Search

We report on the magnetic coupling behavior in all-ferromagnetic La0.7Sr0.3MnO3/SrRuO3 (LSMO/SRO) heterostructures deposited on the SrTiO3 (111) substrate, where the interface leads to an enhanced exchange field as compared to the one deposited on SrTiO3 (001). Importantly, high-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy reveals distinct interface structures of the (111) heterostructures depending on the growth sequence. The heterostructure with an SRO bottom layer shows an atomically flat and abrupt interface, while the one with an LSMO bottom layer shows a deformed interface due to the surface roughening of LSMO deposited directly on SrTiO3 (111). As a result, the heterostructure with an abrupt interface exhibits a robust antiferromagnetic coupling between LSMO and SRO, while the one with a rough interface shows negligible magnetic coupling. Our results demonstrate the key role of an abrupt interface in determining the magnetic properties of oxide heterostructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) is a clinical condition characterized by ovarian dysfunction in women under 40. The etiology of most POI cases remains unidentified and is believed to be multifactorial, including factors such as autoimmunity, metabolism, infection, and genetics. POI exhibits significant genetic heterogeneity, and it can result from chromosomal abnormalities and monogenic defects. Case presentation: The study participant, a 33-year-old woman, presented with a history of irregular menstruation that commenced two years ago, progressing to prolonged menstrual episodes and eventual cessation. The participant exhibits a rearrangement of the X chromosome, characterized by heterozygosity duplication on the long arm and heterozygosity deletion on the short arm by whole exome sequencing(WES) combined with cell chromosome detection. Conclusions: This study expands the spectrum of mutations associated with POI resulting from X chromosomal abnormalities. WES-Copy number variation analysis, in conjunction with chromosome karyotype analysis and other detection techniques, can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the genetic landscape underlying complex single or multi-system diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotion recognition, a burgeoning field in recent years, involves computers discerning and comprehending human emotions, finding widespread applications. While facial expressions are commonly used for emotion recognition, the significance of body posture in this process often goes unnoticed. This study proposes a method to enhance emotion recognition accuracy in educational settings by combining facial expressions and body posture, grounded in the Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics (STEAM) education paradigm. Initially, the relationship between STEAM education and children's emotional regulation is examined to provide a theoretical underpinning. Subsequently, video data of children engaged in STEAM activities is briefly preprocessed, and emotional features are extracted using Visual Geometry Group Network (VGG)16 for facial expressions and movement-based analysis for body posture. The two modalities are then fused and classified, and the recognition accuracy of single and fused modes is compared. Results indicate that the average accuracy rates for facial expression and body posture recognition are 84.627% and 89.523%, respectively, while the combined mode achieves 94.135%. This method demonstrates robust generalization and applicability, emphasizing the complementary nature of emotional information conveyed through facial expressions and posture. Furthermore, automatic feature extraction using deep learning (DL) for posture emotion recognition shows promising results, suggesting the potential for DL to enhance static or dynamic posture representations. The integration of both recognition modes significantly improves accuracy, offering valuable insights for application and further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cryopreservation of receptacles or fertilized eggs is the main method for the preservation of indoor germplasm resources for the economic seaweed Sargassum fusiforme. However, none of these methods can achieve long-term preservation of germplasm resources. The holdfast represents the asexual reproductive organ of S. fusiforme and has a dense tissue that can be regenerated into seedlings under suitable conditions. Therefore, in this study, the holdfast was used as the experimental material to analyze the effects of different temperatures (8 °C, 10 °C, 13 °C) and salinities (29‰, 24‰, 19‰, 14‰) on the preservation of S. fusiforme germplasm. The results showed that 29‰ and 14‰ were not suitable for the long-term preservation of holdfasts regardless of temperatures, since both photosynthesis and growth rates of the holdfast decreased after 30 days of preservation at these salinities. However, 8 °C and 19‰ were found to be suitable for the long-term in vitro preservation of holdfasts, with a survival time being as long as 120 days. During the experiment, the photosynthesis activity of the holdfast also displayed less fluctuation in this experimental condition than in the others. After 120 days, the content of malondialdehyde in the holdfasts was the lowest, and the morphology remained intact. 8 °C and 19‰ could be suitable for long-term indoor preservation of S. fusiforme. These findings might provide technical support for solving the problem associated with the difficulty of preserving the germplasm of superior strains in the breeding process. They might also have important significance for crossbreeding and for establishing a germplasm resource bank for S. fusiforme in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, Au/Bi2O3 was synthesized by loading Au nanoparticles (NPs) onto β-Bi2O3 by a simple solution reduction method. β-Bi2O3 was synthesized by a precipitation-thermal decomposition procedure, which results in significantly improved SERS detection limits down to 10−9 M for methylene blue (MB) and 10−7 M for methyl orange (MO) as probe molecules, comparable to those reported for the best semiconductor SERS substrates. In particular, further deposition of Au NPs (5.20% wt%) onto β-Bi2O3 results in a two-order-of-magnitude enhancement in detection sensitivity, achieving a detection limit of 10−11 M for MB and 10−9 M for MO. Under ultraviolet/visible irradiation, the Au/Bi2O3 hybrids substrate exhibits superior self-cleaning ability due to its photocatalytic degradation ability which can be applied repeatedly to the detection of pollutants. The advanced composite substrate simultaneously achieved ultra-low mass loading of Au NPs, outstanding detection performance, good reproducibility, high stability and self-cleaning ability. The development strategy of low load noble metal coupled high performance semiconductor β-Bi2O3 to obtain nano-hybrid materials provides a method to balance SERS sensitivity, cost effectiveness and operational stability, and can be synthesized in large quantities, which is a key step towards commercialization and has good reliability prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a significant biomarker during the apoptosis process, cytochrome c (Cyt c) is considered as a critical component in the inherent apoptotic pathway, but the simple and portable detection still remains challengeable. In this work, a portable and visual sensing platform for Cyt c was developed based upon the fluorescence quenching of graphene quantum dots (GQDs), which could be finished within a few seconds. Herein, the absorption spectrum of Cyt c matched the emission spectrum of GQDs well, which could cause the fluorescence quenching of GQDs via the inner filter effect (IFE) in the range of 1–50 μg/mL with the limit of detection as low as 0.1 μg/mL. Furthermore, the intracellular Cyt c was imaged to observe the apoptosis process of cancer cells induced by staurosporine. To achieve the portable and visual detection of Cyt c, GQDs were deposited on the filter paper to form the solid platform, which displayed a gradual fluorescence quenching when different concentrations of Cyt c were present. Compared to the conventional methods, the proposed assay is low-cost, fast, portable, and visual, which will be useful for the investigation of mitochondrial dysfunction and apoptotic cell death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responsible for synthesizing the complementary strand of the DNA template, DNA polymerase is a crucial enzyme in DNA replication, recombination and repair. A highly conserved tyrosine (Tyr), located at the C‐terminus of the O‐helix in family A DNA polymerases, plays a critical role in enzyme activity and fidelity. Here, we combined the technology of genetic code extension to incorporate non‐canonical amino acids and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to uncover the mechanisms by which Tyr671 impacts substrate binding and conformation transitions in a DNA polymerase from Thermus aquaticus. Five non‐canonical amino acids, namely l‐3,4‐dihydroxyphenylalanine (l‐DOPA), p‐aminophenylalanine (pAF), p‐acetylphenylalanine (pAcF), p‐cyanophenylalanine (pCNF) and p‐nitrophenylalanine (pNTF), were individually incorporated at position 671. Strikingly, Y671pAF and Y671DOPA were active, but with lower activity compared to Y671F and wild‐type. Y671pAF showed a higher fidelity than the Y671F, despite both possessing lower fidelity than the wild‐type. Metadynamics and long‐timescale MD simulations were carried out to probe the role of mutations in affecting protein structure, including open conformation, open‐to‐closed conformation transition, closed conformation, and closed‐to‐open conformation transition. The MD simulations clearly revealed that the size of the 671 amino acid residue and interactions with substrate or nearby residues were critical for Tyr671 to determine enzyme activity and fidelity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi (SB), a plant of the Lamiaceae family, contains flavonoids with potent human health benefits. The full mechanistic details and regulatory networks related to the biosynthesis of these compounds in SB have been the focus of recent research but are still fragmented. Similarly, a complete account of the metabolites produced, specifically flavonoids, and their distribution in different parts of the plant is incomplete. To provide a more complete picture, herein we have explored the SB metabolites and differentially expressed genes in underground and aerial tissues. Of the 947 metabolites identified, 373 were differentially accumulated flavonoids (DAFs), and 147 of these were differentially accumulated in roots relative to other tissues. Interestingly, roots accumulated more baicalin and baicalein than aboveground tissues, but they were low in scutellarein and wogonoside, in contrast to previous reports. These differences may be attributed to either plant variety, age of the plants, or the extraction protocol. Transcriptomics analysis identified 56 key genes from the flavonoid synthesis pathway in all six SB plant tissues. A weighted gene correlation network analysis conducted using four DAFs (baicalin, baicalein, scutellarein and wogonoside) produced 13 modules. Baicalin and baicalein were positively correlated with one of these modules, whereas wogonoside and scutellarein were correlated with three other modules. Gene expression in these modules was consistent with the observed accumulation of these compounds in plant tissues. Fourteen structural genes were highly correlated with baicalin, baicalein and scutellarein, and 241 transcription factors (TFs) associated to these four compounds. The 13 highly correlated structural genes and 21 highly correlated TFs were used to construct correlation networks, where genes were identified to be highly correlated with flavonoid biosynthesis genes. Overexpression of some of these genes, namely, SbMYB8 (Sb02g25620), SbMYB14 (Sb09g00160) and SbbHLH94 (Sb07g11990), in SB callus increased flavonoid content and regulated the expression of genes involved in the flavonoid biosynthesis pathway, confirming their association to flavonoid production. Overall, the present work contributes to delineating the differences in flavonoid biosynthesis among different SB tissues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Fragility fracture is common in the elderly. Osteoblast differentiation is essential for bone healing and regeneration. Expression pattern of long non-coding RNA MIAT during fracture healing was examined, and its role in osteoblast differentiation was investigated. Methods: 90 women with simple osteoporosis and 90 women with fragility fractures were included. Another 90 age-matched women were set as the control group. mRNA levels were tested using RT-qPCR. Cell viability was detected via CCK-8, and osteoblastic biomarkers, including ALP, OCN, Collagen I, and RUNX2 were tested via ELISA. The downstream miRNAs and genes targeted by MIAT were predicted by bioinformatics analysis, whose functions and pathways were annotated via GO and KEGG analysis. Results: Serum MIAT was upregulated in osteoporosis women with high accuracy of diagnostic efficacy. Serum MIAT was even elevated in the fragility fracture group, but decreased in a time manner after operation. MIAT knockdown promoted osteogenic proliferation and differentiation of MC3T3-E1, but the influences were reversed by miR-181a-5p inhibitor. A total of 137 overlapping target genes of miR-181a-5p were predicted based on the miRDB, TargetScan and microT datasets, which were mainly enriched for terms related to signaling pathways regulating pluripotency of stem cells, cellular senescence, and osteoclast differentiation. Conclusions: LncRNA MIAT serves as a promising biomarker for osteoporosis, and promotes osteogenic differentiation via targeting miR-181a-5p. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genes associated with endoplasmic reticulum stress (ERS) and mitophagy can be conducive to predicting solid tumour prognosis. The authors aimed to develop a prognosis prediction model for these genes in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). Relevant gene expression and clinical information were collected from public databases including Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). A total of 265 differentially expressed genes was finally selected (71 up‐regulated and 194 downregulated) in the LUAD dataset. Among these, 15 candidate ERS and mitophagy genes (ATG12, CSNK2A1, MAP1LC3A, MAP1LC3B, MFN2, PGAM5, PINK1, RPS27A, SQSTM1, SRC, UBA52, UBB, UBC, ULK1, and VDAC1) might be critical to LUAD based on the expression analysis after crossing with the ERS and mitochondrial autophagy genes. The prediction model demonstrated the ability to effectively predict the 5‐, 3‐, and 1‐year prognoses of LUAD patients in both GEO and TCGA databases. Moreover, high VDAC1 expression was associated with poor overall survival in LUAD (p < 0.001), suggesting it might be a critical gene for LUAD prognosis prediction. Overall, the prognosis model based on ERS and mitophagy genes in LUAD can be useful for evaluating the prognosis of patients with LUAD, and VDAC1 may serve as a promising biomarker for LUAD prognosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) is a clinical condition characterized by ovarian dysfunction in women under 40. The etiology of most POI cases remains unidentified and is believed to be multifactorial, including factors such as autoimmunity, metabolism, infection, and genetics. POI exhibits significant genetic heterogeneity, and it can result from chromosomal abnormalities and monogenic defects. Case presentation: The study participant, a 33-year-old woman, presented with a history of irregular menstruation that commenced two years ago, progressing to prolonged menstrual episodes and eventual cessation. The participant exhibits a rearrangement of the X chromosome, characterized by heterozygosity duplication on the long arm and heterozygosity deletion on the short arm by whole exome sequencing(WES) combined with cell chromosome detection. Conclusions: This study expands the spectrum of mutations associated with POI resulting from X chromosomal abnormalities. WES-Copy number variation analysis, in conjunction with chromosome karyotype analysis and other detection techniques, can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the genetic landscape underlying complex single or multi-system diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The incidence of comorbidity between type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and metabolic-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) is high, and patients tend to be younger. When people develop metabolic diseases such as T2DM and MAFLD, the original homeostasis of the gut microbiota in the body is disrupted, and gut flora drift occurs. This study investigated the relationship between the number of gut flora and MAFLD in young-onset T2DM. Methods: This retrospective study analyzed 44 adolescent T2DM patients who were divided into a non-MAFLD group and a MAFLD group. Anthropometric measurements, clinical and biochemical markers, inflammatory markers, thyroid function assessments, and stool specimens were collected. Real-time PCR was performed to quantify several important gut flora constituents at the genus level. Student's t-test and the chi-square test were applied for group comparisons, and binary regression models were used to explore the relationship between gut flora and MAFLD in young-onset T2DM. Results: Among the 44 subjects, 26 (59.1%) were diagnosed with MAFLD, and 18 (40.9%) were not. Compared with the non-MAFLD group, body mass index (BMI), abdominal circumference, and levels of blood uric acid and thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) in the MAFLD group were significantly increased, and age level and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) were significantly decreased (p < 0.05). Compared with the non-MAFLD group, the abundance of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii and Bifidobacterium in the MAFLD group was significantly reduced, and the abundance of Enterococcus and Lactobacillus was significantly increased (p < 0.05). In the multivariate regression analysis, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii and Bifidobacterium were independent protective factors for MAFLD in young-onset T2DM, after excluding confounding factors. Conclusion: In young-onset T2DM, there was a difference in gut flora between patients with MAFLD and those without MAFLD. Faecalibacterium prausnitzii and Bifidobacterium were independent protective factors for MAFLD in young-onset T2DM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language learning has increasingly benefited from Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) technologies, especially with Artificial Intelligence involved in recent years. CALL in writing learning acknowledged as the core of language learning is being realized by technologies like Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE), and Automated Essay Scoring (AES), which have developed considerably in both computer and language education fields. AWE has effectively enhanced EFL students' writing performance to some extent, but such technology can only provide an evaluation in the form of scores, the majority of which are based on holistic scoring, resulting in the inability to provide comprehensive and detailed content-based feedback. In order to provide not only the writing multiple trait-specific evaluation scores, but also detailed writing feedback, we proposed a computer-assisted EFL writing learning system incorporating the neural network models and a couple of semantic-based NLP techniques, MsCAEWL, which fully meets the requirements of writing feedback theory, i.e., multiple, continuous, timely, clear, and multi-aspect guidance interactive feedback. The results of comparison experiments with the AWE baseline models and human raters demonstrated the superiority and the high correlation contained by the proposed system. The independent-sample t -test and paired-sample t -test results of the experiments on MsCAEWL effect validation suggested the significant impact of our proposed system in enhancing students' EFL writing proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve the quality of Sargassum fusiforme seedlings, suitable strains of juveniles regenerated from holdfasts need to be bred. In this study, effects of different temperatures (16, 20, and 24 °C) and irradiances (100, 120, and 160 µmol photons·m−2·s−1) on the growth of juveniles (new individuals) from the holdfasts of S. fusiforme were investigated to provide strategies for the cultivation of vegetative propagation seedlings of S. fusiforme. The results demonstrated that during cultivation at 24 °C, the regenerated juveniles rotted after twenty-one days, and their relative growth rate, photosynthetic activity and pigment content decreased substantially. The low temperature of 16 °C also decreased their photosynthetic activity and growth considerably. At a high irradiance of 160 µmol photons·m−2·s−1, the growth rate and photosynthetic activity decreased. Under conditions of 20 °C and 120 µmol photons·m−2·s−1, juveniles showed higher photosynthetic activity and nitrate uptake rates, which increased the growth of the juveniles and lateral branches and promoted the accumulation of photosynthetic pigment. Therefore, culture conditions of 20 °C and 120 µmol photons·m−2·s−1 can be applied for early indoor cultivation of regenerated juveniles of S. fusiforme. This study provided technical support for solving the problem of single provenance of S. fusiforme seedlings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mega projects have a huge impact on the economy and society. Preventing collusive behavior and introducing public participation in supervision are conducive to the governance of mega projects and are crucial to the success of mega projects. The owner, the construction party, and the supervisor of the mega project are regarded as a collusion-body that may collude. Based on the evolutionary game theory, an evolutionary game model with collusion-body, the government, and the public as the participants is constructed. The stability of each participant's strategy selection is analyzed, the conditions for achieving the evolutionarily stable strategy are obtained, and the evolutionary path of the strategy is simulated. The results show that the costs and benefits have important effects on the behavior of the three participants. Each participant's strategy choice is affected by other participants, and there is a certain critical probability for each participant. If the critical value is greater than or less than, the participant's strategy will change. There are five evolutionary stable strategies in the game system, and the costs and benefits conditions to achieve each evolutionary stable strategy are different. In the case of active government intervention and public participation in supervision, the ideal stabilization strategy can be achieved by changing the costs and benefits parameters of the participants, and then the governance effectiveness of the collusive behavior of mega projects can be improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boron particles in solid-fuel ramjet combustion chambers typically exist in agglomerated form, and the gas composition within the chamber includes not only air but also propellant combustion products such as water vapor and CO2. This study investigates the thermal behavior, laser heating characteristics, and condensed-phase heating products of boron agglomerates in six distinct atmospheres: N2, O2, air, water vapor, CO2, and Ar. Thermal oxidation tests revealed that the reaction between boron and O2 dominates in an air atmosphere, while boron can still react with N2 in air to form granular boron nitride. Laser-induced heating resulted in ejection phenomena occurring in boron agglomerates when subjected to N2, air, water vapor, Ar, or O2 atmospheres, with the O2 atmosphere being the most conducive, exhibiting an average of 47 occurrences for individual agglomerates. The ejection process and frequency were found to be comparable in the air, Ar, and water vapor atmospheres, with an average ejection frequency ranging from 7 to 11 times. Although the ejection phenomenon occurred in the N2 atmosphere, its frequency was low, with an average of only two occurrences. Agglomerates underwent significant expansion before ejection, while single-particle boron did not exhibit ejection or expansion in any of these atmospheres. The highest surface temperatures of boron agglomerates upon laser heating in air, water vapor, N2, and Ar atmospheres were 2697.7 K, 2416.2 K, 2408.9 K, and 2392.1 K, respectively. Analysis of condensed-phase heating products revealed that boron agglomerates reacted with N2 or CO2 to form boron nitride or boron carbide, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, studies on the relationship between endogenous phytohormones and growth and development of macroalgae are still lacking. In this study liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC–MS) was used to investigate the temporal and spatial changes of the types and contents of major endogenous plant hormones in Sargassum fusiforme holdfasts during the juvenile's regeneration. The results showed that six endogenous hormones or hormone precursor substances including auxins (Aux/IAA), gibberellins (GAs), isopentenyl adenine (2-iP), 1-aminocyclopropanecarboxylic acid (ACC), salicylic acid (SA) and dihydrojasmonic acid (DHJA) were detected at different temporal change and in different parts of S. fusiforme holdfasts and the regenerated juveniles. The contents of Aux/IAA, 2- iP, ACC, SA and DHJA decreased gradually from non-regenerated (NG) to initial regeneration (IG) of juveniles. From the perspective of spatial distribution, among the leaves (SL), stems (SS) and new holdfast filaments (SR) of the regenerated juvenile, Aux/IAA and GAs contents were the highest in SL and the lowest in SR, while the contents of DHJA and SA were the opposite. The endogenous hormones during the regeneration of juveniles from holdfasts had dynamic pattern of temporal and spatial changes. When compared with other brown algae by the clustering analysis, it was found that the regenerated juveniles had a higher Aux/IAA and SA contents, while the gibberellin (GA3) content varied greatly. This may be the potential cause of regeneration of juveniles from S. fusiforme holdfasts. This study lays the foundation for the study of hormone regulation mechanism during the regeneration of juveniles from S. fusiforme holdfasts and provides a theoretical basis for S. fusiforme holdfasts seedlings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Real-time online identification of spacecraft segment damage is of great significance for realizing spacecraft structural health monitoring and life prediction. In this paper, a damage response characteristic field inversion algorithm based on the differential reconstruction of strain response is proposed to solve the problem of not being able to recognize the small damages of spacecraft structure directly by the strain response alone. Four crack damage location identification methods based on vector norm computation are proposed, which realize online identification and precise location of structural damage events without external excitation by means of spacecraft structural working loads only. A spacecraft segment structural damage monitoring system based on fiber optic grating sensors was constructed, and the average error of damage localization based on the curvature vector 2 norm calculation was 2.58 mm, and the root-mean-square error was 1.98 mm. The results show that the method has superior engineering applicability for on-orbit service environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Zhejiang University: Science A is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Engineering Taq DNA polymerase (TaqPol) for improved activity, stability and sensitivity was critical for its wide applications. Multiple sequence alignment (MSA) has been widely used in engineering enzymes for improved properties. Here, we first designed TaqPol mutations based on MSA of 2756 sequences from both thermophilic and non-thermophilic organisms. Two double mutations were generated including a variant H676F/R677G showing a decrease in both activity and stability, and a variant Y686R/E687K showing an improved activity, but a decreased stability. Mutations targeted on coevolutionary residues of Arg677 and Tyr686 were then applied to rescue stability or activity loss of the double mutants, which achieved a partial success. Sequence analysis revealed that the two mutations are abundant in non-thermophilic sequences but not in thermophilic homologues. Then, a small-scale MSA containing sequences from only thermophilic organisms was applied to predict 13 single variants and two of them, E507Q and E734N showed a simultaneous increase in both stability and activity, even in sensitivity. A customized MSA was hence more effective in engineering a thermophilic enzyme and could be used in engineering other enzymes. Molecular dynamics simulations revealed the impact of mutations on the protein dynamics and interactions between TaqPol and substrates. Key points: • The pool of sequence for alignment is critical to engineering Taq DNA polymerase. • The variants with low properties can be rescued by mutations in coevolving network. • Improving binding with DNA can improve DNA polymerase stability and activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There is limited knowledge on the yield of performing capture-based targeted ultradeep sequencing on bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) specimens from advanced nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. This study aimed to evaluate gene variations and performance characteristics in BAL and tissue specimens using targeted sequencing. Methods: This cohort study retrospectively enrolled 20 patients with advanced NSCLC. The variant detection percentage, correlation of tumor mutation burden (TMB), and allele frequency heterogeneity (AFH) were compared between paired BAL and tissue samples. A three-tiered system was also applied for the interpretation of gene variants according to the guidelines. Results: No statistical difference was observed in variant detection between BAL and tissue samples (P =.591 for variant tier and P =.409 for variant type). In general, BAL achieved higher detection rates in tier I variants (96.2% vs 84.6%) and gene fusions (75% vs 50%) compared with tissue samples; tissue samples had better variants detection rates for other variants, such as tier II (89.6% vs 76.0%), tier III (87.1% vs 72.6%), single nucleotide variant (SNV, 89.6% vs 76.5%), insertion/deletion/duplication (InDel, 74.6% vs 69.8%) and copy number variation (CNV, 93.8% vs 43.8%). Besides, there were significant correlations of TMB (R 2 = 0.96, P <.001) and AFH (R 2 = 0.87, P <.001) between BALs and paired tissues. Conclusions: The findings demonstrate that BAL may serve as a supplement in liquid biopsy for mutation detection and for routine utilization in clinical settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macroalgae provide food for microbial, meio- and macro-faunal communities in coastal ecosystems, thus mediating nutrient dynamics and functions in these ecosystems. Because of this vital role, it is important to clarify physiological information about macroalgae as it reflects their growth potential in the field. In this study, we examined the biomass, pigment content, and photosynthetic O2 evolution rate versus irradiance curves of 18 macroalgal species from the intertidal zone of the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area, China, and investigated their photosynthetic patterns in relation to phyla characteristics, morphology, and growth locations. The results showed that green algae had the highest maximum photosynthetic O2 evolution rate (Pmax), light utilization efficiency (α), and dark respiration (Rd) among the three macroalgal phyla; the sheet-like macroalgal species had the highest Pmax, α, and Rd among the four morphological categories. The macroalgal species in the upper intertidal zone showed higher Pmax and α and lower saturation irradiance (EK) and compensation irradiance (EC) than those species in the lower intertidal location. The PCA results showed that the biomass of sheet-like macroalgal species was positively correlated with factor PC1 (50.34%), and that of finely branched species was negatively correlated with factor PC2 (25.17%). In addition, our results indicate that the light absorption and utilization capabilities of macroalgae could determine whether they could dominate the intertidal zone and that their photosynthetic characteristics could be used as a potential indicator of their biomass distribution in the Greater Bay Area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cysteinyl‐tRNA synthetase (CysRS) catalyzes the aminoacylation reaction of cysteine to its cognate tRNACys in the first step of protein translation. It is found that CysRS is different from other aaRSs as it transfers cysteine without the need for an editing reaction, which is not applicable in the case of serine despite the similarity in their structures. Surprisingly, the reasons why CysRS has high amino acid specificity are not clear yet. In this research, the binding configurations of Cys‐AMP and its near‐cognate amino acid Ser‐AMP with CysRS are compared by Molecular Dynamics (MD). The results reveal that CysRS screens the substrate Cys‐AMP to a certain extent in the process of combination and recognition, thus providing a guarantee for the high selectivity of the next reaction. While Ser‐AMP is in a folded state in CysRS. In the meanwhile, the interaction between Cys‐AMP and Zn963 in CysRS is much stronger than Ser‐AMP. The substrate‐assisted aminoacylation mechanism in CysRS is also explored by Quantum Mechanics/Molecular Mechanics (QM/MM) modeling. According to the QM/MM potential energies, the energy barrier of TSCys‐AMP is 91.75 kJ/mol, while that of TSSer‐AMP is close to 150 kJ/mol. Based on thermochemistry calculations, it is found that the product of Cys‐AMP is more stable than the reactant. In contrast, Ser‐AMP has a reactant that is more stable than its product. As a result, it reflects that the specificity of CysRS originates from both the kinetic and thermodynamical perspectives of the reaction. Our investigations demonstrate comprehensively on how CysRS recognizes and catalyzes the substrate Cys‐AMP, hoping to provide some guidance for researchers in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Streptomyces is well known for synthesis of many biologically active secondary metabolites, such as polyketides and non‐ribosomal peptides. Understanding the coupling mechanisms of primary and secondary metabolism can help develop strategies to improve secondary metabolite production in Streptomyces. In this work, Streptomyces albus ZD11, an oil‐preferring industrial Streptomyces strain, was proved to have a remarkable capability to generate abundant acyl‐CoA precursors for salinomycin biosynthesis with the aid of its enhanced β‐oxidation pathway. It was found that the salinomycin biosynthetic gene cluster contains a predicted 3‐hydroxyacyl‐CoA dehydrogenase (FadB3), which is the third enzyme of β‐oxidation cycle. Deletion of fadB3 significantly reduced the production of salinomycin. A variety of experimental evidences showed that FadB3 was mainly involved in the β‐oxidation pathway rather than ethylmalonyl‐CoA biosynthesis and played a very important role in regulating the rate of β‐oxidation in S. albus ZD11. Our findings elucidate an interesting coupling mechanism by which a PKS biosynthetic gene cluster could regulate the β‐oxidation pathway by carrying β‐oxidation genes, enabling Streptomyces to efficiently synthesize target polyketides and economically utilize environmental nutrients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This correction notice addresses two errors in the original article titled "X chromosome rearrangement associated with premature ovarian insufficiency as diagnosed by molecular cytogenetic methods: a case report and review of the literature." The first error is in the Abstract, where the sentence describing the chromosome rearrangement is corrected to state that there is heterozygosity duplication on the short arm and heterozygosity deletion on the long arm. The second error is in the discussion, where the breakpoint for the loss of heterozygosity on the X chromosome is corrected to be on the long arm, not the short arm. The correction notice is provided by the authors and includes the names of the authors involved in the study. Springer Nature, the publisher, remains neutral regarding jurisdictional claims and institutional affiliations. [Extracted from the article]

The 4d and 5d transition metal oxides have exhibited a wide spectrum of attracting phenomena. Here, we demonstrate modulations on crystal structure, electrical properties, and spin-orbit couplings (SOCs) in perovskite CaIr1−xRuxO3 (CIRO, 0 ≤ x ≤ 1) thin films. First, all our coherently-grown CIRO films exhibit the orthorhombic perovskite structure, of which the orthorhombicity is tuned by the doping level x. This is different from the post-perovskite structure that is usually observed in the bulk CaIrO3. Second, the metal-semiconductor transition in the perovskite CIRO layers is triggered by changing either the doping level or the layer thickness. Our data suggest the important roles of SOC and disorders in determining the electrical properties in perovskite CIRO layers. Third, the sign reversal of Hall coefficient in CIRO films reveals the complex evolution of electronic structure depending on x and temperature, suggesting the perovskite CIRO films as a new accessible platform for investigating rich physics in 4d and 5d transition metal oxides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to bring the diverse functionalities of transition metal oxides into modern electronics, it is imperative to integrate oxide films with controllable properties onto the silicon platform. Here, we present asymmetric LaMnO3/BaTiO3/SrTiO3 superlattices fabricated on silicon with layer thickness control at the unit-cell level. By harnessing the coherent strain between the constituent layers, we overcome the biaxial thermal tension from silicon and stabilize c-axis oriented BaTiO3 layers with substantially enhanced tetragonality, as revealed by atomically resolved scanning transmission electron microscopy. Optical second harmonic generation measurements signify a predominant out-of-plane polarized state with strongly enhanced net polarization in the tricolor superlattices, as compared to the BaTiO3 single film and conventional BaTiO3/SrTiO3 superlattice grown on silicon. Meanwhile, this coherent strain in turn suppresses the magnetism of LaMnO3 as the thickness of BaTiO3 increases. Our study raises the prospect of designing artificial oxide superlattices on silicon with tailored functionalities. Integrating multifunctional oxides on silicon is highly desirable. Here, the authors present asymmetric BaTiO3 superlattices on silicon exhibiting enhanced out-of-plane polarization by harnessing the interfacial strain and broken inversion symmetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The state-of-the-art water-in-salt electrolytes exhibit a wider electrochemical window than conventional dilute aqueous electrolytes. However, the extended electrochemical stability window via increasing the salt concentration has reached a bottleneck. An alternative approach is to effectively suppress H2O activity using multi-functional components. Here, we design an isolated water-in-salt solvation structure in aqueous electrolytes with the "hydrotropic" ionic liquid 1-methyl-1-propylpiperidinium bis(fluorosulfonyl)imide (PP13FSI). The addition of PP13FSI suppresses H2O clusters via the hydrophobic PP13+ cations and lithium-philic FSI− anions, showing a greatly extended electrochemical stability window up to 4.9 V. A robust alkaline-based organic–inorganic hybrid solid electrolyte interface is achieved on a low-voltage Li4Ti5O12 anode, which further extends kinetics stability of aqueous electrolytes. Aqueous Li4Ti5O12‖LiMn2O4 full cells demonstrate stable cycling over 1000 cycles at 2C rate and a capacity retention of 70% with an average coulombic efficiency of 99.7%. This work provides new avenues to explore effective approaches for the development of next-generation highly stable aqueous lithium-ion batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earth observation systems play important roles in many critical applications. The rapid increase of the number of satellites and their sensing capability, however, makes it challenging to send the massive amount of observed data back to the Earth. One promising direction to enhance the earth observation throughput is to use inter-satellite communication. Towards this, we identify two key design factors: 1) the capability to support on-demand scheduling of inter-satellite communication; and 2) the capability to co-optimize the scheduling of observation and transmission missions. For both, rigorous study is needed to determine whether they provide sufficient throughput gain to justify their additional complexity. Our work formulates a generic earth observation and transmission problem to study the maximum network throughput under different settings. By succinctly modeling the different constraints using a generalized time-varying graph representation, we can efficiently find the optimal scheduling solutions. We conduct an extensive study, which shows that using 40 relay satellites from the “starlink” constellation can increase the throughput of 10 sensing satellites from the “Gaofen” constellation by more than 400%. In particular, on-demand scheduling under heavy load and co-optimization of observation/transmission under light but time-critical load can improve the throughput by more than 180% and 100%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing electrode thickness can substantially enhance the specific energy of lithium‐ion batteries; however, ionic transport, electronic conductivity, and ink rheology are current barriers to adoption. Here, a novel approach using a mixed xanthan gum and locust bean gum binder to construct ultra‐thick electrodes is proposed to address above issues. After combining aqueous binder with single‐walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT), active material (LiNi0.8Co0.1Mn0.1O2) and subsequent vacuum freeze‐drying, highly aligned, and low‐tortuosity structures with a porosity of ca. 50% can be achieved with an average pore size of 10 μm, whereby the gum binder‐SWCNT‐NMC811 forms vertical structures supported by tissue‐like binder/SWCNT networks allowing for excellent electronic conducting phase percolation. As a result, ultra‐thick electrodes with a mass loading of about 511 mg cm−2 and 99.5 wt% active materials have been demonstrated with a remarkable areal capacity of 79.3 mAh cm−2, which is the highest value reported so far. This represents a >25× improvement compared with conventional electrodes with an areal capacity of about 3 mAh cm−2. This route also can be expanded to other electrode materials, such as LiFePO4 and Li4Ti5O12, and thus opens the possibility for low‐cost and sustainable ultra‐thick electrodes with increased specific energy for future lithium‐ion batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech separation is the key to many speech backend tasks, like multi-speaker speech recognition. In recent years, with the development and aid of deep learning technology, many single-channel speech separation models have shown good performance in weak reverberant environment. However, with the presence of reverberation, the multi-channel speech separation model still has greater advantages. Among them, the deep neural network (DNN) based beamformers (also known as neural beamformers) have achieved significant improvements in separation quality. The current neural beamformers can't jointly optimize beamforming layers and DNN layers when using the prior knowledge of the existing beamforming algorithms, which may make the model unable to obtain the optimal separation performance. In order to solve this problem, this paper employs a set of beamformers that uniformly sample the space as a learning module in the neural network, and the initial values of their coefficients are determined by the existing maximum directivity factor (DF) beamformer. Furthermore, to obtain beam representations of source signals when their directions are unknown, a cross-attention mechanism is introduced. The experimental results show that in the separation task with reverberation, the proposed method has better performance than the current state-of-the-art temporal neural beamformer filter-and-sum network (FasNet) and several mainstream multi-channel speech separation approaches in terms of scale-invariant signal-to-noise ratio (SI-SNR), perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) and short-time objective intelligibility measure (STOI). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Alcohol-related liver disease (ALD) is a major chronic liver ailment caused by alcohol overconsumption and abuse. Apolipoprotein H (APOH) participates in lipid metabolism and might have a potential regulatory role in ALD. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the effects of ApoH on alcohol-induced liver injury and gut microbiota dysbiosis. Methods: ApoH−/− mice were generated and the synergic alcoholic steatohepatitis mouse model was constructed, which were used to assess liver function and pathological changes. Results: ApoH−/− mice clearly exhibited spontaneous steatohepatitis. Severe hepatic steatosis was observed in alcohol-fed WT and ApoH−/− mice, in which ApoH expression was reduced post alcohol consumption. Moreover, RNA-seq and KEGG pathway analyses indicated that differential expression genes enriched in lipid metabolism and oxidation–reduction process between in alcohol-fed ApoH−/− mice and pair-fed control mice. Finally, gut microbiota diversity and composition were assessed by 16S rRNA Illumina next-generation sequencing. Alpha diversity of enterobacteria was lower in ApoH−/− mice with ethanol feeding than in ethanol-fed WT mice and all control-fed mice (P < 0.05). Moreover, KEGG enrichment analysis, using PICRUSt software, revealed that metabolic functions were activated in the gut microorganisms of ApoH−/− mice with ethanol feeding (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Alcohol-downregulated ApoH expression, leading to the progress of fatty liver disease and gut microbiota dysbiosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For estuaries, inland lakes play a vital role in the ecological balance under the impact of tides. The effect of tides-induced water exchange on phytoplankton community in a semi-closed lake was studied and compared with that of an adjacent closed lake in the Oujiang River mouth in Zhejiang, East China Sea, from June 29, 2020 to June 14, 2021. Results show that the dominant species, abundance, dominance, and diversity of the phytoplankton species between the two lakes were significantly different. In the closed lake, cyanobacteria were the dominant species during the study period. However, in the semi-closed lake, the diversification of the dominant species was greater, and some species of diatoms and green algae became dominant. The average phytoplankton abundance in the closed lake was 6 times of that in the semi-closed lake. The average dominance of cyanobacteria in the closed lake was 0.96, and those in the semi-closed lake and the Oujiang River were 0.51 and 0.22, respectively. Cyanobacterial blooms occurred throughout the study time in the closed lake but not in the semi-closed one. Furthermore, the species diversity richness of the phytoplankton in the semi-closed lake was higher than that of the closed one, and the phytoplankton community between the closed lake and semi-closed lake could be divided into distinctly different groups based on non-metric multidimensional scaling analysis (NMDS) and analysis of similarities (ANOSIM) analysis. The salinity of the water was significantly greater and the transparency significantly smaller in the semi-closed lake than those in the closed lake. Therefore, water exchange driven by local tidal movement increased salinity and decreased transparency of water, which consequently shaped the community structures of different phytoplankton and reduced the risk of a cyanobacterial bloom outbreak in the semi-closed lake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The defects in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) can dramatically alter their pore structure and chemical properties. However, it has been a great challenge to characterize the molecular structure of defects, especially when the defects are distributed irregularly in the lattice. In this work, we applied a characterization strategy based on solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to assess the chemistry of defects. This strategy takes advantage of the coordination-sensitive phosphorus probe molecules, e.g., trimethylphosphine (TMP) and trimethylphosphine oxide (TMPO), that can distinguish the subtle differences in the acidity of defects. A variety of local chemical environments have been identified in defective and ideal MOF lattices. The geometric dimension of defects can also be evaluated by using the homologs of probe molecules with different sizes. In addition, our method provides a reliable way to quantify the density of defect sites, which comes together with the molecular details of local pore environments. The comprehensive solid-state NMR strategy can be of great value for a better understanding of MOF structures and for guiding the design of MOFs with desired catalytic or adsorption properties. Defects in porous materials can alter the pore structure and chemical properties. Here authors demonstrate an approach for studying defects in metal-organic frameworks using 31P NMR and probe molecules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading comprehension is an important language learning skill. In English class, we should pay attention to cultivating students' reading comprehension ability to help students improve their reading comprehension ability. The application of language service products of artificial intelligence has brought great challenges and opportunities to language teaching. This research starts from the current situation of the teaching mode of English language and literature reading under the background of artificial intelligence. The following four questions are mainly studied. Can the multimodal oral teaching model improve students' oral English performance? Has the students' spoken English improved in the three aspects of language content, language accuracy, and pronunciation and intonation? Does multimodal oral teaching have a positive impact on students' attitudes towards oral learning? How can students improve their English writing? This study uses two research methods, experimental research and questionnaire survey, to explore the above research questions through a 16-week multimodal oral teaching experiment. The subjects of the experiment were 61 non-English majors in two parallel classes in the first year of a university in Xi'an. The experiment is divided into three phases: pretest of oral test, implementation of multimodal oral teaching, and posttest of oral test. The experiment proved that most students (about 67.35%) did not show much interest in reading and writing in English. Only a few students (12.24%) like to read and write. It shows that after accepting the multimodal teaching experiment, the students' oral English scores have been significantly improved, which is reflected in the language accuracy, pronunciation intonation, and language content. The students' oral English learning attitude is positive after the multimodal oral teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address the issues of insufficient danger excavation and long data collection period in traditional traffic risk assessment methods, this paper proposes a risk assessment method based on driver's improper driving behavior and abnormal vehicle state warning data. Meanwhile, this paper analyses the built environment's impact on traffic risk using the spatial econometric model. Firstly, a risk assessment system with the relative incidence of driver's improper driving behavior (eye closure, yawn, and looking away) and abnormal vehicle state (rapid acceleration, rapid deceleration, and lane departure) warnings as assessment indicators is constructed. Then, the risk responsibility weights of each warning type were determined using the entropy weight method. The risk classification thresholds were determined based on the Gaussian Mixture Model algorithm. Finally, a spatial econometric model was used to quantify the impact of built environment factors characterized by Point of Interest (POI) data on regional traffic risk, with the results of risk class classification as the dependent variable. The data of bus vehicle warnings in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, are employed as an example for validation. The geographic cell of 1 km × 1 km scale is applied as the basic risk assessment unit. The results show that the optimal risk classification threshold for road traffic risk levels I and II is 1.92, the accuracy rate of class classification is 79.3%; the optimal risk classification threshold for levels II and III is 0.75, and the accuracy rate of class classification is 83.4%. The number of residential areas, Point of Interest (POI) mixing degree, and bus stops were significantly and positively correlated with transit traffic risk. The study results provide references for developing customized accident prevention measures and the appropriate setting of urban supporting facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. CLK2 is a splicing regulator and expressed ubiquitously in various malignancies. The study is aimed at exploring the potential roles of CLK2 in the development of colorectal cancer (CRC). Methods. Real-time PCR and analyses of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Human Protein Atlas (HPA) database were utilized to evaluate the CLK2 gene transcription level and protein level of colorectal cancer (CRC) tissue. The chi-squared and logistic regression tests were used to evaluate the relationship between CLK2 and clinicopathologic features. Kaplan-Meier survival curve and Cox regression analysis were performed to explore the prognostic significance of CLK2. The association between CLK2 expression and immune landscapes was explored by CIBERSORT and ESTIMATE. Furthermore, GSEA (Gene Set Enrichment Analysis) and alternative splicing (AS) analyses were performed to investigate the relationship between CLK2 expression and downstream signaling pathway. Results. The CLK2 expression was upregulated in CRC in both transcript and protein level. The elevated expression of CLK2 was correlated with local invasion and poor prognosis. Furthermore, CLK2 induced tumor cell adhesion and thereby promotes local invasion of CRC. The CLK2 expression significantly inhibited plasma cells and eosinophil infiltration and showed no relationship with immune and stromal scores of CRC samples. CLK2 might involve in Notch signaling pathway by regulating the AS of CTBP1. Conclusions. CLK2 might be a potential prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target for colorectal cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The state-of-the-art digital signatures incur undesirable delays, hence are impractical for time-stringent Industrial Control Systems (ICSs). The recent revision to IEC 62351–6 standard stepped back from digital signatures in favor of symmetric key based solutions, thereby sacrificing key properties, e.g., scaling well for multiple destinations, easy key distribution and management, public verifiability, and non-repudiation. Inspired by the Online/Offline signatures, this paper presents a new digital signature model to provide the key properties of digital signatures within the delay requirements, hinting that this step back can be avoided. The Online/Offline signatures concept divides the signature generation into two phases; offline (before the message is given), online (using the outputs of the former for faster signing after the message is given). The conventional solutions following this concept potentially reduce the delay, yet do not meet IEC 61850 delay requirements as they still involve expensive operations in the online phase, and their offline phase hinders throughput. This paper introduces Less-online/More-offline Signatures (LoMoS) to enable minimal end-to-end delay and high message throughput. LoMoS entails avoiding expensive operations entirely during the online phase. We present a construction that converts any digital signature scheme into LoMoS, retains its properties, and unlike existing solutions, benefits from shorter messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sargassum fusiforme is often adversely affected by epiphytic algae during its cultivation. However, the biological differences between S. fusiforme and the epiphytic algae have not yet been elucidated detrimental to the management of S. fusiforme culture. In this study, we sampled S. fusiforme and main epiphytic algae Ulva lactuca in a marine culture cycle and compared their biological characteristics. It indicated that, except during low‐temperature months (January and March), the photosynthetic electron activity of U. lactuca were generally higher than S. fusiforme. The nitrogen uptake rates of S. fusiforme and U. lactuca were all significantly higher in the earlier growth stage than other stages. In most cases, the nitrogen uptake and utilization of U. lactuca was higher than those of S. fusiforme. Although S. fusiforme absorbed more trace elements, U. lactuca had relatively strong photosynthesis and nutrient absorption performance; thus, the latter accumulated more soluble carbohydrate and protein and may have stress effect on S. fusiforme. This study will be helpful for understanding the differences in the biological characteristics of economic seaweed and its epiphytic macroalgae and provides a reference for the friendly management and healthy development of seaweed cultivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the catalytic pyrolysis integrating combined pretreatment (acid washing and torrefaction) and dual catalysts was adopted to improve the quality of bio-oil and the selectivity of aromatic hydrocarbons. Combined pretreatment is a highly effective method to improve the quality of biomass feedstock. It was capable of the removal of alkali and alkaline earth metals from wheat straw, with a K removal rate of 97.79 %. Under the combined pretreatment, the aromatic hydrocarbon content in bio-oil increased to 68.8 % using the ZSM-5 catalyst alone. Compared with ZSM-5, CaO could remove part of the oxygenated functional groups and had a better acid removal effect, but the aromatic hydrocarbon yield was low to 7.95 %. After combined pretreatment using simulated aqueous phase bio-oil for acid washing, catalytic pyrolysis using CaO/ZSM-5 dual catalysts greatly enhanced the quality of the bio-oil. The oxygenated compounds content was reduced to 17.58 %, and the total hydrocarbon yield was increased to 82.42 %, especially the aromatic hydrocarbons yield was increased to 79.91 %, of which the monocyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were as high as 68.38 %, and the benzene, toluene, and xylene content reaching 49.39 %. Thus, integrating dual catalysts (CaO/ZSM-5) with combined pretreatment can effectively increase the aromatic yield for producing high-quality bio-oil. • Combined pretreatments with dual catalysis increased the aromatic hydrocarbon yield to 82.42%. • Acid washing with simulated aqueous phase bio-oil removed K up to 98.77%. • ZSM-5 catalyst increased the aromatization rate of pyrolysis products in bio-oil. • CaO enhances deoxygenation and improves bio-oil stability. • These above factors have synergistic promotion effects on the generation of aromatic hydrocarbons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moisture is a crucial quality property for granules in fluidized bed granulation (FBG) and accurate prediction of the granule moisture is significant for decision making. This study proposed a novel stacking ensemble method to predict the granule moisture based on granulation process parameters. The proposed method employed k-nearest neighbor (KNN), random forest (RF), light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM) and deep neural networks (DNNs) as the base learners, and ridge regression (RR) as the meta learner. To improve the diversity of the base learners, perturbations of the input variables and network structures were adopted in the proposed method, implemented by feature construction and combination of multiple DNNs with a different number of hidden layers, respectively. In the feature construction, a SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) approach was innovatively utilized to construct effective synthetic features, which enhanced the prediction performance of the base learners. The cross-validation results demonstrated that the proposed stacking ensemble method outperformed other machine learning (ML) algorithms in terms of performance evaluation criteria, for which the parameters MAE, MAPE, RMSE, and Adj. R2 were 0.0596, 1.5819, 0.0844, and 0.99485, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Profiling of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in the bloodstream shows promise for noninvasive cancer detection. Chromatin fragmentation features have previously been explored to infer gene expression profiles from cell-free DNA (cfDNA), but current fragmentomic methods require high concentrations of tumor-derived DNA and provide limited resolution. Here we describe promoter fragmentation entropy as an epigenomic cfDNA feature that predicts RNA expression levels at individual genes. We developed 'epigenetic expression inference from cell-free DNA-sequencing' (EPIC-seq), a method that uses targeted sequencing of promoters of genes of interest. Profiling 329 blood samples from 201 patients with cancer and 87 healthy adults, we demonstrate classification of subtypes of lung carcinoma and diffuse large B cell lymphoma. Applying EPIC-seq to serial blood samples from patients treated with PD-(L)1 immune-checkpoint inhibitors, we show that gene expression profiles inferred by EPIC-seq are correlated with clinical response. Our results indicate that EPIC-seq could enable noninvasive, high-throughput tissue-of-origin characterization with diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic potential. EPIC-seq predicts expression of individual genes from cell-free DNA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim. To identify novel mutations in keratoconus (KC) susceptibility genes in the Chinese Han population. Methods. A total of fifty-two patients with primary KC were recruited. Blood samples were collected, and genomic DNA was isolated from peripheral blood leukocytes. The entire coding region, intron-exon junctions, and promoter regions of sixteen known KC susceptibility genes were screened with next-generation sequencing technology. All identified variants were further confirmed using the Sanger sequencing technology. The Sorting Intolerant from Tolerant (SIFT), MutationTaster, and PolyPhen 2 programs were used to predict the effect of amino acid substitution on protein. Results. After removing twelve known SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) and three variants predicted to be harmless, nine novel mutations were identified in eight of the fifty-two patients, including c.455C > T:p.P152L in FNDC3B; c.3636_3637del:p.R1212fs in COL4A4; c.5015G > T:p.R1672L, c.3798dupA:p.P1267fs, and c.28G > A:p.A10T in MPDZ; c.1940C > T:p.P647L in DOCK9; c.127_128insGGC:p.Q43delinsRQ in POLG; c.3019G > A:p.V1007I in IPO5; and c.624 + 7− > A in TGFBI. All nine mutations in the patients with KC were heterozygote. Conclusion. This study enlarged the gene profile of KC and should be further confirmed by well-powered, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of Han Chinese patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]