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A novel approach was proposed to enhance the microviscosity sensitivity of molecular rotor probes by integrating flexible rotators and expanded molecular frameworks, addressing the crucial challenge of weakening microviscosity sensitivity in dilute solutions of macromolecules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatically generating descriptions for disaster news images could effectively accelerate the spread of disaster message and lighten the burden of news editors from tedious news materials. Image caption algorithms are remarkable for generating captions directly from the content of the image. However, current image caption algorithms trained on existing image caption datasets fail to describe the disaster images with fundamental news elements. In this paper, we developed a large-scale disaster news image Chinese caption dataset (DNICC19k), which collected and annotated enormous news images related to disaster. Furthermore, we proposed a spatial-aware topic driven caption network (STCNet) to encode the interrelationships between these news objects and generate descriptive sentences related to news topics. STCNet firstly constructs a graph representation based on objects feature similarity. The graph reasoning module uses the spatial information to infer the weights of aggregated adjacent nodes according to a learnable Gaussian kernel function. Finally, the generation of news sentences are driven by the spatial-aware graph representations and the news topics distribution. Experimental results demonstrate that STCNet trained on DNICC19k could not only automatically creates descriptive sentences related to news topics for disaster news images, but also outperforms benchmark models such as Bottom-up, NIC, Show attend and AoANet on multiple evaluation metrics, achieving CIDEr/BLEU-4 scores of 60.26 and 17.01, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pigments are often used in water borne barrier coatings but tend to make the coatings prone to failure. The pigment properties effects on this issue is lacking in literature. In this work, coatings that used pigments with different moduli but with similar size and aspect ratio were characterized in terms of water vapor resistance before and after folding. Coatings with talc had better water vapor resistance than coatings with similar sized kaolin. Talc also limited the degradation of barrier properties when folded. Coatings with metalized poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) flakes had better failure resistance than coatings with similarly sized rigid mica. Both results are likely caused by the ability of the low modulus pigment to deform and allow for strain to occur in the pigment as well as the latex phase. Styrene-butadiene (SB) and natural rubber (NR) latex coatings had a better failure resistance than styrene-acrylate (SA) latex, which is likely due to their low glass transition temperatures and high strain-to-failure values. However, coatings with high amounts of SB or NR latex may lead to blocking issues in production. Adding kaolin into SA and SB latex mixtures resulted in improved water vapor barrier property and failure resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foams with advanced sensing properties and excellent mechanical properties are promising candidates for smart packaging materials. However, the fabrication of ultra-elastic and durable foams is still challenging. Herein, we report a universal strategy to obtain ultra-elastic and durable foams by crosslinking cellulose nanofiber and MXene via strong covalent bonds and assembling the composites into anisotropic cellular structures. The obtained composite foam shows an excellent compressive strain of up to 90 % with height retention of 97.1 % and retains around 90.3 % of its original height even after 100,000 compressive cycles at 80 % strain. Their cushioning properties were systematically investigated, which are superior to that of wildly-used petroleum-based expanded polyethylene and expanded polystyrene. By employing the foam in a piezoelectric sensor, a smart cushioning packaging and pressure monitoring system is constructed to protect inner precision cargo and detect endured pressure during transportation for the first time. Nanocellulose-based ultra-elastic and durable foams for smart packaging applications. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperative localization has emerged as an appealing technology since it can improve the localization performance without any infrastructure change compared with non-cooperative localization. However, some well-localized agents may not be willing to sacrifice additional power to improve the others’ localization accuracy. This paper proposes an incentive mechanism from an economic perspective for cooperative localization, whereby a pricing scheme is designed to lead each agent to the optimal state. A game-theoretic algorithm is proposed where each player (agent) can obtain the optimal budget strategy to minimize its individual utility. To make profits in the game, the relationship between the agent's network condition and its budget strategy is derived. Furthermore, a fairness-aware price allocation rule (PAR) is developed to distribute the budget among the reference agents proportional to each node's contribution. Analytical and numerical results show that agents with better network conditions are more likely to join the cooperation under the proposed incentive mechanism, leading to an improved localization performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reservoir dispatching regulations are a crucial basis for reservoir operation, and using information extraction technology to extract entities and relationships from heterogeneous texts to form triples can provide structured knowledge support for professionals in making dispatch decisions and intelligent recommendations. Current information extraction technologies require manual data labeling, consuming a significant amount of time. As the number of dispatch rules increases, this method cannot meet the need for timely generation of dispatch plans during emergency flood control periods. Furthermore, utilizing natural language prompts to guide large language models in completing reservoir dispatch extraction tasks also presents challenges of cognitive load and instability in model output. Therefore, this paper proposes an entity and relationship extraction method for reservoir dispatch based on structured prompt language. Initially, a variety of labels are refined according to the extraction tasks, then organized and defined using the Backus–Naur Form (BNF) to create a structured format, thus better guiding large language models in the extraction work. Moreover, an AI agent based on this method has been developed to facilitate operation by dispatch professionals, allowing for the quick acquisition of structured data. Experimental verification has shown that, in the task of extracting entities and relationships for reservoir dispatch, this AI agent not only effectively reduces cognitive burden and the impact of instability in model output but also demonstrates high extraction performance (with F1 scores for extracting entities and relationships both above 80%), offering a new solution approach for knowledge extraction tasks in other water resource fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this report, the porous Fe3O4/C nanocomposites were successfully synthesized by using ferrocene as raw material and dilute nitric acid as solvent via extremely convenient and low-cost one-step calcining method. The formation of porous structure resulted from the aggregation and assembly of numerous nanoparticles. The experimental results show that the crystallinities, morphologies and electrochemical performance of samples were affected by the calcining temperature and carbon content. As an anode for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), the Fe3O4/C nanocomposites obtained at calcination temperature of 500∘C (Fe3O4/C-a500) exhibited remarkable initial specific discharge capacity of 1418 mA h g − 1 and a reversible capacity retention of 721 mA h g − 1 after 100 cycles at the current density of 100 mA g − 1 . The excellent properties can be attributed to the high theoretical capacity of Fe3O4, the high conductivity of carbon and especially the porous structure, which offered more sites for the storage and insertion of Li ions. Even at the current density of 1000 mA h g − 1 , the reversible capacity of Fe3O4/C-a500 can be up to 291 mA h g − 1 , indicating the prepared typical nanocomposite presented excellent electrochemical performances and lithium storage capacity, which may be a promising candidate as the anode material for LIBs. The porous Fe3O4/C nanocomposite is successfully synthesized via extremely convenient and low-cost one-step calcining method. The calcination temperature and carbon content play the key role in morphology and properties. The Fe3O4/C-a500 as anode for lithium-ion batteries exhibits favorable specific capacity and excellent cycling stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Model paper coatings with different pigment types and shapes were folded to show folding increases water vapor transport. • Spherical pigments had the lowest relative increase in water vapor transport after folding. • Electron microscopy images indicated spherical pigments reduced the observed crack formation. • Finite element modeling of coatings suggest that spherical pigments reduce strain between pigments and reduces coating damage. Water borne barrier coatings for paper have great potential to replace extruded polymer coatings because they can be recycled and are more likely to break down in the environment. Pigments are usually added to these coatings to reduce the costs and to improve the barrier properties for packaging applications. When these coated papers are formed into a package, often the paper needs to be folded, which usually leads to decreased barrier performance of the coating. While barrier properties of coatings have been studied extensively, the barrier properties of these systems after folding has not been well reported in the literature. In this study, the influence of pigment type, shape, and pigment volume concentration (PVC) on the water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) and fold resistance were characterized for barrier coating formulations. A method to fold the sample was developed to investigate barrier properties after folding. Coating crack structure was observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and compared with the observed WVTR results. The deformation of a coating layer on paper, including the influence of pigments, was modeled using a finite element code. Plate shaped pigments gave the best WVTR results before folding but tended to generate large cracks and poor water vapor barrier properties after folding. Spherical pigments yielded small cracks and allowed some retention of barrier properties after folding. The change of the WVTR after folding was greater than what would be expected based on crack area, and internal damage or delamination may explain this result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract A novel porous pillar-like γ-Fe 2 O 3 coated with carbon layer (γ-Fe 2 O 3 /C) was successfully synthesized by using discarded natural Typha orientalis Presl (TOP) as the carbon source, FeC 2 O 4 ·2H 2 O as the sacrifice template and pore-forming agent. The obtained porous γ-Fe 2 O 3 /C pillars as the anode materials for lithium ion batteries exhibited a highly reversible capacity of 520.8 mA h g−1 after 500 cycles at a current density of 1.0 A g−1. Besides, the γ-Fe 2 O 3 /C material shows the excellent rate capabilities of 1003, 890, 780, 685, 630, 600 mA h g−1 at 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 0.9, 1.0 A g−1, respectively, which are much higher than those of the γ-Fe 2 O 3. These wonderful electrochemical performances of the γ-Fe 2 O 3 /C nanocomposite are due to the existence of porous pillar-like shape and carbon, which can effectively increase electrical conductivity, shorten the transmission path of the electrons/ions in axial and radial directions, and also relieve the volume changes during the charge-discharge process. These excellent results give us an inspiration of turning waste into wealth for designing smart, environment-friendly and low-cost methods to prepare other functional materials. Highlights • γ-Fe 2 O 3 /C was synthesized by using discarded natural Typha orientalis Presl as the carbon source. • As-obtained γ-Fe 2 O 3 /C presents porous pillar-like shape. • γ-Fe 2 O 3 /C exhibits good rate capability and cycling stability as anode material for lithium ion batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To observe the effect of Cai's Neiyi Prescription (CNYP) on the apoptosis and inflammation in endometrial stromal cells with endometriosis (EM) both in vivo and in vitro, EM model rats and endometrial stromal cells were treated with CNYP and the level of USP10, p‐ERK1/2, ERK1/2, and apoptosis‐related protein as well as the levels of proinflammatory factors were measured by Western blotting and ELISA, respectively. Rats with surgically induced EM showed increased USP10 expression and ERK/2 activation. Intragastric administration of CNYP granule significantly inhibited EM‐induced ERK1/2 activation and expression of USP10 and Bcl‐2, but increased the expression of Bax and Caspase‐7 in EM‐induced rats. CNYP granule administration also inhibited EM‐induced inflammation in rats. Moreover, the ectopic endometrial stromal cells isolated from EM patients demonstrated decreased ERK1/2 activation and expression of USP10 and Bcl‐2 and increased expression of Bax and Caspase‐7 after cultured in DMEM containing CNYP‐medicated rat serum, which were reversed by USP10 overexpression and were enhanced by USP10 siRNA. USP10 overexpression also inhibited while USP10 siRNA enhanced the CNYP‐induced inhibition of inflammation in ectopic endometrial stromal cells. Taken together, our results suggest that CNYP granule promotes apoptosis and inhibits inflammation in endometrial stromal cells with EM through inhibiting USP10. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although various aerogels with electromagnetic wave (EMW) absorbing properties have been extensively explored, the development of aerogels with excellent wave absorption performance, low density, and great heat resistance has still met profound challenges. Herein, polysilazane hybrid phenolic resin aerogels (PRVS aerogels) were prepared using the vinyl addition reaction of polysilazane and cross‐linking reaction between polysilazane and phenolic resin. A SiOCN ceramic aerogel with multistage pore structure was prepared via a simple and quick freeze‐drying method and polymer‐derived ceramic (PDC) methods. The SiOCN ceramic aerogels exhibited low density (0.15–0.27 g/cm3), good heat‐shielding (thermal conductivity in the range of 0.03–0.04 W/(m·K)), and excellent wave absorption performance (i.e., RL was about –31.6 dB@16.48 GHz and EAB was 3.85 GHz when the thickness of the ceramic aerogel was 1.2 mm). Hence, the ceramic aerogel absorbing materials could meet the requirements of "wide absorption bandwidth, strong reflection loss, lightweight and thi thickness". Moreover, the mechanism of low weight, heat insulation, and wave absorption properties of the aerogels were also investigated. We believe this work is of great significance in ceramic aerogels prepared by traditional polymers, which may provide new opportunities for new ceramic aerogels with applications ranging from EMW absorption to aerospace and information technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrogen (H2) has advantages that lead it to be used as a novel antioxidant in preventive and therapeutic applications. H2 can permeate into biomembranes, cytosol, mitochondria and nuclei, and can be dissolved in water or saline to produce H2 water or H2‑rich saline. H2 selectively reduces oxidants of the detrimental reactive oxygen species (ROS), including hydroxyl radicals (·OH) and peroxynitrite (ONOO‑), which serve a causative role in the promotion of tumor cell proliferation, invasion and metastasis, but do not disturb metabolic oxidation‑reduction reactions in cell signaling. Compared with traditional antioxidants, H2 is a small molecule that can easily dissipate throughout the body and cells; thus, it may be a safe and effective antioxidant for inflammatory diseases and cancer, since ROS usually initiates tumor progression. Treatment with H2 may involve correction of the oxidative/anti‑oxidative imbalance and suppression of inflammatory mediators. Therefore the present review will discuss the anti‑inflammatory and anti‑tumorigenic action of H2 via ROS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. Curcumin is an active extract from turmeric. The aim of this study was to identify the underlying mechanism of curcumin on PCa cells and the role of autophagy in this process. Methods. The inhibitory effect of curcumin on the growth of PANC1 and BxPC3 cell lines was detected by CCK-8 assay. Cell cycle distribution and apoptosis were tested by flow cytometry. Autophagosomes were tested by cell immunofluorescence assay. The protein expression was detected by Western blot. The correlation between LC3II/Bax and cell viability was analyzed. Results. Curcumin inhibited the cell proliferation in a dose- and time-dependent manner. Curcumin could induce cell cycle arrest at G2/M phase and apoptosis of PCa cells. The autophagosomes were detected in the dosing groups. Protein expression of Bax and LC3II was upregulated, while Bcl2 was downregulated in the high dosing groups of curcumin. There was a significant negative correlation between LC3II/Bax and cell viability. Conclusions. Autophagy could be triggered by curcumin in the treatment of PCa. Apoptosis and cell cycle arrest also participated in this process. These findings imply that curcumin is a multitargeted agent for PCa cells. In addition, autophagic cell death may predominate in the high concentration groups of curcumin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An 8-week growth (8 w) and 1-week starvation (S1 w) trial were conducted to investigate the effects of low-protein-high-starch diet on the growth performance, glucose and lipid metabolism in Amur sturgeon (initial body weight, 69.99 ± 0.06 g). Two diets with equal protein-to-energy ratios were fed, one diet contained 43.0% protein and 11.5% starch (HPLS) and the other contained 38.9% protein and 23.6% starch (LPHS). The results showed that LPHS diet did not compromise growth performance of Amur sturgeon, while the feeding rate increased significantly suggesting the keep of energy supplement. The LPHS diet also promoted the deposition of whole-body protein in Amur sturgeon after S1 w. An effective glucose metabolism response was observed that the transcript levels of glycolysis-related genes (gk) was upregulated significantly, suggesting that glucose catabolism was accelerated to maintain normal glycemic homeostasis and avoid hyperglycemia and glycogen accumulation during long-term feeding phase. Moreover, hepatic gluconeogenesis pathway (PEPCK, G6P) was upregulated to maintain normal plasma glucose levels of sturgeon in the LPHS group during S1 w phase. In addition, activated chrebp by high-starch intake induced excess glucose conversion to TG in the liver, which led to inhibit lipogenesis and accelerate lipolysis to prevent excessive fat accumulation after fed LPHS diet during feeding phase. Hepatic lipolysis (HSL) and β-oxidation (PPARα) were upregulated to satisfy energetic requirements, thereby promoting whole-body protein deposition. Our findings suggested that low-protein-high-starch diet could conserve dietary protein, and mitigate the excessive consumption of whole-body protein during starvation. • Low-protein (38.9%) high-starch (23.6%) (LPHS) diet did not compromise growth performance of Amur sturgeon during feeding. • Hepatic glucose metabolism was regulated effectively without hyperglycemia after fed LPHS diet. • Amur sturgeon catabolized hepatic glycogen and lipid to meet energy requirement and avoid overconsumption of protein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A deep understanding of the relationship between the knowledge acquired and the graduation requirements is essential for students to precisely meet the graduation requirements and to become human resources with specific knowledge, skills and professionalism. In this paper, we define the ontology layer of the knowledge graph by deeply analyzing the relationship between graduation requirement, course and knowledge. Based on the implementation of the concept of Outcome Based Education, we use Knowledge extraction, fusion, reasoning techniques to construct a hierarchical knowledge graph with the main line of "knowledge-course-graduation requirements. In the process of knowledge extraction, in order to alleviate the huge labor overhead brought by traditional extraction methods, this paper adopts a transfer learning method to extract triadic knowledge using the multi-task framework EERJE, Finally, knowledge reasoning was also performed with the help of LLM to further expand the knowledge scope. The comprehensiveness, correctness and relatedness of the data were evaluated through the experiment, and the F1 value of the ternary group extraction was 87.76%, the accuracy rate of entity classification was 85.42%, the data coverage was more comprehensive, and the results showed that the data quality was better, and the knowledge graph constructed in this way can fully optimize the organization and management of teaching resources, help students intuitively and comprehensively grasp the correlation and difference between graduation requirements and various knowledge points, and let the Students can carry out personalized independent learning through the navigation mode of knowledge graph, strengthen their weak links, and complete the relevant graduation requirements, which effectively improves the degree of students' graduation requirements achievement. This new paradigm of knowledge graph enabled teaching is of reference significance for engineering education majors to improve the degree of graduation requirements achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality around the world. The physiological or pathological processes of CVDs can be well indicated by timely and accurate diagnosis of relevant biomarkers and function parameters. Nanosensors integrating the advantages of nanomaterials and sensing platforms have shown good potential for rapid diagnosis of CVDs, especially for early prediction. In this review, recent advances in nanosensors for the detection of CVDs are summarized, including electrochemical, optical, pressure, and paper-based nanosensors. Design strategies for different nanosensors and the corresponding sensing nanomaterials, mechanisms, and properties are briefly discussed. This review also offered a preliminary analysis of the obstacles and prospects for using nanosensors to diagnose CVDs. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four siloxane benzoxazines containing different rigid segments were successfully synthesized and characterized herein, including a benzene ring, a biphenyl, a naphthalene ring, and a diphenyl sulfone group. Different rigid segments had different effects on polymer properties. The introduction of the naphthalene ring and sulfone group considerably reduced the curing temperature of benzoxazine. Although the benzoxazine with the naphthalene ring exhibited low heat resistance, all the four samples showed a high char yield at 800°C under nitrogen atmosphere. In addition, during copolymerization with AG-80 epoxy, the introduction of epoxy promoted the curing of the benzoxazines containing the naphthalene ring and sulfone group. The heat resistance of all copolymers was considerably improved, especially for the copolymer containing the naphthalene ring, whose 5% thermal weight loss temperature (T d5) increased from 248°C to 321°C under nitrogen atmosphere. The copolymer containing the biphenyl structure had the highest glass transition temperature, reaching 259.1°C. Copolymerization with epoxy also considerably improved the tensile strength and elongation at break of the copolymers, which were much higher than those of traditional bisphenol A-aniline based benzoxazine (BA-a). Compared with the neat benzoxazine prepared using siloxane and bisphenol A, the developed copolymers also had better tensile properties, and the copolymer containing the sulfone group showed the greatest improvement (from 49 to 69 MPa, from 3.1% to 9.12%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on linear epoxy (bisphenol A epoxy) resin/benzoxazine composites showed that with the addition of epoxy (EP) resin, the resulting copolymers exhibited an increased glass transition temperature (T g) (T g reached a maximum value at a specific content), improved flexural strength, lower heat resistance, and reduced tensile strength. Herein, branched EP resin (AG-80)/benzoxazine copolymers featuring novolac (N-box) and siloxane (Si-box) chains were prepared without any external curing agent. In both systems, the EP resin endowed the copolymers with an increased crosslinking density; however, T g continued to increase with increasing EP content. In addition, the heat resistance of the copolymers gradually enhanced. Different types of benzoxazines have various effects on the properties of copolymers. In terms of mechanical properties, AG-80/N-box copolymers exhibited brittle fracture characteristics; with increasing EP content, the flexural strength of the copolymer decreased while the tensile strength increased. AG-80/Si-box copolymers exhibited ductile fracture characteristics, with gradual increases in flexural and tensile strengths. Furthermore, with increasing EP content, the molecular chain migration ability and network homogeneity of the AG-80/N-box copolymers decreased gradually. Alternatively, in the case of the AG-80/Si-box copolymers, the molecular chain migration ability remained unchanged and network homogeneity improved. Hence, the developed copolymers can be used as resin matrices for the fabrication of advanced composites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new multidentate soft-ligand 2,6-bis(5,6-dinonyl-1,2,4-triazine-3-yl)pyridine(NonBTP) was synthesized. The solvent extraction of Pd(II) and sometypical metals Ru(III), Mo(VI), Fe(III), Co(II), Zr(IV), and Ni(II)with NonBTP/30 % 1-octanol–70 % 1-dodecane was investigatedat 298 K. It was performed by examining the effects of contact timeand the concentration of HNO3in the range of (0.42 to5.11) M. NonBTP showed a strong extraction ability and high selectivityfor Pd(II) over the tested metals, which had very weak or almost noextraction. The optimum acidity in the extraction of Pd(II) was around3.0 M HNO3. It was ascribed to the complexation of Pd(II),a weak Lewis acid and an electron-pair acceptor, with nitrogen insideNonBTP, a weak Lewis base and an electron-pair donor. The extractionof NonBTP for Pd(II) was an exothermic reaction. The composition ofthe extracted species was determined to be Pd(NO3)2·2NonBTP. Considering the excellent complexation of minoractinides MAs(III) with NonBTP, the results are beneficial to simultaneouspartitioning of MA(III) and Pd(II) from highly active liquid wasteby the NonBTP-containing extraction system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatically generating a readable sentence that describes the text-contained image is a challenging task. Compared to traditional image captioning algorithms, OCR-based image captioning focuses on reading OCR tokens in images and understanding them with the image content to generate descriptions. However, existing research mainly concentrate on improving the quantity and quality of obtaining OCR tokens and exploring their spatial relationships while lacking investigation into how to effectively join OCR tokens with image content. This paper proposes a cross-region feature fusion with a geometrical relationship Transformer(CFGR-Transformer) for OCR-based image captioning. The network first establishes the associations between the OCR and object regions of the image by constructing relative geometric relationships, including width/height difference, distance, IOU(Intersection over Union), inclusion relationships, and angles offset, and then incorporates intra-region and cross-region features to aggregate entities from different modalities by a multi-head attention mechanism based on relative relationships. Benefiting from the guidance of the relative relationship, visual entities like OCR tokens and object regions can consider multiple relative relationships as the attention weight for feature fusion within each subspace. Extensive experiments conducted on the TextCaps dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed CFGR-Transformer method. In particular, our results on the online testing of TextCaps achieve an improvement in CIDEr score from 93.0% to 98.2%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circular RNA is a key regulator involved in the progression of many human diseases including diabetic nephropathy (DN). However, the role and mechanism of hsa_circ_0037128 in the occurrence and development of DN remains to be explored. High glucose (HG)-induced podocytes were used to construct in vitro DN models. The expression of hsa_circ_0037128, microRNA (miR)-31-5p, and Kruppel-like factor 9 (KLF9) was determined using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. The viability and apoptosis of podocytes was measured using cell counting kit 8 assay and flow cytometry. Western blot analysis was performed to examine the protein levels of apoptosis markers and KLF9 in podocytes. Inflammation factors were detected by ELISA assay, and oxidative stress markers were assessed by corresponding Assay Kits. In addition, the interaction between miR-31-5p and hsa_circ_0037128 or KLF9 was verified using dual-luciferase reporter assay and RIP assay. Our data suggested that hsa_circ_0037128 was highly expressed in DN patients and HG-induced podocytes. In HG-induced podocytes, hsa_circ_0037128 knockdown could alleviate HG-induced podocytes injury. In the term of mechanism, hsa_circ_0037128 could sponge miR-31-5p to upregulate KLF9. MiR-31-5p inhibitor could reverse the negative regulation of hsa_circ_0037128 silencing on HG-induced podocytes injury. Also, miR-31-5p relieved HG-induced podocytes injury, and this effect also could be reversed by KLF9 overexpression. In summary, our data showed that hsa_circ_0037128 could promote HG-induced podocytes injury via regulating miR-31-5p/KLF9 axis, showing that hsa_circ_0037128 might be a target for DN treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has great significance to develop a convenient and efficient method for hydrogels with adjustable electric and magnetic properties, which can be used in human activity monitoring and personal healthcare diagnosis field. However, it is a big challenge to balance the relationship between the conductive and magnetic categories so that electromagnetic hydrogels could be developed by an in-situ fabrication way. In this work, we firstly proposed a sequential in-situ route to form polypyrrole (PPy) and Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles (Fe 3 O 4 NPs) in sequence within polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) matrix for the hybrid hydrogels with decent mechanical, conductive, and magnetic properties simultaneously, named as Fe 3 O 4 /PPy/PVA hydrogel. The as-prepared hybrid hydrogels exhibited continuous electrons transporting path and magnetic responsive properties. Specifically, a unique combination of high electrical conductivity (up to 1.95 ± 0.17 E−4 S cm−1), saturation magnetization (5.42 emu g−1) and greatly enhanced mechanical properties (tensile strength up to 575.03 ± 28.32 kPa, elasticity modulus up to 461.19 ± 24.75 kPa). More importantly, these hybrid hydrogels demonstrated potential applications in biomedical electronic devices, such as strain sensors and magnetic navigators. Unlabelled Image • We firstly proposed a sequential in-situ route for the electromagnetic hydrogels named as Fe 3 O 4 /PPy/PVA. • The maximum saturation magnetization and conductivity of the hydrogel were 5.42 emu g−1 and 1.95 E-4 S cm-1, respectively. • The hybrid hydrogels demonstrated applications as strain sensors and magnetic navigators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Medical image segmentation is critical for many medical image analysis applications. 3D convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been widely adopted in the segmentation of volumetric medical images. The recent development of channelwise and spatialwise attentions achieves the state‐of‐the‐art feature representation performance. However, these attention strategies have not explicitly modeled interdependencies among slices in 3D medical volumes. In this work, we propose a novel attention module called progressive attention module (PAM) to explicitly model the slicewise importance for 3D medical image analysis. Methods: The proposed method is composed of three parts: Slice Attention (SA) block, Key‐Slice‐Selection (KSS) block, and Channel Attention (CA) block. First, the SA is a novel attention block to explore the correlation among slices for 3D medical image segmentation. SA is designed to explicitly reweight the importance of each slice in the 3D medical image scan. Second, the KSS block, cooperating with the SA block, is designed to adaptively emphasize the critical slice features while suppressing the irrelevant slice features, which helps the model focus on the slices with rich structural and contextual information. Finally, the CA block receives the output of KSS as input for further feature recalibration. Our proposed PAM organically combines SA, KSS, and CA, progressively highlights the key slices containing rich information for the relevant tasks while suppressing those irrelevant slices. Results: To demonstrate the effectiveness of PAM, we embed it into 3D CNNs architectures and evaluate the segmentation performance on three public challenging data sets: BraTS 2018 data set, MALC data set, and HVSMR data set. We achieve 80.34%, 88.98%, and 84.43% of the Dice similarity coefficient on these three data sets, respectively. Experimental results show that the proposed PAM not only boosts the segmentation accuracy of the standard 3D CNNs methods consistently, but also outperforms the other attention mechanisms with slight extra costs. Conclusions: We propose a new PAM to identify the most informative slices and recalibrate channelwise feature responses for volumetric medical image segmentation. The proposed method is evaluated on three public data sets, and the results show improvements over other methods. This proposed technique can effectively assist physicians in many medical image analysis. It is also anticipated to be generalizable and transferable to assist physicians in a wider range of medical imaging applications to produce greater value and impact to health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Though massively parallel sequencing has been widely applied to noninvasive prenatal screen for common trisomy, the clinical use of massively parallel sequencing to noninvasive prenatal diagnose monogenic disorders is limited. This study was to develop a method for directly determining paternal haplotypes for noninvasive prenatal diagnosis of monogenic disorders without requiring proband's samples. Methods: The study recruited 40 families at high risk for autosomal recessive diseases. The targeted linked-read sequencing was performed on high molecular weight (HMW) DNA of parents using customized probes designed to capture targeted genes and single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) distributed within 1Mb flanking region of targeted genes. Plasma DNA from pregnant mothers also underwent targeted sequencing using the same probes to determine fetal haplotypes according to parental haplotypes. The results were further confirmed by invasive prenatal diagnosis. Results: Seventy-eight parental haplotypes of targeted gene were successfully determined by targeted linked-read sequencing. The predicted fetal inheritance of variant was correctly deduced in 38 families in which the variants had been confirmed by invasive prenatal diagnosis. Two families were determined to be no-call. Conclusions: Targeted linked-read sequencing method demonstrated to be an effective means to phase personal haplotype for noninvasive prenatal diagnosis of monogenic disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tumors and heart disease are two of the leading causes of human death. With the development of anti-cancer therapy, the survival rate of cancer patients has been significantly improved. But at the same time, the incidence of cardiovascular adverse events caused by cancer treatment has also been considerably increased, such as arrhythmia, left ventricular (LV) systolic and diastolic dysfunction, and even heart failure (HF), etc., which seriously affects the quality of life of cancer patients. More importantly, the occurrence of adverse events may lead to the adjustment or the cessation of anti-cancer treatment, which affects the survival rate of patients. Understanding the mechanism of cardiotoxicity (CTX) induced by antineoplastic drugs is the basis of adequate protection of the heart without impairing the efficacy of antineoplastic therapy. Based on current research, a large amount of evidence has shown that oxidative stress (OS) plays an essential role in CTX induced by antineoplastic drugs and participates in its toxic reaction directly and indirectly. Here, we will review the mechanism of action of OS in cardiac toxicity of antineoplastic drugs, to provide new ideas for researchers, and provide further guidance for clinical prevention and treatment of cardiac toxicity of anti-tumor drugs in the future. Unlabelled Image [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ubiquitous in nature, Aspergillus rarely invades the brain to induce infection in general. However, in clinical practice, some patients with hematological malignancies or immunosuppression may suffer from Aspergillus infection of the central nervous system, which arises most commonly as a result of hematogenous dissemination from a pulmonary focus or direct extension from the paranasal sinus infection. Treatment is clinically challenging and the mortality rate is relatively high. Recently, a case diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia was admitted to the Department of Neurosurgery, The First People's Hospital of Huzhou (First Affiliated Hospital of Huzhou University, Huzhou, China). During chemotherapy, space-occupying lesions were observed in the right occipital lobe of the patient, and lesion progression was captured. After treatment with surgery, an analysis of specimens collected from the patient was performed and was suggestive of Aspergillus infection. Following the symptomatic therapy with voriconazole, the patient's disease prognosis was favorable. The focus of infection due to pulmonary aspergillosis or Aspergillus sinusitis was not detected in the patient and the focus was not a common site of hematogenous infection. In addition, the patient exhibited no obvious clinical symptoms. In view of the above observations, the possibility of hospital-acquired infection was considered, to which clinicians should be alert. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Merazin hydrate (MH) was able to produce rapid antidepressant effects in chronic unpredictable mild stress. • MH depended on activation of hippocampal CaMKII to promote rapid antidepressant effects. • MH has rapid antidepressant-like effects via activation of CaMKII to promote neuronal activities, subsequently strengthens neuronal proliferation in hippcamps. • This study shed light on the application of MH, which would promote the use in depressive patients. In our previous studies, we demonstrated that merazin hydrate (MH) had rapid antidepressant effects, but the deep mechanism needed to be further investigated. In this study, we used depressive-like model, behavioral tests, molecular biology and pharmacological interventions to reveal the underlying mechanisms of MH's rapid antidepressants. We found that a single administration of MH was able to produce rapid antidepressant effects in chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS) exposed mice at 1 day later, similar to ketamine. Moreover, MH could not only significantly up-regulated the expressions of cFOS, but also obviously increased the number of Ki67 positive cells in hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG). Furthermore, we also found that the phosphorylated expression of calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) was significantly reduced by CUMS in hippocampus, which was also reversed by MH. In addition, pharmacological inhibition of CaMKII by using KN-93 (a CaMKII antagonist) blocked the MH's up-regulation of cFOS and Ki67 in hippocampal DG. To sum up, this study demonstrated that MH produced rapid antidepressant effects by activating CaMKII to promote neuronal activities and proliferation in hippocampus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herein, the catalytic effects of aromatic amines with different structures on the room temperature curing of bisphenol E cyanate (BECy) have been studied using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. Our results revealed that the mixed amine comprised of aniline and N,N-dimethyl-p-phenylenediamine (AN/NNDPA) bearing primary amino groups in its structure was a highly effective catalyst for the room temperature curing of cyanate esters. When the cyanate ester and mixed amine were combined at a molar ratio of 100:5 and cured at room temperature for 5 days, the curing degree of BECy resin reached 79.7%. The room temperature curing mechanism of the BECy-AN/NNDPA system was investigated using pyrolysis gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (PY GC-MS). Our results showed that the formation reactions of the intermediate structure and cyclotrimerization reactions occurred during the room-temperature curing process. The activation energies of BECy and different aromatic amine systems at different heating rates were determined using non-isothermal DSC. The results further demonstrated the catalytic effect of AN/NNDPA on the cyanate ester curing reaction. BECy-AN/NNDPA cured at room temperature has suitable heat resistance and a 5% weight loss temperature (Td5) of 361°C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Myocardial fibrosis (MF) is the result of metabolic imbalance of collagen synthesis and metabolism, which is widespread in various cardiovascular diseases. Autophagy is a lysosomal degradation pathway which is highly conserved. In recent years, research on autophagy has been increasing and the researchers have also become cumulatively aware of the specified association between autophagy and MF. This review highlights the role of autophagy in MF and the potential effects through the administration of medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, it is still a challenge to prepare multifunctional composite nanomaterials with simple composition and favorable structure. Here, multifunctional Fe3O4@nitrogen-doped carbon (N-C) nanocomposites with hollow porous core-shell structure and significant electrochemical, adsorption and sensing performances were successfully synthesized through the hydrothermal method, polymer coating, then thermal annealing process in nitrogen (N2) and lastly etching in hydrochloric acid (HCl). The morphologies and properties of the as-obtained Fe3O4@N-C nanocomposites were markedly affected by the etching time of HCl. When the Fe3O4@N-C nanocomposites after etching for 30 min (Fe3O4@N-C-3) were applied as the anodes for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), the invertible capacity could reach 1772 mA h g−1 after 100 cycles at the current density of 0.2 A g−1, which is much better than that of Fe3O4@N-C nanocomposites etched, respectively, for 15 min and 45 min (948 mA h g−1 and 1127 mA h g−1). Additionally, the hollow porous Fe3O4@N-C-3 nanocomposites also exhibited superior rate capacity (950 mA h g−1 at 0.6 A g−1). The excellent electrochemical properties of Fe3O4@N-C nanocomposites are attributed to their distinctive hollow porous core-shell structure and appropriate N-doped carbon coating, which could provide high-efficiency transmission channels for ions/electrons, improve the structural stability and accommodate the volume variation in the repeated Li insertion/extraction procedure. In addition, the Fe3O4@N-C nanocomposites etched by HCl for different lengths of time, especially Fe3O4@N-C-3 nanocomposites, also show good performance as adsorbents for the removal of the organic dye (methyl orange, MO) and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates for the determination of a pesticide (thiram). This work provides reference for the design and preparation of multifunctional materials with peculiar pore structure and uncomplicated composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigated the tunable porous structure of SiCN(O)-derived ceramic aerogels by changing the molecular structure of the polysilazanes from linear to branched. We also studied the effect of molecular structure on the thermal insulation properties of ceramic aerogels. As the percentage of branched molecular structure in the polysilazane precursor increased, the internal microscopic pore structure of the aerogels changed from macroporous to mesoporous. The specific surface areas and pore volumes of the ceramic aerogels prepared with different precursors increased after pyrolysis at 1000 °C, ranging from 3.7 to 255.9 m2/g and 0.01–0.36 cm3/g, respectively. The corresponding thermal conductivities increased slightly as the aerogels contracted after pyrolysis. The low thermal conductivity (0.046 W/(m·K) at minimum) can be attributed to the decrease in pore size caused by adjusting the precursor structure, which limits the thermal conduction of gas in the porous aerogel materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copper phosphide has shown remarkable development potential in the anode materials of lithium ion batteries (LIBs) due to its high mass/volume ratio capacity. Nevertheless, the low conductivity and volumetric expansion in the cycling process restrict its practical application. Herein, we ingeniously designed and successfully prepared copper phosphide (Cu 3 P)@carbon (C) nanocomposite with multi-stage pore inverse opals (Cu 3 P@C MSPIOs), including possessed the ordered macropores with the mean aperture of ∼100 nm induced by polystyrene (PS) sphere templates and the mesoporous structure with the pore size range of 3.0-9.5 nm and 16–27 nm derived from metal-organic framework (MOF) precursor. Compared to the Cu 3 P@C particles prepared without PS sphere templates, the Cu 3 P@C MSPIOs as the anode materials demonstrated exceptional lithium storage performance. At a high current density of 2 A g-1, the discharge specific capacity of Cu 3 P@C MSPIOs was 295 mA h g-1 in the 1st cycle while that dropped to 204 mA h g-1 during the 2nd one, and then gradually stabilized. After 1500 cycles, the discharge specific capacity can still reach to 166.3 mA h g-1, maintaining 81% capacity compared to the 2nd discharge specific capacity, which indicates the Cu 3 P@C MSPIOs as the anode material presented good cycling stability. Apparently, the multi-stage pore structure, which can effectively resolve the volumetric change problem during lithium ion (Li+) intercalation/deintercalation as well as facilitate contact between electrolyte and anode, is primarily responsible of the superior Li-ion storage property of Cu 3 P@C MSPIOs. At the same time, MOF derived carbon can improve electrical conductivity, accelerate the formation of a stable solid electrolyte interface membrane and also provide buffer layers to further alleviate volumetric expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Silicon-based ceramic aerogels obtained by the polymer pyrolysis route possess excellent thermophysical properties, but their poor mechanical properties limit their broader applicability in thermal insulation materials. Herein, SiCN(O) ceramic aerogels were prepared under the toughening effect of a crosslinker (hexamethylene diisocyanate, HDI), which maintains the structural integrity of the aerogel during the wet gel-to-aerogel conversion. The aerogel maintained a high surface area (88.6 m2 g−1) and large pore volume (0.21 cm3 g−1) after pyrolysis. Based on this, mullite-fiber-reinforced SiCN(O) aerogels composites with outstanding thermal insulation properties and better mechanical performance were synthesized via ambient pressure impregnation. Furthermore, the effect of the impregnation concentration on the mechanical and insulation properties of the composites was investigated. The results revealed that the composite prepared with a solution ratio of 95 wt.% exhibited a low density (0.11 g cm−3) and a low thermal conductivity (0.035 W m−1 K−1), indicating an ~30% enhancement in its thermal insulation performance compared to the mullite fiber; the mesoporous aerogel structures wrapped on the mullite fibers inhibited the gas thermal conduction inside the composites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Angiopoietin-like 4 (ANGPTL4) is highly expressed in a variety of neoplasms and promotes cancer progression. Nevertheless, the mechanism of ANGPTL4 in ovarian cancer (OC) metastasis remains unclear. This study aimeds to explore whether ANGPTL4 regulates OC progression and elucidate the underlying mechanism. Methods: ANGPTL4 expression in clinical patient tumor samples was determined by immunohistochemistry (IHC) and high-throughput sequencing. ANGPTL4 knockdown (KD) and the addition of exogeneous cANGPTL4 protein were used to investigate its function. An in vivo xenograft tumor experiment was performed by intraperitoneal injection of SKOV3 cells transfected with short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) targeting ANGPTL4 in nude mice. Western blotting and qRT-PCR were used to detect the levels of ANGPTL4, CDH5, p-AKT, AKT, ETV5, MMP2 and MMP9 in SKOV3 and HO8910 cells transfected with sh-ANGPTL4 or shRNAs targeting ETV5. Results: Increased levels of ANGPTL4 were associated with poor prognosis and metastasis in OC and induced the angiogenesis and metastasis of OC cells both in vivo and in vitro. This tumorigenic effect was dependent on CDH5, and the expression levels of ANGPTL4 and CDH5 in human OC werepositively correlated. In addition, CDH5 activated p-AKT, and upregulated the expression of MMP2 and MMP9. We also found that the expression of ETV5 was upregulated by ANGPTL4, which could bind the promoter region of CDH5, leading to increased CDH5 expression. Conclusion: Our data indicated that an increase in the ANGPTL4 level results in increased ETV5 expression in OC, leading to metastasis via activation of the CDH5/AKT/MMP9 signaling pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent development in depth imaging technology makes acquisition of depth information easier. With the additional depth cue, RGB-D cameras can provide effective support for many RGB-D perception tasks beyond traditional RGB information. However, current feature representation based on RGB-D images utilizes depth information only to extract local features, without considering it to improve robustness and discriminability of the feature representation by merging depth cues into feature pooling. Spatial pyramid model (SPM) has become the standard protocol to split a 2D image plane into sub-regions for feature pooling of RGB-D images. We argue that SPM may not be the optimal pooling scheme for RGB-D images, as it only pools features spatially and completely discards their depth topological structures. Instead, we propose a novel joint spatial-depth pooling (JSDP) scheme which further partitions SPM using the depth cue and pools features simultaneously in 2D image plane and along the depth direction. By combining the JSDP with standard feature extraction and feature encoding modules, we outperform state-of-the-art methods on benchmarks for RGB-D object classification, detection and scene recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Silicon-containing aryacetylene resins (PSAs) have already shown potential application as heat-resistant materials due to their excellent thermal stability. The formation and degradation of structures in cured PSAs are very important to evaluate the thermal properties during their applications. Herein, the thermal curing and degradation behavior of PSAs with different substituents were investigated by DSC, FT-IR, Py-GC-MS, TGA and TG-GC-MS. DSC and FT-IR analysis reveals that the curing reaction is dominated by the crosslinking reaction of C C H and Si C C , meanwhile, the reactive substituents (such as Si H and Si CH CH 2 ) could promote the C C H and Si C C reaction with higher conversion. Py-GC-MS was used to detect the pyrolysis products at 650 °C and 750 °C, respectively, and the results could provide important information about the curing reaction and structures of cured PSAs. The curing reaction of PSAs mainly contains cyclotrimerization and Diels-Alder reaction of C C H and Si C C , and some addition reaction to form polyene structure. The main structures in cured PSAs contain a lot of phenyl rings, some aromatic fused rings and a little of polyene structure, moreover, their contents in cured PSAs are dependent on the substituents of the precursors. The TGA results show that the substituents of Si H and Si CH CH 2 can effectively improve the crosslinking index of the cured PSA-H and PSA-V, and endow them with better thermal stability. Additionally, the degradation behavior of cured PSAs have been well studied by TG-GC-MS. When the temperature is 400 °C, the Si CH 3 and some aliphatic structure begin to degrade and form CH 4 , and with the temperature increasing to 500 °C, the unsaturated and aliphatic structures decompose into C 2 H 4 and C 2 H 6 , and after 600 °C, the aromatic rings and fused rings in cured PSAs are dehydrogenated and release H 2 . In addition, the content of the degradation products and their forming temperature are also related with the substituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • A facile method to fabricate well-cushioned and elastic aerogels was presented. • The mechanism of buffering capability and elasticity enhancement was elucidated. • Multifunctional intelligent transportation packaging application was demonstrated. Modern logistics applications demand intelligent packaging aerogels with excellent mechanical properties, but these materials typically do not display good resilience or dynamic cushioning. Here, we propose a facile strategy to fabricate a lamellar porous composite aerogel (CB-CNF/MXene) by the crosslinking and bidirectional freeze-drying of cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) and MXene. The obtained CB-CNF/MXene aerogel showed good resilience and dynamic cushioning capacity, could withstand up to 90 % compressive strain, bounced back to 87.1 % of its original height, and remained stable for 1000 cycles under 80 % strain. It displayed a significantly lower maximum acceleration of 27.4 g than that of expanded polyethylene (35.9 g) and expanded polystyrene (34.1 g), indicating its effective protection characteristics. CB-CNF/MXene also displayed a stable piezoresistive sensing capability of up to 4.11 kPa, demonstrating its suitability for real-time cargo monitoring. It also showed a relatively low thermal conductivity of 29.2 mW·m−1·K−1, making it suitable for cold chain transportation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief is concerned with the issue of quantized H filtering for singular time-varying delay systems with an unreliable communication channel. The missing data are described by a binary switching sequence satisfying a conditional probability distribution. The purpose is to design a linear H filter such that the filtering error system is regular, causal, stochastically stable, and satisfies the prescribed H performance constraint. First, based on a finite sum inequality, a new delay-dependent stability condition is obtained. Then, the filter parameters are derived by solving a linear matrix inequality (LMI). Finally, numerical examples are given to illustrate that the proposed approach is effective and feasible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Hepcidin is a low-molecular-weight, highly disulfide bonded peptide relevant to small intestine iron absorption and body iron homeostasis. In this work, hepcidin was expressed in Escherichia coli as a 10.5kDa fusion protein (His-hepcidin) with a N-terminal hexahistidine tag. The expressed His-hepcidin existed in the form of inclusion bodies and was purified by IMAC under denaturation condition. Since the fusion partner for hepcidin did not contain other cysteine residues, the formation of disulfide bonds was performed before the His-tag was removed. Then, the oxidized His-hepcidin monomer was separated from protein multimers through gel filtration. Following monomer refolding, hepcidin was cleaved from fusion protein by enterokinase and purified with reverse-phase chromatography. The recombinant hepcidin exhibited obvious antibacterial activity against Bacillus subtilis. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

GKN2 (gastrokine 2) mainly plays a regulatory role in gastric mucosal defense and cell protection mechanisms, and its role in gastric cancer has not been thoroughly elucidated. Immunohistochemistry was used to detect GKN2 and TFF1 expressions in 90 gastric cancer tissues, 48 neoplastic resection margins, and 22 normal gastric mucosa epithelia. It showed that the downregulation of GKN2 and TFF1 expressions in gastric cancer tissues was significantly different from that in adjacent normal gastric tissues and distal gastric mucosal tissues. Nevertheless, correlation analysis showed that GKN2 expression in gastric cancer tissues was independent of TFF1 expression. After overexpression of GKN2 was constructed in human gastric cancer cell line MKN28 with the Ad-GFP-GKN2 transfected, cell viability was measured by CCK-8 assay, and migration and invasion ability were analyzed by transwell migration assay and transwell invasion assay. It indicated that overexpression of GKN2 significantly reduced the viability of MKN28 and SGC7901 cells. Overexpression of GKN2 could also inhibit the migration and invasion ability in MKN28 and SGC7901 cells. In addition, upregulation of GKN2 can inactivate the JAK2/STAT3 pathway. Our data suggest that GKN2 and TFF1 play the antitumor role in gastric carcinoma, and TFF1 may not interact or cooperate with GKN2. GKN2 overexpression can inhibit the growth and metastasis by downregulating the JAK2/STAT3 pathway in gastric cancer cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inflammasomes are a group of multiprotein signaling complexes located in the cytoplasm. Several inflammasomes have been identified, including NLRP1, NLRP2, NLRP3, AIM2, and NLRC4. Among them, NLRP3 was investigated in most detail, and it was reported that it can be activated by many different stimuli. Increased NLRP3 protein expression and inflammasome assembly lead to caspase‐1 mediated maturation and release of IL‐1β, which triggers inflammation and pyroptosis. The activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome has been widely reported in studies of tumors and neurological diseases, but relatively few studies on the cardiovascular system. Ventricular remodeling (VR) is an important factor contributing to heart failure (HF) after myocardial infarction (MI). Consequently, delaying VR is of great significance for improving heart function. Studies have shown that the NLRP3 inflammasome plays an essential role in the process of VR. Here, we reviewed the latest studies on the activation pathway of the NLRP3 inflammasome, focusing on the effects of the NLRP3 inflammasome in primary cells during VR, and finally discuss future research directions in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, developing highly sensitive and multifunctional surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates is very significant. Here, a new cobalt (Co)-doped titanium dioxide (TiO 2)/graphene oxide (GO) inverse opal photonic crystal (IO PC) was successfully synthesized using polystyrene opal as the template. The scanning and transmission electron microscope images demonstrate the ordered fish scale-like shape while the element mappings display the uniform element distribution of the Co-TiO 2 /GO IO PC. Raman spectra show that the detection limit of 4-mercaptobenzoic acid (4-MBA) on the Co-TiO 2 /GO IO PC SERS substrate is as low as 10−12 M, exhibiting better SERS effect than TiO 2 and Co-TiO 2 IO PCs. Amperometric I-t curves reveal that the photocurrent density of Co-TiO 2 /GO IO PC is six and three times more than that of TiO 2 and Co-TiO 2 IO PCs under simulated sunlight irradiation, respectively. Furthermore, UV-Vis spectra indicate that the degradation rate of methylene blue and Congo red over Co-TiO 2 /GO IO PC photocatalyst could separately reach 96% and 93%, which are much higher than that over TiO 2 and Co-TiO 2 IO PCs. The outstanding performance of Co-TiO 2 /GO IO PC was caused by that the Co2+ doping and GO addition broadened the light absorption to visible range, the electron traps resulted from Co2+ doping inhibited the recombination of electron-hole pairs and doping levels promoted TiO 2 -to-molecule charge-transfer process, which were confirmed by the UV-Vis spectra, PL spectra and SERS spectra, respectively. At the same time the periodic IO PC structure led to multiple scattering of light and improved the light-mass interaction. The prepared Co-TiO 2 /GO IO PC may be a promising material in SERS effect, water purification and so on. ga1 • The fish scale-like Co-TiO 2 /GO IO PC was prepared by the PS opal as the template. • Adding Co2+ and GO into TiO 2 IO PC endowed the Co-TiO 2 /GO IO PC with multifunction. • The SERS detection limit of 4-MBA on the Co-TiO 2 /GO IO PC was as low as 10−12 M. • The Co-TiO 2 /GO IO PC possessed excellent photoelectric conversion efficiency. • The photodegradation rates of MB and CR over Co-TiO 2 /GO IO PC were 96% and 93%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hybrid cyanate ester resin containing polysilazane was prepared via the prepolymerization of bisphenol-A dicyanate ester monomer (BADCy) in the presence of polysilazane (PSZ) under low temperature conditions in a short period of time. Fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy reveal that the polymerization reaction of BADCy can be carried out in the presence of PSZ to obtain a hybrid resin below 100°C and polymethylsilazane (PHS) exhibits an improved prepolymerization effect when compared to polydimethylsilazane (PMS). FT-IR spectroscopy and gel permeation chromatography (GPC) showed that the prepolymerization degree of the PHS/BADCy resin increased upon increasing PHS mass fraction from 0 to 12 wt%, polymerization temperature from 60 to 100°C and polymerization time from 0 to 4 h. The PHS/BADCy hybrid resins samples were prepared and their process properties were investigated by rheometry and Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The results indicated that their viscosity was <10 Pa.s in the temperature range of 60–130°C, and the initial curing temperature and curing exothermic enthalpy were 121.9°C and 358.9 J/g, respectively. Furthermore, the cured PHS/BADCy resin possesses excellent thermal and mechanical properties, the 5% weight loss temperature (Td5) and glass transition temperature (Tg) were 424–441°C and 273–282°C, respectively. The cured PHS/BADCy resin with 4 wt% PHS showed the highest flexural strength of 146 MPa and flexural modulus of 4.1 GPa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) of recessive monogenic diseases depends heavily on knowing the correct parental haplotypes. However, the currently used family-based haplotyping method requires pedigrees, and molecular haplotyping is highly challenging due to its high cost, long turnaround time, and complexity. Here, we proposed a new two-step approach, population-based haplotyping-NIPT (PBH-NIPT), using α-thalassemia and β-thalassemia as prototypes. Methods: First, we deduced parental haplotypes with Beagle 4.0 with training on a large retrospective carrier screening dataset (4356 thalassemia carrier screening-positive cases). Second, we inferred fetal haplotypes using a parental haplotype-assisted hidden Markov model (HMM) and the Viterbi algorithm. Results: With this approach, we enrolled 59 couples at risk of having a fetus with thalassemia and successfully inferred 94.1% (111/118) of fetal alleles. We confirmed these alleles by invasive prenatal diagnosis, with 99.1% (110/111) accuracy (95% CI, 95.1–100%). Conclusions: These results demonstrate that PBH-NIPT is a sensitive, fast, and inexpensive strategy for NIPT of thalassemia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CoP@N/P-(C/CNTs) with porous nanocubic structure exhibited outstanding electrochemical property with high specific capacity, high-rate performance and cycle stability which benefiting from the synergistic effects between highly active CoP nanoparticles and N/P-C/CNTs. • CoP@N/P-(C/CNTs) with porous nanocubic structure were prepared by ZIF-67 through a pyrolysis-phosphorization strategy. • CNTs formed by the auto-catalysis of Co nanoparticles generated at high temperature pyrolysis in-situ in Ar. • CoP@N/P-(C/CNTs) exhibited outstanding electrochemical performance as LIBs anodes. A rational and convenient method was selected to prepare CoP@N/P-co-doped-(C/CNTs) (CoP@N/P-(C/CNTs)) composites with porous nanocubic structure through a pyrolysis-phosphorization strategy derived from ZIF-67. The production of N, P-doped carbon and CNTs formed by in-situ autocatalysis improved the electrical conductivity of the nanocomposite greatly and made the combination of N, P-(C/CNTs) with CoP nanoparticles (NPs) very tightly. The CoP NPs were well encapsulated into the N/P-(C/CNTs) polyhedron. The prepared CoP@N/P-(C/CNTs) had a large specific surface area with 114 m2 g−1 and an average pore diameter of about 10 nm, which were helpful for the efficient diffusion of electrolyte and transfer of ions/electrons. Benefiting from the synergistic effects between highly active CoP NPs and wonderfully conductive N/P-C/CNTs, the CoP@N/P-(C/CNTs) composites exhibited outstanding electrochemical performance. As anodes for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), the CoP@N/P-(C/CNTs) composites exhibited an excellent initial discharge capacity of 1215 mA h g−1 and reversible capacity of 600 mA h g−1 after 200 cycles at 0.5 A g−1. Even at the high current density of 2 A g−1, it still retained a capacity of 385 mA h g−1. It proved that the autocatalytic formation of CoP@N/P-(C/CNTs) resulted from Co-MOFs is an economical and convenient approach to synthesize electrode materials with high performance for LIBs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel graphene oxide encapsulated Ni 3 S 2 multi-layer nanosheet arrays were designedly grown on Ni foam (Ni 3 S 2 @GO/NF) via a simple and low-cost method. The prepared nanocomposite was converted from a pyramid shape to a multi-layer nanosheet array because Sn4+, Ni2+ and thioacetamide performed a coprecipitation transformation during the hydrothermal reaction. As a binder-free anode material for lithium ion batteries, the Ni 3 S 2 @GO/NF nanocomposite showed an initial charge and discharge of 797.8 and 1182.3 mA h g−1 at a current density of 0.5 A g−1, respectively. After 100 reversible cycles, the specific discharge capacity of the composite can still remain 1006.6 mA h g−1, presenting excellent cycle stability. The enhanced electrochemical performance is due to that the multi-layer sheet array structure can increase the Li+ energy storage active site and alleviate the volume expansion caused by Li+ insertion and extraction, which was beneficial to the sufficient contact of the active material with the electrolyte, enhancing the lithium ion transmission rate. Additionally, the coating of oxide graphene on the composite further stabilized the structural morphology, thereby improving the stability of the electrochemical cycle performance of the nanocomposite. • The novel nanosheet arrays were directly grown in situ on NF skeleton. • The addition of Sn4+ could regulate the shape of the arrays. • Ni 3 S 2 @GO/NF nanosheet arrays can be used as binder-free anodes for LIBs. • The nanosheet arrays structure could increase the active sites of Li+ storage and alleviate the volume expansion. • The GO coating could improve the conductivity, total capacity and cycle stability of Ni 3 S 2 @GO/NF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attitude algorithm is used by a given magnetic and inertial measurement unit (MIMU) for weight fusion of the outputs of gyroscope and the outputs of the subunit constructed by accelerometer and magnetometer for attitude calculation of a rigid body. It has been proved that the weight assigned to the outputs of gyroscope determines the overall performances of attitude algorithm. A new weight adaptive regulation method based on Kalman filter and hidden Markov model is proposed, and then a new attitude algorithm is constructed by the integration of that method with recursive quaternion estimation algorithm. The authors' attitude algorithm is compared with some other related attitude algorithms in their experiments. With the outputs of the sensors in MTi as the inputs of the new attitude algorithm, the maximum attitude estimation errors in response to three‐dimensional random movements and the changes of their amplitudes are 2.85° and 6.82°, respectively, and the Allan variance of attitude drift in response to motionless conditions is 2.1×10−4°. Other attitude algorithms cannot simultaneously achieve similar dynamic and similar static performances comparing to their attitude algorithm. The results validate the overall performance improvement of their attitude algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This was a randomized, double‐blind, crossover, clinical‐end‐point pilot study examining the hypothesis that inhaled fluticasone propionate decreases exhaled nitric oxide (eNO) concentrations within a week of beginning treatment and shows evidence of dose separation across the marketed dose range. Subjects had a ≥6‐month history of asthma and screening eNO ≥60 parts per billion. At the start of each treatment period, eNO was ≥55 parts per billion, and forced expiratory volume in 1 second was ≥50% predicted. Subjects attended a clinic visit daily on consecutive mornings during each of 3 1‐week treatment periods to measure eNO and receive once‐daily doses of 100/50, 250/50, or 500/50 fluticasone propionate/salmeterol combination product (Advair® Diskus). Daily eNO value recorded was the highest of 3 measurements; 1 inhalation of treatment was then administered. Procedures were repeated for 3 treatment cycles, separated by 14‐day minimum washouts. A total of 105 subjects were screened; 22 were randomized; and 17 completed all treatments. Mean percentage eNO decrease (standard deviation) from day 1 baseline for each treatment period was 36.6 (±18.7), 45.3 (±16.5), and 54.6 (±12.5) with Advair® 100/50, 250/50, and 500/50, respectively. Mean percentage decrease in eNO across each treatment (dose) was modeled using a mixed‐model ANOVA. Although the overall treatment was significant (P = .0015), because of the relatively small sample size and within‐subject variability, only the 100/50 vs 500/50 (P = .0003) and 250/50 vs 500/50 (P = .047) treatments were significantly different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The multi‑center, randomized, open‑label, phase III trial discussed in the present study was performed to compare the clinical outcomes of nedaplatin (NDP) plus paclitaxel, and carboplatin (CBP) plus paclitaxel for the treatment of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). In the current study, 182 patients with International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage II‑IV EOC were randomly assigned to receive NDP plus paclitaxel or CBP plus paclitaxel at 3‑week intervals for a total of six courses. The primary endpoints were progression‑free survival rate (PFS) and overall survival rate (OS). The secondary endpoints were toxicity profiles. The median follow‑up was 44.63 months [95% confidence interval (CI) 33.67‑46.47 months] for the NDP group and 47.63 months (95% CI 45.13‑49.07 months) for the CBP group. Overall, there was no significant difference in PFS or OS between the two groups (P=0.09 for PFS, and P=0.65 for OS). For the patients with FIGO stage III‑IV EOC, the NDP plus paclitaxel regimen significantly prolonged PFS (P=0.02) but did not result in improved OS (P=0.53) when compared with the CBP group. The patients in the NDP plus paclitaxel group also exhibited a lower incidence rate of grade 3 or 4 leucopenia (P=0.03). Other hematological and non‑hematological toxicity profiles were similar between the two groups. Compared with CBP plus paclitaxel regimens, NDP plus paclitaxel regimens achieved comparable survival outcomes and similar toxicity profiles. However, patients of FIGO stage III‑IV EOC may experience more clinical benefits from NDP plus paclitaxel treatment, including a prolonged PFS and a lower incidence rate of leucopenia. Therefore, an NDP‑based regimen may be an alternative choice when using platinum‑based agents to treat EOC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]