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Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are self-organizing monitoring networks with a large number of randomly deployed microsensor nodes to collect various physical information to realize tasks such as intelligent perception, efficient control, and decision-making. However, WSN nodes are powered by batteries, so they will run out of energy after a certain time. This energy limitation will greatly constrain the network performance like network lifetime and energy efficiency. In this study, to prolong the network lifetime, we proposed a multi-hop routing protocol based on game theory and coverage optimization (MRP-GTCO). Briefly, in the stage of setup, two innovational strategies including a clustering game with penalty function and cluster head coverage set were designed to realize the uniformity of cluster head distribution and improve the rationality of cluster head election. In the data transmission stage, we first derived the applicable conditions theorem of inter-cluster multi-hop routing. Based on this, a novel multi-hop path selection algorithm related to residual energy and node degree was proposed to provide an energy-efficient data transmission path. The simulation results showed that the MRP-GTCO protocol can effectively reduce the network energy consumption and extend the network lifetime by 159.22%, 50.76%, and 16.46% compared with LGCA, RLEACH, and ECAGT protocols., Comment: 14 pages, 13 figure, 3 tables

A double-heterojunction-structure photocatalyst g-C3N4/(101)-(001)-TiO2 with Z-system and surface heterojunction, was synthesized, which can effectively promote the separation of photogenerated e−–h+ pairs and the degradation of organic pollutants.

The modulation of vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) phenotype during cellular proliferation and migration may represent a potential therapeutic approach for vascular intimal hyperplasia prevention. However, the precise role of this process in VSMC biology and remodeling remains unclear. In the present study, western blotting, PCR, MTT and Transwell assays were used to analyze related protein and mRNA expression, cell viability and cell migration, respectively. It was demonstrated that miR‑92a modulated VSMCs into a synthetic phenotype via the Kruppel‑like factor 4 (KLF4) pathway. Targeting microRNA (miRNA/miR)‑92a in VSMCs using a KLF4 inhibitor suppressed the synthetic phenotype and inhibited VSMC proliferation and migration. To further confirm this finding, the expression levels of miR‑92a were measured in patients undergoing coronary artery intervention. The serum miR‑92a expression levels were significantly higher in patients with in‑stent restenosis (ISR) compared with those in patients without ISR, whereas KLF4 expression was significantly reduced in the non‑ISR group. Bioinformatic analysis and promoter‑luciferase reporter assays were used to examine the regulatory mechanisms underlying KLF4 expression. KLF4 was demonstrated to be transcriptionally upregulated by miR‑92a in VSMCs. miRNA transfection was also performed to regulate the level of miR‑92a expression. miR‑92a overexpression inhibited VSMC proliferation and migration, and also increased the mRNA and protein expression levels of certain differentiated VSMC‑related genes. Finally, miR‑92a inhibition promoted the proliferation and migration of VSMCs, which could be reversed using a KLF4 inhibitor. Collectively, these results indicated that the local delivery of a KLF4 inhibitor may act as a novel therapeutic option for the prevention of ISR.

The β-cell dedifferentiation is one of the critical mechanisms in diabetic β-cell loss. Long-term activation of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors plays an essential role in the development of diabetes, but the underlying mechanisms have not been fully elucidated. This study aims to investigate the effect of prolonged activation of NMDA receptors on islet β-cell dedifferentiation.Male C57BL/6 mice were randomly divided into a normal control group (control group) and an NMDA group. The mice in the NMDA group were intraperitoneally injected with NMDA (8 mg/kg body weight) and those in the control group were injected with the same volume of saline every day for 6 months. At the end of the 6Compared with the control group, the mice in the NMDA group had higher blood glucose levels at each time point after glucose injection, and the area under the glucose tolerance curve was significantly increased (Prolonged activation of NMDA receptors induces islet β-cell dedifferentiation via regulating the NF-κB pathway.

Melanoma is a highly aggressive cancer which often forms metastatic tumors in the lung, leading to sharply reduced patients’ survival rate. Effectively treating these tumors thus could improve late stage melanoma with lung metastasis. In this study, we fabricated a Cys-Arg-Glu-Lys-Ala with N-methylated Glu (CR(NMe)EKA) decorated disk shaped nano vehicle to co-deliver tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) and paclitaxel (PTX) to lung melanoma tumor sites (TRAIL-[ND-PTX]CR(NMe)EKA). These nanodisks displayed better tumor-targeting and penetration capability than spherical nanoparticles, while the fibronectin-targeting CR(NMe)EKA motif also increased the tumor accumulation of loaded drugs. The combined usage of TRAIL and PTX both killed tumor cells and reduced local nutrition supply, leading to stronger overall anti-tumor effect. This TRAIL-[ND-PTX]CR(NMe)EKA system performed remarkably better than free paclitaxel and also significantly elongated survival rate of melanoma lung metastasis bearing mice, without displaying significant toxicity. Hence, this designing strategy and the fabricated nanoplatform possess potential for further development.

As an important biomarker for human identification, human gait can be collected at a distance by passive sensors without subject cooperation, which plays an essential role in crime prevention, security detection and other human identification applications. At present, most research works are based on cameras and computer vision techniques to perform gait recognition. However, vision-based methods are not reliable when confronting poor illuminations, leading to degrading performances. In this paper, we propose a novel multimodal gait recognition method, namely GaitFi, which leverages WiFi signals and videos for human identification. In GaitFi, Channel State Information (CSI) that reflects the multi-path propagation of WiFi is collected to capture human gaits, while videos are captured by cameras. To learn robust gait information, we propose a Lightweight Residual Convolution Network (LRCN) as the backbone network, and further propose the two-stream GaitFi by integrating WiFi and vision features for the gait retrieval task. The GaitFi is trained by the triplet loss and classification loss on different levels of features. Extensive experiments are conducted in the real world, which demonstrates that the GaitFi outperforms state-of-the-art gait recognition methods based on single WiFi or camera, achieving 94.2% for human identification tasks of 12 subjects., 12 pages, 8 figures, accepted by IEEE Internet of Things Journal

Pancreatic carcinoma elevates quickly and thus has a high mortality rate. Therefore, early treatment is essential for treating pancreatic carcinoma. KRAS is the most frequently identified and one of the earliest mutations in pancreatic tumorigenesis. Thus, the KRAS-mutant cell is an ideal target for the treatment of pancreatic carcinoma, especially at the early stage. KRAS mutation increases macropinocytosis in pancreatic cancer cells, enhancing the internalization of exosomes. Because acquiring natural exosomes could be laborious and their encapsulation efficiency is often unsatisfactory, we aimed to develop a delivery system that mimics the Kras-mutant cell targeting capability of exosomes but is easier to generate and has better loading efficiency. For this purpose, we constructed a hybrid nanoplatform by fusing CLT (Celastrol)-Loaded PEGylated lipids with the DC2.4 cell membrane (M-LIP-CLT) to achieve targeted treatment of Kras-mutant pancreatic cancer. This hybrid nanoplatform improved CLT tumor accumulation and showed excellent anti-cancer efficiency both in vitro and in vivo with increased safety. These results suggest that M-LIP-CLT is an effective drug delivery system for targeted therapy against pancreatic carcinoma, and the fusion strategy showed attractive potential for further development.

Diabetes mellitus has been a major public health problem worldwide, characterized by insulin resistance and dysfunction of β-cells. A previous study showed that Kindlin-2 loss in β-cells dramatically reduces insulin secretion and decreases β-cell mass, resulting in severe diabetes-like phenotypes. It suggests that Kindlin-2 in β-cells play an important role in regulating glucose homeostasis. However, the effect of Kindlin-2 on the function of β-cells under chronic hyperglycemia in diabetes has not been explored. Here we report that Kindlin-2 overexpression ameliorates diabetes and improves insulin secretion in mice induced by streptozocin. In contrast, Kindlin-2 insufficiency exacerbates diabetes and promotes β-cells dysfunction and inflammation in β-cells induced by a high-fat diet (HFD). In vitro, Kindlin-2 overexpression prevented high-glucose (HG)-induced dysfunction in β-cells. Kindlin-2 overexpression also decreased the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines and NLRP3 inflammasome expression in β-cells exposed to HG. Furthermore, the loss of Kindlin-2 aggravates the expression of inflammatory cytokines and NLRP3 induced by HG in β-cells. Collectively, we demonstrate that Kindlin-2 protects against diabetes by inhibiting NLRP3 inflammasome activation.

The modulation of the phenotype of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) during cell proliferation and migration may represent a potential therapeutic approach for the prevention of vascular intimal hyperplasia. However, the precise role of this process in the biology and remodeling of VSMCs remains unclear. Herein, we demonstrate that miR-92a modulates VSMCs to a synthetic phenotype via the KLF4 pathway. Targeting miR-92a in VSMCs with a KLF4 inhibitor suppressed the synthetic phenotype and inhibited the proliferation and migration of VSMCs. To provide definitive evidence, we measured the expression levels of miR-92a in patients undergoing coronary artery intervention; serum miR-92a levels were significantly higher in patients with In-stent restenosis (ISR) than in those without ISR; these findings were the opposite of those obtained for KLF4. Bioinformatics analysis and promoter-luciferase reporter assays were used to examine the regulatory mechanisms underlying KLF4 expression; we found that KLF4 was transcriptionally upregulated by miR-92a in VSMCs. miRNA transfection was also performed to regulate the expression of miR-92a e. We found that the overexpression of miR-92a inhibited the proliferation and migration of VSMCs and also increased differentiated gene and protein expression. Finally, we found that the inhibition of miR-92a promoted the proliferation and migration of VSMCs; this could be reversed by applying a KLF4 inhibitor. Collectively, these results indicate that the local delivery of a KLF4 inhibitor may act as a novel therapeutic option to prevent in-stent restenosis.

The cellular instabilities of premixed C1–C3 alkane–air mixtures were investigated at an initial temperature of 400 K and different initial pressures (0.25–1.5 MPa). Flame propagation images were recorded using high-speed Schlieren photography techniques. Cellular instabilities were analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods. The results showed that with an increase in the initial pressure, the flame instabilities of these three alkane–air mixtures increased as a result of the enhanced hydrodynamic instability. For a given initial pressure and with an increasing equivalence ratio, the thermal-diffusive instability was the main influencing factor on the flame instability of methane when Φ ≤ 1.0, whereas it was the result of hydrodynamic and thermal-diffusive instability when Φ > 1.0. The flame instability of ethane and propane was caused by the enhanced hydrodynamic and thermal-diffusive instability when Φ ≤ 1.0, whereas it was determined by diffusion-thermal instability when Φ > 1.0. Under the conditions with the strongest cellular instability, the cellular instability of these three alkane–air mixtures tended to increase with an increasing number of carbon atoms in the fuel.

Hepatitis B, one of the most common contagious viral hepatitis with high infection rate, is challenging to treat. Although the treatment for hepatitis B has been improved over the years, many therapeutic drugs still have either severe adverse effects or insufficient effectiveness via systemic administration. In this study, we confirmed that glycyrrhetinic acid can enhance the accumulation of entecavir in HepaRG cell and liver. Then we constructed a novel albumin nanoparticle co-loading entecavir and glycyrrhetinic acid (ETV-GA-AN) to improve liver accumulation of entecavir and investigated its ability to deliver both drugs to liver. In vitro cellular uptake study and in vivo tissue distribution experiment showed that these negatively charged ETV-GA-AN (112 ± 2 nm in diameter) can increase the accumulation of entecavir in hepatic HepaRG cells and improve entecavir distribution in liver. We also revealed the mechanism that glycyrrhetinic acid enhances intracellular accumulation of entecavir by inhibiting the activity of specific efflux transporters. Our delivery system is the first liver-targeted albumin nanoparticle that utilizes the site-specific co-delivery strategy to delivery entecavir and glycyrrhetinic acid. As it combines high efficiency and low toxicity, it possess great potential for treating hepatitis B.

The ubiquitous interactions between tumor cells and the surrounding microenvironment contribute to tumor metastasis, interrupting these communications has, therefore, a great potential for antimetastasis therapy. Here, we describe an in situ self-assembly strategy that limits direct contact between tumor cells and the tumor microenvironment (TME). In this strategy, the Lys-Leu-Val-Phe-Phe (KLVFF) peptide motifs are targeted to the tumor by hyaluronic acid (HA) functionalized liposomes and spontaneously undergo self-assembly to form nanofibers with a net-like structure wrapping around tumor cells. The fibrous nanostructures bury the membrane protrusions and thus hinder the migration and invasion of tumor cells, especially the transmigration through the fenestrated endothelium. The nanofibril coatings on tumor cells significantly block tumor cells induced platelet aggregation in vitro and prevent the adhesion of platelet around circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in vivo, thus limit the pro-metastasis effect of platelets and prevent the early metastasis. Furthermore, the nano-nets stably retain in the primary tumor site for over 72 h and effectively prevent the activation of intratumoral platelet, which suppress tumor progression and the spontaneous lung metastasis in 4T1 breast cancer mice model. Our study paves a promising avenue to combat tumor metastasis by regulating the interactions between tumor cells and the TME.

Currently, most anti-cancer therapies are still haunted by serious and deleterious adverse effects. Here, we report a highly biocompatible tumor cell-targeting delivery systems utilizing exosome-like vesicles (ELVs) that delivers a low-toxicity anti-cancer agent imperialine against non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). First, we introduced a novel micelle-aided method to efficiently load imperialine into intact ELVs. Then, integrin α3β1-binding octapeptide cNGQGEQc was modified onto ELV platform for tumor targeting as integrin α3β1 is overexpressed on NSCLC cells. This system not only significantly improved imperialine tumor accumulation and retention, but also had extremely low systemic toxicity both in vitro and in vivo. Our discoveries offer new ways to utilize ELV more efficiently for both drug loading and targeting. The solid pharmacokinetics improvement and extraordinary safety of this system also highlight possibilities of alternative long course cancer therapies using similar strategies.

A new species, Oreocharis tetrapterus F.Wen, B.Pan & T.V.Do (Gesneriaceae) from Gupo Mountain area, Hezhou city, Guangxi Zhuangzu Autonomous Region, China, is described and illustrated. The new species has a zygomorphic tetramerous corolla with two adaxial and two abaxial lobes and two fertile stamens in the posterior position, making this a unique combination of floral characteristics in the expanded Oreocharis.

The increasing concentration of residual ciprofloxacin (CIP) can cause potential harm to the environment. Photocatalysis has been regarded as an effective method for the degradation of CIP. Bi/BiVO4 with excellent photocatalytic performance was synthesized partial reduction with NaBH4. The structure, morphology, composition, and optical performance of BiVO4 and Bi/BiVO4 were characterized by a variety of techniques. The results showed that the Bi/BiVO4 exhibits high photocatalytic activity in the degradation of CIP. Comparison of BiVO4 and Bi/BiVO4 has lower photoluminescence intensity and higher photocurrent responses intensity. The introduction of Bi made Bi/BiVO4 have a higher charge separation efficiency and generate more active free radicals. In addition, the radical trapping experiments revealed that superoxide free radicals and holes were the main active free radicals during the degradation of CIP. The pathway of CIP degradation was investigated through high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, and a possible degradation mechanism was proposed.

In the optical multicast network, node and link failures have very important influence on the network survivability which may lead to multiple destinations cannot receive data. Based on the wavelength layered-graph method, a method of efficiency-score based on heuristic algorithm of pre-configured cycle ( p -Cycle) based-segment protection (ESHS) for dynamic multicast with limited-range wavelength conversion was presented in this paper. By finding the multicast tree segment protection, the total available p -Cycles are constructed for the multicast. Then we calculate each p -Cycle efficiency-score, the highest efficient-score p -Cycle is selected as the multicast route protection p -Cycle. The simulation results show that the ESHS can get higher performance than the existing ESHT algorithm, in terms of multicast request blocking probability and wavelength utilization.

Optical packet switch with multicast capability can inspire a broad range of multipoint to multipoint applications in future optical networks. An optical multicast packet switching architecture, equipped with feedback shared small number of limited-range multi-wavelength converters (LMWCs) and output shared some full-range wavelength converters (FRWCs), is proposed for a wavelength-division multiplexed optical multicast network to improve multicast performance in the paper. The FRWCs are used to overcome the performance degradation in terms of packet loss probability due to only use LMWCs. In the architecture, the two converters are shared by all the multicast packets importing to the optical multicast switch node. A maximum bipartite matching with minimum edges weights strategy was designed to employ fewer wavelength converters and avoid useless degradation of optical signal quality for the architecture to improve the node performance. The simulation results show that the proposed architecture and its wavelength converter scheduling algorithm can reduce the multicast packet loss probability with relatively lesser wavelength conversion cost.

PLECS is used to model the PV H6 inverter connected to grid and good results are obtained. First, several common topologies of PV inverters are introduced. Then the unipolar PWM control strategy is described for PV H6 inverter. Third, PLECS is briefly introduced. Fourth, the modeling of PV H6 inverter is presented with PLECS. Finally, a series of simulations are carried out. The simulation results tell us PLECS is very powerful tool to real power circuits and it is very easy to simulate LCL filter. They have also verified that the unipolar PWM control strategy is feasible to control the PV H6 inverter.

This study presents a strategy for determining the relatively accurate geographical location of an object based on a video or a sequence of images taken at regular intervals. On the basis of a series of solar formulas, a precise object’s shadow length model that includes the latitude and longitude of the photographer is built to describe how the shadow changes. Inputting the shadow length of the object and the creation time of the image into the built model, parameters like the latitude or longitude can be estimated by Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). To solve the problem that PSO is easy to get stuck into local optima, a compression factor and mutation operation are introduced to the algorithm. Through analyzing the instance, the improved PSO algorithm has demonstrated itself with enhancement in convergence and accuracy. In conclusion, the improved PSO is an effective and precise tool to estimate the geographical location of video or images.

PLECS is used to model the diode clamping three-level inverter connected to grid and good results are obtained. First the output voltage SVM is described for diode clamping three-level inverter with loads connected to Y. Then the output voltage SVM of diode clamping three-level inverter is simply analyzed with loads connected to △. But it will be further researched in the future. Third, PLECS is briefly introduced. Fourth, the modeling of diode clamping three-level inverter is briefly presented with PLECS. Finally, a series of simulations are carried out. The simulation results tell us PLECS is very powerful tool to real power circuits and it is very easy to simulate them. They have also verified that SVM control strategy is feasible to control the diode clamping three-level inverter.

Virtual flux oriented direct power control (VFDPC) is combined space vector modulation (SVM) with PI of DC-link voltage, active power and reactive power to control the grid side converter in wind power generation system in this paper. VFDPC has reached good performances with PLL (phase lock loop). First the mathematical models of grid side converter, LCL filter and phase lock loop are given. Then the control strategy of grid side converter-based wind power generation system is given in detail. Finally the simulation model is modeled consisting of power circuits, such as the grid side converter, LCL filter, transformer grid, and control parts, such as PI controllers of DC-link voltage, active power, reactive power, and SVM, and so on. The simulation results have verified that the control strategy is feasible to fit for control of gird currents, active power, reactive power and DC-link voltage in wind power generation system.