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BackgroundRadial deviation of the interphalangeal (IP) joint is a common complication of treating Wassel type IV-D preaxial polydactyly. Long-term radial deviation can place excessive tension on the radial skin and cause overabundance of the ulnar skin. To overcome this problem, we aimed to utilize a fascial flap for ulnar reconstruction of a defect in the radial skin.MethodsWe used a fascial flap for ulnar reconstruction of a defect in the radial skin, eight patients (average: 12 years, range: 5–33 years) who underwent reconstructive surgery at our department for radial deviation of the interphalangeal (IP) joint after the initial operation were included between August 2017 and August 2021. An incision was made on the radial side of the thumb. An olive-shaped flap was designed on the ulnar eminence of the IP joint. The skin and fascia in the other three quadrants were incised. While the flap was protected, children with epiphyseal plates underwent wedge osteotomy at the maximum ulnar deviation of the proximal phalanx, and adults underwent direct fusion of the distal IP joint. Absorbable sutures were used to suture the flap. The Tada functional and visual analog scale (VAS) scores were recorded before and after the operation.ResultsAll flaps survived without infection or necrosis. The preoperative and postoperative Tada scores were 1 and 5, respectively, and the preoperative and postoperative VAS scores were 3 and 9, respectively. The postoperative scores showed a statistically significant degree of improvement.ConclusionsAn ulnar fascial flap is an effective and feasible option for repair of radial deviation following surgery for preaxial polydactyly.

The advantageous geographical location of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River (YRMR) plays an important role in promoting high-quality development in China and accelerating the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt(YREB). In the new stage of development, green development efficiency (GDE) is an important metric for assessing the balance between economic development and ecological civilization. Therefore, taking three city clusters in China's YRMR as the study area, this research employs the Super-SBM model to assess their GDE in 2010–2020 in order to analyze the problem of GDE at the city scale. On this basis, spatio-temporal analyses, dynamic evolution, and convergence analyses have been carried out using the Thiel index, GML index model, and convergence model. The findings indicate that overall GDE has not yet reached an effective level and generally exhibits a two-stage fluctuating upward trend. Spatially, the pattern of distribution is ''high in the southwest, low in the northeast''. The differences within the city clusters in the YRMR in terms of green development are gradually narrowing, with differences within the same regions contributing the most to overall differences. The GML index shows a trend of fluctuating growth, indicating that the overall GDE growth is in good condition. GDE has grown significantly as a result of technological advancements, with the Wuhan metropolitan area (cluster A) experiencing the fastest growth in this regard, followed by the Chang-Zhu-Tan and the Poyang Lake rim city clusters (clusters B and C). The YRMR and its three major city clusters exhibit both σ- and β-convergence patterns. The convergence of GDE is simultaneously affected by several factors, including economic development (RGDP), urbanization level (UR), industrial structure (IND), technological development (TEC), and the level of openness (LO). Regional heterogeneity also exists. The above study provides decision-making references and empirical evidence for promoting green development in China's city clusters in the YRMR and advancing the improvement of economic-environmental incongruence in this area.

Drought stress is one of the most important stresses in plants. The important role of calcium signal as a second messenger in alleviating drought stress is still unclear. We used tobacco as test material to simulate drought stress with 20 % PEG concentration. Physiological and transcriptome techniques were used to study how the model plant tobacco protects itself from drought stress by examining the mechanism used by exogenous calcium ions to respond to the antioxidant and hormone signals that indicate drought stress. Exogenous calcium was shown to increase the levels of expression of the proteins CDPK, CBL/CIPK and AQPs that respond to signaling by calcium under drought stress. The cis-acting elements of the promoters of the genes related to signals primarily focused on hormone and drought-related elements, which suggests that the exogenous calcium may mediate the transduction of hormone signals in response to drought stress. The results of physiological and transcriptional data showed that oxidative damage occurred in the tobacco leaves under drought stress. Under drought stress, exogenous calcium can enhance the activities of SOD (4.75 %), POD (42.33 %) and APX (512.43 %), up-regulate the expression of the genes that encode antioxidant enzymes to eliminate excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS), and alleviate the oxidative damage to tobacco leaves under drought stress. The calcium produced during drought stress increased the content of auxin (IAA), decreased that of abscisic acid (ABA) and downstream gene expression, and prevented excessive amplification of the ABA signal. Exogenous calcium enhanced the crosstalk between cytokinin, gibberellin and ABA signals.In summary, exogenous calcium can stimulate the synergistic effect of calcium and hormone signals and the antioxidant system, eliminate ROS, improve the crosstalk between plant hormones, and improve the drought resistance of tobacco.

Renal injury, a prevalent clinical outcome with multifactorial etiology, imposes a substantial burden on society. Currently, there remains a lack of effective management and treatments. Extensive research has emphasized the diverse biological effects of natural polysaccharides, which exhibit promising potential for mitigating renal damage. This review commences with the pathogenesis of four common renal diseases and the shared mechanisms underlying renal injury. The renoprotective roles of polysaccharides in vivo and in vitro are summarized in the following five aspects: anti-oxidative stress effects, anti-apoptotic effects, anti-inflammatory effects, anti-fibrotic effects, and gut modulatory effects. Furthermore, we explore the structure-activity relationship and bioavailability of polysaccharides in relation to renal injury, as well as investigate their utility as biomaterials for alleviating renal injury. The clinical experiments of polysaccharides applied to patients with chronic kidney disease are also reviewed. Broadly, this review provides a comprehensive perspective on the research direction of natural polysaccharides in the context of renal injury, with the primary aim to serve as a reference for the clinical development of polysaccharides as pharmaceuticals and prebiotics for the treatment of kidney diseases.

Different drought types exhibit propagation phenomena and feedback through the hydrological cycle. Therefore, this study utilized the convergent cross mapping to identify the causality among meteorological drought(MD), agricultural drought(AD), hydrological drought(HD), and ecological drought(ED) in the Nenjiang River Basin from 1980 to 2020, constructing a causal relationship network. The results indicate that different types of droughts are more prone to spread and influence each other at shorter time scales. Although there exist bidirectional causality between MD and other droughts at the monthly scale, no clear causal relationship is observed between AD and ED. Contrasting the direction and strength of causality, presenting the order MD-AD-HD-ED. This finding is consistent with the hydrological cycle pattern. The intensity of drought causality varies significantly across different regions spatially. This study delves into the mechanisms and intensities of mutual influence among different types of droughts by establishing the causal relationship network, offering essential scientific basis for drought monitoring, early warning, and emergency response.

Evaluating the water resources spatial equilibrium (WRSE) is the foundation for scientifically planning the construction of an optimized water resource allocation system and achieving the high-standard development of the China Water Network Project. To elucidate the characteristics of WRSE variation in Ulanqab City, this study explored a novel WRSE assessment model based on connection number and the subtraction set pair potential method. The results indicate that: (1) there exists a mismatch between the distribution of water resources in Ulanqab City and its socio-economic development. In 2020, the Gini coefficients of water resources total quantity concerning resident population, gross domestic product (GDP), industrial output value, and irrigated land area were 0.48, 0.48, 0.51, and 0.28, respectively. (2) From 2011 to 2020, the overall WRSE level in Ulanqab City showed an increasing trend year by year. Among them, the WRSE levels in six counties improved, while Jining District consistently remained at a low equilibrium state due to the prominent contradiction between water supply and demand. (3) In the future, Ulanqab City can further enhance the WRSE level by promoting the reuse of recycled water, intensifying groundwater pollution control, and implementing a quota management system for agricultural water use. HIGHLIGHTS The distribution of water resources in Ulanqab City is in a state of mismatch with social and economic development.; From 2011 to 2020, the water resources spatial equilibrium levels of six counties in Ulanqab City improved, while there was no significant change in five counties.; The vulnerability indicators of Ulanqab City are per capita water resources and ecological environment water demand load.;

IntroductionDesigning footwear for comfort is vital for preventing foot injuries and promoting foot health. This study explores the impact of auxetic structured shoe soles on plantar biomechanics and comfort, motivated by the integration of 3D printing in footwear production and the superior mechanical properties of auxetic designs. The shoe sole designs proposed in this study are based on a three-dimensional re-entrant auxetic lattice structure, orthogonally composed of re-entrant hexagonal honeycombs with internal angles less than 90 degrees. Materials fabricated using this lattice structure exhibit the characteristic of a negative Poisson's ratio, displaying lateral expansion under tension and densification under compression.MethodsThe study conducted a comparative experiment among three different lattice structured (auxetic 60°, auxetic 75° and non-auxetic 90°) thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) shoe soles and conventional polyurethane (PU) shoe sole through pedobarographic measurements and comfort rating under walking and running conditions. The study obtained peak plantar pressures (PPPs) and contact area across seven plantar regions of each shoe sole and analyzed the correlation between these biomechanical parameters and subjective comfort.ResultsCompared to non-auxetic shoe soles, auxetic structured shoe soles reduced PPPs across various foot regions and increased contact area. The Auxetic 60°, which had the highest comfort ratings, significantly lowered peak pressures and increased contact area compared to PU shoe sole. Correlation analysis showed that peak pressures in specific foot regions (hallux, second metatarsal head, and hindfoot when walking; second metatarsal head, third to fifth metatarsal head, midfoot, and hindfoot when running) were related to comfort. Furthermore, the contact area in all foot regions was significantly associated with comfort, regardless of the motion states.ConclusionThe pressure-relief performance and conformability of the auxetic lattice structure in the shoe sole contribute to enhancing footwear comfort. The insights provided guide designers in developing footwear focused on foot health and comfort using auxetic structures.

Acute ischemic stroke (AIS) remains to be a challenging cerebrovascular disease. The mainstay of AIS management is endovascular reperfusion therapy, including thrombectomy and thrombolysis. However, ineffective (futile) reperfusion (FR) or reperfusion injury (RI) can be seen in a significant number of patients undergoing reperfusion strategy. In this article, we discuss two clinically relevant concepts known as “time window” and “tissue window” that can impact the clinical outcome of reperfusion therapy. We also explore patient risk factors, leading to FR and RI as well as an emerging concept of “no-reflow phenomenon” seen in ineffective reperfusion. These fundamental concepts provide insight into the clinical management of AIS patients and provide references for future research.

Model-driven tensor robust principal component analysis (TRPCA) has been widely applied to feature extraction of hyperspectral images (HSIs) and successfully protected two-dimensional spectral contextual information. Nevertheless, the current TRPCA-based feature extraction methods still destroy the underlying spectral and spatial–spectral joint contextual features. Moreover, these global iterative algorithms commonly ignore the heterogeneity of different real-world regions, increase the calculation burden, and improve practice operating time. To solve these issues, an efficient reconstructive homogeneous block-based local TRPCA is proposed for low-rank feature extraction, composed of a homogeneous block rebuilder and a local TRPCA low-rank feature extractor. The proposed local TRPCA is a novel data-model-driven algorithm depending on the data regulation. It remains the primary spatial and spectral contextual information and extracts the underlying homogeneity and heterogeneity characteristics of spatial, spectral, and spatial–spectral joint variables, which provides more essential features for further research than other model-driven TRPCA models. Furthermore, our local TRPCA feature extractor is an elaborate divide-and-rule model that executes on each homogeneous data block to extract low-rank features adaptively, remarkably decreasing computing cost and time. Experimental results on six hyperspectral datasets demonstrate that the proposed local TRPCA is more adaptive to HSIs and outperforms other state-of-the-art TRPCA-based feature extraction algorithms.

Background: Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is the mainstay of treatment for prostate cancer, yet dynamic molecular changes from hormone-sensitive to castration-resistant states in patients treated with ADT remain unclear. Methods: In this study, we combined the dynamic network biomarker (DNB) method and the weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) to identify key genes associated with the progression to a castration-resistant state in prostate cancer via the integration of single-cell and bulk RNA sequencing data. Based on the gene expression profiles of CRPC in the GEO dataset, the DNB method was used to clarify the condition of epithelial cells and find out the most significant transition signal DNB modules and genes included. Then, we calculated gene modules associated with the clinical phenotype stage based on the WGCNA. IHC was conducted to validate the expression of the key genes in CRPC and primary PCa patients Results:Nomograms, calibration plots, and ROC curves were applied to evaluate the good prognostic accuracy of the risk prediction model. Results: By combining single-cell RNA sequence data and bulk RNA sequence data, we identified a set of DNBs, whose roles involved in androgen-associated activities indicated the signals of a prostate cancer cell transition from an androgen-dependent state to a castration-resistant state. In addition, a risk prediction model including the risk score of four key genes (SCD, NARS2, ALDH1A1, and NFXL1) and other clinical–pathological characteristics was constructed and verified to be able to reasonably predict the prognosis of patients receiving ADT. Conclusions: In summary, four key genes from DNBs were identified as potential diagnostic markers for patients treated with ADT and a risk score-based nomogram will facilitate precise prognosis prediction and individualized therapeutic interventions of CRPC.

Abstract White adipose tissue browning can promote lipid burning to increase energy expenditure and improve adiposity. Here, we show that Slc35d3 expression is significantly lower in adipose tissues of obese mice. While adipocyte-specific Slc35d3 knockin is protected against diet-induced obesity, adipocyte-specific Slc35d3 knockout inhibits white adipose tissue browning and causes decreased energy expenditure and impaired insulin sensitivity in mice. Mechanistically, we confirm that SLC35D3 interacts with the NOTCH1 extracellular domain, which leads to the accumulation of NOTCH1 in the endoplasmic reticulum and thus inhibits the NOTCH1 signaling pathway. In addition, knockdown of Notch1 in mouse inguinal white adipose tissue mediated by orthotopic injection of AAV8-adiponectin-shNotch1 shows considerable improvement in obesity and glucolipid metabolism, which is more pronounced in adipocyte-specific Slc35d3 knockout mice than in knockin mice. Overall, in this study, we reveal that SLC35D3 is involved in obesity via NOTCH1 signaling, and low adipose SLC35D3 expression in obesity might be a therapeutic target for obesity and associated metabolic disorders.

Abstract Insulin resistance is associated with many pathological conditions, and an in-depth understanding of the mechanisms involved is necessary to improve insulin sensitivity. Here, we show that ZFYVE28 expression is decreased in insulin-sensitive obese individuals but increased in insulin-resistant individuals. Insulin signaling inhibits ZFYVE28 expression by inhibiting NOTCH1 via the RAS/ERK pathway, whereas ZFYVE28 expression is elevated due to impaired insulin signaling in insulin resistance. While Zfyve28 overexpression impairs insulin sensitivity and causes lipid accumulation, Zfyve28 knockout in mice can significantly improve insulin sensitivity and other indicators associated with insulin resistance. Mechanistically, ZFYVE28 colocalizes with early endosomes via the FYVE domain, which inhibits the generation of recycling endosomes but promotes the conversion of early to late endosomes, ultimately promoting phosphorylated insulin receptor degradation. This effect disappears with deletion of the FYVE domain. Overall, in this study, we reveal that ZFYVE28 is involved in insulin resistance by promoting phosphorylated insulin receptor degradation, and ZFYVE28 may be a potential therapeutic target to improve insulin sensitivity.

Abstract Lithium-selenium (Li-Se) batteries possess high volumetric capacity and have attracted considerable attention as a high energy storage system. However, the shuttling of polyselenides seriously worsens the electrochemical performance and retards their application advancement. Herein, we engineered a bifunctional membrane consisted of polyethylenimine derived carbon quantum dots (Cdots) to efficiently restrict the shuttling of polyselenides under a high Se loading (Se≈70 wt%) and promote Li-Se conversion kinetics, which can be accounted by the greatly accelerated transportation of charge carriers and dipole–dipole interactions between polar moieties and long-chain polyselenides (Li2Se4 and Li2Se6) as corroborated by theoretical calculations. Thus, the bifunctional membrane endows Li-Se batteries with a specific capacity of 658.60 mAh g−1 at 0.1 C and coulombic efficiency of 97.8% in average, and demonstrates the effectiveness of defect-rich Cdots on suppressing polyselenides shuttling and reinforcing Li-Se conversion kinetics in augmenting the battery’s durability and efficiency. Graphical Abstract

Previous studies on the water–energy nexus mainly focused on the calculation and comparison of resource consumption at the national or regional level, lacking interprovincial sector-sector transfer analysis. In this study, the intensity of water and energy consumption of various sectors in China was calculated, the key nodes and paths of resource networks were identified, and countermeasures for resource conservation were proposed from the new perspective of the “dual saving” and “bidirectional saving” of water and energy. The results showed that the metallurgical industry (Me) in Jiangsu and the chemical industry (Ch) in Hebei and Jiangsu had high node strength in the water and energy network and were key sectors in China with “dual saving” effects of water and energy. The construction industry, Ch, Me in Jiangsu, electricity and hot water production and supply industry in Beijing, and Me in Hebei had high node strength in the water-related energy network and energy-related water network, significantly supporting the “bidirectional saving” effect of water and energy in China. The electrical equipment industry (El) in Jiangsu → El in Zhejiang, El in Zhejiang → El in Shanghai frequently appeared in key paths, which could effectively reduce the resource consumption of the entire network.

Abstract Phycobilisomes (PBS) are the major light harvesting complexes of photosynthesis in the cyanobacteria and red algae. CpcL-PBS is a type of small PBS in cyanobacteria that transfers energy directly to photosystem I without the core structure. Here we report the cryo-EM structure of the CpcL-PBS from the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 at 2.6-Å resolution. The structure shows the CpcD domain of ferredoxin: NADP+ oxidoreductase is located at the distal end of CpcL-PBS, responsible for its attachment to PBS. With the evidence of ultrafast transient absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy, the roles of individual bilins in energy transfer are revealed. The bilin 1Iβ82 2 located near photosystem I has an enhanced planarity and is the red-bilin responsible for the direct energy transfer to photosystem I.

Background: Trichoderma species are rich source of bioactive secondary metabolites. In the past decades, a series of secondary metabolites were reported from different Trichoderma fungi, among which terpenoids possessing versatile structural diversities and extensive pharmacological activities are one of the particularly important categories. Aim of Review: The review aims to summarize the terpenoids isolated from Trichoderma species regarding their structural diversities, biological activities, and promising biosynthetic potentials. Key Scientific Concepts of Review: So far, a total of 253 terpenoids, including 202 sesquiterpenes, 48 diterpenes, 2 monoterpenes and 1 meroterpenoid, were isolated and identified from Trichoderma species between 1948 and 2022. Pharmacological investigations of Trichoderma terpenoids mainly focused on their antibacterial activities, antifungal activities, inhibitory activities on marine plankton species and cytotoxic activities, indicating that Trichoderma species are important microbial agents for drug discovery and environmentally friendly agrochemicals development. Intriguing chemistry and enzymology involved in the biosynthesis of Trichoderma terpenoids were also presented to facilitate further precise genome mining-guided novel structure discovery. Taken together, the abundance of novel skeletons, bioactivities and biosynthetic potentials presents new opportunities for drug and agrochemicals discovery, genome mining and enzymology exploration from Trichoderma species. The work will provide references for the profound study of terpenoids derived from Trichoderma, and facilitate further studies on Trichoderma species in the areas of chemistry, medicine, agriculture and microbiology.

Background Skin flap transplantation is one of the effective methods to treat the diabetes-related foot ulceration, but the intrinsic damage to vessels in diabetes mellitus (DM) leads to the necrosis of skin flaps. Therefore, the discovery of a non-invasive and effective approach for promoting the survival of flaps is of the utmost importance. Electrical stimulation (ES) promotes angiogenesis and increases the proliferation, migration, and elongation of endothelial cells, thus being a potential effective method to improve flap survival. Objective The purpose of this study was to elucidate the mechanism used by ES to effectively restore the impaired function of endothelial cells caused by diabetes. Methods A total of 79 adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were used in this study. Gene and protein expression was assessed by PCR and western blotting, respectively. Immunohistochemistry and hematoxylin-eosin staining were performed to evaluate the morphology and density of the microvessels in the flap. Results The optimal duration for preconditioning the flap with ES was 7 days. The flap survival area percentage and microvessels density in the DMES group were markedly increased compared to the DM group. VEGF, MMP2, and MMP9 protein expression was significantly upregulated. ROS intensity was significantly decreased and GSH concentration was increased. The expression of IL-1β, MCP‑1, cleaved caspase-3, and Bax were downregulated in the DMES group, while TGF-β expression was upregulated. Conclusions ES improves the angiogenesis in diabetic ischemic skin flaps by attenuating oxidative stress–mediated inflammation and apoptosis, eventually increasing their viability.

Comprehensive understanding of the complex relationship among water, energy, and carbon emissions (WEC) is crucial for achieving socio-economic structural transformation and regional sustainable development. It represents a complex systemic undertaking that necessitates coordinated efforts across multiple domains and requires intricate planning and balancing. However, as the relationships between regional water resources, energy, and carbon emissions become increasingly acute, systematically examining the circulating relationships of a typical regional Water-Energy-Carbon system under changing conditions is still a challenge for regional sustainable development. In this study, we propose an integrated framework by jointly employing the Environmental Input-Output model and Structural Path analysis to assess the embodied intensities and circulation characteristics of WEC in Shandong Province, a major energy-consuming province in China. The results indicate that in 2017, the industries with the highest embodied WEC intensities are water production and supply industry (224.36 m3/10,000 CNY), coal mining and washing industry (1.66 tce/10,000 CNY), and transportation, postal, and telecommunication industry (2.36 tons/10,000 CNY). During the study period, most industries exhibited decreasing trends in embodied WEC intensities. Notably, the energy intensity and carbon intensity showed a certain positive correlation. For Shandong Province, both the embodied WEC trade flows in 2012 and 2017 demonstrated net inflows. The changes in embodied energy consumption and carbon emissions end consumption were minor, whereas the terminal demand for water resources decreased by 10.3 billion cubic meters, with urban consumption being its main form. Agriculture serves as the largest sector for embodied water transfer and trade-in, while the construction industry is the primary sector for energy and carbon transfer and trade, with 98 % of the construction industry's embodied quantity used for fixed capital formation. This study contributes to bridge the gap in regional resource management and provides a scientific basis to make policy on water conservation, energy efficiency, and emissions reduction.

Ethnopharmacological relevance: Viticis Fructus (called Manjingzi in China) is the dried ripe fruits of the plant species Vitex trifolia subsp. litoralis Steenis and Vitex trifolia L. in the family Lamiaceae. Viticis Fructus has been used as a traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years to treat illness such as colds, headache, vertigo, anesthesia, and hyperkinesias. More chemical constituents and medicinal effects have been discovered in Viticis Fructus with the development of modern technology.The aim of the review: This review aims to analyze the research progress of Viticis Fructus from the aspects of botany, ethnopharmacology, phytochemistry, and pharmacological activity, as well as to provide an outlook on the research and use prospects of Viticis Fructus. Material and methods: A comprehensive literature search using online databases such Science Direct, CNKI, Wiley online library, Spring Link, Web of Science, PubMed, Wanfang Data and SCI-Finder. In addition, information was obtained from local and foreign books on ethnobotany and ethnomedicine. Results: The application of Viticis Fructus as a medicine can be traced back to around 480 AD. So far, more than 190 compounds have been isolated from Viticis Fructus, including flavonoids, sterols, cyclic enol ether terpenoids, and diterpenoids. Modern pharmacological studies have shown that the extracts of Viticis Fructus have various pharmacological effects, such as anti-allergic, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, and anti-bacterial effects. Conclusion: As a widely used traditional medicine, Viticis Fructus is rich in chemical compositions and has an obvious biological activity. However, the application and pharmacological activity of Viticis Fructus have not been scientifically evaluated or convincing due to poor methodology, unclear results and lack of clinical data. Systematic and comprehensive research evaluations are needed to verify its pharmaceutical activity, clinical therapeutic efficacy and safety. As an important herbal medicine, it should be further explored to facilitate the development of new medicines and treatments for a variety of diseases.

Gait movement is an important activity in daily human life. The coordination of gait movement is directly affected by the cooperation and functional connectivity between muscles. However, the mechanisms of muscle operation at different gait speeds remain unclear. Therefore, this study addressed the gait speed effect on the changes in cooperative modules and functional connectivity between muscles. To this end, surface electromyography (sEMG) signals were collected from eight key lower extremity muscles of twelve healthy subjects walking on a treadmill at high, middle, and low motion speeds. Nonnegative matrix factorization (NNMF) was applied to the sEMG envelope and intermuscular coherence matrix, yielding five muscle synergies. Muscle functional networks were constructed by decomposing the intermuscular coherence matrix, revealing different layers of functional muscle networks across frequencies. In addition, the coupling strength between cooperative muscles grew with gait speed. Different coordination patterns among muscles with changes in gait speed related to the neuromuscular system regulation were identified.

The maturity of human-computer interaction technology has made it possible to use surface electromyographic signals (sEMG) to control exoskeleton robots and intelligent prostheses. However, the available upper limb rehabilitation robots controlled by sEMG have the shortcoming of inflexible joints. This paper proposes a method based on a temporal convolutional network (TCN) to predict upper limb joint angles by sEMG. The raw TCN depth was expanded to extract the temporal features and save the original information. The timing sequence characteristics of the muscle blocks that dominate the upper limb movement are not apparent, leading to low accuracy of the joint angle estimation. Therefore, this study squeeze-and-excitation networks (SE-Net) to improve the network model of the TCN. Finally, seven movements of the human upper limb were selected for ten human subjects, recording elbow angle (EA), shoulder vertical angle (SVA), and shoulder horizontal angle (SHA) values during their movements. The designed experiment compared the proposed SE-TCN model with the backpropagation (BP) and long short-term memory (LSTM) networks. The proposed SE-TCN systematically outperformed the BP network and LSTM model by the mean RMSE values: by 25.0 and 36.8% for EA, by 38.6 and 43.6% for SHA, and by 45.6 and 49.5% for SVA, respectively. Consequently, its R2 values exceeded those of BP and LSTM by 13.6 and 39.20% for EA, 19.01 and 31.72% for SHA, and 29.22 and 31.89% for SVA, respectively. This indicates that the proposed SE-TCN model has good accuracy and can be used to estimate the angles of upper limb rehabilitation robots in the future.

Flood forecasting method is an important non-engineering power generation scheduling method. However, due to various sources of uncertainty and the influence of observation and other factors, there are always errors in the results of flood forecasting, and these errors will reduce the application effect of the forecast results in reservoir optimization. Therefore, in order to improve the accuracy, we should analyze the sources of uncertainty, estimate the probability of the error range, and thus reduce the forecast error. In this paper, three improved real-time adjustment methods of variable forgetting factor least squares arithmetic coupled Kalman filter are proposed: adaptive Kalman method, ZK method and KZ method. It effectively avoids the shortcomings of the traditional Kalman method. We adjusted the Feng Shu Ba Reservoir flood forecast in real time for example, and then applied it and compared it with other methods. The results show that they have better simulation effect.

Abstract Zinc–selenium (Zn–Se) batteries have generated great research interest because they could potentially meet the requirements of a high‐capacity, high energy density storage device. Unfortunately, efforts to control the shuttle effect of polyselenides have yielded limited success. Nanostructured carbon hosts with nonpolar surfaces have insufficient ability to restrict polyselenides within the cathode. Herein, first‐principles calculations are used to successfully study the merits of heteroatom‐doped graphene as an efficient sorbent with an excellent ability to inhibit the shuttle effect of polyselenides. The calculation results show that using B as a dopant could distinctly enhance interaction between hosts and polyselenides, which occur significant charge transfer with polyselenides and reduce the diffusion energy barrier of Zn ions. Then, we synthesized carbon/Se and boron‐doped carbon material/Se composite cathodes proving that B‐doped carbon could restrict the shuttle effect of polyselenides, which increases the electrochemical performance of Zn–Se batteries. Therefore, the theoretical study identifies a delightful restricted material that could potentially restrict the shuttle effect in Zn–Se batteries and provides a foundation and strategy for the fabrication of long‐life, high‐power‐density Zn–Se batteries.

The assessment of green development of water resources system is critical for the formulation of high-quality development policies of regional economy and society. Despite the water resources ecological footprint (WEF) model has been proved to be an effective measure in evaluating the sustainable utilization of water resources, there is still lacking a well-established method to weigh the green development of water resources system concerning the economic and social development. In this study, the parameters of the traditional WEF model were calibrated and optimized, and an extended WEF model, which suit for different regions, was constructed; Further, based on WEF, the water resources ecological benefit ratio (WEBR) was proposed, which depict the relationship between the sustainability of water resources and social economy. The integrated framework coupling the above methods had been verified in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region of China. The results demonstrated that: (1) From 2010 to 2020, the WEF in BTH region all exceeded the water resources ecological carrying capacity (WEC), showing varying degrees of overload in water resources utilization. Water resources ecological pressure index (WEPI) is relatively high, and there is no significant improvement. (2) The slope of BTH's WEBR is weakening, and shows spatial heterogeneity. (3) The coordinated development of WEPI and WEBR is stable, and most cities are within the L-L cluster. This study can provide support for decision-makers and promote the green and high-quality development of region water resources system and economic society.

Due to the influence of the monsoon, river runoff in most of China’s river basins is mainly concentrated in the flood season. The distribution is extremely uneven during the year and between the year. It needs to be fully utilized by the reservoir to bring serious challenges to the daily management. Therefore, analyzing the seasonal variation of storm floods, scientifically and rationally staging the flood season can not only give full play to the comprehensive benefits of the reservoir, but also be an inevitable requirement for coordinating reservoir flood control and power generation. Aiming at the several commonly used methods of flood season staging, the case study is carried out, and the applicable conditions are analyzed. Based on these, three new staging methods are proposed. Among them, the improved change point analysis method adopts the linear and nonlinear joint fitting, which improves the commonly used mean value calculation method. In theory, the non-uniformity and seasonality of the reservoir water are more carefully considered, and the flood season is considered to some extent. The distribution law and continuity of floods along the time course; the projection method has a similar theoretical system with the vector statistical method based on the annual maximum sampling method, both of which are based on the intensity of the points, the difference is the point of the latter is projected on the circumference, the partitioning result is selected by manual experience, and the human influence factor is large. The new method is to project the point on the straight line, and quantitatively gives the partitioning method, and is also applicable to the maximum flow of different sequences. The case of the same time, the dynamic clustering method divides the sample set into several subsets according to the similarity between samples, and has the advantage that the calculation amount is small and the genus of the sample can be changed compared with the system clustering method. The research results can provide reference for the reasonable adjustment of the reservoir flood season.

Michelia maudiae ‘Rubicunda’ (M. maudiae ‘Rubicunda’) is one of the most popular ornamental plants. However, relatively little is known regarding its floral development. Here, the variations of the mineral, endogenous hormone, and non-structural carbohydrate (NSC) contents in the petals and gynoecium and androecium (GA) at five developmental stages during M. maudiae ‘Rubicunda’ flower development were analyzed. The results suggested that the carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) endogenous hormones, NSC contents, and C/N/P stoichiometric ratios exhibit large variations during flower development. There were significant differences in N and P contents in the GA and petals among the five growth stages, while C contents did not change significantly. In the five flower development stages, the average N and P contents in the GA were higher than those in the petals. The maximum C/N and N/P ratios in the GA and petals were foundat the senescent flower stage (stage5) and green bud stage (stage1), respectively. The C/P ratio in petals reached its maximum value at the mature bud stage (stage 2), and the C/P ratio in the GA reached its maximum value at the senescent flower stage (stage 5). The C/N/P stoichiometric ratios in the petals were more sensitive to development stages than those in the GA. There were highly significant correlations between the NSC and C/N/P stoichiometric ratios in the GAand petals. Moreover, acetic acid (IAA), abscisic acid (ABA), gibberellic acid 3 (GA3), and cytokinin (CTK) contents in the petals exhibited significant changes in response to development stages. Principal component analysis (PCA) revealed significant correlations and clear differences in the test indexes between the development stage and organs, and the variation was explained by PC-1 (55.6%), PC-2 (23.3%), and the cumulative contribution percentage of the total biplot (78.9%). These studies can lay the foundation for elucidating the requirements and dynamic balance among C, N, P, NSC, and hormone contents during the flower development of M. maudiae‘ Rubicunda’.

Abscisic acid (ABA) plays crucial regulatory roles in cold acclimation and deacclimation of grapevine, making it a potential tool to be utilized in vineyards for the acquisition of preferred phenotypes in winter and spring. To understand the function of ABA, we conducted experiments during cold acclimation and deacclimation and evaluated the impact of exogenous ABA on the grapevine transcriptome. RNA-seq data were collected periodically hours or days after ABA treatment. Transcriptomic data were analyzed using principal component analysis (PCA), hierarchical clustering, unsupervised weighed gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA), contrast-based differentially expressed genes (DEGs) identification and pre-ranked gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA). Our results suggest that ABA functions differently during cold acclimation and deacclimation by selectively regulating key pathways including auxin/indole acetic acid (IAA) metabolism, galactose metabolism and ribosome biogenesis. We also identified the activation of several apparent negative feedback systems that regulated ABA-induced transcriptomic changes, suggesting the existence of a balancing system in response to excessive ABA. This balancing systems potentially eliminates the long-term negative effect on grapevine growing from using ABA in the field. These findings advance our understanding about the regulation of grapevine physiology during dormancy and supports the potential of applying ABA as a cultural practice to mitigate cold injury in winter and spring.

Abstract Liver cancer poses a great threat to people's health. Accurate liver segmentation is crucial to the diagnosis of liver cancer. In recent years, great achievements have been made in liver segmentation using a series of improved networks developed based on U‐Net. U‐Net uses a skip connection splices the feature map in the encoder and decoder. However, this method ignores the difference between the two feature maps, which limits the ability of the network to extract liver structures of different sizes. This study proposes a new network structure, the pyramid convolutional attention fusion network (PCAF‐Net), for 2D liver segmentation. The PCAF mechanism was introduced to fuse the feature maps of different receptive field paths after attention mechanism processing to enhance the semantic expression ability of feature maps in skip connection and to improve the segmentation accuracy. The MICCAI 2017 LiTS dataset and CHAOS were used to validate the proposed method. The results of multi‐index evaluation showed that the segmentation performance of the proposed network was superior to those of other networks. PCAF‐Net achieved accurate liver segmentation, providing a reference for artificial intelligenceassisted clinical diagnosis of liver cancer.

Gait recognition is an emerging biometric technology that can be used to protect the privacy of wearable device owners. To improve the performance of the existing gait recognition method based on wearable devices and to reduce the memory size of the model and increase its robustness, a new identification method based on multimodal fusion of gait cycle data is proposed. In addition, to preserve the time-dependence and correlation of the data, we convert the time-series data into two-dimensional images using the Gramian angular field (GAF) algorithm. To address the problem of high model complexity in existing methods, we propose a lightweight double-channel depthwise separable convolutional neural network (DC-DSCNN) model for gait recognition for wearable devices. Specifically, the time series data of gait cycles and GAF images are first transferred to the upper and lower layers of the DC-DSCNN model. The gait features are then extracted with a three-layer depthwise separable convolutional neural network (DSCNN) module. Next, the extracted features are transferred to a softmax classifier to implement gait recognition. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, the gait dataset of 24 subjects were collected. Experimental results show that the recognition accuracy of the DC-DSCNN algorithm is 99.58%, and the memory usage of the model is only 972 KB, which verifies that the proposed method can enable gait recognition for wearable devices with lower power consumption and higher real-time performance.

Drought forecasting, which can enable contingency actions to be implemented in advance of a drought, plays a significant role in reducing the risks and impacts of drought. In this study, a simulation framework of the occurrence probability of drought events based on a nested copula function and Gibbs sampling is proposed to effectively compensate for the high-dimensional problems and lack of initial data in traditional methods. Precipitation data of 718 meteorological stations from 1961 to 2018 in China was analyzed. The results showed that the occurrence location of drought events was mainly concentrated from 35° to 42° north latitude and 105° to 120° east longitude, with the occurrence time mainly concentrated from September to November. The Archimedean-copula function, constructed based on latitude, longitude, and occurrence time, could precisely determine the spatiotemporal joint probability distribution of drought events (RMSE: 0.01). The optimal time-varying nested Archimedean-copula functions were obtained from February to May (spring), June to September (summer) and October to January (autumn and winter). Compared with the nested Archimedean-copula function, the accuracy of Gibbs sampling and simulation based on the time-varying nested Archimedean-copula function was increased by 84.05% latitude and 69.76% longitude. The results provide an effective means for scientific drought forecasting, and water resource management departments can take preventive measures at an early stage. HIGHLIGHTS This is the first to attempt to propose the quantitative framework of drought forecast based on run analysis theory, Archimedean-copula function, and Gibbs sampling.; The optimal time-varying nested Archimedean-copula functions are constructed.; Drought prediction accuracy is improved.;

Inhibitory oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) are short single-stranded DNA, which capable of folding into complex structures, enabling them to bind to a large variety of targets. With appropriate modifications, the inhibitory oligodeoxynucleotides exhibited many features of long half-life time, simple production, low toxicity and immunogenicity. In recent years, inhibitory oligodeoxynucleotides have received considerable attention for their potential therapeutic applications in immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs). Inhibitory oligodeoxynucleotides could be divided into three categories according to its mechanisms and targets, including antisense ODNs (AS-ODNs), DNA aptamers and immunosuppressive ODNs (iSup ODNs). As a synthetic tool with immunomodulatory activity, it can target RNAs or proteins in a specific way, resulting in the reduction, increase or recovery of protein expression, and then regulate the state of immune activation. More importantly, inhibitory oligodeoxynucleotides have been used to treat immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, including inflammatory disorders and autoimmune diseases. Several inhibitory oligodeoxynucleotide drugs have been developed and approved on the market already. These drugs vary in their chemical structures, action mechanisms and cellular targets, but all of them could be capable of inhibiting excessive inflammatory responses. This review summarized their chemical modifications, action mechanisms and applications of the three kinds of inhibitory oligodeoxynucleotidesin the precise treatment of immune-mediated inflammatory diseases.

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSC) represents one of the most common malignant carcinomas worldwide. Because the 5-year survival rate of patients with HNSC is poor, it is necessary to develop an effective signature for predicting the risk of HNSC. To identify a circadian rhythm (CR)-related predictive signature, we analyzed the RNA-seq data of patients with HNSC from The Cancer Genome Atlas and Gene Expression Omnibus cohorts. Nine CR-related genes (PER2, PER3, GHRL, CSF2, HDAC3, KLF10, PRKAA2, PTGDS, and RORB) were identified to develop a CR-related signature. The area under the curve values for 5-year overall survival were 0.681, 0.700, and 0.729 in the training set, validation set, and an external independent test set (GSE41613), respectively. The Kaplan‒Meier curve analysis showed that the high-risk group had a reduced relapse-free survival compared with the low-risk group in the training set, validation set, and test set (P < 0.05). Finally, we observed that the CR-related gene signature was associated with the tumor immune microenvironment, somatic nucleotide variation, and drug response in HNSC. In conclusion, we developed a circadian rhythm-related gene signature for predicting overall survival in HNSC.

Water and energy are essential resources that flow between different regions in economic activities, forming a complex network that profoundly impacts sustainable development. Revealing network structural resilience allows for the identification of weak links, thus enhancing the capacity for sustainable development. This study employs a resilience-based method to examine changes in virtual water-energy transfers, combining input–output tables and total resource consumption coefficients (TRCC) to investigate the structural resilience of the virtual water-energy network. Case studies were conducted in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YEB) in 2012 and 2017. The results show that the virtual water flow rate decreased by 28.66%, while that of virtual energy increased by 4.88% in YEB. The virtual energy network’s structural resilience is better than that of the virtual water network and shows significant improvement in later periods. The virtual water network structure has a clear hierarchical structure, while the virtual energy network structure is relatively flat. The transmission and connectivity of the two networks do not differ significantly, but the virtual energy network’s transmission is superior to that of the virtual water network. There is a significant improvement in the virtual energy network’s agglomeration in the later stages, while there is no significant change in the virtual water contact network.

Water resources are the foundation of economic development, social progress and ecological security, and water shortage is the primary problem facing China. Water quotas have great practical significance for the resolution of water shortages to achieve sustainable use of water resources and sustainable development of the national economy. In this study, to analyse the problems and countermeasures of the water quota system in China, the water quota system progress domestically and abroad, the water quota problem in China, and the countermeasures for the water quota problem are summarized. The data validity test, spatial correlation test and consistency test are used to test the rationality of water use quota. And the specific countermeasures are presented: improving the water quota system, defining its concept, and revising its scheme, etc. This study provides the support to standardize water quotas and implement the effective water conservation policies of China. HIGHLIGHTS Introduces a method that uses data validity test, spatial correlation test and consistency test of the water quota reasonableness to test the rationality of water quota.; Presents several specific recommendations: improving the water quota system, defining its concept and revising its scheme; Provides the support to standardize water quotas and implement the effective water conservation policies.;

Acute lung injury (ALI) with uncontrolled inflammatory response has high morbidity and mortality rates in critically ill patients. Pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) are involved in the development of uncontrolled inflammatory response injury and associated lethality. In this study, we investigated the inhibit effect of MS19, a microsatellite DNA-derived oligodeoxynucleotide (ODN) with AAAG repeats, on the inflammatory response induced by various PAMPs in vitro and in vivo. In parallel, a microsatellite DNA with AAAC repeats, named as MS19-C, was used as controls. We found that MS19 extensively inhibited the expression of inflammatory cytokines interleukin (IL)-6 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α induced by various PAMPs stimulation, including DNA viruses, RNA viruses, bacterial components lipopolysaccharide (LPS), and curdlan, as well as the dsDNA and dsRNA mimics, in primed bone marrow-derived macrophage (BMDM). Other than various PAMPs, MS19 also demonstrated obvious effects on blocking the high mobility group box1 (HMGB1), a representative damage-associated-molecular pattern (DAMP), nuclear translocation and secretion. With the base substitution from G to C, MS19-C has been proved that it has lost the inhibitory effect. The inhibition is associated with nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) signaling but not the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) transduction. Moreover, MS19 capable of inhibiting the IL-6 and TNF-α production and blocking the HMGB1 nuclear translocation and secretion in LPS-stimulated cells was used to treat mice ALI induced by LPS in vivo. In the ALI mice model, MS19 significantly inhibited the weight loss and displayed the dramatic effect on lessening the ALI by reducing consolidation, hemorrhage, intra-alveolar edema in lungs of the mice. Meanwhile, MS19 could increase the survival rate of ALI by downregulating the inflammation cytokines HMGB1, TNF-a, and IL-6 production in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF). The data suggest that MS19 might display its therapeutic role on ALI by inhibiting the HMGB1-TLR4-NF-κB signaling pathway.

Green development is one of the important guidance and core contents of high-quality development of regional economy and society, and its spatial–temporal pattern evolution analysis is helpful to the scientific formulation of relevant policies. However, the green development evaluation is faced with multi attribute decision making difficulties. In view of this, firstly, based on discussing the connotation of green development from ontology, epistemology, axiology and methodology, a new evaluation indicator system from the four dimensions of energy conservation, emission reduction, efficiency increase and harmony was explored. Then, coupling symmetric cross entropy multi attribute decision making and Gini coefficient method, a comprehensive evaluation framework of temporal evolution and spatial equilibrium of green development was constructed and applied in 11 provinces (cities) of China's Yangtze River Economic Belt (YEB) from 2009 to 2018. The results show that during the study period, the green development level of YEB has improved year by year, but there was still a large gap. Among the 120 research samples, only 41.7% had a ranking score of more than 6, and only Chongqing in 2017 had a ranking score of more than 8. The Gini coefficient of green development in 11 provinces (cities) is about 0.2, which is balanced on the whole, but there is a significant difference in the indicators, such as proportion of new energy power generation, sulfur dioxide emission per 104 RMB yuan GDP and proportion of investment in environmental protection; The effect of energy conservation and emission reduction is obvious, while efficiency increase and harmony need to be improved. The complementary role of 11 provinces (cities) in YEB's green development has become increasingly prominent, which made that YEB (as a whole) ranked second in comparison with 11 provinces (cities) in 2018.

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are key sensors that recognize the pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to activate innate immune response to clear the invading virus. However, dysregulated immune responses may elicit the overproduction of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines, resulting in the enhancement of immune-mediated pathology. Therefore, a proper understanding of the interaction between SARS-CoV-2 and TLR-induced immune responses is very important for the development of effective preventive and therapeutic strategies. In this review, we discuss the recognition of SARS-CoV-2 components by TLRs and the downstream signaling pathways that are activated, as well as the dual role of TLRs in regulating antiviral effects and excessive inflammatory responses in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In addition, this article describes recent progress in the development of TLR immunomodulators including the agonists and antagonists, as vaccine adjuvants or agents used to treat hyperinflammatory responses during SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Abstract Background The key challenge to constructing functional corticomuscular coupling (FCMC) is to accurately identify the direction and strength of the information flow between scalp electroencephalography (EEG) and surface electromyography (SEMG). Traditional TE and TDMI methods have difficulty in identifying the information interaction for short time series as they tend to rely on long and stable data, so we propose a time-delayed maximal information coefficient (TDMIC) method. With this method, we aim to investigate the directional specificity of bidirectional total and nonlinear information flow on FCMC, and to explore the neural mechanisms underlying motor dysfunction in stroke patients. Methods We introduced a time-delayed parameter in the maximal information coefficient to capture the direction of information interaction between two time series. We employed the linear and non-linear system model based on short data to verify the validity of our algorithm. We then used the TDMIC method to study the characteristics of total and nonlinear information flow in FCMC during a dorsiflexion task for healthy controls and stroke patients. Results The simulation results showed that the TDMIC method can better detect the direction of information interaction compared with TE and TDMI methods. For healthy controls, the beta band (14–30 Hz) had higher information flow in FCMC than the gamma band (31–45 Hz). Furthermore, the beta-band total and nonlinear information flow in the descending direction (EEG to EMG) was significantly higher than that in the ascending direction (EMG to EEG), whereas in the gamma band the ascending direction had significantly higher information flow than the descending direction. Additionally, we found that the strong bidirectional information flow mainly acted on Cz, C3, CP3, P3 and CPz. Compared to controls, both the beta-and gamma-band bidirectional total and nonlinear information flows of the stroke group were significantly weaker. There is no significant difference in the direction of beta- and gamma-band information flow in stroke group. Conclusions The proposed method could effectively identify the information interaction between short time series. According to our experiment, the beta band mainly passes downward motor control information while the gamma band features upward sensory feedback information delivery. Our observation demonstrate that the center and contralateral sensorimotor cortex play a major role in lower limb motor control. The study further demonstrates that brain damage caused by stroke disrupts the bidirectional information interaction between cortex and effector muscles in the sensorimotor system, leading to motor dysfunction.

Agriculture contributes extensively to the economic development of countries; however, it is one of the main water-consuming industries. Revealing the characteristics and network structure of agricultural water use efficiency (AWUE) is conducive to green and coordinated development of agriculture. Considering that analyzing the variation of AWUE is helpful to calculating the AWUE, this study aims to calculate the total water consumption coefficient of the agricultural sector in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YEB) by using the China interregional input-output tables in 2012 and 2017. The gravity model was modified to deduce the spatial correlation network of agricultural total water consumption coefficient (ATWCC), and the social network analysis method was used to analyze the network structural characteristics. The results show that: (1) compared to 2012, the AWUE of YEB in 2017 improved, with a decrease of ATWCC from 532.5 to 387.5 m3/10,000-yuan, account for 27.2%; (2) The network relevance of ATWCC of YEB’s 11 provinces (cities) enhanced, the rank relationship within the network and the network structure was relatively stable; (3) The spatial correlation network formed several network centers, Zhejiang and Jiangsu in the eastern coastal area were the main destinations of the spatial spillover of the spatial correlation network.

Automatic assessing the location and extent of liver and liver tumor is critical for radiologists, diagnosis and the clinical process. In recent years, a large number of variants of U-Net based on Multi-scale feature fusion are proposed to improve the segmentation performance for medical image segmentation. Unlike the previous works which extract the context information of medical image via applying the multi-scale feature fusion, we propose a novel network named Multi-scale Attention Net (MA-Net) by introducing self-attention mechanism into our method to adaptively integrate local features with their global dependencies. The MA-Net can capture rich contextual dependencies based on the attention mechanism. We design two blocks: Position-wise Attention Block (PAB) and Multi-scale Fusion Attention Block (MFAB). The PAB is used to model the feature interdependencies in spatial dimensions, which capture the spatial dependencies between pixels in a global view. In addition, the MFAB is to capture the channel dependencies between any feature map by multi-scale semantic feature fusion. We evaluate our method on the dataset of MICCAI 2017 LiTS Challenge. The proposed method achieves better performance than other state-of-the-art methods. The Dice values of liver and tumors segmentation are 0.960 ± 0.03 and 0.749 ± 0.08 respectively.

A large number of studies have shown that patients with Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have different degrees of liver injury. However, the mechanisms of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) invasion into the liver are still not fully understood. This review mainly summarizes the recently published works on the abnormal liver biochemical indicators and the mechanism of viral invasion with liver injury in COVID-19 patients. Generally, SARS-CoV-2 infection of the liver was caused by blood circulation or retrograde infection of digestive tract, which led to the liver injury through direct cytopathic effect induced by virus or immunopathological effect caused by excessive inflammation. Besides these, hypoxia, endothelial injury and drug-induced jury were also the main reasons of liver injury in COVID-19 patients. In the liver function indicators, elevated alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, alkaline phosphatase, gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase, and lactate dehydrogenase levels with reduced albumin levels were observed in COVID-19 patients.

Intelligent prosthetic hand is an important branch of intelligent robotics. It can remotely replace humans to complete various complex tasks and also help humans to complete rehabilitation training. In human-computer interaction technology, the prosthetic hand can be accurately controlled by surface electromyography (sEMG). This paper proposes a new multichannel fusion scheme (MSFS) to extend the virtual channels of sEMG and improve the accuracy of gesture recognition. In addition, the Temporal Convolutional Network (TCN) in deep learning has been improved to enhance the performance of the network. Finally, the sEMG is collected by the Myo armband and the prosthetic hand is controlled in real time to validate the new method. The experimental results show that the method proposed in this paper can improve the accuracy of the control intelligent prosthetic hand, and the accuracy rate is 93.69%.

Large-scale industrial processes usually adopt centralized control and optimization methods. However, with the growth of the scale of industrial processes leading to increasing computational complexity, the online optimization capability of the double-layer model predictive control algorithm is challenged, exacerbating the difficulty of the widespread implementation of this algorithm in the industry. This paper proposes a distributed double-layer model predictive control algorithm based on dual decomposition for multivariate constrained systems to reduce the computational complexity of process control. Firstly, to solve the problem that the original dual decomposition method does not apply to constrained systems, two improved dual decomposition model prediction control methods are proposed: the dual decomposition method based on the quadratic programming in the subsystem and the dual decomposition method based on constraint zones, respectively. It is proved that the latter will certainly converge to the constraint boundaries with appropriate convergence factors for the controlled variables. The online optimization ability of the proposed two methods is compared in discussion and simulation, concluding that the dual decomposition method based on the constraint zones exhibits superior online optimization ability. Further, a distributed double-layer model predictive control algorithm with dual decomposition based on constraint zones is proposed. Different from the objective function of the original dual decomposition model predictive control, the proposed algorithm’s dynamic control-layer objective function simultaneously tracks the steady-state optimization values of the controlled and manipulated variables, giving the optimal solution formulation of the optimization problem consisting of this objective function and the constraints. The algorithm proposed in this paper achieves the control goals while significantly reducing the computational complexity and has research significance for promoting the industrial implementation of double-layer model predictive control.

As a common neurophysiological phenomenon, voluntary muscle fatigue is accompanied by changes in both the central nervous system and peripheral muscles. Considering the effectiveness of the muscle network and the functional corticomuscular coupling (FCMC) in analyzing motor function, muscle fatigue can be analyzed by quantitating the intermuscular coupling and corticomuscular coupling. However, existing coherence-based research on muscle fatigue are limited by the inability of the coherence algorithm to identify the coupling direction, which cannot further reveal the underlying neural mechanism of muscle fatigue. To address this problem, we applied the time-delayed maximal information coefficient (TDMIC) method to quantitate the directional informational interaction in the muscle network and FCMC during a right-hand stabilized grip task. Eight healthy subjects were recruited to the present study. For the muscle networks, the beta-band information flow increased significantly due to muscle fatigue, and the information flow between the synergist muscles were stronger than that between the synergist and antagonist muscles. The information flow in the muscle network mainly flows to flexor digitorum superficialis (FDS), flexor carpi ulnar (FCU), and brachioradialis (BR). For the FCMC, muscle fatigue caused a significant decrease in the beta- and gamma-band bidirectional information flow. Further analysis revealed that the beta-band information flow was significantly stronger in the descending direction [electroencephalogram (EEG) to surface electromyography (sEMG)] than that in the ascending direction (sEMG to EEG) during pre-fatigue tasks. After muscle fatigue, the beta-band information flow in the ascending direction was significantly stronger than that in the descending direction. The present study demonstrates the influence of muscle fatigue on information flow in muscle networks and FCMC. We proposes that beta-band intermuscular and corticomuscular informational interaction plays an adjusting role in autonomous movement completion under muscle fatigue. Directed information flow analysis can be used as an effective method to explore the neural mechanism of muscle fatigue on the macroscopic scale.

Prostate cancer is the second most common malignant cancer in males. It involves a complex process driven by diverse molecular pathways that closely related to the survival, apoptosis, metabolic and metastatic characteristics of aggressive cancer. Prostate cancer can be categorized into androgen dependent prostate cancer and castration-resistant prostate cancer and cure remains elusive due to the developed resistance of the disease. Natural compounds represent an extraordinary resource of structural scaffolds with high diversity that can offer promising chemical agents for making prostate cancer less devastating and curable. Herein, those natural compounds of different origins and structures with potential cytotoxicity and/or in vivo anti-tumor activities against prostate cancer are critically reviewed and summarized according to the cellular signaling pathways they interfere. Moreover, the anti-prostate cancer efficacy of many nutrients, medicinal plant extracts and Chinese medical formulations were presented, and the future prospects for the application of these compounds and extracts were discussed. Although the failure of conventional chemotherapy as well as involved serious side effects makes natural products ideal candidates for the treatment of prostate cancer, more investigations of preclinical and even clinical studies are necessary to make use of these medical substances reasonably. Therefore, the elucidation of structure-activity relationship and precise mechanism of action, identification of novel potential molecular targets, and optimization of drug combination are essential in natural medicine research and development.

Modified biochars have attracted attention for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in paddy fields. However, material screening difficulties and lengthy effect validation periods have restricted their development. We proposed a theoretical calculation method to guide short-term field trials in this study. Utilizing first-principles calculations, we determined that sodium ferrate-modified biochar (Fe@C) would limit methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. Field trials confirmed that Fe@C increased rice yields and active organic carbon content in soil and reduced methane emissions and the global warming potential. However, applying sodium ferrate alone significantly reduced N2O emissions. Correlation analysis showed that methane was significantly negatively correlated with yield and the soil carbon pool labile index. N2O was significantly negatively correlated with urease activity, and significantly positively correlated with the soil carbon pool management index. Therefore, Fe@C provides a high-yielding management measure that enhances soil labile organic carbon. Additionally, its effects were controlled by the proportion of sodium ferrate. Our work provides a new strategy to guide the design of paddy field experiments via theoretical calculations, greatly shortening research time and providing solutions for carbon sequestration and emissions reduction.

Cadmium (Cd) contamination in agricultural soils has caused extensive concern to researchers. Biochar with iron-compound modifications could give rise to the synergistic effect for Cd restriction. However, the related capture mechanism based on physicochemical properties is unclear. In this study, first principles calculations are proposed to explore the adsorption ability and potential mechanism of the ferric hydroxide modified graphene (Fe@G) for capturing CdCl2. The simulation results show that the adsorption energy to CdCl2 could enhance to −1.60 eV when Fe(OH)3 is introduced on graphene. Subsequently, analyses of electronic properties demonstrated a significant electron transfer between Cd s-orbital and O p-orbital, thereby leading to strong adsorption energy. This theoretical study not only identifies a powerful adsorption material for Cd reduction in agricultural soils and reveals the capture mechanism of Fe@G for Cd but also provides a foundation and strategy for Cd reduction in agricultural soils.

The Yangtze River Economic Belt, which is an important development axis of China’s “T-shaped” strategy, has been challenged by water resource utilization and water environment protection due to the rapid development of the social economy. In this study, to understand the variation characteristics, competition and cooperation relationship, and optimal stable point of synergetic development capability of the “water resource–water environment–socioeconomic development” coupling system, 20 years of data, from 1999 to 2018, at the general, provincial, and city scales were analyzed. The results showed that the synergetic development capability of the Yangtze River Economic Belt in 2011 was a mutation point; it fluctuated slightly before 2011 and steadily rose after 2011, with an average value of 2.46. The three subsystems were all in an evolutionary state, and the evolution speed was sorted by socioeconomic development > water resources > water environment. The water resource subsystem and water environment subsystem had a win–win relationship, and the other subsystems had a lose–lose relationship. Moreover, the synergetic evolution stable point of the Yangtze River Economic Belt was (0.8625,0.8236,1.5841). From the spatial trend, the synergetic development capability in the west was better than in the east and the capability in the south was better than in the north. The spatial agglomeration and spatial heterogeneity in 110 cities were more obvious than those of 11 provinces. From the temporal trend, the synergetic development capability gradually improved. Additionally, the synergetic development capability and its rank obeyed Zipf’s rank-size rule, and the degree of deviation gradually reduced. Furthermore, the Yangtze River Economic Belt can be divided into nine secondary urban agglomerations, and the western, central, and eastern regions paid more attention to socioeconomic development, water environment improvement, and water resource protection, respectively. The “siphon effect” in the central cities was greater than the “radiation effect”. This study provided a method for effectively evaluating the synergetic development characteristics and is of great significance to the protection, development, and utilization of water resources.

In this study, we analysed the survey results regarding the level of public knowledge about, and general attitudes towards, reclaimed water in Jinan, Weifang, and Yantai, three cities in northern China that experience serious water shortages. The objective is to identify the factors influencing public knowledge and acceptance of reclaimed water and determine the hurdles of water reuse applications. The results showed that: (1) educational background was moderately correlated, and age and monthly income were weakly correlated, with the respondents' knowledge about water resources and use; (2) gender, occupation, and economic income were not related to public attitudes toward reclaimed water, and older people and those with higher educational backgrounds were more willing to accept the use of reclaimed water than were other respondents. This study could provide a valuable reference in other regions of China and developing countries facing similar issues of reclaimed water. The knowledge of this study will help to overcome public acceptance hurdles in other projects.

China, especially its coastal provinces, is facing water shortage issues, restricting its further development. To tackle the serious imbalance between water resource supply and demand, China has strived to develop alternative water resources to combat the water crisis, among which seawater desalination plays a major role. This paper reviews the current situation of utilization of desalinated seawater in China and includes: (1) a history of seawater desalination classified into three phases; (2) analysis of utilization sectors, geographic distribution and employed technologies of the desalination plants; (3) summaries of the policies, regulations and technological standards governing seawater desalination; (4) proposals for existing problems and some suggested measures regarding the current condition of seawater desalination; and (5) the seawater desalination programs in Tianjin and Zhoushan are presented as two representative examples. China's seawater desalination experience can provide some guidance for other countries facing similar water resource situations.