Search

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER)–endolysosome interactions regulate cholesterol exchange between the ER and the endolysosome. ER–endolysosome membrane contact sites mediate the ER–endolysosome interaction. VAP-ORP1L (vesicle-associated membrane protein-associated protein- OSBP-related protein 1L) interaction forms the major contact site between the ER and the lysosome, which is regulated by Rab7. RILP (Rab7-interacting lysosomal protein) is the downstream effector of Rab7, but its role in the organelle interaction between the ER and the lysosome is not clear. In this study, we found RILP interacts with ORP1L to competitively inhibit the formation of the VAP–ORP1L contact site. Immunofluorescence microscopy revealed that RILP induces late endosome/lysosome clustering, which reduces the contact of endolysosomes with the ER, interfering with the ER–endolysosome interaction. Further examination demonstrated that over-expression of RILP results in the accumulation of cholesterol in the clustered endolysosomes, which triggers cellular autophagy depending on RILP. Our results suggest that RILP interferes with the ER–endolysosome interaction to inhibit cholesterol flow from the endolysosome to the ER, which feedbacks to trigger autophagy.

Abstract Background Protein cysteine oxidation is substantially involved in various biological and pathogenic processes, but its implications in pancreatic cancer development remains poorly understood. Methods and results In this study, we performed a global characterization of protein oxidation targets in PDAC cells through iodoTMT-based quantitative proteomics, which identified over 4300 oxidized cysteine sites in more than 2100 proteins in HPDE6c7 and PANC-1 cells. Among them, 1715 cysteine residues were shown to be differentially oxidized between HPDE6c7 and PANC-1 cells. Also, charged amino acids including aspartate, glutamate and lysine were significantly overrepresented in flanking sequences of oxidized cysteines. Differentially oxidized proteins in PANC-1 cells were enriched in multiple cancer-related biological processes and signaling pathways. Specifically, the HIF-1 signaling proteins exhibited significant oxidation alterations in PANC-1 cells, and the reduced PHD2 oxidation in human PDAC tissues was correlated with lower survival time in pancreatic cancer patients. Conclusion These investigations provided new insights into protein oxidation-regulated signaling and biological processes during PDAC pathogenesis, which might be further explored for pancreatic cancer diagnosis and treatment.

BackgroundMandibular tumor surgery necessitates precise osteotomies based on tumor boundaries; however, conventional osteotomies often lack accuracy in predicting osteotomy positions and planes, potentially leading to excessive resection of normal bone tissues or residual tumors, thus compromising postoperative quality of life and clinical outcomes. Robotic-assisted surgery (RAS) augmented with artificial intelligence (AI) offers precise localization capabilities, aiding surgeons in achieving accurate osteotomy positioning. This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility and accuracy of a robotic magnetic navigation system for positioning and osteotomy in an intraoral surgical trial of a mandibular tumor model.MethodsPatient computed tomography (CT) imaging data of mandibular chin and body tumors were utilized to create 3D printed models, serving as study subjects for mandibular tumor resection. Ten pairs of models were printed for the experimental and control groups. The experimental group (EG) underwent osteotomy using a robot-assisted surgical navigation system, performing osteotomy under robotic navigation following alignment based on preoperative design. The control group (CG) underwent traditional surgery, estimating osteotomy position empirically according to preoperative design. Postoperative CT scans were conducted on both models, and actual postoperative results were compared to preoperative design. Osteotomy accuracy was evaluated by positional and angular errors between preoperatively designed and actual osteotomy planes.ResultsFor ten randomly selected spots on the left and right sides, respectively, the EG group had mean distance errors of 0.338 mm and 0.941 mm. These values were obtained from the EG group. In the EG group, on the left side, the mean angular errors were 14.741 degrees, while on the right side, they were 13.021 degrees. For the 10 randomly selected spots on the left and right sides, respectively, the CG had mean distance errors of 1.776 mm and 2.320 mm. This is in contrast to the results obtained by the EG. It was determined that the left side had a mean angle error of 16.841 degrees, while the right side had an error of 18.416 degrees in the CG group. The above results indicated significantly lower point errors of bilateral osteotomy planes in the experimental group compared to the control group.ConclusionThis study demonstrates the feasibility of electromagnetic navigation robot-assisted intraoral osteotomy for mandibular tumors and suggests that this approach can enhance the precision of clinical surgery.

Silicon photonic integrated circuits and micro-electro-mechanical systems enable the design of compact, high-performance micro-opto-electro-mechanical systems (MOEMS) gyroscopes, such as recently reported optomechanical gyroscopes. However, effective on-chip light coupling within a confined micro/nano system under vacuum posed challenges for conventional angular velocity measurements in prior optomechanical gyroscopes. Additionally, A core challenge in resonant gyroscopes is directly measuring resonant frequency displacement, necessitating alternative angular velocity detection techniques. Alternatively, this work presents the design of a novel optomechanical gyroscope based on the micro-hemispherical shell resonator integrated with optical ring cavity resonators. This integrated optomechanical device combines the principles of shell resonators and optical ring cavity resonators to enhance gyroscope performance. The high-Q optical ring resonators coupled via evanescent fields from the on-chip silicon waveguide, serve as the basic building block. Overall, the gyroscope design utilizes principles of both mechanical resonators and integrated photonics to address challenges in on-chip light coupling and angular velocity detection for next-generation optomechanical inertial sensors. Numerical simulations demonstrated the optomechanical micro-hemispherical shell resonator gyroscope could attain a calculated scale factor of 77.9 mV/(°/s) and total angle random walk of 0.0662 °/h1/2 for a micro-hemispherical shell mass of 212 ng at an input laser power of 5 mW. These performance metrics suggest the proposed integrated optomechanical gyroscope design holds promise for applications requiring chip-scale inertial navigation, attitude measurement, and stabilization.

Abstract Micro-gyroscopes using micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) and micro-opto-electro-mechanical system (MOEMS) are the new-generation and recently well-developed gyroscopes produced by the combinations of the traditional gyroscope technology and MEMS/MOEMS technologies. According to the working principle and used materials, the newly-reported micro-gyroscopes in recent years include the silicon-based micromechanical vibratory gyroscope, hemispherical resonant gyroscope, piezoelectric vibratory gyroscope, suspended rotor gyroscope, microfluidic gyroscope, optical gyroscope, and atomic gyroscope. According to different sensitive structures, the silicon-based micromechanical vibratory gyroscope can also be divided into double frame type, tuning fork type, vibrating ring type, and nested ring type. For those micro-gyroscopes, in recent years, many emerging techniques are proposed and developed to enhance different aspects of performances, such as the sensitivity, angle random walk (ARW), bias instability (BI), and bandwidth. Therefore, this paper will firstly review the main performances and applications of those newly-developed MEMS/MOEMS gyroscopes, then comprehensively summarize and analyze the latest research progress of the micro-gyroscopes mentioned above, and finally discuss the future development trends of MEMS/MOEMS gyroscopes.

Lactobacillus acidophilus (LA) is a common clinical probiotic that improves ulcerative colitis (UC) by restoring intestinal immune balance. However, the interaction of LA with the gut microbiota and its metabolites in the treatment of UC remains unknown. Therefore, this study seeks to elucidate whether the gut microbiota and its metabolites act as pivotal effectors in LA’s therapeutic mechanisms and how precisely they modulate intestinal immunity. In this study, we verified that LA can obviously ameliorate the disease severity, and regulate intestinal immune disorders in UC mice. Subsequently, antibiotic (ABX)-mediated depletion of the gut microflora demonstrated that the therapeutic efficiency of LA was closely associated with gut microbiota. In addition, the results of metabolomics revealed that ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA), a metabolite of intestinal flora, may be a potential effector molecule mediating therapeutic effects of LA. Indeed, we found that UDCA can improve the macro pathological characteristics of UC mice, and through a comprehensive set of in vivo and in vitro experiments, we discovered that UDCA exerts dual effects on immune regulation. Firstly, it promotes the differentiation of Treg cells, resulting in increased secretion of anti-inflammatory cytokines. Secondly, UDCA inhibits the polarization of M1 macrophages, effectively reducing the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Moreover, we found that UDCA regulation of immune response is directly related to the RapGap/PI3K-AKT/NF-κB signaling pathway. In conclusion, LA and its metabolite, UDCA, may treat UC by activating the RapGap/PI3K-AKT/NF-κB signaling pathway and modulating Treg cells and M1 macrophages. All in all, our findings highlight the potential of microbial metabolites in enhancing probiotic for UC treatment.

The traditional land system of rural communities in China has been an obstacle to the sustainable development of land transfer. To facilitate a more efficient allocation of resources, the Chinese government has implemented the largest rural land titling action in the world. However, there has been much debate in scholarly circles regarding the correlation between rural land titling and rural land transactions. By employing meta-analysis technology, this paper evaluates the relationship between rural land titling and rural land transactions. According to the meta-analysis results, rural land titling is only a minor contributor to rural land transfer; it only contributes to rural land transfer-out, with no effect on rural land transfer-in. Furthermore, education, age, labor force, agricultural fixed assets owned, area of contracted rural land, and publication time were identified as situational variables that affect the relationship between rural land titling and rural land transfer-out. This research provides insight into how to promote the sustainable development of agricultural land economy by promoting land transfer, as well as further topics for future study.

Micro-gyroscopes based on the Coriolis principle are widely employed in inertial navigation, motion control, and vibration analysis applications. Conventional micro-gyroscopes often exhibit limitations, including elevated noise levels and suboptimal performance metrics. Conversely, the advent of cavity optomechanical system technology heralds an innovative approach to micro-gyroscope development. This method enhances the device’s capabilities, offering elevated sensitivity, augmented precision, and superior resolution. This paper presents our main contributions which include a novel dual-frame optomechanical gyroscope, a unique photonic crystal cavity design, and advanced numerical simulation and optimization methods. The proposed design utilizes an optical cavity formed between dual oscillating frames, whereby input rotation induces a measurable phase shift via optomechanical coupling. Actuation of the frames is achieved electrostatically via an interdigitated comb-drive design. Through theoretical modeling based on cavity optomechanics and finite element simulation, the operating principle and performance parameters are evaluated in detail. The results indicate an expected angular rate sensitivity of 22.8 mV/°/s and an angle random walk of 7.1 × 10−5 °/h1/2, representing superior precision to existing micro-electromechanical systems gyroscopes of comparable scale. Detailed analysis of the optomechanical transduction mechanism suggests this dual-frame approach could enable angular vibration detection with resolution exceeding state-of-the-art solutions.

In this paper, to fully understand the influence of nanofabrication error issues on the lithium-niobate-based device, the systematic simulations and optimizations of lithium-niobate-based photonic crystal (PhC) optomechanical cavity considering the material dispersion and inclination angle of PhC air hole are investigated in details. The structural parameter influences on the PhC band gap, the line defected waveguide transmission characteristics, the optical resonant wavelength of the PhC microcavity, and the mechanical resonant frequency are all discussed. The effects of the simulation methods on the PhC band gap are investigated as well. And finally, the opto-mechanical coupling rate of the lithium-niobate-based PhC optomechanical cavity structure is calculated. Such obtained results can help researchers to precisely design the required optomechanical cavity for specific applications.

Bifidobacterium longum subsp. longum XZ01 (BLSL1) is a new strain (isolated from the intestines of healthy people and deposited with the preservation number GDMCC 61618). An exopolysaccharide, S-EPS-1, was successfully isolated from the strain and then systematically investigated for the first time. Some structural features of S-EPS-1 were analyzed by chemical component, HPLC, ultraviolet, infrared, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum analyses. These analyses revealed that S-EPS-1 is a neutral heteropolysaccharide with an α-configuration. It contains mainly mannose and glucose, as well as small amounts of rhamnose and galactose. The molecular weight of S-EPS-1 was calculated to be 638 kDa. Several immunoregulatory activity assays indicated that S-EPS-1 could increase proliferation, phagocytosis, and NO production in vitro. In addition, S-EPS-1 could upregulate the expression of cytokines at the mRNA level through TLR4-mediated activation of the NF-κB signaling pathway in RAW 264.7 cells. Finally, S-EPS-1 was demonstrated to exhibit antioxidant activity by ABTS+• scavenging, DPPH• scavenging, and ferric-ion reducing power assays. Furthermore, S-EPS-1 can protect cells from oxidative stress and shows no cytotoxicity. These beneficial effects can be partly attributed to its antioxidant ability. Thus, the antioxidant S-EPS-1 may be applied as a functional food in the future.

Abstract Coalbed methane (CBM) is an important resource of energy. For CBM recovery, sorption‐induced coal deformation can cause significant reservoir permeability change. Moisture content and coal pore morphology affect the gas adsorption capacity and can alter the coal deformation of the coal seam. Therefore, it is crucial to establish a coal gas moisture‐coupled model for CBM production prediction. However, there are currently insufficient data available for quantitative analyses. In this paper, a series of typical sorption‐induced strain experiments were carried out during methane adsorption and desorption on coal samples with different metamorphic degrees and moisture content. The pore morphology and adsorption capacity of coals were measured to analyze the reason for different deformation of coals with various pore structures and moisture. Results show that the adsorption capacity and deformation is corresponding to the specific surface area of micropore, which first decreases and then increases with coal ranks. The deformation and adsorption gas content of dried coals is greater than that of natural moisture coals, which means that moisture can reduce the sorption capacity of coals, resulting in the decrease of gas adsorption‐induced coal deformation. There is also residual deformation of coal samples after gas desorption caused by the residual adsorbed gas in coals. This paper quantitatively investigates the effects of pore characteristics and moisture on coal deformation and the internal mechanism. This work will provide essential information for building out a fully cross‐coupled model of coal gas‐moisture relationships for CBM production prediction.

In underground mining engineering, the residual strength of surrounding rock has an important influence on the secondary stress distribution caused by excavation. Generally, the residual strength of coal can be measured by experiments, but for soft coal, due to its large postpeak deformation characteristics and the limitation of strain sensor range, it is difficult to measure residual strength. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to estimate the residual strength of soft coal with incomplete stress-strain curves. In this paper, a method for estimating residual strength of soft coal based on the ratio of equivalent residual strain to peak strain is proposed. Taking advantage of the characteristics that the strain-softening curve of soft coal decreases approximately linearly in the initial stage, keeping the drop modulus unchanged, the endpoint of the extension line can be determined based on the ratio of equivalent residual strain to peak strain, which is estimated residual strength. There are 342 groups of typical complete stress-strain curves analyzed to determine the value range of the ratio of equivalent residual strain to peak strain. It is concluded that for briquette composed of soft coal, the ratio of equivalent residual strain to peak strain is between 1 and 3.35 when the confining pressure is 0-6 MPa, and the maximum probability interval of the ratio value under different confining pressures is further calculated. When the confining pressure is higher than 6 MPa, the briquette composed of soft coal tends to ideal plastic state after peak. The feasibility of the residual strength estimation method is verified by comparing the numerical simulation results of triaxial compression of coal pillars with the experimental results.

A magnetically functionalized Fe3O4@ZIF−67 metal–organic framework (MOF) was prepared by electrostatic self-assembly using magnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticles as the core and ZIF−67 as the shell. The composite was characterized by electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, Fourier- transform infrared spectroscopy, and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller measurements. Magnetic solid-phase extraction (MSPE) was performed on five flavonoids from Dicranopteris pedata using Fe3O4@ZIF−67 as an adsorbent. The developed MSPE method was combined with high-performance liquid chromatography–ultraviolet detection to preconcentrate and separate five flavonoids (rutin, quercitrin, kaempferol-3-O-α-L-rhamnoside, quercetin, and kaempferol) from Dicranopteris pedata. The factors affecting the extraction, such as the amount of Fe3O4@ZIF−67 adsorbent, salt ion concentration in the sample solution, vortex time, type and amount of desorbing solvent, concentration of formic acid to acidify the desorbing solvent, and acetonitrile ratio, were optimized. The developed method showed good linearity over the concentration range of 1.09–70.0 μg∙mL−1 for the five flavonoids, with R2 values between 0.9901 and 0.9945. The limits of detection and average recoveries for the five flavonoids were in the ranges of 39.5–56.2 ng∙mL−1 and 92.2–100.7%, respectively. The method presented herein is simple, efficient, and sensitive; it can be used for enrichment analysis of the five flavonoids in Dicranopteris pedata.

In contrast to the well-established palladium-catalyzed version, the nickel-catalyzed carbonylative coupling is underdeveloped. Here the authors report a nickel-catalyzed allylic carbonylative coupling with alkyl zinc reagents, allowing for preparation of β,γ-unsaturated ketones in a linear-selective fashion.

Determination of serum cholesterol (Chol) is important for disease diagnosis, and has attracted great attention during the last few decades. Herein, a new magnetic nanoparticle-based ligand replacement strategy has been presented for chemical luminescence detection of Chol. The detection depends on ligand replacement from ferrocene (Fc) to Chol through a β-cyclodextrin (β-CD)–based host–guest interaction, which releases Fc–Hemin as a catalyst for the luminol/hydrogen peroxide chemical luminescence system. More importantly, the luminescence signal can be captured by the camera of a smartphone, thus realizing Chol detection with less instrument dependency. The limit of detection of this method is calculated to be 0.18 μM, which is comparable to some of the developed methods. Moreover, this method has been used successfully to quantify Chol from serum samples with a simple extraction process.

A novel bearing performance degradation assessment method based on convolutional sparse coding and combination learning is proposed in this paper, which can avoid the impact of the traditional features on the assessment results under complex operation conditions. The vibration signal can be decomposed into the convolution of the kernel sets and their corresponding sparse solutions using convolutional sparse coding. The learned kernel sets based on the training signal samples are the comprehensive embodiment of the information related to the operational complexity and the bearing healthy state, and the corresponding sparse solutions indicate the energy of the kernel activation. Asimulation experiment of bearing signal proves that the activation energy of the kernels, which are more related to bearing healthy, will rise with the increase of the bearing degradation degree; meanwhile, the error of reconstructed signal based on the learned kernel sets and original signal will decrease since the description effect of convolutional sparse coding to the signal will be enhanced with the periodic strengthen of signal caused by the fault. Thus, an index based on the kernel sparse norms and the errors between the original and reconstructed signals has been proposed to evaluate the degradation degree of the bearing in this paper. On the other hand, combination learning will be fused into the convolutional sparse coding to improve the real-time performance of the index calculation and obtain the best assessment result in the testing part by dividing the kernel dictionary set into multiple sub-dictionaries. A bearing run-to-fail experiment is analyzed to verify the validity of the proposed method. The testing results show that the proposed assessment index can clearly detect the initial fault, serve fault and failure of the bearing in the whole life, and the proposed method is more self-adaptive and sensitive to the fault degree. In addition, it is verified that the time consumption of the combination dictionaries is less than that of a single dictionary set.

In this paper, the high-concentration aqueous dispersion N-doped anatase TiO2 is prepared based on low temperature non-aqueous solvent-thermal method by using TCl4 and NH4Cl as titanium source and nitrogen source respectively. From TEM image, we can learn that the particle is composed of spindle-shaped particles with the size from 8 to 15 nm. According to the XRD and XPS spectra of N-doped TiO2, it can be seen that, during the synthesis process, N atoms permeate into the TiO2 lattice, and the impurity level can be formed within the band gap of TiO2. The impurity level can extend to absorb UV and the visible light. As for N-doped TiO2 nanoparticle of XPS spectrum, ethanol is used as solvent to form carbonaceous species on the surface of TiO2. The carbonaceous species in visible light can excite electrons towards the TiO2 conduction band, so as to increase the number of electrons in the conduction band under visible light to improve the catalytic activity of TiO2 which possesses the feature of high catalytic activity under UV–visible light. Keywords: TiO2 nanoparticle, Highly aqueous dispersion, Visible light photocatalytic activity

The existence of nontrivial equilibrium and poverty traps for a generalized Solow growth model with concave and nonconcave production functions is investigated. The explicit solutions of the growth model, which is expressed by a differential equation with corresponding boundary conditions, are employed to illustrate the spatial dynamics of the model in different economic regions. Numerical method is used to justify the validity of the theoretical analysis.

The detection of difenidol hydrochloride, which is a drug that is widely used for treating the nausea and vomiting symptoms caused by certain diseases, has been increasingly involved in cases of suicide via overdosing and of drug poisoning in children. A novel electrochemiluminescence (ECL) sensor for the simple and effective detection of difenidol hydrochloride was fabricated by modifying a glassy carbon electrode with three-dimensional carbon nanofibers (3D-CNFs). The 3D-CNFs were synthesized by electrospinning a mixture of montmorillonite (MMT) and polyacrylonitrile, carbonizing the electrospun product, and etching it with hydrofluoric acid. The form and structure of the 3D-CNFs was analyzed via scanning electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and Raman microspectroscopy. According to the experimental results obtained using the modified electrodes, a good linear relationship was found between peak intensity and difenidol concentration (y = 868.14x − 61.04, R2 = 0.999), with a relatively low detection limit (8.64 × 10−10 mol·L−1 (S/N = 3)). In addition, our approach exhibited good recovery values ranging from 98.99% to 102.28%. The proposed novel ECL sensor has wide application prospects for the detection of difenidol hydrochloride.

Hybrid nanopaper-like thin films with a graphene oxide (GO) layer sandwiched by two functionalized graphene (GP-SO3H) layers were successfully prepared from oxidized graphene and benzene sulfonic modified graphene. The hybrid graphene-graphene oxide-graphene (GP-GO-GP) nanopapers showed combination of high mechanic strength and good electrical conductivity, leading to desirable electromagnetic interference shielding performance, from the GP-SO3H layers, and superior gas diffusion barrier provided by the GO layer. These GP-GO-GP nanopapers can be readily coated onto plastic and composite substrates by thermal lamination and injection molding for various industrial applications such as fuel cell and natural gas containers.