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Graphdiyne (GDY) is a 2D carbon allotrope that features a one-atom-thick network of sp- and sp

A novel magnetic adsorbent, PPy-modified silica-coated magnetic MES organic–inorganic composite (MFSP), with high dispersibility, abundant adsorption sites, and magnetic separation was prepared successfully for the adsorption or reduction of Cr(vi).

Backgroud: The purpose of this meta-analysis was to investigate the clinical effects of peppermint oil (PO) on the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome（IBS). Methods: Randomized controlled trials of PO for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome were retrieved by computer from PubMed, Cochrane CENTRAL, EMBASE, and Web of science until December 30, 2021, and a meta-analysis was performed using Revman5.3 software. Results: Seven high-quality studies included a total of 722 participants. PO improved both IBS Symptom Severity Scale (IBS-SSS) and IBS quality of life (IBS-QOL) scores, although not significantly better than placebo(IBS-SSS ：MD = 15.35, 95% CI: -25.16-55.86, P = 0.46;IBS-QOL：MD = 0.78, 95% CI: -0.18-1.74, P = 0.11)；IBS-Global improvement in symptoms (IBS-GIS）of the PO group improved significantly compared with the placebo group (RR = 1.62, 95% CI: 1.20-2.17, P = 0.002). The PO group had significantly higher adverse events than the placebo group (RR 1.48, 95% CI: 1.48-1.89, P = 0.0002). Conclusions: While PO can significantly alleviate the clinical symptoms of IBS, the occurrence of adverse events will increase, and whether it will enhance IBS-SSS or IBS-QOL scores has to be researched further.

BACKGROUND Anisometropic amblyopia results from the unequal ability to focus between the right and left eyes. Blood oxygenation level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (BOLD-fMRI) measures the proportion of oxygenated hemoglobin in specific areas. Diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) is a method of diffusion tensor imaging that estimates the skewed distribution of water diffusion probability. We aimed to evaluate and compare 11 adult patients with anisometropic amblyopia (AA) with 13 normally sighted healthy controls (HC) using BOLD-fMRI and DKI. MATERIAL AND METHODS Eleven adults with AA (age range 20-49; mean age 29.18±8.089) and 13 HC adults (age range 22-50; mean age 28.00±5.79) were recruited. DKI scanning used a single excitation echo-planar imaging sequence and a region of interest to obtain DKI parameters for optic radiation; the corpus callosum was manually placed, including mean kurtosis (MK), fractional anisotropic (FA), and mean diffusivity (MD) values; and BOLD data used a gradient-echo echo-planar imaging sequence. RESULTS The AA group had lower MK and FA of bilateral optic radiation than the HC group (P=0.008 and P=0.006, respectively) and higher MD than the HC group (P=0.005). The MK of the corpus callosum in the AA group was lower than that of HC group (P=0.012).Compared with the non-dominant eyes of the HC group, the amblyopic eyes in the AA group had less activation range and intensity in Brodmann areas 17, 18, and 19. CONCLUSIONS The combined use of DKI and BOLD-fMRI detected microstructural changes associated with local visual pathways and identified damage to the visual cortex in patients with amblyopia.

Monodisperse polypyrrole/SBA-15 composite (PPy/SBA-15) was fabricated by in situ polymerization and used for Cr(VI) adsorption from aqueous solution. PPy/SBA-15 was characterized by numerous approaches. Factors affecting the Cr(VI) adsorption process, including the pH, the dose of adsorbent and contact time, were analyzed through batch experiments. The optimum experimental conditions were pH 2, dose of 4 g L−1 and contact time of 300 min. Meanwhile, PPy/SBA-15 had strong selective adsorption of Cr(VI) in co-existing ionic solution, the adsorption kinetics matched a pseudo-second-order kinetic model, and the adsorption isotherm data followed Langmuir adsorption isotherm models with a maximum adsorption capacity of 194.17 mg g−1 at 298 K, which is higher than that found in other reports of the same type of adsorbent. Regeneration evaluation demonstrated that the adsorbent can be recycled four times, retaining 92.58% of its removal rate. Moreover, EDX indicated that PPy/SBA-15 adsorbed Cr(VI) on its surface owing to ion exchange of chloride ions with either HCrO4− or Cr2O72−. XPS further certified that part of Cr(VI) was reduced to Cr(III). Overall, PPy/SBA-15 possesses capability as an alternative adsorbent to remove Cr(VI) from aqueous solution.

Content-based image copy detection has become one of the important technologies in copyright protection, where two major processes, content-based feature extraction and matching are included. However, it is certainly true that enough storage space is required to establish feature database for matching, which greatly increases time and storage consumption, as well as lacks flexibility. Fortunately, perceptual image hashing is a good strategy to address these problems, in which content-based features are extracted and further encoded to hash codes. On the one hand, content-based features provide and ensure higher copy detection accuracy, while on the other hand, hash codes instead of feature database reduce storage space and improve time efficiency. Meanwhile, a better balance between robustness and discrimination is one of the most objectives of image hashing, which is conducive to its application in multimedia management and security. Consequently, we present an effective image hashing method for copy detection. Specifically, to obtain perceptual robustness against to copy attacks, we extract the global statistical characteristics in gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) to reveal texture changes. Then, to make up the discrimination limitation, we leverage the local dominant DCT coefficients from the first row/column in each sub-image to calculate vector distance. Finally, two kinds of complementary information (global feature via texture and local feature via vector distance) are simultaneously preserved to generate hash codes. Various experiments performed on benchmark database indicate that our proposed perceptual image hashing provides higher detection accuracy and better balance between robustness and discrimination than the state-of-the-art algorithms.

Hashing method is an efficient technique of multimedia security for content protection. It maps an image into a content-based compact code for denoting the image itself. While most existing algorithms focus on improving the classification between robustness and discrimination, little attention has been paid to geometric invariance under normal digital operations, and therefore results in quite fragile to geometric distortion when applied in image copy detection. In this article, a novel effective image hashing method is proposed based on geometric invariant vector distance in both spatial domain and frequency domain. First, the image is preprocessed by some joint operations to extract robust features. Then, the preprocessed image is randomly divided into several overlapping blocks under a secret key, and two different feature matrices are separately obtained in the spatial domain and frequency domain through invariant moment and low frequency discrete cosine transform coefficients. Furthermore, the invariant distances between vectors in feature matrices are calculated and quantified to form a compact hash code. We conduct various experiments to demonstrate that the proposed hashing not only reaches good classification between robustness and discrimination, but also resists most geometric distortion in image copy detection. In addition, both receiver operating characteristics curve comparisons and mean average precision in copy detection clearly illustrate that the proposed hashing method outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms.

Co-exposure to heavy metal and antibiotic pollution might result in complexation and synergistic interactions, affecting rice growth and further exacerbating pollutant enrichment. Therefore, our study sought to clarify the influence of different Tetracycline (TC) and Cadmium(Cd) concentration ratios (both alone and combined) on rice growth, pollutant accumulation, and transportation during the tillering stage in hydroponic system. Surprisingly, our findings indicated that the interaction between TC and Cd could alleviate the toxic effects of TC/Cd on aerial rice structures and decrease pollutant burdens during root elongation. In contrast, TC and Cd synergistically promoted the accumulation of TC/Cd in rice roots. However, their interaction increased the accumulation of TC in roots while decreasing the accumulation of Cd when the toxicant doses increased. The strong affinity of rice to Cd promoted its upward transport from the roots, whereas the toxic effects of TC reduced TC transport. Therefore, the combined toxicity of the two pollutants inhibited their upward transport. Additionally, a low concentration of TC promoted the accumulation of Cd in rice mainly in the root tip. Furthermore, a certain dose of TC promoted the upward migration of Cd from the root tip. Laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry demonstrated that Cd mainly accumulated in the epidermis and stele of the root, whereas Fe mainly accumulated in the epidermis, which inhibited the absorption and accumulation of Cd by the rice roots through the generation of a Fe plaque. Our findings thus provide insights into the effects of TC and Cd co-exposure on rice growth.

Titanium and its alloys have been widely used as bone implants, but for reduced treatment span, improvements are urgently needed to achieve faster and better osteointegration. In this study, we found that miR-132-3p inhibited bone-marrow-derived stem cell (BMSC) osteogenic differentiation via targeting BMP2, and that inhibiting miR-132-3p could significantly improve the osteogenic capability of BMSCs. Moreover, we fabricated a biocompatible selenomethionine (SEMET)-modified polyethylene glycol (PEG)/polyethylenimine (PEI) nanoparticle (SeNP) cross-linked with 0.2% gelatin solutions and delivered miR-132-3p inhibitor to biofunctionalize alkali heat-treated titanium implants, resulting in the development of a novel coating for reverse transfection. The biological performances of PEG/PEI/miR-132-3p inhibitor and SeNP/miR-132-3p inhibitor-biofunctionalized titanium were compared. The biological effects, including cell viability, cytotoxicity, adhesion, cellular uptake, and osteogenic capacity of SeNP/miR-132-3p inhibitor-biofunctionalized titanium implants, were then assessed. Results showed that SeNPs presented appropriate morphology, diameter, and positive zeta potential for efficient gene delivery. The transfection efficiency of the SeNP/miR-132-3p inhibitor was comparable to that of the PEG/PEI/miR-132-3p inhibitor, but the former induced less reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and lower apoptosis rates. Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) demonstrated that SeNP/miR-132-3p inhibitor nanoparticles released from the titanium surfaces and were taken up by adherent BMSCs. In addition, the release profile showed that transfection could obtain a long-lasting silencing effect for more than 2 weeks. The cell viability, cytotoxicity, and cell spreading of SeNP/miRNA-132-3p inhibitor-biofunctionalized titanium were comparable with those of untreated titanium and the SeNP/miRNA-132-3p inhibitor negative control (NC)-biofunctionalized titanium but resulted in higher ALP activity and osteogenic gene expression levels. In vivo animal studies further certified that SeNP/miRNA-132-3p inhibitor nanoparticles from titanium surfaces promoted osteointegration, which was revealed by microcomputed tomography (micro-CT) and histological observations. Taken together, these findings suggested that selenomethionine-modified PEI-based nanoparticles could achieve better biocompatibility. Moreover, titanium implants biofunctionalized by SeNP/miRNA-132-3p inhibitor nanoparticles might have significant clinical potential for more effective osteointegration.

With the social and economic development and the government's attention, the study on the advancement of the development of the agricultural “new six industries”, which is an innovative practice to promote the integrated development of rural primary, secondary and tertiary industries, is of great significance for accelerating the transformation of agricultural development methods, promoting high-quality agricultural development, and accelerating the pace of agricultural and rural modernization. By analyzing the problems of the current “Internet +” agricultural “new six industries”, relying on information technologies such as computers, the Internet, the Internet of Things, and big data, this paper proposes a path for the construction of the “Internet +” agricultural big data ecosystem, designs the platform architecture, and elaborates the system structure and key technology of the platform. Through the construction and exploration of the platform, the optimization and promotion of the agricultural “new six industries” industrial structure has been achieved, providing theoretical exploration and technical support for the development of the “new six industries” smart business.

Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) is a transformative technology that has great potential to improve urban traffic and driving safety. Electric Vehicle (EV) is becoming the key subject of next-generation CAVs by virtue of its advantages in energy saving. Due to the limited endurance and computing capacity of EVs, it is challenging to meet the surging demand for computing-intensive and delay-sensitive in-vehicle intelligent applications. Therefore, computation offloading has been employed to extend a single vehicle’s computing capacity. Although various offloading strategies have been proposed to achieve good computing performace in the Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) environment, it remains challenging to jointly optimize the offloading failure rate and the total energy consumption of the offloading process. To address this challenge, in this paper, we establish a computation offloading model based on Markov Decision Process (MDP), taking into consideration task dependencies, vehicle mobility, and different computing resources for task offloading. We then design a computation offloading strategy based on deep reinforcement learning, and leverage the Deep Q-Network based on Simulated Annealing (SA-DQN) algorithm to optimize the joint objectives. Experimental results show that the proposed strategy effectively reduces the offloading failure rate and the total energy consumption for application offloading.

Aggregation kinetics of nanoplastics in aquatic environment are influenced by their interactions with proteins having different structures and properties. This study employed time-resolved dynamic light scattering (TR-DLS) to investigate the effects of 5 proteins (bovine hemoglobin (BHb), bovine (BSA) and human serum albumin (HSA), collagen type I (Col I), and bovine casein (CS)) on aggregation kinetics of polystyrene nanoplastics (PSNPs) under natural water conditions, which were simulated using various ionic strength (1-1000 mM NaCl and 0.01-100 mM CaCl

Dental implant surgery is currently a routine therapy for the repair of missing dentition or dentition defects. Both clinical and basic research have elucidated that oxidative stress caused by the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) for various reasons impairs the process of osteointegration after dental implantation. Therefore, the osteogenic micro-environment must be ameliorated to decrease the damage caused by oxidative stress. Selenomethionine (SEMET) has been reported to play an important role in alleviating oxidative stress and accelerating cell viability and growth. However, it remains unclear whether it exerts protective effects on bone-marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) under oxidative stress. In this study, we explored the influence of selenomethionine on the viability and osteogenic differentiation of BMSCs under oxidative stress and the underlying mechanisms. Results showed that 1 μM selenomethionine was the optimum concentration for BMSCs under H2O2 stimulation. H2O2-induced oxidative stress suppressed the viability and osteogenic differentiation of BMSCs, manifested by the increases in ROS production and cell apoptosis rates, and by the decrease of osteogenic differentiation-related markers. Notably, the aforementioned oxidative damage and osteogenic dysfunction induced by H2O2 were rescued by selenomethionine. Furthermore, we found that the PTEN expression level was suppressed and its downstream PI3K/AKT pathway was activated by selenomethionine. However, when PTEN was stimulated, the PI3K/AKT pathway was down-regulated, and the protective effects of selenomethionine on BMSC osteogenic differentiation diminished, while the inhibition of PTEN up-regulated the protective effects of selenomethionine. Together, these results revealed that selenomethionine could attenuate H2O2-induced BMSC dysfunction through an antioxidant effect, modulated via the PTEN/PI3K/AKT pathway, suggesting that selenomethionine is a promising antioxidant candidate for reducing oxidative stress during the process of dental implant osteointegration.