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Text-to-3D generation has attracted much attention from the computer vision community. Existing methods mainly optimize a neural field from scratch for each text prompt, relying on heavy and repetitive training cost which impedes their practical deployment. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for fast text-to-3D generation, dubbed Instant3D. Once trained, Instant3D is able to create a 3D object for an unseen text prompt in less than one second with a single run of a feedforward network. We achieve this remarkable speed by devising a new network that directly constructs a 3D triplane from a text prompt. The core innovation of our Instant3D lies in our exploration of strategies to effectively inject text conditions into the network. In particular, we propose to combine three key mechanisms: cross-attention, style injection, and token-to-plane transformation, which collectively ensure precise alignment of the output with the input text. Furthermore, we propose a simple yet effective activation function, the scaled-sigmoid, to replace the original sigmoid function, which speeds up the training convergence by more than ten times. Finally, to address the Janus (multi-head) problem in 3D generation, we propose an adaptive Perp-Neg algorithm that can dynamically adjust its concept negation scales according to the severity of the Janus problem during training, effectively reducing the multi-head effect. Extensive experiments on a wide variety of benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed algorithm performs favorably against the state-of-the-art methods both qualitatively and quantitatively, while achieving significantly better efficiency. The code, data, and models are available at https://ming1993li.github.io/Instant3DProj/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addresses the relationship between platelet count and 30-day in-hospital mortality in End-Stage Kidney Disease (ESRD) patients in the intensive care unit (ICU), a topic with limited existing evidence. Utilizing data from the US eICU-CRD v2.0 database (2014–2015), a retrospective cohort study was conducted involving 3700 ICU ESRD patients. We employed binary logistic regression, smooth curve fitting, and subgroup analyses to explore the association between platelet count and 30-day in-hospital mortality. The 30-day in-hospital mortality rate was 13.27% (491/3700), with a median platelet count of 188 × 109/L. After adjusting for covariates, we observed a relationship between platelet count and 30-day in-hospital mortality (OR = 0.98, 95% CI 0.97, 0.99). Subgroup analyses supported these findings. More importantly, a nonlinear association was detected, with an inflection point at 222 × 109/L. The effect sizes (OR) on the left and right sides of the inflection point were 0.94 (0.92, 0.96) and 1.03 (1.00, 1.05), respectively. The most significant finding of this study is the revelation of a nonlinear relationship between baseline platelet count and 30-day in-hospital mortality in ICU patients with ESRD. This discovery explicitly suggests that when ESRD patients are admitted to the ICU, a platelet level closer to 222 × 10⁹/L may predict a lower 30-day in-hospital mortality risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A visible‐light‐initiated energy‐transfer enabled radical cyclization for the divergent synthesis of polycyclic γ‐sultine derivatives has been developed. The reaction provides an alternative and expeditious access to benzofused γ‐sultine frameworks, the analogues of γ‐lactones and γ‐sultones, and features good functional group compatibility, mild reaction conditions and excellent diastereoselectivity. The robustness and application potential of this method have also been successfully displayed by two gram‐scale reactions and the synthesis of polycyclic sultones. Mechanistic studies indicated the transformations through a possible energy‐transfer enabled intramolecular radical homolytic substitution or hydrogen atom transfer process mainly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key tasks to ensure infrastructure safety is the periodic detection of bridge cracks. Since manual crack detection is subjective and inefficient, it is very important to develop an automatic crack recognition system by using machine vision. Inspired by the pyramid vision transformer (PVT) and the feature pyramid network (FPN) variants, a method combining PVT, residual transformer (REST), holistically nested edge detection (HED), and downstream detection tasks is proposed in this paper, which is named EVPTMFF (efficient visual pyramid transformer and multiple-feature fusion). Based on the PVT, the multiheaded attention module was replaced and the efficient attention module was adopted, which could process the data efficiently and flexibly. To improve the performance of EVPTMFF, the original perceptual field windows were changed. The adjacent windows were partially overlapped, which was more conducive to feature interaction and improves detection performance. To prove the generalization ability of the model, three different data sets related to bridges were collected and formed. We carried out experiments on these three data sets, and EVPTMFF showed good results. Especially for larger data sets, the performance advantage was more significant. Practical Applications: The crack detection model proposed in this paper presents a good detection effect under different illumination and interference. And the detection results, collected data, time, and other information are saved to the bridge crack detection software. This can help engineers quickly and accurately detect cracks on the bridge surface, as well as predict the development trend of cracks and possible safety issues. In practical application, the bridge crack detection system can help engineers find and solve the bridge crack problem in time and avoid the security risks and economic losses caused by cracks. At the same time, the efficiency and accuracy of bridge maintenance can be improved, and the maintenance cost and time can be reduced. The bridge crack detection system can be integrated with other hardware equipment and management systems to form a complete bridge management platform, which contributes to the traffic construction and social and economic development of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Memristors are essential components of neuromorphic systems that mimic the synaptic plasticity observed in biological neurons. In this study, a novel approach employing one‐dimensional covalent organic framework (1D COF) films was explored to enhance the performance of memristors. The unique structural and electronic properties of two 1D COF films (COF‐4,4′‐methylenedianiline (MDA) and COF‐4,4′‐oxydianiline (ODA)) offer advantages for multilevel resistive switching, which is a key feature in neuromorphic computing applications. By further introducing a TiO2 layer on the COF‐ODA film, a built‐in electric field between the COF‐TiO2 interfaces could be generated, demonstrating the feasibility of utilizing COFs as a platform for constructing memristors with tunable resistive states. The 1D nanochannels of these COF structures contributed to the efficient modulation of electrical conductance, enabling precise control over synaptic weights in neuromorphic circuits. This study also investigated the potential of these COF‐based memristors to achieve energy‐efficient and high‐density memory devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Memristors are essential components of neuromorphic systems that mimic the synaptic plasticity observed in biological neurons. In this study, a novel approach employing one‐dimensional covalent organic framework (1D COF) films was explored to enhance the performance of memristors. The unique structural and electronic properties of two 1D COF films (COF‐4,4′‐methylenedianiline (MDA) and COF‐4,4′‐oxydianiline (ODA)) offer advantages for multilevel resistive switching, which is a key feature in neuromorphic computing applications. By further introducing a TiO2 layer on the COF‐ODA film, a built‐in electric field between the COF‐TiO2 interfaces could be generated, demonstrating the feasibility of utilizing COFs as a platform for constructing memristors with tunable resistive states. The 1D nanochannels of these COF structures contributed to the efficient modulation of electrical conductance, enabling precise control over synaptic weights in neuromorphic circuits. This study also investigated the potential of these COF‐based memristors to achieve energy‐efficient and high‐density memory devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electrolytes for lithium metal batteries (LMBs) are plagued by a low Li+ transference number (T+) of conventional lithium salts and inability to form a stable solid electrolyte interphase (SEI). Here, we synthesized a self‐folded lithium salt, lithium 2‐[2‐(2‐methoxy ethoxy)ethoxy]ethanesulfonyl(trifluoromethanesulfonyl) imide (LiETFSI), and comparatively studied with its structure analogue, lithium 1,1,1‐trifluoro‐N‐[2‐[2‐(2‐methoxyethoxy)ethoxy)]ethyl]methanesulfonamide (LiFEA). The special anion chemistry imparts the following new characteristics: i) In both LiFEA and LiETFSI, the ethylene oxide moiety efficiently captures Li+, resulting in a self‐folded structure and high T+ around 0.8. ii) For LiFEA, a Li−N bond (2.069 Å) is revealed by single crystal X‐ray diffraction, indicating that the FEA anion possesses a high donor number (DN) and thus an intensive interphase "self‐cleaning" function for an ultra‐thin and compact SEI. iii) Starting from LiFEA, an electron‐withdrawing sulfone group is introduced near the N atom. The distance of Li−N is tuned from 2.069 Å in LiFEA to 4.367 Å in LiETFSI. This alteration enhances ionic separation, achieves a more balanced DN, and tunes the self‐cleaning intensity for a reinforced SEI. Consequently, the fast charging/discharging capability of LMBs is progressively improved. This rationally tuned anion chemistry reshapes the interactions among Li+, anions, and solvents, presenting new prospects for advanced LMBs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electrolytes for lithium metal batteries (LMBs) are plagued by a low Li+ transference number (T+) of conventional lithium salts and inability to form a stable solid electrolyte interphase (SEI). Here, we synthesized a self‐folded lithium salt, lithium 2‐[2‐(2‐methoxy ethoxy)ethoxy]ethanesulfonyl(trifluoromethanesulfonyl) imide (LiETFSI), and comparatively studied with its structure analogue, lithium 1,1,1‐trifluoro‐N‐[2‐[2‐(2‐methoxyethoxy)ethoxy)]ethyl]methanesulfonamide (LiFEA). The special anion chemistry imparts the following new characteristics: i) In both LiFEA and LiETFSI, the ethylene oxide moiety efficiently captures Li+, resulting in a self‐folded structure and high T+ around 0.8. ii) For LiFEA, a Li−N bond (2.069 Å) is revealed by single crystal X‐ray diffraction, indicating that the FEA anion possesses a high donor number (DN) and thus an intensive interphase "self‐cleaning" function for an ultra‐thin and compact SEI. iii) Starting from LiFEA, an electron‐withdrawing sulfone group is introduced near the N atom. The distance of Li−N is tuned from 2.069 Å in LiFEA to 4.367 Å in LiETFSI. This alteration enhances ionic separation, achieves a more balanced DN, and tunes the self‐cleaning intensity for a reinforced SEI. Consequently, the fast charging/discharging capability of LMBs is progressively improved. This rationally tuned anion chemistry reshapes the interactions among Li+, anions, and solvents, presenting new prospects for advanced LMBs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil setup has a significant contribution to the performance of jacked piles in natural clays with structure characteristics. In this paper, a series of model pile tests are conducted to investigate the pile setup in structured clays, focusing on the influence of soil structure on time-dependent pile response. Three artificially structured clays are prepared as model soils to avoid the sampling challenge of undisturbed clays. The model tests are capable of modeling pile response through installation, equalization, and loading, and hence the initial structure and stress-induced structure degradation of clays, as well as the following thixotropic effect and reconsolidation of disturbed clays, can be adequately incorporated. Meanwhile, the behaviors of the piles and pile–soil interface are constantly monitored by the measurement system during and after pile installation. The results demonstrate that by increasing the cement content of structured clays from 0 to 4%, the penetration resistance is almost doubled, and the pore water pressure (PWP) and radial stress of the pile–soil interface located 20 cm from the pile toe increase by 1.27 and 1.38 times, respectively. A higher cement content in model soils leads to a quicker dissipation of excess pore water pressure (EPWP) due to the presence of a larger void structure and a smaller zone of damage caused by pile driving in structured clays. The growth rate of the ultimate bearing capacity of piles increases sharply with the cement content. The normal stress of the interface first decreases slightly and then grows dramatically with the mobilized shear stress during static loading tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, 2D ferroelectric (FE) heterostructures have become a subject of great interest due to their potential device applications and the underlying physics involved. In this study, the first‐principles calculations are employed to examine the FE control of electronic structures in 2D FE heterostructures, specifically In2Se3/h‐BN and CuInP2S6 (CIPS)/h‐BN. In these results, it is demonstrated that by reversing the polarization of the FE layers, the band alignment of the heterostructures can be interconverted between type II and type I. For In2Se3/h‐BN, the variation of out‐of‐plane polarization can be attributed to the hindrance and facilitation of charge transfer from h‐BN to In2Se3 by the intrinsic electric field of the In2Se3 monolayer. For CIPS/h‐BN heterostructures, the higher transferred charge in the Cdn configuration due to the presence of built‐in electric fields and the stronger interfacial interaction in the Cdn configuration result in a higher polarization value compared to the Cdn configuration. Moreover, the carrier mobility of the heterostructures can also be effectively modulated by the FE polarization. In these findings, the potential significance of FE heterostructures with tunable band alignment and bandgap is highlighted in the development of nanoscale optoelectronic devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phosphatase and tensin homolog deleted on chromosome 10 (PTEN) is a critical tumor suppressor protein that regulates various biological processes such as cell proliferation, apoptosis, and inflammatory responses by controlling the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)/protein kinase B (PI3K/AKT) signaling pathway. PTEN plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Loss of PTEN may contribute to survival, proliferation, and pro-inflammatory cytokine release of fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLS). Also, persistent PI3K signaling increases myeloid cells' osteoclastic potential, enhancing localized bone destruction. Recent studies have shown that the expression of PTEN protein in the synovial lining of RA patients with aggressive FLS is minimal. Experimental upregulation of PTEN protein expression could reduce the damage caused by RA. Nonetheless, a complete comprehension of aberrant PTEN drives RA progression and its interactions with other crucial molecules remains elusive. This review is dedicated to promoting a thorough understanding of the signaling mechanisms of aberrant PTEN in RA and aims to furnish pertinent theoretical support for forthcoming endeavors in both basic and clinical research within this domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construction of the pyridine ring is a practical and streamline way to construct a variety of quindoline derivatives. We have developed a novel method for synthesis of quindoline derivatives by means of intramolecular ring-closure reactions of 3-N-methylphenylindoles via an iminium salt intermediate. This practical method has the advantages of a short reaction time, operational simplicity, and nearly quantitative yields; and it can be used for the rapid synthesis of a variety of valuable quindoline derivatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Covalent organic polymers (COPs) memristors with multilevel memory behavior in harsh environments and photoelectric regulation are crucial for high‐density storage and high‐efficiency neuromorphic computing. Here, a donor–acceptor (D–A)‐type COP film (Py‐COP‐3), which is initiated by keto–enol tautomerism, is proposed for high‐performance memristors. Satisfactorily, the indium tin oxide (ITO)/Py‐COP‐3/Ag device demonstrates multilevel memory performance, even in high temperatures, acid‐base corrosion, and various organic solvents. Moreover, the performance can be modulated by the photoelectric effect to maintain a great switching behavior. By contrast, Py‐COP‐0, with similar structure and chemical composition to Py‐COP‐3 but without keto–enol tautomerism, exhibits binary storage performance. Further studies unravel that both the formation of conductive filaments and charge transfer within D‐A Py‐COP‐3 film contribute to the resistive switching behavior of memory devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: Coastal salt marshes are productive ecosystems that are highly efficient carbon sinks, but there is uncertainty regarding the interactions among climate warming, plant species, and tidal restriction on C cycling. Methods: Open-top chambers (OTCs) were deployed at two coastal wetlands in Yancheng, China, where native Phragmites australis (Phragmites) and invasive Spartina alterniflora (Spartina) were dominant, respectively. Two study locations were set up in each area based on difference in tidal action. The OTCs achieved an increase of average daytime air temperature of ~ 1.11–1.55 °C. Net ecosystem CO2 exchange (NEE), ecosystem respiration (Reco), CH4 fluxes, aboveground biomass and other abiotic factors were monitored over three years. Results: Warming reduced the magnitude of the radiative balance of native Phragmites, which was determined to still be a consistent C sink. In contrast, warming or tidal flooding presumably transform the Spartina into a weak C source, because either warming-induced high salinity reduced the magnitude of NEE by 19% or flooding increased CH4 emissions by 789%. Remarkably, native Phragmites affected by tidal restrictions appeared to be a consistent C source with the radiative balance of 7.11–9.64 kg CO2-eq m–2 yr–1 because of a reduction in the magnitude of NEE and increase of CH4 fluxes. Conclusions: Tidal restrictions that disconnect the tidal hydrologic connection between the ocean and land may transform coastal wetlands from C sinks to C sources. This transformation may potentially be an even greater threat to coastal carbon sequestration than climate warming or invasive plant species in isolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Described herein is a visible light‐mediated radical addition/SO2 insertion/anionic cyclization of benzo‐fused homoallylic tosylates, allowing access to a diverse array of otherwise challenging‐to‐access fluoromethylated polycyclic γ‐sultines with two adjacent tetrasubstituted carbon stereocenters in 49–95% yields, which can be further readily functionalized towards bulky two adjacent tetrasubstituted carbon‐containing benzo‐fused γ‐sultone and mercaptoalkanol. Sodium fluoroalkanesulfinates were utilized as bifunctionalization reagents for both fluoromethyl groups and SO2. The cyclization proceeds through a stepwise photoinduced radical addition followed by an intramolecular 5‐exo‐tet anionic substitution cyclization after SO2 insertion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are promising active mediums for high‐performance data storage devices stemming from their high crystallinity, ordered porous channels, predetermined topology, and rigid architectures, while relative studies are still limited. Here, two COFs (i.e., COF‐EtD and COF‐EtA)‐based resistive‐switching memory devices are proposed to demonstrate the impact of intramolecular hydrogen bonding interactions, both of which exhibit nonvolatile write‐once‐read‐many (WORM) memory characteristics. Comparatively, COF‐EtD with the hydroxyl motif decoration illustrated a lower SET voltage (i.e., turn‐on voltage) and a higher ON/OFF current ratio as well as exceptional high‐temperature endurance and solvent resistance. Mechanism explorations suggest that the resistance‐switching behavior of COF‐EtD may be controlled by the synergistic effect of space‐charge‐limited current and conductive filaments. This finding is the first example of simply varying the functional group of COFs to regulate the WORM resistive switching behavior, providing some inspiration for the advancement of electronic memories and positively contributing to the realization of high endurance and high‐density electric storage materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we are concerned with a diffusive SVEIR epidemic model with nonlinear incidences. We first obtain the well-posedness of solutions for the model. Then, the basic reproduction number R 0 and the local basic reproduction number R ¯ 0 (x) are calculated, which are defined as the spectral radii of the next-generation operators. The relationship between R 0 and R ¯ 0 (x) as well as the asymptotic properties of R 0 when the diffusive rates tend to infinity or zero is investigated by introducing two compact linear operators L 1 and L 2 . Using the theory of monotone dynamical systems and the persistence theory of dynamical systems, we show that the disease-free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable when R 0 < 1 , while the disease is uniformly persistent when R 0 > 1 . Furthermore, in the spatially homogeneous case, by using the Lyapunov functions method and LaSalle's invariance principle, we completely obtain that the disease-free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable if R 0 ≤ 1 , and the endemic equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable if R 0 > 1 and an additional condition is satisfied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let C be a Krull–Schmidt n-exangulated category and A be an n-extension closed subcategory of C . Then A inherits the n-exangulated structure from the given n-exangulated category in a natural way. This construction gives n-exangulated categories which are neither n-exact categories in the sense of Jasso nor (n + 2)-angulated categories in the sense of Geiss–Keller–Oppermann in general. Furthermore, we also give a sufficient condition on when an n-exangulated category A is an n-exact category. These results generalize work by Klapproth and Zhou. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a biologically heterogeneous malignancy defined by the proliferation of monoclonal plasma cells. Despite the tremendous advancement in MM treatment over the past decades, relapse remains a major problem which is inevitable for most patients. In particular, a partial of patients with early relapse and poor outcomes are classified as a high-risk group. Apart from the clinical stage, genetic aberrations are now recognized as important prognostic factors for identifying high-risk patients. Chromosome 1 abnormalities (C1As), particularly 1q21 gain or amplification, have been identified as common genetic aberrations in patients with MM and are often considered unfavorable prognostic markers for progression-free survival and overall survival. However, more effective therapeutic approaches are still needed to overcome the negative impact of C1As. Therefore, we summarize the prevalence, pathogenesis, clinical significance and present therapeutic condition of C1As in MM, and attempt to conclude the precise and personalized management for patients with C1As. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronic intermittent hypoxia (CIH) induces oxidative stress in the brain, causing sleep disorders. Herein, we investigated the role of pterostilbene (Pte) in CIH-mediated oxidative stress in the brain tissue. A CIH mouse model was constructed by alternately reducing and increasing oxygen concentration in a sealed box containing the mouse; brain tissue and serum were then collected after intragastric administration of Pte. Neurological function was evaluated through field experiments. The trajectory of the CIH mice to the central region initially decreased and then increased after Pte intervention. Pte increased the number of neuronal Nissl bodies in the hippocampus of CIH mice, upregulated the protein levels of Bcl-2, occludin, and ZO-1 as well as the mRNA and protein levels of cAMP-response element binding protein (CREB) and p-BDNF, and reduced the number of neuronal apoptotic cells, Bax protein levels, IBA-1, and GFAP levels. Simultaneously, Pte reversed the decreased levels of superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GSH-PX), and BDNF and increased levels of malondialdehyde (MDA) in the serum of CIH mice. Pte increased Th2 cells, Treg cells, IL-4, IL-10, and TGF-β1 levels and decreased Th1 cells, Th17 cells, IFN-γ, IL-6, and IL- 17A levels in activated BV2 cells and hippocampus in CIH mice. The protein levels of p-ERK1/2, TLR4, p-p38, p-p65, and Bax, apoptosis rate, MDA concentration, Bcl-2 protein level, cell viability, and SOD and GSH-PX concentrations decreased after the activation of BV2 cells. Pte inhibited gliocytes from activating T-cell immune imbalance through p-ERK signaling to alleviate oxidative stress injury in nerve cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Requirements are important in software development. Ambiguous requirements cause inconsistent understanding by developers, which leads to rework, delayed delivery, and other problems, and may even have devastating effects on the project. A large number of requirements text written in natural language are not concise, intuitive, and accurate. This condition increases the workload of designers and the difficulty of their tasks. An effective solution for the aforementioned problems is to extract actors and use cases from the requirement texts. This study proposes a model for extracting actors and using cases automatically, which combines bi-directional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) and conditional random fields. BiLSTM is used to capture the contextual information of the texts, and CRF is used to calculate the tag transfer score and determine the most accurate tag sequence, which aims to extract actors and use cases. Results show that the accuracy of extraction is significantly improved compared with the baseline method, which verifies the effectiveness of the proposed method in extracting actors and use cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A semianalytical approach has been developed to investigate the nonlinear load–settlement behavior of bored single piles and pile groups embedded in sands. A more rigorous load-transfer function for the pile shaft, adopted to describe the pile–soil interface behavior, is derived from a damage constitutive model of the soil–structure interface. The interface model employed is capable of capturing the strain-hardening/softening and bulk dilatancy properties of the pile–soil interface and reflecting the degradation of the pile shaft skin friction. Meanwhile, an existing analytical solution has been applied to approximately describe the elastic stress–displacement relationship of soils outside the pile–soil interface during shearing. Moreover, the nonlinear stress–displacement relationship of soils at the pile base is simulated by a hyperbolic model considering the particle-crushing behavior of soils. Model parameters can easily be calibrated from laboratory interface shear tests and the physical properties of soils. Based on the matrix displacement method, the governing equation of the load–settlement response for bored piles is computed via an efficient iterative algorithm developed in terms of the midpoint incremental method. The pile-to-pile elastic interaction and the reinforcement effect of neighboring piles are incorporated into the investigation of pile groups. The present approach is verified by comparison with the existing theoretical approach, centrifuge tests, and model pile tests. Extensive parameter investigations are performed to systematically explore the load–settlement response of the single pile and pile groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The search for new two-dimensional (2D) carbon nitride (CN) materials with desirable properties is an important and critical area of research. This study presents a series of 2D CN materials with appealing features such as semimetal or flat bands. By utilizing group theory and graph theory, we perform a random search of the configurational space of 2D CN monolayers, leading to the identification of 721 new CN materials. Extensive density functional theory calculations were then conducted to evaluate their properties. We found that 57 materials exhibit semimetal behavior, while 664 display characteristics of semiconductors and normal metals. Notably, materials such as 51-5-16-C 3 N-r568 and 55-5-20-C 4 N-r568 feature topological Dirac semimetals with protected 1D topological boundary states. Moreover, 31 materials possess flat bands near their Fermi level, including two with kagome-like flat bands that induce intrinsic spontaneous magnetization due to partially-occupied flat bands. Our results offer several promising candidates for exploring physical phenomena related to semimetals or flat bands in 2D CN materials. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the success of stochastic variance-reduced gradient (SVRG) algorithms in solving large-scale problems, their stochastic gradient complexity often scales linearly with data size and is expensive for huge data. Accordingly, we propose a hybrid stochastic-deterministic minibatch proximal gradient (HSDMPG) algorithm for strongly convex problems with linear prediction structure, e.g., least squares and logistic/softmax regression. HSDMPG enjoys improved computational complexity that is data-size-independent for large-scale problems. It iteratively samples an evolving minibatch of individual losses to estimate the original problem, and can efficiently minimize the sampled subproblems. For strongly convex loss of $n$ n components, HSDMPG attains an $\epsilon$ ε -optimization-error within $\mathcal {O} \left(\kappa \log ^{\zeta +1}\left(\frac{1}{\epsilon }\right)\frac{1}{\epsilon }\bigwedge n\log ^{\zeta }\left(\frac{1}{\epsilon }\right)\right)$ O κ log ζ + 1 1 ε 1 ε ⋀ n log ζ 1 ε stochastic gradient evaluations, where $\kappa$ κ is condition number, $\zeta =1$ ζ = 1 for quadratic loss and $\zeta =2$ ζ = 2 for generic loss. For large-scale problems, our complexity outperforms those of SVRG-type algorithms with/without dependence on data size. Particularly, when $\epsilon =\mathcal {O}(1/\sqrt{n})$ ε = O (1 / n) which matches the intrinsic excess error of a learning model and is sufficient for generalization, our complexity for quadratic and generic losses is respectively $\mathcal {O} (n^{0.5}\log ^{2}(n))$ O (n 0. 5 log 2 (n)) and $\mathcal {O} (n^{0.5}\log ^{3}(n))$ O (n 0. 5 log 3 (n)) , which for the first time achieves optimal generalization in less than a single pass over data. Besides, we extend HSDMPG to online strongly convex problems and prove its higher efficiency over the prior algorithms. Numerical results demonstrate the computational advantages of HSDMPG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Direct difunctionalization of olefins—which are the most commonly used compounds in organic synthesis—is a powerful tool for rapid formation of structurally complex building blocks from readily available starting materials. However, difunctionalization of unactivated olefins remains a formidable challenge. Herein, we describe a green, cost-effective, and eco-friendly electrochemical protocol for selective chlorosulfuration or chlorosulfoxidation of unactivated alkenes. This electrochemical method creates the potential possibility for the preparation of high-value-added products in a more sustainable and greener manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This work constitutes a timely and important advancement in the interdisciplinary area of photocatalytic water splitting and machine learning technology. • The machine learning screening method proposed in this paper can greatly accelerate the progress of photocatalyst discovery. We showed that ten potential photocatalysts can be selected from 860 metal oxides within seconds based on the established screening model. • A prediction model of energy level was established based on regression algorithm. By using regression algorithm, we can train the prediction model based on a relatively small dataset, and the accuracy of the prediction model is very high (R 2 = 0.908). • An effective photocatalyst of CsYO 2 was selected. We used DFT calculations to probe the free energy change during hydrogen emission reaction and oxygen emission reaction, and the effectiveness of CsYO 2 was verified. • Besides, the machine learning screening method proposed in the paper can be extended to screen multi-component metal oxide photocatalysts by establishing its corresponding material library. Photocatalytic water splitting represents a sustainable avenue for hydrogen production, yet the traditional trial-and-error approach for identifying efficient photocatalysts among numerous candidates is cumbersome. In this paper, we introduce a machine learning (ML)-driven approach for rapid screening of promising metal oxide photocatalysts for hydrogen generation. This methodology comprises three key steps: the construction of a comprehensive material library, ML-accelerated material screening, and Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations for verification. Through this process, we successfully identify ten metal oxides with good energy levels and charge carrier transport properties from an initial library of 860 candidates. Notably, CsYO 2 emerges as a standout candidate, exhibiting excellent photocatalytic water-splitting performance on its (001) crystal face, with Y atoms identified as active sites through DFT calculations. This study demonstrates the efficacy of applying machine learning to the precise and rapid screening of vast material databases, paving the way for discovering novel and efficient photocatalysts. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a correction notice for an article titled "Instant3D: Instant Text-to-3D Generation" published in the International Journal of Computer Vision. The correction addresses an error in the authors' affiliations. The original version incorrectly listed the authors' affiliation as the "School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University," when they were actually affiliated with the "Sea AI Lab, Singapore." The correction provides the correct affiliations for the authors. The publisher, Springer Nature, remains neutral regarding jurisdictional claims and institutional affiliations. The original article can be found online at the provided link. [Extracted from the article]

Part II of this study presents numerical simulations of reconstructing the excitation forces acting on the interior surface of an enclosure, based on the vibroacoustic information collected in the exterior region. Various types of excitation forces such as distributed, line, and point forces are considered. Moreover, fluid loading inside the enclosure is considered in the numerical simulations. Analytical proofs show that fluid loading has no impact on excitation forces, but has significant impacts on structural vibrations. This is especially true when the density of fluid medium inside an enclosure is high. Results demonstrate that when excitation forces are continuous, the accuracy in reconstruction may be very high. When excitation forces contain abrupt changes or discontinuities, for example, line and point force, the accuracy in reconstruction may be significantly reduced. This is because many expansion terms are required to properly describe the discontinuities of excitations. On the other hand, discretization grids are fixed a priori. When fixed discretization grids are used together with an increasing number of expansion terms, aliasing may occur that may completely distort the reconstructed excitation forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part I of this paper presents analytic solutions for reconstructing the excitation forces that act on the interior surfaces of a finite solid rectangular enclosure with the fluid loading effect taken into consideration, given vibroacoustic data in the exterior region. The reason for selecting a simple structure is to facilitate the reconstruction of excitation forces. To validate these analytic solutions, we apply the reciprocity principle and demonstrate that when the resultant excitation forces are used to excite the enclosure from the inside, the same vibroacoustic responses in the exterior region in exterior region can be obtained. To illustrate this point, we consider the case in which the top panel of a rectangular box is connected to the side walls through simply-supported boundary conditions, and the rest surfaces are rigid. The top surface of this box may be excited into vibrations by any type of excitation forces from the inside with the fluid loading effect taken into consideration. Note that for arbitrarily shaped structures under arbitrary boundary conditions, numerical solutions can be obtained. Therefore, it is possible to determine the excitation forces acting inside an enclosure based on the vibroacoustic information collected in the exterior. The knowledge of the excitation forces is critically important, because it can lead to optimal mitigation strategies to mitigate undesirable noise and vibrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) is often accompanied by potentially fatal coagulopathy, especially in high-risk APL. Bleeding, particularly severe bleeding is the leading cause of early death (ED). Meanwhile, thrombosis, the other major coagulopathic complication, is being increasingly recognized. However, predictors of thrombohemorrhagic disorders are still not well investigated. In this study, we retrospectively studied 83 patients with high-risk APL and categorized them into severe bleeding, thrombosis and no evident events groups. Severe bleeding was observed in 15 patients, nearly half of whom died of hemorrhage, while thrombosis was observed in 12 patients. Risk factor analysis showed that high WBC (>58.76 × 109/L) (p = 0.001) and prolonged PT (>17.7 s) (p = 0.015) could be independent predictors for severe bleeding, while high WBC/D-dimer>5.12 (p = 0.002) and low D-dimer/FIB<5.14 (p = 0.03) could be independent predictors for thrombosis in high-risk APL patients. Moreover, there are significant differences in WBC/D-dimer and D-dimer/FIB between DIC and Non-DIC groups (p < 0.001). Notably, we found that the WBC/D-dimer was dramatically higher in the thrombotic group than in the other two groups at the time of admission or during the first week of induction therapy. High WBC and prolonged PT could predict severe bleeding in high-risk APL patients, while high WBC/D-dimer and low D-dimer/FIB could be independent predictors for thrombosis. For high-risk APL, WBC/D-dimer and D-dimer/FIB are also beneficial in the diagnosis of DIC. WBC/D-dimer might help early identification of thrombosis at the time of admission or during the first week of induction therapy. • High WBC and prolonged PT could predict severe bleeding in high-risk APL patients. • WBC/D-dimer and D-dimer/FIB can be beneficial for early identification of thrombosis and the diagnosis of DIC. • PT, D-dimer, FDP/FIB, D-dimer/FIB and WBC/D-dimer could differentiate severe hemorrhage from thrombosis. • WBC/D-dimer might help early identification of thrombosis at admission or during the first week of induction therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the method for synthesis of indole‐ and pyrrole‐fused seven‐membered nitrogen heterocycles by means of acid‐base switchable cyclization reactions. The reactions involved cleavage of amide C−N bonds, chemoselective N‐1 or C‐3 acylation, and 1,4‐Michael addition. This method could be used to construct two different kinds of seven‐membered rings in one step from the same starting material without the need for a transition‐metal catalyst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mechanisms of the Diels‐Alder (D‐A) reactions between N‐alkyl and aryl‐1,2‐dihydropyridines and dienophiles have been investigated by M06‐2X‐D3/6‐31 + G(d,p) basis set, and SMD model was employed to simulate the solvent effect. The computational results show that the productive process of endo‐product is favorable with lower energy barrier. The calculations of substituent effect indicate that there are some relations between the energy barrier and the productivity. The lower energy barrier means the higher productivity, and the barrier of retro D‐A reaction could also have influence on the productivity. Finally, natural bond orbital Fukui function (NOFF) and frontier molecular orbital theory (FMOT) are employed to analyze the structures and reveal the substances of D‐A reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copper(II)‐mediated unprecedented intermolecular radical [3+2] annulation of N,N‐dimethyl enaminones has been developed. The protocol is promoted simply by copper(II) chloride to access 5‐acyl‐3‐furancarboxaldehydes with acceptable to good yields and broad substrate scope. This reaction allows the formation of multiple new bonds, including C(sp2)−O bond between two nucleophilic sites, C(sp2)−C(sp2) bond and C=O bond, through a radical cyclization process. Moreover, gram‐synthesis and application research show the potential application value of this transformation in industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the presence of sulfur⋅⋅⋅π bonding interaction is a general phenomenon in the biological systems, the exploitation of this noncovalent force in a chemical process yet remains elusive. Herein, we describe the concept of chalcogen⋅⋅⋅π bonding catalysis that activates molecules of π systems through the interaction between chalcogen and π‐electron cloud. The proof‐of‐concept studies using a vinylindole‐based Diels–Alder benchmark reaction demonstrate that S⋅⋅⋅π and Se⋅⋅⋅π bonding interaction can drive the cycloaddition reaction efficiently. Experimental results suggest that a simultaneously double Se⋅⋅⋅π bonding interaction directs the stereoselectivity in this cycloaddition process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the presence of sulfur⋅⋅⋅π bonding interaction is a general phenomenon in the biological systems, the exploitation of this noncovalent force in a chemical process yet remains elusive. Herein, we describe the concept of chalcogen⋅⋅⋅π bonding catalysis that activates molecules of π systems through the interaction between chalcogen and π‐electron cloud. The proof‐of‐concept studies using a vinylindole‐based Diels–Alder benchmark reaction demonstrate that S⋅⋅⋅π and Se⋅⋅⋅π bonding interaction can drive the cycloaddition reaction efficiently. Experimental results suggest that a simultaneously double Se⋅⋅⋅π bonding interaction directs the stereoselectivity in this cycloaddition process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electrochemical properties of 2,6-di-tert-butyl-p-cresol (T501) in transformer oil were investigated by using staircase voltammetry (SV) with analysis by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. A new method was established to determine the T501 content in transformer oil. The results showed that the oxidation current Ip (μA) exhibited a linear relationship with the concentration as the mass fraction of T501 within the concentration range from 0.05% to 0.50% under optimal conditions and that the corresponding regression relationship is C = 0.05506Ip − 0.19524 with R2 equal to 0.9995. The limit of detection based upon a signal-to-noise ratio of three was 0.039%. The accuracy was the same as determined by liquid chromatography. The standard addition recovery was 99.33% to 101.67%, indicating high reliability and practicability. Considering the results obtained, the proposed novel electrochemical method is able to enhance the analytical determination of T501 in transformer oil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, the booming demand of big data analytics and the constraints of computational ability and network bandwidth have made it difficult for a stand-alone agent/service provider to provide suitable information for every user from the large volume online data within the limited time. To handle this challenge, a recommender system (RS) can call in a group of agents to collaborate to learn users’ preference and taste, which is known as a distributed recommender system (DRS). DRSs can improve the accuracy of a traditional RS by requesting agents to share information with each other. However, it is challenging for DRSs to make personalized recommendations for each user due to the large amount of candidates. In addition, information sharing among agents raises a privacy concern. Thus, we propose a privacy-preserving DRS in this paper, and then model each service provider as a distributed online learner with context-awareness. Service providers collaborate to make personalized recommendations by learning users’ preferences according to the user context and users’ history behaviors. We adopt the federated learning framework to help train a high quality privacy- preserving centralized model over a large number of distributed agents which is probably unreliable with relatively slow network connections. To handle big data scenario, we build an item-cluster tree to deal with online and increasing datasets from top to the bottom. We further consider the structure of social network and present an efficient algorithm to avoid more performance loss adaptively. Theoretical proofs show that our proposed algorithm can achieve sublinear regret and differential privacy protection simultaneously for service providers and users. Numerical results confirm that our novel framework can handle increasing big datasets and strike a trade-off between privacy-preserving level and the prediction accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First-order non-convex Riemannian optimization algorithms have gained recent popularity in structured machine learning problems including principal component analysis and low-rank matrix completion. The current paper presents an efficient Riemannian Stochastic Path Integrated Differential EstimatoR (R-SPIDER) algorithm to solve the finite-sum and online Riemannian non-convex minimization problems. At the core of R-SPIDER is a recursive semi-stochastic gradient estimator that can accurately estimate Riemannian gradient under not only exponential mapping and parallel transport, but also general retraction and vector transport operations. Compared with prior Riemannian algorithms, such a recursive gradient estimation mechanism endows R-SPIDER with lower computational cost in first-order oracle complexity. Specifically, for finite-sum problems with $n$ n components, R-SPIDER is proved to converge to an $\epsilon$ ε -approximate stationary point within $\mathcal {O}\big (\min \big (n+\frac{\sqrt{n}}{\epsilon ^2},\frac{1}{\epsilon ^3}\big)\big)$ O min n + n ε 2 , 1 ε 3 stochastic gradient evaluations, beating the best-known complexity $\mathcal {O}\big (n+\frac{1}{\epsilon ^4}\big)$ O n + 1 ε 4 ; for online optimization, R-SPIDER is shown to converge with $\mathcal {O}\big (\frac{1}{\epsilon ^3}\big)$ O 1 ε 3 complexity which is, to the best of our knowledge, the first non-asymptotic result for online Riemannian optimization. For the special case of gradient dominated functions, we further develop a variant of R-SPIDER with improved linear rate of convergence. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the advantage of the proposed algorithms over the state-of-the-art Riemannian non-convex optimization methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Methods Results Conclusions As an initial treatment for primary membranous nephropathy (PMN), there remains a significant proportion of patients for whom rituximab is not fully effective. Here, we aimed to assess the effectiveness and safety of obinutuzumab as initial treatment in patients with PMN.In this observational case series, patients diagnosed with PMN and treated with obinutuzumab as initial treatment were included. Treatment response was assessed by 24‐h urine total protein (24 h UTP) and serum albumin, and immunologic remission was assessed by phospholipase A2 receptor (PLA2R) antibodies.Twelve patients with PMN receiving obinutuzumab as initial treatment were included. Over 6 months, a statistically significant reduction in 24 h UTP levels (p = 0.003) and an increase in serum albumin levels were observed (p < 0.001). By the 6‐month follow‐up, two patients (16.7%) achieved complete remission, eight (66.6%) reached partial remission, and two (16.7%) showed no remission. Immunological remission was observed in 44.4% of evaluable patients (n = 9) after 3 months, increasing to 100% (6/6) at 6 months. Except for cases 1, 2, and 3, the total B cell counts in the remaining patients fell to less than 5 cells/μL before the administration of the second dose of obinutuzumab, including seven patients with counts as low as 0 cells/μL. Mild to moderate treatment‐related adverse events (TRAEs) were reported in 58.3% (7/12) of the patients. No serious TRAEs were reported.Obinutuzumab demonstrates promising potential as an initial treatment for PMN, with good effectiveness and a manageable safety profile. Further large‐scale prospective studies are needed to confirm these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the basic reproduction number (BRN) is explored in terms of a degenerate reaction–diffusion host–pathogen model. The expressions of BRN R0$$ {R}_0 $$ and local basic reproduction number (LBRN) R¯0(x)$$ {\overline{R}}_0(x) $$ for the model are calculated. Some basic properties of R0$$ {R}_0 $$ with respect to the general diffusion rates and the asymptotic profiles of R0$$ {R}_0 $$ with respect to large diffusion rates and small diffusion rates are established by introducing two compact operators H1$$ {H}_1 $$ and H2$$ {H}_2 $$. Our results reveal that R0$$ {R}_0 $$ is the spectral radius of a sum of the product of additive operators and strongly positive compact linear operators with spectral radii one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topological phase transition between normal and topological insulators is essential in topological mechanism analysis and search for new topological materials. Herein, on the basis of the well‐known monolayer 2D topological insulator 1T′‐WTe2, a new 2D material 1T′‐WSTe is constructed. It is a typical central inversion asymmetric 2D topological insulator. The fascinating feature of this material is that its low‐energy electronic structure is very similar to the inversion broken topological phase transition point. The first‐principles calculations reveal that the ±4% uniaxial strain can effectively turn the 2D material into topological insulator or normal insulator phases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As urban traffic condition is diverse and complicated, applying reinforcement learning to reduce traffic congestion becomes one of the hot and promising topics. Especially, how to coordinate the traffic light controllers of multiple intersections is a key challenge for multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). Most existing MARL studies are based on traditional $Q$ -learning, but unstable environment leads to poor learning in the complicated and dynamic traffic scenarios. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-agent recurrent deep deterministic policy gradient (MARDDPG) algorithm based on deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) algorithm for traffic light control (TLC) in vehiclar networks. Specifically, the centralized learning in each critic network enables each agent to estimate the policies of other agents in the decision-making process and each agent can coordinate with each other, alleviating the problem of poor learning performance caused by environmental instability. The decentralized execution enables each agent to make decisions independently. We share parameters in actor networks to speed up the training process and reduce the memory footprint. The addition of LSTM is beneficial to alleviate the instability of the environment caused by partial observable state. We utilize surveillance cameras and vehicular networks to collect status information for each intersection. Unlike previous work, we have not only considered the vehicle but also considered the pedestrians waiting to pass through the intersection. Moreover, we also set different priorities for buses and ordinary vehicles. The experimental results in a vehicular network show that our method can run stably in various scenarios and coordinate multiple intersections, which significantly reduces vehicle congestion and pedestrian congestion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A nickel-catalyzed intramolecular addition of aryl halides to 1,3-diketones was first developed. This desymmetrization reaction afforded polycyclic products bearing two tetrasubstituted centers with excellent diastereoselectivities and high yields. Moderate enantioselectivities were achieved in the presence of a chiral ligand. This transformation has great potential for the synthesis of polycyclic compounds including spiro[4,4,3,0] compounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anaerobic digestion is an effective process for the treatment of organic solid waste and wastewater and the production of biogas, which is a clean energy source. The carbon dioxide in the biogas can be converted into methane using hydrogen generated from water electrolysis through an approach referred to as power-to-gas. Recently, hydrogen has been added to digesters as an in-situ or ex-situ biogas upgrade to reduce the levels of carbon dioxide. Biogas production systems consist of microbial complexes with highly organized microorganisms in different niches, which can either produce or consume hydrogen. However, the produced endogenous hydrogen should be constantly consumed to maintain a low hydrogen partial pressure. This review addresses the biochemical processes of anaerobic digestion and hydrogen-related microorganisms, including fermentative acid-producing bacteria, syntrophic organic acid degrading bacteria, syntrophic acetate-oxidizing bacteria, homoacetogens, hydrogenotrophic methanogens, and newly reported hydrogen-dependent methylotrophic methanogens. This study also investigates (1) the role of endogenous hydrogen as an intermediate metabolite and of interspecies electron transfer in anaerobic digestion, (2) effects of exogenous hydrogen addition on microbial community structure and metabolic processes, and (3) recent developments regarding in-situ and ex-situ biogas upgrading systems via hydrogen addition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We present a potential laboratory test of HITT (receptor glycoprotein IV). • We present two potential treatments for patients with HITT. • We summarize the currently used managements in the clinic of HITT. • We updated current findings into the pathogenesis of HITT. Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia and thrombosis is a severe immune-mediated adverse drug effect caused by the IgG antibodies to platelet factor4/heparin complexes. Activated platelets, vascular endothelium, and monocytes generate the life-threatening thrombocytopenia and thrombosis. In this review, we will update the reader on recent findings on the pathogenesis and clinical management of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia and thrombosis. Firstly, PF4/heparin complexes make IgM mediate complement activation by classical pathway. Secondly, Marginal zoneB cells play a crucial role in producing anti-PF4/heparin complex IgG antibody. Thirdly, two activation signals of platelets (protease-activated receptor 1/Fc gamma IIA receptor) were confirmed. Based on these findings, we present a potential laboratory test of HITT (receptor glycoprotein Ⅳ) and two possible treatments by using receptor inhibitors (vorapaxar/atopaxar) and IgG-degrading enzyme (streptococcus pyogenes/glutamyl endopeptidase V8/matrix metalloproteinases). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aims: The Child-Pugh (CP) score is a widely used method to assess liver function and predict postoperative outcomes in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Recently, the fibrosis index (FIB-4) has been demonstrated to be closely associated with liver fibrosis and cirrhosis. This study aimed to compare the capability of FIB-4 index with CP score in predicting the outcomes for HCC patients after hepatectomy.Methods: A total of 495 HCC patients who underwent hepatectomy were enrolled. The performance of the FIB-4 index in predicting postoperative liver failure (PHLF) and overall survival was compared with that of the CP score.Results: Of them, 9.3% (46/495) patients developed PHLF. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of the FIB-4 index for predicting PHLF was greater than that of the CP score (0.744 versus 0.621; P = 0.044). The optimal cutoff value of the FIB-4 index for predicting PHLF was 4.16. Multivariable analyses revealed that the FIB-4 index was an independent predictor of PHLF regardless of the hepatectomy subgroups, but the CP grade was only a significant predictor of PHLF in the minor hepatectomy subgroup. The FIB-4 index (4.16) stratified patients into two distinct overall survival cohorts (P = 0.006). The FIB-4 index also classified patients with the Barcelona Clinical Liver Cancer (BCLC) stages 0 and A into two distinct overall survival cohorts (P = 0.001 and P = 0.034, respectively).Conclusion: The FIB-4 index may be a better predictor of PHLF and overall survival in HCC patients with hepatectomy than CP score. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explicit congestion notification (ECN) has been widely adopted by recent proposals to build up high-throughput and low-latency datacenter network transport. In these ECN-based proposals, when the queue length of a switch exceeds a pre-defined threshold, the switch would mark all arriving packets with ECN to explicitly notify their senders to slow down the rates. Such a design enables the network to eliminate congestions quickly. However, it marks packets without considering the flow state, which may overkill flows, especially those only send a few packets, thus resulting in significant throughput loss and long flow completion times. In this paper, we propose a novel flow-aware ECN marking approach (FECN), which can improve the throughput and flow completion time by taking flow states into consideration. By selectively marking packets respecting to their flow rates, FECN enables the network to precisely slow down the high-speed flows to avoid congestions without killing low-speed short flows. Moreover, FECN does not require switches to maintain per-flow state, which yields low overhead and thus makes FECN to be easily implemented and deployed in commodity switches. Simulations show that FECN can shorten the flow completion time by up to 44.7% and reduce the throughput loss by up to 40.3%, compared with prior flow-agnostic ECN marking approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Diosgenin (DSG) is the precursor of steroid hormones and plays a crucial part in the proliferation of various carcinomas including human colorectal cancer and gastric carcinoma. Nevertheless, its specific features and mechanisms in human cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) remain unknown. Methods: MTS assay, colony-forming assay, and EdU assay were performed to determine the role of DSG on the progression of human CCA cells. The distributions of cell cycle, the ratio of apoptosis, and the mitochondrial membrane potential (ΔΨm) were studied by flow cytometry (FCM). AO/EB and Hoechst 33258 staining were performed to observe the morphological features of cell apoptosis. TEM was performed to observe the ultrastructures of QBC939 and HuCCT1 cells. The mRNA and protein expression of mitochondrial apoptotic pathway and GSK3β/β-catenin pathway were further confirmed by qPCR and Western blotting. The xenograft tumor model of HuCCT1 cells was built. Immunohistochemistry of tumor tissues was performed. Results: Our results indicated that DSG inhibited the progression of six CCA cell lines. In vivo tumor studies also indicated that DSG significantly inhibited tumor growth in xenografts in nude mice. The expression of mitosis-promoting factor cyclinB1 was decreased along with the elevating level of cell cycle inhibitor p21, resulting in arresting CCA cell cycles at G2/M phase. Furthermore, DSG induced apoptosis with the increased expressions of cytosol cytochrome C, cleaved-caspase-3, cleaved-PARP1 and the Bax/Bcl-2 ratio. Mechanistically, our study showed that GSK3β/β-catenin pathway was involved in the apoptosis of CCA cells. Thus, DSG might provide a new clue for the drug therapy of CCA. Conclusion: In our data, DSG was found to have efficient antitumor potential of human CCA cells in vitro and in vivo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]