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The asexual taxon Phialolunulospora vermispora gen. et sp. nov., collected from submerged dicotyledonous leaves in Hainan, China, is described and illustrated herein. Phialolunulospora gen. nov. is characterized by macronematous, semimacronematous, septate and pigmented conidiophores and acrogenous, long lunate, vermiform to sigmoid, hyaline conidia with an eccentric basal appendage. Complete sequences of internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and partial sequences of nuclear large subunits ribosomal DNA (LSU) genes are provided. Phylogenetic analyses of combined ITS and LSU sequences revealed its placement in the Chaetosphaeriaceae. The new fungus is compared with morphologically similar genera.

Previous research has identified a negative association between mobile phone addiction and time management disposition among college students; however, the direction of this relationship remains divergent. This study utilized a cross-lagged panel model to elucidate the directionality of the relationship between mobile phone addiction and time management disposition. A total of 466 college students completed two measures at seven-month intervals. The findings revealed a prevalence of mobile phone addiction at 10.94 % and 13.73 % in the two surveys. Notably, both mobile phone addiction and time management disposition demonstrated stability over time. Furthermore, a discernible negative bidirectional relationship was observed between the two. The present findings underscore the importance of timely intervention for college students facing challenges in mobile phone usage and time management.

Liver fibrosis poses a significant global health risk due to its association with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and the lack of effective treatments. Thus, the need to discover additional novel therapeutic targets to attenuate liver diseases is urgent. Leucine-rich repeat containing 1 (LRRC1) reportedly promotes HCC development. Previously, we found that LRRC1 was significantly upregulated in rat fibrotic liver according to the transcriptome sequencing data. Herein, in the current work, we aimed to explore the role of LRRC1 in liver fibrosis and the underlying mechanisms involved. LRRC1 expression was positively correlated with liver fibrosis severity and significantly elevated in both human and murine fibrotic liver tissues. LRRC1 knockdown or overexpression inhibited or enhanced the proliferation, migration, and expression of fibrogenic genes in the human hepatic stellate cell line LX-2. More importantly, LRRC1 inhibition in vivo significantly alleviated CCl4-induced liver fibrosis by reducing collagen accumulation and hepatic stellate cells’ (HSCs) activation in mice. Mechanistically, LRRC1 promoted HSC activation and liver fibrogenesis by preventing the ubiquitin-mediated degradation of phosphorylated mothers against decapentaplegic homolog (Smad) 2/3 (p-Smad2/3), thereby activating the TGF-β1/Smad pathway. Collectively, these results clarify a novel role for LRRC1 as a regulator of liver fibrosis and indicate that LRRC1 is a promising target for antifibrotic therapies.

Research on language learning motivations has been extensive. However, research on learners’ motivations for learning Chinese has been underexplored compared to that for learning English. The current study aimed to investigate the motivations among 256 Turkish learners of Chinese as foreign language (CFL) who studied at five universities in Turkey. Participants completed an adapted questionnaire based on Gardner’s Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMTB). A series of statistical analysis revealed three major findings. First, integrativeness, attitudes towards learning situation and attitudes towards learning Chinese were identified as the three most important motivational variables, followed by instrumentality, and parental encouragement. Language anxiety and passive motivation seemed to play a weaker role in Turkish CFL learners’ motivations for learning Chinese at the tertiary level. Second, the results also show that females exhibited higher motivation to learn the target language compared to their male peers. Third, the choice of major among CFL learners appeared to influence their language learning motivations, with a notable distinction between Chinese majors and non-Chinese majors in five motivational variables: integrativeness attitudes towards the learning situation, language anxiety, parental encouragement, and passive motivation.

In 2019, the Chinese government has put forward comprehensive plan for reducing social insurance premium rate, which will affect the measurement of the pension security level. In order to evaluate the pension level, this paper uses CHIPs data from 1988 to 2018 to calculate “empirical” pension replacement rate by “empirical” method based on different wage calibers. The result shows that the pension replacement rate and income replacement rate of urban employees have gradually declined in the past 30 years. The pension level of nonprivate employees is lower than that of insured employees, and that of insured employees is lower than that of full-scale employees. The pension level of male, high-income groups, the older generation, organs, and institutions is much higher than that of female, low-income groups, the younger generation, and enterprises relatively. Compared with other countries, the pension replacement rate of urban employees in China is not low, but the income replacement rate is relatively low. This paper makes an in-depth analysis of the actual pension level under the new policy. As a result, it is necessary to vigorously develop multilevel and multipillar pension system such as enterprise annuity, occupational annuity, and commercial pension insurance, so as to improve the pension level of urban employees.

Photoresists are radiation-sensitive materials used for forming patterns to build up IC devices. To date, most photoresists have been based on organic polymers, which have been dominating the semiconductor industries over the past few decades. It is obvious that extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography has become the next-generation lithography technology. The development of comprehensive performance EUV resist is one of the most critical issues. However, organic polymeric photoresists are difficult to meet the harsh requirements of EUV lithography. Pure inorganic photoresists such as metal salts, hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ) are expected for EUV lithography due to their high resistance and high resolution. But the low sensitivity makes them not suitable for high volume manufacturing (HVM). Organic-inorganic hybrid photoresists, containing both organic and inorganic components, are regarded as one of the most promising EUV resists. They combine both merits of organic and inorganic materials and have significant advantages in machinability, etching resistance, EUV absorption, and chemical/thermal stability. Organic-inorganic hybrid photoresists are considered as ideal materials for realizing industrial-grade patterns below 10 nm. This review mainly focuses on the development of organic-inorganic hybrid photoresists over the past decade.

Abstract Almost half of dental restorations have failed in less than 10 years, and approximately 60% of practice time has been consumed to replace these dental restorations. As such, contemporary dentin adhesives should be modified to treat secondary caries and prevent the degradation of adhesive–dentin interfaces. To achieve this goal, we developed a versatile therapeutic adhesive in the present study by incorporating quercetin, which is a naturally derived plant extract, into a commercial adhesive at three concentrations (100, 500 and 1000 µg/mL). An unmodified adhesive served as a control. The antibacterial ability on Streptococcus mutans biofilm, conversion degree, microtensile bond strength, failure modes, in situ zymography, nanoleakage expression and cytotoxicity of quercetin-doped adhesive were comprehensively evaluated. Results showed that the quercetin-doped adhesive (500 µg/mL) preserved its bonding properties against collagenase ageing and inhibited the growth of S. mutans biofilm. Efficient bonding interface sealing ability, matrix metalloproteinase inhibition and acceptable biocompatibility were also achieved. Thus, a simple, safe and workable strategy was successfully developed to produce therapeutic adhesives for the extension of the service life of adhesive restorations.

Introduction: Current theories of dentin bonding are based on the concept of "hybrid layer". However, the histological complexity of dentin, as well as the vulnerability of the hybrid layer, goes against the long-term effect of dentin bonding. At the same time, post-operative sensitivity is more likely to occur after traditional adhesive restoration. The Hypothesis: Compared to dentin bonding, enamel bonding exhibits a more optimal immediate and long-term performance, owing to its higher degree of mineralization, well-arranged enamel crystals and the porous structure after etching. Moreover, "enamel hypersensitivity" is never going to happen due to the lack of tubules existing in dentin. In light of this phenomenon, we brought up the concept and the proposal method to form an "enamel-like" dentin, simulating enamel structure to achieve satisfying durability of dentin bonding and obtain good performance for preventing post-operative sensitivity. With the application of mesoporous silicon bi-directionally binding to hydroxyapatite of dentin itself and hydroxyapatite nanorods synthetized in vitro, we may be able to form an enamel-like "functional layer" via ion-regulating self-assembly. Evaluation of Hypothesis: This paper explains how to achieve dentin enamel-like modification by chemical methods, especially, details the strategies and possible mechanisms of the hypothesis. Validation of the hypothesis is more likely to eliminate the adverse effect of dentinal fluid, improve long-term performance of dentin bonding, offer strategies for desensitizing treatment and self-repairing carious-affected dentin, and furthermore, provide the possibility to introduce new theories of dentin bonding.

In recent years, the big data emerged as a hot topic because of the rapid growth of the information and wireless communication technology. One of the significant sources of the big data is wireless sensor networks. Due to the power limitation of sensor nodes, energy-efficient big data collecting is a challenging task in wireless sensor networks. Being considered as an effective solution to address this challenge is to utilize sink’s mobility to assist data collecting. Although this method can reduce the volume of data transfer between sensor nodes and thus save energy consumption of nodes, the low speed of mobile sink hinders its use in data-intensive sensing applications with time constraint. In this article, we propose a four-phase mobility-assisted data collecting protocol consisting of network clustering, routes planning, routes combination, and data collecting. Two heuristic routes planning algorithms are presented to build a set of trajectories which satisfy the deadline constraint and have the minimum overall movement cost. Numeric results show that our approaches have better performance in terms of energy saving, latency, and movement cost.