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The deterioration of the quality of raw liquor caused by the low content of ethyl hexanoate in Nongxiangxing baijiu has become a pervasive problem in the baijiu industry. Therefore, this study attempted to increase the synthesis of ethyl hexanoate by microorganisms with high esterase activity to increase Zaopei fermentation. The results showed that biofortification was a feasible and important way to improve the quality of the raw liquor and increase the ethyl hexanoate content. Adding Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus epidermidis, and Millerozyma farinosa for biofortified fermentation disturbed the microbial community structure of Zaopei and increased the abundance of Wickerhamomyces, Saccharomyces, and Thermoascus. The contents of ethyl hexanoate, ethyl valerate, ethyl caprylate, and ethyl heptanoate also increased noticeably in baijiu. The results of E‐nose and sensory analysis tested and verified that the baijiu in the fortified group had better flavor characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transcription factor forkhead box protein O1 (FoxO1) is closely related to the occurrence and development of ovarian cancer (OC), however its role and molecular mechanisms remain unclear. Herein, we found that FoxO1 was highly expressed in clinical samples of OC patients and was significantly correlated with poor prognosis. FoxO1 knockdown inhibited the proliferation of OC cells in vitro and in vivo. ChIP‐seq combined with GEPIA2 and Kaplan–Meier database analysis showed that structural maintenance of chromosome 4 (SMC4) is a downstream target of FoxO1, and FoxO1 promotes SMC4 transcription by binding to its −1400/−1390 bp promoter. The high expression of SMC4 significantly blocked the tumor inhibition effect of FoxO1 knockdown. Furtherly, FoxO1 increased SMC4 mRNA abundance by transcriptionally activating methyltransferase‐like 14 (METTL14) and increasing SMC4 m6A methylation on its coding sequence region. The Cancer Genome Atlas dataset analysis confirmed a significant positive correlation between FoxO1, SMC4, and METTL14 expression in OC. In summary, this study revealed the molecular mechanisms of FoxO1 regulating SMC4 and established a clinical link between the expression of FoxO1/METTL14/SMC4 in the occurrence of OC, thus providing a potential diagnostic target and therapeutic strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suppressing non‐radiative recombination via passivating surface defects of perovskite films has demonstrated an excellent strategy for high‐performance perovskite solar cells (PSCs). However, it is still hard to realize both high open‐circuit voltage (Voc) of >1.2 V and high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of >22%, because the optimized bandgap of perovskite films is less than 1.60 eV for efficient light harvesting and Voc deficit is generally unavoidable due to carriers recombination. Here, the surface of the perovskite film is treated with a series of phenylhydroxylammonium halide salts and it is found that all of them can remarkably prolong the carrier lifetime owing to their excellent capability of surface defects passivation. The best PSC with phenylbutylammonium bromide treatment realizes a PCE of 22.67% with a Voc of 1.216 V, corresponding to a small Voc deficit of ≈344 mV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have been widely investigated for possible application in field‐effect transistors and optoelectronic devices. However, due to the wide band gap of most TMDs, photoresponse to infrared wavelength is still a big challenge. Here, a lateral molybdenum disulfide (MoS2)‐on‐metal Schottky photodetector operating in internal photoemission mode for near‐infrared wavelength with high responsivity is reported. With moderate Schottky barrier height, a low dark current of 0.12 nA at −0.5 V and a remarkable rectification ratio of 103 at ±0.8 V are realized in the MoS2‐on‐Au Schottky photodetector. The maximum responsivity of 1.9 A W−1 at −1 V is achieved at 1310 nm due to the photoemission from the underlayering Au electrode, which absorbs most of the incident light through the transparent MoS2 layers, and the generated photocurrent gain in MoS2 layers. Furthermore, the MoS2 Schottky photodetectors are self‐powered. The high responsivity of 0.68 A W−1 and the excellent specific detectivity of 1.89 × 1012 Jones at 1310 nm are obtained under 0 V. The excellent performance demonstrates that internal photoemission mechanism can be well applied in 2D material Schottky photodetectors for infrared wavelengths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trap-related phenomena in the electrical performance of back-gated mechanical exfoliated MoS2 field-effect transistors are investigated in terms of the super linear increase in the drain current under positive gate bias and the shift of transfer curves with gate voltage stress. The super linear increase in drain current is only observed for the MoS2 field-effect transistors in the electron accumulation regime under positive gate bias, which can be attributed to a trap-assisted tunneling effect with S vacancies at the contact interface between metal Ti and MoS2. After thermal annealing of the devices in vacuum at 300 °C for 2 h, the almost complete metallization of Ti contacting with the MoS2 layer leads to the variation of the drain current relationship with drain voltage from a super linear to a linear increase, thus screening the efficacy of the mechanism of defect level assisted electron tunneling. The shift of transfer curves with gate voltage stress (denoted as hysteresis) is attributed to the defects near the interface between MoS2 and SiO2, which is slightly impacted by thermal annealing. The hump effect caused by parasitic transistors is also observed in back-gated mechanical exfoliated MoS2 field-effect transistors. These results further enrich the knowledge of the complex electrical characteristics of MoS2 field-effect transistors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adding a small amount of CsI into mixed cation‐halide perovskite film via a one‐step method has been demonstrated as an excellent strategy for high‐performance perovskite solar cells (PSCs). However, the one‐step method generally relies on an antisolvent washing process, which is hard to control and not suitable for fabricating large‐area devices. Here, CsF is employed and Cs is incorporated into perovskite film via a two‐step method. It is revealed that CsF can effectively diffuse into the PbI2 seed film, and drastically enhances perovskite crystallization, leading to high‐quality Cs‐doped perovskite film with a very long photoluminescence carrier lifetime (1413 ns), remarkable light stability, thermal stability, and humidity stability. The fabricated PSCs show power conversion efficiency (PCE) of over 21%, and they are highly thermally stable: in the aging test at 60 °C for 300 h, 96% of the original PCE remains. The CsF incorporation process provides a new avenue for stable high‐performance PSCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transcription factor forkhead box protein O1 (FoxO1) is closely related to the occurrence and development of ovarian cancer (OC), however its role and molecular mechanisms remain unclear. Herein, we found that FoxO1 was highly expressed in clinical samples of OC patients and was significantly correlated with poor prognosis. FoxO1 knockdown inhibited the proliferation of OC cells in vitro and in vivo. ChIP-seq combined with GEPIA2 and Kaplan-Meier database analysis showed that structural maintenance of chromosome 4 (SMC4) is a downstream target of FoxO1, and FoxO1 promotes SMC4 transcription by binding to its -1400/-1390 bp promoter. The high expression of SMC4 significantly blocked the tumor inhibition effect of FoxO1 knockdown. Furtherly, FoxO1 increased SMC4 mRNA abundance by transcriptionally activating methyltransferase-like 14 (METTL14) and increasing SMC4 m 6 A methylation on its coding sequence region. The Cancer Genome Atlas dataset analysis confirmed a significant positive correlation between FoxO1, SMC4, and METTL14 expression in OC. In summary, this study revealed the molecular mechanisms of FoxO1 regulating SMC4 and established a clinical link between the expression of FoxO1/METTL14/SMC4 in the occurrence of OC, thus providing a potential diagnostic target and therapeutic strategy., (© 2024 The Authors. Cancer Science published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Japanese Cancer Association.)

Background: Breast cancer is now the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women worldwide. Radiotherapy is an important part of the treatment for breast cancer, while setting proper number of fields dramatically affects the benefits one can receive. Machine learning and radiomics have been widely investigated in the management of breast cancer. This study aims to provide models to predict the best number of fields based on machine learning and improve the prediction performance by adding clinical factors., Methods: Two-hundred forty-two breast cancer patients were retrospectively enrolled for this study, all of whom received postoperative intensity modulated radiation therapy. The patients were randomized into a training set and a validation set at a ratio of 7:3. Radiomics shape features were extracted for eight machine learning algorithms to predict the number of fields. Univariate and multivariable logistic regression were implemented to screen clinical factors. A combined model of rad-score and clinical factors were finally constructed. The area under receiver operating characteristic curve, precision, recall, F1 measure and accuracy were used to evaluate the model., Results: Random Forest outperformed from eight machine learning algorithms while predicting the number of fields. Prediction performance of the radiomics model was better than the clinical model, while the predictive nomogram combining the rad-score and clinical factors performed the best., Conclusions: The model combining rad-score and clinical factors performed the best. Nomograms constructed from the combined models can be of reliable references for medical dosimetrists., (© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Association of Physicists in Medicine.)