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Abstract Background Sepsis-associated encephalopathy (SAE) refers to the widespread impairment of brain function caused by noncentral nervous system infection mediated by sepsis. Lipid peroxidation-induced ferroptosis contributes to the occurrence and course of SAE. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between neuronal injury and lipid peroxidation-induced ferroptosis in SAE. Methods Baseline data were collected from pediatric patients upon admission, and the expression levels of various markers related to lipid peroxidation and ferroptosis were monitored in the serum and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of patients with SAE as well as SAE model mice. The hippocampal phosphatidylethanolamine-binding protein (PEBP)-1/15-lysine oxidase (LOX)/ glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4) pathway was assessed for its role on the inhibitory effect of ferroptosis in SAE treatment. Results The results showed elevated levels of S100 calcium-binding protein beta (S-100β), glial fibrillary acidic protein, and malondialdehyde in the serum of SAE patients, while superoxide dismutase levels were reduced. Furthermore, analysis of PBMCs revealed increased transcription levels of PEBP1, LOX, and long-chain fatty acyl-CoA synthetase family member 4 (ACSL4) in SAE patients, while the transcription levels of GPX4 and cystine/glutamate transporter xCT (SLC7A11) were decreased. In comparison to the control group, the SAE mice exhibited increased expression of S-100β and neuron-specific enolase (NSE) in the hippocampus, whereas the expression of S-100β and NSE were reduced in deferoxamine (DFO) mice. Additionally, iron accumulation was observed in the hippocampus of SAE mice, while the iron ion levels were reduced in the DFO mice. Inhibition of ferroptosis alleviated the mitochondrial damage (as assessed by transmission electron microscopy, hippocampal mitochondrial ATP detection, and the JC-1 polymer-to-monomer ratio in the hippocampus) and the oxidative stress response induced by SAE as well as attenuated neuroinflammatory reactions. Further investigations revealed that the mechanism underlying the inhibitory effect of ferroptosis in SAE treatment is associated with the hippocampal PEBP-1/15-LOX/GPX4 pathway. Conclusion These results offer potential therapeutic targets for the management of neuronal injury in SAE and valuable insights into the potential mechanisms of ferroptosis in neurological disorders.

Abstract α-Synuclein forms amyloid fibrils that are critical in the progression of Parkinson’s disease and serves as the pathological hallmark of this condition. Different posttranslational modifications have been identified at multiple sites of α-synuclein, influencing its conformation, aggregation and function. Here, we investigate how disease-related phosphorylation and O-GlcNAcylation at the same α-synuclein site (S87) affect fibril structure and neuropathology. Using semi-synthesis, we obtained homogenous α-synuclein monomer with site-specific phosphorylation (pS87) and O-GlcNAcylation (gS87) at S87, respectively. Cryo-EM revealed that pS87 and gS87 α-synuclein form two distinct fibril structures. The GlcNAc situated at S87 establishes interactions with K80 and E61, inducing a unique iron-like fold with the GlcNAc molecule on the iron handle. Phosphorylation at the same site prevents a lengthy C-terminal region including residues 73 to 140 from incorporating into the fibril core due to electrostatic repulsion. Instead, the N-terminal half of the fibril (1–72) takes on an arch-like fibril structure. We further show that both pS87 and gS87 α-synuclein fibrils display reduced neurotoxicity and propagation activity compared with unmodified α-synuclein fibrils. Our findings demonstrate that different posttranslational modifications at the same site can produce distinct fibril structures, which emphasizes link between posttranslational modifications and amyloid fibril formation and pathology.

This study is intended to explore the effect of hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) activation on lipid accumulation in the diabetic kidney. A type 1 diabetic rat model was established by STZ intraperitoneal injection. Cobalt chloride (CoCl2) and YC-1 were used as the HIF-1α activator and antagonist, respectively. CoCl2 treatment significantly increased HIF-1α expression, accelerated lipid deposition, and accelerated tubular injury in diabetic kidneys. In vitro, CoCl2 effectively stabilized HIF-1α and increased its transportation from the cytoplasm to the nucleus, which was accompanied by significantly increased lipid accumulation in HK-2 cells. Furthermore, results obtained in vivo showed that HIF-1α protein expression in the renal tubules of diabetic rats was significantly downregulated by YC-1 treatment. Meanwhile, lipid accumulation in the tubules of the DM + YC-1 group was markedly decreased in comparison to the DM + DMSO group. Accordingly, PAS staining revealed that the pathological injury caused to the tubular epithelial cells was alleviated by YC-1 treatment. Furthermore, the blood glucose level, urine albumin creatinine ratio, and NAG creatinine ratio in the DM + YC-1 group were significantly decreased compared to the DM + DMSO group. Moreover, the protein expression levels of transforming growth factor β1 (TGF-β1) and connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) in diabetic kidneys were decreased by YC-1 treatment. Our findings demonstrate that the activation of HIF-1α contributed to interstitial injury in a rat model of diabetic nephropathy and that the underlying mechanism involved the induction of lipid accumulation.

Abstract As one of the most widespread components in marine sediments, calcium carbonate (CaCO3) plays a crucial role in the global carbon cycle and climate changes. To efficiently semi‐quantify the CaCO3 concentration, a more effective, non‐destructive, economic, and accurate technique is required. Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) has been widely used for the detection and quantification of minerals but has been less studied for CaCO3. This study synthesized a series of samples with well‐determined content of CaCO3 to analyze the visible and near‐infrared DRS characteristics. Results show that the intensity of the second derivative of Kubelka‐Munk (K‐M) remission functions of the DRS spectra at 2,340 nm (I2340) is linearly correlated with the CaCO3 content. Then, the new proxy I2340 was applied for marine sediments from the Pacific Ocean with known CaCO3 concentrations determined previously by chemical methods, and the robustness of the I2340 as the proxy for CaCO3 concentration was attested.

Abstract In longwall top coal caving (LTCC) mining methods, problems such as large deformations, loss of coal resources, and excavation relay out of balance are often encountered with the increased production in single mining panels. To address these problems, a novel non‐pillar coal mining technology in LTCC was used based on the equilibrium mining theory. This approach could cut off the stress transmission, eliminate the coal pillar, and retain the gob‐side entry. In this technology, the entry is first excavated along the roof of the coal, and then four techniques are applied to control the surrounding rock of the retained entry. The constant resistance and large deformation anchor cable are used to maintain the roof stability. The directional roof split blasting technique is adopted to separate the roof between the entry and gob. The blocking‐gangue support system (BGSS) is used to form the gangue rib lagging the mining panel. The temporary support system is applied to prevent the roadway from being affected by the dynamic pressure and prevented the BGSS from falling. Finally, the field monitoring results indicate that the surrounding rock of retained entry is stabilized at 200 m behind the working face. The deformation of retained entry is within a reasonable range at 180–190 m behind the mining panel. The results provide an important reference for the thick coal seam non‐pillar coal mining technology, specifically using this technology in LTCC panels.

Aiming at the problem that it is difficult to achieve the real-time and accurate measurement of the bolter miner’s position and orientation during the excavation process in coal mines, which leads to the difficulty in achieving directional excavation, a guidance method for bolter miner based on dual-screen visual target is proposed. Using two vertically installed light-sensitive imaging screens to form the dual-screen visual target surfaces and the indication laser emitted by the laser instrument presents light spots on the front and rear target surfaces. Combining with the visual measurement, high-precision raster calibration and other technology are applied to establish the mapping relationship of the spot centroid between 2D-3D coordinates, which is used to form the point cloud data of the coordinates. Based on the principle of grid indexing, coordinate transformation and Euler angle solving, combining with the biaxial inclinometer at the bottom of target to obtain the bolter miner body’s real-time position and orientation, the key points’ horizontal/vertical deviations relative to the roadway axis are calculated, which can provide data support for deviation correction during the excavation process. The off-target problem of the system is analyzed by constructing a mathematical model. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of the guidance method is verified by building an experimental platform. The experimental results indicate that this method can achieve a precision measurement of six-degrees-of-freedom spatial pose for the machine body. When the measurement distance is 9 m, the repeatability measurement precision of the yaw angle is better than 0.01º and the error of absolute measurement is less than 0.05º. Within the measurement range of 15−40 m, which uses the total station and mining laser to set the planning line, the measurement errors of key points’ horizontal/vertical deviations are less than 5 mm and 15 mm, respectively. The guiding system developed based on this method has also been successfully applied to the underground roadway excavation in coal mine, which fully meets the requirements of underground roadway excavation and the positioning of the machine body’s key points. The error characteristic of the guiding method is independent of the test distance. Also, all optical measurement functions involved in the method are realized inside the target, which can effectively shield the influence of the underground complex environment for the measurement function, and greatly improve the capacity of anti-dust interference in field application.

This paper presents a rapidly direct algorithm (RDA) to calculate explicit Fréchet derivatives (EFD) for marine controlled-source electromagnetic measurement (MCSEM) in a three-dimensional (1-D) transversely isotropic (TI) formation. By discretizing the Helmholtz equations about coupled potentials on Yee’s staggered grids by the 3-D finite volume method (FVM), we obtain a complex linear system about the unknown potentials excited by a mass of moving electric current sources. To efficiently determine electromagnetic (EM) fields, we introduce an interpolation operator and projection operator per receiver by using the direct solver PARDISO and 3-D Newtown interpolation. Based on this, the perturbation in goal conductivity is expressed as a piece-wise constant function according to block or pixel model. The spatial scattered electric currents will be decomposed into a series of electric current elements distributed on Yee’s grids due to the conductivity perturbation. We then discretize the scattered electric currents by 3-D FVM and obtain the new right-hand terms about the unknown scattered potentials. This allows for fast production of the linear relationship between the changes in the EM fields and the relative conductivity perturbation per block or pixel, ultimately resulting in the EFD of MCSEM responses. Numerical results demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of this method. The 3-D pixel sensitivities are presented to further investigate the response characteristics of MCSEM in several cases.

Influence maximization (IM) has shown wide applicability in various fields over the past few decades, e.g., viral marketing, rumor control, and prevention of infectious diseases. Nevertheless, existing research on IM primarily focuses on ordinary networks with pairwise connections between nodes, which fall short in the representation of higher-order relations. Influence maximization on hypergraphs (HIM) has received limited research attention. A novel evaluation function, which aims to evaluate the spreading influence of selected nodes on hypergraphs, i.e., expected diffusion value on hypergraph (HEDV), is proposed in this work. Then, an advanced greedy-based algorithm, termed HEDV-greedy, is proposed to select seed nodes with maximum spreading influence on the hypergraph. We conduct extensive experiments on eight real-world hypergraph datasets, benchmarking HEDV-greedy against eight state-of-the-art methods for the HIM problem. Extensive experiments conducted on real-world datasets highlight the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed methods. The HEDV-greedy algorithm demonstrates a marked reduction in time complexity by two orders of magnitude compared to the conventional greedy method. Moreover, HEDV-greedy outperforms other state-of-the-art algorithms across all datasets. Specifically, under conditions of lower propagation probability, HEDV-greedy exhibits an average improvement in solution accuracy of 25.76%.

The Harris Hawks Optimization algorithm (HHO) is a sophisticated metaheuristic technique that draws inspiration from the hunting process of Harris hawks, which has gained attention in recent years. However, despite its promising features, the algorithm exhibits certain limitations, including the tendency to converge to local optima and a relatively slow convergence speed. In this paper, we propose the multi-strategy improved HHO algorithm (MSI-HHO) as an enhancement to the standard HHO algorithm, which adopts three strategies to improve its performance, namely, inverted S-shaped escape energy, a stochastic learning mechanism based on Gaussian mutation, and refracted opposition-based learning. At the same time, we conduct a comprehensive comparison between our proposed MSI-HHO algorithm with the standard HHO algorithm and five other well-known metaheuristic optimization algorithms. Extensive simulation experiments are conducted on both the 23 classical benchmark functions and the IEEE CEC 2020 benchmark functions. Then, the results of the non-parametric tests indicate that the MSI-HHO algorithm outperforms six other comparative algorithms at a significance level of 0.05 or greater. Additionally, the visualization analysis demonstrates the superior convergence speed and accuracy of the MSI-HHO algorithm, providing evidence of its robust performance.

Indoor fires pose significant threats in terms of casualties and economic losses globally. Thus, it is vital to accurately detect indoor fires at an early stage. To improve the accuracy of indoor fire detection for the resource-constrained embedded platform, an indoor fire detection method based on multi-sensor fusion and a lightweight convolutional neural network (CNN) is proposed. Firstly, the Savitzky–Golay (SG) filter is used to clean the three types of heterogeneous sensor data, then the cleaned sensor data are transformed by means of the Gramian Angular Field (GAF) method into matrices, which are finally integrated into a three-dimensional matrix. This preprocessing stage will preserve temporal dependency and enlarge the characteristics of time-series data. Therefore, we could reduce the number of blocks, channels and layers in the network, leading to a lightweight CNN for indoor fire detection. Furthermore, we use the Fire Dynamic Simulator (FDS) to simulate data for the training stage, enhancing the robustness of the network. The fire detection performance of the proposed method is verified through an experiment. It was found that the proposed method achieved an impressive accuracy of 99.1%, while the number of CNN parameters and the amount of computation is still small, which is more suitable for the resource-constrained embedded platform of an indoor fire detection system.

This article presents an integrated approach for theoretical analysis and numerical modeling to investigate the mechanism of roof presplitting and its reasonable parameters in the hard roof and longwall top-coal caving face. The test site is located in the city of Jinzhong, Shanxi Province, China. The theoretical analysis results indicated that when the presplitting angle remains constant, the tensile stress at the unpenetrated surface is approximately exponentially distributed with the presplitting height. When the presplitting height remains constant, the variation curve of tensile stress at the unpenetrated surface with the presplitting angle is parabolic. As the presplitting height increases, the presplitting angle required for the tensile stress at the unpenetrated face to exceed the ultimate tensile strength of limestone first increases and then decreases. The ground response of retained entry obtained with numerical modeling confirmed the theoretical analysis results. Meanwhile, numerical modeling results also showed that presplitting height affects the volume of the collapse gangues and the structure of the overlying strata above the retained entry. The presplitting angle is effective in reducing the frictional resistance between the collapse gangue and roof structure of retained entry. Moreover, based on the ground response of the retained entries, the reasonable parameters of the roof presplitting were determined at 17 m and 15°. The field application showed that reasonable roof presplitting parameters could achieve satisfactory effects at pressure relief and retained entry in the longwall top-coal caving panel. Furthermore, the proposed design principle of the roof presplitting technique can be applied to other projects.

Requirements classification is a significant task for requirements engineering, which is time-consuming and challenging. The traditional requirements classification models usually rely on manual pre-processing and have poor generalization capability. Moreover, these traditional models ignore the sentence structure and syntactic information in requirements. To address these problems, we propose an automatic requirements classification based BERT and graph attention network (GAT), called DBGAT. We construct dependency parse trees and then utilize the GAT for mining the implicit structure feature and syntactic feature of requirements. In addition, we introduce BERT to improve the generalization ability of the model. Experimental results of the PROMISE datasets demonstrate that our proposed DBGAT significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods. Moreover, we investigate the impact of graph construction methods on non-functional requirements classification. DBGAT achieved the best classification results on both seen (F1-scores of up to 91%) and unseen projects (F1-scores of up to 88%), further demonstrating the strong generalization ability.

Characterizing nonhomogeneous elastic property distribution of soft tissues plays a crucial role in disease diagnosis and treatment. In this paper, we will apply the optical coherence elastography to reconstruct the shear modulus elastic property distribution of a bilayer solid. In the computational aspect, we adopt a well-established inverse technique that solves for every nodal shear modulus in the problem domain (NO method). Additionally, we also propose a novel inverse method that assumes the shear moduli merely vary along the thickness of the bilayer solid (TO method). The inversion tests using simulated data demonstrate that TO method performs better in reconstructing the shear modulus distribution. Further, we utilize the experimental data obtained from the optical coherence tomography to reconstruct the shear modulus distribution of a bilayer phantom. We observe that the quality of the reconstructed shear modulus distribution obtained by the partial displacement measurement is better than that obtained by the full-field displacement measurement. Particularly, merely using the displacement component along the loading direction significantly improves the reconstructed results. This work is of great significance in applying optical coherence elastography (OCE) to characterize the elastic property distribution of layered soft tissues such as skins and corneas.

Background: Current mainstream treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD) has a disadvantage in delayed onset of efficacy, making detection of early signatures predicative of the long-term treatment efficacy urgent.Methods: MDD patients were scored with HAMD-24 and serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels were measured at different times in two independent trials: a single-arm observation of Yueju pill, a clinically approved traditional multiherbal medicine, and a two-arm random placebo-controlled trial for Yueju vs escitalopram. The ratio of the BDNF level to HAMD-24 score, or neuroplasticity index (NI), and its derived parameters were used for correlation analysis and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis.Results: On both the early (4th) and final (28th) days, Yueju and escitalopram significantly reduced HAMD-24 scores, compared to baselines, but only Yueju increased BDNF at both times. For either Yueju or escitalopram treatment, NI, but not BDNF, at baseline was correlated to NIs at the early or final treatment day. NI at early time was significantly correlated to early NI enhancement from the baseline for both Yueju and escitalopram, and to final NI enhancement from the baseline for Yueju in both trials. ROC analysis supported the predictability of Yueju’s final treatment efficacy from early NI enhancement.Limitations: The small sample size and 28 days of treatment time may lead to the impossibility of ROC analysis of escitalopram.Conclusion: Early NI enhancement is useful for prediction of long-term efficacy of Yueju and presumably some other antidepressants.Clinical Trial Registration: [www.ClinicalTrials.gov], identifier [ChiCTR1900021114].

Optical coherence elastography (OCE) based on digital volume correlation (DVC) has the advantages of full 3D displacements and strain tensor quantification. However, the measurement results are often unreliable due to the poor quality of the optical coherence tomography (OCT) speckle patterns. This paper proposes an image evaluation index based on OCT-DVC (CMGG, combined mean attenuation intensity, breadth and dispersion of the gray level distribution), which comprehensively considers the OCT signals’ attenuation and the breadth and dispersion of the gray level distribution of the OCT images. Virtual deformation experiments of phantoms by numerically applied displacements and deformation measurement of pork meat were conducted. The results of the mean bias errors have a corresponding good relationship with CMGG, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed CMGG. Based on this index, a lot of time may be saved by a pretest evaluation during DVC-OCE measurement. CMGG also guides the development of OCE system design, adjustment and new DVC-OCE algorithms.

Abutment pressure distribution is different when a longwall panel is passing through the abandoned gate roads in a damaged coal seam. According to the geological condition of panel E13103 in Cuijiazhai Coal Mine in China, theoretical analysis and finite element numerical simulation were used to determine the front pressure distribution characteristics when the longwall face is 70, 50, 30, 20, 10, and 5 m from the abandoned roadways. The research results show that the influence range of abutment pressure is 40 to 45 m outby the face, and the peak value of front abutment pressure is related to the distance between the face and abandoned roadways. When the distance between the longwall face and abandoned roadways is reduced from 50 to 10 m, the front abutment pressure peak value kept increasing. When the distance is 10 m, it has reached the maximum. The peak value is located in 5 to 6 m outby the faceline. When the distance between the longwall face and abandoned roadways is reduced from10 to5 m, the front abutment pressure sharply decreases, the intact coal yields and is even in plastic state. The peak value transfers to the other side of the abandoned roadways. The research results provide a theoretical basis for determining the advance support distance of two roadways in the panel and the reinforcement for face stability when the longwall face is passing through the abandoned roadways. Keywords: Abandoned roadways, Abutment pressure, Theoretical calculation, Numerical simulation

Shaped charge blasting (SCB)—a directional fracture blasting technology—has the disadvantages of low safety, harmful gas, and dust emissions. This study proposes a new type of directional rock-breaking technology called shaped charge hydraulic blasting (SCHB) that uses water as the blasting medium instead of air. To verify the effectiveness of the new method, we performed a theoretical analysis. Twelve groups of on-site directional roof-cutting tests were carried out on SCB and SCHB for comparison in a coal mine. The results showed that, although both blasting methods achieved the goal of directional roof cutting for noncoal pillar mining, SCHB had greater blasting power and produced 8% higher crack rate than SCB for the same charge amount. SCHB required 12.5% less charge than SCB when the crack rate was basically the same. SCHB effectively reduced the concentration of CO. The maximum concentration of CO was reduced by 22–62% compared with SCB. The maximum concentration decreased parabolically with the monitoring distance. In addition, water can absorb high temperature and inhibit sparks from blasting, so SCHB can prevent gas explosions. Therefore, SCHB is an environmental, safe, and economical method of directional roof cutting, which has wide applications in mining and geotechnical engineering.

Noncoal pillar mining with automatic formation of a roadway is a new coal mining method that is tailored to improve the coal resource recovery rate and reduce the investment in roadway tunneling. Using this proposed method, a reuse entry is formed by roof cutting instead of tunneling. In this paper, the S1201-II working face of the Ningtiaota Coal Mine was used as a case study. The stress distribution of surrounding rock and the roof deformation characteristics of the reused entry during the mining process of the second working face were studied through FLAC3D numerical simulations combined with field measurements. The results indicate that the zone close to the reused entry led to higher stress in advance. If this stress is superimposed with the lateral pressure of the adjacent mined working face, it will be more difficult to maintain the reused entry. In the engineering case study described here, the reused entry created a stress increase zone and a severe deformation zone in the range of 0–80 m in front of the working face, and its range was approximately 37.5% larger than an ordinary entry. The stress peak in the stress increase zone increased by approximately 34.7% over that of an ordinary entry. The maximum amount of deformation within the severe deformation zone increased by 94.4% over that of an ordinary entry. To properly control the surrounding rock stress and deformation of the reused entry, a dynamic pressure bearing support in front of the working face with adaptability to the large roof deformation and high support strength is proposed here. Field application results showed that the final roof deformation with the dynamic pressure bearing support can be satisfactorily controlled within 110∼130 mm. These findings can provide a reference for researchers and field engineering technicians when engaging in the support work of reused entry.

ZBTB38 belongs to the zinc finger protein family and contains the typical BTB domains. As a transcription factor, ZBTB38 is involved in cell regulation, proliferation and apoptosis, whereas, functional deficiency of ZBTB38 induces the human neuroblastoma (NB) cell death potentially. To have some insight into the role of ZBTB38 in NB development, high throughput RNA sequencing was performed using the human NB cell line SH-SY5Y with the deletion of ZBTB38. In the present study, 2,438 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in ZBTB38−/− SH-SY5Y cells were obtained, 83.5% of which was down-regulated. Functional annotation of the DEGs in the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes database revealed that most of the identified genes were enriched in the neurotrophin TRK receptor signaling pathway, including PI3K/Akt and MAPK signaling pathway. we also observed that ZBTB38 affects expression of CDK4/6, Cyclin E, MDM2, ATM, ATR, PTEN, Gadd45, and PIGs in the p53 signaling pathway. In addition, ZBTB38 knockdown significantly suppresses the expression of autophagy-related key genes including PIK3C2A and RB1CC1. The present meeting provides evidence to molecular mechanism of ZBTB38 modulating NB development and targeted anti-tumor therapies.

By combining electrochemical experiments with mass spectrometric analysis, it is found that using short chain oligomers to improve the cycling stability of conducting polymers in supercapacitors is still problematic. Cycling tests via cyclic voltammetry over a potential window of 0 to 1.0 V or 0 to 1.2 V in a two-electrode device configuration resulted in solid-state electropolymerization and chain scission. Electropolymerization of the aniline tetramer to generate long chain oligomers is shown to be possible despite the suggested decrease in reactivity and increase in intermediate stability with longer oligomers. Because aniline oligomers are more stable towards reductive cycling when compared to oxidative cycling, future conducting polymer/oligomer-based pseudocapacitors should consider using an asymmetric electrode configuration.