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Objective To explore the expression of miR-101-3p in gastric cancer and its mechanism on the invasion, metastasis, and angiogenesis of gastric cancer cells by targeting the STC-1 gene to regulate the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway. Methods qRT-PCR was used to detect the expression of miR-101-3p and STC-1 mRNA in gastric cancer tissues and BGC-823 cell and analyze the relationship between miR-101-3p expression and patients' clinical pathological factors. The cells were transfected with miRNA mimics and plasmids separately or in combination with LipofectamineTM 2000. TargetScanHuman prediction and dual-luciferase assay were used to verify the targeted regulation of miR-101-3p on STC-1. The effect and possible mechanism of miR-101-3p targeting the STC-1 gene on the invasion, metastasis, and angiogenesis of cancer cells were verified by scratch test, Transwell chamber test, Matrigel in vitro tube forming test, and Western blot assay. The development of the transplanted tumor was detected by nude mouse tumorigenicity test. Results The expression of STC-1 in gastric cancer tissues was higher than that in normal tissues. Compared with normal gastric tissues and GES-1 cells, miR-101-3p was down-regulated, and STC-1 mRNA was up-regulated in gastric cancer tissues and BGC-823 cell. The level of miR-101-3p was negatively correlated with the level of STC-1, and significantly correlated with the degree of tumor differentiation, TNM stage, and lymph node metastasis (P < 0.05). miR-101-3p directly targeted STC-1. The overexpression of miR-101-3p inhibited STC-1 expression and downregulated the expression of p-PI3K/PI3K, p-AKT/AKT, MMP-2, MMP-9, VEGF, and Ang2, consequently, inhibited tumor cell invasion, metastasis, and angiogenesis and reduced the size and weight of the transplanted tumors (P < 0.05). Conclusion miR-101-3p is down-regulated in gastric cancer and can target the STC-1 gene to regulate the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway and inhibit the invasion, metastasis, and angiogenesis of BGC-823 gastric cancer cells and the development of transplanted tumors in vivo.

Power line interference (PLI) is a major source of noise in sEMG signals. As the bandwidth of PLI overlaps with the sEMG signals, it can easily affect the interpretation of the signal. The processing methods used in the literature are mostly notch filtering and spectral interpolation. However, it is difficult for the former to reconcile the contradiction between completely filtering and avoiding signal distortion, while the latter performs poorly in the case of a time-varying PLI. To solve these, a novel synchrosqueezed-wavelet-transform (SWT)-based PLI filter is proposed. The local SWT was developed to reduce the computation cost while maintaining the frequency resolution. A ridge location method based on an adaptive threshold is presented. In addition, two ridge extraction methods (REMs) are proposed to fit different application requirements. Parameters were optimized before further study. Notch filtering, spectral interpolation, and the proposed filter were evaluated on the simulated signals and real signals. The output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) ranges of the proposed filter with two different REMs are 18.53–24.57 and 18.57–26.92. Both the quantitative index and the time–frequency spectrum diagram show that the performance of the proposed filter is significantly better than that of the other filters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In solving the problems of slowly updated laboratory equipment, heavy hardware wastage and potential danger in the course of traditional computer hardware assembling experiment, this article proposes a design and concrete implementation of virtual laboratory for computer hardware assembling based on immersive VR environment. Adopt 3Ds Max and Unity3d software to create 3D models and build the scene, and Mojing SDK as the VR display effect and the tool of interactive interface, the article achieved the design and implementation of virtual laboratory application in mobile devices. Current virtual laboratories based on Virtools can only run in Windows environment, and this design overcomes such limitation. In addition, with rich scenes and tutorial, this design combines the head-mounted display and somatosensory controller to greatly promote the immersion and interactivity, thus enhancing the interests of students. This is a new trail to improve the traditional experimental teaching effect.

Photovoltaics (PVs, light to electricity) integrated with a thermoelectric generator (TEG, heat to electricity) has been viewed as a promising technique that can achieve high power gain and extend device lifetime, but which have rarely been applied in organic PVs. The critical temperature difference (dTc) is a key parameter because only if the temperature difference (dT) is higher than dTc a power gain can be realized, and dTc is closely associated with device performance and application scenarios. By examining the performance of a simulated PV–TEG integrated device comprising a state‐of‐the‐art organic solar cell and a commercial TEG at various dTs, this dTc is witnessed. An effective numerical simulation method is established to study the PV–TEG integration based on, the dTc can be perfectly reproduced and corresponding optimal p–n leg density for the TEG module to generate the highest power output at a certain dT. Integrated organic PV–TEG (OPV–TEG) devices show a lower dTc than c‐SiPV–TEG devices, which, together with the lower temperature coefficient, are intrinsic advantages of OPVs for future applications. Under AM 1.5G illumination, the 1‐cm2 optimized OPV–TEG integrated device achieves a record energy conversion efficiency of 18.2%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the potential of regioisomeric quinoidal-resonance π-spacers in designing near-infrared (NIR) non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) for high-performance organic solar cell devices. Adopting thienothiazole as the π-spacer, two new isomeric A-Q-D-Q-A NFAs, TzN-S and TzS-S, are designed and synthesized. Both NFAs demonstrate a broad spectral response extended to the NIR region. However, they exhibit different photovoltaic properties when they were mixed with the PCE10 donor to fabricate respective solar cells. The optimal device of TzS-S achieves a PCE of 10.75%, much higher than that of TzN-S based ones (6.13%). The more favorable energetic offset and better molecular packing contribute to the better charge generation and transport, which explains the relative superiority of TzS-S NFA. This work sheds new light on the regioisomeric effect of component materials for optoelectronic applications., Competing Interests: There are no conflicts to declare., (This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.)

Purposes: This study was to estimate the prevalence of myopia among primary school students in Hefei, China, and evaluate the association of educational environment with myopia., Methods: This study was a cross-sectional study, and recruited primary school students in grades 1-6. Children underwent a stepwise ophthalmic examination, which included visual acuity and objective cycloplegic refraction to identify children with myopia. Under the guidance of parents, children completed a questionnaire, including gender, region, grade and several indicators related to education. The study analyzed the risk factors by using a logistic regression and assessed feature importance by using a random forest algorithm., Results: A total of 3,596 primary school students were involved in this analysis, and the overall prevalence of myopia was 27.1%. Gender, grade, education level of the father, education level of the mother, academic level of children, hours of homework per day on weekends, number of after-school tutoring per week and frequency of extracurricular reading were significantly associated with myopia. There was no significant association between the amount of homework per day on school days and myopia after adjusting for covariates. In terms of educational environment, the top 3 factors were academic level of children, homework on weekends and after-school tutoring., Conclusions: Educational environment with high educational loads was associated with the high prevalence of myopia. Reducing the burden of studying, especially that after class, was an effective way to prevent myopia., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Peng, Zhang, Wang, Sun and Sun.)

The automatic recognition technology of muscle fatigue has widespread application in the field of kinesiology and rehabilitation medicine. In this paper, we used surface electromyography (sEMG) to study the recognition of leg muscle fatigue during circuit resistance training. The purpose of this study was to solve the problem that the sEMG signals have a lot of noise interference and the recognition accuracy of the existing muscle fatigue recognition model is not high enough. First, we proposed an improved wavelet threshold function denoising algorithm to denoise the sEMG signal. Then, we build a muscle fatigue state recognition model based on long short-term memory (LSTM), and used the Holdout method to evaluate the performance of the model. Finally, the denoising effect of the improved wavelet threshold function denoising method proposed in this paper was compared with the denoising effect of the traditional wavelet threshold denoising method. We compared the performance of the proposed muscle fatigue recognition model with that of particle swarm optimization support vector machine (PSO-SVM) and convolutional neural network (CNN). The results showed that the new wavelet threshold function had better denoising performance than hard and soft threshold functions. The accuracy of LSTM network model in identifying muscle fatigue was 4.89% and 2.47% higher than that of PSO-SVM and CNN, respectively. The sEMG signal denoising method and muscle fatigue recognition model proposed in this paper have important implications for monitoring muscle fatigue during rehabilitation training and exercise.

Semitransparent organic solar cells (ST-OSCs) are considered as one of the most valuable applications of OSCs and a strong contender in the market. However, the optical band gap of current high-performance ST-OSCs is still not low enough to achieve the optimal balance between power conversion efficiency (PCE) and average visible transmittance (AVT). An N-substituted asymmetric nonfullerene acceptor SN with over 40 nm bathochromically shifted absorption compared to Y6 was designed and synthesized, based on which the device with PM6 as donor obtained a PCE of 14.3 %, accompanied with a nonradiative voltage loss as low as 0.15 eV. Meanwhile, ternary devices with the addition of SN into PM6 : Y6 can achieve a PCE of 17.5 % with an unchanged open-circuit voltage and improved short-circuit current. Benefiting from extended NIR absorption and lowered voltage loss, ST-OSCs based on PM6 : SN : Y6 were fabricated and the optimized device demonstrated a PCE of 14.0 % at an AVT of 20.2 %, which is the highest PCE at an AVT over 20 %., (© 2021 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

The maximum oxygen uptake (V̇O 2 max), determined from graded maximal or submaximal exercise tests, is used to classify the cardiorespiratory fitness level of individuals. The purpose of this study was to examine the validity and reliability of the YMCA submaximal exercise test protocol performed on a newly-designed rectilinear stepping ergometer (RSE) that used up and down reciprocating vertical motion in place of conventional circular motion and giving precise measurement of workload, to determine V̇O 2 max in young healthy male adults. Thirty-two young healthy male adults (32 males; age range: 20-35 years; height: 1.75 ± 0.05 m; weight: 67.5 ± 8.6 kg) firstly participated in a maximal-effort graded exercise test using a cycle ergometer (CE) to directly obtain measured V̇O 2 max. Subjects then completed the progressive multistage test on the RSE beginning at 50W and including additional stages of 70, 90, 110, 130, and 150W, and the RSE YMCA submaximal test consisting of a workload increase every 3 minutes until the termination criterion was reached. A metabolic equation was derived from the RSE multistage exercise test to predict oxygen consumption (V̇O 2 ) from power output (W) during the submaximal exercise test (V̇O 2 (mL·min -1 )=12.4 ×W(watts)+3.5 mL·kg -1 ·min -1 ×M+160mL·min -1 , R 2 = 0.91, standard error of the estimate (SEE) = 134.8mL·min -1 ). A high correlation was observed between the RSE YMCA estimated V̇O 2 max and the CE measured V̇O 2 max (r=0.87). The mean difference between estimated and measured V̇O 2 max was 2.5 mL·kg -1 ·min -1 , with an SEE of 3.55 mL·kg -1 ·min -1 . The data suggest that the RSE YMCA submaximal exercise test is valid for predicting V̇O 2 max in young healthy male adults. The findings show that the rectilinear stepping exercise is an effective submaximal exercise for predicting V̇O 2 max. The newly-designed RSE may be potentially further developed as an alternative ergometer for assessing cardiorespiratory fitness and the promotion of personalized health interventions for health care professionals.