the variation of wind speed before and after heavy rainfall is explored.The results show that:① the annual total amount of heavy rainfall in the upstream shows a significant downward trend,but the annual average wind speed behaves oppositely,which declines significantly in the midstream;② Greater wind speed means a lower heavy rainfall threshold in the upstream,while the threshold in the midstream and downstream increases first and then decreases as the wind speed rises;③ The wind speed gradually drops before a heavy rainfall event in the upstream and begins to rise two days after the heavy rainfall while it increases before a heavy rainfall event and decreases after the heavy rainfall in the midstream and downstream.The research can provide a reference for the management of heavy rainfall and flooding in the Pearl River Basin.

Long-term water seepage in shield tunnels has a serious impact on water and soil loading on the outer surfaces of a shield segment near water areas. A theoretical analysis was used to obtain a formula to express the average vertical seepage gradient at the top of the tunnel. A formula for calculating the coefficient of lateral earth pressure for the principal stress arch effect was utilized. A model that takes into consideration the effects of long-term water seepage on the shield tunnel’s water and soil load was designed. Based on this calculation model, the variation law of the water and soil loading on top of shield tunnel near water area with the internal friction angle in the soil body, the density of the soil, the tunnel depth-to-diameter ratio, the water head of the external section, and the amount of water seepage per unit length is studied. Based on the geological conditions and field survey results of water and soil loading of two typical segments of the Maliuzhou Waterway section of the Hengqin Tunnel, a comparative analysis of the theoretical results and field survey measurements was performed for different calculated conditions. The research shows that the proposed model is able to perform a reasonably effective evaluation of the water and soil pressure at the top of the shield tunnel for the marine and land segments of the shield tunnel; and, when compared with Dimitrios Kolymbas’ effective stress method and Terzaghi’s Principle, the method shown in this paper has fewer errors. The results of the associated research are sufficient to reasonably design and propose a theoretical basis for underwater shield tunnels.

Underground construction will have more or less adverse effects on adjacent existing buildings with more and more existing buildings above ground. However, this situation has only been reported by a small number of researchers. In view of this, this article takes the existing airport line shaft and horizontal passage project in the western suburb of Beijing Metro Line 12 as the background to study the impact of the construction of subway station and shaft passage on the adjacent existing railway. Based on the above project reality, under the action of pavement load, the effects of different parameters (the distance between the surface measuring point and the middle line of the transverse passage and the substep of construction loading sup step) on the surface settlement and track deformation of the shaft and cross-passage through the existing railway are studied by numerical analysis method. The calculation results show that the construction method of shaft and cross passage is reasonable. The comprehensive reinforcement measures of subgrade, rail and hole are effective, effectively controlling the deformation of subgrade and rail within the standard value (surface settlement ≤60 mm, rail deformation ≤6 mm). In addition, the numerical simulation data can better represent the actual situation as a whole.

Ru-doped NiAlHf coatings were deposited on Ni-based single crystal substrate by arc ion plating technology. The failure mechanism and interfacial diffusion behavior were comparatively investigated with NiAlHf coating using scanning electron microscopy, electron probe micro-analyzer, and transmission electron microscopy. The results indicated that microstructure evolution of oxide scale induced by element diffusion process significantly affected oxidation resistance of NiAlHf/Ru coatings, resulting in formation of cracks and voids, thereby accelerating failure process. The precipitates in interdiffusion zone and secondary reaction zone of the substrate initiated by interfacial element diffusion were P phase and σ phase, respectively. And the discrepancy in content was elucidated from the perspective of thermodynamics and kinetics. Besides, microstructural evolution between NiAlHf/Ru coatings and substrate was also deliberated. The research could not only provide profound understanding of NiAlHf/Ru coatings failure mechanism, but also had significant guidance for suppressing precipitation of topological close-packed phases and facilitating development of single crystal Ni-based superalloys.

With the continuous development of information technology, more and more people have become to use online dating apps, and the trend has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic in these years. However, there is a phenomenon that most of user reviews of mainstream dating apps are negative. To study this phenomenon, we have used topic model to mine negative reviews of mainstream dating apps, and constructed a two-stage machine learning model using data dimensionality reduction and text classification to classify user reviews of dating apps. The research results show that: firstly, the reasons for the current negative reviews of dating apps are mainly concentrated in the charging mechanism, fake accounts, subscription and advertising push mechanism and matching mechanism in the apps, proposed corresponding improvement suggestions are proposed by us; secondly, using principal component analysis to reduce the dimensionality of the text vector, and then using XGBoost model to learn the low-dimensional data after oversampling, a better classification accuracy of user reviews can be obtained. We hope These findings can help dating apps operators to improve services and achieve sustainable business operations of their apps.

Global land cover map provides fundamental information for understanding the relationship between global environmental change and human settlement. With the development of data-driven deep learning theory, semantic segmentation network has largely facilitated the global land cover mapping activity. However, the performance of semantic segmentation network is closely related to the number and quality of training data, and the existing annotation data are usually insufficient in quantity, quality, and spatial resolution, and are usually sampled at local region and lack diversity and variability, making data-driven model difficult to extend to global scale. Therefore, we proposed a large-scale annotation dataset (Globe230k) for semantic segmentation of remote sensing image, which has 3 superiorities: (a) large scale: the Globe230k dataset includes 232,819 annotated images with a size of 512 × 512 and a spatial resolution of 1 m, including 10 first-level categories; (b) rich diversity: the annotated images are sampled from worldwide regions, with coverage area of over 60,000 km2, indicating a high variability and diversity; (c) multimodal: the Globe230k dataset not only contains RGB bands but also includes other important features for Earth system research, such as normalized differential vegetation index (NDVI), digital elevation model (DEM), vertical–vertical polarization (VV) bands, and vertical–horizontal polarization (VH) bands, which can facilitate the multimodal data fusion research. We used the Globe230k dataset to test several state-of-the-art semantic segmentation algorithms and found that it is able to evaluate algorithms in multiple aspects that are crucial for characterizing land covers, including multiscale modeling, detail reconstruction, and generalization ability. The dataset has been made public and can be used as a benchmark to promote further development of global land cover mapping and semantic segmentation algorithm development.

The high levels of bile acids are a critical factor in hepatorenal syndrome. Organic solute transporter α/β (Ostα/β) participate in bile acids reabsorption in the kidney. Fucoidan has the great potential in protecting against liver and kidney injury. However, whether Ostα/β increase bile acids reabsorption in bile duct ligature (BDL)-induced hepatorenal syndrome and the blockade of fucoidan are still not clear. Male mice that received BDL were given to fucoidan (at 12.5, 25 and 50 ​mg/kg) through intraperitoneal injection once daily for three weeks. The serum, liver and kidney samples of these experimental mice were collected to carry out biochemical, pathological and Western blot analysis. In this study, fucoidan significantly lowered serum activities of alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST), decreased serum levels of uric acid, creatinine and uric nitrogen, restored the deregulation of the renal urate transporter 1 (URAT1), organic anion transporter 1 (OAT1), and organic cation/carnitine transporter 1/2 (OCTN1/2), consistence with alleviation BDL-induced liver and kidney dysfunction, inflammation and fibrosis in mice. Furthermore, fucoidan significantly hampered Ostα/β and reduced bile acids reabsorption in BDL-induced mice, protected against AML12 and HK-2 ​cells injury in vitro. These results demonstrate that fucoidan alleviates BDL-induced hepatorenal syndrome through inhibition Ostα/β to reduce bile acids reabsorption in mice. Therefore, suppression of Ostα/β by fucoidan may be a novel strategy for attenuating hepatorenal syndrome.

This study is aimed at exploring whether curcumin can regulate the AKT pathway, promote the transfer of Nrf2 into the nucleus, and inhibit cell pyroptosis in diabetic cardiomyopathy. Diabetic rats and cardiomyocytes were treated with curcumin to study its effect on myocardial pyroptosis. Whether curcumin can promote the transfer of Nrf2 into the nucleus through AKT pathway regulation was assessed by western blotting and immunofluorescence. The Nrf2 knockout vector and ml385 were used to block the Nrf2 pathway, and the differences between the different groups in the expression of pyroptosis protein, cell activity, and incidence of apoptosis were evaluated to verify the relationship between the effect of curcumin on pyroptosis inhibition and the Nrf2 pathway. Curcumin promoted the transfer of Nrf2 into the nucleus through the AKT pathway and increased the expression of the antioxidant factors HO-1 and GCLC. These effects reduced reactive oxygen species accumulation and mitochondrial damage in diabetic myocardium and inhibited diabetes-induced pyroptosis. However, in cardiomyocytes with a blocked Nrf2 pathway, the ability of curcumin to inhibit pyroptosis was significantly reduced, and the protective effect on the cells was lost. Curcumin can reduce the accumulation of superoxide in the myocardium through AKT/Nrf2/ARE pathway activation and inhibit pyroptosis. It also has a role in diabetic cardiomyopathy treatment. This study provides new directions for evaluating the mechanism of diabetic cardiomyopathy and treating diabetic myocardium.

Psoriasis is a chronic papulosquamous skin disease with an autoimmune pathogenic traits and strong genetic predisposition. In the past few decades, with the rapid development of molecular biology and cell biology, the inherent pathogenesis of psoriasis has been gradually elucidated, in which cytokine inflammatory loops, cell signaling pathways, and epigenetic factors such as miRNAs have been demonstrated to play important roles in regulating the development and progression of psoriasis. More importantly, understanding the pathogenesis of psoriasis has promoted the development of effective treatment for psoriasis. In this review, we systemically summarized the molecular mechanisms regulating the development and progression psoriasis, introduced various therapeutics used for clinical psoriasis therapy, and highlighted the recent advances in nanoparticles (NPs)-mediated drug delivery for psoriasis treatment.

Smart materials promote the development of soft actuators. Herein, the modularized origami soft actuators consisting of shape memory alloy (SMA) wires, foldable paper‐based heaters, and paper substrates with special origami structures are proposed, which are connected without adhesive and allow convenient replacement for damaged parts. SMA wires are threaded into the paper as a drive module. The foldable paper‐based heaters with a length of 288 mm can be heated to 105.1 °C at 6.5 V to control the origami soft actuators. Combined with theoretical calculations and experimental measurements, the origami structure is adopted which exhibits a high recoverability compared with the flat structure because the design finds a structure–material balance by increasing structural flexural rigidity (2 times of that flat structure) for improving the restoring force while maintaining the deformation of materials within the elastic region during the actuation. The three modules in the origami actuator are independent and perform their functions individually. The combined system can also become a module that provides a driving force in other devices. This work provides a novel route and insight for developing modular soft actuators.

BackgroundThe duration of initial corticosteroid therapy in newly diagnosed Idiopathic nephrotic syndrome (INS) is about 3 months. Our study was designed to test the feasibility of a shorter duration of corticosteroid therapy in newly diagnosed INS who show a quicker response.MethodsPatients who responded within 10 days (Group A) received 8 weeks of corticosteroid therapy as compared to 12–14 weeks of standard therapy in those who responded between >10 days to 28 days (Group B), and follow up for 52 weeks. The primary endpoint is time to first relapse after treatment completion. (NCT03878914, March 18, 2019)ResultsA total of 33 children with INS were enrolled and the follow-up data were analyzed. The clinical and laboratory characteristics of patients in both groups were similar. No significant difference was found in time to first relapse [65(14.5, 159) days for Group A vs. 28(17, 61.5) days for Group B, P = 0.371], the incidence of frequently relapsing nephrotic syndrome [6/18 (33.3%) vs. 5/10(50%), P = 0.644] or requirement for alternative immunosuppressant [4/18 (22.2%) vs. 1/10 (10%), P = 0.769]. Group A received similar corticosteroid dose compare with Group B (3511 ± 2421 mg/m2 vs. 4117 ± 2556 mg/m2, P = 0.524). Frequency and severity of corticosteroid-related complications was similar in both groups.ConclusionsThe time to first relapse and the number of relapses per patient were comparable between the two groups. However, more patients in Group A relapsed and the mean total dose of prednisolone for the study period was very similar between the two groups.

IntroductionIn order to solve the inhibition of alkaline environment on plants growth at the initial stage of Eco-restoration of vegetation concrete technology, introducing AMF into vegetation concrete substrate is an effective solution. MethodsIn this study, Glomus mosseae (GM), Glomus intraradices (GI) and a mixture of two AMF (MI) were used as exogenous inoculation agents. Festuca elata and Cassia glauca were selected as host plants to explore the relationship between the physiological characteristics of plants and the content of substrate cement under exogenous inoculation of AMF.ResultsThe experiment showed that, for festuca elata, the maximum mycorrhizal infection rates of inoculation with GM, MI were when the cement contents ranged 5–8% and that of GI inoculation was with the cement contents ranging 5–10%. Adversely, for Cassia glauca, substrate cement content had little effect on the root system with the exogenous inoculation of AMF. Compared with CK, the effects of AMF inoculation on the physiological characteristics of the two plants were different. When the cement content was the highest (10% and 8% respectively), AMF could significantly increase(p

BackgroundAs a malignant digestive system tumor, pancreatic cancer has unique metabolic characteristics. In recent years, the study of pancreatic cancer metabolism is in full swing, which provides a new direction for the treatment of pancreatic cancer patients. However, there is no systematic report of pancreatic cancer metabolism. In this paper, bibliometrics and visualization methods were used to analyze the number of publications, countries/regions, authors, institutions, journals, co-cited references, and keywords of pancreatic cancer metabolism articles, to summarize the research trends and predict research hotspots.MethodsWe searched, screened and downloaded articles on pancreatic cancer metabolism through the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). Using CiteSpace, VOSviewer and Bibliometrix Package to analyze publications, countries/regions, authors, institutions, journals, co-cited references, and keywords of pancreatic cancer metabolism to identify research trends and predict research hotspots.ResultsAccording to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 5,255 articles were retrieved during the period 1943-2022. The number of publications on pancreatic cancer metabolism is increasing year by year. The United States (n=1602, 30.49%), China (n=1074, 20.44%), and Italy (n=313, 5.96%) are the three countries with the largest number of publications and citations, and there is close cooperation between countries. LI J (n=55) is the most prolific author. FUDAN UNIV (n=348) is the most published institution. CANCERS (n=118), PLOS ONE (n=93), and CANCER RESEARCH (n=80) are the most popular journals in this field. “Nutriment-deficient environment”, “cancer chemoprevention” and “targeting cancer stem cell” are the main areas of focus. “immunotherapy”, “ferroptosis” and “targeted therapy” are hot keywords in recent years. Taking pancreatic cancer metabolism as an entry point to study the role of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) mainly focuses on curcumin and resveratrol, lack of broader and deeper research on TCM.ConclusionsThe number of publications on pancreatic cancer metabolism has generally increased, and scholars have generally paid more attention to this field. “immunotherapy”, “ferroptosis” and “targeted therapy” are the current research hotspots. The in-depth study of pancreatic cancer metabolism will provide new ideas for the treatment of pancreatic cancer.

Two-dimensional (2D) transitional metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have garnered remarkable attention in electronics, optoelectronics, and hydrogen precipitation catalysis due to their exceptional physicochemical properties. Their utilisation in optoelectronic devices is especially notable for overcoming graphene’s zero-band gap limitation. Moreover, TMDs offer advantages such as direct band gap transitions, high carrier mobility, and efficient switching ratios. Achieving precise adjustments to the electronic properties and band gap of 2D semiconductor materials is crucial for enhancing their capabilities. Researchers have explored the creation of 2D alloy phases through heteroatom doping, a strategy employed to fine-tune the band structure of these materials. Current research on 2D alloy materials encompasses diverse aspects like synthesis methods, catalytic reactions, energy band modulation, high-voltage phase transitions, and potential applications in electronics and optoelectronics. This paper comprehensively analyses 2D TMD alloy materials, covering their growth, preparation, optoelectronic properties, and various applications including hydrogen evolution reaction catalysis, field-effect transistors, lithium-sulphur battery catalysts, and lasers. The growth process and characterisation techniques are introduced, followed by a summary of the optoelectronic properties of these materials.