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Reasonable and effective passenger flow forecasting is a prerequisite for the initial investment planning of tourist-dedicated train projects, improving operational efficiency and market competitiveness. Based on the classification and analysis of tourist-dedicated train passenger flow, this paper introduces the theory of system dynamics to forecast the passenger flow of tourist-dedicated train. The system dynamics equation of passenger flow forecasting is constructed, and the causal loop diagram and system flow diagram of the forecasting system are analyzed. The development of tourist-dedicated train passenger flow is forecasted by two examples of different scales. The research results show that the system dynamics method is feasible and applicable for the passenger flow forecasting of the tourist-dedicated train, and the introduction of this method provides a new theoretical reference for the study of this problem.

Abstract The optimization of the train frequency of the Airport express line (AEL) is crucial for improving the efficiency of air-rail intermodal transport. It directly influences passenger transfer convenience and overall service quality, thereby bolstering the competitiveness of the transport system This study focuses on the optimization of “AEL and Flight Succession” in the context of air-rail intermodal transport. By analyzing the departure and landing time of airport flights, we assess the demand from various passenger flows and identify key factors that impact the connection between the AEL and flights. Based on these factors, we develop a demand-driven optimization model for AEL frequency, aimed at minimizing total travel time and the number of unserved passengers. A simulated annealing algorithm is employed to solve this model. The Lanzhou-Zhongchuan AEL serves as a case study for validation. The results demonstrate that the optimized schedule reduces total passenger travel time costs by 0.93% and 3.82%, respectively, while accounting for passenger time sensitivity and fairness principles, with a difference of 2.89% between these scenarios. In addition, the optimization scheme decreases the number of unserved passengers by 14.7% and reduces the percentage of flights and trains failing to meet occupancy constraints by 17%. This study illustrates that the schedule optimization strategy not only effectively increases the number of served passengers but also significantly reduces total intermodal and commuter travel time. Such findings provide a solid scientific foundation for AEL operations and management to develop a more efficient and rational train schedule in the context of air-rail intermodal transport.

Abstract Background Pulmonary fibrosis (PF) is an aging-related progressive lung disorder. The aged lung undergoes functional and structural changes termed immunosenescence and inflammaging, which facilitate the occurrence of fibrosis. Interleukin-10 (IL-10) is a potent anti-inflammatory and immunoregulatory cytokine, yet it remains unclear how IL-10 deficiency-induced immunosenescence participates in the development of PF. Methods Firstly we evaluated the susceptibility to fibrosis and IL-10 expression in aged mice. Then 13-month-old wild-type (WT) and IL-10 knockout (KO) mice were subjected to bleomycin(BLM) and analyzed senescence-related markers by PCR, western blot and immunohistochemistry staining of p16, p21, p53, as well as DHE and SA-β-gal staining. We further compared 18-month-old WT mice with 13-month-old IL-10KO mice to assess aging-associated cell senescence and inflamation infiltration in both lung and BALF. Moreover, proliferation and apoptosis of alveolar type 2 cells(AT2) were evaluated by FCM, immunofluorescence, TUNEL staining, and TEM analysis. Recombinant IL-10 (rIL-10) was also administered intratracheally to evaluate its therapeutic potential and related mechanism. For the in vitro experiments, 10-week-old naïve pramily lung fibroblasts(PLFs) were treated with the culture medium of 13-month PLFs derived from WT, IL-10KO, or IL-10KO + rIL-10 respectively, and examined the secretion of senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) factors and related pathways. Results The aged mice displayed increased susceptibility to fibrosis and decreased IL-10 expression. The 13-month-old IL-10KO mice exhibited significant exacerbation of cell senescence compared to their contemporary WT mice, and even more severe epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) than that of 18 month WT mice. These IL-10 deficient mice showed heightened inflammatory responses and accelerated PF progression. Intratracheal administration of rIL-10 reduced lung CD45 + cell infiltration by 15%, including a 6% reduction in granulocytes and a 10% reduction in macrophages, and increased the proportion of AT2 cells by approximately 8%. Additionally, rIL-10 significantly decreased α-SMA and collagen deposition, and reduced the expression of senescence proteins p16 and p21 by 50% in these mice. In vitro analysis revealed that conditioned media from IL-10 deficient mice promoted SASP secretion and upregulated senescence genes in naïve lung fibroblasts, which was mitigated by rIL-10 treatment. Mechanistically, rIL-10 inhibited TGF-β-Smad2/3 and PTEN/PI3K/AKT/ERK pathways, thereby suppressing senescence and fibrosis-related proteins. Conclusions IL-10 deficiency in aged mice leads to accelerated cell senescence and exacerbated fibrosis, with IL-10KO-PLFs displaying increased SASP secretion. Recombinant IL-10 treatment effectively mitigates these effects, suggesting its potential as a therapeutic target for PF. Graphical Abstract

Abstract Background Numerous studies have confirmed the involvement of extracellular vesicles (EVs) in various physiological processes, including cellular death and tissue damage. Recently, we reported that EVs derived from ischemia-reperfusion heart exacerbate cardiac injury. However, the role of EVs from healthy heart tissue (heart-derived EVs, or cEVs) on myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (MI/R) injury remains unclear. Results Here, we demonstrated that intramyocardial administration of cEVs significantly enhanced cardiac function and reduced cardiac damage in murine MI/R injury models. cEVs treatment effectively inhibited ferroptosis and maintained mitochondrial homeostasis in cardiomyocytes subjected to ischemia-reperfusion injury. Further results revealed that cEVs can transfer ATP5a1 into cardiomyocytes, thereby suppressing mitochondrial ROS production, alleviating mitochondrial damage, and inhibiting cardiomyocyte ferroptosis. Knockdown of ATP5a1 abolished the protective effects of cEVs. Furthermore, we found that the majority of cEVs are derived from cardiomyocytes, and ATP5a1 in cEVs primarily originates from cardiomyocytes of the healthy murine heart. Moreover, we demonstrated that adipose-derived stem cells (ADSC)-derived EVs with ATP5a1 overexpression showed much better efficacy on the therapy of MI/R injury compared to control ADSC-derived EVs. Conclusions These findings emphasized the protective role of cEVs in cardiac injury and highlighted the therapeutic potential of targeting ATP5a1 as an important approach for managing myocardial damage induced by MI/R injury.

The purpose of this paper is to optimize the accuracy of airport express passenger flow prediction so as to meet the need for the optimal allocation of traffic resources against the background of accelerated urbanization and the rapid development of airport express services. A fusion intelligence network model (FINM) is proposed, which integrates the advantages of convolutional neural networks, bidirectional long short-term memory networks, and gated recurrent units. Firstly, by using the powerful feature extraction ability of convolutional neural networks, local features and detail information are captured from the input data to improve the data representation ability. Secondly, bidirectional long short-term memory networks are used to process the sequence data, capture the global information and its context relationship, and enhance the model’s understanding of the dependence of time series data. Finally, gated recurrent units are introduced to simplify the computational complexity while maintaining high prediction accuracy and training efficiency. Based on the actual passenger flow data for Tianjin Metro Line 2 on a 30 min time scale, the proposed FINM is verified. The experimental results show that the model achieves an excellent performance, with 0.0160, 0.0947, 0.0160, 0.1255, 18.40, and 0.7788 in key indicators such as loss value (Loss Value), mean absolute error (MAE), mean squared error (MSE), root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and coefficient of determination (R-Squared). Compared with the comparison algorithm, this model shows significant advantages in all indicators, which proves its effectiveness in dealing with complex time series data.

Because China’s high-speed railway diverts many passengers from the existing railway, the existing railway network capacity has greatly increased, which provides convenient conditions to begin tourist-dedicated train projects. Due to the lack of research on the optimization of train working diagrams, including tourist-dedicated trains, first, the time characteristics of tourist-dedicated train passengers are analyzed. Then, according to the proposed optimization principle of train working diagram under the condition of tourist-dedicated train operation, the optimization model is constructed, the operation line of dedicated train is added to the original operation diagram, and the optimization is adjusted. The validity of the model is verified by examples and comparative experiments. The research results show that the constructed train working diagram optimization model and algorithm can adjust and optimize the running lines of dedicated trains and has good practicability. This study fills the gap in the research of this problem and makes a theoretical innovation in the theory of train working diagram optimization, and can provide a theoretical basis for the operation planning, transportation organization and other process optimization of subsequent tourist-dedicated train projects of railway transportation management departments.

To meet the preference demands of the crew members of high-speed railway trains while forming a crew team, and to automate the compilation of adaptable crew member schemes, a bilateral matching decision method for crew members is proposed based on complete preference order information. This method first describes the mutual selection process between the chief stewards and stewards of a high-speed railway train as a one-to-many bilateral matching decision process between the chief stewards and stewards Subsequently, by constructing a virtual train chief stewards, the original one-to-many bilateral matching relationship between the chief stewards and stewards is transformed into a one-to-one bilateral matching relationship between the virtual chief stewards for modeling. Then, a dual-objective integer programming model is established with the minimum sum of preference order values as the objective. Finally, an optimization solver is used to calculate the problem under different scales, and a genetic algorithm is designed for large-scale scenarios. The analysis results of numerical examples show that the model and algorithm of train crew members based on bilateral matching decisions can meet the actual requirements of the crew department and have good application value.

This study aims to elucidate the implications of carbon peak and carbon neutrality targets on corridor logistics, with a focus on the burgeoning high-speed rail express sector. Acknowledging carbon emissions taxation as an integral component of transportation costs, it examines the competitive dynamics among four cargo transport modes: high-speed rail (HSR), conventional rail, aviation, and road transport. Within a strategic game framework, carriers are analyzed based on freight rates, speed, safety, reliability, and convenience to assess their utility. A dynamic game model and a solution approach are developed, aiming to optimize freight-related variables, maximize carriers’ generalized profits, and enhance shippers’ utility. Empirical validation is provided through case studies in Xi’an and Lanzhou, northwest China, affirming the model’s efficacy. The findings reveal the strong competitive edge of the high-speed rail express in the corridor, offering valuable insights for carrier pricing strategies, emission tax rate setting, and macro-policy adjustments in the transport sector.

Abstract Extracellular vesicles (EVs) exist throughout our bodies. We recently revealed the important role of intracardiac EVs induced by myocardial ischemia/reperfusion on cardiac injury and dysfunction. However, the role of EVs isolated from normal tissues remains unclear. Here we found that EVs, derived from murine heart, lung, liver and kidney have similar effects on macrophages and regulate the inflammation, chemotaxis, and phagocytosis of macrophages. Interestingly, EV‐treated macrophages showed LPS resistance with reduced expressions of inflammatory cytokines and enhanced phagocytic activity. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the protein content in EVs contributed to the activation of inflammation, while the RNA component mainly limited the excessive inflammatory response of macrophages to LPS. The enrichment of miRNAs, including miR‐148a‐3p, miR‐1a‐3p and miR‐143‐3p was confirmed in tissue EVs. These EV‐enriched miRNAs contributed to the inflammation remission in LPS induced macrophages through multiple pathways, including STAT3, P65 and SAPK/JNK. Moreover, administration of both EVs and EV‐educated macrophages attenuated septic injury and cytokine storm in murine CLP models. Taken together, the present study disclosed that EVs from normal tissues can orchestrate the homeostasis of macrophages and attenuate inflammatory injury of sepsis. Therefore, tissue derived EVs or their derivatives may serve as potential therapeutic strategies in inflammatory diseases.

This paper proposes an optimization model for the train operation scheme of the Airport Express Line (AEL) based on the expected arrival time of passengers by the introduction of the train departure time to cope with the time-dependent passenger flow and provide better prompt train service according to passengers’ demand. Considering factors such as train sections, station arrangement, passenger capacity, departure time windows, passenger flow conservation, and boarding and disembarkation processes, this paper also aims to find the optimal combination of the passengers’ total travel time and the train operation cost. A set of alternative train options is introduced to simplify the model and convert integer variables related to train pairs into 0-1 variables. The elaborately designed simulated annealing algorithm mainly focuses on the key elements of strategies like initial solution generation, neighborhood solution construction, and the allocation of passenger flows, tailored to the model’s unique features and the time-dependent passenger flow. Neighborhood solution strategies include the increase or haut of train operations and the adjustment of the number of stops, which refines the solution space and boosts the process efficiency of the heuristic algorithm. Additionally, the model and algorithm proposed in this paper are practiced during the peak hour of Nanjing Metro Line S1 for empirical validation. The research findings demonstrate that the optimized train operation scheme is better synchronized with the fluctuating number of time-dependent passenger flows and exhibits notable improvement in computational efficiency and convergence.

Abstract Background Sepsis still remains a major challenge in intensive care medicine with unacceptably high mortality among patients with septic shock. Due to current limitations of human CD19+CD24hiCD38hi Breg cells (Bregs) studies among sepsis, here, we tried to evaluate Bregs in severity and prognostic value in patients with sepsis. Methods Peripheral blood from 58 patients with sepsis and 22 healthy controls was analyzed using flow cytometry to evaluate the frequency and number of Bregs. All cases were divided into non-survived or survived group after 28 days followed up. Spearman's correlation analysis was performed on Bregs frequency and clinical indices. The area under the curve was acquired using the receiver operating characteristic analysis to assess the sensitivity and specificity of Bregs for outcome of sepsis. Survival curve analysis and binary logistic regression were applied to estimate the value of Bregs in prognosis among cases with sepsis. Results Sepsis patients had decreased proportions and number of Bregs. Sepsis patients with low frequency of Bregs were associated with an increased risk of septic shock. Bregs frequency is inversely associated with lactate, SOFA, and APACHE II and positively correlated with Tregs frequency. Low levels of Bregs closely correlated with septic outcomes. Numbers of Bregs were prediction factors for poor prognosis. Conclusions Frequency and number of Bregs decreased, and Bregs deficiency revealed poor prognosis in patients with sepsis.

Excessive and chronic inflammation post myocardial infarction (MI) causes cardiac fibrosis and progressive ventricular remodeling, which leads to heart failure. We previously found high levels of IL-27 in the heart and serum until day 14 in murine cardiac ischemia‒reperfusion injury models. However, whether IL-27 is involved in chronic inflammation-mediated ventricular remodeling remains unclear. In the present study, we found that MI triggered high IL-27 expression in murine cardiac macrophages. The increased expression of IL-27 in serum is correlated with cardiac dysfunction and aggravated fibrosis after MI. Furthermore, the addition of IL-27 significantly activated the JAK/STAT signaling pathway in cardiac fibroblasts (CFs). Meanwhile, IL-27 treatment promoted the proliferation, migration and extracellular matrix (ECM) production of CFs induced by angiotensin II (Ang II). Collectively, high levels of IL-27 mainly produced by cardiac macrophages post MI contribute to the activation of CFs and aggravate cardiac fibrosis.

As an important part of modern comprehensive transportation system, high-speed railway (HSR), whether it is a transregional trunk line or an intercity line, always shapes the industrial layout and changes the living environment at different levels. Based on the analysis of the railway network topology and organization process of passenger train, this paper clarifies the connotation of passenger train operation scheme of HSR considering network survivability, and further explains the connotation of railway network system and its relationship with passenger train operation scheme. In this paper, a comprehensive quantitative index of the importance of key nodes and key edges is established, and an evaluation index of the survivability of railway service network based on the operating mileage of passenger trains is constructed, which is applied to the real local HSR network in China. With the aim of improving the survivability of HSR system, an alternative operation route of passenger trains between some OD stations is given according to the specific railway interruption situation.

Abstract Extracellular vesicles (EVs) curb important biological functions. We previously disclosed that ischemia‐reperfusion (IR) induces increased release of EVs (IR‐EVs) in the heart. However, the role of IR‐EVs in IR pathological process remains poorly understood. Here we found that adoptive transfer of IR‐EVs aggravated IR induced heart injury, and EV inhibition by GW4869 reduced the IR injury. Our in vivo and in vitro investigations substantiated that IR‐EVs facilitated M1‐like polarization of macrophages with increased expression of proinflammatory cytokines. Further, we disclosed the miRNA profile in cardiac EVs and confirmed the enrichment of miRNAs, such as miR‐155‐5p in IR‐EVs compared to EVs from the sham heart (S‐EVs). In particular, IR‐EVs transferred miR‐155‐5p to macrophages and enhanced the inflammatory response through activating JAK2/STAT1 pathway. Interestingly, IR‐EVs not only boosted the local inflammation in the heart, but even triggered systemic inflammation in distant organs. Taken together, we newly identify an IR‐EVs–miR‐155‐5p–M1 polarization axis in the heart post IR. The EVs derived from IR‐injured heart contribute to both local and systemic inflammation. Importantly, EV inhibition by GW4869 is supposed to be a promising therapeutic strategy for IR injury.

An urban public transportation super-network model is established in this article. Compared with three existing complicated urban public transportation network models (the C-space network, L-space network, and P-space network), our urban public transportation super-network model first incorporated both station networks and bus line networks explicitly, which connects two non-homogeneous nodes (station and line nodes) through the notion of super networks. The proposed model reflects the interaction and mutual influences between the internal features and internal structures of the urban public transportation super network. And then the function projective synchronization of the dynamic public transportation super-network model is proven, and the high stability of the public transportation super network is confirmed by the Lyapunov stability theorem. Finally, the classical Lorenz chaotic system is applied in a numerical example to illustrate the proposed model and algorithm. The impact of departure frequency, line crowdedness, passenger transport density, and station dwell time on synchronous ability of the urban public transportation super-network model is analyzed. So, this study is a discussion on the urban public transportation super-network balance in order to offer theoretical basis for people to research bus dispatching and bus lines optimization.

The paper studies the coopetition of the downstream different carriers by providing complementary transport services in intermodal freight transport chain. Considering different information structure, a two-stage dynamic game model with simultaneous actions on investment and price is first formulated. Equilibria show both parties have motivation to select coopetition even if the agreement for cooperation investment is reached in advance. When both firms agree on the specific allocation, the new coopetition with higher efficiency would be emerged. Moreover, we analyze the complexity and evolution of coopetition by repeated pricing game with finitely and infinitely time horizon. In the finitely repeated pricing game, both firms have incentive to reach a tacit understanding to alternate choosing price cooperation and competition after setting suitable allocation scheme; the repeated periods t are then going to be an issue. In the infinitely repeated pricing game, the perfect cooperation is realized by designing the suitable trigger strategy.