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The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of an organic solar cell (OSC) mainly depends on the chemical structures and intrinsic properties of its active layer materials. The development of new nonfullerene acceptors (NFAs) has significantly boosted the PCEs of OSCs over the last decade. Herein, two carbon–oxygen-bridged fused nonacyclic donor units were developed to synthesize two NFAs, namely TTPIC-Ar and iTTPIC-Ar, respectively. The PM6:iTTPIC-Ar blend film displays clearer phase separation with subtler and narrower nanofiber structure, which shortens the exciton diffusion distance to donor/acceptor interfaces, reduces trap density and improves charge carrier mobilities in its devices, compared with the PM6:TTPIC-Ar counterpart. These features help to achieve a higher exciton dissociation probability and to inhibit charge carrier recombination, leading higher short-circuit current density and fill factor values for its OSCs. As a result, the PM6:iTTPIC-Ar-based OSC shows a higher PCE, of 12.80%, than PM6:TTPIC-Ar-based one. Our work demonstrates that designing fused ring donor units is an efficient strategy for developing high-performance NFAs and thus further improving the PCEs of OSCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Although Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT) is one of most common autoimmune thyroid diseases, its treatment remains focused on symptom relief. The soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) shows potential functions as a drug target in alleviating some autoimmune diseases; however, we seldom know its role in HT. Methods The protein expression of sEH and related downstream molecules were evaluated by immunohistochemistry, Western blotting, ELISA, or immunofluorescence staining. RNA sequencing of tissue samples was performed to analyze differential genes and dysregulated pathways in HT and controls. The thyroid follicular epithelial cells (TFECs) and rat HT model were used to verify the biological function of sEH and the inhibition role of adamantyl-ureido-dodecanoic acid (AUDA) in HT. Results The sEH was significantly upregulated in HT patients compared with healthy individuals. Transcriptome sequencing showed cytokine-related pathways and chemokine expression; especially chemokine CXCL10 and its receptor CXCR3 were aberrant in HT patients. In TFECs and a rat HT model, blocking sEH by AUDA inhibitor could effectively inhibit the autoantibody, proinflammatory nuclear kappa factor B (NF-κB) signaling, chemokine CXCL10/CXCR3 expression, and type-1 helper CD4+ T cells. Conclusion Our findings suggest that sEH/NF-κB p65/CXCL10-CXCR3 might be promising therapeutic targets for HT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ternary compounds in the Al–Te–O system have been considered as potential materials for Low-Temperature Co-fired Ceramics preparation. Two ternary compounds, Al2TeO6 and Al2Te2O7, have been found in the Al–Te–O system under 920 °C in air. The decomposition behavior of these two compounds has been studied with Thermogravimetric Analysis-Differential Scanning Calorimetry (TGA-DSC) and equilibration experiments. Phase equilibrium of the Al2O3–TeO2 system has also been experimentally investigated at ambient atmosphere, and corresponding phase diagram has been derived. Obtained results showed that Al2Te2O7, could only be found when TeO2 was 66.7-70.0 mol pct and temperature was at 590 °C to 610 °C. Al2TeO6 decomposed into Al2O3, TeO2(g), and O2(g) when temperature was above 920 °C. Al2Te2O7 converted into Al2TeO6 at 620 ± 2 °C, and then followed the decomposition path of Al2TeO6. In phase equilibrium study, when the initial sample started from the Al2O3–Al2TeO6 region, Al2TeO6 and Al2O3 were found in quenched samples at the temperature range of 500 °C to 915 °C. When the initial sample started from the Al2TeO6–TeO2 phase region, two solid phases, Al2TeO6 and TeO2, could be found in samples prepared under 725 ± 2 °C. When the temperature was above 730 ± 2 °C, there were Al2TeO6 and one oxide liquid phase. In the Al2Te2O7–TeO2 region, all equilibrated samples had Al2Te2O7 and TeO2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ferroelectric tunnel junctions (FTJs) have great potential in nonvolatile memory devices and have been extensively studied in recent years. Compared with conventional FTJs based on perovskite-type oxide materials as the barrier layer, two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals ferroelectric materials are advantageous in improving the performance of FTJs and achieving miniaturization of FTJ devices due to the features such as atomic thickness and ideal interfaces. In this work, we present a 2D out-of-plane ferroelectric tunnel junction (FTJ) constructed using graphene and bilayer-In2Se3. Using density functional calculations combined with the nonequilibrium Green's function technique, we investigate the electron transport properties in the graphene/bilayer-In2Se3 (BIS) vdW FTJ. Our calculations show that the FTJ we constructed can be switched from ferroelectric to antiferroelectric by changing the relative dipole arrangement of the BIS to form multiple nonvolatile resistance states. Since the charge transfer between the layers varies for the four different polarization states, the TER ratios range from 103% to 1010%. The giant tunneling electroresistance and multiple resistance states in the 2D BIS-based FTJ suggest that it has great potential for application in nanoscale nonvolatile ferroelectric memory devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence and development of primitive cave buildings are influenced by constant improvement of living conditions. Based on the research of landscape theory and related theory, the paper analyzes the three types of cave dwellings, and compares the advantages and disadvantages of spatial layout of cave dwellings. Some suggestions are put forward for improving the spatial layout of modern cave dwellings according to the existing problems. It is hoped that cave dwellings can better meet the living needs of modern residents after renovation and design, so that the architectural form of cave dwellings can be well preserved and developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BackgroundThe ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and psychological stress experienced by the general public in various degrees worldwide. However, effective, tailored mental health services and interventions cannot be achieved until we understand the patterns of mental health issues emerging after a public health crisis, especially in the context of the rapid transmission of COVID-19. Understanding the public's emotions and needs and their distribution attributes are therefore critical for creating appropriate public policies and eventually responding to the health crisis effectively, efficiently, and equitably. ObjectiveThis study aims to detect the temporal patterns in emotional fluctuation, significant events during the COVID-19 pandemic that affected emotional changes and variations, and hourly variations of emotions within a single day by analyzing data from the Chinese social media platform Weibo. MethodsBased on a longitudinal dataset of 816,556 posts published by 27,912 Weibo users in Wuhan, China, from December 31, 2019, to April 31, 2020, we processed general sentiment inclination rating and the type of sentiments of Weibo posts by using pandas and SnowNLP Python libraries. We also grouped the publication times into 5 time groups to measure changes in netizens’ sentiments during different periods in a single day. ResultsOverall, negative emotions such as surprise, fear, and anger were the most salient emotions detected on Weibo. These emotions were triggered by certain milestone events such as the confirmation of human-to-human transmission of COVID-19. Emotions varied within a day. Although all emotions were more prevalent in the afternoon and night, fear and anger were more dominant in the morning and afternoon, whereas depression was more salient during the night. ConclusionsVarious milestone events during the COVID-19 pandemic were the primary events that ignited netizens’ emotions. In addition, Weibo users’ emotions varied within a day. Our findings provide insights into providing better-tailored mental health services and interventions.

For the inner-temperature-field reconstruction of a fireball, a detecting method was proposed, using multi-channel visible spectral remote sensing theory. In our proposed method, the reconstructive algorithm based on multi-channel-detection was considered as a multi-objective optimization problem (MOOP), and a fast non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm based on reference-point strategy (NSGA-III) was employed as the solution of this problem. Besides, a so-called ambient pressure operator, based on the unique detecting model, was proposed and employed during the iteration process, for dynamic genetic parameter adjustment. To verify some performance of our proposed method, several numerical reconstructive simulations were carried out, from simple GA to NSGA-III, using several artificial 2-D virtual data, with different kinds of crossover and mutation functions. The simulation results show that, limited to our problems, the NSGA-III can effectively reconstruct different 2-D data, by a fixed crossover rate and a dynamic mutation rate under the proposed ambient pressure operator and an adaptive mutation rate function. The algorithm, limited to the field-reconstruction, also performs well on stability, but still has some deficiencies to be optimized.

Fruit firmness is an important trait for characterizing the quality and value of apple. It also serves as an indicator of fruit maturity, as it is a complex trait regulated by multiple genes. Resequencing techniques can be employed to elucidate variations in such complex fruit traits. Here, the whole genomes of 294 F 1 hybrids of 'Fuji' and 'Cripp's Pink' were resequenced, and a high-density binmap was constructed using 5014 bin markers with a total map distance of 2213.23 cM and an average map distance of 0.44 cM. Quantitative trait loci (QTLs) of traits related to fruit were mapped, and an A-T allele variant identified in the coding region of MdNAC5 was found to potentially regulate fruit firmness and ripening. The overexpression of MdNAC5 A resulted in higher production of methionine and 1-aminocyclopropanecarboxylic acid compared to MdNAC5 T , leading to reduced fruit firmness and accelerated ripening in apples and tomatoes. Furthermore, the activities of MdNAC5 A and MdNAC5 T were enhanced through their differential binding to the promoter regions of MdACS1 and MdERF3 . Spatial variations in MdNAC5 A and MdNAC5 T caused changes in MdACS1 expression following their interaction with MdERF3. Ultimately, utilizing different MdNAC5 alleles offers a strategy to manipulate fruit firmness in apple breeding., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (© The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nanjing Agricultural University.)

Ferroelectric tunnel junctions (FTJs) have great potential in nonvolatile memory devices and have been extensively studied in recent years. Compared with conventional FTJs based on perovskite-type oxide materials as the barrier layer, two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals ferroelectric materials are advantageous in improving the performance of FTJs and achieving miniaturization of FTJ devices due to the features such as atomic thickness and ideal interfaces. In this work, we present a 2D out-of-plane ferroelectric tunnel junction (FTJ) constructed using graphene and bilayer-In 2 Se 3 . Using density functional calculations combined with the nonequilibrium Green's function technique, we investigate the electron transport properties in the graphene/bilayer-In 2 Se 3 (BIS) vdW FTJ. Our calculations show that the FTJ we constructed can be switched from ferroelectric to antiferroelectric by changing the relative dipole arrangement of the BIS to form multiple nonvolatile resistance states. Since the charge transfer between the layers varies for the four different polarization states, the TER ratios range from 10 3 % to 10 10 %. The giant tunneling electroresistance and multiple resistance states in the 2D BIS-based FTJ suggest that it has great potential for application in nanoscale nonvolatile ferroelectric memory devices.

Background: Automatic segmentation of lesion, organ, and tissue from the medical image is an important part of medical image analysis, which are useful for improving the accuracy of disease diagnosis and clinical analysis. For skin melanomas lesions, the contrast ratio between lesions and surrounding skin is low and there are many irregular shapes, uneven distribution, and local and boundary features. Moreover, some hair covering the lesions destroys the local context. Polyp characteristics such as shape, size, and appearance vary at different development stages. Early polyps with small sizes have no distinctive features and could be easily mistaken for other intestinal structures, such as wrinkles and folds. Imaging positions and illumination conditions would alter polyps' appearance and lead to no visible transitions between polyps and surrounding tissue. It remains a challenging task to accurately segment the skin lesions and polyps due to the high variability in the location, shape, size, color, and texture of the target object. Developing a robust and accurate segmentation method for medical images is necessary., Purpose: To achieve better segmentation performance while dealing with the difficulties above, a U-shape network based on the encoder and decoder structure is proposed to enhance the segmentation performance in target regions., Methods: In this paper, a novel deep network of the encoder-decoder model that combines HarDNet, dual attention (DA), and reverse attention (RA) is proposed. First, HarDNet68 is employed to extract the backbone features while improving the inference speed and computational efficiency. Second, the DA block is adopted to capture the global feature dependency in spatial and channel dimensions, and enrich the contextual information on local features. At last, three RA blocks are exploited to fuse and refine the boundary features to obtain the final segmentation results., Results: Extensive experiments are conducted on a skin lesion dataset which consists of ISIC2016, ISIC2017, and ISIC 2018, and a polyp dataset which consists of several public datasets, that is, Kvasir, CVC-ClinicDB, CVC-ColonDB, ETIS, Endosece. The proposed method outperforms some state-of-art segmentation models on the ISIC2018, ISIC2017, and ISIC2016 datasets, with Jaccard's indexes of 0.846, 0.881, and 0.894, mean Dice coefficients of 0.907, 0.929, and 03939, precisions of 0.908, 0.977, and 0.968, and accuracies of 0.953, 0.975, and 0.972. Additionally, the proposed method also performs better than some state-of-art segmentation models on the Kvasir, CVC-ClinicDB, CVC-ColonDB, ETIS, and Endosece datasets, with mean Dice coefficients of 0.907, 0.935, 0.716, 0.667, and 0.887, mean intersection over union coefficients of 0.850, 0.885, 0.644, 0.595, and 0.821, structural similarity measures of 0.918, 0.953, 0.823, 0.807, and 0.933, enhanced alignment measures of 0.952, 0.983, 0.850, 0.817, and 0.957, mean absolute errors of 0.026, 0.007, 0.037, 0.030, and 0.009., Conclusions: The proposed deep network could improve lesion segmentation performance in polyp and skin lesion images. The quantitative and qualitative results show that the proposed method can effectively handle the challenging task of segmentation while revealing the great potential for clinical application., (© 2022 American Association of Physicists in Medicine.)

In order to avoid the problems of long exposure time and high incidence of photosensitivity by intravenous injection of photosensitizer, our study explore the safety, efficacy, and possible mechanisms of photodynamic therapy (PDT) by intrathoracic administration of hematoporphyrin injection in the treatment of disseminated pleural malignancies of Lewis lung carcinoma in mice to provide a theoretical basis for thoracic PDT in the clinic. Hematoporphyrin was administered into the thoracic cavity of tumor-bearing mice, and the concentrations of hematoporphyrin in normal and tumor pleural tissues were detected by high-performance liquid chromatography. The tumor-bearing mice were randomly divided into four groups: model control, pure laser irradiation, PDT low-dose, and PDT high-dose groups. Hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining was used to observe the histological changes in normal pleural tissue. H&E and DNA in situ nick end-labeling staining were used to detect necrosis and apoptosis in the tumor tissues. The tumor volume in each group from high to low was as follows: model control group > pure laser irradiation group > PDT low-dose group > PDT high-dose group. Inflammatory cells infiltrated the normal pleural tissue of the PDT group. Necrosis was observed to different extents in the tumor tissues of the PDT group. The apoptosis index of each group from high to low was as follows: PDT high-dose group > PDT low-dose group > pure laser irradiation group > model control group. The differences were statistically significant (P<0.05). Hematoporphyrin selectively accumulated in tumor pleural tissues. PDT with intrathoracic administration of hematoporphyrin injection could inhibit the thoracic implant tumors in mice by inducing necrosis and apoptosis., Competing Interests: None., (AJCR Copyright © 2022.)

Background Stress-induced cell premature senescence participates in a variety of tissue and organ remodeling by secreting such proteins as proinflammatory cytokines, chemokines, and growth factors. However, the role of cardiomyocyte senescence in heart remodeling after acute myocardial infarction has not been thoroughly elucidated to date. Therefore, we sought to clarify the impact of premature myocardial senescence on postinfarction heart function. Methods and Results Senescence markers, including p16 INK 4a , p21 CIP 1/ WAF 1 , and SA -β-gal staining, were analyzed in several heart disease models by immunostaining. Both postinfarction mouse hearts and ischemic human myocardium demonstrated increased senescence markers. Additionally, senescence-related secretory phenotype was activated after acute myocardial infarction, which upregulated senescence-related secretory phenotype factors, including CCN family member 1 ( CCN 1), interleukin-1α, tumor necrosis factor α, and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1. In vivo, a tail vein injection of AAV 9- Gata4-sh RNA significantly attenuated senescence-related secretory phenotype secretion and aggravated postinfarction heart dysfunction. Furthermore, among activated senescence-related secretory phenotype factors, CCN 1 administration reduced myofibroblast viability in vitro and rescued the deleterious effect of AAV 9- Gata4-sh RNA in vivo. Conclusions Myocardial premature senescence was observed in the ischemic hearts and improved postinfarction heart function, partly through the GATA-binding factor 4- CCN 1 pathway.