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To better understand RNA-binding proteins in rice, a comprehensive investigation was conducted on the RRM1 gene family of rice. It encompassed genome-wide identification and exploration of its role in rice blast resistance. The physicochemical properties of the rice OsRRM1 gene family were analyzed. There genes were also analyzed for their conserved domains, motifs, location information, gene structure, phylogenetic trees, collinearity, and cis-acting elements. Furthermore, alterations in the expression patterns of selected OsRRM1 genes were assessed using quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). A total of 212 members of the OsRRM1 gene family were identified, which were dispersed across 12 chromosomes. These genes all exhibit multiple exons and introns, all of which encompass the conserved RRM1 domain and share analogous motifs. This observation suggests a high degree of conservation within the encoded sequence domain of these genes. Phylogenetic analysis revealed the existence of five subfamilies within the OsRRM1 gene family. Furthermore, investigation of the promoter region identified cis-regulatory elements that are involved in nucleic acid binding and interaction with multiple transcription factors. By employing GO and KEGG analyses, four RRM1 genes were tentatively identified as crucial contributors to plant immunity, while the RRM1 gene family was also found to have a significant involvement in the complex of alternative splicing. The qRT-PCR results revealed distinct temporal changes in the expression patterns of OsRRM1 genes following rice blast infection. Additionally, gene expression analysis indicates that the majority of OsRRM1 genes exhibited constitutive expressions. These findings enrich our understanding of the OsRRM1 gene family. They also provide a foundation for further research on immune mechanisms rice and the management of rice blast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Alternative polyadenylation (APA) is an important pattern of post-transcriptional regulation of genes widely existing in eukaryotes, involving plant physiological and pathological processes. However, there is a dearth of studies investigating the role of APA profile in rice leaf blight. Results: In this study, we compared the APA profile of leaf blight-susceptible varieties (CT 9737-613P-M) and resistant varieties (NSIC RC154) following bacterial blight infection. Through gene enrichment analysis, we found that the genes of two varieties typically exhibited distal poly(A) (PA) sites that play different roles in two kinds of rice, indicating differential APA regulatory mechanisms. In this process, many disease-resistance genes displayed multiple transcripts via APA. Moreover, we also found five polyadenylation factors of similar expression patterns of rice, highlighting the critical roles of these five factors in rice response to leaf blight about PA locus diversity. Conclusion: Notably, the present study provides the first dynamic changes of APA in rice in early response to biotic stresses and proposes a possible functional conjecture of APA in plant immune response, which lays the theoretical foundation for in-depth determination of the role of APA events in plant stress response and other life processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) actin fiber-associated protein-1 antisense RNA 1 (AFAP1-AS1) exerted oncogenic activity in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). We designed this study and conducted it to investigate the upstream regulation mechanism of AFAP1-AS1 in TNBC tumorigenesis. In this work, we proved the localization of AFAP1-AS1 in the cytoplasm. We elucidated the mechanism by which the transcription factor specificity protein 1 (SP1) modulated AFAP1-AS1 in TNBC progression, which has yet to be thoroughly studied. Dual luciferase reporter assay and chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assay revealed a strong affinity of SP1 toward the promoter regions P3 of AFAP1-AS1, proving the gene expression regulation of AFAP1-AS1 via SP1 in TNBC. Additionally, SP1 could facilitate the tumorigenesis of TNBC cells in vitro and in vivo by regulating the AFAP1-AS1 expression. Furthermore, silenced AFAP1-AS1 suppressed the expression of genes in the mTOR pathway, such as eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4B (EIF4B), mitogen-activated protein kinase-associated protein 1 (MAPKAP1), SEH1-like nucleoporin (SEH1L), serum/glucocorticoid regulated kinase 1 (SGK1), and its target NEDD4-like E3 ubiquitin protein ligase (NEDD4L), and promoted the gene expression of s-phase kinase-associated protein 2 (SKP2). Overall, this study emphasized the oncogenic role of SP1 and AFAP1-AS1 in TNBC and illustrated the AFAP1-AS1 upstream interaction with SP1 and the downstream modulatory of mTOR signaling, thus offering insights into the tumorigenesis mechanism in TNBC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a high-performance application of low-temperature superconductivity, superconducting single-flux-quantum (SFQ) circuits have high speed and low-power consumption characteristics, which have recently received extensive attention, especially in the field of neural network inference accelerations. Despite these promising advantages, they are still limited by storage capacity and manufacture reliability, making them unfriendly for feedback loops and very large-scale circuits. The Binarized Neural Network (BNN), with minimal memory requirements and no reliance on multiplication, is undoubtedly an attractive candidate for implementing inference hardware using SFQ circuits. This work presents the first SFQ-based Binarized Neural Network inference accelerator, namely JBNN, with a new representation to binarize weights and activation variables. Every SFQ gate is essentially a pipeline stage, making conventional design methods of the accumulator unsuitable for SFQ circuits. So an SFQ-based accumulative parallel counter using SFQ logic cells including T1, OR, and AND is designed to realize the accumulation, where the data size is reduced to a quarter after passing the XNOR column and the AU layer, largely declining the hardware cost. Our evaluation shows that the proposed design outperforms a cryogenic CMOS-based BNN accelerator design running at 77K by 70.92 times while maintaining 97.89% accuracy on the MNIST benchmark dataset. Without the cooling cost, the power efficiency increases up to 929.18 times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore the intervention effect of traditional Chinese medicine hot pressing combined with health education in adolescents with asthenopia, 92 adolescents with asthenopia admitted to the outpatient department of Guangming Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital in Pudong New Area from October 2019 to January 2021 were selected and randomly divided into two groups: the control group and the test group, each with 46 cases. Both received health education. The control group was given sodium hyaluronate eye drops, and the test group was given traditional Chinese medicine hot ironing technique intervention. After 2 courses of treatment, the scores of visual fatigue symptoms, clinical curative effect, and eye refractive power of the two groups were observed. The satisfaction of treatment was compared between the two groups. The scores of asthenopia of the two groups were compared at 6 months after intervention. After the intervention, the scores of visual fatigue symptoms in the control group and the test group were reduced after one or two courses of treatment (control group: t = 4.167, 6.318, and P = 0.027 , 0.010; test group: t = 4.820, 6.834, and P = 0.013 , <0.001). The scores of asthenopia symptoms of the trial group after the intervention for one and two courses were significantly lower than those of the control group P < 0.05 ; the total clinical effective rate of the trial group was 93.48%, which was significantly higher than that of the control group (80.43%). The difference between the groups was statistically significant P < 0.05 ; the left and right eyes of the control group did not change significantly before and after the intervention P > 0.05 . After the intervention, the left and right eyes of the paper group were significantly reduced P < 0.05 . After the intervention, the difference of the two groups in the refractive power of the left and right eyes was statistically significant P < 0.05 . After treatment, the satisfaction of the experimental group was significantly higher than that of the control group P < 0.05 . After 6 months, there was no significant change in the visual fatigue score of the experimental group, while the visual fatigue score of the control group increased significantly. The traditional Chinese medicine ironing combined with health education intervention can improve the symptoms of adolescents' asthenopia and improve the treatment efficiency. The method is safe, and the operation is convenient. It is worthy of clinical promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Patients with primary brain abscess often present with atypical symptoms, and the outcome varies. We investigated the demographic, laboratory, and neuroimaging features of patients with brain abscess at our hospital and identified factors associated with their outcomes.Methods: We retrospectively collected the data of patients diagnosed with primary brain abscess at our hospital between January 2011 and December 2020. Their clinical characteristics, predisposing factors, laboratory and neuroimaging findings, treatment, and outcome were analyzed.Results: Of the 57 patients diagnosed with primary abscess, 51 (89.47%) were older than 40 years, and 42 (73.68%) were male. Only eight patients (14.04%) showed the classical triad of headache, fever, and focal neurological deficit. Fifteen patients (26.31%) had comorbidities, of which diabetes mellitus was the most common. Positive intracranial purulent material cultures were obtained in 46.15% of the patients, and gram-negative enteric bacteria were found in 33.33% of them, with Klebsiella pneumoniae being the most frequently observed. Surgical treatment, most commonly in the form of stereotactic drainage, was received by 54.39% of the patients. Good outcomes were achieved in 75.44% of the patients. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that patients with headaches were more likely to have a poor outcome (odds ratio 6.010, 95% confidence interval 1.114-32.407, p = 0.037).Conclusions: Male patients and those older than 40 years were more susceptible to brain abscess than female patients and those younger than 40 years, respectively. Only a few patients showed the classical triad of clinical symptoms. Diabetes mellitus was the most common comorbidity. Positive intracranial specimens' culture results were uncommon, with gram-negative enteric bacteria, especially Klebsiella pneumoniae, being the main organisms found. Most patients had a good outcome, and the presence of headache may influence the outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the demand for data processing and storage increasing rapidly, the existing CMOS-based computing system is gradually unable to meet the amplification demand because of its high-power consumption. Due to high frequency and low power consumption, superconducting rapid single-flux-quantum (RSFQ) logic circuit technology is an attractive candidate. In this paper, we propose a novel placement method based on the layer layout. We layer the gates according to the logic level, which is the length of the longest path in terms of the number of clocked gates from any primary input (PI) of the circuit to the gate. Dummy gates are inserted so that any two adjacent layers can form a bipartite graph. Then the gates of each layer are reordered to minimize the half-perimeter wirelength (HPWL). Finally, the gates of each layer are assigned vertical positions to make the edges as straight as possible. The distance between adjacent layers is determined by the number of bending points of the edges between layers. We use several superconducting RSFQ logic circuits to evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed placement method, which uses HPWL and area as evaluation metrics. The experimental results show that compared with the Simulated Annealing (SA)-based placement method, the proposed approach can reduce the total HPWL and total area by an average of 77.77% and 57.56%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy consumption performance evaluation of an industrial grain dryer is an essential step to check its current status and to put forward suggestions for more effective operation. The present work proposed a combined IRCC dryer with drying capacity of 4.2 t/h that uses a novel drying technology. Moreover, the existing energy–exergy methodology was applied to evaluate the performance of the dryer on the basis of energy efficiency, heat loss characteristics, energy recovery, exergy flow and exegetic efficiency. The results demonstrated that the average drying rate of the present drying system was 1.1 gwater/gwet matter h. The energy efficiency of the whole drying system varied from 2.16% to 35.21% during the drying process. The overall recovered radiant energy and the average radiant exergy rate were 674,339.3 kJ and 3.54 kW, respectively. However, the average heat-loss rate of 3145.26 MJ/h indicated that measures should be put in place to improve its performance. Concerning the exergy aspect, the average exergy rate for dehydration was 462 kW and the exergy efficiency of the whole drying system ranged from 5.16% to 38.21%. Additionally, the exergy analysis of the components indicated that the combustion chamber should be primarily optimized among the whole drying system. The main conclusions of the present work may provide theoretical basis for the optimum design of the industrial drying process from the viewpoint of energetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uncontrollable ambient conditions are the main factors limiting the self-adaption control of an industrial drying system. To achieve the goal of accurate control of the drying process, the influence of the ambient conditions on the drying behavior should be taken into consideration when modeling the drying process. Present work introduced an industrial drying system with a loading capacity of 50 t, two artificial neural network prediction models with (IANN) and without (OANN) considering the ambient conditions were established using artificial neural network modeling approach. The ambient conditions on the moisture content (MC), exergy efficiency of the heat exchanger (ηex,h) and specific recovered radiant energy (Er) of the drying process were also investigated. The results showed that the ηex,h and Er increase with the increase of ambient temperature while the drying time decrease with the increase of the ambient temperature. The IANN model has a better prediction performance that that of OANN model. An optimal architecture of 9-2-12-3 artificial neuron network model was developed and the best prediction performance of the artificial neural network (ANN) model were found at a training epoch number of 30, and a momentum coefficient of 0.4, where the coefficient of determination of moisture content, exergy efficiency of heat exchanger, and the specific recovered radiant energy, respectively are 0.998, 0.992, and 0.980, indicating that the model has an excellent prediction performance and can be used in engineering practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a substitute of Pt-based catalysts, MoS2-based catalysts have been widely used in hydrogen evolution reaction, but the inherent low conductivity, limited active edges, self-stacking and agglomeration still hinder their activities. In this work, Mn-doped MoS2 nanosheets were vertically anchored on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by the one-step hydrothermal reaction, in which Mn–O–C/Mo–O–C was considered as a bridge between Mn-MoS2 and CNTs. The doping of the Mn element enables the spreading of MoS2 on CNTs and the rapid escape of hydrogen bubbles from the electrode, while conductive CNTs with hydrophilicity can accelerate the electron transport process between the electrolyte and the material. With an overpotential of 150 mV at a current density of −10 mA cm−2 and a Tafel slope of 39 mV dec−1, this material exhibited excellent catalytic hydrogen evolution activity, which could open the path for designing commercial electrocatalysts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Purpose: Activation of PKC-ζ is closely linked to the pathogenesis of cardiac hypertrophy. PKC-ζ can be activated by certain lipid metabolites such as phosphatidylinositol (3,4,5)-trisphosphate and ceramide. However, its endogenous negative regulators are not well defined. Here, the role of the sirtuin1-PKC-ζ signalling axis and the underlying molecular mechanisms were investigated in cardiac hypertrophy.Experimental Approach: Cellular hypertrophy in cultures of cardiac myocytes, from neonatal Sprague-Dawley rats, was monitored by measuring cell surface area and the mRNA levels of hypertrophic biomarkers. Interaction between sirtuin1 and PKC-ζ was investigated by co-immunoprecipitation and confocal immunofluorescence microscopy. Sirtuin1 activation was enhanced by resveratrol treatment or Ad-sirtuin1 transfection. A model of cardiac hypertrophy in Sprague-Dawley rats was established by abdominal aortic constriction surgery or induced by isoprenaline in vivo.Key Results: Overexpression of PKC-ζ led to cardiac hypertrophy and increased activity of NF-κB, ERK1/2 and ERK5, which was ameliorated by sirtuin1 overexpression. Enhancement of sirtuin1 activity suppressed acetylation of PKC-ζ, hindered its binding to phosphoinositide-dependent kinase 1 and inhibited PKC-ζ phosphorylation in cardiac hypertrophy. Consequently, the downstream pathways of PKC-ζ' were suppressed in cardiac hypertrophy. This regulation loop suggests a new role for sirtuin1 in mediation of cardiac hypertrophy.Conclusions and Implications: Sirtuin1 is an endogenous negative regulator for PKC-ζ and mediates its activity via regulating the acetylation and phosphorylation in the pathogenesis of cardiac hypertrophy. Targeting the sirtuin1-PKC-ζ signalling axis may suggest a novel therapeutic approach against cardiac hypertrophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a promising non-precious metal electrocatalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), MoS2 suffers from impeded electrical conductivity and scarce active sites. This tricky situation can be ameliorated but not eliminated by the simple involvement of nanocarbons. Herein, a leaves-and-branch structure of strongly coupled and porous MoS2–carbon nanotube (CNT) nanocomposite was synthesized, where few-layer MoS2 nanoflakes are anchored radially and intimately on the surface of CNT. Mo–O–C has been unveiled to be the bridge between these two phases and a sandwich-like structure was proposed for the interface within the strongly coupled MoS2–CNT. This genuine nanocomposite exhibits remarkably improved electrocatalytic activity towards HER, reaching −850 mA cmgeo−2 with the expense of only 290 mV of overpotential and maintaining a low Tafel slope of 47 mV per decade even under a current density of 100 mA cmgeo−2. After detailed analysis, this surging activity has been ascribed not so much to the simple addition of the properties of MoS2 and CNT, but to a strong interfacial attachment between them which not only stabilizes tiny and edge-terminated MoS2 nanoflakes, but also constructs a three dimensional hierarchical structure to boost electron and mass transfer during the HER operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The online measurement of moisture content for grains is an essential technology to realize real-time tracking and control, improve drying quality and reduce energy consumption of the drying process. To improve the measurement accuracy and reliability of the dynamic measurement process as well as expand the application scope of the device, the present work constructed an experimental equipment for determining dynamic resistance characteristics of a single grain. The relations between moisture content and real-time resistance waveform were revealed, and an analytical calculation method of peak value and peak area of waveform was proposed, which correctly revealed the electrical measurement properties of grain. The results demonstrated that the gap width between the electrodes had large influence on the sensor's performance. Moreover, an online measuring device was developed based on the experimental analysis and calculation method, and the test results in both lab and field for different grains showed that online real-time absolute measurement error are within ±0.5% in the varied moisture content (10–35%w.b.) and the temperature (−20–50 °C). The main results and the developed device might provide technical support for developing intelligent grain drying equipment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The improvement of the design and operation of energy conversion systems is a theme of global concern. As an energy intensive operation, industrial agricultural product drying has also attracted significant attention in recent years. Taking a novel industrial corn drying system with drying capacity of 5.5 t/h as a study case, based on existing exergoeconomic and exergetic analysis methodology, the present work investigated the exergetic and economic performance of the drying system and identified its energy use deficiencies. The results showed that the average drying rate for corn drying in the system is 1.98 gwater/gdry matter h. The average exergy rate for dehydrating the moisture from the corn kernel is 345.22 kW and the exergy efficiency of the drying chamber ranges from 14.81% to 40.10%. The average cost of producing 1 GJ exergy for removing water from wet corn kernels is USD 25.971, while the average cost of removing 1 kg water is USD 0.159. These results might help to further understand the drying process from the exergoeconomic perspective and aid formulation of a scientific index for agricultural product industrial drying. Additionally, the results also indicated that, from an energy perspective, the combustion chamber should be firstly optimized, while the drying chamber should be given priority from the exergoeconomics perspective. The main results would be helpful for further optimizing the drying process from both energetic and economic perspectives and provide new thinking about agricultural product industrial drying from the perspective of exergoeconomics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]