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Abstract As natural predators, owls fly with astonishing stealth due to the serrated feather morphology that produces advantageous flow characteristics. Traditionally, these serrations are tailored for airfoil edges with simple two-dimensional patterns, limiting their effect on noise reduction while negotiating tradeoffs in aerodynamic performance. Conversely, the intricately structured wings of cicadas have evolved for effective flapping, presenting a potential blueprint for alleviating these aerodynamic limitations. In this study, we formulate a synergistic design strategy that harmonizes noise suppression with aerodynamic efficiency by integrating the geometrical attributes of owl feathers and cicada forewings, culminating in a three-dimensional sinusoidal serration propeller topology that facilitates both silent and efficient flight. Experimental results show that our design yields a reduction in overall sound pressure levels by up to 5.5 dB and an increase in propulsive efficiency by over 20% compared to the current industry benchmark. Computational fluid dynamics simulations validate the efficacy of the bioinspired design in augmenting surface vorticity and suppressing noise generation across various flow regimes. This topology can advance the multifunctionality of aerodynamic surfaces for the development of quieter and more energy-saving aerial vehicles.

Objective: MicroRNAs represent an emerging class of small non-coding RNAs that play important roles in the post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. This study was aimed to evaluate the relevance of microRNA in classical mixed cellularity Hodgkin lymphoma (MCHL) pathogenesis. Methods: The expressions of 157 microRNAs in lymph nodes from 20 paediatric and 20 adult patients with MCHL and 20 normal lymph nodes (controls) were analysed. Results: The patients' mean age was 7.4 years for the children and 47.4 years for the adults. Most of the patients were male (n = 14, 70%) in both groups. Stage III disease (n = 9, 45%) was common in the paediatric group, while stage II disease (n = 18, 90%) in others. Thirty-six cases (90%) were alive, while four (10%) were deceased. With microRNA sequencing, it was determined that miR-1273e, miR-4322, miR-5008-5p, and miR-6511b-5p were upregulated, while miR-508-5p was down-regulated in only paediatric tumours. Conclusion: These results suggest that microRNAs may play an important role in the biology of paediatric MCHL and may be useful in developing therapies targeting microRNAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of grain size on phase composition and electrical properties is evaluated in relaxor ferroelectric system Pb(Ni1/3Nb2/3)O3-Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PNN-PZT) near the morphotropic phase boundary. Observations reveal that increasing the sintering temperature leads to grain growth in the PNN-PZT with a grain growth exponent of n=3 and the ferroeletric behavior depends on grain size and phase composition.

Motivation Identification of interactions between bioactive small molecules and target proteins is crucial for novel drug discovery, drug repurposing and uncovering off-target effects. Due to the tremendous size of the chemical space, experimental bioactivity screening efforts require the aid of computational approaches. Although deep learning models have been successful in predicting bioactive compounds, effective and comprehensive featurization of proteins, to be given as input to deep neural networks, remains a challenge. Results Here, we present a novel protein featurization approach to be used in deep learning-based compound–target protein binding affinity prediction. In the proposed method, multiple types of protein features such as sequence, structural, evolutionary and physicochemical properties are incorporated within multiple 2D vectors, which is then fed to state-of-the-art pairwise input hybrid deep neural networks to predict the real-valued compound–target protein interactions. The method adopts the proteochemometric approach, where both the compound and target protein features are used at the input level to model their interaction. The whole system is called MDeePred and it is a new method to be used for the purposes of computational drug discovery and repositioning. We evaluated MDeePred on well-known benchmark datasets and compared its performance with the state-of-the-art methods. We also performed in vitro comparative analysis of MDeePred predictions with selected kinase inhibitors' action on cancer cells. MDeePred is a scalable method with sufficiently high predictive performance. The featurization approach proposed here can also be utilized for other protein-related predictive tasks. Availability and implementation The source code, datasets, additional information and user instructions of MDeePred are available at https://github.com/cansyl/MDeePred. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relaxor ferroelectrics near the morphotropic phase boundary were prepared by pressureless sintering at various temperatures in order to study the influence of grain size on phase composition and electrical properties. Investigations of the microstructure indicate an increase in grain size from 0.5 to 3.7 μm when the sintering temperature is increased from 1050 to 1290 °C. The corresponding phase composition is changed from predominantly rhombohedral for small grain sizes to more than 80% tetragonal for larger grain sizes. Low-voltage measurements of poled and unpoled samples correlate well with the x-ray diffraction results. An increase of the permittivity after poling is found for samples with a high tetragonal phase content, while samples with a predominantly rhombohedral composition show a slight decrease. The remanent polarization as well as uni- and bipolar strain increase with increasing sintering temperature by a factor larger than 2, whereas the coercive field EC remains nearly constant for all sintering conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relaxor ferroelectrics near the morphotropic phase boundary were prepared by pressureless sintering at various temperatures in order to study the influence of grain size on phase composition and electrical properties. Investigations of the microstructure indicate an increase in grain size from 0.5 to 3.7 μm when the sintering temperature is increased from 1050 to 1290 °C. The corresponding phase composition is changed from predominantly rhombohedral for small grain sizes to more than 80% tetragonal for larger grain sizes. Low-voltage measurements of poled and unpoled samples correlate well with the x-ray diffraction results. An increase of the permittivity after poling is found for samples with a high tetragonal phase content, while samples with a predominantly rhombohedral composition show a slight decrease. The remanent polarization as well as uni- and bipolar strain increase with increasing sintering temperature by a factor larger than 2, whereas the coercive field EC remains nearly constant for all sintering conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]