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Background: Oxaliplatin is one of the most effective chemotherapeutic drugs used for the treatment of colorectal cancer (CRC). However, intervention that attenuates the resistance of oxaliplatin is still required in the treatment of CRC. Aims: To investigate the role of miR-325 in changing the oxaliplatin sensitivity to CRC cells. Methods: Expression of miR-325 in colorectal cancer tissues and cell lines was measured by using qRT-PCR analysis. Cytotoxicity of oxaliplatin to control or miR-325-overexpressed HT29 and SW480 cells was evaluated by CCK-8 assays. Luciferase reporter assay was used to confirm the regulation of miR-325 on HSPA12B. Flow cytometry was performed to detect the mitochondrial membrane potential and cell apoptosis. Results: Expression of miR-325 was decreased in colorectal cancer tissues and cell lines. However, overexpression of miR-325 can decrease the 50% inhibiting concentration of oxaliplatin to colorectal cancer cell lines HT29 and SW480. Mechanically, we confirmed that miR-325 targeted HSPA12B in colorectal cancer. Therefore, overexpression of miR-325 inhibited the phosphorylation of PI3K and AKT and decreased the expression of Bcl-2 to promote the oxaliplatin-induced mitochondrial apoptosis in colorectal cancer. Conclusions: MiR-325 sensitizes the colorectal cancer cells to oxaliplatin-induced cytotoxicity through the HSPA12B/PI3K/AKT/Bcl-2 pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing variations of fabrication processes is a primary focus for improvement in etching process. One powerful tool employed towards this goal is Advanced Process Control (APC). APC adjusts recipes to compensate for measured variations. Systemic variations that were acceptable previously can become problematic as node sizes get smaller and structures become more complex. Dry etch can be a major source of variations and will be the focus of this research. Different APC methods have been developed to adjust recipes. However it is challenging to determine an optimal recipe to achieve multiple critical dimensions. In this article, an optimization method is proposed to generate optimal recipes for multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) systems. Models are constructed by applying Gaussian Process Regression and the optimal recipe is predicted using the proposed optimization method. Experimental data in dry etch process were collected and processed for model construction and recipe prediction. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in exploring optimal recipes for MIMO systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the concept of industry 4.0 was proposed in 2011, the trend of industry 4.0 has been surging around the world. Intelligent factory is one of the main research points in the industry 4.0 era. In order to improve the intelligent level of the factory, the connection-and-cognition ability has to be established for the factory and its equipment. Connection builds data pipes among equipment and systems while cognition automatically turns the data into knowledge. In an intelligent factory, industrial robot plays a leading role. Hence, the aim of this paper is to synthetically study connection and cognition of industrial robots in intelligent factories. To be specific, open platform communications unified architecture (OPC UA) is applied to establish heterogeneous connection of industrial robots with factory management software. A long short-term memory (LSTM) joint auto encoder method is proposed to establish the unsupervised anomaly detection cognition ability for industrial robot process (e.g. grinding, welding and assembling). In summary, this study puts OPC UA and LSTM auto encoder technology together to study heterogeneous connection and process anomaly detection of industrial robots in intelligent factory. The experimental results showed that the proposed method successfully realized heterogeneous connection of an industrial robot and detected process anomaly from the robot built-in sensors' data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the data of core description and sporopollen analysis, the gradual evolution of deltas in vertical direction and transition of channel types in the MPE3 block of the eastern Venezuela Basin have been surveyed by seismic phase and well logging facies interpretation. The results show that due to the great sea level rise, the sedimentary system of the Miocene Oficina Formation in the MPE3 block shifted from the distal‐source sandy braided river delta to tide‐affected delta, and eventually to tide‐dominated delta. Vertically, during the early stage of sedimentation of Oficina Formation, the distributary channels of the delta were dominated by braided river channels. While in the later stage, as the tidal effect was gradually intensified, the channel changed from braided channel to meandering channel. On plane, as a result of differential transgression, sedimentary framework and distribution of sand bodies vary across the study area. Compared with the eastern part, the western part has more braided channels, larger channel bars, less developments of distributary bay and higher ratio of sand to mud. Whereas the braided channels in the south are larger than those in the north. It is the first time we pointed out the impact of marine transgression differences on the sedimentary facies distribution and river type transition in the study area. Factors like the structural and paleogeomorphological change, sea level variation, supply of sediments have strong influence on the evolution of sedimentary system and distribution of sandbodies. It is predicted that the major sandbody is more developed in the central south, which can guide the subsequent horizontal well development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proportional–integral–derivative control system has been widely used in industrial applications. For complex systems, tuning controller parameters to satisfy the process requirements is very challenging. Different methods have been proposed to solve the problem. However these methods suffer several problems, such as dealing with system complexity, minimizing tuning effort and balancing different performance indices including rise time, settling time, steady-state error and overshoot. In this paper, we develop an automatic controller parameter optimization method based on Gaussian process regression Bayesian optimization algorithm. A non-parametric model is constructed using Gaussian process regression. By combining Gaussian process regression with Bayesian optimization algorithm, potential candidate can be predicted and applied to guide the optimization process. Both experiments and simulation were performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disease often occurs randomly in high-density shrimp farming, which leads to large differences in shrimp survival rates. However, the microbial ecologic mechanism underlying differences in the survival rate of farmed shrimp remains unclear. In this study, we regrouped the samples into high survival (HS) group and low survival (LS) group according to the survival rate of shrimp to elucidate the microbial mechanism. The results showed that the relative abundance of Vibrionaceae was mainly enriched in the LS group, and the dominated taxon OTU661 (Operational Taxonomic Unit 661) was significantly and negatively associated with the survival rate. The relative importance of OTU661 accounted for about 24% in causing differences of shrimp survival rate. The intestinal bacterial communities of the HS and LS groups were fit to a neutral distribution model, but the neutral process was significantly reduced in the LS group, compared to that in the HS group. Co-occurrence network analysis found that the interactions of the bacterial communities were more complex and stable in the HS group than the LS group, which might be an important factor for influencing the survival rate of shrimp. This study investigated the potential reasons for the differences in the shrimp survival rates from the aspects of microbiome homeostasis and assembly process, which might be helpful to develop a micro-ecological regulation method for healthy shrimp farming. • Understand the reasons for the instability of shrimp farming from a microbial ecological perspective. • The intestinal bacterial community was responsible for the discriminatory shrimp survival rate. • Key differential taxa between the HS and LS groups and correlations with the shrimp survival rate. • Obvious differences in the assembly mechanism and interactions of intestinal bacterial communities between HS and LS groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile robot typically has limited on-board resources and may be applied in different indoor environment. Thus, it is necessary that they can learn a map and navigate themselves autonomously with lightweight algorithms. A novel topological map-building-based localization and navigation method is proposed in this paper. Based on the depth curve provided by a 3D sensor, a progressive Bayesian classifier is developed to realize direct corridor type identification. Instead of extracting features from single observation, information from multi-observations are fused to achieve a more robust performance. A topological map generation and loop closing method are proposed to build the environment map through autonomous exploration. Based on the derived map and the Markov localization method, the robot can then localize itself and navigate freely in the indoor environment. Experiments are performed on a recently built mobile robot system, and the results verify the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Wafer-handling robots are widely used to transfer wafers in semiconductor manufacturing. To improve the wafer transfer efficiency, optic sensors are installed at each station to estimate the wafer eccentricity on the fly. However, due to nonideal factors such as light beam radius, robot motion error, and system nonlinearity and uncertainties, it is difficult to achieve high-accuracy eccentricity estimation to satisfy the demanding requirements in semiconductor manufacturing. To further improve the eccentricity estimation accuracy, the relationship among the robot kinematic error, sensor calibration error, and eccentricity identification error is analyzed. The analytic results show that both the error modeling method and the global data sampling method can greatly improve the wafer eccentricity estimation accuracy. The proposed eccentricity estimation techniques are verified by experiments performed on a wafer-handling robotic system. The results demonstrate that the developed methods can be used to improve the wafer-handling accuracy and reduce the wafer-handling cycle time in semiconductor manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Wafer-handling robots are used to transfer wafers in semiconductor manufacturing. Typically, a pick-measure-place method is used to transfer wafers accurately between stations. The measurement step is performed using an aligner, which is time-consuming. To increase the wafer transfer efficiency, it is desirable to speed up the measurement process or place it in parallel with other operations. Hence, optic sensors are installed at each station to estimate the wafer eccentricity on the fly. The eccentricity values are then used to control the robot to place the wafer directly onto another station accurately without using the aligner. In this paper, the kinematic model of a wafer-handling robot is developed. The errors in the kinematics model are analyzed. A model parameter identification method is proposed to obtain the parameters. A wafer eccentricity identification method is derived to calculate the eccentricity values on the fly. Experiments were performed to validate the proposed methods. The computed eccentricity errors are compared with those obtained by other researchers. The results demonstrated that the kinematics error modeling method can increase the wafer eccentricity identification accuracy. Hence, the developed methods can be applied to estimate the wafer eccentricity on the fly to reduce the wafer transfer cycle time and increase wafer-handling efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The incidence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is rising globally, increasing interest in food ingredients for its prevention and control. This study evaluated the effect of farnesol (FAR), a key component of pomelo flower volatile oil, on dextran sodium sulfate (DSS)-induced colitis in C57BL/6 mice. FAR significantly alleviated DSS-induced colitis and secondary liver injury, as shown by improved body weight, DAI, colon length, and pathology, as well as liver function and blood lipid indices. The mechanism involves FAR-mediated regulation of inflammatory cytokines, increased expression of tight junction protein genes, and decreased expression of lipid metabolism-related proteins. FAR also enhanced gut microbiota diversity, balancing harmful and probiotic bacteria. Fecal metabolome analysis indicated FAR's role in reversing metabolic disturbances related to inflammation and liver lipid metabolism. These findings support developing functional foods for IBD treatment using pomelo flower volatile oil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structure- and mechanism-based redesign of the Fe(II)/2-oxoglutarate-dependent oxygenase AndA was performed. The function of AndA was expanded to catalyze a spiro-ring formation reaction from an isomerization reaction. The redesigned AndA variants produced two unnatural novel spiro-ring containing compounds through two and three consecutive oxidation reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of their rapid development, polymer composites are seeing wider use in transportation infrastructure in China and worldwide. To solve the insufficient anti-aging performance of modified asphalt with high SBS content, Han et al. added nanomaterials and polyphosphoric acid (PPA) to high SBS content linear-modified asphalt as anti-aging agents [[2]]. The low-temperature properties of SBS-modified asphalt are not satisfactory; thus, Chen et al. analyzed the main factors for improving the low-temperature performance of SBS-modified asphalt base on the orthogonal tests [[1]]. [Extracted from the article]

Background: Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) affects reproductive-aged women. Active disease can lead to decreased fertility. Although the vast majority of international guidelines recommend for the continuation of anti-TNF-α during pregnancy, recent studies have raised concerns about the safety of anti-tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) therapy during pregnancy, both for patients and for physicians. Methods: Studies that evaluate the safety of anti-TNF-α therapy in pregnant women with IBD were identified using bibliographical searches. An updated meta-analysis was performed for pregnancy outcomes, such as live birth, abortion, still birth, preterm birth, low birth weight, congenital abnormalities, and neonatal infection. Odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) are reported. Data on disease activity, timing of anti-TNF-α therapy were collected for further analysis. Results: Overall, 11 studies were screened from on-line databases and international meeting abstracts. An increased risk of abortion (OR, 1.33; 95% CI, 1.02–1.74; P = 0.04) and preterm birth (OR, 1.16; 95% CI, 1.05–1.28; P = 0.004), and a decreased risk of live birth (OR, 0.83; 95% CI, 0.74–0.94; P = 0.002]) were found in the anti-TNF-α therapy group compared with the control group (no use of anti-TNF-α therapy). The subgroup analyses based on the disease activity showed there is no significant association between the use of anti-TNF-α therapy during pregnancy on adverse pregnancy outcomes of abortion, preterm birth, and live birth. The rates of still birth, low birth weight, and congenital abnormalities in the anti-TNF-α therapy group were not significantly different from those in the control group. Conclusions: Anti-TNF-α therapy does not increase the risks of still birth, low birth weight, and congenital abnormalities; however it may be assicated with increased risks of abortion and preterm birth, which are accompanied by a lower rate of live birth. Although these findings may be confounding by potential disease activity, they offer some opposite viewpoints with biologic agent use. Therefore, more studies are required to further confirm the safety of anti-TNF-α therapy in pregnancy with IBD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Spontaneous reporting of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) is essential for the post-marketing safety evaluation of drugs. Therefore, good monitoring of ADRs is vital for strengthening drug supervision, management, and guiding rational drug use. Chinese medical institutions are the primary source of ADR case reports, but the proportion of the reports in grade IIIA hospitals is still low due to serious under-reporting. The 3rd Affiliated Hospital of Chengdu Medical College, Chengdu Pidu District People's Hospital, also has such a problem. Objective: To improve the quantity and quality of ADR reports and enhance the level of pharmacovigilance in hospitals, the Third Affiliated Hospital of Chengdu Medical College, People's Hospital of Chengdu Pidu District experienced 10 years to gradually establish a management model to improve the medical staff's reporting rate of spontaneous reporting of ADRs. The management model is led by clinical pharmacists and combines the PDCA with Teach-back methods. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the management model and discuss its advantages and shortcomings of this model. Methods: This study was conducted at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Chengdu Medical College—Chengdu Pidu District People's Hospital. From 2016, the daily management of reporting, auditing, and data improvement of adverse drug reactions in the hospital was carried out by clinical pharmacists, who used the PDCA method combined with the Teach-back method to continuously improve the reporting program of ADRs in the hospital during 2016–2021. Then, the proportion of spontaneous reports of total, new, and serious ADRs was compared before and after the intervention. Also, we performed a time series analysis using an autoregressive moving average model to assess changes in the total number of spontaneous ADR reports before the intervention (2013–2015), the first intervention (2016–2018), and the second intervention (2019–2021). Results: After the combined PDCA and Teach-back method intervention, the median number of reported ADRs per year increased from 50 (range 37–55) in the pre-intervention period to 88 (range 83–162) in the first intervention period and to 374 in the second (range 312–566). Breakpoint regression analysis of the spontaneous reporting rate of ADRs showed that the instantaneous increase after the first intervention was not statistically significant (P = 0.526). However, the reporting rate of ADRs increased at a month-by-month growth rate during the second intervention compared to the first intervention. Its spontaneous reporting rate improved 1.034 times (P = 0.002). After the second intervention, the spontaneous reporting rate of ADRs transiently increased 6.111-fold (P < 0.001), and the month-to-month growth rate increased 1.024-fold (P < 0.001) again. Conclusion: The management model that combines the PDCA and the Teach-back method significantly improves the reporting rate of adverse drug reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AIM: From the perspective of regulating mitochondrial complex I activity by DJ-1 protein, this study aims to explore the mechanism of DJ-1-mediated resveratrol (RES) preconditioning in protecting against oxidative stress injury induced by myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) in rats. METHODS: After intramyocardial injection of lentivirus carrying DJ-1 shRNA (sh-DJ-l) or negative control (NC) shRNA, the myocardial I/R model was constructed by ligating the left anterior descending branch of the rat coronary artery. Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were randomly divided into 6 groups: sham group, I/R group, RES+I/R group, NC+RES+I/R group, sh-DJ-1+RES+I/R group, and IACS-010759 (mitochondrial complex I inhibitor)+RES+I/R group, with 10 rats in each group. The rats in RES treatment groups were given RES (20 mg/kg) via gavage for 7 d prior to the myocardial I/R modeling, once daily. Moreover, the rats in sham and I/R groups received an equivalent volume of normal saline via gavage. Myocardial infarction area and cardiac function were assessed by TTC staining and echocardiography, respectively. The MitoSOX fluorescent probe was used to detect levels of mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the myocardium. The levels of malondialdehyde (MDA), superoxide dis-mutase (SOD) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) in the serum were detected using kits. Western blot and co-immunoprecipitation assays were used to observe the interaction between DJ-1 and the two subunits, ND-1 and NDUFA4, of the mitochondrial complex I. RESULTS: Compared with I/R group, RES pretreatment significantly reduced the myocardial infarction area, mitochondrial ROS levels, serum LDH activity, and serum MDA content (P<0. 01). It also elevated left ventricular ejection fraction, left ventricular fractional shortening and serum SOD activity (P<0. 01). Pretreatment with RES increased the expression and mitochondrial translocation of DJ-1 (P<0. 01), promoted the interaction between DJ-1 and ND-1/NDUFA4, which in turn protected the activity of mitochondrial complex I (P<0. 01). However, when the expression of DJ-1 was suppressed, the protective effects of RES against myocardial I/R injury were significantly inhibited compared with RES+I/R group (P<0. 05 or P<0. 01). CONCLUSION: Pretreatment with RES increases the expression and mitochondrial translocation of DJ-1, and facilitates the interaction of DJ-1 with ND1 and NDUFA4 subunits of mito-chondrial complex I, thus preserving the activity of mitochondrial complex I and attenuating myocardial I/R-induced oxidative stress damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to deal with automatic assembly problems for flexible components, in this paper we develop contact states analysis, jamming analysis, and force control strategies for flexible dual peg-in-hole assembly. First, contact states in large and small deformation stages are enumerated, respectively. Second, the relationship between forces and moments is derived, and jamming states for different stages are analyzed. Third, control strategies are also presented. Finally, results of experiments verified the effectiveness of the contact state analysis, jamming analysis, and force control strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Timely and accurate flame detection is a very important and practical technology for preventing the occurrence of fire accidents effectively. However, the current methods of flame detection are still faced with many challenges in video surveillance scenarios due to issues such as varying flame shapes, imbalanced samples, and interference from flame-like objects. In this work, a real-time flame detection method based on deformable object detection and time sequence analysis is proposed to address these issues. Firstly, based on the existing single-stage object detection network YOLOv5s, the network structure is improved by introducing deformable convolution to enhance the feature extraction ability for irregularly shaped flames. Secondly, the loss function is improved by using Focal Loss as the classification loss function to solve the problems of the imbalance of positive (flames) and negative (background) samples, as well as the imbalance of easy and hard samples, and by using EIOU Loss as the regression loss function to solve the problems of a slow convergence speed and inaccurate regression position in network training. Finally, a time sequence analysis strategy is adopted to comprehensively analyze the flame detection results of the current frame and historical frames in the surveillance video, alleviating false alarms caused by flame shape changes, flame occlusion, and flame-like interference. The experimental results indicate that the average precision (AP) and the F-Measure index of flame detection using the proposed method reach 93.0% and 89.6%, respectively, both of which are superior to the compared methods, and the detection speed is 24–26 FPS, meeting the real-time requirements of video flame detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional methods for determining rock stress sensitivity, in which the confining pressure is varied while the pore pressure is held at a constant level, are not suitable for the conditions in low-permeability tight gas reservoirs. In this work, we have studied an evaluation method that involves varying the pore pressure for constant confining pressure. In order to establish the actual reservoir pressures, we used a method involving simultaneous increase in the confining and pore pressures. We have derived an equation describing the dependence of the gas well productivity on the stress sensitivity of the reservoir and have demonstrated the validity of our model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fastener assembly is a tedious and time-consuming work because operators have to check assembly manuals and find right fastener for each hole. Hence, this paper aims to develop a three-dimensional (3-D) projection system that projects assembly instruction onto the work piece surface directly to guide operators to assemble. However, in order to project the instruction accurately, the corresponding part of the computer-aided design model of the physical scanned area needs to be attained through the rapid and accurate registration. In order to achieve this goal, first, a high-accuracy and rapid 3-D measurement system is developed; second, a fast registration method based on local multiscale geometric feature vector is proposed to accelerate the registration speed and improve the registration reliability. Experimental results demonstrate the measurement accuracy of the developed system, and verify the feasibility of the proposed registration method. Hence, the proposed method can lead to improved assembly efficiency and decreased error probability, making great contributions to large-scale structure assembly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The underlying mechanisms of microbial community assembly in connective coastal environments are unclear. The coastal water area of northern Zhejiang, East China Sea, is a complex marine ecosystem with multiple environmental gradients, where the distributions and determinants of bacterioplankton communities remain unclear. We collected surface water samples from 95 sites across eight zones in this area for investigating bacterial community with 16S r RNA gene high-throughput sequencing. Bacterial alpha-diversity exhibits strong associations with water chemical parameters and latitude, with 75.5% of variation explained by suspended particle. The composition of dominant phyla can group the sampling sites into four bacterial provinces, and most key discriminant phyla and families/genera of each province strongly associate with specific environmental features, suggesting that local environmental conditions shape the biogeographic provincialism of bacterial taxa. At a broader and finer phylogenetic scale, bacterial beta-diversity is dominantly explained by the shared variation of environmental and spatial factors (63.3%); meanwhile, the environmental determinants of bacterial β-diversity generally exhibit spatially structured patterns, suggesting that bacterial assembly in surface water is highly controlled by spatially structured environmental gradients in this area. This study provides evidence for the unique biogeographic pattern of bacterioplankton communities at an entire scale of this marine ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the limited dissipating effect and high construction costs of traditional sand cushion in shed, this paper proposes to partially replace the sand with waste tennis balls to solve the problem of poor impact resistance of sand cushion. Tests of the impact of rockfall on the waste tennis ball-sand composite cushion were carried out exploring the dissipation effect controlled for the following: height of the rockfall, average gas content of the tennis balls, distribution density, whether the tennis ball gaps were filled with sand, and prevalence and position of tennis balls. According to the results, when a steel plate is added above the composite cushion to isolate the river sand and the tennis balls, the peak of reaction force and impact force decreased by 62% and 72%, respectively, and the dissipating effect of the composite cushion is significantly improved. More specifically, the energy dissipation of tennis cushion outperforms the traditional one with an increase of falling height, and the peak value of reaction force and impact force decrease by up to 23% and 14%, respectively. Moreover, under the same impact energy, the dissipating effect of the tennis ball-sand composite cushion gradually increases with the reduction of the gas content of the tennis ball and the distance between the tennis balls; 25% gas content and 5 cm distance have the best energy dissipation effect. The research results can provide new solutions for the structural design of cushion and the reuse of used tennis balls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of multi-wave and multi-component seismic information for reservoir prediction and characterization has been a popular research direction. The study area is located in the Orinoco heavy oil belt in Venezuela. The reservoir is a braided river delta plain deposit and the sandstone is shallowly buried and unconsolidated. Thereby, it is difficult to predict and characterize the type of reservoir effectively with seismic data of conventional P-waves. Based on multi-wave and multi-component seismic acquisition data, the study has conducted petrophysical analysis and seismic horizon calibration with converted wave (PS). Vertically, superimposed sand bodies were identified with PP wave because the PP wave has higher vertical resolution than that of PS wave. Laterally, sectional morphology and plane distribution scale of sand bodies were delineated by using the higher lateral resolution of PS wave. By combining the characteristics of PP wave and PS wave, five models for intersection and sand body superposition were summarized and the architecture units of sand bodies were divided. The seismic attribute (RMS amlpitude) boundary characteristics and continuity of the high amplitude region described by PS wave are more evident to obtain plane distribution of channel bars and braided channels. Three different seismic inversion results of seismic impedance, density and sand thickness from three different methods were compared. The average accuracy of sand body prediction with the method of PP-PS wave combined pre-stack inversion reached approximately 85% which is greater than that of the PP wave post-stack inversion and PP-PS combined post-stack inversion, with accuracy of 64% and 66% respectively. The research results showed that in the study area, the combination of multi-wave and multi-component seismic reflection information can effectively identify and predict multi-stage superimposed sand bodies with clearer vertical superposition and more accurate lateral boundary. Due to the inherent non-uniqueness of seismic information on predicting reservoir distribution, the resolution of seismic data and the difficulty of identification of the highly superimposed shallow-buried unconsolidated sandbodies, reservoir prediction uncertainty still exists. In particular, the interpretation on the sedimentary microfacies distribution and sand-body scale may only be one of the relatively reliable interpretation schemes. • Application of multi-wave and multi-component seismic data. • Description on unconsolidated sand bodies integrated well and seismic data. • PP-PS wave combined pre-stack inversion method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patients with myocardial infarction have a much worse prognosis when they have myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury. Further research into the molecular basis of myocardial I/R injury is therefore urgently needed, as well as the identification of novel therapeutic targets and linkages to interventions. Three cysteine residues are present in DJ-1 at amino acids 46, 53, and 106 sites, with the cysteine at position 106 being the most oxidation-prone. This study sought to understand how oxidized DJ-1(C106) contributes to myocardial I/R damage. Rats' left anterior descending branches were tied off to establish a myocardial I/R model in vivo. A myocardial I/R model in vitro was established via anoxia/reoxygenation (A/R) of H9c2 cells. The results showed that autophagy increased after I/R, accompanied by the increased expression of oxidized DJ-1 (ox-DJ-1). In contrast, after pretreatment with NAC (N-acetylcysteine, a ROS scavenger) or Comp-23 (Compound-23, a specific antioxidant binding to the C106 site of DJ-1), the levels of ox-DJ-1, autophagy and LDH release decreased, and cell survival rate increased. Furthermore, the inhibition of interaction between ox-DJ-1 and PTEN could increase PTEN phosphatase activity, inhibit the p-IKK/NF-κB/Beclin1 pathway, reduce injurious autophagy, and alleviate A/R injury. However, BA (Betulinic acid, a NF-κB agonist) was able to reverse the protective effects produced by Comp-23 pretreatment. In conclusion, ox-DJ-1 could activate detrimental autophagy through the PTEN/p-IKK/NF-κB/Beclin1 pathway and exacerbate myocardial I/R injury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A compact circular resonator for a microwave plasma lamp is designed. A disc‐shaped metal sheet is loaded in the coaxial resonant cavity to reduce the volume by increasing its equivalent capacitance. The operating centre frequency of the proposed circular resonator is 444.5 MHz with a radius of 25 mm and height of 40 mm. The proposed compact resonator does not need to be filled with dielectric material, therefore it is very easy to manufacture with low cost. The test results show that the proposed resonator exhibits good performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Orinoco heavy oil belt (OHOB), which has the most significant heavy oil reserve in the world, has shown various sedimentary patterns and different evolution processes within its different blocks. We selected two blocks, Junin in the west and Carabobo in the east, to analyze the depositional environment distinctions due to different transgression processes. Based on the interpretation of 3D seismic data and electrical well-logging facies and analysis of depositional phenomena using cores, we clarified diverse depositional associations and constructed a sedimentary evolution model of the depositional system in the study area. We suggest that the depositional system transitioned from a braided river delta to a tide-dominated delta in the Early Miocene and that two factors mainly controlled the transition: paleo-flow and paleo-geomorphology, which are related to tectonic uplift and transgression processes. Transgression increased gradually through tectonic activity, though transgression rates varied area to area, resulting in different depositional environment transitions and sand-body distribution patterns. In the Carabobo block (east), a gentle slope developed, indicating a fast transgression rate. The intense interaction between river and tide flow led to a large inter-distributary channel area with high-sinuosity- or tidal-channels (relative to the Junin block). In the Junin block (west), tectonic activity developed a large accommodation area providing space for the sediment produced, slowing the transgression rate, and contributing to a mainly fluvial delta environment. Due to the gradual intensive transgression, channel stack patterns transitioned from braided-to meandering-channel in the river dominated delta or tidal-channel in the tide-dominated delta. • Depositional environment analysis in the Orinoco heavy oil belt. • Braided river delta to tide-dominated delta transition in the early Miocene. • Fast and slow transgression in the east (Carabobo) and west (Junin), respectively. • Channel stack patterns transitioned from braided-to meandering- or tidal-channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sucrose-based biofloc system could facilitate the growth and fitness of shrimp (Penaeus vannamei) by regulating the gut bacterial community. However, little is known about the specific taxa enriched by sucrose-based biofloc system that could improve shrimp health. Here, we investigated the influences of sucrose-based biofloc system on the diversity, structure, and function of the shrimp gut bacterial community. Sucrose-based biofloc system enhanced the observed species and shannon index of the gut bacterial community, and altered the bacterial community compositions by aggrandizing the relative abundances of Amaricoccus , Demequina , and Microbacterium , and decreasing the abundances of potential pathogens belonging to Mycoplasmataceae. The relative abundances of three key operational taxonomic units (OTUs), Demequina OTU465, Microbacterium OTU778, and Amaricoccus OTU 3213 accounted for >50% contributions to shrimp growth and survival rate. Sucrose-based biofloc system positively improved the bacterial community functions involved in amino acid metabolism, metabolism of terpenoids and polyketides, and carbohydrate metabolism. These improved functions were also positively associated with these key OTUs, further implying that they might be key for shrimp health. Finally, the corresponding strains of these key OTUs were isolated to construct a synthetic community, which showed significantly promotive role in shrimp growth and resistance against pathogen challenge. These results not only help us understand the role of sucrose-based biofloc system in improving shrimp fitness better but also provide a reference for suppressing disease occurrence through the use of bacterial inocula. • Sucrose addition changed the bacterial community diversity and structure. • Sucrose addition directly enriched some specific taxa in the shrimp gut. • Specifically enriched taxa had great contributions on shrimp growth and survival rate. • Sucrose addition altered the potential functions of shrimp gut bacterial community. • Combination of specifically enriched bacteria protected shrimp against Vibrio challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The Eastern Venezuela Basin serves as a world-class petroliferous basin, with the sedimentary environment controlled by interactions between the Caribbean and South American plates. This complex tectonic movement could have an important impact on the unsynchronized sedimentary evolution process and heterogeneous marine transgression of different regions within the basin. Thus, it is important to clarify the impact of interactions between the fluviatic- and marine-deposits on the development of the sedimentary environment, the transition of different delta types, and sand-body distribution within this complicated tectonic movement. Based on interpretation of 3D seismic data, electrical well-logging facies and analysis of the sedimentary characteristics of the core, we were able to identify the different sedimentary association types and understand the evolutionary process of the sedimentary system within the study area. We found that the differential sedimentary process in the eastern and western Carabobo block in the Eastern Venezuela Basin was caused by differential uplift and the corresponding spatial discrepancy transgression process in the Middle and Early Miocene foreland basins in this region. The flat geomorphology in the eastern Carabobo block contributed to the obvious sea level transgression process from North to South, but the uplift in the center of the western Carabobo block continuously blocked the sea level transgression. The different transgression processes led to the different sedimentary evolution processes in the eastern and western Carabobo blocks. In the eastern Carabobo block, braided river deltas (23.3–20.43 Ma) gradually changed into meandering river deltas (20.43–15.97 Ma) and finally into tide-influenced estuaries (15.97 Ma). However, in the western subsiding Carabobo block, impacted by the uplift in the center of this area, braided river deltas (23.3–15.97 Ma) in front of the uplift (adjacent to the sea) quickly changed into tide-influenced estuaries (15.97 Ma) with the generation of meandering distributary channels. However, the relatively weak transgression impacting the area behind the uplift resulted in braided channels being retained. Along with the evolution of the sedimentary environment, the tide-related deltaic distributary channel began to change from a braided channel to a meandering one. After rebuilding the paleo-hydrodynamic field, ancient geomorphology, and combining the hydrodynamic equations, we were able to quantitatively explain why sausage-shaped mouth bars occurred in the West and isolated mouth bars occurred in the East. Differential sedimentary environment evolution in eastern and western Carabobo is related to the spatial discrepancy of transgression, which resulted in the rate of change in hydrodynamic intensity, the direction of water flow confluence, and paleo-geomorphology. Highlights • Identification of Spatial discrepancy of Miocene transgression with multi-scaled data analysis. • Recognition different kinds of sedimentary evolution process based on the seismic-log-core integration analysis. • Put out the responding channel transform pattern with rebuilding the hydrodynamic distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The peritoneal metastasis‑associated phosphatase of regenerating liver‑3 (PRL‑3) is upregulated in gastric cancer. The phosphatidylinositol 3‑kinase (PI3K)/RAC serine/threonine‑protein kinase (AKT) signaling pathway acts downstream of PRL‑3 in gastric cancer. However, the exact PRL‑3 signaling mechanisms are poorly understood. The present study investigated whether PRL‑3 facilitates the peritoneal metastasis of gastric cancer via the PI3K/AKT pathway in vivo and in vitro. Nude mouse models of peritoneal metastasis were established using SGC7901/PRL‑3 cell lines. The results confirmed that the invasion and migration abilities of SGC7901/PRL‑3 cells were significantly increased in these models. Furthermore, western blotting demonstrated that the expression of p‑AKT, matrix metallopeptidase‑2 (MMP‑2) and ‑9 proteins increased in SGC7901/PRL‑3 cells. These effects were suppressed in SGC7901 cell lines when PI3K was inhibited by LY294002. Furthermore, tumors derived from the peritoneal injection of SGC7901/PRL‑3 cells were significantly smaller when the cells were grown in the presence of LY249002, compared with cells grown in its absence. These results indicated that targeted inhibition of the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway decreased the effects of PRL‑3 on metastasis in vivo. Collectively, the results of the present study indicated that PRL‑3 acts via the PI3K/AKT pathway to promote peritoneal metastasis and invasion of gastric cancer cells in vitro and in vivo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major assumption in developing intelligent robot in industrial fields is that the intelligence has to be from senior human workers. However, in many industrial applications, this assumption may not hold. For example, in welding process, a senior welder can continually choose proper weld parameters and tune weld performance based on their observations of the liquid weld pool. But a robot with better pool shape measurement system and quicker respond speed may outperform human welders. In such cases, intelligent welding agents, if developed successfully, would greatly reduce welding cost by avoiding much expensive human training efforts and improve the welding performance. In recent years, machine learning techniques have emerged as a new learning framework to address such problem. The theory of machine learning provides a normative account of how agents may predict their future action based on a model structure, in which the training and future data have to be in the same feature space and have the same distribution. In this paper, Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) is proposed to model real-time welding process. Gas tungsten arc welding experiments were performed and the experimental data are utilized to validate the proposed method. We train the model using 1284 pairs of data in one experiment and test this model on a challenging domain of 4 other experiments by 11,642 pairs of data, using the same algorithm, GPR architectures, and hyperparameters. Bayesian Optimization Algorithm (BOA) surrogated with GPR is proposed to provide robust prediction results. This paper opens a door for enabling robot with industrial skills, resulting in the first artificial welder that is capable to respond real-time observations and provide robust predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resveratrol (RES), a natural polyphenolic compound found in red wine and grape skins, has attracted significant attention due to its cardioprotective properties. DJ-1, a multifunctional protein that participated in transcription regulation and antioxidant defense, was shown to provide a significant protective impact in cardiac cells treated with ischemia-reperfusion. We created a myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) model in vivo and in vitro by ligating the left anterior descending branch of rats and subjecting H9c2 cells to anoxia/reoxygenation (A/R) to investigate whether RES reduces myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury by upregulating DJ-1. We discovered that RES dramatically enhanced cardiac function in rats with I/R. Subsequently, we found that RES prevented the rise in autophagy (P62 degradation and LC3-II/LC3-I increase) induced by cardiac ischemia-reperfusion in vitro and in vivo. Notably, the autophagic agonist rapamycin (RAPA) eliminated RES-induced cardioprotective effects. In addition, Further data showed that RES significantly increased the expression of DJ-1 in the myocardium with the treatment of I/R. At the same time, pretreatment with RES reduced phosphorylation of MAPK/ERK kinase kinase 1 (MEKK1) and Jun N-terminal Kinase (JNK) stimulated by cardiac ischemia-reperfusion, and Beclin-1 mRNA and protein levels while decreasing lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and improving cell viability. However, the lentiviral shDJ-1 and JNK agonist anisomycin disrupted the effects of RES. In summary, RES could inhibit autophagy against myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury through DJ-1 modulation of the MEKK1/JNK pathway, providing a novel therapeutic strategy for cardiac homeostasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autophagy is a highly conserved biological process that has evolved across evolution. It can be activated by various external stimuli including oxidative stress, amino acid starvation, infection, and hypoxia. Autophagy is the primary mechanism for preserving cellular homeostasis and is implicated in the regulation of metabolism, cell differentiation, tolerance to starvation conditions, and resistance to aging. As a multifunctional protein, DJ-1 is commonly expressed in vivo and is associated with a variety of biological processes. Its most widely studied role is its function as an oxidative stress sensor that inhibits the production of excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the mitochondria and subsequently the cellular damage caused by oxidative stress. In recent years, many studies have identified DJ-1 as another important factor regulating autophagy; it regulates autophagy in various ways, most commonly by regulating the oxidative stress response. In particular, DJ-1-regulated autophagy is involved in cancer progression and plays a key role in alleviating neurodegenerative diseases(NDS) and defective reperfusion diseases. It could serve as a potential target for the regulation of autophagy and participate in disease treatment as a meaningful modality. Therefore, exploring DJ-1-regulated autophagy could provide new avenues for future disease treatment. [Display omitted] • DJ-1 regulated autophagy through indirect oxidation, Ca2+ stabilization platform, and direct regulation of autophagy proteins. • DJ-1 also regulated autophagy through pathways such as AMPK. • DJ-1 regulation of autophagy played a role in many diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Yeast degraded PN, PS, amino acids, and fluorescent components in EPS. • Yeast transformed macromolecular organics to small molecular ones in EPS. • Addition of 0.75 g/L of yeast enhanced the dewaterability of AS. • Yeast reduced hydrophilic organics or functional groups in EPS. • Yeast enhanced the AS dewaterability and reduced the in-situ biomass in SBR. Candida Tropicalis was used to improve the dewaterability of activated sludge (AS) and reduce its biomass by degrading EPS in AS. The protein, polysaccharide, and hydrophilic amino acids in EPS decreased by 54.50, 29.20, and 61.01%, respectively. Meanwhile, molecular weight distribution indicated that yeast degraded macromolecular organics into small molecular ones. The direct addition of yeast to AS was more conducive to EPS degradation. With the addition of 0.75 g/L of wet yeast cells and 24 h of aeration enhanced the dewaterability of AS. The CST and MLSS decreased by 24.44 and 10.51%, respectively. After 30 days of operation of lab-scale continuous SBRs, the CST and MLSS of AS were reduced by 6.37 ± 2.01 and 3.57 ± 0.52%, respectively. FTIR spectroscopy results showed that some hydrophilic functional groups were reduced. This study provides a new approach for the in-situ reduction of AS in wastewater treatment plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accuracy of structured light measurement depends on delicate offline calibration. However, in some practical applications, the system is supposed to be reconfigured so frequently to track the target that an online calibration is required. To this end, this paper proposes a rapid and autonomous self-recalibration method. For the proposed method, first, the rotation matrix and the normalized translation vector are attained from the fundamental matrix; second, the scale factor is acquired based on scale-invariant registration such that the actual translation vector is obtained. Experiments have been conducted to verify the effectiveness of our proposed method and the results indicate a high degree of accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phosphatase of regenerating liver-3 (PRL-3) is believed to be associated with cell motility, invasion, and metastasis. Our previous work found that PRL-3 is highly overexpressed in gastric cancer (GC) tissue with peritoneal metastasis and directly involved in the pathogenesis of GC peritoneal metastasis. Moreover, we further found that the down-regulation of endogenous miR-495 expression plays a causative role in over expression of PRL-3 in GC peritoneal metastasis. However, the molecular regulation mechanisms by which endogenous miR-495 expression is down-regulated and PRL-3 promotes GC peritoneal metastasis remain to be clearly elucidated. Some studies have shown that the promoter methylation is closely related to the miRNA gene expression. Therefore, in present study, based on our previous findings, we will analysis whether DNA methylation is a major cause of the down-expression of endogenous miR-495, which results in PRL-3 overexpression in GC peritoneal metastasis. Methylation specific PCR (MSP) and sodium bisulfite sequencing method (BSP) detected miR-495 gene promoter methylation status. We treated GC cell lines with 5-Aza-2′-deoxycytidine (5-Aza-dC) to make the gene promoter methylation inactivation. By treating with 5-Aza-dC the migration and invasion of GC cells were significantly inhibited. And the miR-495 was overexpressing, corresponds to the mRNA and protein levels of PRL-3 were reduced, the ability of invasion and metastasis was inhibited. This study suggest that miR-495 have tumor suppressor properties and are partially silenced by DNA hypermethylation in GC, will provide new strategies for prevention and treatment of GC peritoneal metastasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The close correlation between the incidence of shrimp disease and the surrounding microbial community is well established. However, it remains uncertain whether particular bacterial assemblages are indicative of shrimp health status (healthy or diseased). To test this hypothesis, we used 454 pyrosequencing to compare the bacterioplankton composition of ponds with healthy shrimp populations (PHS) with that of ponds with diseased shrimp populations (PDS). The results showed that the bacterial communities in PDS were markedly distinct (P <0.05) from those of PHS but that the diversity was unchanged. This sudden shift in the bacterioplankton communities was accompanied by severe mass mortality of the shrimp. The differentiation of the bacterial communities was primarily shaped by the total phosphate and by the chemical oxygen demand. In particular, we identified 11 indicator orders (in which 6 for healthy status and 5 for diseased status) that differentiated PHS from PDS. In a given pond, especially, the sum of the relative abundance of the disease indicator phylotypes and that of the healthy indicator phylotypes could be used to estimate the health status of the pond. This result suggests that the bacterioplankton composition determines, at least in part, the health status of the shrimp. Overall, this study provides direct evidence that the composition of the bacterioplankton community can serve as a biological indicator to evaluate the occurrence of shrimp diseases. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of sasanquasaponin (SQS) on ICAM-1 expression and capillary permeability induced by burns in rats. Male adult Sprague–Dawley (SD) rats were subjected to burns in the presence or absence of SQS, and then intravenously injected with Evans blue (60.0mg/kg body weight). The levels of soluble ICAM-1 (sICAM-1) in sera were assayed using ELISA and the expression levels of transmembrane ICAM-1 (mICAM-1) in aorta were determined by Western blots and ICAM-1 mRNA levels were measured using semi-quantification RT-PCR. The capillary permeability was determined spectrophotometrically. The results showed that SQS markedly lowered the levels of sICAM-1 in sera, and considerably inhibited the over-expression as well as transcription of mICAM-1 in rat aorta. In addition, SQS dramatically inhibited the enhancement of dermal capillary permeability induced by burns in a dose-dependent manner. These results suggest that SQS, developed from Chinese traditional herbs, might be effective in decreasing inflammation induced by burns. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The common shrimp disease, acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND), has caused extensive damage to the shrimp farming industry due to its rapid spread and high mortality rates. However, the alterations in gastrointestinal microbiota (GM) ecosystem in subadult shrimps (Litopenaeus vannamei) with AHPND occurrence are still unclear. This study identified AHPND according to clinical symptoms and the existence of the toxin gene pirA VP, analyzed the microbiome dynamics of healthy and diseased subadult shrimps, and built an ecological model for quantitative evaluation of the GM imbalance. The results showed that the GM community diversity in diseased shrimps was significantly lower than that in healthy ones. The structural composition, dysbiosis-related indices, and assembly processes of the GM community were also evidently changed in diseased shrimps. The different operational taxonomic units (OTUs) in GM of diseased shrimps were mainly composed of Vibrio spp. with a relative abundance >90%, the majority of these were neutrally distributed in the neutral model of AHPND occurrence. Of 39 biomarkers for predicting AHPND occurrence, nine belonging to Vibrio were overrepresented in diseased shrimps, whereas biomarkers such as Rhodobacteraceae OTU3427, Candiadatus aysiosphaera OTU1041, KD4-96 OTU4963, and Rhodobacter OTU3366 were enhanced in healthy shrimps. Functional prediction showed that the gene abundances of the NOD receptor signaling pathway (p =.04), Vibrio infection (p <.01), and Vibrio pathogenic cycle function (p <.01) were significantly increased in diseased compared with healthy shrimps. Disturbed GM was closely correlated with infectious diseases and pirA gene. In contrast, stable GM was maintained by multiple bacterial taxa, which may be benefit for shrimp health through regulating immune system and environmental adaptation. These results indicated that GM imbalance caused by AHPND with the characteristics of expanded variation of GM diversity, increased dysbiosis-related indices, higher abundance of potential pathogens, and lager loss of potential beneficial bacteria or ecological functions, might further accelerate the progression of AHPND outbreaks. This study may provide a basis for understanding the etiology of AHPND from a microecological perspective in subadult shrimp. • Quantitatively evaluated the relationship between pirA copies and Vibrio abundance. • Describing the imbalance status of GM with the microbial ecological models. • GM dysbiosis was mainly caused by Vibrio biomarkers when AHPND occurred. • NLR signaling pathway involved in Vibrio was significantly elevated in DG. • Healthy shrimps were maintained by a wider range of bacteria in GM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge about the drivers of benthic prokaryotic diversity and metabolic potential in interconnected coastal sediments at regional scales is limited. We collected surface sediments across six zones covering ~200 km in coastal northern Zhejiang, East China Sea and combined 16 S rRNA gene sequencing, community-level metabolic prediction, and sediment physicochemical measurements to investigate variations in prokaryotic diversity and metabolic gene composition with geographic distance and under local environmental conditions. Geographic distance was the most influential factor in prokaryotic β-diversity compared with major environmental drivers, including temperature, sediment texture, acid-volatile sulfide, and water depth, but a large unexplained variation in community composition suggested the potential effects of unmeasured abiotic/biotic factors and stochastic processes. Moreover, prokaryotic assemblages showed a biogeographic provincialism across the zones. The predicted metabolic gene composition similarly shifted as taxonomic composition did. Acid-volatile sulfide was strongly correlated with variation in metabolic gene composition. The enrichments in the relative abundance of sulfate-reducing bacteria and genes relevant with dissimilatory sulfate reduction were observed and predicted, respectively, in the Yushan area. These results provide insights into the relative importance of geographic distance and environmental condition in driving benthic prokaryotic diversity in coastal areas and predict specific biogeochemically-relevant genes for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]