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Zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs), a class of promising metal organic frameworks (MOFs) material, display high porosity and chemical/thermal stability. However, there are problems such as few active sites and restricted exposed active areas, which limit the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) performance of catalysts. Here, starting from zeolitic imidazolate framework-67 (ZIF-67), we have successfully synthesized Pt-doped CoFe layered double hydroxide (Pt/CoFe LDH) catalysts for efficient OER catalysis. The obtained Pt/CoFe LDH-4 catalysts provides large surface areas and abundant active sites, which further improves the OER performance. In detail, the Pt/CoFe LDH-4 exhibits a lower overpotential of 263 mV at a current density of 40 mA cm -2 , in 1 M KOH solution, the stability of the catalyst exceeds 120 h at this current density, far superior to commercial catalyst RuO 2 . This study describes a new design idea for synthesis of LDH catalytic materials with low noble metal doping, which broadens the way to the synthesis of robust OER catalysts derived from ZIF-67., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

High-entropy alloys have raised great interest in recent years because of their potential applications for multi-electron reactions owing to their diverse active sites and multielement tunability. However, the difficulty of synthesis is an obstacle to their development due to phase separation often exists. In addition, it's a challenge to precisely control morphology in harsh conditions, thus leading to nanoparticles in many cases. We report a facile method to obtain PdPtPbSnNi HEA NWs by solvothermal synthesis method that no existing phase separation. PdPb nucleation plays a role in the formation of the high-entropy structure that serves as a PdPb nucleus for Sn, Ni, and Pt reduction subsequently, thus forming a single phase and an orderly-arranged nanowire structure. Significantly, the optimized PdPtPbSnNi NWs exhibit excellent catalytic activity and stability for both EOR and MOR which is 4.36 A mg Pd+Pt -1 and 4.34 A mg Pd+Pt -1 , respectively. This study highlights a novel strategy for morphology tuning, providing a prospect for designing superior high-entropy nano-catalysts for multi-step reactions., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Constructing highly active and noble metal-free electrocatalysts is significant for the anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Herein, uniform carbon-coated CoP nanospheres (CoP/C) are developed by a direct impregnation coupling phosphorization approach. Importantly, CoP/C only takes a small overpotential of 230 mV at the current density of 10 mA cm -2 and displays a Tafel slope of 56.87 mV dec -1 . Furthermore, the intrinsic activity of CoP/C is 21.44 times better than that of commercial RuO 2 under an overpotential of 260 mV. In situ Raman spectroscopy studies revealed that a large number of generated Co-O and Co-OH species could facilitate the *OH adsorption, effectively accelerating the reaction kinetics. Meanwhile, the carbon shell with a large number of mesoporous pores acts as the chainmail of CoP, which could improve the active surface area of the catalyst and prevent the Co sites from oxidative dissolution. This work provides a facile and effective reference for the development of highly active and stable OER catalysts.

This article proposes a novel module called middle spectrum grouped convolution (MSGC) for efficient deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) with the mechanism of grouped convolution. It explores the broad "middle spectrum" area between channel pruning and conventional grouped convolution. Compared with channel pruning, MSGC can retain most of the information from the input feature maps due to the group mechanism; compared with grouped convolution, MSGC benefits from the learnability, the core of channel pruning, for constructing its group topology, leading to better channel division. The middle spectrum area is unfolded along four dimensions: groupwise, layerwise, samplewise, and attentionwise, making it possible to reveal more powerful and interpretable structures. As a result, the proposed module acts as a booster that can reduce the computational cost of the host backbones for general image recognition with even improved predictive accuracy. For example, in the experiments on the ImageNet dataset for image classification, MSGC can reduce the multiply-accumulates (MACs) of ResNet-18 and ResNet-50 by half but still increase the Top-1 accuracy by more than 1% . With a 35% reduction of MACs, MSGC can also increase the Top-1 accuracy of the MobileNetV2 backbone. Results on the MS COCO dataset for object detection show similar observations. Our code and trained models are available at https://github.com/hellozhuo/msgc.

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are considered as promising electrocatalytic materials due to their tunable porosity, functional organic ligands, and large specific surface area for oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Recently, most reported electrocatalysts focus on the establishing heterogeneous structures by thermal treatments to improve OER performance. However, the thermal treatments are accompanied by the complex synthetic process and destruction of the MOFs structure. Therefore, improving the catalytic performance of pristine MOFs remains a challenge. Here, a series of trimetallic M a M b M c -MOFs (M represents metal element) were synthesized by one-pot method. Modulating the Co/Ni ratio not only adjusts the morphology of FeCoNi-MOFs, but also effectively optimizes the electronic structure. The composition-optimized FeCo 0.5 Ni 2.5 -MOF nano-bundles (FeCo 0.5 Ni 2.5 -NBs) only required a low overpotential of 273 mV to achieve the current density of 10 mA cm -2 in alkaline solution, with a Tafel slope of 51.1 mV dec -1 , lower than other FeCoNi-MOFs and commercial RuO 2 catalyst. The two-electrode couple FeCo 0.5 Ni 2.5 -NBs || Pt/C achieved the cell voltage of 1.55 V, delivering current density of 10 mA cm -2 for overall water splitting., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Key Message: Two major genetic loci, qTN5.1 and qAB9.1, were identified and finely mapped to the 255 Kb region with one potential candidate gene for tiller number and the 521 Kb region with eight candidate genes for axillary branch number, respectively. Vegetative branching including tillering and axillary branching are vital traits affecting both the plant architecture and the biomass in cereal crops. However, the mechanism underlying the formation of vegetative branching in foxtail millet is largely unknown. Here, a foxtail millet cultivar and its bushy wild relative Setaria viridis accession were used to construct segregating populations to identify candidate genes regulating tiller number and axillary branch number. Transcriptome analysis using vegetative branching bud samples of parental accessions was performed, and key differentially expressed genes and pathways regulating vegetative branching were pointed out. Bulk segregant analysis on their F 2:3 segregating population was carried out, and a major QTL for tiller number (qTN5.1) and two major QTLs for axillary branch number (qAB2.1 and qAB9.1) were detected. Fine-mapping strategy was further performed on F 2:4 segregate population, and Seita.5G356600 encoding β-glucosidase 11 was identified as the promising candidate gene for qTN5.1, and eight genes, especially Seita.9G125300 and Seita.9G125400 annotated as B-S glucosidase 44, were finally identified as candidate genes for regulating axillary branching. Findings in this study will help to elucidate the genetic basis of the vegetative branching formation of foxtail millet and lay a foundation for breeding foxtail millet varieties with ideal vegetative branching numbers., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Transformers show a great impact on visual tracking thanks to their powerful representation learning capabilities. As the capacity of the model grows, the speed of the tracker tends to decrease gradually. Our work focuses on dealing with massively redundant information in tracking sequences with the Saliency Region Tracker (SRTrack). SRTrack is a heuristic two-stage tracker consisting of a lightweight tracking stage and a saliency stage. The former can handle simple tracking sequences while the latter is designed to perform delicate tracking on challenging frames with more discriminative features. However, the two-stage design leads to feature extrapolation, creating inconsistencies between training and inference features. In order to mitigate this problem, we develop an attention scaling factor that guarantees model robustness while yielding a slight performance gain. Our SRTrack achieves a state-of-the-art 0.699 AUC running at 61 FPS on LaSOT. Several experiments on large benchmarks demonstrate the high efficiency and accuracy of SRTrack.

Introduction: Tasks involving mental practice, relying on the cognitive rehearsal of physical motors or other activities, have been reported to have similar patterns of brain activity to overt execution. In this study, we introduced a novel imagination task called, acupuncture imagery and aimed to investigate the neural oscillations during acupuncture imagery., Methods: Healthy volunteers were guided to watch a video of real needling in the left and right KI3 (Taixi point). The subjects were then asked to perform tasks to keep their thoughts in three 1-min states alternately: resting state, needling imagery left KI3, and needling imagery right KI3. Another group experienced real needling in the right KI3. A 31-channel-electroencephalography was synchronously recorded for each subject. Microstate analyses were performed to depict the brain dynamics during these tasks., Results: Compared to the resting state, both acupuncture needling imagination and real needling in KI3 could introduce significant changes in neural dynamic oscillations. Moreover, the parameters involving microstate A of needling imagery in the right KI3 showed similar changes as real needling in the right KI3., Discussion: These results confirm that needling imagination and real needling have similar brain activation patterns. Needling imagery may change brain network activity and play a role in neural regulation. Further studies are needed to explore the effects of acupuncture imagery and the potential application of acupuncture imagery in disease recovery., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Zhang, Liu, Yao, Zhang, Chen, Luo, Ruan, Liu, Chen and Ruan.)

The plant height of broomcorn millet ( Panicum miliaceum ) is a significant agronomic trait that is closely related to its plant architecture, lodging resistance, and final yield. However, the genes underlying the regulation of plant height in broomcorn millet are rarely reported. Here, an F 2 population derived from a cross between a normal variety, "Longmi12," and a dwarf mutant, "Zhang778," was constructed. Genetic analysis for the F 2 and F 2:3 populations revealed that the plant height was controlled by more than one locus. A major quantitative trait locus (QTL), PH1.1 , was preliminarily identified in chromosome 1 using bulked segregant analysis sequencing (BSA-seq). PH1.1 was fine-mapped to a 109-kb genomic region with 15 genes using a high-density map. Among them, longmi011482 and longmi011489 , containing nonsynonymous variations in their coding regions, and longmi011496 , covering multiple insertion/deletion sequences in the promoter regions, may be possible candidate genes for PH1.1 . Three diagnostic markers closely linked to PH1.1 were developed to validate the PH1.1 region in broomcorn millet germplasm. These findings laid the foundation for further understanding of the molecular mechanism of plant height regulation in broomcorn millet and are also beneficial to the breeding program for developing new varieties with optimal height., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Liu, Liu, He, Dong, Pan, Zhang, Ren, Zhang and Yang.)

Foxtail millet (Setaria italica) is an ideal model of genetic system for functional genomics of the Panicoideae crop. Identification of QTL responsible for morpho-agronomic and yield-related traits facilitates dissection of genetic control and breeding in cereal crops. Here, based on a Yugu1 × Longgu7 RIL population and genome-wide resequencing data, an updated linkage map harboring 2297 bin and 74 SSR markers was constructed, spanning 1315.1 cM with an average distance of 0.56 cM between adjacent markers. A total of 221 QTL for 17 morpho-agronomic and yield-related traits explaining 5.5 ~ 36% of phenotypic variation were identified across multi-environments. Of these, 109 QTL were detected in two to nine environments, including the most stable qLMS6.1 harboring a promising candidate gene Seita.6G250500, of which 70 were repeatedly identified in different trials in the same geographic location, suggesting that foxtail millet has more identical genetic modules under the similar ecological environment. One hundred-thirty QTL with overlapping intervals formed 22 QTL clusters. Furthermore, six superior recombinant inbred lines, RIL35, RIL48, RIL77, RIL80, RIL115 and RIL125 with transgressive inheritance and enrichment of favorable alleles in plant height, tiller, panicle morphology and yield related-traits were screened by hierarchical cluster. These identified QTL, QTL clusters and superior lines lay ground for further gene-trait association studies and breeding practice in foxtail millet., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

By introducing halogens to the A/Ga/Q (A = Na, K; Q = S, Se) system, one new chalcohalide namely Na 2 GaS 2 Cl was successfully obtained. It crystallizes in the orthorhombic space group Cmcm (63). Na 2 GaS 2 Cl has a layered structure consisting of two dimensional [GaS 2 ] ∞ layers which are stacked in "face to face" and "back to back" arrays and separated by Na + and Cl - ions. Interestingly, supertetrahedral building units [Ga 4 S 10 ] (T2) which are rarely found in metal chalcogenides and metal chalcohalides are formed in this structure. Moreover, the distances of two adjacent layers are around four times larger than the ionic radius of the Na + ion, which is very likely to provide a perfect environment for the storage and migration of Na + ions. In particular, the volume concentration of the Na + cations in this compound is as high as 1.54 × 10 22 cm -3 . The UV-vis-NIR spectroscopy measurement reveals that the optical band gap of this title compound is 3.06 eV. The electronic structural calculations on Na 2 GaS 2 Cl show that the band gap is mainly determined by the [GaS 4 ] groups and Na-Cl ionic bonding.

Background: Foxtail millet (Setaria italica) has been developed into a model genetical system for deciphering architectural evolution, C 4 photosynthesis, nutritional properties, abiotic tolerance and bioenergy in cereal grasses because of its advantageous characters with the small genome size, self-fertilization, short growing cycle, small growth stature, efficient genetic transformation and abundant diverse germplasm resources. Therefore, excavating QTLs of yield component traits, which are closely related to aspects mentioned above, will further facilitate genetic research in foxtail millet and close cereal species., Results: Here, 164 Recombinant inbreed lines from a cross between Longgu7 and Yugu1 were created and 1,047,978 SNPs were identified between both parents via resequencing. A total of 3413 bin markers developed from SNPs were used to construct a binary map, containing 3963 recombinant breakpoints and totaling 1222.26 cM with an average distance of 0.36 cM between adjacent markers. Forty-seven QTLs were identified for four traits of straw weight, panicle weight, grain weight per plant and 1000-grain weight. These QTLs explained 5.5-14.7% of phenotypic variance. Thirty-nine favorable QTL alleles were found to inherit from Yugu1. Three stable QTLs were detected in multi-environments, and nine QTL clusters were identified on Chromosome 3, 6, 7 and 9., Conclusions: A high-density genetic map with 3413 bin markers was constructed and three stable QTLs and 9 QTL clusters for yield component traits were identified. The results laid a powerful foundation for fine mapping, identifying candidate genes, elaborating molecular mechanisms and application in foxtail millet breeding programs by marker-assisted selection.

Due to the maternal inheritance of cytoplasm, using foxtail millet [ Setaria italica (L.) P. Beauv.] male sterile lines with a single cytoplasmic source as the female parent will inevitably lead to a narrow source of cytoplasm in hybrids, which may make them vulnerable to infection by cytoplasm-specific pathogens, ultimately leading to destructive yield losses. To assess cytoplasmic genetic diversity in plants, molecular markers derived from chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) have been used. However, such markers have not yet been applied to foxtail millet. In this study, we designed and screened nine pairs of polymorphic foxtail millet-specific primers based on its completely sequenced cpDNA. Using these primers, we analyzed the genetic diversity and cytoplasmic types of 130 elite foxtail millet parental lines collected in China. Our results revealed that the cytoplasmic genetic diversity of these accessions was low and needs to be increased. The parental lines were divided into four cytoplasmic types according to population structure analysis and a female parent-derivative evolutionary graph, indicating that the cytoplasmic types of elite foxtail millet lines were rather limited. A principal component analysis (PCA) plot was linked with the geographic and ecological distribution of accessions for each cytoplasmic type, as well as their basal maternal parents. Collectively, our results suggest that enriching cytoplasmic sources through the use of accessions from diverse ecological regions and other countries as the female parent may improve foxtail millet breeding programs, and prevent infection by cytoplasm-specific pathogens., (Copyright © 2019 Liu, Cui, He, Li, Li, Liang, Wang, Shi, Wang, Dong, Liu, Zhang, Ren, Yang, Feng and Liu.)

Background: Cotton is a leading natural fiber crop. Beyond its fiber, cottonseed is a valuable source of plant protein and oil. Due to the much higher value of cotton fiber, there is less consideration of cottonseed quality despite its potential value. Though some QTL controlling cottonseed quality have been identified, few of them that warrant further study are known. Identifying stable QTL controlling seed size, oil and protein content is necessary for improvement of cottonseed quality., Results: In this study, a recombinant inbred line (RIL) population was developed from a cross between upland cotton cultivars/lines Yumian 1 and M11. Specific locus amplified fragment sequencing (SLAF-seq) technology was used to construct a genetic map that covered 3353.15 cM with an average distance between consecutive markers of 0.48 cM. The seed index, together with kernel size, oil and protein content were further used to identify QTL. In total, 58 QTL associated with six traits were detected, including 13 stable QTL detected in all three environments and 11 in two environments., Conclusion: A high resolution genetic map including 7033 SNP loci was constructed through specific locus amplified fragment sequencing technology. A total of 13 stable QTL associated with six cottonseed quality traits were detected. These stable QTL have the potential for fine mapping, identifying candidate genes, elaborating molecular mechanisms of cottonseed development, and application in cotton breeding programs.

Background: Foxtail millet [Setaria italica (L.) P. Beauv.], a crop of historical importance in China, has been adopted as a model crop for studying C-4 photosynthesis, stress biology and biofuel traits. Construction of a high density genetic map and identification of stable quantitative trait loci (QTL) lay the foundation for marker-assisted selection for agronomic traits and yield improvement., Result: A total of 10598 SSR markers were developed according to the reference genome sequence of foxtail millet cultivar 'Yugu1'. A total of 1013 SSR markers showing polymorphism between Yugu1 and Longgu7 were used to genotype 167 individuals from a Yugu1 × Longgu7 F2 population, and a high density genetic map was constructed. The genetic map contained 1035 loci and spanned 1318.8 cM with an average distance of 1.27 cM between adjacent markers. Based on agronomic and yield traits identified in 2 years, 29 QTL were identified for 11 traits with combined analysis and single environment analysis. These QTL explained from 7.0 to 14.3 % of phenotypic variation. Favorable QTL alleles for peduncle length originated from Longgu7 whereas favorable alleles for the other traits originated from Yugu1 except for qLMS6.1., Conclusions: New SSR markers, a high density genetic map and QTL identified for agronomic and yield traits lay the ground work for functional gene mapping, map-based cloning and marker-assisted selection in foxtail millet.

Objective: To evaluate the association of signal transducer and activators of transcription 3 (STAT3) -1096G/C polymorphism in promoter region with the susceptibility to HBsAg positive hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)., Methods: A total of 632 patients with HCC and 723 HBV-infected subjects without HCC treated at Changhai Hospital of Shanghai from 2009 to 2012 were included in this case-control study. The polymorphism of STAT3 -1096 G/C was genotyped by Fluorescent probe-Real time quantitative PCR. Univariate analysis was used to calculate the odds ratio (OR) and its 95% confidence interval (CI)., Results: The frequency of genetic allele STAT3 -1096G/C (GC+CC) of control group and case group were 61.83% (447/723) and 60.60% (383/632), while difference of HCC risk was not found among different genotypes (OR = 0.95, 95%CI: 0.76-1.18). When stratified by sex, the frequency of genetic allele STAT3 -1096C (GC+CC) of control group and case group were 62.18% (314/505) and 61.75% (331/536) in men, 61.01% (133/218) and 54.17% (52/96) in women, respectively, while difference of HCC risk was not found among different genotypes (OR = 0.98, 95%CI: 0.77-1.26; OR = 0.76, 95%CI: 0.47-1.26, respectively). When stratified by HBV genotypes, the frequency of genetic allele STAT3 -1096C (GC+CC) of control group and case group were 61.45% (110/179) and 53.13% (34/64) in HBV genotype B, 62.87% (276/439) and 60.27% (226/375) in HBV genotype C, respectively, while difference of HCC risk was not found among different genotypes (OR = 0.71, 95%CI: 0.40-1.26; OR = 0.90, 95%CI: 0.68-1.19, respectively)., Conclusion: STAT3 -1096G/C polymorphism was not associated with the susceptibility to HCC for the HBV-infected subjects without HCC.