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COVID-19 booster dose vaccination has been crucial in ensuring protection against COVID-19 including recently predominant Omicron variants. Because vaccines against newer SARS-CoV- 2 variants are likely to be recommended in future, it will be valuable to understand past booster dose uptake among different demographic groups. Using U.S. vaccination data, this study examined intervals between primary series completion and receipt of first booster dose (monovalent or bivalent) during August 2021 - October 2022 among persons ≥12 years of age who had completed a COVID-19 vaccine primary series by October 2021. Sub-populations who were late booster recipients (received a booster dose ≥12 months after the primary series) or received no booster dose included persons <35 years old, Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine primary dose recipients, persons in certain racial and ethnic groups, and persons living in rural and more socially vulnerable areas, and in the South region of the United States; these groups may benefit the most from public health outreach efforts to achieve timely COVID-19 vaccination completion in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: At present, there is a preliminary clinical consensus that prone position ventilation (PPV) is beneficial to the treatment of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and further research on the details of treatment and patients' benefits will help to assess its effectiveness and safety. Aim: To evaluate the timing, efficacy, and safety of different mechanical ventilation positions (MVP) in treating ARDS. Study Design: The results of clinical trials were directly or indirectly compared by network meta‐analysis to compare the effects of different MVP. Two authors independently searched the papers published in PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, China Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), China Biomedical Discs (CBM), WanFang, and VIP database from January 2000 to August 2022. The outcome indicators were oxygenation index, mechanical ventilation time, ICU hospitalization time, in‐hospital mortality, and incidence of adverse events. Two authors independently screened the literature, evaluated the quality of the studies, and completed the data extraction. Stata 14.0 was used to conduct a network Meta‐analysis, and the intervention measures were ranked according to the surface under the cumulative ranking curve (SUCRA). Funnel plots were drawn to evaluate publication bias. Results: According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 75 studies (including 6333 patient data) were finally included. According to the analysis results, PPV was the best for improving the oxygenation index. The SUCRA values of mechanical ventilation time, ICU hospitalization time, and in‐hospital mortality were ranked as PPV > lateral position ventilation (LPV) > supine position ventilation (SuPV) > semireclining position ventilation (SePV). The SUCRA values in the incidence of adverse events were ranked as LPV > PPV > SuPV > SePV. All outcome measures had good consistency and low statistical heterogeneity. Funnel plot analysis shows that papers reported within three days of mechanical ventilation time, over five days of mechanical ventilation time, and in‐hospital mortality were more likely to have publication bias. Conclusions: PPV has the best effect on improving the oxygenation index, reducing mechanical ventilation time, shortening ICU hospitalization time, and reducing in‐hospital mortality. Early and long‐term use of PPV to improve pulmonary ventilatory function will be the key to improving patients' survival and quality of life with ARDS. Relevance to clinical practice: PPV significantly affects patients with ARDS, which can shorten the treatment time and reduce hospital costs. During the treatment, nursing observation should be strengthened to prevent adverse events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) showing unusual expressions have been discovered in pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PAAD). However, the functions and underlying mechanisms of these circRNAs still remain largely unclear. Our current study discovered a notable increase in the expression of circRNA hsa_circ_0002395 (circ_0002395) in both PAAD tissues and cell lines. This up-regulation of circ_0002395 was found to be associated with larger tumor sizes and lymph node metastasis. Furthermore, our findings showed that circ_0002395 facilitated aerobic glycolysis and cell proliferation in PAAD cells by regulating the miR-548c-3p/PDK1 axis. Mechanistically, we identified circ_0002395 as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) that sponged miR-548c-3p, thereby promoting PDK1 expression and aerobic glycolysis, and ultimately resulting in the enhancement of cell proliferation. Our findings found that circ_0002395 promoted proliferation of PAAD cells by enhancing PDK1 expression and aerobic glycolysis by sponging miR-548c-3p. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rubisco is assembled from large subunits (encoded by chloroplast gene rbcL) and small subunits (encoded by the nuclear rbcS multigene family), which are involved in the processes of carbon dioxide fixation in the Calvin cycle of photosynthesis. Although Rubisco has been studied in many plants, the evolutionary divergences among the different rbcS genes are still largely unknown. Here, using a rice closely related wild species, Oryza punctata Kotschy ex Steud, we investigated the differential properties of the rbcS genes in the species. We identified five rbcS genes (OprbcS1 through OprbcS5), OprbcS1 showed a different evolutionary pattern from the remaining four genes in terms of chromosome location, gene structure, and sequence homology. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that plant rbcS1 and other non‐rbcS1 genes originated from a common ancient duplication event that occurred at least in seed plants ancestor. RbcS1 was then retained in a few plant lineages, including Oryza, whereas non‐rbcS1 was mainly amplified in angiosperms. OprbcS1, OprbcS2–OprbcS4, and OprbcS5 were prominently expressed in stems and seeds, young leaves, and mature leaves, respectively. The yeast two‐hybrid assay detected a significant decrease in the interaction between OprbcS1 and OprbcL compared to the other four pairs of proteins (OprbcS2–OprbcS5 and OprbcL). We propose that OprbcS1 might be assigned a divergent function that was predominantly specific to nonphotosynthetic organs, whereas OprbcS2–OprbcS5, having different affinity in the assembly process of Rubisco, might be subfunctionalized in photosynthetic organs. This study not only deepens our understanding of the fine assembly of Rubisco, but also sheds some light on future de novo domestication of wild rice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reconstruction of visual stimuli from fMRI signals, which record brain activity, is a challenging task with crucial research value in the fields of neuroscience and machine learning. Previous studies tend to emphasize reconstructing pixel-level features (contours, colors, etc.) or semantic features (object category) of the stimulus image, but typically, these properties are not reconstructed together. In this context, we introduce a novel three-stage visual reconstruction approach called the Dual-guided Brain Diffusion Model (DBDM). Initially, we employ the Very Deep Variational Autoencoder (VDVAE) to reconstruct a coarse image from fMRI data, capturing the underlying details of the original image. Subsequently, the Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training (BLIP) model is utilized to provide a semantic annotation for each image. Finally, the image-to-image generation pipeline of the Versatile Diffusion (VD) model is utilized to recover natural images from the fMRI patterns guided by both visual and semantic information. The experimental results demonstrate that DBDM surpasses previous approaches in both qualitative and quantitative comparisons. In particular, the best performance is achieved by DBDM in reconstructing the semantic details of the original image; the Inception, CLIP and SwAV distances are 0.611, 0.225 and 0.405, respectively. This confirms the efficacy of our model and its potential to advance visual decoding research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cryptographic system is the foundation of blockchain security mechanisms. This paper constructs a blockchain security mechanism based on the Chinese national cryptographic SM2 algorithm, involving the generation of public–private key pairs and the signing of block information using key pairs. However, the original SM2 algorithm has a high computational complexity, which cannot meet the requirements of low on-chain delay in blockchain applications. To solve this problem, this paper optimizes the SM2 digital signature algorithm. The scalar multiplication operation in the digital signature algorithm has a large computational complexity, which affects the efficiency of a digital signature. To reduce its computational complexity, this paper improves the traditional window non-adjacent form (w-NAF) algorithm for the scalar multiplication operation and proposes a low computational complexity Fw-NAF algorithm based on the prime number precomputation window, which greatly reduces its computational complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vibrio alginolyticus, a Gram-negative bacterium, is a dominant bacterium in the marine environment. At the same time, it is also a common pathogenic bacterium in daily life. When the temperature is between 25 °C and 35 °C, the epidemic vibriosis is particularly easy to break out, which has a significant impact on the mariculture industry. RseB gene was successfully deleted with Overlap PCR and homologous gene recombination. The results showed that the RseB gene was correlated with the growth rate of V. alginolyticus, and the deletion strain increased the growth rate of Vibrio alginolyticus. RseB gene deletion resulted in a 37.5% decrease in hemolysis of V. alginolyticus. The pathogenicity test results showed that the death time of the RseB gene deleted strain in the experimental group was delayed by 4 h, and the LT50 was delayed by 20 h. At 24 h after challenge, the colonization ability of RseB gene deletion strain in L. vannamei decreased by 53.4%. The hepatopancreas of L. vannamei infected by Vibrio phagolysii were seriously infected, the order of hepatic tubules was out of order, the space became larger, the boundary began to blur gradually, and the lumen of hepatopancreas tubules disappeared. The arrangement of liver cells began to be irregular, and some liver cells were obviously enlarged or even the whole cell began to degenerate, dyed dark with eosin, and the nucleus began to disappear. The results of pathological sections at 8, 16, 32 and 64 h showed that the hepatopancreas damage of RseB gene knockout strain was relatively mild. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Evaluation of vestibular graviceptive pathway (VGP) in patients with unilateral peripheral vestibular dysfunction (UPVD) has received increasing attention from researchers. The study aimed to investigate the value of VGP evaluation in the diagnosis of UPVD. Methods: Ninety‐five UPVD patients were divided into attack and remission phase groups. VGP evaluation‐related indicators, including subjective visual vertical (SVV), subjective visual horizontal (SVH), head tilt, ocular torsion (OT), and skew deviation (SD), were measured, and their correlations with cochleovestibular function test results were analyzed. The possible etiologies of contralesional VGP (c‐VGP) were analyzed. Results: Positive rates of SVV, SVH, OT, and SD were significantly higher, and the degrees of SVV, SVH, and OT were significantly greater in the attack phase group than the remission phase group. The sides with abnormal VGP evaluation results were correlated with the sides with hearing loss, abnormal caloric, and video head impulse test (vHIT) results. A total of 14 patients showed c‐VGP, and possible etiologies included contralateral benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (n = 4), bilateral hearing loss (n = 8), bilateral vHIT gain reduction (n = 1), autoimmune diseases (n = 6), vascular risk factors (n = 6), lacunar infarction (n = 3), and endolymphatic hydrops (n = 3). Conclusions: Alterations in SVV, SVH, OT, and SD were noted in UPVD patients in different phases, which are presumed to be related to dynamic vestibular compensation; correlations between VGP evaluation results and cochleovestibular function test results indicate that VGP evaluation may be helpful for the diagnosis of the side affected in UPVD; the presence of c‐VGP may be related to bilateral labyrinth lesions or endolymphatic hydrops on the affected side; and the involvement of autoimmune mechanisms also deserves attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Wheat fixes CO2 by photosynthesis into kernels to nourish humankind. Improving the photosynthesis rate is a major driving force in assimilating atmospheric CO2 and guaranteeing food supply for human beings. Strategies for achieving the above goal need to be improved. Here, we report the cloning and mechanism of CO2ASSIMILATION RATE AND KERNEL‐ENHANCED 1 (CAKE1) from durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L. var. durum). The cake1 mutant displayed a lower photosynthesis rate with smaller grains. Genetic studies identified CAKE1 as HSP90.2‐B, encoding cytosolic molecular chaperone folding nascent preproteins. The disturbance of HSP90.2 decreased leaf photosynthesis rate, kernel weight (KW) and yield. Nevertheless, HSP90.2 over‐expression increased KW. HSP90.2 recruited and was essential for the chloroplast localization of nuclear‐encoded photosynthesis units, for example PsbO. Actin microfilaments docked on the chloroplast surface interacted with HSP90.2 as a subcellular track towards chloroplasts. A natural variation in the hexaploid wheat HSP90.2‐B promoter increased its transcription activity, enhanced photosynthesis rate and improved KW and yield. Our study illustrated an HSP90.2–Actin complex sorting client preproteins towards chloroplasts to promote CO2 assimilation and crop production. The beneficial haplotype of Hsp90.2 is rare in modern varieties and could be an excellent molecular switch promoting photosynthesis rate to increase yield in future elite wheat varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chiral symmetry and its spontaneous breaking play an important role both in the light hadron and heavy hadron systems. The chiral perturbation theory (χ PT) is the low energy effective field theory of the Quantum Chromodynamics. In this work, we shall review the investigations on the chiral corrections to the properties of the heavy mesons and baryons within the framework of χ PT. We will also review the scatterings of the light pseudoscalar mesons and heavy hadrons, through which many new resonances such as the D s 0 ∗ (2317) could be understood. Moreover, many new hadron states were observed experimentally in the past decades. A large group of these states is near-threshold resonances, such as the charged charmoniumlike Z c and Z c s states, bottomoniumlike Z b states, hidden-charm pentaquark P c and P c s states and the doubly charmed T c c state, etc. They are very good candidates of the loosely bound molecular states composed of a pair of charmed (bottom) hadrons, which are very similar to the loosely bound deuteron. The modern nuclear force was built upon the chiral effective field theory (χ EFT), which is the extension of the χ PT to the systems with two matter fields. The long-range and medium-long-range interactions between two nucleons arise from the single- and double-pion exchange respectively, which are well constrained by the chiral symmetry and its spontaneous breaking. The short-distance interactions can be described by the low energy constants. Such a framework works very well for the nucleon–nucleon scattering and nuclei. In this work, we will perform an extensive review of the progress on the heavy hadronic molecular states within the framework of χ EFT. We shall emphasize that the same chiral dynamics not only govern the nuclei and forms the deuteron, but also dictates the shallow bound states or resonances composed of two heavy hadrons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hexavalent chromium can promote centrosome amplification (CA) as well as tumorigenesis. Since CA can lead to tumorigenesis, it is plausible that the chromium promotes the development of cancer via CA. In the present study, we investigated the signaling pathways of the chromium-induced CA. Our results showed that sub-toxic concentration of chromium was able to cause CA in HCT116 cells, and decrease the expression of TMOD2 and NPM2. Furthermore, TMOD2 and NPM2 interacted to each other via their C-terminal and the N-terminal, respectively, which was inhibited by the chromium. Overexpression of TMOD2 and NPM2 increased their binding and significantly attenuated the CA. Moreover, TMOD2 and NPM2 were co-localized with the centrosomes. The chromium inhibited the centrosomeal localization of NPM2, which was reversed by the overexpression of TMOD2, C-terminal of TMOD2, but not the N-terminal of NPM2. Our results suggest that the chromium induces CA via inhibiting the binding between TMOD2 and NPM2 as well as the dissociation of NPM2 from centrosomes. • Hexavalent chromium inhibited TMOD2-NPM2 signaling pathway. • The inhibition of TMOD2-NPM2 induce centrosome amplification. • TMOD2 interacts with the N-terminal of NPM2 by its C-terminal. • The interaction contributes to the centrosomal localization of NPM2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Oogonial stem cells (OSCs) are germ cells that can sustain neo‐oogenesis to replenish the pool of primary follicles in adult ovaries. In lower vertebrates, fresh oocytes are produced by numerous OSCs through mitosis and meiosis during each reproduction cycle, but the OSCs in adult mammals are rare. The birds have retained many conserved features and developed unique features of ovarian physiology during evolution, and the presence of OSCs within avian species remain unknown. Materials and Methods: In this study, we investigated the existence and function of OSCs in adult chickens. The chicken OSCs were isolated and expanded in culture. We then used cell transplantation system to evaluate their potential for migration and differentiation in vivo. Results: DDX4/SSEA1‐positive OSCs were identified in both the cortex and medulla of the adult chicken ovary. These putative OSCs undergo meiosis in the reproductively active ovary. Furthermore, the isolated OSCs were expanded in vitro for months and found to express germline markers similar to those of primordial germ cells. When transplanted into the bloodstream of recipient embryos, these OSCs efficiently migrated into developing gonads, initiated meiosis, and then derived oocytes in postnatal ovaries. Conclusions: This study has confirmed the presence of functional OSCs in birds for the first time. The identification of chicken OSCs has great potential for improving egg laying and preserving endangered species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CRISPR-Cas, as a tool for gene editing, has received extensive attention in recent years. Anti-CRISPR (Acr) proteins can inactivate the CRISPR-Cas defense system during interference phase, and can be used as a potential tool for the regulation of gene editing. In-depth study of Anti-CRISPR proteins is of great significance for the implementation of gene editing. In this study, we developed a high-accuracy prediction model based on two-step model fusion strategy, called AcrPred, which could produce an AUC of 0.952 with independent dataset validation. To further validate the proposed model, we compared with published tools and correctly identified 9 of 10 new Acr proteins, indicating the strong generalization ability of our model. Finally, for the convenience of related wet-experimental researchers, a user-friendly web-server AcrPred (Anti-CRISPR proteins Prediction) was established at http://lin-group.cn/server/AcrPred , by which users can easily identify potential Anti-CRISPR proteins. • High-accuracy prediction model was developed to identify Anti-CRISPR (Acr) proteins based on two-step model fusion strategy. • AcrPred was demonstrated that it has robustness and excellent generalization ability on test dataset. • AcrPred showed the excellent superiority in case studies and comparison with published tools. • A user-friendly web-server AcrPred was built to detect Acr proteins at http://lin-group.cn/server/AcrPred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: This study aimed to determine the sensitivity and specificity of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the Canadian Stroke Network (CSN) brief (5 min) screen composed of three items of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), in acute coronary syndrome (ACS) patients during hospital admission, relative to the full MoCA and potential alternative combinations of other items. Methods and results: Participants were consecutively recruited during ACS admission and administered the MoCA before discharge. The three NINDS–CSN screen items were extracted, collated and compared to the full MoCA. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves were created to determine the sensitivity, specificity, and appropriate cut-off scores of the screens. The mean age of the sample (n = 81) was 63.49 [standard deviation (SD) 10.85] years and 49.4% screened positive for cognitive impairment. The NINDS–CSN mean score was 9.22 (SD 2.09 of the potential range 0–12). Area under the ROC (AUC) indicated high accuracy levels for screening for cognitive impairment (AUC = 0.89, P < 0.01, 95% confidence interval 0.82, 0.96) with none of the alternative combination screens performing better on both sensitivity and specificity. A cut-off score of ≤10 on the NINDS–CSN protocol provided 83% sensitivity and 80% specificity for classifying cognitive impairment. Conclusion: The NINDS–CSN protocol presents an accurate, feasible screen for cognitive impairment in patients following ACS for use at the bedside and potentially also for telephone screens. Diagnostic accuracy should be confirmed using a neurocognitive battery. Graphical Abstract [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) are important assets to fight COVID-19, but most existing nAbs lose the activities against Omicron subvariants. Here, we report a human monoclonal antibody (Ab08) isolated from a convalescent patient infected with the prototype strain (Wuhan-Hu-1). Ab08 binds to the receptor-binding domain (RBD) with pico-molar affinity (230 pM), effectively neutralizes SARS-CoV-2 and variants of concern (VOCs) including Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Mu, Omicron BA.1 and BA.2, and to a lesser extent for Delta and Omicron BA.4/BA.5 which bear the L452R mutation. Of medical importance, Ab08 shows therapeutic efficacy in SARS-CoV-2-infected hACE2 mice. X-ray crystallography of the Ab08-RBD complex reveals an antibody footprint largely in the β-strand core and away from the ACE2-binding motif. Negative staining electron-microscopy suggests a neutralizing mechanism through which Ab08 destructs the Spike trimer. Together, our work identifies a nAb with therapeutic potential for COVID-19. Author summary: To fight against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron subvariants, we screened and selected one human monoclonal antibody (Ab08) previously isolated from a convalescent patient infected with the SARS-CoV-2 prototype strain (Wuhan-Hu-1). The features of Ab08 are as followed: (1) Ab08 can effectively neutralize SARS-CoV-2 and variants of concern (VOCs) including Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Mu, Omicron BA.1 and BA.2, and to a lesser extent, Delta and Omicron BA.4/BA.5. (2) Ab08 can act as a therapeutic agent in SARS-CoV-2-infected hACE2 mice which are highly susceptible to infection. (3) Ab08 could destruct the Spike trimer which is essential for SARS-CoV-2 entry into the host cells. Together, our work identifies an effective neutralizing antibody with therapeutic potential for COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The NAC (NAM, ATAF1/2 and CUC2) is a large gene family of plant-specific transcription factors that play a pivotal role in various physiological processes and abiotic stresses. Due to the lack of genome-wide characterization, intraspecific and interspecific synteny, and drought-responsive expression pattern of NAC genes in poplar, the functional characterization of drought-related NAC genes have been scarcely reported in Populus species. Here, we identified a total of 170 NAC domain-containing genes in the P. trichocarpa genome, 169 of which were unevenly distributed on its nineteen chromosomes. These NAC genes were phylogenetically divided into twenty subgroups, some of which exhibited a similar pattern of exon–intron architecture. The synteny and Ka/Ks analysis indicated that the expansion of NAC genes in poplar was mainly due to gene duplication events occurring before and after the divergence of Populus and Salix. Ten PdNAC (P. deltoids × P. euramericana cv.'Nanlin895') genes were randomly selected and cloned. Their drought-responsive expression profiles showed a tissue-specific pattern. The transcription factor PdNAC013 was verified to be localized in the nucleus. Our research results provide genomic information for the expansion of NAC genes in the poplar genome, and for further characterizing putative poplar NAC genes associated with water-deficit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

QT interval length is an important risk factor for adverse cardiovascular outcomes; however, the genetic architecture of QT interval remains incompletely understood. We conducted a genome-wide association study of 76,995 ancestrally diverse Kaiser Permanente Northern California members enrolled in the Genetic Epidemiology Research on Adult Health and Aging cohort using 448,517 longitudinal QT interval measurements, uncovering 9 novel variants, most replicating in 40,537 individuals in the UK Biobank and Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology studies. A meta-analysis of all 3 cohorts (n = 117,532) uncovered an additional 19 novel variants. Conditional analysis identified 15 additional variants, 3 of which were novel. Little, if any, difference was seen when adjusting for putative QT interval lengthening medications genome-wide. Using multiple measurements in Genetic Epidemiology Research on Adult Health and Aging increased variance explained by 163%, and we show that the 6 measurements in Genetic Epidemiology Research on Adult Health and Aging was equivalent to a 2.4 increase in sample size of a design with a single measurement. The array heritability was estimated at 17%, approximately half of our estimate of 36% from family correlations. Heritability enrichment was estimated highest and most significant in cardiovascular tissue (enrichment 7.2, 95% CI= 5.7–8.7, P = 2.1e-10), and many of the novel variants included expression quantitative trait loci in heart and other relevant tissues. Comparing our results to other cardiac function traits, it appears that QT interval has a multifactorial genetic etiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brain decoding is to predict the external stimulus information from the collected brain response activities, and visual information is one of the most important sources of external stimulus information. Decoding functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) based on visual stimulation is helpful in understanding the working mechanism of the brain visual function regions. Traditional brain decoding algorithms cannot accurately extract stimuli features from fMRI. To address these shortcomings, this paper proposed a brain decoding algorithm based on a graph convolution network (GCN). Firstly, 11 regions of interest (ROI) were selected according to the human brain visual function regions, which can avoid the noise interference of the non-visual regions of the human brain; then, a deep three-dimensional convolution neural network was specially designed to extract the features of these 11 regions; next, the GCN was used to extract the functional correlation features between the different human brain visual regions. Furthermore, to avoid the problem of gradient disappearance when there were too many layers of graph convolutional neural network, the residual connections were adopted in our algorithm, which helped to integrate different levels of features in order to improve the accuracy of the proposed GCN. The proposed algorithm was tested on the public dataset, and the recognition accuracy reached 98.67%. Compared with the other state-of-the-art algorithms, the proposed algorithm performed the best. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primordial germ cells (PGCs) are the undifferentiated progenitors of the gametes. Unlike the poor maintenance of cultured mammalian PGCs, the avian PGCs can be expanded in vitro indefinitely while preserving pluripotency and germline competence. In mammals, the Oct4 is the master transcription factor that ensures the stemness of pluripotent cells such as PGCs, but the specific function of Oct4 in chicken PGCs remains unclear. As expected, the loss of Oct4 in chicken PGCs reduced the expression of key pluripotency factors and promoted the genes involved in endoderm and ectoderm differentiation. Furthermore, the global active chromatin was reduced as shown by the depletion of the H3K27ac upon Oct4 suppression. Interestingly, the de-activated chromatin caused the down-regulation of adjacent genes which are mostly known regulators of cell junction, chemotaxis and cell migration. Consequently, the Oct4-deficient PGCs show impaired cell migration and could not colonize the gonads when re-introduced into the bloodstream of the embryo. We propose that, in addition to maintaining pluripotency, the Oct4 mediated chromatin activation is dictating chicken PGC migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A tree model identified adults age ≤34 years, Johnson & Johnson primary series recipients, people from racial/ethnic minority groups, residents of nonlarge metro areas, and those living in socially vulnerable communities in the South as less likely to be boosted. These findings can guide clinical/public health outreach toward specific subpopulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • A hydroxyl-containing triazine-based conjugated microporous polymers was facilely synthesized. • The material showed high adsorption efficiency for fluoroquinolones. • Hydrogen bonding and π-π interactions dominate the extraction. • The proposed method was successfully achieved in environmental and food samples. Fluoroquinolones (FQs) are a category of broadly used antibiotics. Development of an effective and sensitive approach for determination of trace FQs in environmental and food samples is still challenging. Herein, the hydroxyl-containing triazine-based conjugated microporous polymers (CMPs-OH) was constructed and served as SPE absorbent for the efficient enrichment of FQs. Based on DFT simulations, the excellent enrichment capacity between CMPs-OH and FQs was contributed by hydrogen bonding and π-π interactions. In combination with high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, the proposed approach exhibited a wide linear range (0.2–400 ng L−1), low detection limits (0.05–0.15 ng L−1), and good intraday and interday precisions under optimal conditions. In addition, the established method was effectively utilized for the determination of FQs in fourteen samples with recoveries between 82.6 % and 109.2 %. This work provided a feasible sample pretreatment method for monitoring FQs in environmental and food matrices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pathogenesis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has not been fully elucidated. Gestational hypertension could double the probability of ADHD in the offspring, while the initial bacterial communication between the mother and offspring has been associated with psychiatric disorders. Thus, we hypothesize that antihypertensive treatment during pregnancy may abate the impairments in neurodevelopment of the offspring. To test this hypothesis, we chose Captopril and Labetalol, to apply to pregnant spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) dams and examined the outcomes in the male offspring. Our data demonstrated that maternal treatment with Captopril and Labetalol had long-lasting changes in gut microbiota and behavioral alterations, including decreased hyperactivity and increased curiosity, spatial learning and memory in the male offspring. Increased diversity and composition were identified, and some ADHD related bacteria were found to have the same change in the gut microbiota of both the dam and offspring after the treatments. LC-MS/MS and immunohistochemistry assays suggested elevated expression of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and dopamine in the prefrontal cortex and striatum of offspring exposed to Captopril/ Labetalol, which may account for the improvement of the offspring's psychiatric functions. Therefore, our results support the beneficial long-term effects of the intervention of gestational hypertension in the prevention of ADHD. [Display omitted] • Maternal Captopril/Labetalol treatment alleviated ADHD symptoms in SHR offspring. • Maternal Captopril/Labetalol treatment altered gut microbiota in SHR offspring. • Maternal Captopril/Labetalol treatment elevated brain dopamine in SHR offspring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The third-generation epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKIs), osimertinib, aumolertinib, and furmonertinib represent a new treatment option for patients with EGFR p.Thr790 Met (T790 M)-mutated non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Currently, there are no studies reporting the simultaneous quantification of these three drugs. A simple ultra-performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method was developed and validated for the simultaneous quantitative determination of osimertinib, aumolertinib, and furmonertinib concentrations in human plasma, and it was applied for therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM). Plasma samples were processed using the protein precipitation method (acetonitrile). A positive ion monitoring mode was used for detecting analytes. D3-Sorafenib was utilized as the internal standard (IS), and the mobile phases were acetonitrile (containing 0.1% formic acid) and water with gradient elution on an XSelect HSS XP column (2.1 mm × 100.0 mm, 2.5 µm, Waters, Milford, MA, USA) at a flow rate of 0.5 mL·min−1. The method's selectivity, precision (coefficient of variation of intra-day and inter-day ≤ 6.1%), accuracy (95.8–105.2%), matrix effect (92.3–106.0%), extraction recovery, and stability results were acceptable according to the guidelines. The linear ranges were 5–500 ng·mL−1, 2–500 ng·mL−1, and 0.5–200 ng·mL−1 for osimertinib, aumolertinib, and furmonertinib, respectively. The results show that the method was sensitive, reliable, and simple and that it could be successfully applied to simultaneously determine the osimertinib, aumolertinib, and furmonertinib blood concentrations in patients. These findings support using the method for TDM, potentially reducing the incidence of dosing blindness and adverse effects due to empirical dosing and inter-patient differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Realizing real-time and robust crosswalk (zebra crossing) detection in complex scenarios and under limited computing power is one of the important difficulties of current intelligent traffic management systems (ITMS). Limited edge computing capabilities and real complex scenarios such as in cloudy, sunny, rainy, foggy and at night simultaneously challenge this task. In this study, the crosswalk detection network (CDNet) based on YOLOv5 is proposed to achieve fast and accurate crosswalk detection under the vision of the vehicle-mounted camera, and real-time detection is implemented on Jetson nano device. The powerful convolution neural network feature extractor is used to handle complex environments, the squeeze-and-excitation (SE) attention mechanism module is embedded into the network, the negative samples training (NST) method is used to improve the accuracy, the region of interest (ROI) algorithm is utilized to further improve the detection speed, and a novel slide receptive field short-term vector memory (SSVM) algorithm is proposed to improve vehicle-crossing behavior detection accuracy, the synthetic fog augmentation algorithm is used to allow the model adaptable to foggy scenario. Finally, with a detection speed of 33.1 FPS on Jetson nano, we obtained an average F1 score of 94.83% in the above complex scenarios. For better weather condition such as sunny and cloudy days, the F1 score exceeds 98%. This work provides a reference for the specific application of artificial neural network algorithm optimization methods on edge computing devices. The datasets, tutorials and source codes are available on GitHub. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy‐dispersive X‐ray fluorescence (EDXRF) is a physical rapid detection method to analyze the types of elements through the energy characteristics of fluorescent X‐ray particles. When applied to the detection of food element content, it not only needs simple sample pretreatment but also the element measurement time generally does not exceed 10 min to have the accuracy of μg/g, which can greatly reduce the time and cost of detection. Due to the limitations of the EDXRF instrument and measurement mechanism, it has low sensitivity to light elements in food, and the detection sensitivity varies with elements in food element analysis. For example, the detection sensitivity of Ca, Mg, Fe, Zn, Cu and other elements concerned by people is not high when the content is low, and the measurement accuracy is extremely dependent on the detector resolution. However, with the improvement of detector performance and algorithm optimization of EDXRF, the detection limit of this technology can reach 0.1 μg/g, the detection of trace elements has also been improved, which has made a new breakthrough in the field of food element detection. Therefore, this paper reviews that in recent 20 years, in order to overcome the various difficulties of EDXRF in food detection, the hardware optimization of EDXRF (For example, the development of an analyzer without sample preparation can greatly reduce the time required for the detection of food elements, and a series of instruments combined with EDXRF and cluster capillary technology can greatly improve the excitation efficiency of lighter elements in food. The spectrometer with a high‐resolution detector can improve the detection accuracy of target elements with low content in food) and in order to solve the problem of spectrum resolution in food detection, (For example, the wavelet transform method which has good performance in spectrum smoothing, identifying weak peaks and maintaining peak shape is applied to EDXRF spectrum resolution, which can better solve the problem that the X‐ray characteristic peaks of elements with a low atomic number in food are submerged) the reform and innovation of spectrum resolution methods are introduced. This paper summarizes and analyzes the representative application examples of EDXRF in food safety detection, discusses the advantages and disadvantages of EDXRF compared with other rapid detection or food detection methods in different situations, concludes its application conditions, and discusses the application prospect of EDXRF technology in the field of food detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study developed a moderated mediation model to investigate the effects of parental perfectionist expectations on online gaming addiction and its underlying mechanisms among Chinese undergraduates. 6403 Chinese undergraduates from Guangxi and Sichuan (51.0% males, mean age = 19.17 years) consented to take part in the study. The findings revealed that trait anxiety and perceived stress significantly mediated the relationship between parental perfectionist expectations and online gaming addiction. Moreover, flow experience moderated the effects of parental perfectionist expectations and trait anxiety on online gaming addiction, and this relationship was stronger with higher flow experience. These findings underscore the importance of a relatively comprehensive approach that takes into account both parental and individual factors when designing prevention and intervention strategies for online gaming addiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The simultaneous circulation of seasonal influenza virus and SARS-CoV-2 variants will likely pose unique challenges to public health during the future influenza seasons. Persons who are undergoing treatment in healthcare facilities may be particularly at risk. It is important for healthcare personnel to protect themselves and patients by receiving vaccines. The purpose of this study is to assess coverage of the seasonal influenza vaccine and COVID-19 monovalent booster among healthcare personnel working at acute care hospitals in the United States during the 2021–22 influenza season and to examine the demographic and facility characteristics associated with coverage. A total of 3260 acute care hospitals with over 7 million healthcare personnel reported vaccination data to National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) during the 2021–22 influenza season. Two separate negative binomial mixed models were developed to explore the factors associated with seasonal influenza coverage and COVID-19 monovalent booster coverage. At the end of the 2021–2022 influenza season, the overall pooled mean seasonal influenza coverage was 80.3%, and the pooled mean COVID-19 booster coverage was 39.5%. Several demographic and facility-level factors, such as employee type, facility ownership, and geographic region, were significantly associated with vaccination against influenza and COVID-19 among healthcare personnel working in acute care hospitals. Our findings highlight the need to increase the uptake of vaccination among healthcare personnel, particularly non-employees, those working in for-profit and non-medical school-affiliated facilities, and those residing in the South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the impacts of rumors' information characteristics on people's believing and spreading of rumors online. Design/methodology/approach: This study employed a mixed-methods approach by combining qualitative and quantitative methods. In study 1, the authors explored different types of rumors and their information source characteristics through qualitative research. In study 2, the authors utilized the findings from study 1 to develop an empirical model to verify the impact of these characteristics on the public's behaviors of believing and spreading rumors by content analysis and quantitative research. Findings: The results show that five information source characteristics – credibility, professionalism, attractiveness, mystery and concreteness – influence the spreading effect of different types of rumors. Research limitations/implications: This study contributes to rumor spreading research by deepening the theory of information source characteristics and adding to the emerging literature on the COVID-19 pandemic. Practical implications: Insights from this research offer important practical implications for policymakers and online-platform operators by highlighting how to suppress the spread of rumors, particularly those associated with COVID-19. Originality/value: This research introduces the theory of information source characteristics into the field of rumor spreading and adopts a mixed-methods approach, taking COVID-19 rumors as a typical case, which provides a unique perspective for a deeper understanding of rumor spreading's antecedences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oral vaccination has wide applicability in poor areas, particularly during the epidemic periods of infectious diseases. However, successful oral antigen delivery and immune activation remain highly challenging due to the instability of vaccines in gastric acid and the low capture of antigens in the intestine. Here, we present a facile approach for the preparation of a robust oral delivery system via encapsulating antigen-carrying pseudoviruses inside positively charged polyethyleneimine-modified yeast capsules (P-YC). By virtue of the physical barrier role and surface β-glucan of YC, encapsulated pseudoviruses can be protected from gastric insult and delivered into Peyer's patches via uptake mediated by microfold cells located in the intestinal epithelium. Given the ability to carry diverse antigens, the enhanced oral delivery of pseudoviruses achieved by P-YC provides a versatile platform for the development of various oral vaccines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] Recently, the hidden charm tetraquark states Z cs (3985) and Z cs (4000) with strangeness were observed by the BESIII and LHCb collaborations, respectively, which are great breakthroughs for exploring exotic quantum chromodynamics (QCD) structures. The first and foremost question is whether they are the same state. In this work, we explore the implications of the narrower state Z cs (3985) in BESIII and the wider one Z cs (4000) in LHCb as two different states. Within a solvable nonrelativistic effective field theory, we include the possible violations of heavy quark spin symmetry and SU(3) flavor symmetry in a comprehensive approach. If Z cs (3985) and Z cs (4000) are two different states, our results show that Z cs (4000) / Z cs (3985) is the pure (| D ‾ s ∗ D 〉 + / - | D ‾ s D ∗ 〉) / 2 state, and the SU(3) flavor partner of Z c (3900) is Z cs (4000) rather than the Z cs (3985). Another two important consequences are the existence of a tensor D ‾ s ∗ D ∗ resonance with mass about 4126 MeV and width 13 MeV, and the suppression of the decay mode Z cs (3985) → J / ψ K. The two consequences can be tested in experiments and distinguish the two-state interpretation from the one-state scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose an alternative approach to Lüscher's formula for extracting two-body scattering phase shifts from finite volume spectra with no reliance on the partial wave expansion. We use an effective-field-theory-based Hamiltonian method in the plane wave basis and decompose the corresponding matrix elements of operators into irreducible representations of the relevant point groups. The proposed approach allows one to benefit from the knowledge of the long-range interaction and avoids complications from partial wave mixing in a finite volume. We consider spin-singlet channels in the two-nucleon system and pion-pion scattering in the ρ-meson channel in the rest and moving frames to illustrate the method for non-relativistic and relativistic systems, respectively. For the two-nucleon system, the long-range interaction due to the one-pion exchange is found to make the single-channel Lüscher formula unreliable at the physical pion mass. For S-wave dominated states, the single-channel Lüscher method suffers from significant finite-volume artifacts for a L = 3 fm box, but it works well for boxes with L > 5 fm. However, for P-wave dominated states, significant partial wave mixing effects prevent the application of the single-channel Lüscher formula regardless of the box size (except for the near-threshold region). Using a toy model to generate synthetic data for finite-volume energies, we show that our effective-field-theory-based approach in the plane wave basis is capable of a reliable extraction of the phase shifts. For pion-pion scattering, we employ a phenomenological model to fit lattice QCD results at the physical pion mass. The extracted P-wave phase shifts are found to be in a good agreement with the experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] In this work, we investigate the SU(3) flavor symmetry, heavy quark spin symmetry and their breaking effects in the di-meson systems. We prove the existence of the [ D ‾ s ∗ D s ∗ ] 0 + + , [ D ‾ s ∗ D s / D ‾ s D s ∗ ] 1 + - , and [ D ‾ s ∗ D s ∗ ] 1 + - bound states as the consequence of two prerequisites in the SU(3) flavor symmetry and heavy quark spin symmetry. The first prerequisite, the X (3872) as the weakly D ‾ ∗ D / D ‾ D ∗ bound state is supported by its mass and decay branching ratios. The second prerequisite, the existence of the [ D ‾ s D s ] 0 + + bound state is supported by the lattice QCD calculation and the observation of χ c 0 (3930) by the LHCb Collaboration. We hope the future experimental analyses can search for these bound states in the B → D (s) (*) D ‾ (s) (*) h processes (h denotes the light hadrons). The [ D ‾ s ∗ D s ∗ ] 0 + + bound state is also expected to be reconstructed in the J / ψ ϕ final state in the B → J / ψ ϕ K decay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wearable devices are increasingly popular for health monitoring via electrocardiograms (ECGs) as they can portably monitor heart conditions over a long time. However, so far there are no publicly available ECG data sets collected from wearable devices. Most ECG analysis algorithms target ECG data collected by hospital equipment. In the present study, we used the IREALCARE2.0 Flexible Cardiac Monitor Patch as the wearable device to collect ECG signals and formed ECG data sets. Wearable ECG data tended to contain more interference and be large in size. This article proposed a deep CNN approach, named time–spatial convolutional neural networks (TSCNNs), for the automatic classification and analysis of ECG signals from wearable devices. First, the original long-term ECG signals were divided into separate heartbeats and input into the TSCNN. Second, we applied convolution over time and spatial filtering for each heartbeat to extract abundant features. Finally, the cascaded small-scale kernel convolution was applied to improve classification performance and reduce the number of network parameters. To avoid overfitting, some regularized methods such as dropout and batch normalization were adopted. In the experiments, the method proposed in this letter is compared with other eight ECG classification algorithms. Our method attained the highest classification accuracy. The experimental results indicated that the proposed method can achieve better performance for wearable ECG data and can effectively monitor whether the wearer has an abnormal ECG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dairy cows with mastitis are frequently treated with antibiotics. The potential effect of antibiotics on the milk microbiome is still not clear. Therefore, the objective of this research was to investigate the effect of 2 commonly used cephalosporins on the milk microbiota of dairy cows and the antibiotic resistance genes in the milk. The milk samples were collected from 7 dairy cows at the period before medication (d 0), medication (d 1, 2, 3), withdrawal period (d 4, 6, 8), and the period after withdrawal (d 9, 11, 13, 15). We applied 16S rRNA sequencing to explore the microbiota changes, and antibiotic resistance patterns were investigated by quantitative PCR. The microbiota richness and diversity in each sample were calculated using the Chao 1 (richness), Shannon (diversity), and Simpson (diversity) indices. The cephalosporins treatment lowered the Simpson diversity value at the period of withdrawal. Members of the Enterobacter genera were the most affected bacteria associated with mastitis. Meanwhile, antibiotic resistance genes in the milk were also influenced by antibiotic treatment. The cephalosporins treatment raised the proportion of bla TEM in milk samples at the period of withdrawal. Therefore, the treatment of cephalosporins led to change in the milk microbiota and increase of β-lactam resistance gene in the milk at the time of withdrawal period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Freezing stress is the key factor that affecting the cell activity and fermentation performance of baker's yeast in frozen dough production. Generally, cells protect themselves from injury and maintain metabolism by regulating gene expression and modulating metabolic patterns in stresses. The Snf1 protein kinase is an important regulator of yeast in response to stresses. In this study, we aim to study the role of the catalytic subunit of Snf1 protein kinase in the cell tolerance and dough leavening ability of baker's yeast during freezing. Furthermore, the effects of SNF1 overexpression on the global gene expression and metabolite profile of baker's yeast before and after freezing were analysed using RNA-sequencing and untargeted UPLC − QTOF-MS/MS, respectively. Results: The results suggest that overexpression of SNF1 was effective in enhancing the cell tolerance and fermentation capacity of baker's yeast in freezing, which may be related to the upregulated proteasome, altered metabolism of carbon sources and protectant molecules, and changed cell membrane components. SNF1 overexpression altered the level of leucin, proline, serine, isoleucine, arginine, homocitrulline, glycerol, palmitic acid, lysophosphatidylcholine (LysoPC), and lysophosphatidylethanolamine (LysoPE) before freezing, conferring cells resistance in freezing. After freezing, relative high level of proline, lysine, and glycerol maintained by SNF1 overexpression with increased content of LysoPC and LysoPE. Conclusions: This study will increase the knowledge of the cellular response of baker's yeast cells to freezing and provide new opportunities for the breeding of low-temperature resistant strains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. S100 family genes exclusively encode at least 20 calcium-binding proteins, which possess a wide spectrum of intracellular and extracellular functions in vertebrates. Multiple lines of evidences suggest that dysregulated S100 proteins are associated with human malignancies including colorectal cancer (CRC). However, the diverse expression patterns and prognostic roles of distinct S100 genes in CRC have not been fully elucidated. Methods. In the current study, we analyzed the mRNA expression levels of S100 family genes and proteins and their associations with the survival of CRC patients using the Oncomine analysis and GEPIA databases. Expressions and mutations of S100 family genes were analyzed using the cBioPortal, and protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks of S100 proteins and their mutation-related coexpressed genes were analyzed using STRING and Cytoscape. Results. We observed that the mRNA expression levels of S100A2, S100A3, S100A9, S100A11, and S100P were higher and the level of S100B was lower in CRC tissues than those in normal colon mucosa. A high S100A10 levels was associated with advanced-stage CRC. Results from GEPIA database showed that highly expressed S100A1 was correlated with worse overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) and that overexpressions of S100A2 and S100A11 were associated with poor DFS of CRC, indicating that S100A1, S100A2, and S100A11 are potential prognostic markers. Unexpectedly, most of S100 family genes showed no significant prognostic values in CRC. Conclusions. Our findings, though still need to be ascertained, offer novel insights into the prognostic implications of the S100 family in CRC and will inspire more clinical trials to explore potential S100-targeted inhibitors for the treatment of CRC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Saccharomyces cerevisiae Snf1 complex is a member of the AMP-activated protein kinase family and plays an important role in response to environmental stress. The α catalytic subunit Snf1 regulates the activity of the protein kinase, while the β regulatory subunits Sip1/Sip2/Gal83 specify substrate preferences and stress response capacities of Snf1. In this study, we aim to investigate the effects of SNF1 overexpression on the cell tolerance and glucose consumption of S. cerevisiae in high glucose, ethanol, and heat stresses and to explore the valid Snf1 form in the light of β subunits in these stresses. Results: The results suggest that overexpression of SNF1 is effective to improve cell resistance and glucose consumption of S. cerevisiae in high glucose, ethanol, and heat stresses, which might be related to the changed accumulation of fatty acids and amino acids and altered expression levels of genes involved in glucose transport and glycolysis. However, different form of β regulatory subunits dominated in stresses with regard to cell tolerance and glucose utilization. The Sip1 isoform was more necessary to the growth and glucose consumption in ethanol stress. The glucose uptake largely depended on the Sip2 isoform in high sugar and ethanol stresses. The Gal83 isoform only contributed inferior effect on the growth in ethanol stress. Therefore, redundancy and synergistic effect of β subunits might occur in high glucose, ethanol, and heat stresses, but each subunit showed specificity under various stresses. Conclusions: This study enriches the understanding of the function of Snf1 protein kinase and provides an insight to breed multi-stress tolerant yeast strains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This study was to investigate of the mechanism by which histone deacetylase (HDAC) 8 inhibitor ameliorated airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR) and allergic airway inflammation.Methods: Mice were sensitized and then treated with budesonide (BUD) or PCI-34051 (PCI) prior to exposing to normal saline (NS) or ovalbumin (OVA). The raw264.7 cells were treated with interleukin (IL)-4 and PCI or shRNA alone. Repetitive measurements of enhanced pause (Penh) were executed by increasing concentrations of acetyl-β-methacholine chloride (0 - 50 mg/ml). Cells in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) and pathological changes of lungs were examined, respectively. The expression levels of HDAC8, Galecitn (Gal)-3, CD68, CD86, CD163, Arg1 and NOS2 in lungs were measured. Co-regulation of HDAC8 and Gal-3 proteins was observed by immunofluorescence staining and co-immunoprecipitation assay (Co-IP).Results: Significant increases in Penh and IL-4 level were detected with a large inflammatory infiltrate, comprised predominantly of macrophages and eosinophils, into the BALF in OVA-exposed lungs. HDAC8, Gal-3, CD68, CD86, CD163, Arg1 and NOS2 proteins were over-expressed with the significant changes in the Arg1 and NOS2 mRNA levels in the lungs and the IL-4-treated cells. PCI intervention obviously reduced the counts of CD163+ cells. Furthermore, Gal-3 knockdown suppressed Arg1 expression in the cells. Immunofluorescence staining displayed simultaneous changes in HDAC8 and Gal-3 expression in the investigated samples. Treatment with PCI resulted in synchronous reduction of HDAC8 and Gal-3 expression in the Co-IP complexes.Conclusions: The HDAC8 inhibitor ameliorates AHR and airway inflammation in animal model of allergic asthma through reducing HDAC8-Gal-3 interaction and M2 macrophage polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We systematically investigate the possible molecular states composed of (1) two spin- 3 2 doubly charmed baryons, and (2) a pair of spin- 3 2 and spin- 1 2 doubly charmed baryons. The one-boson-exchange (OBE) model is used to describe the potential between two baryons. The channel mixing effect is considered for the systems with the same quantum number (I (J P)) but different total spin (S) and orbital angular momenta (L). We also study the channel mixing effect among the systems composed of various doubly charmed baryons if they have the same quantum number. Many of the systems are good candidates of molecular states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macrophages are the first-line host defense that the invading Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) encounters. It has been recently reported that host aerobic glycolysis was elevated post the infection by a couple of virulent mycobacterial species. However, whether this metabolic transition is required for host defense against intracellular pathogens and the underlying mechanisms remain to be further investigated. A pathogenic mycobacterial species, M. marinum , is genetically close to Mtb and was utilized in this study. Through analyzing cellular carbon metabolism of RAW 264.7 (a murine macrophage-like cell line) post M. marinum infection, a strong elevation of glycolysis was observed. Next, three glycolysis inhibitors were examined for their ability to inhibit mycobacterial proliferation inside RAW264.7 macrophages. Among them, a glucose analog, 2-deoxyglucose (2-DG) displayed a protective role against mycobacterial infection. Treatment with 2-DG at concentrations of 0.5 or 1 mM significantly induced autophagy and decreased the phagocytosis of M. marinum by macrophages. Moreover, 2-DG pre-treatment exerted a significantly protective effect on zebrafish larvae by limiting the proliferation of M. marinum , and such effect was correlated to tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) as the 2-DG pre-treatment increased the expression of TNF-α in both mouse peritoneal macrophages and zebrafish. On the contrary, the 2-DG treatment post infection did not restrain proliferation of M. marinum in WT zebrafish, and even accelerated bacterial replication in TNF-α−/− zebrafish. Together, modulation of glycolysis prior to infection boosts host immunity against M. marinum infection, indicating a potential intervention strategy to control mycobacterial infection. • Macrophages displayed an elevated glycolysis post M. marinum infection. • 2-DG reduced phagocytosis and M. marinum burden inside macrophages. • 2-DG pretreatment led to autophagy or apoptosis of RAW cells. • 2-DG pre-treatment inhibited the proliferation of M. marinum in WT zebrafish. • 2-DG accelerated M. marinum proliferation in zebrafish missing TNF-α. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neospartoneae are a small tribe in Verbenaceae, native to temperate South America and comprising seven species in three genera: Diostea, Lampayo, and Neosparton. Diostea and Neosparton share an ephedroid habit and the presence of a staminode. Diostea and Lampayo share a schizocarpous fruit and bilobed stigma. Previous chloroplast DNA phylogenetic studies first identified Neospartoneae as a clade. However, evolutionary relationships within Neospartoneae remain unclear. In this study, nine loci from both chloroplast and nuclear genomes were used to reconstruct phylogeny with almost complete taxon sampling. Maximum likelihood and Bayesian analyses were conducted using single-locus and concatenated datasets to generate gene trees. A species tree was reconstructed by Bayesian multispecies coalescent analyses. The generic relationships are well resolved and confirm the monophyly of the Neospartoneae and each genus. The topologies show that Neosparton is sister to a clade comprised of Diostea and Lampayo. This study presents a first species-level phylogeny of Neospartoneae and provides insight into morphological character evolution of this tribe. The presence of a staminode shared by Diostea and Neosparton, and dry schizocarpous fruits shared by Diostea and Lampayo, are inferred to be plesiomorphic traits in Neospartoneae and not indicative of close relationship. The ephedroid habit and curved corolla tubes shared by Diostea and Neosparton may have evolved in the common ancestor of Neospartoneae and subsequently reversed in the ancestor of Lampayo, or have evolved in parallel in the two genera. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The plant growth regulator mepiquat chloride (MC) has been widely used to regulate cotton growth and development worldwide. However, little is known about whether MC application during cotton growing season affects defoliation efficiency of the harvest aids (TE), a novel product with the mixture of 10% thidiazuron and 40% ethephon. Here, a 3-year (2018–2020) field experiment was carried out in Hejian, Hebei province, China, involving six treatments as three different MC rates (MC free, farmers' practice-conventional amount, high MC amount) and two defoliant rates (0 ml ha−1 [CK] and 2250 ml ha−1 [TE]). High MC rate delayed cotton leaf abscission and decreased the defoliation percentage at 7 days after TE treatment, but hardly affected harvest aids efficacy at harvest time. The delay of leaf abscission was due to an increase in auxin and cytokinin concentration of cotton leaves in MC treatment. The MC treatment accelerated the natural maturation of cotton, achieving a higher boll-opening percentage before defoliant spraying, and increased cotton lint yield. Over the 3-year period, compared to CK, the defoliant application TE increased the defoliation percentage by 43.4%, the boll-opening percentage by 10.4%, and the cotton lint yield by 9.1% due to an increase in opened boll number per unit land area. We concluded that the optimal MC dose (about 200 g ha−1) would decrease the risk of reducing defoliation and achieve higher cotton lint yield. • Applying mepiquat chloride (MC) only delayed cotton leaf abscission in the early stage of defoliation. • MC application increased auxin and cytokinin concentration in cotton leaf. • Applying MC accelerated cotton maturation and achieved a higher boll-opening percentage. • The optimal MC dose decreased the risk of decreasing defoliation and enhanced cotton lint yield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uranium nitride-oxide cations [NUO]+ and their complexes with equatorial N2 ligands, [NUO·(N2)n]+ (n = 1–7), were synthesized in the gas phase. Mass-selected infrared photodissociation spectroscopy and quantum chemical calculations confirm [NUO·(N2)5]+ to be a sterically fully coordinated cation, with electronic singlet ground state of 1A1, linear [NUO]+ core, and C5v structure. The presence of short N–U bond distances and high stretching modes, with slightly elongated U–O bond distances and lowered stretching modes, is rationalized by attributing them to cooperative covalent and dative [ǀN≡U≡Oǀ]+ triple bonds. The mutual trans-interaction through flexible electronic U-5f6d7sp valence shell and the linearly increasing perturbation with increase in the number of equatorial dative N2 ligands has also been explained, highlighting the bonding characteristics and distinct features of uranium chemistry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Silver nanowires (AgNWs) are a promising substitute for indium tin oxide (ITO) transparent conductive films (TCFs). However, AgNWs suffer the insufficiencies in contact resistance between the nanowires and light loss. Here, graphene oxide and moth-eye-like antireflection nanostructure have been introduced to physically "weld" the AgNWs junctions and modulate the AR properties, respectively. The sandwich structure AgNWs TCFs achieved resistance of 26.26 Ω sq−1 and transmittance of 98.67%, exhibiting promoted photoelectronic performance compared with the pure AgNWs films. The stability of sandwich structure AgNWs TCFs was improved, and their wettability was also discussed with water contact angle changed from 92.55° to 69.18°, switched from hydrophobic to hydrophilic. Though a simple solution process without mechanical or heat post-treatment, we proposed a stable sandwich structure to obviously improve the electrical and optical capabilities of AgNWs. The enhanced AgNWs TCFs with superior photoelectronic performance are believed to boost the practical applications and future development of AgNWs-based TCFs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Developing precious metal-free electrocatalysts with both high and stable oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) electrochemical activity is still the key challenge in the wide application of clean energy, e.g. fuel cells or metal air batteries. Here, TiC based precious metal-free ORR catalyst has been studied by doping heterogeneous atoms. N-doping results in enhanced ORR performance of N/TiC, which was further elevated by introducing metal (e.g. Fe, Co) into TiC powders. Especially, the resultant Fe-N/TiC demonstrates the highest ORR activity among the prepared samples, which exhibits approximate 4e− pathway with a comparable electron-transfer number to the benchmark 20 wt%Pt/C, and much higher methanol tolerance than the latter in alkaline media. The high ORR performance of Fe-N/TiC composite could be ascribed to the cooperative effects of both N and metal doping, in which the N doping would lead to the change of electronic structure near the TiC surface and the formation of C-N active sites, and the metal species addition leads to the formation of a certain amount of Me-N x active sites resulting in the further ORR activity enhancement. The reasonably high and stable electrochemical catalytic activity and the excellent methanol tolerance make the precious-metal free Fe-N/TiC composite a promising candidate cathode catalyst in ORR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mechanisms leading to self-assembly of misfolded proteins into amyloid aggregates have been studied extensively in the test tube under well-controlled conditions. However, to what extent these processes are representative of those in the cellular environment remains unclear. Using super-resolution imaging of live cells, we show here that an amyloidogenic polyglutamine-containing protein first forms small, amorphous aggregate clusters in the cytosol, chiefly by diffusion. Dynamic interactions among these clusters limited their elongation and led to structures with a branched morphology, differing from the predominantly linear fibrils observed in vitro. Some of these clusters then assembled via active transport at the microtubule-organizing center and thereby initiated the formation of perinuclear aggresomes. Although it is widely believed that aggresome formation is entirely governed by active transport along microtubules, here we demonstrate, using a combined approach of advanced imaging and mathematical modeling, that diffusion is the principal mechanism driving aggresome expansion. We found that the increasing surface area of the expanding aggresome increases the rate of accretion caused by diffusion of cytosolic aggregates and that this pathway soon dominates aggresome assembly. Our findings lead to a different view of aggresome formation than that proposed previously. We also show that aggresomes mature over time, becoming more compacted as the structure grows. The presence of large perinuclear aggregates profoundly affects the behavior and health of the cell, and our super-resolution imaging results indicate that aggresome formation and development are governed by highly dynamic processes that could be important for the design of potential therapeutic strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have developed a facile one-step hydrothermal strategy to synthesize pyramid-like NiSe2 nanostructures, serving as electrode materials for battery-supercapacitor hybrid (BSH) devices. The NiSe2 nanopyramid electrode exhibits superior electrochemical performances, including a high specific capacity of 240.83 mAh g−1 at current density of 1 A g−1 and a low internal resistance of 0.85 Ω. The all-solid-state hybrid devices have been assembled with NiSe2 as the battery-type electrode and activated carbon as the capacitor-type electrode. The hybrid device exhibits a high energy density of 0.196 mWh cm−2 at power density of 1.60 mW cm−2. The internal resistance of 1.52 Ω further reveals the nature of low resistance and high conductivity for the hybrid devices. Connecting two hybrid devices in series is able to drive a red LED for more than 3 min after charging for 9 s. This work has demonstrated that the pyramid-like NiSe2 nanostructure is expected to be an ideal high specific capacity electrode for BSH devices, especially for all-solid-state energy storage devices and portable electronic devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective • The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of warming needle therapy on eosinophils, specific immunoglobulin E (IgE), inflammatory factors, and T lymphocyte subsets in patients with lung qi deficiency and cold-type allergic rhinitis (AR). Methods • A total of 155 patients with lung qi deficiency and cold-type AR from May 2021 to December 2022 were randomly divided into a study group of 76 cases and a control group of 79 cases. The control group received medication (chlorpheniramine and fluticasone), and the study group received medication combined with warming needle therapy. The efficacy, TCM syndrome score, eosinophils, IgE, inflammatory factors (interleukin-6 (IL-6), IL-8, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α)), T lymphocyte subsets (CD3+, CD4+, and CD8+), and rhinoconjunctivitis quality of life questionnaire (RQLQ) scores were evaluated after 2 weeks of treatment. Results • The total effective rate in the study group was 92.11%, which was higher than that in the control group (77.22%) (P<.05). The TCM syndrome scores of the study group were lower than those of the control group after 1 and 2 weeks of treatment (P<.05). The positive rate of eosinophils in the study group was lower than that in the control group after 1 week (47.37% vs. 64.56%, P<.05) and after 2 weeks (21.05% vs. 37.97%, P<.05) of treatment. The serum levels of specific IgE, IL-6, IL-8, and TNF-α in the study group were lower than those in the control group after 1 and 2 weeks of treatment (P<.05). The peripheral blood levels of CD3+ and CD4+ were higher and the peripheral blood level of CD8+ was lower in the study group than in the control group after 1 and 2 weeks of treatment (P < .05). The RQLQ scores of the study group were lower than those of the control group after 1 and 2 weeks of treatment (P < .05). Conclusion • Warming needle therapy can effectively improve the clinical symptoms of patients with lung qi deficiency and cold-type AR, reduce inflammation, and enhance immune function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Glucose carbon microspheres have been widely used for wastewater treatment as adsorbent owing to their strong adsorption capacity, but for large-scale applications, the glucose carbon microspheres are inconvenient to be recycled from aqueous suspension due to their good suspendability. Moreover, the primitive nature of small particle size, large specific surface area and high surface energy of glucose carbon microspheres make them prone to aggregate and thus, disperse no-effectively for the other extended application. To solve this dilemma, polyester (PET) fibers decorated with glucose carbon microspheres (GC@PFs) were herein fabricated by one-step hydrothermal carbonization with acrylic acid as a coupling agent. The products were characterized by Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Boehm titration, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Thermo-gravimetric Analysis (TG), Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and zeta potential respectively. The experimental results showed that a large amount of glucose carbon microspheres were evenly dispersed on the surface of carboxyl activated polyester fibers with uniform particle diameter, and the composite fibers showed desirable adsorption ability of cationic dyes for its more negative zeta potential. The dye adsorption isotherm follows Langmuir model and pseudo-second-order kinetic model better. Remarkably, the adsorbent has an excellent recyclability for maintaining a high removal rate (>85%) to dye even after 10 cycles. Highlights • Glucose carbon microspheres were evenly distributed on the PET fibers surface that solved the problem of easy aggregation. • The polyester fibers were firstly decorated with glucose carbon microspheres through one-step hydrothermal carbonization. • Acrylic acid maintained the integrity of PET fabric and introduced a quite number of carboxyl groups on the PET surface. • The surface decorated composite material possessed good adsorption property and easy recovery performance. • The glucose carbon microspheres decorated polyester fibers showed a highly selective adsorption for the cationic dyes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]