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Background: Exploring the neural encoding mechanism and decoding of motion state switching during flight can advance our knowledge of avian behavior control and contribute to the development of avian robots. However, limited acquisition equipment and neural signal quality have posed challenges, thus we understand little about the neural mechanisms of avian flight. Methods: We used chronically implanted micro-electrode arrays to record the local field potentials (LFPs) in the formation reticularis medialis mesencephali (FRM) of pigeons during various motion states in their natural outdoor flight. Subsequently, coherence-based functional connectivity networks under different bands were constructed and the topological features were extracted. Finally, we used a support vector machine model to decode different flight states. Results: Our findings indicate that the gamma band (80-150 Hz) in the FRM exhibits significant power for identifying different states in pigeons. Specifically, the avian brain transmitted flight related information more efficiently during the accelerated take-off or decelerated landing states, compared with the uniform flight and baseline states. Finally, we achieved a best average accuracy of 0.86 using the connectivity features in the 80-150 Hz band and 0.89 using the fused features for state decoding. Conclusions: Our results open up possibilities for further research into the neural mechanism of avian flight and contribute to the understanding of flight behavior control in birds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a fundamental degree of freedom, phonon chirality is expected to promote the development of quantum information technology just like electron spin. Currently, central to this area is the realization of efficient transmission and control of chiral information. In this paper, we propose an approach by integrating topological theory, leveraging topologically invariant Chern numbers, to encode hexagonal lattice systems. Our investigation reveals the presence of topologically protected chiral interface states within the shared band gaps of both trivial and non-trivial system units. By precisely modulating the magnetic field distribution within the encoding system, we can effectively manipulate the topological pathways. Building upon this framework, we design and implement a chiral phonon three-port device. Through dynamic calculations, we demonstrate the transmission process of chiral information, showcasing the chiral phonon switching effect and logical OR operation. Our findings not only establish a fundamental mechanism for the manipulation and control of phonon chiral information but also provide a promising direction for research in harnessing chirality degrees of freedom in practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The striatum serves an important role in motor control, and neurons in this area encode the body's initiation, cessation, and speed of locomotion. However, it remains unclear whether the same neurons also encode the step-by-step rhythmic motor patterns of individual limbs that characterize gait. By combining high-speed video tracking, electrophysiology, and optogenetic tagging, we found that a sizable population of both D1 and D2 receptor expressing medium spiny projection neurons (MSNs) were phase-locked to the gait cycle of individual limbs in mice. Healthy animals showed balanced limb phase-locking between D1 and D2 MSNs, while dopamine depletion led to stronger phase-locking in D2 MSNs. These findings indicate that striatal neurons represent gait on a single-limb and step basis, and suggest that elevated limb phase-locking of D2 MSNs may underlie some of the gait impairments associated with dopamine loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semi-natural habitats in agricultural areas play a crucial role in providing resources and shelters for insect predators. However, the impacts of local insecticide use on these beneficial effects remain poorly understood. This study examined the relationship between local insecticide intensity and the benefits of semi-natural habitats for ladybeetle populations in 38 commercial cotton fields. Ladybeetle abundance was monitored using yellow stick traps, and insecticide use was recorded. The proportion of different types of semi-natural habitats within a 2.0 km radius of each cotton field was also considered. The sampled cotton fields were classified for the frequency of their insecticide use (lower vs. higher) and the proportion of the main types of semi-natural habitats (smaller vs. larger area of grassland, woodlots, or fallow habitats) at 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 km. Generalized linear mixed-effects models revealed significant interactions between local insecticide intensity and coverage levels of each semi-natural habitat on ladybeetle abundance. For cotton fields with fewer grassland habitats, there were no differences in ladybeetle abundance between fields with different levels of insecticide use. In cotton fields with lower intensity of insecticide application, ladybeetle densities were markedly highest for fields within landscapes with higher level of grassland habitats. For cotton fields with higher insecticide use, there were no differences in ladybeetle abundance between fields with different levels of grassland habitats in the landscape at smaller scales (0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 km). However, at a larger scale (2 km), the numbers of ladybeetles in higher sprayed fields were lower in landscapes with a greater proportion of grassland habitats compared to landscapes with fewer grassland habitats. Our study demonstrates that the higher use of insecticides in crop fields can negates the positive effects of grassland habitats on ladybeetle density. This highlights the conflict that exists between farmers attempting to benefit from maintaining a high quality and quantity of semi-natural habitats at the landscape level versus farmer's practices that lead to the intense use of insecticides, which cause mortality to natural enemies. This study emphasizes the need for sustainable agricultural practices that balance pest control and the conservation of beneficial predator populations within agricultural landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A miniaturized, wideband circularly polarized (CP) antenna based on coupled triangular patches is presented. Initially, two identical triangular patches with shorting pins are placed close to each other in a perpendicular orientation. Hence, a pair of orthogonal modes can be produced based on the coupled resonators. Under the characteristic mode analysis (CMA), it can be found that the 90° phase difference is achieved by modulating gap distance and shorting pins numbers. Both the shape of triangle patches and shorting pins contribute to the miniaturization. To further improve the AR bandwidth, a third patch is added to form a new mode. Thanks to the triple modes produced by the three patch elements, two AR minima are constructed to broaden the AR bandwidth. With this compact arrangement and shorting pins, a miniaturized wideband CP patch antenna with a 5.2% AR bandwidth is successfully implemented. The overall size of the antenna is merely 0.34λ0×0.33λ0×0.046λ0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autotaxin (ATX), the key enzyme that generates lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) from lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC), is involved in tumorigenesis through the ATX-LPA axis and is regarded as a valuable target in tumor therapy. Hypoxia is a major feature of solid tumors and contributes to tumor development with striking alterations in the gene expression profile. Here, we show that hypoxia induces ATX expression in a hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) 2α-dependent fashion in human colon cancer SW480 cells. HIF-2α is directly bound to specific hypoxia response elements (HREs) in the ATX promoter. Under hypoxic conditions, knockout or inhibition of ATX suppressed the migration of SW480 cells, which could be rescued by the addition of LPA, suggesting that the induction of ATX during hypoxia promotes cancer cell migration through the ATX-LPA axis. Further studies showed that ATX expression was induced by HIF-2α through recruiting p300/CBP, which led to crotonylation but not acetylation of histone H3 in the ATX promoter region during hypoxia. Moreover, elevation of cellular histone crotonylation levels could induce ATX expression under normoxic conditions. In conclusion, our findings reveal that ATX is induced in SW480 cells during hypoxia by histone crotonylation in a HIF-2α-dependent manner, while as a novel mechanism of ATX expression regulation, the upregulation of ATX expression by histone crotonylation is not confined to hypoxia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tight conglomerate reservoirs are featured with extremely low permeability, strong heterogeneity and poor water injectivity. CO2 huff-n-puff has been considered a promising candidate to enhance oil recovery in tight reservoirs, owing to its advantages in reducing oil viscosity, improving mobility ratio, quickly replenishing formation pressure, and potentially achieving a miscible state. However, reliable inhouse laboratory evaluation of CO2 huff-n-puff in natural conglomerate cores is challenging due to the inherent high formation pressure. In this study, we put forward an equivalent method based on the similarity of the miscibility index and Grashof number to acquire a lab-controllable pressure that features the flow characteristics of CO2 injection in a tight conglomerate reservoir. The impacts of depletion degree, pore volume injection of CO2 and soaking time on ultimate oil recovery in tight cores from the Mahu conglomerate reservoir were successfully tested at an equivalent pressure. Our results showed that oil recovery decreased with increased depletion degree while exhibiting a non-monotonic tendency (first increased and then decreased) with increased CO2 injection volume and soaking time. The lower oil recoveries under excess CO2 injection and soaking time were attributed to limited CO2 dissolution and asphaltene precipitation. This work guides secure and reliable laboratory design of CO2 huff-n-puff in tight reservoirs with high formation pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bone cancer pain (BCP) is severe chronic pain caused by tumor metastasis to the bones, often resulting in significant skeletal remodeling and fractures. Currently, there is no curative treatment. Therefore, insight into the underlying mechanisms could guide the development of mechanism-based therapeutic strategies for BCP. We speculated that Rac1/PAK1 signaling plays a critical role in the development of BCP. Tumor cells implantation (TCI) into the tibial cavity resulted in bone cancer-associated mechanical allodynia. Golgi staining revealed changes in the excitatory synaptic structure of WDR (Wide-dynamic range) neurons in the spinal cord, including increased postsynaptic density (PSD) length and thickness, and width of the cleft. Behavioral and western blotting test revealed that the development and persistence of pain correlated with Rac1/PAK1 signaling activation in primary sensory neurons. Intrathecal injection of NSC23766, a Rac1 inhibitor, reduced the persistence of BCP as well as reversed the remodeling of dendrites. Therefore, we concluded that activation of the Rac1/PAK1 signaling pathway in the spinal cord plays an important role in the development of BCP through remodeling of dendritic spines. Modulation of the Rac1/PAK1 pathway may be a potential strategy for BCP treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cervical cancer metastasis is an important cause of death in cervical cancer. Previous studies have shown that epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) of tumors promotes its invasive and metastatic capacity. Alterations in the extracellular matrix (ECM) and mechanical signaling are closely associated with cancer cell metastasis. However, it is unclear how matrix stiffness as an independent cue triggers EMT and promotes cervical cancer metastasis. Using collagen-coated polyacrylamide hydrogel models and animal models, we investigated the effect of matrix stiffness on EMT and metastasis in cervical cancer. Our data showed that high matrix stiffness promotes EMT and migration of cervical cancer hela cell lines in vitro and in vivo. Notably, we found that matrix stiffness regulates yes-associated protein (YAP) activity via PPIase non-mitotic a-interaction 1 (Pin1) with a non-Hippo mechanism. These data indicate that matrix stiffness of the tumor microenvironment positively regulates EMT in cervical cancer through the Pin1/YAP pathway, and this study deepens our understanding of cervical cancer biomechanics and may provide new ideas for the treatment of cervical cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] It has recently been shown that the non-Hermitian skin effect can be suppressed by magnetic fields. In this work, using a two-dimensional tight-binding lattice, we demonstrate that a pseudomagnetic field can also lead to the suppression of the non-Hermitian skin effect. With an increasing pseudomagnetic field, the skin modes are found to be pushed into the bulk, accompanied by the reduction of skin topological area and the restoration of Landau level energies. Our results provide a time-reversal invariant route to localization control and could be useful in various classical wave devices that are able to host the non-Hermitian skin effect but inert to magnetic fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of efficient and metal-free heterogeneous catalysts for the chemical fixation of CO2 into value-added products is still a challenge. Herein, we reported two kinds of polar group (−COOH, −OH)-functionalized porous ionic polymers (PIPs) that were constructed from the corresponding phosphonium salt monomers (v-PBC and v-PBH) using a solvothermal radical polymerization method. The resulting PIPs (POP-PBC and POP-PBH) can be used as efficient bifunctional heterogeneous catalysts in the cycloaddition reaction of CO2 with epoxides under relatively low temperature, ambient pressure, and metal-free conditions without any additives. It was found that the catalytic activities of the POP-PBC and POP-PBH were comparable with the homogeneous catalysts of Me-PBC and PBH and were higher than that of the POP-PPh3-COOH that was synthesized through a post-modification method, indicating the importance of the high concentration catalytic active sites in the heterogeneous catalysts. Reaction under low CO2 concentration conditions showed that the activity of the POP-PBC (with a conversion of 53.8% and a selectivity of 99.0%) was higher than that of the POP-PBH (with a conversion of 32.3% and a selectivity of 99.0%), verifying the promoting effect of the polar group (−COOH group) in the porous framework. The POP-PBC can also be recycled at least five times without a significant loss of catalytic activity, indicating the high stability and robustness of the PIPs-based heterogeneous catalysts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Object recognition, as one of the most fundamental and challenging problems in high-resolution remote sensing image interpretation, has received increasing attention in recent years. However, most conventional object recognition pipelines aim to recognize instances with bounding boxes in a supervised learning strategy, which require intensive and manual labor for instance annotation creation. In this paper, we propose a weakly supervised learning method to alleviate this problem. The core idea of our method is to recognize multiple objects in an image using only image-level semantic labels and indicate the recognized objects with location points instead of box extent. Specifically, a deep convolutional neural network is first trained to perform semantic scene classification, of which the result is employed for the categorical determination of objects in an image. Then, by back-propagating the categorical feature from the fully connected layer to the deep convolutional layer, the categorical and spatial information of an image are combined to obtain an object discriminative localization map, which can effectively indicate the salient regions of objects. Next, a dynamic updating method of local response extremum is proposed to further determine the locations of objects in an image. Finally, extensive experiments are conducted to localize aircraft and oiltanks in remote sensing images based on different convolutional neural networks. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the-state-of-the-art methods, achieving the precision, recall, and F 1 -score at 94.50%, 88.79%, and 91.56% for aircraft localization and 89.12%, 83.04%, and 85.97% for oiltank localization, respectively. We hope that our work could serve as a basic reference for remote sensing object localization via a weakly supervised strategy and provide new opportunities for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taxi-out time is the main performance index to evaluate the operational efficiency of major airports. Scientifically and accurately predicting the taxi-out time of departure flights is very important to improve the operational efficiency and coordination decision-making ability of airport. Firstly, the quantifiable influence factors of taxi-out time and their correlation is analyzed, including the number of departure flights, the number of arrival flights, the number of flights pushed back in the same period, the taxi-out time by half-hour in average, the taxi distance, and the number of turns, etc. And then a prediction model of departure flights' taxi-out time based on BP is constructed. Because the traditional BP neural network is sensitive to the initial weight and threshold and has poor accuracy and stability, the taxi-out time prediction model of BP neural network optimized by intelligent algorithm is proposed. Genetic algorithm (GA) and sparrow search algorithm (SSA) are used to obtain the optimal weight and threshold of BP neural network, which is verified by the actual operation data of a major airport in central and southern China for two weeks. The results show that ① the taxi-out time is strongly correlated with the airport surface traffic flow, moderately correlated with the average taxi-out time, and weakly correlated with the taxi distance and the number of turns. ② The predicted outcome of the 4-element combination prediction model which considers strong correlation and medium correlation factors is the best. After adding weak correlation factors, the prediction accuracy is reduced. ③ By obtaining the local optimal weight and threshold of neural network, intelligent optimization algorithm can effectively improve the accuracy of departure flights' taxi-out time prediction results. ④ The prediction result of BP neural network optimized based on GA is 1.79% higher than that of MAPE before optimization, MAE is reduced by 7.4 s, and RMSE is reduced by 6.93 s. The prediction result of BP neural network optimized based on SSA is 3.05% higher than that of MAPE before optimization, MAE is reduced by 16.55 s, and RMSE is reduced by 14.31 s. Therefore, Sparrow search algorithm has better optimization effect on the model than genetic algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel functional compatibilization strategy for poly(lactic acid) (PLA)/poly(butylene adipate- co -butylene terephthalate) (PBAT) was developed by combining reactive maleic anhydride segments with imidazolium cations. The results revealed that the PSM-R compatibilizer with the longest alkyl chains was more efficient for compatibilization, which was ascribed to the formation of a stable co-continuous structure in the matrix. Moreover, the PLA/PBAT blends exhibited excellent antibacterial properties against both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. [Display omitted] • A novel functional compatibilization strategy for PLA/PBAT blend was developed. • PSM-R with longer alkyl chain compatibilized the PLA/PBAT blends more efficiently. • A stable co-continuous structure was produced in PLA/PBAT blends using PSM-R. • PLA/PBAT blends exhibited excellent antibacterial performance. Blends of poly(lactic acid) (PLA) and poly(butylene adipate- co -butylene terephthalate) (PBAT) are currently the most widely studied biodegradable blends and have great potential to replace conventional polyolefin and polyester materials. However, PLA/PBAT blends still face the challenges of poor compatibility and antibacterial performance in the practice applications. In this study, antibacterial functional PLA/PBAT blends were fabricated using an alternative copolymer (PSM-D) composed of reactive maleic anhydride segments and imidazolium cations. The results revealed that PSM-D, with long alkyl chains, improved the compatibility, antibacterial properties, and mechanical properties of the PLA/PBAT blends. Under the optimized conditions, the elongation at break of PLA/PBAT blends was increased by 750%. Detailed analysis demonstrated that these outstanding improvements could be ascribed to the formation of a stable co-continuous structure in the PLA/PBAT matrix. Furthermore, the PLA/PBAT blends exhibited excellent antibacterial properties against both gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus and gram-negative Escherichia coli , which was attributed to the presence of imidazolium cations with long alkyl chains. This study provides a new "two-in-one" platform for fabricating functional compatibilization strategies for biodegradable polymer blends and is expected to have broad implications and practical relevance for packaging and medical devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the ambiguity, uncertainty, and grey characteristics in the service quality evalilation process of medical caring and nursing combined instimtions-for the aged, a sen'ice quality evaluation method is proposed through the inten·al-valued Pythagorean fuzzy set (IVPFS)-decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) and a two-stage decision model with grey synthetic measures. Based on the SPO model(structure-process-outcome), a service quality evaluation index sy.stem for medical caring and nursing combined institutions for the aged is established. Further, a new method is proposed to determine the index weight through combination of IVPFS and DEMATEL, followed by the two-stage decision model with grey synthetic measures is used to assess the service quality of medical caring and nursing combined institutions for the aged. Taking medical caring and nursing combined instimtions for the aged in four typical cities of Jiangsu Province as target examples, the effectiveness of the proposed model is verified by comparing with other method. The restilts show that the proposed methodology can effectively evaluate the service quality of medical caring and nursing combined institutions for the aged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cerebellum has been implicated in the regulation of social behavior. Its influence is thought to arise from communication, via the thalamus, to forebrain regions integral in the expression of social interactions, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). However, the signals encoded or the nature of the communication between the cerebellum and these brain regions is poorly understood. Here, we describe an approach that overcomes technical challenges in exploring the coordination of distant brain regions at high temporal and spatial resolution during social behavior. We developed the E-Scope, an electrophysiology-integrated miniature microscope, to synchronously measure extracellular electrical activity in the cerebellum along with calcium imaging of the ACC. This single coaxial cable device combined these data streams to provide a powerful tool to monitor the activity of distant brain regions in freely behaving animals. During social behavior, we recorded the spike timing of multiple single units in cerebellar right Crus I (RCrus I) Purkinje cells (PCs) or dentate nucleus (DN) neurons while synchronously imaging calcium transients in contralateral ACC neurons. We found that during social interactions a significant subpopulation of cerebellar PCs were robustly inhibited, while most modulated neurons in the DN were activated, and their activity was correlated with positively modulated ACC neurons. These distinctions largely disappeared when only non-social epochs were analyzed suggesting that cerebellar-cortical interactions were behaviorally specific. Our work provides new insights into the complexity of cerebellar activation and co-modulation of the ACC during social behavior and a valuable open-source tool for simultaneous, multimodal recordings in freely behaving mice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polymer flooding in fractured wells has been extensively applied in oilfields to enhance oil recovery. In contrast to water, polymer solution exhibits non-Newtonian and nonlinear behavior such as effects of shear thinning and shear thickening, polymer convection, diffusion, adsorption retention, inaccessible pore volume and reduced effective permeability. Meanwhile, the flux density and fracture conductivity along the hydraulic fracture are generally non-uniform due to the effects of pressure distribution, formation damage, and proppant breakage. In this paper, we present an oil-water two-phase flow model that captures these complex non-Newtonian and nonlinear behavior, and non-uniform fracture characteristics in fractured polymer flooding. The hydraulic fracture is firstly divided into two parts: high-conductivity fracture near the wellbore and low-conductivity fracture in the far-wellbore section. A hybrid grid system, including perpendicular bisection (PEBI) and Cartesian grid, is applied to discrete the partial differential flow equations, and the local grid refinement method is applied in the near-wellbore region to accurately calculate the pressure distribution and shear rate of polymer solution. The combination of polymer behavior characterizations and numerical flow simulations are applied, resulting in the calculation for the distribution of water saturation, polymer concentration and reservoir pressure. Compared with the polymer flooding well with uniform fracture conductivity, this non-uniform fracture conductivity model exhibits the larger pressure difference, and the shorter bilinear flow period due to the decrease of fracture flow ability in the far-wellbore section. The field case of the fall-off test demonstrates that the proposed method characterizes fracture characteristics more accurately, and yields fracture half-lengths that better match engineering reality, enabling a quantitative segmented characterization of the near-wellbore section with high fracture conductivity and the far-wellbore section with low fracture conductivity. The novelty of this paper is the analysis of pressure performances caused by the fracture dynamics and polymer rheology, as well as an analysis method that derives formation and fracture parameters based on the pressure and its derivative curves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inflammatory feed-forward loops including the steps of "inflammatory cell recruitment", "inflammatory signaling pathway activation" and "inflammatory factor production" are essential in the development of breast cancer and its metastasis. Herein, a doxorubicin-loaded micellar low-molecular-weight-heparin-astaxanthin nanoparticle (LMWH-AST/DOX, LA/DOX NP) was developed. The hydrophilic LMWH could decrease the recruitment of neutrophils in liver and myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) in lung and tumor through P-selectin blockage. The hydrophobic AST could inhibit nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) signaling pathways. Therefore, LA/DOX NPs could block these loops and suppress the liver metastasis by inhibiting the formation of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), inhibit the lung metastasis and alleviate the inflammatory and immunosuppressive microenvironment in tumor. This is the first functional nanoparticle reported to shut down inflammatory feed-forward loops and the formation of NETs, which provides a promising therapeutic strategy for breast cancer and its liver and lung metastasis. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is one of the most lethal malignant tumors, its drug resistance, immunosuppression and metastasis makes the traditional chemotherapy and immunotherapy inefficient. Here we confirmed a 3-aminophenylboronic acid-modified low molecular weight heparin-D-α-tocopheryl succinate micellar nanoparticle (PBA-LMWH-TOS NP, PLT NP) could inhibit orthotopic pancreatic tumor and its spontaneous metastases. The small particle size and high affinity of PBA to sialic acid residue (SA) made PLT/PTX NPs significantly targeted and accumulated in both pancreatic tumor tissues and metastases. The immunosuppressive microenvironment of pancreatic tumor was most caused by the infiltration of immunosuppressive cells, mainly myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs). We first reported that P-selectin glycoprotein ligand-1 (PSGL-1) was expressed on the surfaces of MDSCs in pancreatic tumor tissues. Meanwhile, we found that LMWH could inhibit the early stage of adhesion cascade between vascular endothelial cells (VECs) and MDSCs by interfering with P-selectin/PSGL-1 binding, thus inhibiting MDSC recruitment to pancreatic tumor tissues. The therapeutic results indicated that PLT/PTX NPs could significantly improve the immune microenvironment of pancreatic tumor and inhibit spontaneous metastases. This nanosystem provides a new immune microenvironment regulation mechanism based on carrier materials in pancreatic tumor, and has high clinical application potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the discounted Gerber-Shiu type function for a perturbed actuarial risk model with interest and periodic dividend strategy. Under the assumption of exponentially distributed inter-observation times, some integro-differential equations of the discounted Gerber-Shiu type function at ruin are presented. For exponential claim amounts, explicit expressions satisfied by the Laplace transforms of ruin time are provided and some numerical examples are investigated to demonstrate our results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is characterized by the outbreak of inflammation. Neutrophils, the main culprit of the outbreak of inflammation, are the first inflammatory cells to be recruited to inflamed joints and facilitate the recruitment of themselves by stimulating the release of chemokines. Here, based on neutrophils, a novel anti-inflammatory "shield and sword soldiers" strategy is established with LMWH-TOS nanoparticles (LT NPs). The hydrophilic fragment low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) acts as a shield which block the transvascular movement of neutrophils through inhibiting the adhesion cascade by binding to P-selectin on inflamed endothelium. Synergistically, MMP-9, which is secreted by the recruited neutrophils and degrade the main component of articular cartilage, is reduced by the hydrophobic fragment d-α-tocopheryl succinate (TOS), functioning as a sword. In collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) mouse model, LT NPs show significant targeting effect, and exhibit prominent therapeutic efficacy after enveloping the first-line anti-RA drug methotrexate. Our work proves that the multi-stage manipulation of neutrophils is feasible and effective, providing a new concept for RA treatment. [Display omitted] • Nanoparticles for RA treatment were assembled from LMWH and TOS, which can regulate neutrophils in multiple stages. • By binding to P-selectin, LMWH can target the inflamed endothelium in inflamed joints. • LMWH can interrupt the recruitment of neutrophils by competitively inhibiting the combination of P-selectin and PSGL-1. • TOS can suppress the secretion of MMP-9 of neutrophils, thereby leaving neutrophils hamstrung in its cartilage destruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

River regulations and changing land management practices are generally perceived to be the dominant drivers of river flood changes in countries with rapid economic growth, such as China. Here, we demonstrate based on the most comprehensive flood database to date, that climate variations dominate the spatial pattern of changes in annual flood peak discharge in China, despite intense human alterations of the river and land systems over the past four decades. Regional flood increases are mainly associated with increasing precipitation due to changes in the East Asian Summer Monsoon, tropical cyclones and the subtropical westerly jet. Regional flood decreases are due to decreased soil moisture in the North China plain. Our results highlight the need for flood management policies to go beyond local measures and adapt to the effects of climate change. Plain Language Summary Changes in river floods are of worldwide concern due to their massive socio-economic impacts. Understanding the reasons of changes in this hazard is a prerequisite for managing the associated risks efficiently. Potential reasons include climate change, river regulations and changing land management practices. In some countries, such as China, the recent rapid socio-economic development has led to dramatic modifications of the river and land system. Existing studies suggest that flood changes in China are mainly a result of land use change and the construction of reservoirs. Here, we demonstrate based on the most comprehensive flood database to date, that climate variations dominate the spatial pattern of changes in annual flood peak discharge in China, despite the intense human alterations over the past four decades. Flood trends of human-modified and neighboring nearnatural watersheds are generally similar. Regional flood increases are mainly associated with increasing precipitation due to changes in the East Asian Summer Monsoon, tropical cyclones and the subtropical westerly jet. Regional flood decreases are due to decreased soil moisture in the North China Plain. Our results highlight the need for flood management policies to go beyond local measures and adapt to the effects of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spin angular momentum (SAM) is an important feature for wave systems, prominent in various properties like spin-momentum locking of wave propagations. Here, we study the SAM of gravitational waves in general relativity based on the Noether theorem in classical field theory. We demonstrate gravitational wave spin in various interference cases and evanescent waves, which is manifested as locally rotating metric perturbations, driving particles on geodesic spheroid locally deformed in elliptical trajectories. For non-polarized gravitational wave modes of zero SAM, their superpositions can induce nonzero density of SAM with interfered patterns. The evanescent gravitational wave shows clear SAM, which is also a consequence of wave interference between propagating and transverse evanescent components. The spin-momentum locking relations are clearly present for all different interference cases of wave modes and components based on general relativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Aryl exchange between primary amide and thioether for aryl sulfide synthesis. • Thioether as sulfide source instead of toxic thiols. • Activation of amide through a non-decarbonylative strategy. Herein, a nickel-catalyzed synthesis of aryl sulfide through a formal aryl exchange reaction between aromatic amide and thioether was reported. This work not only realized the activation of non-activated primary amides through an unconventional dehydration strategy, but also provided a practical and facile method for aryl sulfide synthesis without odorous and toxic thiols. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bacterial foraging optimisation (BFO) algorithm is a commonly adopted bio-inspired optimisation algorithm. However, BFO is not a proper choice in coping with continuous global path planning in the context of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). In this paper, a grid partition-based BFO algorithm, named AS-BFO, is proposed to address this issue in which the enhancement is contributed by the involvement of the A* algorithm. The chemotaxis operation is redesigned in AS-BFO. Through repeated simulations, the relative optimal parameter combination of the proposed algorithm is obtained and the most influential parameters are identified by sensitivity analysis. The performance of AS-BFO is evaluated via five size grid maps and the results show that AS-BFO has advantages in USV global path planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding unidirectional and topological wave phenomena requires the unveiling of intrinsic geometry and symmetry for wave dynamics. This is essential yet challenging for the flexible control of near-field evanescent waves, highly desirable in broad practical scenarios ranging from information communication to energy radiation. However, exploitations of near-field waves are limited by a lack of fundamental understanding about inherent near-field symmetry and directional coupling at sub-wavelengths, especially for longitudinal waves. Here, based on the acoustic wave platform, we show the efficient selective couplings enabled by near-field symmetry properties. Based on the inherent symmetry properties of three geometrically orthogonal vectors in near-field acoustics, we successfully realize acoustic Janus, Huygens, spin sources and quadrupole hybrid sources, respectively. Moreover, we experimentally demonstrate fertile symmetry selective directionality of those evanescent modes, supported by two opposite meta-surfaces. The symmetry properties of the near-field acoustic spin angular momenta are revealed by directly measuring local vectorial fields. Our findings advance the understanding of symmetries in near-field physics, supply feasible approaches for directional couplings, and pave the way for promising acoustic devices in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is highly desirable to synthesize various micro/nanostructures of bismuth oxyhalides by facile methods and to further investigate these functional photoactive materials. Herein, we demonstrate a facile route to synthesize five distinct morphologies of BiOI microstructures via the solvothermal method. Notably, based on the morphology study of the intermediate products and the crystal structure analysis of the BiOI microstructures, the mechanism by which water modulates the crystal growth and finally mediates the morphology of BiOI microstructures was proposed. It is demonstrated that water can control the crystal growth, and increasing the amount of water can transform the growth from vertical to the (001) facets to parallel to them. By combining Ostwald ripening crystal reconstruction and self-assembly of nanostructures, the microstructures of BiOI can be precisely controlled. Therefore, the water-mediated strategy not only gives a new route for specific BiOI microstructure preparation but also provides new evidence for further understanding of the crystal growth mechanism of BiOI prepared by the wet-chemical method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first copper‐catalyzed intermolecular [5+2] homodimerization of hydroxy p‐quinone is presented, furnishing bicyclo[3.2.1]octadienone core structures in typically good yields and excellent diastereoselectivities. Applying this synthetic approach enables a concise nine‐step total synthesis of (−)‐perezoperezone from commercially available 3,5‐dimethoxytoluene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first copper‐catalyzed intermolecular [5+2] homodimerization of hydroxy p‐quinone is presented, furnishing bicyclo[3.2.1]octadienone core structures in typically good yields and excellent diastereoselectivities. Applying this synthetic approach enables a concise nine‐step total synthesis of (−)‐perezoperezone from commercially available 3,5‐dimethoxytoluene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

N-phenylmaleimide (N-PMI) and its precursor, (Z)-4-oxo-4-(phenylamino)but-2-enoic acid, were synthesized from aniline and maleic anhydride. Copolymerization between N-phenylmaleimide and styrene was initiated in micropores and outside surface of porous polyvinyl chloride (PVC) resin suspended in aqueous phase. The modified PVC was characterized with Gel Permeation Chromatography, thermal gravimetric analysis and scanning electron microscopy. The result of high performance liquid chromatography shows that the purity of N-PMI reached 97.3%. Thermal gravimetric analysis indicated that the introduction of N-PMI could clearly affect the thermal degradation behavior of PVC, and when PMI was at 6.25% of the PVC mass, the decomposition temperature T0.5 of modified polymer was increased to 314.2°C. The glass transition temperature of modified polymer was increased from 70°C to 80°C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) is a serious complication of hepatectomy and liver transplantation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the protective effects of salvianolic acid-A (Sal-A) against IRI-induced hepatocellular injury.Material and Methods: Forty rats were randomly divided into the following four groups: (1) sham group, (2) IR group, (3) Sal-A(10) group and (4) Sal-A(20) group. After 90 min of ischemia and 6 h of reperfusion, serum alanine aminotransferease (ALT) and apartate aminotransferase (AST) levels were measured; the amounts of malondialdehyde (MDA) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) in the liver tissue were determined; the expression of Bcl-2 and caspase-3 was detected and the severity of apoptosis, inflammation and pathological alterations were evaluated. Also apoptosis and mRNA and protein levels of TLR4 (toll-like receptor 4) were tested.Results: The serum aminotransferases, hepatic MDA concentration, and apoptotic cells in the IR group were significantly higher than in the sham group (p < 0.01), whereas the Sal-A group values were lower than in the IR group (p < 0.05). Compared with the IR group, the Sal-A groups had significantly higher Bcl-2 expression and downregulated cleaved caspase-3 expression in liver tissue. Moreover, increased mRNA and protein levels of TLR4 in IR rats and Sal-A could improve the increased mRNA and protein levels of TLR4.Conclusions: Sal-A had a synergistically protective effect on the liver tissue against IRI that might be due to decreased oxidative stress, inflammation, hepatocellular apoptosis and include, at least in part, the regulation of TLR4. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Interest in spatial fractionation radiotherapy has exponentially increased over the last decade as a significant reduction of healthy tissue toxicity was observed by mini‐beam irradiation. Published studies, however, mostly use rigid mini‐beam collimators dedicated to their exact experimental arrangement such that changing the setup or testing new mini‐beam collimator configurations becomes challenging and expensive. Purpose: In this work, a versatile, low‐cost mini‐beam collimator was designed and manufactured for pre‐clinical applications with X‐ray beams. The mini‐beam collimator enables variability of the full width at half maximum (FWHM), the center‐to‐center distance (ctc), the peak‐to‐valley dose ratio (PVDR), and the source‐to‐collimator distance (SCD). Methods: The mini‐beam collimator is an in‐house development, which was constructed of 10 × 40 mm2 tungsten or brass plates. These metal plates were combined with 3D‐printed plastic plates that can be stacked together in the desired order. A standard X‐ray source was used for the dosimetric characterization of four different configurations of the collimator, including a combination of plastic plates of 0.5, 1, or 2 mm width, assembled with 1 or 2 mm thick metal plates. Irradiations were done at three different SCDs for characterizing the performance of the collimator. For the SCDs closer to the radiation source, the plastic plates were 3D‐printed with a dedicated angle to compensate for the X‐ray beam divergence, making it possible to study ultra‐high dose rates of around 40 Gy/s. All dosimetric quantifications were performed using EBT‐XD films. Additionally, in vitro studies with H460 cells were carried out. Results: Characteristic mini‐beam dose distributions were obtained with the developed collimator using a conventional X‐ray source. With the exchangeable 3D‐printed plates, FWHM and ctc from 0.52 to 2.11 mm, and from 1.77 to 4.61 mm were achieved, with uncertainties ranging from 0.01% to 8.98%, respectively. The FWHM and ctc obtained with the EBT‐XD films are in agreement with the design of each mini‐beam collimator configuration. For dose rates in the order of several Gy/min, the highest PVDR of 10.09 ± 1.08 was achieved with a collimator configuration of 0.5 mm thick plastic plates and 2 mm thick metal plates. Exchanging the tungsten plates with the lower‐density metal brass reduced the PVDR by approximately 50%. Also, increasing the dose rate to ultra‐high dose rates was feasible with the mini‐beam collimator, where a PVDR of 24.26 ± 2.10 was achieved. Finally, it was possible to deliver and quantify mini‐beam dose distribution patterns in vitro. Conclusions: With the developed collimator, we achieved various mini‐beam dose distributions that can be adjusted according to the needs of the user in regards to FWHM, ctc, PVDR and SCD, while accounting for beam divergence. Therefore, the designed mini‐beam collimator may enable low‐cost and versatile pre‐clinical research on mini‐beam irradiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constructing the topological states can serve as a promising approach for robust acoustic wave transports and manipulations. Here, the authors develop a scheme to realize acoustic topological states and adiabatic Thouless pumping in acoustic Floquet resonator systems. The directional acoustic wave can be robustly manipulated and pumped adiabatically from one side to the opposite side due to the non-trivial topological nature. The physical mechanism behind these phenomena can be understood by effective one-dimensional Aubry−André−Harper Hamiltonian, with an additional synthetic dimension originating from Floquet spatially periodic modulation. This Aubry−André−Harper acoustic resonator system can be regarded as a projection from a two-dimensional topological Hofstadter model for the integer quantum Hall effect. The authors' scheme provides a promising method for synthesizing acoustic topological states for efficient acoustic wave manipulations. Introducing the topological mechanism to the control wave will become an alternative method besides the conventional effective acoustic parameter methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flash flooding in the arid/semiarid southwestern United States is frequently associated with convective rainfall during the North American monsoon. In this study, we examine flood-producing storms in central Arizona based on analyses of dense rain gauge observations and stream gauging records as well as North American Regional Reanalysis fields. Our storm catalog consists of 102 storm events during the period of 1988-2014. Synoptic conditions for flood-producing storms are characterized based on principal component analyses. Four dominant synoptic modes are identified, with the first two modes explaining approximately 50% of the variance of the 500-hPa geopotential height. The transitional synoptic pattern from the North American monsoon regime to midlatitude systems is a critical large-scale feature for extreme rainfall and flooding in central Arizona. Contrasting spatial rainfall organizations and storm environment under the four synoptic modes highlights the role of interactions among synoptic conditions, mesoscale processes, and complex terrains in determining space-time variability of convective activities and flash flood hazards in central Arizona. We characterize structure and evolution properties of flood-producing storms based on storm tracking algorithms and 3D radar reflectivity. Fast-moving storm elements can be important ingredients for flash floods in the arid/semiarid southwestern United States. Contrasting storm properties for cloudburst storms highlight the wide spectrum of convective intensities for extreme rain rates in the arid/semiarid southwestern United States and exhibit comparable vertical structures to their counterparts in the eastern United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The relationship between classification complexity and hyper-parameter optimization. • The choice of the initial set of hyper-parameters for a random classification task. • The search of similar classification complexity data distribution can be widely used. • The proposed method is comparable with some other state-of-the-art methods. Achieving the best performance with many machine learning methods depends critically on model hyper-parameter optimization. However, this optimization which requires strong expertise is often a "black magic" especially on deep learning models. Currently, even some widely used classic methods such as random search, grid search and manual search have obtained success to some extent, whose evaluation on hyper-parameter optimization problems is still computationally expensive and unpractical. They have to face the same challenge about how to choose the initial set of trials from random hyper-parameter permutation and combination. In this paper, to develop these methods, we present a simple and efficient framework for improving the efficiency and accuracy of hyper-parameter optimization by combining classification complexity and hyper-parameter optimization. Through this framework, it can quickly choose an initial set of hyper-parameters for a new coming classification task, thus reducing the number of trials in terms of hyper-parameter space. Results of six real-world datasets on three representative deep learning models demonstrate that the initial hyper-parameters set which is provided by our framework can make good performance, while plays a significant and efficient role on hyper-parameter optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The photonics topological state plays an important role in recent optical physics and has led to devices with robust properties. However, the design of optical structures with the target topological states is a challenge for current research. Here, we propose an approach to achieve this goal by exploiting machine learning technologies. In our work, we focus on Zak phases, which are the topological properties of one-dimensional photonics crystals. After learning the principle between the geometrical parameters and the Zak phases, the neural network can obtain the appropriate structures of photonics crystals by applying the objective Zak phase properties. Our work would give more insights into the application of machine learning on the inverse design of the complex material properties and could be extended to other fields, i.e., advanced phononics devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. To investigate the expression of kinesin family member 20A (KIF20A) in bladder cancer, the effect of KIF20A on the proliferation and metastasis of bladder cancer cells, and the effect of KIF20A expression on the prognosis of bladder cancer patients. Methods. Bladder cancer tissue and its adjacent tissues were collected from tumour patients. The mRNA and protein expression levels of KIF20A in the tissue samples were detected by qRT-PCR and western blot. Immunohistochemical (IHC) staining was used to identify the expression and distribution of KIF20A proteins in the tissue samples. The relationship between the KIF20A expression and the clinical pathology of bladder cancer was analysed. The effect of the differential expression of KIF20A on the prognosis of patients with bladder cancer was analysed by the TCGA database. The plasmid was transfected into the bladder cell lines T24 and 5637 to construct two stable cell lines with knocked down KIF20A. The effect of KIF20A expression on the proliferation and invasion of T24 and 5637 bladder cells was explored in vitro using the abovementioned stable cell lines. The effect of the KIF20A expression on the proliferation of bladder cancer cells was evaluated by a mouse xenograft model. Results. The expression of KIF20A was significantly higher in the bladder cancer tissues than in the adjacent control tissues. The expression of KIF20A was significantly associated with the degree of pathological differentiation of bladder cancer. Patients with a higher expression of KIF20A had a higher tumour grade and a more advanced stage. The mean survival of patients with a high KIF20A expression was significantly lower than the mean survival of patients with a low KIF20A expression. The in vitro experiments demonstrated that the knockdown of KIF20A significantly inhibited T24 and 5637 cell proliferation and invasion. The in vivo experiments showed that the knockdown of KIF20A significantly inhibited the proliferation of the bladder tumours. Conclusion. KIF20A promotes the proliferation and metastasis of bladder cancer cells. Bladder cancer patients with a high KIF20A expression have a worse tumour differentiation and a poor prognosis. KIF20A may become an independent factor that affects the prognosis of bladder cancer patients and a therapeutic target for bladder cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Both features and attributes are projected into orthogonal space. • Binary codes of different categories are orthogonal to each other. • All the Hamming distance of different classes are equal to half code length. • Both linear and deep models are implemented to show the performance. Abstract Hashing has been widely used in large-scale image retrieval. Supervised information such as semantic similarity and class label, and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) has greatly improved the quality of hash codes and hash functions. However, due to the explosive growth of web data, existing hashing methods cannot well perform on emerging images of new classes. In this paper, we propose a novel hashing method based on orthogonal projection of both image and semantic attribute, which constrains the generated binary codes in orthogonal space should be orthogonal with each other when they belong to different classes, otherwise be same. This constraint guarantees that the generated hash codes from different categories have equal Hamming distance, which also makes the space more discriminative within limited code length. To improve the performance, we also extend our method with a deep model. Experiments of both our linear and deep model on three popular datasets show that our method can achieve competitive results, specially, the deep model can outperform all the listed state-of-the-art approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • A novel VSAR algorithm that can simultaneously remove the ambiguity between visual and semantic information. • Extensive evaluations suggest the important role of visual-semantic ambiguity to the performance improvement. • A unified framework that can deal with both category-level and instance-level zero-shot learning tasks. Abstract Zero-Shot Hashing (ZSH) aims to learn compact binary codes that can preserve semantic contents of the images from unseen categories. Conventional approaches project visual features to a semantic space that is shared by both seen and unseen categories. However, we observe that such a one-way paradigm suffers from the visual-semantic ambiguity problem. Namely, the semantic concepts (e.g. attributes) cannot explicitly correspond to visual patterns, and vice versa. Such a problem can lead to a huge variance in the visual features for each attribute. In this paper, we investigate how to remove such semantic ambiguity based on the observed visual appearances. In particular, we propose (1) a novel latent attribute space to mitigate the gap between visual appearances and semantic expressions; (2) a dual-graph regularised embedding algorithm called V isual- S emantic A mbiguity R emoval (VSAR) that can simultaneously extract the shared components between visual and semantic information and mutually align the data distribution based on the intrinsic local structures of both spaces; (3) a new zero-shot hashing framework that can deal with both instance-level and category-level tasks. We validate our method on four popular benchmarks. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our proposed approach significantly performs the state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Study Design: Psychometric test of the cross-cultural adaptation the Japanese Orthopaedic Association Back Pain Evaluation Questionnaire (JOABPEQ) in low back pain (LBP) patients.Objective: To investigate the agreement, responsiveness, and minimal important change (MIC) of the simplified Chinese version of the JOABPEQ in LBP patients.Summary Of Background Data: The factor structure, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, validity, floor and ceiling effect of simplified Chinese JOABPEQ have been tested, while the agreement, responsiveness, and MIC were required.Methods: The agreement, responsiveness, and MIC of the simplified Chinese version were assessed by completing the Chinese JOABPEQ twice. Agreement was tested with Bland-Altman plot. Responsiveness was operationalized using receiver operating characteristic analyses. The anchor-based method was used to calculate MIC.Results: One hundred sixty-two of 184 patients returned to finish the booklet twice were available for analysis (response rate: 88.0%). While the responsiveness, the area under the curves of each subscale were ranged from 0.746 to 0.875, which meant a good responsiveness. While the MIC (MIC%) of simplified Chinese JOABPEQ was 19.28 (44.98%) for Q1 Low back pain, 15.20 (24.13%) for Q2 Lumbar function, 15.79 (22.76%) for Q3 Walking ability, 9.58 (19.86%) for Q4 Social life function, 7.33 (17.28%) for Q5 Mental health. While compared with the MIC, only the Q3 Walking ability had a positive rating for agreement in the Bland-Altman plot.Conclusion: The simplified Chinese JOABPEQ has positive agreement of Q3 Walk ability and acceptable to excellent responsiveness of all the subscales. The MICs for subscales of the simplified Chinese JOABPEQ ranged from 7.33 to 19.28 points.Level Of Evidence: 3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sufficient training examples are the fundamental requirement for most of the learning tasks. However, collecting well-labelled training examples is costly. Inspired by Zero-shot Learning (ZSL) that can make use of visual attributes or natural language semantics as an intermediate level clue to associate low-level features with high-level classes, in a novel extension of this idea, we aim to synthesise training data for novel classes using only semantic attributes. Despite the simplicity of this idea, there are several challenges. First, how to prevent the synthesised data from over-fitting to training classes? Second, how to guarantee the synthesised data is discriminative for ZSL tasks? Third, we observe that only a few dimensions of the learnt features gain high variances whereas most of the remaining dimensions are not informative. Thus, the question is how to make the concentrated information diffuse to most of the dimensions of synthesised data. To address the above issues, we propose a novel embedding algorithm named Unseen Visual Data Synthesis (UVDS) that projects semantic features to the high-dimensional visual feature space. Two main techniques are introduced in our proposed algorithm. (1) We introduce a latent embedding space which aims to reconcile the structural difference between the visual and semantic spaces, meanwhile preserve the local structure. (2) We propose a novel Diffusion Regularisation (DR) that explicitly forces the variances to diffuse over most dimensions of the synthesised data. By an orthogonal rotation (more precisely, an orthogonal transformation), DR can remove the redundant correlated attributes and further alleviate the over-fitting problem. On four benchmark datasets, we demonstrate the benefit of using synthesised unseen data for zero-shot learning. Extensive experimental results suggest that our proposed approach significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Aims: miR-146a has recently been shown to promote cell proliferation, migration, and invasion in many cancers, but the role of miR-146a in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) remains unclear. Methods: Reverse transcription quantitative PCR (RTqPCR) was performed to investigate the mRNA expression of miR-146a and CADM2 in ccRCC tissues. The luciferase reporter assay, Western blotting, and ChIP assay were carried out to explore the promoter and the transcription factor of miR-146a. Moreover, the effect of miR-146a and CADM2 on ccRCC cells was explored using methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium, colony formation, and migration and invasion assays. The luciferase reporter assay, RT-qPCR, western blotting, and immunofluorescence assay were carried out to investigate whether CADM2 is directly regulated by miR-146a. A tumor xenograft model and immunohistochemical staining were used to examine the carcinogenic effect of miR-146a and CADM2 in vivo. Results: miR-146a has been shown to promote cell proliferation, migration, and invasion. Here, we found that miR-146a is highly expressed in ccRCC tissues, whereas CADM2 is down-regulated. Hypoxia can induce the expression of miR-146a by stimulating its promoter. In addition, we demonstrated that miR-146a promoted and CADM2 inhibited proliferation, migration, and invasion of ccRCC cells. The 3' untranslated region (UTR) luciferase reporter assay identified that miR-146a targeted the 3' UTR of CADM2 and negatively regulated its expression. Ectopic expression of CADM2 counteracted the promoting effect of miR-146a on cell proliferation, migration, invasion, and the epithelial-mesenchymal transition process. Conclusion: Together, the finding of down-regulation of CADM2 by miR-146a can provide new insights into ccRCC pathogenesis and might contribute to the development of novel therapeutic strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many techniques have been applied for quality inspection but none is currently suitable for on-line bond quality inspection of uncured adhesive joined polymeric composites. A newly nondestructive evaluation (NDE) technique based on the interaction between ultrasonic oscillation and mediums (i.e., workpieces and adhesive) for inspecting the quality of uncured adhesive joined carbon fiber/nylon six composites has been developed. Ultrasonic oscillation was applied to adhesively joined carbon fiber/nylon six composites with various uncured bond discrepancies under a given static force. The interaction between ultrasonic oscillation and mediums led to the formation of internal friction heat, which softened the mediums and resulted in downward movement of horn. The horn displacements of workpieces with various bond discrepancies (i.e., lack of adhesive and air gap) were measured and compared with that of sound adhesively joined joint. Test results revealed that the horn displacement was closely correlated with volume of bond discrepancy (i.e., lack of adhesive and air gap), and therefore could be used to differentiate quantitatively the differences between a sound bond and a discrepant bond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Variovorax is a metabolically diverse genus of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) that engages in mutually beneficial interactions between plants and microbes. Unlike most PGPR, Variovorax cannot synthesize the phytohormone indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) via tryptophan. However, we found that Variovorax boronicumulans strain CGMCC 4969 can produce IAA using indole-3-acetonitrile (IAN) as the precursor. Thus, in the present study, the IAA synthesis mechanism of V. boronicumulans CGMCC 4969 was investigated. V. boronicumulans CGMCC 4969 metabolized IAN to IAA through both a nitrilase-dependent pathway and a nitrile hydratase (NHase) and amidase-dependent pathway. Cobalt enhanced the metabolic flux via the NHase/amidase, by which IAN was rapidly converted to indole-3-acetamide (IAM) and in turn to IAA. IAN stimulated metabolic flux via the nitrilase, by which IAN was rapidly converted to IAA. Subsequently, the IAA was degraded. V. boronicumulans CGMCC 4969 can use IAN as the sole carbon and nitrogen source for growth. Genome sequencing confirmed the IAA synthesis pathways. Gene cloning and overexpression in Escherichia coli indicated that NitA has nitrilase activity and IamA has amidase activity to respectively transform IAN and IAM to IAA. Interestingly, NitA showed a close genetic relationship with the nitrilase of the phytopathogen Pseudomonas syringae. Quantitative PCR analysis indicated that the NHase/amidase system is constitutively expressed, whereas the nitrilase is inducible. The present study helps our understanding of the versatile functions of Variovorax nitrile-converting enzymes that mediate IAA synthesis and the interactions between plants and these bacteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autotaxin (ATX), also known as ENPP2, is the key enzyme in lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) production. LPA acts on its receptors on the cell membrane to promote cell proliferation and migration, and thus, the ATX-LPA axis plays a critical role in tumorigenesis. Clinical data analysis indicated that in colon cancer, there is a strong negative correlation between the expression of ATX and EZH2, the enzymatic catalytic subunit of polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2). Here, we demonstrated that ATX expression was epigenetically silenced by PRC2, which was recruited by MTF2 and catalyzed H3K27me3 modification in the ATX promoter region. EZH2 inhibition is a promising strategy for cancer treatment, and ATX expression is induced in colon cancer cells by EZH2 inhibitors. With both EZH2 and ATX as targets, their combined inhibition exerted synergistic antitumor effects on colon cancer cells. In addition, LPA receptor 2 (LPA2) deficiency significantly enhanced the sensitivity to EZH2 inhibitors in colon cancer cells. In summary, our study identified ATX as a novel PRC2 target gene and found that cotargeting EZH2 and the ATX-LPA-LPA2 axis may be a potential combination therapy strategy for colon cancer. • There is a strong negative correlation between the expression of ATX and EZH2 in colon cancer. • ATX expression is epigenetically silenced by EZH2/PRC2 in colon cancer cells. • ATX expression is induced in colon cancer cells by EZH2 inhibition. • Combined inhibition of EZH2 and the ATX-LPA-LPA receptor 2 axis exerts synergistic antitumor effects on colon cancer cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visible-light-driven (VLD) BiOI/BiOBr heterostructure films with hierarchical microstructure have been firstly fabricated on 304 stainless steel wire mesh (304SSWM) substrates through a novel ion-exchange method using the BiOI film as precursor. The concentration of tetrabutylammonium bromide (TBAB) is the key factor to control the composition and microstructure of BiOI/BiOBr films. Physical, chemical, and optical properties of BiOI/BiOBr heterostructure films were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, high resolution transmittance electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, UV–vis diffuse reflectance absorption, and fluorescence spectrophotometer, respectively. The VLD photocatalytic ability of the BiOI/BiOBr heterostructure film coated 304SSWM was studied by degrading rhodamine B and pIRES2-EGFP plasmid as target water organic pollutants and pathogenic bacteria genetic materials. The BiOI/BiOBr heterostructure film coated 304SSWM fabricated with 50 mM TBAB has excellent photocatalytic activity, stability, and reusability in the cycled experiments. The reasons for these unique features can be ascribed to the formation of heterojuction structure and the open framework structure of the 304SSWM. The current work can provide new strategies to construct novel VLD photoactive functional films for water purification and disinfection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Aims: In the current study, we performed an integrated analysis of genomewide methylation and gene expression data to find novel prognostic genes for lower-grade gliomas (LGGs). Methods: First, TCGA methylation data were used to identify prognostic genes associated with promoter methylation. Second, candidate genes that were stably regulated by promoter methylation were explored. Third, Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was used to generate a prognostic signature, and the signature genes were used to construct a survival risk score system. Results: Three genes (EMP3, GSX2 and EMILIN3) were selected as signature genes. These three signature genes were used to construct a survival risk score system. The high-risk group exhibited significantly worse overall survival (OS) and relapsefree survival (RFS) as compared to the low-risk group in the TCGA dataset. The association of the three-gene prognostic signature with patient' survival was then validated using the CGGA dataset. Moreover, Kaplan-Meier plots showed that the three-gene prognostic signature risk remarkably stratified grade II and grade III patients in terms of both OS and RFS in the TCGA cohort. There was also a significant difference between the low- and high-risk groups in IDH wild-type glioma patients, indicating that the three-gene signature may be able to help in predicting prognosis for patients with IDH wild-type gliomas. Conclusion: We identified and validated a three-gene (EMP3, GSX2 and EMILIN3) prognostic signature in LGGs by integrating multidimensional genomic data from the TCGA and CGGA datasets, which may help in fine-tuning the current histology-based tumors classification system and providing better stratification for future clinical trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]