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With the development of energy storage technology, energy storage technology began to be put into the peak regulation of power grid. But at present, the lack of scientific evaluation means for coordinated peak regulation ability of energy storage and regional power grid (ESRPG) hinders the large-scale participation of energy storage devices in peak regulation. To solve this problem, this paper proposes an evaluation system and evaluation method to comprehensively and accurately evaluate the coordinated peak regulation ability of ESRPG. Firstly, an evaluation system for the coordinated peak regulation ability of ESRPG is established from the perspective of energy storage and generator units. The indicator system comprehensively considers the impact of technology, economy, reliability, and other factors on the peak regulation ability of the ESRPG. At the same time, a multi-level evaluation method composed of an analytic hierarchy process and weighted rank sum ration is proposed to comprehensively evaluate the proposed indicator system. This method not only takes subjective and objective factors into account, but also eliminates the interference of dimensions, orders of magnitude and other factors on the evaluation results. Finally, the evaluation indicator system and evaluation method are applied to the simulation scene for evaluation, and the results show that the evaluation system and method make up for the shortcomings of the current mainstream methods and effectively evaluate the peak shaving capability.

The Baihetan Reservoir is built for hydropower in China. The rise of the reservoir water leads to a series of earthquakes in the surrounding area. This study proposes fully coupled equations of pore-viscoelasticity and a parallel partition mesh model to study the short- and long-term effects of the Baihetan Reservoir and further calculate the changes in stress, pore pressure, and Coulomb failure stress with time on the major faults. Based on the calculation results, impoundment increases regional seismicity, which is consistent with the seismic catalog. The reservoir impoundment causes an increase in pore pressure in the crust, primarily enhancing Coulomb failure stress beneath the reservoir center. This effect extends to approximately 60 km in length and 20 km in width at a depth layer of 5–10 km. Seismicity varies greatly among different faults. Coulomb failure stress increases on the northern part of the Xiaojiang Fault and Zhaotong-Ludian Fault, and decreases on the southern part of the Xiaojiang Fault and Zemuhe Fault. The Coulomb failure stress is highly correlated with the number of earthquakes along the Xiaojiang Fault. The influence of the reservoir on the local seismicity is mainly limited to several months, and it has a slight effect later on. The focal depth of the induced earthquakes increases while the magnitude decreases. The earthquakes caused by the impoundment all have a small magnitude, and the Ms4.3 Qiaojia earthquake on 30 March 2022, was more likely a natural event.

This study proposes a combined hybrid energy storage system (HESS) and transmission grid (TG) model, and a corresponding time series operation simulation (TSOS) model is established to relieve the peak-shaving pressure of power systems under the integration of renewable energy. First, a linear model for the optimal operation of the HESS is established, which considers the different power-efficiency characteristics of the pumped storage system, electrochemical storage system, and a new type of liquid compressed air energy storage. Second, a TSOS simulation model for peak shaving is built to maximize the power entering the grid from the wind farms and HESS. Based on the proposed model, this study considers the transmission capacity of a TG. By adding the power-flow constraints of the TG, a TSOS-based HESS and TG combination model for peak shaving is established. Finally, the improved IEEE-39 and IEEE-118 bus systems were considered as examples to verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed model

This paper discusses the existence and uniqueness of local strong solution for a class of 1D non-Newtonian fluids with non-Newtonian potential and damping term. Here we allow the initial vacuum and viscosity term to be fully nonlinear.

Two-dimensional transition metal carbides and nitrides (MXenes) nanosheets with high photothermal conversion efficiency as well as photothermal stability can efficiently generate remarkable hyperthermia for photothermal therapy (PTT) of cancer. However, mono-MXenes cannot exhibit precise diagnosis and treatment to complete ablation of cancer cells in the PTT process. To overcome this dilemma, an “all-in-one” nanoplatform of titanium carbide (Ti3C2) MXene-based composite nanosheets is developed for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided multi-modal hyperthermia and chemodynamic tumor ablation, which was achieved by bonding of manganese ion on the surface of Ti3C2, and then was the functionalized nanosheets was modified by biocompatible PEG (Mn-Ti3C2@PEG). Due to magnetic and Fenton-like catalytic properties of Mn components, Mn-Ti3C2@PEG not only acted as the contrast agents for T1-weighted MRI (relaxivity value of 1.05 mM−1 s−1), but also converted cellular H2O2 into highly toxic hydroxyl radicals (·OH) mediated chemodynamic therapy (CDT). Moreover, Furthermore, Mn-Ti3C2@PEG can efficiently suppressed tumor-growth by PTT, due to the high photothermal conversion capability and photothermal stability. As a proof-of-concept model, the as-designed Mn-Ti3C2@PEG nanoplatform shows simultaneous MRI and dual-modal treatment for effective suppression of tumor with minimized side effects both in vitro and in vivo, indicating the great potential for clinical cancer theranostics.

Mesoporous carbon spheres (MCSs) are widely used in the field of pollutants adsorption, energy storage and various biomedicine applications such as targeted delivery vector, phototherapy sensitizers, bioimaging contrast agents, etc. Current synthetic strategies including soft templating and hard templating methods generally have the limits of using expensive surfactants or lack of control over the pore structures. Therefore, the complex and uncontrollable pore structures limit its further clinical application. Herein, we proposed a new synthetic strategy to control the uniformity of pore channel arrangement in MCSs which can modulate the photonic property and the corresponding light controlled drug release property in intelligent drug delivery. The as obtained MCSs with relative uniform pore channel arrangement and long pore channels are demonstrated to have the best NIR light-induced drug release performance. This work provides not only new synthetic method to modulate pore structure characteristics and biophotonic property of MCSs, but also uniform MCSs as novel delivery platforms with advanced controlled release performance.

In this paper, a new pseudoparabolic equation with logarithmic nonlinearity of variable exponents is investigated. By using the energy functional and the classical potential well, we obtain the global existence and blow-up results of weak solutions with variable exponents. These results extend and improve some recent results in which the blow-up results were showed involving the logarithmic nonlinearity with variable exponents.

Objectives: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is an independent risk factor for metabolic syndrome (MetS). Recent studies have indicated that circadian clock genes were dysregulated in OSA. In addition, it is clear that the impairment of circadian clocks drives the progression of MetS. Therefore, we hypothesized that circadian rhythm disruption links OSA with MetS.Methods: A total of 118 participants, who underwent polysomnography (PSG) and were diagnosed as healthy snorers (control, n = 29) or OSA (n = 89) patients based on the apnea–hypopnea index (AHI), were enrolled in the present study. General information, anthropometric data, blood biochemical indicators, clock gene expressions, and levels of oxidative and inflammatory indicators were collected, determined, and compared in all the participants.Results: We found that Brain and muscle aryl hydrocarbon receptor nuclear translocator-like protein 1 (Bmal1) and Differentiated embryo chondrocyte 1 (Dec1) were upregulated, while Period 1 (Per1) was reduced in OSA patients. In addition, these changing trends were closely associated with the hypoxia indicator of AHI and have a significant impact on the presence of MetS components, such as hyperglycemia (Dec1 and Per1, p < 0.05 and 0.001, respectively), hypertension (Bmal1 and Dec1, p < 0.001 and 0.01, respectively), hyperlipidemia (Dec1, p < 0.01), and obesity (Dec1, p < 0.05). Notably, expressions of Dec1 correlated with IR and predicted the presence of MetS in OSA patients. Finally, we also observed that Dec1 expression was interrelated with levels of both oxidative indicators and inflammatory biomarkers (IL-6) in OSA.Conclusion: This study concluded that circadian clock disruptions, especially Dec1, link OSA with MetS in an oxidative and inflammatory-related manner. Circadian clock Dec1 can be used as a specific biomarker (p < 0.001) and therapeutic target in OSA combined with Mets patients.

Ovarian cancer (OC) is a severe malignancy featuring a poor prognosis due to rapid metastasis and chemotherapy resistance. In this study, we extensively investigated the upstream and downstream mechanisms of miR-548e in regulating OC progression and cisplatin resistance. Our results indicated that ZFAS1 was highly expressed and promoted OC cell proliferation, migration, invasion, and cisplatin resistance by directly suppressing miR-548e expression. ZFAS1 co-localized with miR-548e in the cytosols of OC cells. miR-548e repressed CXCR4 expression, and elevated CXCR4 expression promoted OC cell proliferation, migration, invasion, and cisplatin resistance. Cisplatin resistance induced by ZFAS1 and CXCR4 overexpression in OC cells was mediated by their suppression on let-7a and elevation of BCL-XL/S expression. ZFAS1 knockdown and miR-548e and let-7a overexpression impaired cisplatin resistance and suppressed lung metastatic nodule formation in nude mice. In conclusion, ZFAS1 binds with miR-548e to enhance CXCR4 expression to promote OC cell proliferation and metastasis, which also enhances cisplatin resistance by suppressing let-7a and elevating BCL-XL/S protein expression.

In an optical Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) phase metasurface, each sub-wavelength dielectric structure of varied spatial orientation can be treated as a point source with the same amplitude yet varied relative phase. In this work, we introduce an optimized genetic algorithm (GA) method for the synthesis of one-dimensional (1D) PB phase-controlled dielectric metasurfaces by seeking for optimized phase profile solutions, which differs from previously reported amplitude-controlled GA method only applicable to generate transverse optical modes with plasmonic metasurfaces. The GA–optimized phase profiles can be readily used to construct dielectric metasurfaces with improved functionalities. The loop of phase-controlled GA consists of initialization, random mutation, screened evolution, and duplication. Here random mutation is realized by changing the phase of each unit cell, and this process should be efficient to obtain enough mutations to drive the whole GA process under supervision of appropriate mutation boundary. A well-chosen fitness function ensures the right direction of screened evolution, and the duplication process guarantees an equilibrated number of generated light patterns. Importantly, we optimize the GA loop by introducing a multi-step hierarchical mutation process to break local optimum limits. We demonstrate the validity of our optimized GA method by generating longitudinal optical modes (i. e., non-diffractive light sheets) with 1D PB phase dielectric metasurfaces having non-analytical counter-intuitive phase profiles. The produced large-area, long-distance light sheets could be used for realizing high-speed, low-noise light-sheet microscopy. Additionally, a simplified 3D light pattern generated by a 2D PB phase metasurface further reveals the potential of our optimized GA method for manipulating truly 3D light fields.

Although coupled plasmonic systems have been extensively studied in the past decades, their theoretical understanding is still far from satisfactory. Here, based on experimental and numerical studies on a series of symmetry-broken nano-patch plasmonic resonators, we found that Fano’s formula, widely used in modeling such systems previously, works well for one polarization but completely fails for another polarization. In contrast, a two-mode coupled-mode theory (CMT) can interpret all experimental results well. This motivated us to employ the CMT to establish a complete phase diagram for such coupled plasmonic systems, which not only revealed the diversified effects and their governing physics in different phase regions, but more importantly, also justifies the applicabilities of two simplified models (including Fano’s formula) derived previously. Our results present a unified picture for the distinct effects discovered in such systems, which can facilitate people’s understanding of the governing physics and can design functional devices facing requests for diversified applications.

Two-dimensional black phosphorus (BP) has been demonstrated to be promising in photoelectronic devices, electrode materials, and biomedicine owing to its outstanding properties. However, the application of BP has been hindered by harsh preparation conditions, high costs, and easy degradation in ambient condition. Herein, we report a facile and cost-effective strategy for synthesis of orthorhombic phase BP and a kind of BP-reduced graphene oxide (BP/rGO) hybrids in which BP remains stable for more than 4 weeks ascribed to the formation of phosphorus-carbon covalent bonds between BP and rGO as well as the protection effect of the unique wrinkle morphology of rGO nanosheets. Surface modification BP/rGO hybrids (PEGylated BP/rGO) exhibit excellent photothermal performance with photothermal conversion efficiency as high as 57.79% at 808 nm. The BP/rGO hybrids exhibit enhanced antitumor effects both in vitro and in vivo, showing promising perspectives in biomedicine.

Paris saponin has shown great therapeutic value in cancer therapy. We used isolated Paris saponin II (PSII), an active component of Paris saponin, and demonstrated its antitumor effect on human head and neck squamous cell carcinoma cell lines. Additionally, we investigated its mechanisms of action in vivo by establishing a xenograft mouse model. The results showed that PSII had presented strong anticancer effects on both hypopharyngeal malignant tumor cell lines (FaDu) and laryngeal carcinoma cell lines (Tu212 and Tu686). In addition, we successfully isolated and cultured the head and neck squamous stem cells and the primary fibroblasts to perform metabonomics studies. The results showed that RPII remarkably decreased energy metabolism, and type III nitric oxide synthase 3 (NOS3) may be a target to block tumor growth. Furthermore, we found that PSII inhibited HNSCC proliferation and metastasis by inhibiting the nitric oxide metabolic pathway. Overall, these results demonstrated that PSII is a potent anticancer agent, and the metabonomics analysis is a valuable tool to investigate and establish the antitumor effects of traditional Chinese medicines.

Short-term traffic flow prediction is an important component of intelligent transportation systems, which can support traffic trip planning and traffic management. Although existing predicting methods have been applied in the field of traffic flow prediction, they cannot capture the complex multifeatures of traffic flows resulting in unsatisfactory short-term traffic flow prediction results. In this paper, a multifeature fusion model based on deep learning methods is proposed, which consists of three modules, namely, a CNN-Bidirectional GRU module with an attention mechanism (CNN-BiGRU-attention) and two Bidirectional GRU modules with an attention mechanism (BiGRU-attention). The CNN-BiGRU-attention module is used to extract local trend features and long-term dependent features of the traffic flow, and the two BiGRU-attention modules are used to extract daily and weekly periodic features of the traffic flow. Moreover, a feature fusion layer in the model is used to fuse the features extracted by each module. And then, the number of neurons in the model, the loss function, and other parameters such as the optimization algorithm are discussed and set up through simulation experiments. Finally, the multifeature fusion model is trained and tested based on the training and test sets from the data collected from the field. And the results indicate that the proposed model can better achieve traffic flow prediction and has good robustness. Furthermore, the multifeature fusion model is compared and analyzed against the baseline models with the same dataset, and the experimental results show that the multifeature fusion model has superior predictive performance compared to the baseline models.

Abstract Background Aberrant TAK1 (transforming growth factor β‐activated kinase 1) activity is known to be involved in a variety of malignancies, but the regulatory mechanisms of TAK1 remain poorly understood. GRAMD4 (glucosyltransferase Rab‐like GTPase activator and myotubularin domain containing 4) is a newly discovered p53‐independent proapoptotic protein with an unclear role in HCC (hepatocellular carcinoma). Results In this research, we found that GRAMD4 expression was lower in HCC samples, and its downregulation predicted worse prognosis for patients after surgical resection. Functionally, GRAMD4 inhibited HCC migration, invasion and metastasis. Mechanistically, GRAMD4 interacted with TAK1 to promote its protein degradation, thus, resulting in the inactivation of MAPK (Mitogen‐activated protein kinase) and NF‐κB pathways. Furthermore, GRAMD4 was proved to recruit ITCH (itchy E3 ubiquitin protein ligase) to promote the ubiquitination of TAK1. Moreover, high expression of TAK1 was correlated with low expression of GRAMD4 in HCC patients. Conclusions GRAMD4 inhibits the migration and metastasis of HCC, mainly by recruiting ITCH to promote the degradation of TAK1, which leads to the inactivation of MAPK and NF‐κB signalling pathways.

Background: The hypoxia-induced pro-proliferative and anti-apoptotic characteristics of pulmonary arterial endothelial cells (PAECs) play critical roles in pulmonary vascular remodeling and contribute to hypoxic pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) pathogenesis. However, the mechanism underlying this hypoxic disease has not been fully elucidated.Methods: Bioinformatics was adopted to screen out the key hypoxia-related genes in PAH. Gain- and loss-function assays were then performed to test the identified hypoxic pathways in vitro. Human PAECs were cultured under hypoxic (3% O2) or normoxic (21% O2) conditions. Hypoxia-induced changes in apoptosis and proliferation were determined by flow cytometry and Ki-67 immunofluorescence staining, respectively. Survival of the hypoxic cells was estimated by cell counting kit-8 assay. Expression alterations of the target hypoxia-related genes, cell cycle regulators, and apoptosis factors were investigated by Western blot.Results: According to the Gene Expression Omnibus dataset (GSE84538), differentiated embryo chondrocyte expressed gene 1-peroxisome proliferative-activated receptor-γ (Dec1-PPARγ) axis was defined as a key hypoxia-related signaling in PAH. A negative correlation was observed between Dec1 and PPARγ expression in patients with hypoxic PAH. In vitro observations revealed an increased proliferation and a decreased apoptosis in PAECs under hypoxia. Furthermore, hypoxic PAECs exhibited remarkable upregulation of Dec1 and downregulation of PPARγ. Dec1 was confirmed to be crucial for the imbalance of proliferation and apoptosis in hypoxic PAECs. Furthermore, the pro-surviving effect of hypoxic Dec1 was mediated through PPARγ inhibition.Conclusion: For the first time, Dec1-PPARγ axis was identified as a key determinant hypoxia-modifying signaling that is necessary for the imbalance between proliferation and apoptosis of PAECs. These novel endothelial signal transduction events may offer new diagnostic and therapeutic options for patients with hypoxic PAH.

Abstract Because of ubiquity of thioesters, thioesterases play a critical role in metabolism, membrane biosynthesis, signal transduction, and gene regulation. In many bacteria, YbgC is such an enzyme, whose coding gene mostly resides in the tol-pal cluster. Although all other proteins encoded in the tol-pal cluster are clearly involved in maintaining cell envelope integrity and cell division, little is known about the physiological role of YbgC. In this study, we identify in Shewanella oneidensis, a γ-proteobacterium used as a research model for environmental microbes, YbgC as a motility regulator. The loss of YbgC results in enhanced motility, which is likely due to the increased rotation rate of the flagellum. The regulatory function of YbgC requires its thioesterase activity but could not be replaced by YbgC homologues of other bacteria. We further show that the regulation of YbgC is mediated by the second message c-di-GMP.

Eosinophils are important effector cells in the pathogenesis of allergic bronchial asthma. Enhancement of eosinophil apoptosis has been considered to have therapeutic effect on allergic disease. Fungal immunomodulatory peptide (FIP)-fve has been reported to possess immunoprophylactic activities for allergic diseases. The purpose of this study was to investigate the modulation of FIP-fve on human eosinophil survival derived from allergic asthmatic patients. Methods: Eosinophils were obtained from allergic asthmatic patients and purified with the use of density gradients and immunomagnetic beads negative selection. Apoptosis was assessed by annexin V and propidium iodide. The apoptotic signal protein, CD95 and IL-5 receptor expression were assessed by Western blot and flow cytometric analysis. Results: When the eosinophils were treated with FIP-fve in the presence of IL-5, IL-5-enhanced eosinophil survival diminished. FIP-fve could reduce IL-5-mediated survival of eosinophils and decrease IL-5Rα expression. In the presence of FIP-fve, CD95 expression was upregulated and Bcl-xL and pro-caspase 3 expression were downregulated in cultured eosinophils. Conclusion: The results suggest that FIP-fve can inhibit IL-5-mediated survival of eosinophils through the modulation of cytokine receptor expression and apoptotic signal protein production. The modulatory effect of FIP-fve on eosinophil apoptosis in vitro indicates that it may have some therapeutic effect on eosinophil-related allergic inflammation in vivo. [J Formos Med Assoc 2007;106(1):36-43]

Solar-driven semiconductor photocatalysts are highly appealing in applications of environmental remediation and energy conversion. However, photocatalytic reactions, particularly oxygen evolution reaction (OER), are often constrained by the swift recombination of electron–hole pairs, thereby resulting in low reaction efficiency. Although it is effective to separate charge carriers by constructing heterojunctions to form built-in electric field, the lattice mismatch and inefficient interlayer charge transfer of heterojunctions in the photocatalysts limit their further development. Here, we propose a new strategy by constructing an internal electric field for OER through an individual piezoelectric two-dimensional material. The results indicate that the piezoelectric effect regulates the electronic structure, reduces bandgap, improves light absorption efficiency, and that the displacement of positive and negative charge centers is the key factor in the enhanced OER. This research indicates the feasibility of combining piezoelectric properties of two-dimensional materials with OER (1.19 eV), providing new insights and guidance for applying the piezoelectric effect in the OER and opening up a way to promote efficient separation of charge carriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BackgroundThe Fist-Edge-Palm (FEP) test takes 0.5-3 min to complete and is highly sensitive in differentiating Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia from normal cognition, but it has not yet been studied in Parkinson's disease (PD).ObjectiveTo determine the sensitivity and specificity of the FEP test in screening patients with PD for cognitive impairment and dementia.MethodsPD patients were recruited and divided into three groups based on cognitive status: normal cognition, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia according to 2015 MDS clinical diagnostic criteria for PD and clinical dementia rating scale (CDR) assessment for cognitive status. MMSE, FEP and clock drawing test (CDT) were tested in all recruited PD patients. Chi-square test was used to compare the sensitivity of FEP and CDT in detecting PDD and PD-MCI.ResultsA total of 108 PD patients were included: 52 normal cognition, 28 MCI, and 28 dementia. The sensitivity of FEP in differentiating PDD from PD-NC was 96.4% and the sensitivity for PD-MCI from PD-NC was 71.4%. The sensitivity of CDT in differentiating PDD from PD-NC was 71.4% and PD-MCI from PD-NC was 53.6%. The sensitivities of FEP and CDT were 83.9% and 62.5%, respectively, in identifying cognitive impairment (CDR ≥ 0.5) in PD patients.ConclusionFEP is a sensitive screening tool in differentiating PDD or PD-MCI from PD-NC, and it is much faster than MMSE and more sensitive than CDT. FEP may be a practical screening tool for daily clinical practice.