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Abstract Domesticated herbivores are an important agricultural resource that play a critical role in global food security, particularly as they can adapt to varied environments, including marginal lands. An understanding of the molecular basis of their biology would contribute to better management and sustainable production. Thus, we conducted transcriptome sequencing of 100 to 105 tissues from two females of each of seven species of herbivore (cattle, sheep, goats, sika deer, horses, donkeys, and rabbits) including two breeds of sheep. The quality of raw and trimmed reads was assessed in terms of base quality, GC content, duplication sequence rate, overrepresented k-mers, and quality score distribution with FastQC. The high-quality filtered RNA-seq raw reads were deposited in a public database which provides approximately 54 billion high-quality paired-end sequencing reads in total, with an average mapping rate of ~93.92%. Transcriptome databases represent valuable resources that can be used to study patterns of gene expression, and pathways that are related to key biological processes, including important economic traits in herbivores.

Head and neck malignancies are a significant global health concern, with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) being the sixth most common cancer worldwide accounting for > 90% of cases. In recent years, there has been growing recognition of the potential role of alternative splicing (AS) in the etiology of cancer. Increasing evidence suggests that AS is associated with various aspects of cancer progression, including tumor occurrence, invasion, metastasis, and drug resistance. Additionally, AS is involved in shaping the tumor microenvironment, which plays a crucial role in tumor development and response to therapy. AS can influence the expression of factors involved in angiogenesis, immune response, and extracellular matrix remodeling, all of which contribute to the formation of a supportive microenvironment for tumor growth. Exploring the mechanism of AS events in HNSCC could provide insights into the development and progression of this cancer, as well as its interaction with the tumor microenvironment. Understanding how AS contributes to the molecular changes in HNSCC cells and influences the tumor microenvironment could lead to the identification of new therapeutic targets. Targeted chemotherapy and immunotherapy strategies tailored to the specific AS patterns in HNSCC could potentially improve treatment outcomes and reduce side effects. This review explores the concept, types, processes, and technological advancements of AS, focusing on its role in the initiation, progression, treatment, and prognosis of HNSCC.

To investigate the coupled damage mechanism of blunt impact and bullets penetration after penetrating ballistic plates against human body targets, experiments were conducted using 6.8 mm caliber armor-piercing bullets against gelatin targets with protective coatings. A numerical analysis model was developed to simulate bullet penetration into gelatin with protective coatings, obtaining endpoint characteristic quantities such as bullet velocity changes, changes in energy distribution, pressure, stress, and stress wave variations within the gelatin target after protection. The results indicate that at a velocity of 640 m·s-1, the 6.8 mm caliber armor-piercing round failed to penetrate the ballistic plate yet still caused a blunt impact depression of 37 mm in depth. Under conditions where the bullet did not penetrate the ballistic plate, approximately 80% of the bullet's kinetic energy was absorbed by the ballistic plate. At a velocity of 740 m·s-1, the bullet penetrated the ballistic plate, resulting in a blunt impact depression depth of 56 mm and an instantaneous cavity with a maximum diameter of 60 mm. During the process of penetrating the ballistic plate, approximately 50% of the bullet's kinetic energy was absorbed by the ballistic plate, and about 40% of the remaining kinetic energy transferred into the gelatin during the penetration of the target.

Combination therapy has become the most important treatment for advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which can significantly improve the prognosis of patients. However, poor targeting and adverse reactions limited its clinical application. Here, we constructed an AS1411 aptamer-programmed cell death ligand-1 (PD-L1) siRNA chimera/polyethylenimine/glutamine/β-cyclodextrin/doxorubicin (Chimera/ PEI/Gln/β-CD/DOX) nanoparticle for the combination therapy (chemotherapy combined with immunotherapy). Scanning electron microscopy showed that PEI/Gln/β-CD/DOX nanoparticle was conical, with a diameter of about 250–500 nm. AS1411 aptamer-PD-L1 siRNA chimera can effectively bind NSCLC cells and inhibit PD-L1 expression, further activating T cells and CD8+T cells. Glutamine modification effectively promoted the doxorubicin uptake by cancer cells and induced their apoptosis. Animal experiments showed that our nanoparticles effectively treated the transplanted tumor, and the adverse reactions were reduced. Compared with the Aptamer/β-CD/DOX group, the volume and ki-67 index of transplanted tumors in the Chimera/β-CD/DOX group were significantly decreased, while the apoptosis ratio was increased. Immunohistochemical results showed that Compared with the Aptamer/β-CD/DOX group, the number of T cells and CD8+T cells in the Chimera/β-CD/DOX group was increased by 1.34 and 1.41 times. Glutamine modification enhanced the chemotherapeutic efficacy and anti-tumor immune response in vivo. Our study provided a new method for the combination therapy of lung squamous cell carcinoma.

Visible and infrared image fusion is an important image enhancement technique that aims to generate high-quality fused images with prominent targets and rich textures in extreme environments. However, most of the current image fusion methods have poor visual perception of the generated fused images due to severe degradation of texture details of the visible light images in scenes with extreme lighting, which seriously affects the application of subsequent advanced vision tasks such as target detection and tracking. To address these challenges, this paper bridges the gap between image fusion and advanced vision tasks by proposing an efficient fusion method for mutual enhancement of spatial and radiometric information. First, we design the gradient residual dense block (LGCnet) to improve the description of fine spatial details in the fusion network. Then, we developed a cross-modal perceptual fusion (CMPF) module to facilitate modal interactions in the network, which effectively enhances the fusion of complementary information between different modalities and reduces redundant learning. Finally, we designed an adaptive light-aware network (ALPnet) to guide the training of the fusion network to facilitate the fusion network to adaptively select more effective information for fusion under different lighting conditions. Extensive experiments show that the proposed fusion approach has competitive advantages over six current state-of-the-art deep-learning methods in highlighting target features and describing the global scene.

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) tracking tasks find extensive utility across various applications. However, current Transformer-based trackers are generally tailored for diverse scenarios and lack specific designs for UAV applications. Moreover, due to the complexity of training in tracking tasks, existing models strive to improve tracking performance within limited scales, making it challenging to directly apply lightweight designs. To address these challenges, we introduce an efficient attention mechanism known as Macaron Attention, which we integrate into the existing UAV tracking framework to enhance the model’s discriminative ability within these constraints. Specifically, our attention mechanism comprises three components, fixed window attention (FWA), local squeezing global attention (LSGA), and conventional global attention (CGA), collectively forming a Macaron-style attention implementation. Firstly, the FWA module addresses the multi-scale issue in UAVs by cropping tokens within a fixed window scale in the spatial domain. Secondly, in LSGA, to adapt to the scale variation, we employ an adaptive clustering-based token aggregation strategy and design a “window-to-window” fusion attention model to integrate global attention with local attention. Finally, the CGA module is applied to prevent matrix rank collapse and improve tracking performance. By using the FWA, LSGA, and CGA modules, we propose a brand-new tracking model named MATrack. The UAV123 benchmark is the major evaluation dataset of MATrack with 0.710 and 0.911 on success and precision, individually.

Spinal tuberculosis is a common extrapulmonary type that is often secondary to pulmonary or systemic infections. Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection often leads to the balance of immune control and bacterial persistence. In this study, 64 patients were enrolled and the clinicopathological and immunological characteristics of different age groups were analyzed. Anatomically, spinal tuberculosis in each group mostly occurred in the thoracic and lumbar vertebrae. Imaging before preoperative anti-tuberculosis therapy showed that the proportion of abscesses in the older group was significantly lower than that in the younger and middle-aged groups. However, pathological examination of surgical specimens showed that the proportion of abscesses in the older group was significantly higher than that in the other groups, and there was no difference in the granulomatous inflammation, caseous necrosis, inflammatory necrosis, acute inflammation, exudation, granulation tissue formation, and fibrous tissue hyperplasia. B cell number was significantly lower in the middle-aged and older groups compared to the younger group, while the number of T cells, CD4+ T cells, CD8+ T cells, macrophages, lymphocytes, plasma cells, and NK cells did not differ. Meaningfully, we found that the proportion of IL-10 high expression and TGF-β1 positive in the older group was significantly higher than that in the younger group. TNF-α, CD66b, IFN-γ, and IL-6 expressions were not different among the three groups. In conclusion, there are some differences in imaging, pathological, and immune features of spinal tuberculosis in different age groups. The high expression of IL-10 and TGF-β1 in older patients may weaken their anti-tuberculosis immunity and treatment effectiveness.

Abstract Background Brassica napus is an important oilseed crop providing high-quality vegetable oils for human consumption and non-food applications. However, the regulation between embryo and seed coat for the synthesis of oil and phenylpropanoid compounds remains largely unclear. Results Here, we analyzed the transcriptomes in developing seeds at 2-day intervals from 14 days after flowering (DAF) to 64 DAF. The 26 high-resolution time-course transcriptomes are clearly clustered into five distinct groups from stage I to stage V. A total of 2217 genes including 136 transcription factors, are specifically expressed in the seed and show high temporal specificity by being expressed only at certain stages of seed development. Furthermore, we analyzed the co-expression networks during seed development, which mainly included master regulatory transcription factors, lipid, and phenylpropane metabolism genes. The results show that the phenylpropane pathway is prominent during seed development, and the key enzymes in the phenylpropane metabolic pathway, including TT5, BAN, and the transporter TT19, were directly or indirectly related to many key enzymes and transcription factors involved in oil accumulation. We identified candidate genes that may regulate seed oil content based on the co-expression network analysis combined with correlation analysis of the gene expression with seed oil content and seed coat content. Conclusions Overall, these results reveal the transcriptional regulation between lipid and phenylpropane accumulation during B. napus seed development. The established co-expression networks and predicted key factors provide important resources for future studies to reveal the genetic control of oil accumulation in B. napus seeds.

Abstract Background The purpose of this study was to assess morphological changes of the upper anterior alveolus after retraction of a maxillary incisor by applying three-dimensional (3D) superimposition of pretreatment (T1) and posttreatment (T2) cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) data. Methods The study group was comprised of 28 patients with skeletal Class II malocclusion who underwent incisor retraction. CBCT data were acquired before (T1) and after (T2) orthodontic treatment. Labial and palatal alveolar thickness were assessed at the crestal, midroot and apical levels of the retracted incisors. Following three-dimensional (3D) cranial base superimposition, we performed surface modeling and inner remodeling of the labial and palatal alveolar cortex of the maxillary incisors. Paired t-tests were used to compare T0 and T1 bone thickness and volume measurements. Comparisons between labial and palatal surface modeling, inner remodeling and outer surface modeling were performed with paired t-tests in SPSS 20.0 version. Results We observed controlled tipping retraction of the upper incisor. After treatment, the alveolar thickness on the labial sides increased and the palatal alveolar thickness decreased. The labial cortex showed a wider range of modeling area with a larger bending height and a smaller bending angle than the palatal side. The extent of inner remodeling was more prominent than the outer surface on both the labial and palatal sides. Conclusions Adaptive alveolar surface modeling occurred in response to incisor tipping retraction on both the lingual and labial sides although these changes occurred in an uncoordinated manner. Tipping retraction of the maxillary incisors led to a reduction in alveolar volume.

Background: Epidemiological research has established associations between various inflammatory cytokines and the occurrence of oral cancer and oropharyngeal cancer (OCPC). We performed a Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to systematically investigate the causal relationship between inflammatory cytokines and OCPC.Methods: We performed a bidirectional two-sample MR analysis using OCPC from 12 studies (6,034 cases and 6,585 controls) and genome-wide association study (GWAS) results for 41 serum cytokines from 8,293 Finns, respectively. Inverse variance weighting was used as the primary MR method and four additional MR methods (MR Egger, Weighted median, Simple mode, Weighted mode) were used to examine genetic associations between inflammatory traits and OCPC, and Cochran’s Q test, MR-Egger intercept, leave-one-out analysis, funnel plot, and multivariate MR (MVMR) analysis were used to assess the MR results.Results: The results suggested a potential association between high gene expression of Macrophage inflammatory protein-1α (MIP1α/CCL3) and an increased risk of OCPC (Odds Ratio (OR): 1.71, 95% Confidence Interval (CI): 1.09–2.68, p = 0.019). Increasing the expression levels of the interleukin-7 (IL-7) gene by 1 standard deviation reduced the risk of OCPC (OR: 0.64, 95%CI: 0.48–0.86, p = 0.003). In addition, multivariate Mendelian randomization analysis also showed the same results (MIP1α/CCL3, OR: 1.002, 95% CI: 0.919–1.092, p = 0.044; IL-7, OR: 0.997, 95% CI: 0.994–0.999, p = 0.011). Conversely, there was a positive correlation between genetic susceptibility to OCPC and an increase in Interleukin-4 (IL-4) (OR: 1.04, 95%CI: 1.00–1.08, p = 0.027).Conclusion: Our study systematically assessed the association between inflammatory cytokines and the risk of OCPC. We identified two upstream regulatory factors (IL-7 and CCL3) and one downstream effector factor (IL-4) that were associated with OCPC, offering potential avenues for the development of novel treatments.

Study region: The Northwest inland region of China. Study focus: The use of Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite data for assessing groundwater storage changes (GWSC) is rapidly expanding; however, dealing with such low spatial resolution data is always a challenge. In the present study, a dynamical downscaling method based on groundwater flow processes was proposed to simulate GWSC. Firstly, a hypothetical model constructed by MODFLOW package used to evaluate the efficiency of the developed model. Then, a part of the northwest inland region of China was taken as a real example to verify the applicability of the model. Finally, the downscaled results are used to estimate the groundwater storage changes in the study area. New hydrological insights for the region: The spatiotemporal change of GWSC from the proposed model in a hypothetical conceptual model matched well with those from the MODFLOW package. The average correlation coefficient between downscaled GWSC and observed groundwater level is over 0.54, and downscaled GWSC showed the reasonable heterogeneity in the study area. From 2008–2011, the area with a decline in groundwater storage accounted for about 12% of the total area, while it increased to 21.8% from 2012 to 2016. The proposed model has the potential to be applied for the large-scale evaluation of GWSC and to improve the understanding of GWSC in remote areas.

The posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) has been implicated in the integration of auditory feedback and motor system for controlling vocal production. However, the question as to whether and how the pSTG is causally involved in vocal feedback control is currently unclear. To this end, the present study selectively stimulated the left or right pSTG with continuous theta burst stimulation (c-TBS) in healthy participants, then used event-related potentials to investigate neurobehavioral changes in response to altered auditory feedback during vocal pitch regulation. The results showed that, compared to control (vertex) stimulation, c-TBS over the right pSTG led to smaller vocal compensations for pitch perturbations accompanied by smaller cortical N1 and larger P2 responses. Enhanced P2 responses received contributions from the right-lateralized temporal and parietal regions as well as the insula, and were significantly correlated with suppressed vocal compensations. Surprisingly, these effects were not found when comparing c-TBS over the left pSTG with control stimulation. Our findings provide evidence, for the first time, that supports a causal relationship between right, but not left, pSTG and auditory-motor integration for vocal pitch regulation. This lends support to a right-lateralized contribution of the pSTG in not only the bottom-up detection of vocal feedback errors but also the involvement of driving motor commands for error correction in a top-down manner.

The special blood circulation, anatomy, and tissue structure of the spine may lead to significant differences in pathological features and drug resistance between spinal tuberculosis and pulmonary tuberculosis. Here, we collected 168 spinal tuberculosis cases and 207 pulmonary tuberculosis cases, and compared their clinical and pathological features as well as drug resistance. From the anatomical location, the highest incidence was of lumbar tuberculosis, followed by thoracic tuberculosis. PET-CT scans showed increased FDG uptake in the diseased vertebrae, discernible peripheral soft tissue shadow, visible internal capsular shadow, and an abnormal increase in FDG uptake. MRI showed infectious lesions in the diseased vertebral body, formation of paravertebral and bilateral psoas muscle abscess, and edema of surrounding soft tissues. As with control tuberculosis, the typical pathological features of spinal tuberculosis were chronic granulomatous inflammation with caseous necrosis. The incidence of granulomas was not statistically different between the groups. However, the proportions of caseous necrosis, acute inflammation, abscess, exudation, and granulation tissue formation in the spinal tuberculosis group were all significantly increased relative to the control tuberculosis group. Compared to the control tuberculosis group, the incidences of resistance to rifampicin (RFP) + isoniazid (INH) + streptomycin (STR) and INH + ethambutol (EMB) were lower in the spinal tuberculosis group, while the incidences of resistance to RFP + INH + EMB and RFP + EMB were higher. Moreover, we also found some differences in drug-resistance gene mutations. In conclusion, there are noticeable differences between spinal Mycobacterium tuberculosis and pulmonary tuberculosis in pathological characteristics, drug resistance, and drug resistance gene mutations.

Abstract Background Stanford type A aortic dissection (T(A)AD) is one of the most dangerous cardiovascular diseases and morbid obesity is associated with the prognosis of many cardiovascular diseases. The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of morbid obesity on in-hospital mortality, total hospital costs and discover the prevalence of morbid obesity among inpatients with T(A)AD. Methods Patients with a primary diagnosis of T(A)AD were identified from the National Inpatient Sample database (NIS) from 2008 to 2017. These patients were categorized into non-obesity, obesity and morbid obesity. Multivariable regression models were utilized to assess the association between obesity/morbid obesity and in-hospital mortality, total cost and other clinical factors. The temporal trend in prevalence of obesity/morbid obesity in T(A)ADs and the trend of in-hospital mortality among different weight categories were also explored. Results From the NIS database 8489 T(A)AD inpatients were identified, of which 7230 (85.2%) patients were non-obese, 822 (9.7%) were obese and 437 (5.1%) were morbid obese. Morbid obesity was associated with increased risk of in-hospital mortality (odds ratio [OR] 1.39; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.03–1.86), 8% higher total cost compared with the non-obese patients. From 2008 to 2017, the rate of obesity and morbid obesity in patients with T(A)AD have significantly increased from 7.36 to 11.33% (P

Abstract Background Regulation of gene expression plays an essential role in controlling the phenotypes of plants. Brassica napus (B. napus) is an important source for the vegetable oil in the world, and the seed oil content is an important trait of B. napus. Results We perform a comprehensive analysis of the transcriptional variability in the seeds of B. napus at two developmental stages, 20 and 40 days after flowering (DAF). We detect 53,759 and 53,550 independent expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) for 79,605 and 76,713 expressed genes at 20 and 40 DAF, respectively. Among them, the local eQTLs are mapped to the adjacent genes more frequently. The adjacent gene pairs are regulated by local eQTLs with the same open chromatin state and show a stronger mode of expression piggybacking. Inter-subgenomic analysis indicates that there is a feedback regulation for the homoeologous gene pairs to maintain partial expression dosage. We also identify 141 eQTL hotspots and find that hotspot87-88 co-localizes with a QTL for the seed oil content. To further resolve the regulatory network of this eQTL hotspot, we construct the XGBoost model using 856 RNA-seq datasets and the Basenji model using 59 ATAC-seq datasets. Using these two models, we predict the mechanisms affecting the seed oil content regulated by hotspot87-88 and experimentally validate that the transcription factors, NAC13 and SCL31, positively regulate the seed oil content. Conclusions We comprehensively characterize the gene regulatory features in the seeds of B. napus and reveal the gene networks regulating the seed oil content of B. napus.

Abstract As the domestic interprovincial migrants, Uygur traders have been engaged in the Hetian jade trade from Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to the city of Nanyang in Henan Province. Having lived in the private rented houses around the market in the early days, they moved into the government-built public rental housing in 2017, an independently managed community. They have maintained their past residential pattern of living around the market, and gradually develop the community into an inter-embedded multi-ethnic community together with other ethnic groups. Through the history of the formation of the Uygur community in Nanyang Stone Town, this paper presents the process of interaction between the ethnic minority migrants and the local community, examines the responses and influence of the market, society, government, and individuals in this process, aiming to understand how the minority community was formed, to deepen understanding of the “inter-embedded multi-ethnic community", and, in turn, to promote research and reflection on the development of the ethnic community during urbanization in China. This study suggests that such communities surrounding the market are socially extended based on inter-embedded livelihood. The open national market is the core of the social structure of inter-embedded ethnic groups, and market exchange is one of the main relations generated in the current interactions between the ethnic groups. The government’s efforts to build inter-embedded communities are conducive to transforming the relationships among ethnic groups from limited interaction to comprehensive and balanced development. Moreover, the improvement of common living environments and increase in exchanges are conducive to upgrading interactions between individuals to extensive and in-depth exchanges among different ethnic groups.

Abstract Background To evaluate the morphological and positional changes of mandibular condyle after miniscrew-assisted rapid palatal expansion (MARPE) in skeletal Class III malocclusion adult patients with horizontal mandibular deviation (MD). Methods The sample consisted of 15 patients with MD (6 males and 9 females, mean age 21.58 ± 3.12 years). The CBCT scans were taken before and after MARPE immediately. The pre- and post-registered images of the cranial base and mandible were measured, respectively, by Mimics. Results After expansion, the distance between superior condylar point and the Frankfort horizontal plane on the deviated side and the non-deviated side increased by 0.96 ± 0.60 mm (P = 0.011) and 0.70 ± 0.65 mm (P = 0.046); coronal condylar angle of the deviated side increased by 0.39° ± 0.34 (P = 0.028) and 0.06° ± 0.49 (P = 0.917) on the non-deviated side. No statistically significant differences were found when comparing the condylar position on both sides before and after treatment. The degree of mandibular deviation decreased 0.43 mm (P = 0.270). Conclusions This study suggested that for skeletal Class III malocclusion adult patients with horizontal MD, the condyle on the deviated side rotated toward the non-deviated side in the coronal direction; the condylar remodeling occurred mainly on the deviated side after MARPE in the vertical direction.

Double-decker filaments and their eruptions have been widely observed in recent years, but their physical formation mechanism is still unclear. Using high spatiotemporal resolution, multi-wavelength observations taken by the New Vacuum Solar Telescope and the Solar Dynamics Observatory, we show the formation of a double-decker pair of flux rope system by two successive tether-cutting eruptions in a bipolar active region. Due to the combined effect of photospheric shearing and convergence motions around the active region’s polarity inversion line (PIL), the arms of two overlapping inverse-S-shaped short filaments reconnected at their intersection, which created a simultaneous upward-moving magnetic flux rope (MFR) and a downward-moving post-flare-loop (PFL) system striding the PIL. Meanwhile, four bright flare ribbons appeared at the footpoints of the newly formed MFR and the PFL. As the MFR rose, two elongated flare ribbons connected by a relatively larger PFL appeared on either side of the PIL. After a few minutes, another MFR formed in the same way at the same location and then erupted in the same direction as the first one. Detailed observational results suggest that the eruption of the first MFR might experienced a short pause before its successful eruption, while the second MFR was a failed eruption. This implies that the two newly formed MFRs might reach a new equilibrium at relatively higher heights for a while, which can be regarded as a transient double-decker flux rope system. The observations can well be explained by the tether-cutting model, and we propose that two successive confined tether-cutting eruptions can naturally produce a double-decker flux rope system, especially when the background coronal magnetic field has a saddle-like distribution of magnetic decay index profile in height.

The detection of an infrared small target faces the problems of background interference and non-obvious target features, which have yet to be efficiently solved. By employing the non-local self-correlation characteristic of the infrared images, the principle component pursuit (PCP)-based methods are demonstrated to be applicable to infrared small target detection in a complex scene. However, existing PCP-based methods heavily depend on the uniform distribution of the background pixels and are prone to generating a high number of false alarms under strong clutter situations. In this paper, we propose a group low-rank regularized principle component pursuit model (GPCP) to solve this problem. First, the local image patches are clustered into several groups that correspond to different grayscale distributions. These patch groups are regularized with a group low-rank constraint, enabling an independent recovery of different background regions. Then, GPCP model integrates the group low-rank components with a global sparse component to extract small targets from the background. Different singular value thresholds can be exploited for image groups corresponding to different brightness and grayscale variance, boosting the recovery of background clutters and also enhancing the detection of small targets. Finally, a customized optimization approach based on alternating direction method of multipliers is proposed to solve this model. We set three representative detection scenes, including the ground background, sea background and sky background for experiment analysis and model comparison. The evaluation results show the proposed model has superiority in background suppression and achieves better adaptability for different scenes compared with various state-of-the-art methods.

Due to their devastating ability to extract features, convolutional neural network (CNN)-based approaches have achieved tremendous success in hyperspectral image (HSI) classification. However, previous works have been dedicated to constructing deeper or wider deep learning networks to obtain exceptional classification performance, but as the layers get deeper, the gradient disappearance problem impedes the convergence stability of network models. Additionally, previous works usually focused on utilizing fixed-scale convolutional kernels or multiple available, receptive fields with varying scales to capture features, which leads to the underutilization of information and is vulnerable to feature learning. To remedy the above issues, we propose an innovative hybrid-scale feature enhancement network (HFENet) for HSI classification. Specifically, HFENet contains two key modules: a hybrid-scale feature extraction block (HFEB) and a shuffle attention enhancement block (SAEB). HFEB is designed to excavate spectral–spatial structure information of distinct scales, types, and branches, which can augment the multiplicity of spectral–spatial features while modeling the global long-range dependencies of spectral–spatial informative features. SAEB is devised to adaptively recalibrate spectral-wise and spatial-wise feature responses to generate the purified spectral–spatial information, which effectively filters redundant information and noisy pixels and is conducive to enhancing classification performance. Compared with several sophisticated baselines, a series of experiments conducted on three public hyperspectral datasets showed that the accuracies of OA, AA, and Kappa all exceed 99%, demonstrating that the presented HFENet achieves state-of-the-art performance.

Multiple object tracking (MOT) in videos captured by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is a fundamental aspect of computer vision. Recently, the one-shot tracking paradigm integrates the detection and re-identification (ReID) tasks, striking a balance between tracking accuracy and inference speed. This paradigm alleviates task conflicts and achieves remarkable results through various feature decoupling methods. However, in challenging scenarios like drone movements, lighting changes and object occlusion, it still encounters issues with detection failures and identity switches. In addition, traditional feature decoupling methods directly employ channel-based attention to decompose the detection and ReID branches, without a meticulous consideration of the specific requirements of each branch. To address the above problems, we introduce an asymmetric feature enhancement network with a global coordinate-aware enhancement (GCAE) module and an embedding feature aggregation (EFA) module, aiming to optimize the two branches independently. On the one hand, we develop the GCAE module for the detection branch, which effectively merges rich semantic information within the feature space to improve detection accuracy. On the other hand, we introduce the EFA module for the ReID branch, which highlights the significance of pixel-level features and acquires discriminative identity embedding through a local feature aggregation strategy. By efficiently incorporating the GCAE and EFA modules into the one-shot tracking pipeline, we present a novel MOT framework, named AsyUAV. Extensive experiments have demonstrated the effectiveness of our proposed AsyUAV. In particular, it achieves a MOTA of 38.3% and IDF1 of 51.7% on VisDrone2019, and a MOTA of 48.0% and IDF1 of 67.5% on UAVDT, outperforming existing state-of-the-art trackers.

Although nondestructive ultrasonic technologies have been applied in laboratory and field tests in the field of heritage conservation, few studies have quantified the relationship among the real microstructures, micromechanical properties, and macroscopic acoustic responses of earthen-site soils. This paper develops a micromechanics-based multiscale model for quantitatively exploring the ultrasonic propagation characteristics of elastic waves in untreated and consolidated earthen-site soils. Scanning electron microscope images and image processing technology are integrated into the finite-element simulation. The effects of microstructure and wave features on the acoustic characteristics of soils are quantitatively investigated under pulsive loading. The simulation results of untreated and consolidated soils are efficiently compared to ultrasonic test data. It is demonstrated that the integration of microstructure image processing and multiscale modeling can predict the ultrasonic pulse velocity well, which improves the accuracy of laboratory testing and field monitoring and better serves the evaluation and implementation of engineering practice in the field of heritage conservation.

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have shown outstanding feature extraction capability and become a hot topic in the field of hyperspectral image (HSI) classification. However, most of the prior works usually focus on designing deeper or wider network architectures to extract spatial and spectral features, which give rise to difficulty for optimization and more parameters along with higher computation. Moreover, how to learn spatial and spectral information more effectively is still being researched. To tackle the aforementioned problems, a decompressed spectral-spatial multiscale semantic feature network (DSMSFNet) for HSI classification is proposed. This model is composed of a decompressed spectral-spatial feature extraction module (DSFEM) and a multiscale semantic feature extraction module (MSFEM). The former is devised to extract more discriminative and representative global decompressed spectral-spatial features in a lightweight extraction manner, while the latter is constructed to expand the range of available receptive fields and generate clean multiscale semantic features at a granular level to further enhance the classification performance. Compared with progressive classification approaches, abundant experimental results on three benchmark datasets prove the superiority of our developed DSMSFNet model.

A hyperspectral image (HSI) has a very high spectral resolution, which can reflect the target’s material properties well. However, the limited spatial resolution poses a constraint on its applicability. In recent years, some hyperspectral pansharpening studies have attempted to integrate HSI with PAN to improve the spatial resolution of HSI. Although some achievements have been made, there are still shortcomings, such as insufficient utilization of multi-scale spatial and spectral information, high computational complexity, and long network model inference time. To address the above issues, we propose a novel U-shaped hyperspectral pansharpening network with channel cross-concatenation and spatial–spectral attention mechanism (CCC-SSA-UNet). A novel channel cross-concatenation (CCC) method was designed to effectively enhance the fusion ability of different input source images and the fusion ability between feature maps at different levels. Regarding network design, integrating a UNet based on an encoder–decoder architecture with a spatial–spectral attention network (SSA-Net) based on residual spatial–spectral attention (Res-SSA) blocks further enhances the ability to extract spatial and spectral features. The experiment shows that our proposed CCC-SSA-UNet exhibits state-of-the-art performance and has a shorter inference runtime and lower GPU memory consumption than most of the existing hyperspectral pansharpening methods.

ObjectiveTo evaluate transverse maxillomandibular discrepancy and dental compensation in first molar areas in 7- to 9-year-old children with skeletal Class III malocclusion without posterior crossbite using cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT).MethodsThe sample of this retrospective study consisted of 60 children (7 to 9 years old), who were divided into the skeletal Class III malocclusion group (study group, skeletal Class III malocclusion without posterior crossbite, N = 31) and the Class I occlusion group (control group, Class I occlusion with one or two impacted teeth, N = 30). CBCT data were obtained from the database of the Department of Radiology of Hospital of Stomatology, Shandong University. For three-dimensional reconstruction of the head, the dental arch width, basal bone width, and buccolingual inclination angle were measured using MIMICS 21.0 software. Independent-sample t tests were used to compare the two groups.ResultsThe mean age of the children was 8.18±0.83years. The width of the maxillary basal bone was significantly smaller in the skeletal Class III malocclusion group (59.75 ± 3.14 mm) than in the Class I occlusion group (62.39 ± 3.01 mm) (P < 0.01). The mandibular basal bone width was significantly larger in the skeletal Class III malocclusion group (60.00 ± 2.56 mm) than in the Class I occlusion group (58.19 ± 2.42 mm) (P < 0.01). The difference in the width of the maxillary and mandibular bases in the skeletal Class III malocclusion group (-0.25 ± 1.73 mm) was significantly different from that in the Class I occlusion group (4.20 ± 1.25 mm) (P < 0.01). However, there was no significant difference in the upper or lower dental arch width between the two groups (P > 0.05). The buccal inclination of the maxillary molars in the skeletal Class III malocclusion group (31.4° ± 8.9°) was significantly higher than that in the Class I occlusion group (17.64° ± 7.3°) (P < 0.01), as was the lingual inclination angle of mandibular molars (45.24° ± 8.3° vs. 37.96° ± 10.18°; P < 0.01).ConclusionTransverse maxillary and mandibular discrepancies in the posterior area and transverse dental compensation were found in the early mixed dentition of patients with skeletal Class III malocclusion without posterior crossbite. This suggests that even in the absence of posterior crossbite, maxillary expansion can be attempted to correct the maxillomandibular transverse discrepancy.

Due to the strong coupling characteristics and daily correlation characteristics of multiple load sequences, the prediction method based on time series extrapolation and combined with multiple load meteorological data has limited accuracy improvement, which is tested by the fluctuation of load sequences and the accuracy of Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP). This paper proposes a multiple load prediction method considering the coupling characteristics of multiple loads and the division of load similar fluctuation sets. Firstly, the coupling characteristics of multivariate loads are studied to explore the interaction relationship between multivariate loads and find out the priority of multivariate load prediction. Secondly, the similar fluctuating sets of loads are divided considering the similarity and fluctuation of load sequences. Thirdly, the load scenarios are divided by k-means clustering for the inter-set sequences of similar fluctuating sets, and the Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory (BI-LSTM) models are trained separately for the sub-set of scenarios and prioritized by prediction. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method was verified by combining the multivariate load data provided by the Campus Metabolism system of Arizona State University.

BackgroundAccumulating evidence has shown significant contributions of the right cerebellum to auditory-motor integration for vocal production. Whether the left cerebellum is likewise involved in vocal motor control, however, remains unclear.MethodsBy applying neuronavigated continuous and intermittent theta burst stimulation (cTBS/iTBS) over the left cerebellar lobule VII (Crus I), the present event-related potential (ERP) study investigated whether the left cerebellum exerts causal effects in modulating auditory feedback control of vocal pitch production. After receiving cTBS, iTBS, or sham stimulation over the left cerebellum, a group of fifteen young adults produced sustained vowels while hearing their voice unexpectedly shifted in pitch upwards or downwards by 200 cents. The effects of cerebellar stimulation were assessed by measuring the vocal and ERP (N1/P2) responses to pitch perturbations across the conditions.ResultsWhen compared to sham stimulation, cTBS or iTBS over the left cerebellar lobule VII (Crus I) led to no systematic changes in vocal compensations for pitch perturbations in auditory feedback. Also, the cortical N1/P2 responses did not vary significantly across the three stimulation sessions.ConclusionThese findings present the first neurobehavioral evidence suggesting that the left cerebellum is not causally associated with auditory feedback control of vocal production. Together with previously reported causal effects of the right cerebellum in modulating vocal pitch regulation, the present study lends support to the hypothesis that there is a functional lateralization of the cerebellum in vocal motor control though auditory feedback.

Abstract Ammonium sulfate ((NH4)2SO4) assisted roasting has been proven to be an effective way to convert spent lithium‐ion battery cathodes to water‐soluble salts. Herein, thermogravimetric (TG) experiments are performed to analyze the mechanism of the sulfation conversion process. First, the reaction activation energies of the sulfate‐assisted roasting are 88.87 and 95.27 kJ mol−1, which are calculated by Kissinger–Akahira–Sunose (KAS) and Flynn–Wall–Ozawa (FWO) methods, respectively. Then, nucleation and growth are determined and verified as the sulfation reaction model by the Šatava–Šesták method. Finally, sub‐reactions of the sulfation process are investigated and reaction controlling mechanisms are determined by the contribution of sub‐reaction. Based on the thermogravimetric analysis, the phase boundary reaction is found to dominate in the initial step of the roasting process (α < 0.6) while the nucleation reaction controlls the following step (α > 0.6), agreeing well with changing trend of activation energy. Overall, thermogravimetric analysis is a general way to study the mechanism of the various roasting processes.

The supplementary motor area (SMA) has been implicated in the feedforward control of speech production. Whether this region is involved in speech motor control through auditory feedback, however, remains uncertain. The present event-related potential (ERP) study examined the role of the left SMA in vocal pitch regulation in a causal manner by combining auditory feedback manipulations and neuronavigated continuous theta bust stimulation (c-TBS). After receiving c-TBS over the left SMA or the control site (vertex), twenty young adults vocalized the vowel sound /u/ while hearing their voice unexpectedly pitch-shifted -50 or -200 cents. Compared to the control stimulation, c-TBS over the left SMA led to decreased vocal compensations for pitch perturbations of -50 and -200 cents. A significant decrease of N1 and P2 responses to -200 cents perturbations was also found when comparing active and control stimulation. Major neural generators of decreased P2 responses included the right-lateralized superior and middle temporal gyrus and angular gyrus. Notably, a significant correlation was found between active-control differences in the vocal compensation and P2 responses for the -200 cents perturbations. These findings provide neurobehavioral evidence for a causal link between the left SMA and auditory-motor integration for vocal pitch regulation, suggesting that the left SMA receives auditory feedback information and mediates vocal compensations for feedback errors in a bottom-up manner.

Due to the development of aviation hydraulic systems towards high pressure and high flow, the frequency range of pressure pulsation becomes wider, and the amplitude of pulsation increases. This puts higher requirements on the attenuation characteristics of the pressure pulsation attenuator. To reduce the damage caused by pressure pulsation to the pipeline, a Helmholtz-type pulsation attenuator (HTPA) is designed, which works through the Helmholtz resonant chamber. The theoretical model of HTPA is established by the method of lumped parameter method and distribution parametric method. The insertion loss is adopted to evaluate its attenuation characteristics. The internal pressure dynamic characteristics and attenuation effect of the HTPA are analyzed by simulation and experimentation. The results show that the pulsation attenuation rate δ was 40% after the installation of the attenuator. In the frequency range of 0–1000 Hz, the maximum insertion loss is 19 dB, which verifies the validity and correctness of the theoretical model.

Severe inflammatory response and functional impairment of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) often lead to the implantation failure of EPC-captured tissue-engineered blood vessels (TEBVs) in diabetes. Regulatory T cells (Treg cells) are the most important inhibitory immune cells, but their effects in angiogenesis remain undefined, and the differences in the microenvironment may be an important reason. Here, we constructed a TEBV coated with an anti-CD34 antibody-functionalized heparin-collagen multilayer (anti-CD34 antibody-modified TEBV) using layer-by-layer self-assembly. Then, TEBVs were implanted into diabetic pigs. All TEBVs remained unobstructed 60 days after implantation, although varying degrees of intimal hyperplasia were detectable. Severe intimal hyperplasia was observed in the control group and peripheral injection of Treg cells group. Intravenous injection of Treg cells significantly inhibited intimal hyperplasia, inflammation, and cell apoptosis. Moreover, intravenous injection increased the proportion of circulating EPCs, while peripheral injection did not have these effects and reduced microvessel density around the TEBV. Interestingly, many Nestin+ cells could be detected in TEBVs, most of which were fusiform, showing the characteristics of smooth-muscle cells. Treg cell intravenous transplantation markedly reduced the number of Nestin+ cells in the TEBV. In conclusion, Treg cells inhibited the intimal hyperplasia of TEBVs in diabetic pigs by promoting EPC mobilization, anti-inflammatory action, and cellular protection.

Abstract Background Maxillary skeletal expanders (MSE) is effective for the treatment of maxillary transverse deformity. The purpose of the study was to analyse the palatal bone thickness in the of MSE implantation in patients with skeletal class III malocclusion. Methods A total of 80 adult patients (40 males, 40 females) with an average angle before treatment were divided into two groups, the skeletal class III malocclusion group and the skeletal I malocclusion group, based on sagittal facial type. Each group consisted of 40 patients, with a male to female ratio of 1:1. A cone-beam computed tomography scanner was employed to obtain DICOM data for all patients. The palatal bone thickness was measured at 45 sites with MIMICS 21.0 software, and SPSS 22.0 software was employed for statistical analysis. The bone thickness at different regions of the palate in the same group was analysed with one-way repeated measures ANOVA. Fisher’s least significant difference-t method was used for the comparison of pairs, and independent sample t test was employed to determine the significance of differences in the bone thickness at the same sites between the two groups. Results Palatal bone thickness was greater in the middle region of the midline area (P

Using waste clay brick powder (RBP) to partially replace cement in the preparation of concrete, is one way to recycle construction waste. In order to investigate the physical and mechanical properties and volume stability of recycled micropowder ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC), the basic mechanical and shrinkage properties of recycled micropowder UHPC were studied at replacement rates of 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50%. The results show that: (1) When the activated recycled brick powder is used to replace the cement, the compressive strength, flexural strength and splitting tensile strength of the UHPC initially increase and then decrease with the increase in the substitution rate. When the substitution rate is 10%, the 28 d compressive strength, flexural strength and splitting tensile strength of the UHPC are the highest; (2) Replacing cement with recycled brick powder can reduce the autogenous shrinkage of the UHPC, and the autogenous shrinkage rate of the UHPC decreases with the increase in the brick powder replacement rate. The drying shrinkage of the UHPC can be reduced by replacing cement with recycled brick powder. The drying shrinkage of the UHPC initially decreases, and then increases, with the increase in the replacement rate of brick powder. When the replacement rate of the brick powder was 30%, the drying shrinkage of the UHPC was the least, and this was 49.7% lower than that in the benchmark group. The prediction models of autogenous shrinkage and drying shrinkage are in good agreement with the experimental results, which can be used to predict the shrinkage development of recycled brick powder UHPC.

The traditional herb Eleutherococcus henryi Oliv. is commonly used to treat inflammatory conditions including rheumatism, arthritis, and hepatitis, as well as mental fatigue and amnesia, according to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) theory. Savinin is a natural lignan obtained from the roots of E. henryi. The present study was undertaken to determine whether savinin can relieve LPS-induced neuroinflammation and if so, what the mechanism is. Groups of male C57BL/6 mice were administered savinin (5, 10, 20 mg/kg) and DEX (10 mg/kg) by gavage once daily for a continuous 7 days. On the 5th day of continuous pre-administration, LPS (2.5 mg/kg) was injected into the lateral ventricles of the mice for modeling 48 h. We found that treatment with savinin decreased the levels of neuroinflammatory cytokines and histopathological alterations dramatically. Consequently, it improved the LPS-induced neuroinflammatory response in mice. Furthermore, savinin inhibited the up-regulated expression of related proteins in the activated MAPK/NF-κB and NLRP3 inflammasome signaling pathways caused by LPS. Docking studies demonstrated the binding of savinin to three receptors (MAPK, NF-κB and NLRP3) using a well-fitting mode. These findings suggest that savinin may suppress neuroinflammation induced by LPS in vivo via modulating MAPK/NF-κB and NLRP3 signaling pathways.

Reused roadways are increasingly adopted in fully mechanized coalfaces with large mining heights because of the ventilation and gas drainage problems. However, the forced mechanism and grouting control technology of the reused roadway was seldom studied. Hence, in this paper, field monitoring and numerical simulation were undertaken to investigate the distribution of stress and deformation of the reused roadway, and the reasonable grouting opportunities and technological parameters were determined accordingly. Engineering application of grouting control technology with self-developed inorganic double-fluid grouting materials was conducted. The field monitoring and numerical simulation revealed that the reused roadway was significantly affected by the lateral abutment pressure during the first mining operation and by the leading abutment pressure during the second mining operation. It was characterized by lagging stable deformation during the first mining operation and ceaselessly increasing deformation during the second mining operation. The deformation range of the reused roadway during the first mining operation can be divided into three stages: initial deformation, violent deformation and plateaued deformation, while the deformation range can be divided into three distinct stages: initial deformation, slow deformation and violent deformation during the second mining operation. On the basis of the roadway deformation law, two grouting opportunities were confirmed. The first grouting opportunity was suggested in the front part of the plateaued deformation stage during the first mining. The second grouting opportunity was suggested in the slow deformation stage during the second mining. Field engineering applications showed that both the deformation range and value of the reused roadway were decreased obviously after grouting.

The segmentation and modeling of the upper airway play an important role in the analysis and diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea. In this paper, a method based on deep learning is proposed to automatically segment the upper airway on CBCT data. The main process is to obtain a coarse segmentation result map through 3D U-Net. Then low-confidence voxels in the coarse segmentation results as weak feature regions are extracted. Secondly, the boundary attention map is constructed through the Gaussian kernel function based on weak feature regions. Then, the boundary attention mechanism is used to strengthen the learning ability of weak feature regions. Finally, a high-precision 3D model is constructed on the predicted segmentation results through the marching cube algorithm. A large number of experiments and comparisons verify that our method achieves better performance on the manually annotated dataset.

Infrared and visible image fusion is a hot topic due to the perfect complementarity of their information. There are two key problems in infrared and visible image fusion. One is how to extract significant target areas and rich texture details from the source images, and the other is how to integrate them to produce satisfactory fused images. To tackle these problems, we propose a novel fusion framework in this paper. A multi-level image decomposition method is used to obtain the base layer and detail layer of the source image. For the fusion of base layer, an ingenious fusion strategy guided by the saliency map of source image is designed to improve the intensity of salient targets and the visual quality of the fused image. For the fusion of detail layer, an efficient approach by introducing the enhanced gradient information is presented to boost the detail features and sharpen the edges of the fused image. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared with fifteen classical and advanced fusion methods, the proposed image fusion framework has better performance in both subjective and objective evaluation.

The depth map contains abundant spatial structure cues, which makes it extensively introduced into saliency detection tasks for improving the detection accuracy. Nevertheless, the acquired depth map is often with uneven quality, due to the interference of depth sensors and external environments, posing a challenge when trying to minimize the disturbances from low-quality depth maps during the fusion process. In this article, to mitigate such issues and highlight the salient objects, we propose a progressive guided fusion network (PGFNet) with multi-modal and multi-scale attention for RGB-D salient object detection. Particularly, we first present a multi-modal and multi-scale attention fusion model (MMAFM) to fully mine and utilize the complementarity of features at different scales and modalities for achieving optimal fusion. Then, to strengthen the semantic expressiveness of the shallow-layer features, we design a multi-modal feature refinement mechanism (MFRM), which exploits the high-level fusion feature to guide the enhancement of the shallow-layer original RGB and depth features before they are fused. Moreover, a residual prediction module (RPM) is applied to further suppress background elements. Our entire network adopts a top-down strategy to progressively excavate and integrate valuable information. Compared with the state-of-the-art methods, experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method both qualitatively and quantitatively on eight challenging benchmark datasets.

Based on the social identity theory, the relationship and influencing mechanism between high-performance human resource practices (HPHRPs) and employees’ voice behavior were explored by constructing a moderated mediation model, and the relationship between the field of human resources and the field of organizational behavior was also established. Through 1,178 paired samples of supervisor-employee survey and multilevel linear model analysis technology, it was found that (1) HPHRPs had a positive impact on employees’ voice behavior; (2) perceived insider status played a mediating role between HPHRPs and voice behavior; (3) voice efficacy played a moderating role between perceived insider status and voice behavior; and (4) voice efficacy played a mediating role in the relationship between “HPHRPs-perceived insider status-voice behavior.”

Nasal septal deviation (NSD) is one of the most common nasal diseases. Different from common clinical examination methods, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can provide visual flow information of the nasal cavity. The dimension and volume of the nasal cavity are easily affected by rapid maxillary expansion (RME). The purpose of this study was to use CFD to evaluate the effect of RME on the aerodynamics of the nasal cavity in children with maxillary transverse deficiency and NSD. Computational fluid dynamics was implemented after 3D reconstruction based on the CBCT of 15 children who have completed RME treatment. After treatment, the volume increases in the nasal cavity, nasopharynx, oropharynx, and pharynx were not statistically significant. The wall shear stress of the nasal cavity after RME, 1.749 ± 0.673 Pa, was significantly lower than that before RME, 2.684 ± 0.919 Pa. Meanwhile, the maximal negative pressure in the pharyngeal airway during inspiration was smaller after RME (−31.058 Pa) than before (−48.204 Pa). This study suggests that RME has a beneficial effect on nasal ventilation. The nasal airflow became more symmetrical in the bilateral nasal cavity after RME. Pharyngeal resistance decreased with the reduction in nasal resistance and the increase in the volume of oropharynx after RME.

Abstract Background Bialveolar protrusion is one of the most common chief complaints from the Asian orthodontic patients. Typical orthodontic treatment includes extraction of the bimaxillary premolars and en mass retraction of anterior tooth with maximum anchorage by placing miniscrews. However, excessive pursuit of profile improvement by retraction and intrusion of anterior teeth may result in root resorption, alveolar bone loss, even dehiscence. Thus this retrospective, analytical study was to evaluate the root resorption of anterior teeth after miniscrew assisted en mass retraction in adult bialveolar protrusion patients. Materials and methods Thirty six adult patients with bimaxillary protrusion had four first premolars extracted, and then miniscrews were placed to provide anchorage. CBCT scans were performed before (T1) and posttreatment (T2). A new improvement project introduced for 3D CBCT registration assessment of root morphology. The paired t-test was used to compare changes from T1 to T2. The relationship between the root resorption and the movement of anterior teeth were assessed by Pearson correlation coefficient analysis. Results The significant differences were only found in apical third of root and the largest resorption in apical third of the root is always noted in the palatal and distal sectors. Significant correlations were observed in the loss of root in distal and palatal sectors, the root length and volume decrease with the amount of anterior teeth retraction and intrusion. Conclusion The new 3D registration assessment of root morphology will be helpful for the clinicians. Pursuit of large retraction and intrusion leads to obvious anterior teeth root resorption.

Nuclear factor erythroid-2-related factor-2 (Nrf2), the major transcriptional regulator in antioxidant response and cellular defense, had the vital effect on regulating osteogenic differentiation. Our previous study revealed that Nrf2 activation was involved in cyclic mechanical stress-stimulated osteogenic differentiation in the human periodontal ligament stem cells (PDLSCs). However, the mechanisms of Nrf2 underlying this process remained unclear. The goal of the study was to explore the mechanisms of Nrf2 in PDLSCs during cyclic mechanical stress-stimulated osteogenic differentiation via the tandem mass tag (TMT)-based liquid chromatography tandem-mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) analysis. And we applied tert-Butylhydroquinone (t-BHQ), the Nrf2 activator, to the orthodontic rats and detected the expression levels of the osteogenesis markers by immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining. Our results showed that Nrf2 activation in PDLSCs was involved in cyclic mechanical stress-stimulated osteogenic differentiation via phosphoinositide 3 kinase (PI3K)/protein kinase B (Akt) pathway. The protein-protein interaction between Akt and Nrf2 was detected. And the protein-protein interaction between heme oxygenase 1 (HO1) and superoxide dismutase 2 (SOD2), the downstream antioxidants of Nrf2, was associated with cyclic mechanical stress-stimulated osteogenic differentiation. T-BHQ enhanced the expression levels of the osteogenesis markers in orthodontic rats. Nrf2 might possess the potential to be a feasible molecular target in orthodontics.

Bacillus subtilis was applied in peat-based soilless cultivation systems containing a mixed substrate (peat:vermiculite:perlite = 2:1:1, v/v/v) and irrigated by one-strength or four-strength Hoagland’s nutrient solution to explore whether it can alleviate inhibition by higher-nutrient solutions (four-strength) and bring benefits to improvements of quality. The results showed that higher-nutrient solutions improved the flavor quality of cucumber fruit; especially, the contents of (E,Z)-2,6-nonadienal and (E)-2-Nonenal were effectively increased, which are the special flavor substances of cucumber. B. subtilis K424 effectively improved growth performance, photosynthetic capacity, vitamin C content, soluble sugars, soluble protein, and total pectin in cucumber under higher nutrition solution conditions. Compared with the higher solution treatment, the bacterial diversity significantly increased, whereas the presence of fungi had no significant difference following the B. subtilis K424 application. Moreover, B. subtilis K424 reduced the relative abundance of Actinomadura and promoted that of the Rhodanobacter, Bacillus, Pseudomonas, Devosiaceae, and Blastobotrys genera. Redundancy analysis showed that Bacillus, Rhodanobacter, and Blastobotrys were positively correlated with the substrate enzyme of sucrase, catalase, and urease. This study provides insight that B. subtilis K424 mitigated the deleterious effects of high levels of nutrition solution on cucumber growth and quality by improving the substrate enzyme, regulating the microbial community structure, and enhancing the photosynthetic capacity.

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have demonstrated impressive performance and have been broadly applied in hyperspectral image (HSI) classification. However, two challenging problems still exist: the first challenge is that redundant information is averse to feature learning, which damages the classification performance; the second challenge is that most of the existing classification methods only focus on single-scale feature extraction, resulting in underutilization of information. To resolve the two preceding issues, this article proposes a multiscale cross interaction attention network (MCIANet) for HSI classification. First, an interaction attention module (IAM) is designed to highlight the distinguishability of HSI and dispel redundant information. Then, a multiscale cross feature extraction module (MCFEM) is constructed to detect spectral–spatial features at different scales, convolutional layers, and branches, which can increase the diversity of spectral–spatial features. Finally, we introduce global average pooling to compress multiscale spectral–spatial features and utilize two fully connection layers, two dropout layers to obtain the output classification results. Massive experiments on three benchmark datasets demonstrate the superiority of our presented method compared with the state-of-the-art methods.

Background: Sodium-glucose co-transporter-2 inhibitors (SGLT2is) are widely used in clinical practice for their demonstrated cardiorenal benefits, but multiple adverse events (AEs) have been reported. We aimed to describe the distribution of SGLT2i-related AEs in different systems and identify important medical event (IME) signals for SGLT2i.Methods: Data from the first quarter (Q1) of 2013–2021 Q2 in FAERS were selected to conduct disproportionality analysis. The definition of AEs and IMEs relied on the system organ classes (SOCs) and preferred terms (PTs) by the Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA-version 24.0). Two signal indicators, the reported odds ratio (ROR) and information component (IC), were used to estimate the association between SGLT2is and IMEs.Results: A total of 57,818 records related to SGLT2i, with 22,537 SGLT2i-IME pairs. Most SGLT2i-related IMEs occurred in monotherapy (N = 21,408, 94.99%). Significant signals emerged at the following SOCs: “metabolism and nutrition disorders” (N = 9,103; IC025 = 4.26), “renal and urinary disorders” (3886; 1.20), “infections and infestations” (3457; 0.85). The common strong signals were observed in diabetic ketoacidosis, ketoacidosis, euglycaemic diabetic ketoacidosis and Fournier’s gangrene. Unexpected safety signals such as cellulitis, osteomyelitis, cerebral infarction and nephrolithiasis were detected.Conclusion: Our pharmacovigilance analysis showed that a high frequency was reported for IMEs triggered by SGLT2i monotherapy. Different SGLT2is caused different types and the association strengths of IMEs, while they also shared some specific PTs. Most of the results are generally consistent with previous studies, and more pharmacoepidemiological studies are needed to validate for unexpected AEs. Based on risk-benefit considerations, clinicians should be well informed about important medical events that may be aggravated by SGLT2is.

Fiber extraction and segmentation are critical to identifying the distribution of short fibers in fiber reinforced concrete. This work presents a new segmentation model based on the DeepLab V3 + network for automated probabilistic segmentation of fibers embedded in glass fiber reinforced concrete (GFRC) images obtained from micro-computed tomography (Micro-CT). A total of 2700 sliced images (715 × 715 pixels) are prepared by Micro-CT scanning and data augmentation, of which 2400 are for training with the remaining 300 for validation. It is shown that the proposed model can accurately and effectively segment the fibers in GFRC. The efficiency of the proposed segmentation model is accessed by three metrics of accuracy, intersection over union, and F1-score index, and they are reaching up to 99.3%, 80.4% and 67.2%, respectively. Moreover, the model can achieve a better segmentation than the traditional deep learning models. With good qualitative prediction, the proposed approach shows promise for predicting fiber segmentation based on unlabeled data obtained in the field. Finally, three-dimensional distribution of short fibers in GFRC samples with size of 2.99 × 2.99 × 2.99 mm3 is developed for reconstruction analysis.

Using a survey of 300 employees in different types of enterprises and different positions, this study verified that the use of enterprise social media has a positive effect on employees’ work exuberance. The study separately examined the effects of social media applications for work tasks and social tasks. Both types of applications had a positive impact on employees’ work exuberance. The study also identified the mediating role of challenge and obstructive stressors in this relationship. Work-related social media applications enhanced employees’ exuberance by reducing obstructive stressors, and social-related social media applications enhanced employees’ exuberance by reducing challenge stressors. The implications of these findings are that managers should pay attention to the use of enterprise social media, especially for social tasks, as this can enhance employees’ sense of exuberance.

Recently, hyperspectral image (HSI) classification methods based on convolutional neural networks (CNN) have shown impressive performance. However, HSI classification still faces two challenging problems: the first challenge is that most existing classification approaches only focus on exploiting the fixed-scale convolutional kernels to extract spectral–spatial features, which leads to underutilization of information; the second challenge is that HSI contains a large amount of redundant information and noise, to a certain extent, which influences the classification performance of CNN. In order to tackle the above problems, this article proposes a multibranch crossover feature attention network (MCFANet) for HSI classification. The MCFANet involves two primary submodules: a cross feature extraction module (CFEM) and rearranged attention module (RAM). The former is devised to capture joint spectral–spatial features at different convolutional layers, scales and branches, which can increase the diversity and complementarity of spectral–spatial features, while the latter is constructed to spontaneously concentrate on recalibrating spatial-wise and spectral-wise feature responses, meanwhile exploit the shifted cascade operation to rearrange the obtained attention-enhanced features to dispel redundant information and noise, and thus, boost the classification performance. Compared with the state-of-the-art classification methods, massive experiments on four benchmark datasets demonstrate the meliority of our presented method.

Ice accretion on stratospheric airships, which affects the net buoyancy and reduces the ascent speed, thereby leading to component failure and further necessitating flight termination, has received considerable attention. In this study, the formation of ice occurred when the airship hit supercooled water droplets during the non-forming ascending process. Theoretical descriptions of an ice accretion model, a thermal model, and a dynamic model for airships were established to estimate the flight performance with ice mass. Then, validation of the simulation and the cloud chamber test was carried out, which indicated that the temperature, liquid water content (LWC), and pressure considerably influenced the ice mass. A lower temperature had a positive effect on ice accretion. The mass of ice accretion increased with the increase in LWC. Ice did not form easily under low pressure due to evaporation and sublimation. Finally, the effects of the ambient LWC and initial helium mass were analyzed. It was shown that an LWC of 0.5 g/m3 resulted in severe degradation of the ascent performance. When the initial helium mass was not sufficient, the airship landed due to ice accumulation. However, redundant inflation increased the ice mass and lowered the cruising altitude.

Background: Bone metastases are common and devastating to cancer patients. Existing treatments do not specifically target the disease sites and are therefore ineffective and systemically toxic. Here we present a new strategy to treat bone metastasis by targeting both the cancer cells (“the seed”), and their surrounding niche (“the soil”), using stem cells engineered to home to the bone metastatic niche and to maximise local delivery of multiple therapeutic factors. Methods: We used mesenchymal stem cells engineered using mRNA to simultaneously express P-selectin glycoprotein ligand-1 (PSGL-1)/Sialyl-Lewis X (SLEX) (homing factors), and modified versions of cytosine deaminase (CD) and osteoprotegerin (OPG) (therapeutic factors) to target and treat breast cancer bone metastases in two mouse models, a xenograft intratibial model and a syngeneic model of spontaneous bone metastasis. Findings: We first confirmed that MSC engineered using mRNA produced functional proteins (PSGL-1/SLEX, CD and OPG) using various in vitro assays. We then demonstrated that mRNA-engineered MSC exhibit enhanced homing to the bone metastatic niche likely through interactions between PSGL-1/SLEX and P-selectin expressed on tumour vasculature. In both the xenograft intratibial model and syngeneic model of spontaneous bone metastasis, engineered MSC can effectively kill tumour cells and preserve bone integrity. The engineered MSC also exhibited minimal toxicity in vivo, compared to its non-targeted chemotherapy counterpart (5-fluorouracil). Interpretation: Our combinatorial targeting of both the cancer cells and the niche represents a simple, safe and effective way to treat metastatic bone diseases, otherwise difficult to manage with existing strategies. It can also be applied to other cell types (e.g., T cells) and cargos (e.g., genome editing components) to treat a broad range of cancer and other complex diseases. Fund: National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, National Science Foundation, Baylx Inc., and Fondation ARC pour la recherche sur le cancer. Keywords: Bone metastases, Cell therapy, Mesenchymal stem cell, mRNA engineering, Combination therapy