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To provide intelligent learning guidance for students in e-learning systems, it is necessary to accurately predict their performance in future exams by analyzing score data in past exams. However, existing research has not addressed the uncertain and dynamic features of students' cognitive status, whereas these features are essential for improving the accuracy of performance prediction. A novel approach via neutrosophic cognitive diagnosis is proposed to predict student performance in a personalized e-learning environment. This approach innovatively employs the neutrosophic set (NS) theory to comprehensively measure the students' cognitive status on knowledge concepts from three features, i.e., understanding level, degree of misunderstanding, and uncertainty. A new measurement method of NS similarity is used to identify top-k neighboring students for one student. Then, we predict a student's performance on exercises in future exams by integrating a neighborhood-based collaborative filtering algorithm with a probabilistic matrix factorization method to address the data sparsity problem. Finally, the experiments based on real-world datasets demonstrate that the proposed approach provides higher prediction accuracy than the existing ones with a low execution cost.

Abstract Limited information is available on the influence of a one‐time application of controlled‐release nitrogen fertilizer (CRNF) in improving both yield and quality of rice. In this study, two rice cultivars, Jia58 (J58) and Jia67(J67), were used to study the effects of six combinations of short‐acting (40–60‐day release periods) and a long‐acting (80–120‐day release periods) CRNF. The six combinations were as follows: A1, 40‐day + 80‐day CRNFs; A2, 40‐day + 100‐day CRNFs; A3, 40‐day + 120‐day CRNFs; B1, 60‐day + 80‐day CRNFs; B2, 60‐day + 100‐day CRNFs; and B3, 60‐day + 120‐day CRNFs. Each combination of CRNFs was mixed with common urea (CU) to apply as basal fertilizer to rice crops to assess grain yield and quality. In addition, CU without CRNFs was applied as the control (CK). The results showed that the release of nitrogen from A2 and B2 were most matched with nitrogen accumulation by rice resulting in a higher yield (B2 treatment) or the same yield (A2 treatment) as CK. The average yield of 2 years of J58 in B2 was 7.38% higher than that of the CK. Similarly, the average yield of J67 in B2 was 6.46% higher than CK for both years. Milling quality, appearance quality, milled rice starch content, and taste value of rice in CRNF treatments were significantly higher than CK. In contrast, protein, gliadin, and glutenin contents and hardness of rice in the CRNF treatments were lower than CK. The higher protein content of rice in the CK resulted in higher gelatinization temperature and harder rice, which may explain why the eating and cooking qualities of rice in the CK were lower than those of rice in the CRNF treatment. These results demonstrate that the A2 and B2 treatments can produce improvements in both yield and quality of rice.

Comprehensive Summary: Axially chiral biaryls represent the most important class of atropisomers, and they widely exist in natural products and biologically active molecules. They also constitute a unique scaffold for chiral ligands and catalysts in organic synthesis. The development of synthetic methods to obtain such chiral compounds has received widespread attention, among which catalytically atroposelective ring‐opening of configurationally labile compounds represents one of the most attractive strategies. Various substrates with strained cyclic structures, such as the renowned Bringmann's lactones, can undergo asymmetric transformation into stable atropisomers. Known advancement primarily relies on metal catalyst combined with well‐designed chiral ligands, the approaches utilizing organocatalysis as a critical resolution strategy are notably scarce. In this study, we disclosed a N‐heterocyclic carbene (NHC)‐catalyzed asymmetric ring‐opening reaction of biaryl lactams via direct atroposelective nucleophilic activation. The optimized bulky carbene catalyst ensures that the reaction can proceed under mild conditions, affording the desired product with good to excellent yields and atroposelectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Practical Application Our previous studies have shown that sulfated Cyclocarya paliurus polysaccharides (SCP3) can alleviate intestinal oxidative stress (OS) damage by improving the antioxidant capacity of the intestine, but its mechanism still needs further exploration. This study aimed to reveal the possible underlying protective mechanism of SCP3 against OS damage of intestinal epithelial cells (IEC‐6) based on transcriptome profiling. The results showed that SCP3 could increase the activity of superoxide dismutase and reduce the production of malondialdehyde and reactive oxygen species. In addition, the SCP3 could also alleviate the H2O2‐induced high apoptosis rate and mitochondrial membrane potential decrease in IEC‐6 cells. RNA‐sequencing results showed that there were 2152 differentially expressed genes between the control group and the SCP3 group, and the mitogen‐activated protein kinases (MAPK) and PI3K‐Akt signaling pathways are the main signaling pathways that contributed to SCP3 protecting IEC‐6 cells from OS damage. In summary, the SCP3 plays a role in improving intestinal cell damage by inhibiting OS, which may be closely related to the PI3K/Akt and MAPK signaling pathways.This study provides a theoretical basis for the practical application of Cyclocarya paliurus polysaccharides as an antioxidant ingredient in auxiliary medicines and functional foods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the digital image correlation (DIC) method and acoustic emission (AE) technology were combined to study the evolution of rock deformation localization in detail. The second-order spatial–temporal subset DIC (STS-DIC) algorithm was proposed and used for measuring strongly heterogeneous deformation fields of red sandstone specimens under uniaxial compression. The evolution of the deformation field was analyzed with a focus on the deformation localization stage. The length and width of the deformation localization band (DLB) were measured, and the relationships between the relative sliding rate of the DLB, the relative opening rate of the DLB, and the AE counts were identified. Deformation localization was found to result from the rapid evolution of the strain concentration before the peak stress. The complete development of the DLB is an inducing factor for catastrophic rock failure, and the failure modes of the rock specimens were consistent with the final state of the DLB. A good correlation was identified between the AE counts and the relative displacement rate of the DLB, and the sliding rate was found to have a significant influence on the AE counts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]