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Abstract RAD18, an important ubiquitin E3 ligase, plays a dual role in translesion DNA synthesis (TLS) and homologous recombination (HR) repair. However, whether and how the regulatory mechanism of O-linked N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) modification governing RAD18 and its function during these processes remains unknown. Here, we report that human RAD18, can undergo O-GlcNAcylation at Ser130/Ser164/Thr468, which is important for optimal RAD18 accumulation at DNA damage sites. Mechanistically, abrogation of RAD18 O-GlcNAcylation limits CDC7-dependent RAD18 Ser434 phosphorylation, which in turn significantly reduces damage-induced PCNA monoubiquitination, impairs Polη focus formation and enhances UV sensitivity. Moreover, the ubiquitin and RAD51C binding ability of RAD18 at DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) is O-GlcNAcylation-dependent. O-GlcNAcylated RAD18 promotes the binding of RAD51 to damaged DNA during HR and decreases CPT hypersensitivity. Our findings demonstrate a novel role of RAD18 O-GlcNAcylation in TLS and HR regulation, establishing a new rationale to improve chemotherapeutic treatment.

Abstract Tumour medical image segmentation plays a crucial role in clinical imaging diagnosis. Existing research has achieved good results, enabling the segmentation of three tumour regions in MRI brain tumour images. Existing models have limited focus on the brain tumour areas, and the long‐term dependency of features is weakened as the network depth increases, resulting in blurred edge segmentation of the targets. Additionally, considering the excellent segmentation performance of the Swin Transformer(Swin‐T) network, its network structure and parameters are relatively large. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a brain tumour segmentation framework with deep nuanced reasoning and Swin‐T. It is mainly composed of the backbone hybrid network (BHN) and the deep micro texture extraction module (DMTE). The BHN combines the Swin‐T stage with a new downsampling transition module called dual path feature reasoning (DPFR). The entire network framework is designed to extract global and local features from multi‐modal data, enabling it to capture and analyze deep texture features in multi‐modal images. It provides significant optimization over the Swin‐T network structure. Experimental results on the BraTS dataset demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms other state‐of‐the‐art models in terms of segmentation performance. The corresponding source codes are available at https://github.com/CurbUni/Brain‐Tumor‐Segmentation‐Framework‐with‐Deep‐Nuanced‐Reasoning‐and‐Swin‐T.

Given the substantial environmental pollution from industrial expansion, environmental protection has become particularly important. Nowadays, anion exchange membranes (AEMs) are widely used in wastewater treatment. With the use of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), ethylene-vinyl alcohol (EVOH) copolymer, and methyl iminodiacetic acid (MIDA), a series of cross-linked AEMs were successfully prepared using the solvent casting technique, and the network structure was formed in the membranes due to the cross-linking reaction between PVA/EVOH and MIDA. Fourier transform infrared spectrometer, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy were used to analyze the prepared membranes. At the same time, its comprehensive properties which include water uptake, linear expansion rate, ion exchange capacity, thermal stability, chemical stability, and mechanical stability were thoroughly researched. In addition, diffusion dialysis performance in practical applications was also studied in detail. The acid dialysis coefficient (UH+) ranged from 10.2 to 35.6 × 10−3 m/h. Separation factor (S) value ranged from 25 to 38, which were all larger than that of the commercial membrane DF-120 (UH+: 8.5 × 10−3 m/h, S: 18.5). The prepared membranes had potential application value in acid recovery. HIGHLIGHTS The preparation method of the membranes is simple.; The membrane is based on PVA/EVOH/MIDA.; The raw materials are cheap and easy to obtain.; The acid recovery performance is excellent by diffusion dialysis.; The prepared membranes had potential application value in acid recovery.;

Given the complexity and uncertainty of the underwater environment, it is of great importance to generate realistic and high-quality images. In this paper, we propose six unconditional generative models based on the Diffusion-Styegan2 generative model, incorporating Wasserstein, R2 regularization terms, and other techniques for anemone image generation. The Wasserstein distance technique is used in the loss part of Diffusion-Styegan2, combined with the back propagation algorithm to compute the gradient in the neural network while retaining the computational map to improve the training efficiency and training stability; the R2 regularization term is used to introduce the r2 hyperparameter, and the L2 regularization technique is used based on the original R1 regularization term to regularize the gradient of the discriminator to improve the training and generation performance of the model; the ADA technique is used based on DWBG-Stylegan2 to further improve the quality and stability of the generated images. In addition, a set of SA datasets (sea anemone datasets) with a resolution of $256^{\ast} 256$ is proposed in this paper. The experimental results show that the FID value of Diffusuion-Stylegan2 is 10.31, the value of FID of DWBG-Stylegan2 is 8.32, the value of FID of Diffusion-Stylegan2-R2 is 9.58, and the optimal FID value of this experiment is achieved by DWBG-Stylegan2-ADA with a value of 5.67, which is considerably lower compared to the FID value of Diffusion-Stylegan2. Therefore, techniques such as Wasserstein and R2 regularization terms can effectively generate more realistic images of anemones. Meanwhile, this experiment provides new ideas and methods for the construction of the unconditional generative model.

A novel XM-YOLOViT real-time detection algorithm for pedestrians and vehicles in foggy weather based on YOLOV5 framework is proposed, which effectively solves the problems of dense target interference and obscuration by haze, and the detection effect in complex foggy environments is improved. Firstly, Inverted Residual Block and MobileViTV3 Block are introduced to construct XM-net feature extraction network, secondly, EIOU is used as a location loss function and a high-resolution detection layer is added in the Neck region. In terms of data, a nebulization method is designed to map images from fogless space to foggy space based on the atmospheric scattering model and the dark channel prior. Finally, the validity on four datasets under different foggy environments is verified, respectively. The experimental results show that the accuracy, recall and mAP of the XM-YOLOViT model are 54.95%, 41.93% and 43.15% respectively, and with an F1-Score of 0.474, which is 3.42%,7.08%,7.52% and 13.94% improved, the model parameter reduction of 41.7% to 4.09M, the FLOPs is 25.2G and detection speed is 70.93 FPS compared to the baseline model. The XM-YOLOViT model has better performance than the advanced YOLO detectors, the F1-Score and mAP are improved by 5.57% and 3.65% compared with YOLOv7-tiny, and 2.38%, 2.37% respectively compared with YOLOv8s. Therefore, the XM-YOLOViT algorithm proposed in this article has high detection accuracy and an extremely lightweight structure, which can effectively improve the efficiency and quality of detection tasks for UAV in foggy weather, especially for extremely small targets. Our source code is available at: https://github.com/AFeiV8/XM-YOLOViT.

IntroductionMicrobial carbon (C) and nutrient limitation exert key influences on soil organic carbon (SOC) and nutrient cycling through enzyme production for C and nutrient acquisition. However, the intercropping effects on microbial C and nutrient limitation and its driving factors between rhizosphere and bulk soil are unclear.MethodsTherefore, we conducted a field experiment that covered sugarcane–peanut intercropping with sole sugarcane and peanut as controls and to explore microbial C and nutrient limitation based on the vector analysis of enzyme stoichiometry; in addition, microbial diversity was investigated in the rhizosphere and bulk soil. High throughput sequencing was used to analyze soil bacterial and fungal diversity through the 16S rRNA gene and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) gene at a phylum level.ResultsOur results showed that sugarcane–peanut intercropping alleviated microbial C limitation in all soils, whereas enhanced microbial phosphorus (P) limitation solely in bulk soil. Microbial P limitation was also stronger in the rhizosphere than in bulk soil. These results revealed that sugarcane-peanut intercropping and rhizosphere promoted soil P decomposition and facilitated soil nutrient cycles. The Pearson correlation results showed that microbial C limitation was primarily correlated with fungal diversity and fungal rare taxa (Rozellomycota, Chyltridiomycota, and Calcarisporiellomycota) in rhizosphere soil and was correlated with bacterial diversity and most rare taxa in bulk soil. Microbial P limitation was solely related to rare taxa (Patescibacteria and Glomeromycota) in rhizosphere soil and related to microbial diversity and most rare taxa in bulk soil. The variation partitioning analysis further indicated that microbial C and P limitation was explained by rare taxa (7%–35%) and the interactions of rare and abundant taxa (65%–93%).ConclusionThis study indicated the different intercropping effects on microbial C and nutrient limitation in the rhizosphere and bulk soil and emphasized the importance of microbial diversity, particularly rare taxa.

Estimating the volume of food plays an important role in diet monitoring. However, it is difficult to perform this estimation automatically and accurately. A new method based on the multi-layer superpixel technique is proposed in this paper to avoid tedious human-computer interaction and improve estimation accuracy. Our method includes the following steps: 1) obtain a pair of food images along with the depth information using a stereo camera; 2) reconstruct the plate plane from the disparity map; 3) warp the input image and the disparity map to form a new direction of view parallel to the plate plane; 4) cut the warped image into a series of slices according to the depth information and estimate the occluded part of the food; and 5) rescale superpixels for each slice and estimate the food volume by accumulating all available slices in the segmented food region. Through a combination of image data and disparity map, the influences of noise and visual error in existing interactive food volume estimation methods are reduced, and the estimation accuracy is improved. Our experiments show that our method is effective, accurate and convenient, providing a new tool for promoting a balanced diet and maintaining health.

In this study, the 1991 rock avalanche, in Touzhai, Zhaotong, Yunnan, China, was considered the study object. The investigation of the landslide accumulation body revealed that the Touzhai rock avalanche accumulation body has the characteristics of wide gradation and poor sorting. A combination of field investigations, indoor and outdoor experiments, and numerical simulations were used to invert the occurrence and spreading range of rock avalanche-debris flow hazards. To invert and analyze its dynamics and the crushing process, a three-dimensional discrete element modeling was performed on the real terrain data. Simulation results showed that the movement time of the numerically simulated Touzhai rock avalanche was approximately 200 s. After 50 s of movement, the peak velocity reached 32 m/s, and the velocity gradually decayed after the sliding mass rubbed violently against the valley floor and collided with the mountain. Due to the meandering nature of the gully, the sliding mass makes its way down the gully and constantly collides with the mountain, making particles appear to climb, with some particles being blocked by the valley. After 150 s of movement, the average velocity rate decreased substantially, and the landslide-avalanche debris reached the mouth of the trench. After 200 s of movement, the average sliding velocity tends to 0 m/s, where the avalanche debris tends to stop and accumulate. When the rock avalanche movement reaches the mouth of the gully, the avalanche debris spreads to the sides as it is no longer bounded by the hills on either side of the narrow gully, eventually forming a ‘trumpet-shaped’ accumulation, and the granular flow simulation matched the findings of the landslide site accumulation.

Abstract Thyroid carcinoma is a common malignant tumor of endocrine system and head and neck. Recurrence, metastasis and high malignant expression after routine treatment are serious clinical problems, so it is of great significance to explore its mechanism and find action targets. Epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) is associated with tumor malignancy and invasion. One key change in tumour EMT is low expression of E-cadherin. Therefore, this article reviews the expression of E-cadherin in thyroid cancers (TC), discuss the potential mechanisms involved, and outline opportunities to exploit E-cadherin on regulating the occurrence of EMT as a critical factor in cancer therapeutics.

In this work, a novel silane coupled cationic precursor (SAGS) was synthesized by 3-glycidyloxypropyltrimethoxysilane and sodium 2-((2-aminorthyl)amino) ethanesulfonate. A series of cation exchange membranes were prepared with poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and SAGS by a sol-gel-based process. The structure of the prepared membranes were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectrum (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and its properties were studied by water uptake (WR), cation exchange capacity (CEC), linear expansion ratio (LER), alkali stability, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), mechanical properties, and diffusion dialysis performance. FTIR and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) confirmed the successful preparation of SAGS membranes, and SEM images showed that the prepared membranes were dense and uniform. The WR values of the SAGS membranes were in the range of 91.49–122.39%, and the LER values were 17.65–28.21%. In addition, the SAGS membranes had suitable CEC value, good alkali resistance, and thermal stability which ensured the application of membranes in the field of diffusion dialysis (DD) for alkali recovery. In the DD test, the dialysis coefficients of NaOH (UOH) ranged from 0.012 mm/h to 0.023 mm/h, and the separation factors (S) was in the range of 30.77–16.43. In conclusion, the prepared CEM containing silicon oxygen bonds by PVA and SAGS reaction has the advantages of low price, friendly environment, good alkali resistance, simple preparation process, and great application potential in the textile manufacturing wastewater recovery.

As precious cultural heritage sites, the state of preservation of cave temples is closely related to the geological and climatic conditions in which they are located. This paper constructed an analytical method of sized slate stability based on the equivalent support stiffness method. The stability analysis of the roof slab of Yuanjue Cave was carried out by establishing a three-dimensional numerical calculation model. Through comparative analysis of the results of stress and displacement fields under different conditions, the stress and deformation characteristics of the roof slab of Yuanjue Cave were revealed, as well as the study of the main factors affecting the stability of the roof slab of Yuanjue Cave and the key slate to be monitored. The main research results are as follows. The stress deformation of the roof plate of Yuanjue cave is mainly divided into the initial uniform change stage, the medium-term stable change stage or the medium-term accelerated change stage, and the later rapid change stage. With the increase in the number of overhanging and broken slates and the increase in the damage factor of cracked slates, the vertical stress extremum of the stones increases continuously, and the equivalent support stiffness decreases, which aggravates the uneven stress deformation of the roof of the Yuanjue Cave. This study provides a reliable reference basis for the stability analysis and evaluation of the roof slab of a large number of cave temples existing in the Sichuan and Chongqing areas in China.

The hollow structure of large-diameter ring piles (LDRPs) reduces the amount of concrete used, is economically efficient, and reduces the weight of the pile. However, its bearing characteristics and safety performance are still not fully known. In this study, to determine the properties of the LDRP structure, a combination of the indoor scale model test and numerical simulations was used, and a new parameter, K, which is the thickness-to-diameter ratio, was introduced. A comparative study of LDRPs with different hollow ranges was conducted. The results show that for a value of K in the range of 0.2–1, the ultimate bearing capacity of LDRPs is not significantly different from that of large-diameter solid piles (LDSPs), and they can ensure sufficient safety reserves. Under ultimate bearing capacity, the strain on an LDRP is large, but it does not exceed its own material strength, and the strain variation law is similar to that of a solid pile. LDRPs show the characteristics of end-bearing piles, and concrete savings can reach up to 50% for K in the range of 0.2–1.

Damage to underground structures induced by soil liquefaction under cyclic loads such as earthquakes has long been an important issue in underground engineering practice. In this paper, five models are developed using Flac3D software to analyze the effect of burial depth on the force, deformation characteristics, and uplift behavior of utility tunnels in the non-homogeneous site containing a liquefied layer. The cyclic shear property of saturated sand and the increase in pore water pressure during the earthquake are modeled using a cyclic load-volume strain increment model, using Shell-Type structural elements to model underground utility tunnels, and by using plastic hinges to represent the bending moment capacity of member’s joints. Numerical results show that for shallow-buried utility tunnels, increasing the burial depth increases the bending moment, shear force, and deformation of the structure while significantly reducing its uplift. Therefore, for high-strength shallow-buried utility tunnels, appropriate increase in burial depth can improve its seismic safety.

Despite the worldwide prevalence of multilingualism, the knowledge of the relationship between domain-general cognitive control and multilingual language control remains scant. Here we provide new insights into this issue by examining systematically how different components of inhibitory control (i.e., response inhibition and interference suppression) contribute to language control in multilingual populations with high L2 proficiency. To this end, 65 Tibetan-Chinese-English trilinguals highly proficient in L2 were recruited to complete three tasks: a picture-naming task measuring the performance of online trilingual speech production, and two nonlinguistic tasks, a go/no-go task and a Simon task, as proxies for measuring response inhibition and interference suppression abilities, respectively. Using mixed-effects modeling, we analyzed both the trilingual language switching/nonswitching performances and their correlations with these two components of inhibitory control. Our data revealed unexpected patterns of reversed language dominance effect and (a)symmetries in switch costs. Notably, interaction analysis revealed that while response inhibition was robustly engaged in trilingual language control, interference suppression did not appear to play a role. Taken together, our study suggests that, for trilingual speakers highly proficient in L2, the recruitment of different subprocesses of inhibitory control in lexical access was selective and was constrained to reactive and local-level language control. We conclude by discussing theoretical implications.

Abstract Image segmentation is an important preprocessing operation in image recognition and computer vision. This paper proposes an adaptive K-means image segmentation method, which generates accurate segmentation results with simple operation and avoids the interactive input of K value. This method transforms the color space of images into LAB color space firstly. And the value of luminance components is set to a particular value, in order to reduce the effect of light on image segmentation. Then, the equivalent relation between K values and the number of connected domains after setting threshold is used to segment the image adaptively. After morphological processing, maximum connected domain extraction and matching with the original image, the final segmentation results are obtained. Experiments proof that the method proposed in this paper is not only simple but also accurate and effective.

For the widespread exposure of toppling deformation phenomena in anti-dip engineering slopes such as hydropower, transportation, and mining, especially deep-seated toppling, these large-scale deep-seated toppling deformations reaching depths of hundreds of meters have become significant geotechnical engineering problems that restrict large-scale engineering construction and require urgent solutions. There are significant differences in the failure characteristics and mechanisms of anti-dip rock slopes under different soft and hard rock conditions. This study, starting from the failure characteristics and mechanisms under different soft and hard conditions of rocks, summarizes two types of toppling deformation: ductile bending deep toppling (DBDT) and brittle fracture shallow toppling (BFST). The UDEC method is used to preliminarily explore the threshold of rock mechanical parameters for these two types of toppling, with 80 MPa (UCS, uniaxial compressive strength) mechanical parameters serving as the preliminary threshold. The results indicate that hard rock undergoes BFST, whereas soft rock undergoes DBDT. The rock mechanical parameters of 100 MPa (UCS) and 20 MPa (UCS) were selected to study the evolution process and mechanism of DBDT and BFST deformations, respectively. Numerical simulation results have innovatively revealed the mechanical behavior characteristics between rock layers during the process of toppling deformation. Because toppling deformation mainly originates from interlayer displacement deformation and intra-layer tensile deformation of rock layers, the interlayer mechanical characteristics are of great significance for understanding the mechanism of toppling deformation. This research can provide a theoretical basis for the stability assessment and development utilization of anti-dip rock slopes and toppled slopes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on evaluating the influence of the energy accumulation hole diameter on bi-directional cumulative tension blasting. Firstly, the penetration depth of bi-directional cumulative tension blasting is determined, followed by an analysis of the corresponding fracture mechanics behavior. Secondly, the Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method is used for numerical analysis of the bi-directional cumulative tension blasting process, and the Johnson- Holmquist constitutive model is then employed to examine the dynamic process during tensile blasting-induced cracking. This analysis provides insights into damage development, particle distribution, stress distribution, and crack propagation in the rock at different opening diameters. The findings reveal that, except for the 2 mm case, bi-directional cumulative tension blasting effectively produces directional cracks aligned with the energy accumulation direction. For hole diameters between 4-8 mm, linear through cracks form in the energy accumulation direction. However, a 2 mm diameter opening only generates short shear cracks around the blast hole. With energy accumulation hole diameters ranging from 10-14 mm, the crack propagation depth is insufficient for complete penetration, despite the presence of linear cracks in the energy accumulation direction. When diameter exceeds 14 mm, symmetrical airfoil cracks appear in non-concentrated energy directions, with larger diameters resulting in shorter crack propagation lengths. During the directional cracking process for hole diameters of 4-8 mm, explosive particles facilitate crack expansion in width and length through the action of a "gas wedge." Onsite blasting tests confirm the excellent directional pre-splitting effect of bidirectional cumulative tension blasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]