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BackgroundMetagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) technology has been central in detecting infectious diseases and helping to simultaneously reveal the complex interplay between invaders and their hosts immune response characteristics. However, it needs to be rigorously assessed for clinical utility. The present study is the first to evaluate the clinical characteristics of the host DNA-removed mNGS technology for detecting SARS-CoV-2, revealing host local immune signaling and assisting genomic epidemiology.Methods46 swab specimens collected from COVID-19 patients were assayed by two approved commercial RT-qPCR kits and mNGS. The evolutionary tree of SARS-CoV-2 was plotted using FigTree directly from one sample. The workflow of removing the host and retaining the host was compared to investigate the influence of host DNA removal on the performances of mNGS. Functional enrichment analysis of DEGs and xCell score were used to explore the characteristics of host local immune signaling.ResultsThe detection rate of mNGS achieved 92.9% (26/28) for 28 samples with a Ct value ≤ 35 and 81.1% (30/37) for all 46 samples. The genome coverage of SARS-CoV-2 could reach up to 98.9% when the Ct value is about 20 in swab samples. Removing the host could enhance the sensitivity of mNGS for detecting SARS-CoV-2 from the swab sample but does not affect the species abundance of microbes RNA. Improving the sequencing depth did not show a positive effect on improving the detection sensitivity of SARS-CoV-2. Cell type enrichment scores found multiple immune cell types were differentially expressed between patients with high and low viral load.ConclusionsThe host DNA-removed mNGS has great potential utility and superior performance on comprehensive identification of SARS-CoV-2 and rapid traceability, revealing the microbiome’s transcriptional profiles and host immune responses.

Introduction: Cunninghamella elegans infections cause rare and severe mucormycosis. Bordetella bronchiseptica and Pneumocystis jirovecii relate to pneumonia. They are all clinically uncommon pathogens and no reports of co-infections have been reported. Case presentation: Here we present a case of a 67-year-old male patient who initially presented with fever, chills, and mild cough. B. bronchiseptica, P. jirovecii, Aspergillus fumigatus, and human alphaherpesvirus 1 (HSV1) were detected by clinical metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) of his bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BLAF). Despite receiving anti-infective treatment, the patient rapidly developed respiratory failure and was transferred to the intensive care unit. Subsequent mNGS testing further revealed the presence of C. elegans, indicating that different pathogens played dominant roles at various stages of the disease progression. The routine culture also identified several of the above pathogens, but the results were reported much later than those of mNGS. Eventually, imaging findings and symptoms of the patient improved with comprehensive antibiotic coverage, and he was transferred to a lower-level hospital for rehabilitation treatment. Conclusions: This is the first detailed report of the combined infection of B. bronchiseptica, P. jirovecii, and C. elegans. During the treatment process, we also observed rare and unusual neurological side effects: visual and auditory hallucinations, restlessness, and aphasia. Also, the case indicates that traditional methods are insufficient for the etiological diagnosis needs of critical and severe patient populations, and timely use of mNGS should be recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scour funnels formed before bottom orifices are of vital importance regarding intaking water with low-concentration and small-sized sediment to protect the water turbine. Via flume experiments, this work investigates the effect of a bottom-mounted cuboid pile on the formation of a scour funnel upstream of a bottom orifice. A phenomenon we call as "reverse sediment collapse" is observed for the first time, which causes a rapid increase in the scour depth upstream of the orifice. Instantaneous velocity measurements show that the turbulence kinetic energy near the cuboid pile is significantly higher compared with that in a case without a pile or with a cylinder under a same waterhead condition, indicating that large-scale vortex motions are enhanced due to the use of a cuboid pile. The equilibrium scour funnel depth upstream of the orifice is found to be increased by as much as 124.6% when a cuboid pile exists compared with that in a case without a pile under a same waterhead condition. The scour process is highly accelerated when a cuboid pile exists, and it is found that the time required when a cuboid pile exists to reach for the first time the same equilibrium scour depth without a pile is dramatically reduced by 97.2%–99.7%. A formula was established to calculate the equilibrium scour depth. The findings provide guidance for future optimization of the form and placement of structures upstream of an orifice to efficiently achieve a larger-sized scour funnel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new aromatic polyketide, alternaphenol B2 (1), and four known compounds (2–5) were isolated from the coral-derived fungus Parengyodontium album SCSIO SX7W11. Their structures were elucidated by high-resolution mass spectrometry, 1D and 2D NMR spectroscopy and comparison with reported literatures. Compounds 1 and 2 exhibited selective inhibitory activity against isocitrate dehydrogenase mutant R132H (IDH1m), with IC50 values of 41.9 and 27.7 μM, respectively. Our findings thus provide a fresh incentive for investigation on IDH1m inhibitors as lead compounds for cancer treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Achieving high classification accuracy under a limited number of training samples remains a key challenge in hyperspectral image (HSI) classification. To address this issue, we propose a random replacement data augmentation method. The proposed method randomly selects a rectangular spatial region in HSI, and the pixels in the selected region are replaced with data from different spectral dimensions randomly to generate new sample, increasing the diversity of training samples effectively. In addition, we also propose an improved deep metric learning-based relation network, which improves model's ability to extract deep features and fully utilizes spatial information to establish relationships between feature maps and categories effectively. Experiments have shown that the proposed method can achieve more competitive results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breeding is an effective method for the varietal development of pineapple. However, due to open pollination, it is necessary to conduct authentic identification of the hybrid offspring. In this study, we identified the authenticity of offspring and analyzed the genetic diversity within the offspring F1 hybrids resulting from crosses between 'Josapine' and 'MD2' by single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. From the resequencing data, 26 homozygous loci that differentiate between the parents have been identified. Then, genotyping was performed on both the parents and 36 offspring to select SNP markers that are suitable for authentic identification. The genotyping results revealed that 2 sets of SNP primers, namely SNP4010 and SNP22550, successfully identified 395 authentic hybrids out of 451 hybrid offspring. We randomly selected two true hybrids and four pseudohybrids for sequencing validation, and the results have shown that two true hybrids had double peaks with A/G, while pseudohybrids had single peaks with base A or G. Further study showed that the identification based on SNP molecular markers remained consistent with the morphological identification results in the field, with a true hybridization rate of 87.58%. K-means clustering and UPGMA tree analysis revealed that the hybrid offspring could be categorized into two groups. Among them, 68.5% of offspring aggregated with MD2, while 31.95% were grouped with Josapine. The successful application of SNP marker to identify pineapple F1 hybrid populations provides a theoretical foundation and practical reference for the future development of rapid SNP marker-based methods for pineapple hybrid authenticity and purity testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predicting the remaining useful life (RUL) of an engine is one of the key tasks of Prognostics and health management (PHM). Modern mechanical equipment typically operates in complex operating conditions and fault modes, leading to dispersed distribution of sensor data and challenges for feature extraction. To improve the accuracy of predicting the RUL under the complex scenarios, this paper proposes a multi‐scale convolutional network (CNN) and bidirectional gated recurrent unit (MSC‐BiGRU) mode under a dual path framework with temporal attention. Specifically, the multi‐scale CNN in the first path is to learn complex features, and Swish Activation function is used to improve the prediction ability of the network; the bidirectional gated recurrent unit (BiGRU) in the second path can handle both forward and backward time series, and adaptively capture the importance of outputs at different times using temporal attention, enhancing the model's feature extraction ability in the temporal dimension. A feature fusion mechanism is developed to connect two paths in parallel, overcoming the overfitting and high computational complexity in deep complex models. We verify the effectiveness of the proposed method using a simulated turbofan engine dataset, especially on datasets FD002 and FD004 under complex operating conditions and fault modes, the RMSE values were reduced by 17.37% and 9.97%, respectively, compared to the BiGRU‐TSAM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To assess the positive rate of 11 respiratory pathogens in 2023, providing a comprehensive summary and analysis of the respiratory infection patterns after COVID‐19 pandemic. The study comprised 7544 inpatients suspected of respiratory infections who underwent respiratory pathogen multiplex polymerase chain reaction tests from July 2022 to December 31, 2023. We analyzed the positive rate of 11 pathogens over 18 months and the characterization of infection patterns among different age groups and immune states. Among 7544 patients (age range 4 months to 104 years, 44.99% female), the incidence of infected by at least one of the 11 pathogens was 26.07%. Children (55.18%, p < 0.05) experienced a significantly higher infection probability than adults (20.88%) and old (20.66%). Influenza A virus (8.63%), Mycoplasma pneumoniae (5.47%), and human rhinovirus (5.12%) were the most common pathogens. In children, M. pneumoniae (35.96%) replaced the predominant role of human respiratory syncytial virus (HRSV) (5.91%) in the pathogen spectrum. Age, immunosuppressed state, and respiratory chronic conditions were associated with a significantly higher risk of mixed infection. Immunosuppressed patients were more vulnerable to human coronavirus (4.64% vs. 1.65%, p < 0.05), human parainfluenza virus (3.46% vs. 1.69%, p < 0.05), and HRSV (2.27% vs. 0.55%, p < 0.05). Patterns in respiratory infections changed following regional epidemic control measures and the COVID‐19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing bifunctional electrocatalysts for catalyzing water oxidation and urea oxidation reactions is of vital importance for alleviating the energy crisis and environmental damage, but it is still formidably challenging. Here, the potential of a heterostructure of NiMoO 4 nanorods conformally covered by metal-organic framework (MOF) derived Co(OH) 2 nanosheets is demonstrated. Under the assistance of a series of advanced characterizations and electrochemical measurements, the rich heterointerfaces in the NiMoO 4 –Co(OH) 2 are found to be beneficial for promoting the electrocatalytic performance. As a bifunctional catalyst for the electrooxidation of water and urea, the optimized NiMoO 4 –Co(OH) 2 -100 demonstrates higher catalytic activity, kinetics and durability than individual NiMoO 4 and Co(OH) 2. Specifically, an overpotential as low as 285 mV can drive 10 mA cm−2 for oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and a voltage of 1.32 V is demanded for achieving 10 mA cm−2 towards urea oxidation reaction (UOR), significantly lower than the benchmarked catalysts. Presented outcomes can greatly contribute to the industrial application of urea-containing wastewater purifying, by offering a deep understanding on the interface engineering of nanocatalysts. • A heterostructure of NiMoO 4 nanorods conformally covered by Co(OH) 2 nanosheets is synthesized. • Rich heterointerfaces are conducive to electrocatalytic OER and UOR. • The optimized NiMoO 4 –Co(OH) 2 can display satisfied OER (285 mV@10 mA cm−2) and UOR (1.32 V@10 mA cm−2) activity. • Efficient electron transfer is also responsible for the enhanced catalytic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]