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Background: The role of hemoglobin (HGB) in common malignant tumors remains unclear. Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted to identify the correlation between HGB levels and risk of 15 malignant tumors using 50,085 samples from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Mendelian Randomization analyses (MRAs) were performed based on genome-wide association study data to assess the causal relationship between HGB levels and these malignant tumors using more than 700,000 samples. The robustness of the MRA results was confirmed through various analytical methods. Fifty-six in-house samples were used to investigate the correlation between HGB levels and the prognosis in prostate cancer (PRCA) using the Kaplan-Meier curve. Results: High HGB levels were associated with a higher risk for patients with cervix cancer, melanoma, and non-melanoma skin cancer (OR > 1.000, p < 0.05). It served as a protective factor for colon cancer, esophagus cancer, stomach cancer, bone cancer, lung cancer, renal cancer, and PRCA (OR < 1.000, p < 0.05). Furthermore, MRAs suggested that elevated HGB levels were correlated with a reduced risk of PRCA (OR = 0.869, p < 0.05), with no significant association observed between this marker and the remaining 14 malignant tumors. No pleiotropy or heterogeneity was found in the ultimate results for MRAs (p-values > 0.05), suggesting the robustness of the results. The results derived from the in-house data revealed a relationship between higher HGB values and a more favorable prognosis in PRCA (p < 0.05). Conclusion: High circulating HGB levels may play a protective prognostic role for PRCA and serve as a protective factor against the occurrence of PRCA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although facial expression recognition (FER) has a wide range of applications, it may be difficult to achieve under local occlusion conditions which may result in the loss of valuable expression features. This issue has motivated the present study, as a part of which an effective multi-feature cross-attention network (MFCA-Net) is proposed. The MFCA-Net consists of a two-branch network comprising a multi-feature convolution module and a local cross-attention module. Thus, it enables decomposition of facial features into multiple sub-features by the multi-feature convolution module to reduce the impact of local occlusion on facial expression feature extraction. In the next step, the local cross-attention module distinguishes between occluded and unoccluded sub-features and focuses on the latter to facilitate FER. When the MFCA-Net performance is evaluated by applying it to three public large-scale datasets (RAF-DB, FERPlus, and AffectNet), the experimental results confirm its good robustness. Further validation is performed on a real FER dataset with local occlusion of the face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Unilateral biportal endoscopic (UBE) surgery has recently been used as a minimally invasive procedure for the treatment of lumbar spinal stenosis and is associated with less perioperative blood loss. However, perioperative hidden blood loss (HBL) may be neglected during UBE. This study aimed to examine the volume of HBL and discuss the influential risk factors for HBL during unilateral biportal endoscopic surgery. Methods: From January 2022 to August 2022, 51 patients underwent percutaneous unilateral biportal endoscopic surgery for lumbar spinal stenosis at the Department of Spinal Surgery of the Affiliated Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital of Southwest Medical University and were enrolled in this study. The data included general indicators (age, sex and body mass index [BMI]), underlying disease (hypertension and diabetes), laboratory test results (prothrombin time [PT], activated partial thromboplastin time [APTT], fibrinogen [Fbg]), and preoperative and postoperative hematocrit and hemoglobin), related imaging parameters (severity of intervertebral disc [IVD] degeneration and soft tissue thickness of the interlaminar approach), number of operated vertebrae and operation time. Total blood loss (TBL) and HBL during surgical procedures were measured via the Gross formula. Influential factors were further analyzed by multivariate linear regression analysis and t‐tests. Results: The mean HBL was 257.89 ± 190.66 mL for single‐operation patients and 296.58 ± 269.75 mL for two‐operation patients. Patients with lower PT (p = 0.044), deeper tissue thickness (p = 0.047), and diabetes mellitus were determined to have more HBL during UBE. The operation time might also be an important factor (p = 0.047). However, sex (p = 0.265), age (p = 0.771/0.624), BMI (p = 0.655/0.664), APTT (p = 0.545/0.751), degree of degenerated IVD (p = 0.932/0.477), and hypertension (p = 0.356/0.896) were not related to HBL. Conclusion: This study determined the different influential factors of HBL during UBE. PT, tissue thickness, and diabetes mellitus are the independent risk factors that affect HBL incidence. Long PT may decrease the volume of HBL within a certain range. Tissue thickness and diabetes mellitus can lead to an increased volume of HBL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pepper anthracnose caused by Colletotrichum gloeosporioides infection is an important fungal disease and represents a serious threat to pepper yield and quality. At present, the pathogenic molecular mechanism of C. gloeosporioides is not very clear. In our study, we characterized the function of C. gloeosporioides CgNis1, a homolog of Magnaporthe oryzae MoNis1. We found that the ∆Cgnis1 mutant reduced the growth rate and was defective in conidiation. Although the rate of appressorium formation was unaffected, the germ tube was found to be abnormal. CgNis1 was shown to be involved in the H2O2 stress response and maintaining cell membrane permeability. The pathogenicity assays performed in this study indicated that the deletion of CgNIS1 is associated with virulence. Our results indicate that CgNis1 is necessary for the growth, development, and pathogenicity of the fungus. This work provides an in-depth analysis of the Nis1 protein, helps to enhance studies on pathogen-related molecular mechanisms, and provides a theoretical basis for the prevention and control of C. gloeosporioides in peppers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Membrane‐based gas separations are crucial for an energy‐efficient future. However, it is difficult to develop membrane materials that are high‐performing, scalable, and processable. Microporous organic polymers (MOPs) combine benefits for gas sieving and solution processability. Herein, we report membrane performance for a new family of microporous poly(arylene ether)s (PAEs) synthesized via Pd‐catalyzed C−O coupling reactions. The scaffold of these microporous polymers consists of rigid three‐dimensional triptycene and stereocontorted spirobifluorene, endowing these polymers with micropore dimensions attractive for gas separations. This robust PAE synthesis method allows for the facile incorporation of functionalities and branched linkers for control of permeation and mechanical properties. A solution‐processable branched polymer was formed into a submicron film and characterized for permeance and selectivity, revealing lab data that rivals property sets of commercially available membranes already optimized for much thinner configurations. Moreover, the branching motif endows these materials with outstanding plasticization resistance, and their microporous structure and stability enables benefits from competitive sorption, increasing CO2/CH4 and (H2S+CO2)/CH4 selectivity in mixture tests as predicted by the dual‐mode sorption model. The structural tunability, stability, and ease‐of‐processing suggest that this new platform of microporous polymers provides generalizable design strategies to form MOPs at scale for demanding gas separations in industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Membrane‐based gas separations are crucial for an energy‐efficient future. However, it is difficult to develop membrane materials that are high‐performing, scalable, and processable. Microporous organic polymers (MOPs) combine benefits for gas sieving and solution processability. Herein, we report membrane performance for a new family of microporous poly(arylene ether)s (PAEs) synthesized via Pd‐catalyzed C−O coupling reactions. The scaffold of these microporous polymers consists of rigid three‐dimensional triptycene and stereocontorted spirobifluorene, endowing these polymers with micropore dimensions attractive for gas separations. This robust PAE synthesis method allows for the facile incorporation of functionalities and branched linkers for control of permeation and mechanical properties. A solution‐processable branched polymer was formed into a submicron film and characterized for permeance and selectivity, revealing lab data that rivals property sets of commercially available membranes already optimized for much thinner configurations. Moreover, the branching motif endows these materials with outstanding plasticization resistance, and their microporous structure and stability enables benefits from competitive sorption, increasing CO2/CH4 and (H2S+CO2)/CH4 selectivity in mixture tests as predicted by the dual‐mode sorption model. The structural tunability, stability, and ease‐of‐processing suggest that this new platform of microporous polymers provides generalizable design strategies to form MOPs at scale for demanding gas separations in industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metal-free catalysts with low cost and long - term stability are considered as the most promising electrocatalysts. Nitrogen-fluorine double doped graphene (NFG) was prepared by hydrothermal method which includes the reduction of graphene oxide by triethylamine trihydrofluorate as a novel dopamine (DA) electrochemical sensor. The morphologies and structures of GO and NFG were characterized via scanning electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Raman spectra and BET. Cyclic voltammetry, and differential pulse voltammetry were used to investigate the electrochemical behavior of DA on the NFG/glassy carbon electrode (GCE). Impressively, all the fluorine in NFG is in the form of carbon-fluorine semi-ionic bonds. Based on these characteristics, the prepared nitrofl-doped graphene showed high performance in the electrochemical detection of DA. In the ranges of 1–50 μM, the peak current exhibited an excellent linear relationship with DA concentration and the detection limit was 0.3 μM. The proposed sensor has high sensitivity, low-detection limit, and a wide linear range. Notably, the adsorption of H+ by the carbon-fluorine semi-ionic bond accelerates the oxidation of DA. The synergistic effect between N, F and rGO affects the oxidation of DA, which is confirmed by the calculation of density functional theory (DFT). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The roles of cyclin-dependent kinase 6 (CDK6) in various cancers, including small cell lung carcinoma (SCLC), remain unclear. Here, 111,54 multi-center samples were investigated to determine the expression, clinical significance, and underlying mechanisms of CDK6 in 34 cancers. The area under the curve (AUC), Cox regression analysis, and the Kaplan–Meier curves were used to explore the clinical value of CDK6 in cancers. Gene set enrichment analysis and correlation analysis were performed to detect potential CDK6 mechanisms. CDK6 expression was essential in 24 cancer cell types. Abnormal CDK6 expression was observed in 14 cancer types (e.g., downregulated in breast invasive carcinoma; p < 0.05). CDK6 allowed six cancers to be distinguished from their controls (AUC > 0.750). CDK6 expression was a prognosis marker for 13 cancers (e.g., adrenocortical carcinoma; p < 0.05). CDK6 was correlated with several immune-related signaling pathways and the infiltration levels of certain immune cells (e.g., CD8+ T cells; p < 0.05). Downregulated CDK6 mRNA and protein levels were observed in SCLC (p < 0.05, SMD = − 0.90). CDK6 allowed the identification of SCLC status (AUC = 0.91) and predicted a favorable prognosis for SCLC patients (p < 0.05). CDK6 may be a novel biomarker for the prediction and prognosis of several cancers, including SCLC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sulfonamide antibiotics (SAs) are serious pollutants to ecosystems and environments. Previous studies showed that microbial degradation of SAs such as sulfamethoxazole (SMX) proceeds via a sad-encoded oxidative pathway, while the sulfonamide-resistant dihydropteroate synthase gene, sul, is responsible for SA resistance. However, the co-occurrence of sad and sul genes, as well as how the sul gene affects SMX degradation, was not explored. In this study, two SMX-degrading bacterial strains, SD-1 and SD-2, were cultivated from an SMX-degrading enrichment. Both strains were Paenarthrobacter species and were phylogenetically identical; however, they showed different SMX degradation activities. Specifically, strain SD-1 utilized SMX as the sole carbon and energy source for growth and was a highly efficient SMX degrader, while SD-2 did could not use SMX as a sole carbon or energy source and showed limited SMX degradation when an additional carbon source was supplied. Genome annotation, growth, enzymatic activity tests, and metabolite detection revealed that strains SD-1 and SD-2 shared a sad-encoded oxidative pathway for SMX degradation and a pathway of protocatechuate degradation. A new sulfonamide-resistant dihydropteroate synthase gene, sul918, was identified in strain SD-1, but not in SD-2. Moreover, the lack of sul918 resulted in low SMX degradation activity in strain SD-2. Genome data mining revealed the co-occurrence of sad and sul genes in efficient SMX-degrading Paenarthrobacter strains. We propose that the co-occurrence of sulfonamide-resistant dihydropteroate synthase and sad genes is crucial for efficient SMX biodegradation. Key points: •Two sulfamethoxazole-degrading strains with distinct degrading activity, Paenarthrobacter sp. SD-1 and Paenarthrobacter sp. SD-2, were isolated and identified. •Strains SD-1 and SD-2 shared a sad-encoded oxidative pathway for SMX degradation. •A new plasmid-borne SMX resistance gene (sul918) of strain SD-1 plays a crucial role in SMX degradation efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: At present, studies on MircoRNA-22-3p (miR-22-3p) in lung adenocarcinoma use a single method, lack multi-center validation and multi-method validation, and there is no big data concept to predict and validate target genes. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the expression, potential targets and clinicopathological significance of miR-22-3p in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) tissues. METHODS: LUAD formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tumors and adjacent normal lung tissues were collected for real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). Collect miR-22-3p in LUAD and non-cancer lung tissue from high-throughput datasets, standardized mean difference (SMD) and area under the curve (AUC) of the comprehensive receiver operating curve (summary receiver operating characteristic cure, sROC curve) were calculated. Cell function experiments on A549 cells transfected with LV-hsa-miR-22-3p. Target genes were predicted by the miRwalk2.0 website and the resulting target genes were subjected to Gene Ontology (GO) pathway enrichment analysis and constructed to protein-protein interaction network. Finally, the protein expression level of the key gene TP53 was validated by searching The Human Protein Atlas (THPA) database to incorporate TP53 immunohistochemical results in LUAD. RESULTS: RT-qPCR result from 41 pairs of LUAD and adjacent lung tissues showed that miR-22-3p was downregulated in LUAD (AUC = 0.6597, p = 0.0128). Globally, a total of 838 LUADs and 494 non-cancerous lung tissues were included, and were finally combined into 14 platforms. Compared with noncancerous tissue, miR-22-3p expression level was significantly reduced in LUAD tissue (SMD = - 0.32, AUC = 0.72l); cell function experiments showed that miR-22-3p has inhibitory effects on cell proliferation, migration and invasion, and has promotion effect on apoptosis. Moreover, target genes prediction, GO pathway enrichment analysis and PPI network exhibited TP53 as a key gene of target gene of miR-22-3p; at last, a total of 114 high-throughput datasets were included, including 3897 LUADs and 2993 non-cancerous lung tissues, and were finally combined into 37 platforms. Compared with noncancerous tissue, TP53 expression level was significantly increased in LUAD (SMD = 0.39, p < 0.01) and it was verified by the protein expression data from THPA. CONCLUSION: Overexpression of miR-22-3p may inhibit LUAD cell proliferation, migration and invasion through TP53, and promote cell apoptosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Salinity and temperature are two of the key environmental variables influencing the distribution of fungi. Results from the limited research available on the effects of salinity and temperature on growth and reproduction of chytrids were inconclusive. This study investigated the combined effects of salinity (0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32) and temperature (17, 24, 30 °C) on the growth rate of Alphamyces chaetifer (isolates IMB230, IMB231, IMB232) and Gorgonomyces haynaldii (IMB233, IMB237, IMB239) cultured from low-salinity water samples collected from coastal wetlands/ponds of eastern Taiwan. All isolates grew well at salinity 4 or below, irrespective of the incubation temperatures, although some grew significantly faster at 30 °C. No growth was observed at salinity 16 or 32. At or below 4, A. chaetifer IMB230 and IMB231, isolated from the same collection site where salinity was 2, produced the fastest growth rate at these salinities while G. haynaldii IMB237 and IMB239, isolated from water samples of zero salinity, had the slowest growth rate. These results agree with previous research that chytrids are sensitive to salinity, and may explain why only 27 culturable Chytridiomycota species and allied taxa have been documented from the marine environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-order problems pose significant challenges for evolutionary algorithms (EAs) to optimize. To mitigate this, a deep hybrid transfer learning EA (DHTL-EA) is proposed. DHTL-EA works by transferring both the model and the optima from a corresponding low-order problem. Here, a deep neural network is adopted to model both the low-order and high-order problems, and the training data are derived from historical evolutionary data. The theoretical basis of DHTL-EA is well-supported by the transferability of solutions among domination-landscape-equivalent problems. The transfer to high-order problem is achieved by retraining the last fully connected layer of the deep neural network model for the target problem. Experiments on two groups of problems validated that DHTL-EA is effective on high-order problems. Further testing on other benchmark functions demonstrated its competitive performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Neoplasms are a series of diseases affecting human health. Prognostic and tumor status–related markers for various tumors should be identified. Methods: Based on 19,515 samples from multiple sources, for the first time, this study provided an overview of gene S-phase kinase associated protein 2 (SKP2) in pan-cancer. Differential SKP2 expression in multiple comparison groups was identified by the Kruskal–Wallis test and Wilcoxon rank-sum test. The prognosis significance of SKP2 in individuals with neoplasm was evaluated through univariate Cox regression analysis and Kaplan-Meier curves. The area under the curve was utilized to detect the accuracy of SKP2 in predicting cancer status. Spearman's rank correlation coefficients were calculated in all correlation analyses. Gene set enrichment analysis was used to identify essential signaling pathways of SKP2 in human neoplasms. Results: The study disclosed the upregulated SKP2 expression in 15 neoplasms and decreased SKP2 expression in three cancers (p < 0.05). The transcription factor Forkhead Box M1 may contribute to the increased expression levels of SKP2 in certain tumors. Over-expressed SKP2 represented a risk factor for the prognosis of most cancer patients (hazard ratio > 1, p < 0.05). SKP2 expression made it feasible to distinguish neoplasm and control tissues of 21 neoplasms (sensitivity = 0.79, specificity = 0.87, area under the curve = 0.90), implying its potential in screening a series of neoplasms. Further, the research revealed the close association of SKP2 expression with DNA methyltransferases, mismatch repair genes, microsatellite instability, tumor mutational burden, neoantigen count, and immunity. Conclusions: SKP2 plays an essential role in multiple neoplasms and may serve as a marker for treating and identifying these neoplasms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Images captured in low-light environments often face two problems: low contrast and high noise, which are caused by the low number of photons in the environment. Existing low-light image enhancement methods mainly focus on the previous problem to increase visibility while the latter one is usually addressed with a post-processing module. However, there is a coupling relationship between illumination and noise, and ignoring it will result in under-/over-smoothing of the enhanced images. To solve this problem, we propose a novel low-light image enhancement method based on simultaneous adjustment on illumination and noise using unpaired data. In other words, we consider illumination and noise as a joint data distribution. The proposed method consists of two main branches: a Distribution Extraction branch which is used to extract the joint distribution of illumination and noise in normal-light images, and a Distribution Transformation branch which transforms the low-light images in a spatial domain through the joint distribution. Extensive experiment results show that the proposed model can reach the network capability that trained with rich paired data and achieved satisfactory results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) is a multifactorial skeletal disease involving mechanical, genetic, systemic, and biological factors, and it is characterized by apoptosis of the nucleus pulposus cells and breakdown of the extracellular matrix (ECM), which will impair the structure and function of the intervertebral disc (IVD), and cause low back pain. Recently, the piezo1 is recognized as a critical mechanically activated ion channel of IDD. Numerous studies have reported that the piezo1 ion channel was aberrantly activated in the degenerated disc tissues and deeply participated in the pathogenesis of IDD. Inactivating or interfering with the piezo1 channel could effectively prevent the progression of IDD under the experimental conditions. It may be a promising target for the prevention and treatment of the disabling disease. Therefore, we have to make a comprehensive investigation and understanding of the mechanisms and functions of the piezo1 in the biomechanics of the spine. This study mainly elucidates the role of the piezo1 channel in IDD, which may facilitate the development of therapeutic targets for this disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three-dimensionally printed materials show great performance and reliable stability in the removal of refractory organic pollutants in Fenton-like reactions. In this work, hierarchically porous zero-valent copper (3DHP-ZVC) was designed and fabricated via 3D printing and applied as a catalyst for the degradation of tetracycline (TC) through heterogeneous Fenton-like processes. It was found that the 3DHP-ZVC/H2O2 system could decompose over 93.2% of TC within 60 min, which is much superior to the homogeneous Cu2+/H2O2 system under similar conditions. The leaching concentration of Cu2+ ions in the 3DHP-ZVC/H2O2 system is 2.14 times lower than that in the Cu powder/H2O2 system in a neutral environment, which could be ascribed to the unique hierarchically porous structure of 3DHP-ZVC. Furthermore, 3DHP-ZVC exhibited compelling stability in 20 consecutive cycles. The effects of co-existing inorganic anions, adaptability, and pH resistance on the degradation of TC were also investigated. A series of experiments and characterizations revealed that Cu0 and superoxide radicals as reducing agents could facilitate the cycling of Cu(II)/Cu(I), thus enhancing the generation of hydroxyl radicals to degrade TC. This study provides new insights into employing promising 3D printing technology to develop high-reactivity, stable, and recycling-friendly components for wastewater treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a kind of bio-based polymer, poly (lactic acid) has potential application in fibers fields. Due to the weak nucleation ability, PLA crystallizes slowly and forms large spherulites during the forming process, which deteriorates the properties of PLA fibers. In this work, melt-spun method is employed for the fabrication of PLA/T composite fibers using succinate diphenyl dihydrazide (TMC-306) as the nucleating agent, and then the hot-drawing and heat setting is performed to the as-spun fibers. Compared with pure PLA fibers, PLA/T fibers show faster crystallization rate and improved performance due to the synergistic effect of heterogeneous nucleation and stress-induced crystallization. The characterization of non-isothermal crystallization behavior indicates that the peak crystallization temperature as well as crystallinity of PLA composites is increased to 121.5 °C and 36.78 % respectively by blending 0.3 wt% TMC-306. Meanwhile, the obtained PLA/0.3T composite fibers are highly crystallized and oriented at hot-drawing ratio of 2.4 folds and heat setting temperature of 100 °C, and the conformational stability is noticeably enhanced. Further, the tensile strength and storage modulus of PLA/0.3T composite fiber are 3.46 cN/dtex and 46,953 MPa respectively, which are increased by 42 % and 41 % compared with neat PLA fibers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Tic disorders (TD) is a neuropsychiatric disease with twitch as the main manifestation in childhood. Jiu-Wei-Xi-Feng granules has been marketed in China for treating children with TD. As Long Gu (Os Draconis) in the composition of this Chinese patent medicine is a rare and expensive medicinal material protected by the Chinese government, therefore, we consider replacing it with Mu Li (Concha Ostreae) that has the same effect and is cheaper. This study is designed to evaluate the clinical equivalence between Jiu-Wei-Xi-Feng granules (Os Draconis replaced by Concha Ostreae) (JWXFD) and Jiu-Wei-Xi-Feng granules (original formula) (JWXFO) in children with TD (consumption of renal yin and liver wind stirring up internally syndrome).Methods/design: This is a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, equivalence trial comparing the efficacy and safety of JWXFD and JWXFO in treating Children with tic disorders (consumption of renal yin and liver wind stirring up internally syndrome). A total of 288 patients will be recruited and randomly assigned to two groups in a 1:1 ratio. The treatment course is 6 weeks, with a 2 weeks follow-up. The primary outcome is the mean change value from baseline to 6th week by the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale total tic score (YGTSS-TTS). Secondary outcomes include total effective rate of tic, Yale Global Tic Severity Scale (YGTSS) scores and its factor scores (the degree of motor tics, phonic tics and social function damage), Clinical Global Impression-Severity scale, and TCM syndrome efficacy.Discussion: The design of this study refers to a large number of similar research design points, and asked for opinions of peer experts, and finally reached a consensus. This trial will provide high-quality evidence on the clinical equivalence between JWXFD and JWXFO and provide a basis for the marketing of JWXFD.Trial Registration: ChiCTR2000032312 Registered on 25 April 2020, http://www.chictr.org.cn/showproj.aspx?proj=52630. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bimetallic catalysts have significantly contributed to the chemical community, especially in environmental science. In this work, a CoAl2O4 spinel bimetal oxide was synthesized by a facile co-precipitation method and used for the degradation of organic pollutants through peroxymonosulfate (PMS) activation. Compared with Co3O4, the as-prepared CoAl2O4 possesses a higher specific surface area and a larger pore volume, which contributes to its becoming increasingly conducive to the degradation of organic pollutants. Under optimal conditions (calcination temperature: 500 °C, catalyst: 0.1 g/L, and PMS: 0.1 g/L), the as-prepared CoAl2O4 catalyst could degrade over 99% of rhodamine B (RhB) at a degradation rate of 0.048 min−1, which is 2.18 times faster than Co3O4 (0.022 min−1). The presence of Cl− could enhance RhB degradation in the CoAl2O4/PMS system, while HCO3− and CO32− inhibit RhB degradation. Furthermore, the considerable reusability and universality of CoAl2O4 were testified. Through quenching tests, 1O2 and SO4•− were identified as the primary reactive species in RhB degradation. The toxicity evaluation verified that the degraded solution exhibited lower biological toxicity than the initial RhB solution. This study provides new prospects in the design of cost-effective and stable cobalt-based catalysts and promotes the application of PMS-based advanced oxidation processes for refractory wastewater treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • This review presents the advancements in water treatment using metal sulfide-based AOPs. • This review summarizes recent progress in the synthesis and applications of metal sulfides. • The research progress on metal sulfides as either co-catalysts or catalysts is analyzed. • The challenges and perspectives on metal sulfide-based AOPs for water treatment are proposed. Catalytic advanced oxidation processes (CAOPs) have received considerable attention for wastewater treatment. However, the insufficient stability of catalysts, coupled with the sluggish regeneration of active sites, poses a limitation to the sustained performance of CAOPs in practical applications over prolonged periods. To overcome these challenges, accelerating the M(n+1)+/Mn+ redox cycle (where M denotes transition metals and n denotes oxidation state) of catalysts during the treatment process emerges as a highly promising approach. This approach not only holds the potential to enhance efficiency but also offers a comprehensive solution for bolstering the stability of CAOPs. This comprehensive review summarizes the advancements in metal sulfide research, specifically emphasizing the evolving trend from homogeneous to heterogeneous reductants, with the objective of expediting the redox cycles of catalysts. The catalytic and co-catalytic roles of various metal sulfides, including MoS 2 , WS 2 , transition metals doped MoS 2 /WS 2 , iron sulfides, S-modified zero valent-iron, S-doped iron oxides, non-iron metals sulfides, S-modified layered double hydroxides, and S-based single-atom catalysts, in CAOPs, have been systematically summarized. These studies specifically concentrate on accelerating the M(n+1)+/Mn+ redox cycles of catalysts, thereby enhancing the overall efficiency, stability, and catalytic performance of both homogeneous and heterogeneous systems. Finally, the current challenges and future perspectives related to the applications of metal sulfide-based CAOPs for wastewater treatment were proposed to assist researchers in making efficient and stable heterogeneous Fenton/Fenton-like systems for industrial applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large rotating machinery is widely applied in many industrial applications and shaft orbit classification plays an important role in fault diagnosis of large rotating machinery. Therefore, we propose a novel raw data feature-based automatic and deterministic shaft orbit classification framework for large rotating machinery. The main idea of the proposed framework is that it directly uses the most discriminative geometric features of each shaft orbit type for classification. Different from existing supervised learning shaft orbit classification methods, it does not need any labeled data and it is a deterministic, quite simple, light, easy to implement. Extensive experiments of synchronous integrated period sampling and fixed sampling at different rotating speeds conducted on real and simulated datasets have shown the superiority of proposed framework. This study provides a new deterministic interpretable and explainable approach to support predictive maintenance of large rotating machinery in various industrial fields even when no labeled data is available. [Display omitted] • ADSOC is a raw data feature-based classification framework so that it does not need any labeled data. • ADSOC is invariant to shaft orbit translation, scale and rotation. • ADSOC model and results are easy to interpret and explain. • ADSOC is independent from both shaft orbit starting point and rotating direction, and the shaft orbit does not need to be closed. • ADSOC is a deterministic framework and it is quite simple, light and easy to implement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an efficient stochastic algorithm for the recently introduced perturbative density matrix renormalization group method for large active spaces. The stochastic implementation bypasses the computational bottleneck involved in solving the first order equation in the earlier deterministic algorithm. We demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the algorithm on the C2 and Cr2 molecular benchmark systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among many issues associated with religious negotiation and intercultural ministry and mission in the history of Christianity in China, the most important issue involves the Chinese rite of offering sacrifice to ancestors. This issue has been closely connected to the process of the Sinicisation of Christianity in all Pan-Chinese societies, including the Greater China and Chinese diasporic communities worldwide. This paper first reviews key historical elements of the Chinese Rites Controversy (1645–1941) on 'Sacrificing to Ancestors' (jizu), and then considers some details of the 'Three Rites' of 'Reverencing Ancestors' (jingzu) as a historical development within the Bread of Life Christian Church (BOLCC, Ling Liang Tang) in Taipei and the Bread of Life Global Apostolic Network (BGAN) of nearly 600 local churches on all continents as of 2020. Through this case study, the paper argues that the BOLCC, an independent Christian church established in 1942 and a contemporary Sinophone-based Christian movement, could expand quickly by applying its intercultural 'Ling Liang Rule' to continue the successful culture-accommodating 'Matteo Ricci Rule' among the Pan-Chinese (Chinese descendants in China and beyond) by providing an 'in-between space' negotiating for Christianity and Confucianism to satisfy their believers' 'hybrid identity'. Through the Christianised Reverencing Ancestors Rites to hybridise the Confucian Sacrificing to Ancestors Rites, Bread of Life Sinophone Christians in many places of the world can simultaneously affirm their cultural 'hybrid identity' as both Christian and Sinophone through core cultural interactions between Christianity and Confucianism in filial piety (xiao). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because the real network traffic data inevitably cause wrong labeling in label labeling, the label data are inevitably polluted by noise, that is, the observed label of the sample is different from the real label. In order to reduce the negative impact of noise labels on the classification accuracy of the classifiers, this experiment considers two cases of wrong labeling: wrong labeling of correct label type and wrong spelling of label type. A network traffic classification method based on label noise correction is proposed. The method uses clustering and weight division to evaluate and repair the observation samples, and experiments are carried out on two network traffic datasets. The experimental results show that, compared with the three tag noise repair algorithms STC, CC and ADE, the proposed repair algorithm has a certain improvement on the final classification results under the interference of different noise proportions. On the NSL-KDD data set, the average tag correction rates are increased by 23.00%, 7.58% and 2.05% respectively; Similarly, on the MOORE data set, the average correction rates of tags are increased by 35.12%, 10.40% and 4.71% respectively. The proposal has good classification stability in the final classification model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two new diterpenoids, dauricumins A (1) and B (2), together with two known aromatic meroterpenoids (3 and 4), were isolated from the petroleum ether soluble fraction of the stems from Rhododendron dauricum through an HPLC-MS-SPE-NMR combination strategy. The absolute configurations of 1 and 2 were elucidated by ECD calculations and [Rh2 (OCOCF3)4]-induced CD spectrum analysis. In a membrane potential FLIPR assay, confluentin (4) showed an agonistic effect on GABAA receptor (EC50 = 20 µM). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring an effective way to convert biomass waste into highly active oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) electrocatalysts will not only benefit alleviating environmental management pressure, but also open up new ways for the development of alternatives to Pt‐based catalysts. Although the traditional pyrolysis conversion method has been proved to be stable and feasible, the low electrocatalytic activity of the product and the cumbersome post‐treatment process make it difficult to be popularized. Here, we report an effective method to overcome the mentioned drawbacks: the introduction of g‐C3N4. The experimental results confirm that g‐C3N4 can be used as a multifunctional template for adjusting the morphology and providing N source. More importantly, it will decompose at 700 °C and avoid post‐treatment of residues. The pyrolysis products assisted by g‐C3N4 exhibit similar ORR performances to commercial Pt/C, including onset potential of 0.963 V (vs. RHE), half‐wave potential of 0.835 V (vs. RHE) and limiting current density of 6.35 mA ⋅ cm−2. Impressively, the product displayed outstanding performance on output power density (107 mW ⋅ cm−2) and discharge performance at different current densities as the air electrode of zinc‐air battery, which even superior to that of commercial Pt/C. This study elucidated the functional role of g‐C3N4 in reaction system and facilitated the development of more efficient biomass waste‐based ORR electrocatalysts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The roles and clinical values of synaptojanin 2 (SYNJ2) in lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC) remain unclear. Methods: A total of 2824 samples from multi-center were collected to identify the expression of SYNJ2 in LUSC by using Wilcoxon rank-sum test, t-test, and standardized mean difference (SMD), and 194 in-house samples were also included to validate SYNJ2 expression in LUSC. The clinical roles of SYNJ2 were investigated via receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, univariate Cox regression analysis, and Kaplan–Meier plots. The underlying mechanisms of SYNJ2 in LUSC were explored by gene set enrichment analysis and immune correlation analysis. Further, a pan-cancer analysis based on 10,238 sapiens was performed to promote the understating of the expression and clinical significance of SYNJ2 in multiple human cancers. Results: SYNJ2 was found to be significantly upregulated in LUSC at both mRNA and protein levels (p < 0.05, SMD = 0.89 [95% CI 0.34–1.45]) via public and in-house samples. Overexpressed SYNJ2 predicted poor prognosis for LUSC patients (hazard ratio = 2.38 [95% CI 1.42–3.98]). The cancer-promoting effect of SYNJ2 may be related to protein digestion and absorption and extracellular matrix-receptor interaction. SYNJ2 expression was closely related to immune cell infiltration, indicating its role in the immune response. Moreover, the distinct expression levels and essential clinical relevance of SYNJ2 in a series of cancers were initially revealed in this study. Conclusions: This study disclosed the clinical significance of SYNJ2 in LUSC and multiple cancers, demonstrating the novel and potential biomarker for predicting and treating cancers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Cell division cycle 45 (CDC45) plays an important role in the occurrence and development of numerous carcinomas, but its effect in laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) remains unclear. Materials and Methods: The messenger RNA and protein expression levels of CDC45 in LSCC were evaluated with a t test and the standard mean difference (SMD). The ability of CDC45 expression to distinguish the LSCC was assessed through receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA), protein-protein interaction, public databases, and online tools were used to explore the potential molecular mechanism of CDC45 in LSCC. Results: A high expression of CDC45 was identified in LSCC (SMD = 2.61, 95% confidence interval [1.62-3.61]). Through ROC curves, the expression of CDC45 makes it feasible to distinguish the LSCC group from the non-LSCC counterpart. CDC45 was relevant to the progression-free interval of LSCC patients (log-rank p = 0.03). GSEAs show that CDC45 is related to the cell cycle. CDC45, CDC6, KIF2C, and AURKB were identified as hub genes of LSCC. E2F1 may be the regulatory transcription factor of CDC45. Conclusions: High expression of CDC45 likely demonstrates carcinogenic effects in LSCC, and CDC45 is a potential target in screening and treatment of LSCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The expression level and clinical significance of integrin subunit beta 4 (ITGB4) in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) remain unclear. Materials and Methods: Expression of ITGB4 in HNSCC tissues was evaluated by calculating standard mean differences (SMDs) based on gene chips, RNA-seq, and immunohistochemistry data (n = 2330) from multiple sources. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to detect the ability of ITGB4 to distinguish HNSCC from non-HNSCC samples. The relationship between the expression level of ITGB4 and clinical parameters was evaluated by calculating SMDs. Results: Identical results of mRNA and protein levels indicated remarkable up-expression of ITGB4 in HNSCC tissues. Further ROC curves showed that ITGB4 could distinguish HNSCC from non-HNSCC samples. Genetic alteration analysis of ITGB4 in HNSCC indicated that overexpression of ITGB4 in HNSCC was likely not owing to genetic alteration of ITGB4. Moreover, ITGB4 overexpression level may be correlated with clinical T stage. Conclusion:ITGB4 likely plays an essential role in HNSCC occurrence based on our study and its potential diagnostic value is worthy of further exploration in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Nucleosome positioning is the precise determination of the location of nucleosomes on DNA sequence. With the continuous advancement of biotechnology and computer technology, biological data is showing explosive growth. It is of practical significance to develop an efficient nucleosome positioning algorithm. Indeed, convolutional neural networks (CNN) can capture local features in DNA sequences, but ignore the order of bases. While the bidirectional recurrent neural network can make up for CNN's shortcomings in this regard and extract the long-term dependent features of DNA sequence. Results: In this work, we use word vectors to represent DNA sequences and propose three new deep learning models for nucleosome positioning, and the integrative model NP_CBiR reaches a better prediction performance. The overall accuracies of NP_CBiR on H. sapiens, C. elegans, and D. melanogaster datasets are 86.18%, 89.39%, and 85.55% respectively. Conclusions: Benefited by different network structures, NP_CBiR can effectively extract local features and bases order features of DNA sequences, thus can be considered as a complementary tool for nucleosome positioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The clinical progression of small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) remains pessimistic. The aim of the present study was to promote the understanding of the clinical significance and mechanism of O-linked N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) transferase (OGT) in SCLC. Wilcoxon tests, standardized mean difference (SMD), and Kruskal–Wallis tests were utilized to compare OGT level differences among the experimental and control groups. The univariate Cox regression analysis, Kaplan–Meier curves, and receiver operating characteristic curves were applied to determine OGT's clinical relevance in cancers. The Spearman correlation analysis and enrichment analysis were utilized to explore the underlying mechanisms of OGT in cancers. For the first time in the field, we provide an overview of OGT in 32 cancers using a large number of samples (n = 21,196), determining distinct OGT expression in 25 cancers and its prognosis effects in 12 cancers. Furthermore, using 950 samples from multiple sources, upregulated OGT was found in both mRNA and protein levels in SCLC (SMD = 0.93, 95% CI [0.24, 1.63]). Higher OGT levels represented a more unfavorable disease-free interval for SCLC patients (p < 0.001). The research also identified OGT expression as a potential marker for SCLC prediction (sensitivity = 0.79, specificity = 0.86, and AUC = 0.88). The high expression of OGT in SCLC may result from the positive regulation of two transcription factors—DEK and XRN2. We primarily investigated the underlying mechanisms of OGT in SCLC. Herein, based on the analyses from pan-cancer to SCLC, OGT demonstrated conspicuous clinical significance. OGT may be an underlying biomarker for the treatment and identification of some cancers, including SCLC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The role of pyroptosis-related genes (PRGs) in esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) remains unknown. Methods: In this study, the first PRGs prognostic signature (PPS) of EAC was constructed based on the results of multivariate stepwise Cox regression analysis. Based on 1,047 samples of EAC and normal esophagus (NE), differentially expressed PRGs were selected for the establishment of the PPS. The discrimination effect of this PPS was detected by receiver operating characteristic curves, and the prognosis value of this PPS was determined through Cox regression analysis and Kaplan-Meier curves. Net benefits of the EAC patients from the nomogram (constructed based on the PPS and some clinical parameters) were assessed via decision curve analysis. The potential molecular mechanism of the PPS in EAC was explored via gene set enrichment analysis. The ability of PPS to distinguish EAC and NE was evaluated based on the results of summary receiver operating characteristic curves. Results: The significant prognostic value of PPS can be observed at all of the training cohort, test cohort, and validation cohort, such as its independent risk role in the prognosis of the EAC patients (hazard ratio > 0; 95% CI not including 0). The positive net benefits of the nomogram for the EAC patients can be detected via decision curve analysis, and the potential molecular mechanism of the PPS in EAC is likely related to cell pyroptosis. Last, some of the PRGs (particularly CASP5) included in this PPS specifically support its feasibility for identifying EAC (area under the curves > 0.7). Conclusions: The construction of this PPS in EAC enhances the present understanding of the relationship between PRGs and EAC, thus representing a novel approach to the clinical identification and management of EAC based on PRGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: It remains inconclusive whether laparoscopic gastrectomy (LG) has better long-term outcomes when compared with open gastrectomy (OG) for elderly gastric cancer (EGC). We attempted to explore the influence of the immune prognostic index (IPI) on the prognosis of EGCs treated by LG or OG to identify a population among EGC who may benefit from LG. Methods: We included 1539 EGCs treated with radical gastrectomy from January 2007 to December 2016. Propensity score matching was applied at a ratio of 1:1 to compare the LG and OG groups. The IPI based on dNLR ≥ cut-off value (dNLR) and sLDH ≥ cut-off value (sLDH) was developed, characterizing two groups (IPI = 0, good, 0 factors; IPI = 1, poor, 1 or 2 factors). Results: Of the 528 EGCs (LG: 264 and OG: 264), 271 were in the IPI = 0 group, and 257 were in the IPI = 1 group. In the entire cohort, the IPI = 0 group was associated with good 5-year overall survival (OS) (p = 0.001) and progression-free survival (PFS) (p = 0.003) compared to the IPI = 1 group; no significant differences in 5-year OS and PFS between the LG and OG groups were observed. In the IPI = 1 cohort, there was no significant difference in OS or PFS between the LG and OG groups across all tumor stages. However, in the IPI = 0 cohort, LG was associated with longer OS (p = 0.015) and PFS (p = 0.018) than OG in stage II EGC, but not in stage I or III EGC. Multivariate analysis showed that IPI = 0 was an independent protective factor for stage II EGC receiving LG, but not for those receiving OG. Conclusion: The IPI is related to the long-term prognosis of EGC. Compared with OG, LG may improve the 5-year survival rate of stage II EGC with a good IPI score. This hypothesis needs to be further confirmed by prospective studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although branched chain amino acid transaminase 1 (BCAT1) has been identified to play an essential role in multiple tumors, no studies on its role in pan‐cancer have been consulted before. Methods: The study comprehensively analyzes the expression, potential mechanisms, and clinical significance of BCAT1 in pan‐cancer through utilizing 16,847 samples, providing novel clues for the treatment of cancers. A Kruskal–Wallis test and the Wilcoxon rank‐sum and signed‐rank tests were applied to investigate diverse BCAT1 expression between various groups (e.g., cancer tissues versus normal tissues). Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was used in all correlation analyses in the study. Cox analyses and Kaplan‐Meier curves were utilized to identify the prognosis significance of BCAT1 expression in cancers. The significance of BCAT1 expression in differentiating cancer and non‐cancer tissues was explored via the area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC). Results: The differential expression of BCAT1 was detected in various cancers (p < 0.05), which is relevant to some DNA methyltransferases expression. BCAT1 expression was associated with mismatch repair gene expression, immune checkpoint inhibitors expression, microsatellite instability, and tumor mutational burden in some cancers, indicating its potential in immunotherapy. BCAT1 expression showed prognosis significance and played a risk role in multiple cancers (hazard ratio > 0, p < 0.05). BCAT1 expression also demonstrated conspicuous ability to distinguish some cancers tissues from their normal tissues (AUC > 0.7), indicating its potential to detect cancers. Further analyses on head and neck squamous cell carcinoma certified upregulated BCAT1 expression at both mRNA and protein levels in this disease based on in‐house tissue microarrays and multicenter datasets. Conclusions: For the first time, the research comprehensively demonstrates the overexpression of BCAT1 in pan‐cancer, which improves the understanding of the pathogenesis of BCAT1 in pan‐cancer. Upregulated BCAT1 expression represented a poor prognosis for cancers patients, and it serves as a potential marker for cancer immunotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When applied to visual tasks, the diffractive neural network (DNN) based on light propagation between diffractive layers has advantages of all-optical, flexible, low-cost, easy to use as a plug-in, and also has good scalability. As the DNN goes deeper, some problems appear: slow convergence, over-fitting of network parameters, disappearance and explosion of gradients. Most of these problems are related to the redundancy of neurons brought by the standard size diffraction layer. Moreover, the energy loss caused by diffraction layer is inevitable. In this paper, we introduced a pyramid-ladder diffractive neural network (PDNN) which is high efficiency, low cost, strong scalability, able to improve DNN performance through imitation of residual structure and restrict gradients without additional optical hardware. What is more, the unique structure makes achievable layers number of PDNN break through the limitations of hardware and materials, so as to deal with complex problems such as object tracking. We also extended the network in multiple dimensions to make full use of the light and leverage the pyramid-ladder module as fundamental bricks. Code and an auxiliary software integrating functions of diffraction, 4 − f imaging system, supplementary light parameter selection assistance and pre-trained models for mechanism demonstration are available upon request. • A pyramid-ladder model improves DNN performance by imitating residual structure. • A strategy is proposed to increase DNN layers, reducing signal loss under limited hardware. • A paradigm of the diffractive neural network under multi-modal light inputs. • An auxiliary software "PDNNEDU" integrates optical calculation and trained models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Spectral stitching improves the detection ability towards minor and trace species. • Comprehensive molecular information and transfer behavior of O and N atoms are revealed. • Similarity and difference of samples are visually exhibited in PCA and HCA plots. The combination of mass spectrometry (MS) data and chemometrics methods is conducive to obtaining more comprehensive molecular information and evaluating the transfer behavior of O and N atoms during the conversion of biomass and coal. In this work, 12 thermal dissolution (TD) extracts of coal/biomass samples and the catalytic hydrogenation products of TD extracts were analyzed by Orbitrap MS using spectral stitching and in-source collision-activated dissociation (ISCAD) methods. Spectral stitching improves the detection ability towards minor and trace species, enhancing the number of identified compounds by two times. Meanwhile, ISCAD provides more comprehensive molecular structure information, which can illustrate the transfer patterns of heteroatoms and deepen the understanding of the structural characteristics of aromatic rings during the conversion of biomass and coal. Two chemometrics methods, principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), were introduced to dig out the detailed similarities and differences between O-containing and N-containing compounds in coal and biomass. HCA method not only recognized the category of O-containing and N-containing compounds in each sample, but also showed the removal behavior of O and N atoms in biomass and coal. Thus, the combination of MS methods and chemometrics method is expected to provide methodological support to elucidate the molecular structure and conversion pathways for complex coal and biomass. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A green and practical divergent Ritter-type amination via a photoredox catalytic four-component radical-polar crossover process was developed. This versatile protocol presents a modular and powerful strategy to access functionalized β-sulfonyl imides and imines under mild conditions from readily available and stable substrates with high atom-, step- and redox economy. We manipulated carboxylic acids and benzotriazoles to precisely attack the nitrilium ion instead of the carbocation, thus preventing many complicated side reactions of the photocatalytic reactions. Furthermore, the synthetic utility of this divergent Ritter reaction is further demonstrated by the late-stage modification of pharmaceutical and natural product derivatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of smart grid, capacity of wind power that connects to the grid increases gradually, which makes the continuous and stable operation of wind turbine (WT) critically important. Therefore, by considering gearbox structure and operating condition, a diagnosis approach for coupling faults of WT gearbox is proposed based on multitask parallel convolutional neural network with reinforced input (RI-MPCNN). The overall information array of gearbox that fuses wavelet packet transform of vibration signals, domain knowledge of gearbox components and operating condition s used as RI-MPCNN input. Then, RI-MPCNN that has parallel sub-convolutional neural networks (sub-CNNs) and multiple classifiers realizes the diagnosis of coupling faults of multiple components simultaneously. Meanwhile, a reinforced input is added to each sub-CNN to improve the diagnosis accuracy of each component. It is notable that the proposed approach not only fuses the overall gearbox information at system level, but also realizes fault diagnosis at component level. In the approach evaluation based on two case studies, the proposed approach can improve diagnosis accuracies by about 3 and 20% compared with the existing methods, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For improving the emergency capacities during road transportation accidents of dangerous goods, this paper divides the accident emergency procedure into four subsystems: accident information processing, personnel rescue and evacuation, vehicle evacuation, and rescue materials delivery. On this basis, the causal mechanism and the loop diagrams of the emergency process are established by using the System Dynamics Method and Vensim software. First, six factors including transportation distance, the degree of mechanical modernization, delay time of personnel control, delay time of traffic information release, command level coefficient, and delay time of department arrival are selected as parameters to test the model's sensitivity analysis. Then, the influences of the abovementioned factors on the observed value, such as the demand gap of on-site materials, number of people in safe area, number of vehicles in safe area, amount of disposal information, and the dynamic evolution behavior of the system, are analyzed. The results show that the transportation distance is shortened by half, and the time to fill the demand gap is reduced by 39%. The level of mechanical modernization is doubled, the peak inventory of materials in transit will increase by 9.2%, and the time to reach the peak will be shortened by 6.8%. If the delay time of personnel control is shortened by 480 s, the number of people to be evacuated in accident area will be reduced by 56. The delay time of traffic information release is shortened by 480 s, the number of vehicles to be evacuated is reduced by 74, and the time when the vehicle stops entering accident area is 1646 s in advance. The command level coefficient increases by 9.5%, and the speed of action execution increases by 9.6%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mining-induced fracture of overburden strata is intimately related to underground water disasters in coal mining. In this work, we develop an analytical model that uses the probability integral method to calculate the subsidence of the subsurface and the overburden strata. In the developed model, according to the failure characteristics of the mining-induced strata, the horizontal deformation of the strata is expressed by the tensile rate of the elastic plate's neutral plane to reflect the degree of fracture initiation and expansion. The distribution of the water-flowing fractured zone (WFZ) in the overburden strata is calculated by substituting the probability integral function of overburden strata movement into the equation of layer tensile rate. The panel 31071 in Peigou coal mine is taken as a case study, and the height of the water-flowing fractured zone (HWFZ) is determined by the proposed method. Conventional empirical methods and the proposed method are used to predict HWFZ in panels with mining schemes, and the results show that the model is particularly advantageous for inclined coal seam mining where the inclined mining size gradually increases and the coal seam burial depth gradually decreases. In such kind of situations, the overburden strata movement and deformation intensify and the mining fracture develops further with the progress of mining, a feature considered poorly by conventional empirical methods but well represented in the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the accuracy and time overhead of device trust evaluation in edge computing environment, a dynamic trust evaluation model for edge devices is proposed. Firstly, the time-degradation factor is used to express the degree of direct trust invalidity, the satisfaction function is introduced to modify the Bayesian equation, and the incentive mechanism is used to evaluate the direct trust between edge devices. Secondly, the improved grey correlation analysis method is used to determine the index weight to solve the problem of recommending equipment weight in the process of indirect trust evaluation. Finally, through the information entropy fusion of direct trust and indirect trust, the comprehensive trust value of the device is obtained, and the dynamic update factor is used to dynamically update the integrated trust value. The simulation analysis shows that, compared with the RFSN model, the proposed model can reduce the false detection rate of malicious devices by 5. 7% on average, and increase the inter-device interaction success rate by 4. 1%. At the same time, it is verified that the trust evaluation model is superior to the FHTM model and the RFSN model in terms of time overhead, which can more accurately and efficiently evaluate the trust of edge devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to dispose of high level nuclear waste during the operation of underground geological repositories, the buffer/backfill performance of bentonite–based material might be affected by the combined influence of temperature field and infiltrating groundwater thereby leading to uncertainties in the safe operation of repositories. In order to address this issue, bentonite–sand mixtures (BSM) were prepared by mixing GMZ01 bentonite with sand using ratios of 70:30 and 30:70 by weight. One-dimensional deformation experiments were conducted on the prepared BSM in NaCl solutions of varying concentrations (0, 0.1, and 1.0 mol/L) at three different temperatures (25, 60, and 90 °C). The experimental results on the BSM in NaCl solutions indicated that the swelling deformation increased as temperature rises, because osmotic swelling is the dominant swelling type under the experimental conditions. The swelling deformation of BSM could be represented by fractal em–pe relation (em is the montmorillonite void ratio, pe is the effective stress incorporating osmotic suction). At each temperature interval, the swelling of BSM with high bentonite content in different NaCl solutions can be expressed as a unique em–pe relation; however, the swelling coefficient of montmorillonite in the em–pe relationship increases at higher temperature. When the effective stress pe exceeds a threshold, sand–particle skeletons will be formed in BSM with low bentonite content, thus resulting in deviations in the value of em from the em–pe curve. The em–pe relation offers a simple and efficacious method to estimate the deformation of BSM under combined thermal–salt effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel approach to strongly contracted N-electron valence perturbation theory (SC-NEVPT2) as a means of describing dynamic electron correlation for quantum chemical density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) calculations is presented. In this approach the strongly contracted perturber functions are projected onto a renormalized Hilbert space. Compared to a straightforward implementation of SC-NEVPT2 with DMRG wavefunctions, the computational scaling and storage requirements are reduced. This favorable scaling opens up the possibility of calculations with larger active spaces. A specially designed renormalization scheme ensures that both the electronic ground state and the perturber functions are well represented in the renormalized Hilbert space. Test calculations on the N2 and [Cu2O2(en)2]2+ demonstrate some key properties of the method and indicate its capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A low-rank coal was subjected to deoxygenation using NiO/Mo2O3-ZSM-5 as the catalyst and ethanol as the solvent under pressurized hydrogen circumstance to acquire a catalytic product (CP). Another parallel reaction was repeated with the same procedure but with nitrogen circumstance and without the catalyst to obtain a non-catalytic product (NCP). Both CP and NCP were analyzed with a Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, a gas chromatography/mass spectrometer (GC/MS) and an Orbitrap mass spectrometer (Orbitrap MS) to understand the deoxygenation features of low-rank coal. Low polar and molecular mass compounds were detected in NCP and CP using GC/MS. Compared with GC/MS, more species and high polarity were identified in NCP and CP by Orbitrap MS. The three analytical techniques indicated the effective oxygen removal during the catalytic treatment and provide a comprehensive evaluation of the deoxygenation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Nucleosome plays an important role in the process of genome expression, DNA replication, DNA repair and transcription. Therefore, the research of nucleosome positioning has invariably received extensive attention. Considering the diversity of DNA sequence representation methods, we tried to integrate multiple features to analyze its effect in the process of nucleosome positioning analysis. This process can also deepen our understanding of the theoretical analysis of nucleosome positioning. Results: Here, we not only used frequency chaos game representation (FCGR) to construct DNA sequence features, but also integrated it with other features and adopted the principal component analysis (PCA) algorithm. Simultaneously, support vector machine (SVM), extreme learning machine (ELM), extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), multilayer perceptron (MLP) and convolutional neural networks (CNN) are used as predictors for nucleosome positioning prediction analysis, respectively. The integrated feature vector prediction quality is significantly superior to a single feature. After using principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce the feature dimension, the prediction quality of H. sapiens dataset has been significantly improved. Conclusions: Comparative analysis and prediction on H. sapiens, C. elegans, D. melanogaster and S. cerevisiae datasets, demonstrate that the application of FCGR to nucleosome positioning is feasible, and we also found that integrative feature representation would be better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There continues to be debate regarding the timing of the collision between the Indian and Eurasian plates and the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau. This study presents zircon U–Pb geochronology, whole-rock geochemistry, and Lu–Hf isotopic data for the Saiduopugangri granite of the Qiangtang Terrane, located within the core of the Tibetan Plateau. These data provide the basis for the geodynamic setting, petrogenesis, and characteristics of its magma source. Zircons from the Saiduopugangri granite yield a weighted-mean 206Pb/238U age of 62.72 ± 0.06 Ma, indicating that these rocks formed during the early Palaeocene. The rocks are members of the highly calc-alkaline to shoshonitic series, with weak peraluminous characteristics. Trace elements are characterised by high Sr (483–616 ppm), and low Y (6–10 ppm) and Yb (1 ppm) content, typical of a high Sr and low Yb granite. The εHf(t) of zircon ranges from −2.14 to 2.35, with two-stage Hf model ages (TDM2) ranging from 1182 to 895 Ma. These data suggest that the Saiduopugangri granite magma was derived from the melting of lower-crustal clastic meta-sedimentary rocks and mantle-derived basalts. The high Sr and low Yb granite characteristics and experimental results indicate that melting occurred at >1.2 GPa and >750 °C, consistent with a crustal thickness greater than 50 km. Magmatism occurred from the Late Cretaceous to the early Palaeogene and is broadly synchronous with the collision timing between the Indian and Eurasian plates. The Saiduopugangri granite provides evidence of crustal thickening of the Tibetan Plateau and its age and petrogenesis constrain the timing of the initial uplift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) is widely recognized as the main cause of low back pain, which leads to disability in aging populations and induces great losses both socially and economically worldwide. Unfortunately, current treatments for IDD are aimed at relieving symptoms instead of preserving disc structure and function. Researchers are forged to find new promising biological therapeutics to stop, and even reverse, IVD degeneration. Recently, the injection of growth factors has been shown to be a promising biological therapy for IDD. A number of growth factors have been investigated to modulate the synthesis of the extracellular matrix (ECM) through a variety of pathogenetic biological mechanisms, including suppressing inflammatory process and down‐regulating degrading enzymes. However, growth factors, including Transforming Growth Factor‐β (TGF‐β), Fibroblast Growth Factor (FGF), and Insulin‐like Growth Factor‐1 (IGF‐1), may induce unwanted blood vessel in‐growth, which accelerates the process of IDD. On the contrary, studies have demonstrated that injection of GDF‐5 into the intervertebral disc of mice can effectively alleviate the degeneration of the intervertebral disc, which elicits their response via BMPRII and will not induce blood vessel in‐growth. This finding suggests that GDF‐5 is more suitable for use in IDD treatment compared with the three other growth factors. Substantial evidence has suggested that GDF‐5 may maintain the structure and function of the intervertebral disc (IVD). GDF‐5 plays an important role in IDD and is a very promising therapeutic agent for IDD. This review is focused on the mechanisms and functions of GDF‐5 in IDD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To precisely analyze the fractal nature of a short-term time series under the multiscale framework, this study introduces multiscale adaptive multifractal analysis (MAMFA) combining the adaptive fractal analysis method with the multiscale multifractal analysis (MMA). MAMFA and MMA are both applied to the two kinds of simulation sequences, and the results show that the MAMFA method achieves better performances than MMA. MAMFA is also applied to the Chinese and American stock indexes and the R-R interval of heart rate data. It is found that the multifractal characteristics of stock sequences are related to the selection of the scale range s. There is a big difference in the Hurst surface's shape of Chinese and American stock indexes and Chinese stock indexes have more obvious multifractal characteristics. For the R-R interval sequence, we find that the subjects with abnormal heart rate have significant shape changes in three areas of Hurst surface compared with healthy subjects, thereby patients can be effectively distinguished from healthy subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to truly describe the dynamic characteristics of bottom-hole pressure in the reservoir, in this paper, the elastic outer boundary condition is introduced to replace the three kinds of traditional outer boundary conditions (infinity, constant pressure, closed), and a spherical nonlinear seepage model is established for the dual-porosity reservoir, which takes into account wellbore storage, effective well diameter and quadratic gradient term. The solution of the model in the Laplace space is found, and the similar structural formula of the solution is obtained by combining the Laplace transformation with the similarity construction method. Subsequently, by the Stehfest numerical inversion method, the well test curve is drawn, and the influence of main reservoir parameters on bottom-hole pressure dynamics is analyzed. The introduction of the elastic outer boundary not only breaks the traditional fixed form of the ideal outer boundary condition, but also improves the interpretation accuracy of the reservoir boundary. At the same time, a more general representation of the model is put forward, which provides a more effective theoretical basis for further exploration of the seepage law of the reservoir. Simultaneously, the similarity construction method simplifies the complex calculation process of solving the model and provides a new idea for solving the more complicated percolation model of oil and gas reservoirs. The similar construction method simplifies the complicated calculation process of solving the model and provides a new idea for solving the more complicated percolation model of oil and gas reservoirs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • 3D hierarchically porous zero-valent iron (3D-ZVI) was fabricated via 3D printing. • 3D-ZVI showed a catalytic activity comparable to Fe powder with less Fe leaching. • 3D-ZVI retained its excellent catalytic efficiency even after 45 cycles. • The role of high-valent iron-oxo in the 3D-ZVI/PMS system was investigated. Zero-valent iron (ZVI) has emerged as an efficient catalyst for facilitating the decomposition of organic pollutants. However, practical applications of ZVI remain limited owing to its susceptibility towards oxidation and agglomeration. Herein, we utilize 3D printing to fabricate hierarchically porous ZVI (3D-ZVI), which displays a high level of printing precision and superb compression resistance. The 3D-ZVI catalyst can effectively activate peroxymonosulfate (PMS) to degrade a diverse selection of organic contaminants. Notably, while the catalytic activity of 3D-ZVI is comparable to that of Fe powder under similar conditions, the concentration of leached Fe ions of the former is 6.3 times lower than that of the latter. Moreover, 3D-ZVI is capable of maintaining an efficient catalytic performance throughout 45 continuous reactions, which is significantly superior to most previously reported powder catalysts. The high-valent iron-oxo species generated in the 3D-ZVI/PMS system are primarily responsible for contaminant removal, while hydroxyl and sulfate radicals play a lesser role. Additionally, the degradation intermediates and their toxicity levels are investigated. This work provides insight into the practical applications of the ZVI/PMS system, and it also serves as a guide for the rational design of efficient and stable catalysts that can be conveniently recovered from aqueous environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]