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In the era of artificial intelligence, there has been a rise in novel computing methods due to the increased demand for rapid and effective data processing. It is of great significance to develop memristor devices capable of emulating the computational neural network of the brain, especially in the realm of artificial intelligence applications. In this work, a memristor based on NiAl-layered double hydroxides is presented with excellent electrical performance, including analog resistive conversion characteristics and the effect of multi-level conductivity modulation. In addition, the device's conductance can be continuously adjusted by varying pulse width, interval, and amplitude. The successful replication of synaptic features has been achieved. In order to implement the functions of "NOT," "AND," and "OR," a logic gate is constructed using two synaptic devices. The confirmation of the potential use of synaptic devices in brain-like computing was demonstrated. In addition, it demonstrates the potential of these devices in supporting computing models beyond von Neumann architecture., (© 2025 Author(s). Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing.)

Living systems have some of the most sophisticated reaction circuits in the world, realizing many incredibly complex functions through a variety of simple molecular reactions, in which the most notable feature that distinguishes them from artificial molecular reaction networks is the precise control of reaction times and programmable expression. Here, we exploit the hydrolysis-directed nature of λ exonuclease and the programmed responses of the dynamic nanotechnology of nucleic acids to construct a simple, complete, and powerful set of temporally programmed circuits. This system can arbitrarily regulate the degradation rate of the blocker, thereby delaying the nucleic acid chain substitution reaction with less signal leakage. In addition, the powerful dynamic reaction network of nucleic acids enabled us to control the programmed execution of a wide range of reactions in different fields. We have developed a simple strategy to introduce precise control of the time dimension into nucleic acid reaction circuits, which greatly enriches the functionality and applicability of the reaction programs, which can be easily used as timers, compilers, converters, etc. The simplicity, precision, stability, and versatility of such dynamic temporal programming circuits greatly expand the potential of artificial molecular reaction networks for more complex practical applications in biochemistry and molecular biology.

Noncollinear dipole textures greatly extend the scientific merits and application perspective of ferroic materials. In fact, noncollinear spin textures have been well recognized as one of the core issues of condensed matter, e.g. cycloidal/conical magnets with multiferroicity and magnetic skyrmions with topological properties. However, the counterparts in electrical polarized materials are less studied and thus urgently needed, since electric dipoles are usually aligned collinearly in most ferroelectrics/antiferroelectrics. Molecular crystals with electric dipoles provide a rich ore to explore the noncollinear polarity. Here we report an organic salt (H 2 Dabco)BrClO 4 (H 2 Dabco = N,N'-1,4-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]octonium) that shows a transition between the ferroelectric and antiferroelectric phases. Based on experimental characterizations and ab initio calculations, it is found that its electric dipoles present nontrivial noncollinear textures with 60 o -twisting angle between the neighbors. Then the ferroelectric-antiferroelectric transition can be understood as the coding of twisting angle sequence. Our study reveals the unique science of noncollinear electric polarity., Competing Interests: Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Radiotherapy is recognized as the primary treatment for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Rapid and accurate dose prediction is crucial for enhancing the quality and efficiency of radiotherapy planning. However, the current dose prediction model based on 2D architecture cannot effectively learn the spatial information among slices. Although some studies have explored the incorporation of interslice features through 3D architecture, the resolution properties of medical image anisotropy significantly limit the predictive performance. To address the issues, we propose a novel deformable dose prediction network based on hybrid 2D and 3D convolution for NPC radiotherapy. Specifically, the proposed model innovatively incorporates a 2.5D architecture based on hybrid 2D and 3D convolution, and effectively utilizes the directional information within anisotropic resolutions to achieve cross-scale feature extraction. Additionally, deformable convolution is introduced into the model to enhance the receptive field and effectively handle multi-scale spatial transformations. To improve channel correlation and reduce redundant features, we design a Residual Deformable Squeeze-and-Excitation Module. We conduct extensive experiments on an internal dataset, and the results show that the proposed model outperforms other existing methods in most dosimetric criteria. The proposed model has superior dose prediction performance in NPC radiotherapy, and has important clinical significance for assisting physicists to optimize the treatment plan and improve standardization of radiotherapy planning. The source code is available at https://github.com/CDUTJ102/2.5D-Deformable-UNet ., (© 2024. International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering.)

Introduction: Acupuncture may help treat diabetes mellitus (DM), diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN), and adjunct therapy for cancer, but the biological mechanisms and immune-related genes involved are unclear; this study aims to clarify these aspects., Methods: Comprehensive gene expression analysis revealed differentially expressed genes (DEGs) among DM, DPN, and control samples. Key genes from WGCNA were intersected with DEGs and acupuncture targets. Inflammatory responses, immune processes, signaling pathways, immune cell infiltration, and microRNA-gene interactions were studied. Hub immune-related genes' dysregulation was analyzed for copy number variation and gene methylation. A pan-cancer nomogram model was created to predict survival based on various factors, linking hub genes to cancer properties., Results: Our analysis found 3,217 and 2,191 DEGs in DM/control and DPN/DM comparisons, respectively, and identified 1,830 potential acupuncture targets. We pinpointed 21 key genes in DM and 43 in DPN, involved in inflammatory responses, immune processes, CAMKK2, and cAMP signaling pathways. Distinct immune cell infiltration patterns, including M0 and M2 macrophages, neutrophils, and follicular helper T cells, were noted. Further analysis revealed microRNAs and TF genes interacting with immune hub genes in both conditions. Dysregulation of eight hub immune-related genes was linked to copy number variation and gene methylation, correlating with cancer prognosis. Co-occurrence of single nucleotide variations and oncogenic mutations was observed in these genes. The pan-cancer nomogram model showed strong prognostic capabilities, and a significant association was found between the eight genes and cancer properties like angiogenesis, EMT, and cell cycle progression., Discussion: Our findings underscore the pivotal roles of MAPK3, IL1RN, SOD2, CTSD, ESR1, SLC1A1, NPY, and CCR2 in the immune response mediated by acupuncture in the context of DM, DPN, and adjunct therapy for cancer., 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., (© 2024 Zhang et al.)

Radiotherapy is recognized as the major treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Rapid and accurate dose prediction can improve the efficiency of the treatment planning process and the quality of radiotherapy plans. Currently, deep learning-based methods have been widely applied to dose prediction for radiotherapy treatment planning. However, it is important to note that existing models based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) often overlook long-distance information. Although some studies try to use Transformer to solve the problem, it lacks the ability of CNN to process the spatial information inherent in images. Therefore, we propose a novel CNN and Transformer hybrid dose prediction model. To enhance the transmission ability of features between CNN and Transformer, we design a hierarchical dense recurrent encoder with a channel attention mechanism. Additionally, we propose a progressive decoder that preserves richer texture information through layer-wise reconstruction of high-dimensional feature maps. The proposed model also introduces object-driven skip connections, which facilitate the flow of information between the encoder and decoder. Experiments are conducted on in-house datasets, and the results show that the proposed model is superior to baseline methods in most dosimetric criteria. In addition, the image analysis metrics including PSNR, SSIM, and NRMSE demonstrate that the proposed model is consistent with ground truth and produces promising visual effects compared to other advanced methods. The proposed method could be taken as a powerful clinical guidance tool for physicists, significantly enhancing the efficiency of radiotherapy planning. The source code is available at https://github.com/CDUTJ102/THCN-Net ., (© 2024. The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine.)

Protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A), one of the most abundant protein phosphatases, has divergent functions in multiple types of cells. Its inactivation has been closely associated with leukemia diseases. However, the physiological function of PP2A for hematopoiesis has been poorly understood in organisms. Drosophila hematopoiesis parallels the vertebrate counterpart in developmental and functional features but involves a much simpler hematopoietic system. Here, utilizing the Drosophila major larval hematopoietic organ lymph gland, we studied the function of PP2A for hematopoiesis in vivo. By knocking down the expression of Pp2A-29B that encodes the scaffold subunit of the PP2A holoenzyme complex, we found that PP2A silencing in the differentiating hemocytes resulted in their excessive proliferation. Furthermore, this PP2A inhibition downregulated the expression of Smoothened (Smo), a crucial component in the Hedgehog pathway, and smo overexpression was able to rescue the phenotypes of PP2A depletion, indicating that Smo functions as a downstream effector of PP2A to restrict the hemocyte proliferation. PDGF/VEGF-receptor (Pvr) overexpression also restored the Smo expression and lymph gland morphology of PP2A silencing, suggesting a PP2A-Pvr-Smo axis to regulate lymph gland growth and hemocyte proliferation. Moreover, inhibiting PP2A activity in the blood progenitor cells promoted their differentiation, but which was independent with Smo. Together, our data suggested that PP2A plays a dual role in the Drosophila lymph gland by preserving the progenitor population and restraining the hemocyte proliferation, to properly regulate the hematopoietic process., (© 2024 Federation of European Biochemical Societies.)

Out-of-plane polarization is a highly desired property of two-dimensional (2D) ferroelectrics for application in vertical sandwich-type photoferroelectric devices, especially in ultrathin ferroelectronic devices. Nevertheless, despite great advances that have been made in recent years, out-of-plane polarization remains unrealized in the 2D hybrid double perovskite ferroelectric family. Here, from our previous work 2D hybrid double perovskite HQERN ((S3HQ) 4 EuRb(NO 3 ) 8 , S3HQ=S-3-hydroxylquinuclidinium), we designed a molecular strategy of F-substitution on organic component to successfully obtain FQERN ((S3FQ) 4 EuRb(NO 3 ) 8 , S3FQ=S-3-fluoroquinuclidinium) showing circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) response. Remarkably, compared to the monopolar axis ferroelectric HQERN, FQERN not only shows multiferroicity with the coexistence of multipolar axis ferroelectricity and ferroelasticity but also realizes out-of-plane ferroelectric polarization and a dramatic enhancement of Curie temperature of 94 K. This is mainly due to the introduction of F-substituted organic cations, which leads to a change in orientation and a reduction in crystal lattice void occupancy. Our study demonstrates that F-substitution is an efficient strategy to realize and optimize ferroelectric functional characteristics, giving more possibility of 2D ferroelectric materials for applications in micro-nano optoelectronic devices., (© 2024 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

Weakly-supervised Temporal Action Localization (WTAL) aims to localize action instances with only video-level labels during training, where two primary issues are localization incompleteness and background interference. To relieve these two issues, recent methods adopt an attention mechanism to activate action instances and simultaneously suppress background ones, which have achieved remarkable progress. Nevertheless, we argue that these two issues have not been well resolved yet. On the one hand, the attention mechanism adopts fixed weights for different videos, which are incapable of handling the diversity of different videos, thus deficient in addressing the problem of localization incompleteness. On the other hand, previous methods only focus on learning the foreground attention and the attention weights usually suffer from ambiguity, resulting in difficulty of suppressing background interference. To deal with the above issues, in this paper we propose an Adaptive Prototype Learning (APL) method for WTAL, which includes two key designs: (1) an Adaptive Transformer Network (ATN) to explicitly model background and learn video-adaptive prototypes for each specific video, (2) an OT-based Collaborative (OTC) training strategy to guide the learning of prototypes and remove the ambiguity of the foreground-background separation by introducing an Optimal Transport (OT) algorithm into the collaborative training scheme between RGB and FLOW streams. These two key designs can work together to learn video-adaptive prototypes and solve the above two issues, achieving robust localization. Extensive experimental results on two standard benchmarks (THUMOS14 and ActivityNet) demonstrate that our proposed APL performs favorably against state-of-the-art methods.

Aim: To identify latent profiles of narrative competence in nursing students and examine the association between the potential competence profiles and professional identity from a person-centred perspective., Background: According to the Ring theory of personhood, nursing students can develop their professional identities from individual, relational and social aspects through interaction with patients, as well as listening to, understanding and responding to patients' disease narratives. However, few studies have examined the relationship between narrative competence and professional identity through the quantitative method., Design: A cross-sectional analytic study., Methods: A total of 472 nursing students responded to the survey between March and May 2023. The Professional Identity Questionnaire for Nurse Students and the Narrative Competence Scale were given to participants. Latent profile analysis was conducted to identify narrative competence profiles. The Bolck-Croon-Hagenaars method was used to analyse whether these latent profiles for narrative competence affected nursing students' general, individual, interpersonal and social professional identities., Results: Latent profiles were identified as "low narrative competence" (12.1 %), "relatively low narrative competence" (39.9 %), "moderate narrative competence" (40.1 %) and "high narrative competence" (7.9 %). The profiles only show level differences rather than combinations of competence areas. These profiles had varying effects on the nursing students' general professional identities, as well as their individual, relational and social professional identities., Conclusion: This study highlights the significance of providing tailored guidance and support to nursing students, taking into account their unique narrative competency profile, to promote the formation of professional identity from individual, relational and social aspects. Nursing educators should effectively distinguish nursing students with inadequate narrative competence and value patients' disease narratives to promote narrative competence and professional identity., 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 Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Drosophila melanogaster crystal cells are a specialized type of blood cells for innate immune process upon injury. Under normal conditions, crystal cells rarely proliferate and constitute a small proportion of fly blood cells. Notch signaling has been known to guide the cell fate determination of crystal cells and maintain their survival. Here, we reported that protein phosphatase V (PpV), the unique catalytic subunit of protein phosphatase 6 in Drosophila, is a novel regulator of crystal cell proliferation and integrity. We found that PpV proteins highly accumulated in crystal cells in the larval hematopoietic organ termed the lymph gland. Silencing PpV using RNA interference led to increased crystal cell proliferation in a Notch-independent manner and induced crystal cell rupture dependent on Notch signaling. Moreover, additive PpV prevented the rupture of crystal cells in lymph glands upon a needle injury, suggesting the involvement of PpV in wound healing. Altogether, our results indicated that PpV plays a dual role in lymph glands, preventing crystal cell proliferation to limit the cell number, as well as inhibiting crystal cell rupture to maintain their survival., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences.)

Accurate identification of single nucleotide variants (SNVs) in key driver genes holds a significant value for disease diagnosis and treatment. Fluorescent probes exhibit tremendous potential in specific, high-resolution, and rapid detection of SNVs. However, additional steps are required in most post-PCR assays to convert double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) products into single-stranded DNA (ssDNA), enabling them to possess hybridization activity to trigger subsequent reactions. This process not only prolongs the complexity of the experiment but also introduces the risk of losing target information. In this study, we proposed two strategies for enriching active double-stranded DNA, involving PCR based on obstructive groups and cleavable units. Building upon this, we explored the impact of modified units on the strand displacement reaction (SDR) and assessed their discriminatory efficacy for mutations. The results showed that detection of low variant allele frequencies (VAF) as low as 0.1% can be achieved. The proposed strategy allowed orthogonal identification of 45 clinical colorectal cancer tissue samples with 100% specificity, and the results were generally consistent with sequencing results. Compared to existing methods for enriching active targets, our approach offers a more diverse set of enrichment strategies, characterized by the advantage of being simple and fast and preserving original information to the maximum extent. The objective of this study is to offer an effective solution for the swift and facile acquisition of active double-stranded DNA. We anticipate that our work will facilitate the practical applications of SDR based on dsDNA.

Two new phenylpropanoids, ainsbons A and B ( 1 and 2 ), along with a known analogue coniferyl diisovalerate ( 3 ) were isolated from the whole plant of Ainsliaea bonatii . Their structures were elucidated by analysis of NMR spectroscopic data and HRESIMS, and the absolute configuration of 2 was established by the optical rotation calculations. Compounds 1 - 3 were evaluated for their effects on LPS-induced nitric oxide production, and 1 and 3 showed inhibitory activities with IC 50 values of 43.43 and 7.57  μ M, respectively.

Background: The emergence of DNA nanotechnology has enabled the systematic design of diverse bionic dissipative behaviors under the precise control of nucleic acid nanodevices. Nevertheless, when compared to the dissipation observed in robust living systems, it is highly desirable to enhance the anti-interference for artificial DNA dissipation to withstand perturbations and facilitate repairs within the complex biological environments., Results: In this study, we introduce strategically designed "trash cans" to facilitate kinetic control over interferences, transforming the stochastic binding of individual components within a homogeneous solution into a competitive binding process. This approach effectively eliminates incorrect binding and the accumulation of systemic interferences while ensuring a consistent pattern of energy fluctuation from response to silence. Remarkably, even in the presence of numerous interferences differing by only one base, we successfully achieve complete system reset through multiple cycles, effectively restoring the energy level to a minimum., Significance: The system was able to operate stably without any adverse effect under conditions of irregular interference, high-abundance interference, and even multiplex interferences including DNA and RNA crosstalk. This work not only provides an effective paradigm for constructing robust DNA dissipation systems but also greatly broadens the potential of DNA dissipation for applications in high-precision molecular recognition and complex biological reaction networks., 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 B.V. All rights reserved.)

China, as the world's biggest soybean importer and fourth-largest producer, needs accurate mapping of its planting areas for global food supply stability. The challenge lies in gathering and collating ground survey data for different crops. We proposed a spatiotemporal migration method leveraging vegetation indices' temporal characteristics. This method uses a feature space of six integrals from the crops' phenological curves and a concavity-convexity index to distinguish soybean and non-soybean samples in cropland. Using a limited number of actual samples and our method, we extracted features from optical time-series images throughout the soybean growing season. The cloud and rain-affected data were supplemented with SAR data. We then used the random forest algorithm for classification. Consequently, we developed the 10-meter resolution ChinaSoybean10 maps for the ten primary soybean-producing provinces from 2019 to 2022. The map showed an overall accuracy of about 93%, aligning significantly with the statistical yearbook data, confirming its reliability. This research aids soybean growth monitoring, yield estimation, strategy development, resource management, and food scarcity mitigation, and promotes sustainable agriculture., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

DNA strand displacement reactions are vital for constructing intricate nucleic acid circuits, owing to their programmability and predictability. However, the scarcity of effective methods for eliminating circuit leakages has hampered the construction of circuits with increased complexity. Herein, a versatile strategy is developed that relies on a spatially controlled proximity split tweezer (PST) switch to transduce the biomolecular signals into the independent oligonucleotides. Leveraging the double-stranded rigidity of the tweezer works synergistically with the hindering effect of the hairpin lock, effectively minimizing circuit leakage compared with sequence-level methods. In addition, the freely designed output strand is independent of the target binding sequence, allowing the PST switch conformation to be modulated by nucleic acids, small molecules, and proteins, exhibiting remarkable adaptability to a wide range of targets. Using this platform, established logical operations between different types of targets for multifunctional transduction are successfully established. Most importantly, the platform can be directly coupled with DNA catalytic circuits to further enhance transduction performance. The uniqueness of this platform lies in its design straightforwardness, flexibility, scalable intricacy, and system compatibility. These attributes pave a broad path toward nucleic acid-based development of sophisticated transduction networks, making them widely applied in basic science research and biomedical applications., (© 2023 Wiley‐VCH GmbH.)

Although gene expression signatures offer tremendous potential in diseases diagnostic and prognostic, but massive gene expression signatures caused challenges for experimental detection and computational analysis in clinical setting. Here, we introduce a universal DNA-based molecular classifier for profiling gene expression signatures and generating immediate diagnostic outcomes. The molecular classifier begins with feature transformation, a modular and programmable strategy was used to capture relative relationships of low-concentration RNAs and convert them to general coding inputs. Then, competitive inhibition of the DNA catalytic reaction enables strict weight assignment for different inputs according to their importance, followed by summation, annihilation and reporting to accurately implement the mathematical model of the classifier. We validated the entire workflow by utilizing miRNA expression levels for the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in clinical samples with an accuracy 85.7%. The results demonstrate the molecular classifier provides a universal solution to explore the correlation between gene expression patterns and disease diagnostics, monitoring, and prognosis, and supports personalized healthcare in primary care., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Switchable spontaneous polarization is the vital property of ferroelectrics, which leads to other key physical properties such as piezoelectricity, pyroelectricity, and nonlinear optical effects, etc. Recently, organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites with 2D layered structure have become an emerging branch of ferroelectric materials. However, most of the 2D hybrid ferroelectrics own relatively low polarizations (<15 µC cm -2 ). Here, a strategy to enhance the polarization of these hybrid perovskites by using ortho-, meta-, para-halogen substitution is developed. Based on (benzylammonium) 2 PbCl 4 (BZACL), the para-chlorine substituted (4-chlorobenzylammonium) 2 PbCl 4 (4-CBZACL) ferroelectric semiconductor shows a large spontaneous polarization (23.3 µC cm -2 ), which is 79% larger than the polarization of BZACL. This large enhancement of polarization is successfully explained via ab initio calculations. The study provides a convenient and efficient strategy to promote the ferroelectric property in the hybrid perovskite family., (© 2023 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) does not respond well to current treatments, even immune checkpoint inhibitors. PD-L1 (programmed cell death ligand 1 or CD274 molecule)-mediated immune escape of tumor cells may be a key factor affecting the efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy. However, the regulatory mechanisms of PD-L1 expression and immune escape require further exploration. Here, we observed that DDX1 (DEAD-box helicase 1) was overexpressed in HCC tissues and associated with poor prognosis in patients with HCC. Additionally, DDX1 expression correlated negatively with CD8 + T cell frequency. DDX1 overexpression significantly increased interferon gamma (IFN-γ)-mediated PD-L1 expression in HCC cell lines. DDX1 overexpression decreased IFN-γ and granzyme B production in CD8 + T cells and inhibited CD8 + T cell cytotoxic function in vitro and in vivo. In conclusion, DDX1 plays an essential role in developing the immune escape microenvironment, rendering it a potential predictor of ICI therapy efficacy in HCC., (© 2024 The Authors. Cancer Science published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Japanese Cancer Association.)

Organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites (OIHPs) have received particular attention due to their characteristic structural tunability and flexibility. These features make OIHPs behave with excellent modifications on macroscopic properties, such as ferroicity or semiconductor performances, etc. Herein, we report two 2D hybrid stibium-based halide perovskite (C 3 H 7 N) 3 Sb 2 X 9 (X = Br, 1 ; Cl, 2 ) ferroelastic semiconductor possessing dual switching properties of dielectric and second harmonic generation (SHG). Notably, these two hybrids exhibit halogen-regulated ferroelasticity and semiconductor properties. There is a significant difference in Curie temperature ( T c ) and X-ray radiation detection sensitivity ( S ), i.e., the Δ T c and Δ S are 38 K and 87 μC Gy air -1 cm -2 , respectively. Meanwhile, crystals 1 and 2 do not show dark current drift in cyclic measurements of different radiation doses with stable switching ratios of 30 and 10, separately. Meanwhile, these results were proven by scientific experimental results and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Our work presents a facile and practical method to regulate macroproperties on the molecular level, providing a new vision to develop hybrid perovskite ferroic-photoelectric materials.

Bioleaching has gained significant attention as a cost-effective and environmentally friendly approach for extracting metals from low-grade ores and industrial byproducts. The application of acidophiles in bioleaching has been extensively studied. Among the various mechanisms leaching microorganisms utilize, quorum sensing (QS) is pivotal in regulating their life activities in response to population density. QS has been confirmed to regulate bioleaching, including cell morphology, community structure, biofilm formation, and cell metabolism. Potential applications of QS have also been proposed, such as increasing mineral leaching rates by adding signaling molecules. This review is helpful for comprehensively understanding the role of QS in bioleaching and promoting the practical application of QS-based strategies in bioleaching process optimization.

Excessive ammonia (NH 4 + ) discharge can lead to algal blooms and disrupt water sustainability, so its control is imperative. Although microbiology-triggered anammox process is promising, its application is limited due to time-consuming cultivation of specific microorganisms and need for skilled operation. To bypass these barriers, this study proposed and verified a photo-induced anammox technology that removes NH 4 + and total nitrogen (TN) from water by ultraviolet (UV)/vacuum UV (VUV)/chlorine under anoxic conditions. Under the Cl/N mass ratio of 5:1, the anoxic VUV/UV/chlorine process achieved 66.8% removal of 10 mg-N/L NH 4 + within 10 min along with 57.8% reduction in TN. Besides the evidence from TN loss, this study confirmed nitrogen gas (N 2 ) as the primary degradation product at low dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration of 2.0 mg/L. The selective conversion of NH 4 + into N 2 was mainly attributed to reactive nitrogen species (RNS, 42.5%) and reactive chlorine species (RCS, 57.5%). The TN removal efficiency was insensitive to certain variations of pH (7.0-9.0), NH 4 + concentration (1-30 mg-N/L), chloride (50-125 mg/L), and sulfate (25-100 mg/L), but sensitive to DO and bicarbonate (25-100 mg/L). Given its robustness and high efficiency, the anoxic VUV/UV/chlorine technology may serve as a potentially promising alternative for NH 4 + and TN alleviation in wastewater., 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 B.V. All rights reserved.)

Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is regulated by methylation modifications and long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs). However, knowledge of N 7 -methylguanosine (m 7 G)-related lncRNAs that predict ccRCC prognosis remains insufficient. A prognostic multi-lncRNA signature was created using LASSO regression to examine the differential expression of m7G-related lncRNAs in ccRCC. Furthermore, we performed Kaplan-Meier analysis and area under the curve (AUC) analysis for diagnosis. In all, a model based on five lncRNAs was developed. Principal component analysis (PCA) indicated that the risk model precisely separated the patients into different groups. The IC 50 value for drug sensitivity divided patients into two risk groups. High-risk group of patients was more susceptible to A.443654, A.770041, ABT.888, AMG.706, and AZ628. Moreover, a lower tumor mutation burden combined with low-risk scores was associated with a better prognosis of ccRCC. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) exhibited that the expression levels of LINC01507, AC093278.2 were very high in all five ccRCC cell lines, AC084876.1 was upregulated in all ccRCC cell lines except 786-O, and the levels of AL118508.1 and DUXAP8 were upregulated in the Caki-1 cell line. This risk model may be promising for the clinical prediction of prognosis and immunotherapeutic responses in patients with ccRCC., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

As CRISPR technology is promoted to more fine-divided molecular biology applications, its inherent performance finds it increasingly difficult to cope with diverse needs in these different fields, and how to more accurately control the performance has become a key issue to develop CRISPR technology to a new stage. Herein, we propose a CRISPR/Cas12a regulation strategy based on the powerful programmability of nucleic acid nanotechnology. Unlike previous difficult and rigid regulation of core components Cas nuclease and crRNA, only a simple switch of different external RNA accessories is required to change the reaction kinetics or thermodynamics, thereby finely and almost steplessly regulating multi-performance of CRISPR/Cas12a including activity, speed, specificity, compatibility, programmability and sensitivity. In particular, the significantly improved specificity is expected to mark advance the accuracy of molecular detection and the safety of gene editing. In addition, this strategy was applied to regulate the delayed activation of Cas12a, overcoming the compatibility problem of the one-pot assay without any physical separation or external stimulation, and demonstrating great potential for fine-grained control of CRISPR. This simple but powerful CRISPR regulation strategy without any component modification has pioneering flexibility and versatility, and will unlock the potential for deeper applications of CRISPR technology in many finely divided fields., (© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.)

This study revisited a list of inorganic iodine species on their detections and conversions under different water conditions. Several surprising results were found, e.g., UV-vis spectrophotometry is the only reliable method for I 3 - and I 2 determinations with coexisting I - /IO 3 - /IO 4 - , while alkaline eluent of IC and LC columns can convert them into I - completely; IO 4 - can be converted into IO 3 - completely in IC columns and partly in LC columns; a small portion of IO 3 - was reduced to I - in LC columns. To avoid errors, a method for detecting multiple coexisting iodine species is suggested as follows: firstly, detecting I 3 - and I 2 via UV-vis spectrophotometry; then, analyzing IO 4 - (> 0.2 mg/L) through LC; and lastly, obtaining I - and IO 3 - concentrations by deducting I - and IO 3 - measured by IC from the signals derived from I 3 - /I 2 /IO 4 - . As for stability, I - or IO 3 - alone is stable, but mixing them up generates I 2 or H 2 OI + under acidic conditions. Although IO 4 - is stable within pH 4.0-8.0, it becomes H 5 IO 6 /H 3 IO 6 2 - in strongly acidic/alkaline solutions. Increasing pH accelerates the conversions of I 3 - and I 2 into I - under basic conditions, whereas dissolved oxygen and dosage exert little effect. Additionally, spiking ICl into water produces I 2 and IO 3 - rather than HIO., 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 B.V. All rights reserved.)

Osteoporosis is a metabolic condition distinguished by the degradation of bone microstructure and mechanical characteristics. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been employed in China for the treatment of various illnesses. Naringin, an ingredient found in Drynariae TCM, is known to have a significant impact on bone metabolism. For this research, we studied the precise potential effect of Drynaria Naringin on protecting against bone loss caused by stress deficiency. In this study, a tail-suspension (TS) test was performed to establish a mouse model with hind leg bone loss. Some mice received subcutaneous injections of Drynaria Naringin for 30 d. Trabecular bone microarchitecture was evaluated using micro-computed tomography analysis and bone histological analysis. Bone formation and resorption markers were quantified in blood samples from mice or in the supernatant of MC3T3-E1 cells by ELISA analysis, Western blotting, and PCR. Immunofluorescence was utilized to visualize the location of β-catenin. Additionally, siRNA was employed to knockdown-specific genes in the cells. Our findings highlight the efficacy of Drynaria Naringin in protecting against the deterioration of bone loss and promoting bone formation and Rspo1 expression in a mouse model following the TS test. Specifically, in vitro experiments also indicated that Drynaria Naringin may promote osteogenesis through the Wnt/β-catenin signalling pathway. Moreover, our results suggest that Drynaria Naringin upregulates the expression of Rspo1/Lgr4, leading to the promotion of osteogenesis via the Wnt/β-catenin signalling pathway. Therefore, Drynaria Naringin holds potential as a therapeutic medication for osteoporosis. Drynaria Naringin alleviates bone loss deterioration caused by mechanical stress deficiency through the Rspo1/Lgr4-mediated Wnt/β-catenin signalling pathway., (© 2023. The Society for In Vitro Biology.)

Stimuli-responsive multifunctional materials (SRMMs) have attracted tremendous attention due to their dynamic responses to external stimuli. However, it remains challenging to simultaneously achieve solvent-induced single-crystal to single-crystal (SCSC) transformation and structural phase transition after desolvation. Here, we report a two-dimensional (2D) rare-earth organic-inorganic hybrid coordinate polymer [(CH 3 ) 3 NCH 2 Cl] 2 [Eu·H 2 O] 2 [CH 2 (SO 3 ) 2 ] 4 ·2H 2 O ( 1 ) that exhibits a reversible SCSC transformation by changing to 2 ([(CH 3 ) 3 NCH 2 Cl][Eu·H 2 O][CH 2 (SO 3 ) 2 ] 2 ). Impressively, the SCSC transformation process couples with large changes in quantum efficiency dropped from 33.68% of 1 to 20.07% that of 2 . Furthermore, polymer 2 shows an isomorphic structural phase transition associated with switching dielectric. Notably, the distance of the 2D layers shows reversible change during the two successive transition processes displaying a crystal sponge behavior. This work reveals the potential of rare-earth 2D hybrid coordination polymers in the design of multifunctional responsive materials and opens a new prospect to explore the construction of novel SRMMs.

Detection of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) is critical for personalized clinical diagnosis, treatment, and medication. Current clinical detection methods suffer from primer dimerization and require the redesigning of reaction systems for different targets, resulting in a time-consuming and laborious process. Here, we present a robust and versatile method for SNP typing by using tailed primers and universal small molecule probes in combination with a visualized lateral flow assay (LFA). This approach enables not only rapid typing of different targets, but also eliminates the interference of primer dimers and enhances the accuracy and reliability of the results. Our proposed universal assay has been successfully applied to the typing of four SNP loci of clinical samples to verify the accuracy and universality, and the results are consistent with those obtained by Sanger sequencing. Therefore, our study establishes a new universal "typing formula" using nucleic acid tags and small molecule probes that provides a powerful genotyping platform for genetic analysis and molecular diagnostics.

Establishing the relationship between a limited number of samples and segmented objects in diverse scenarios is the primary challenge in few-shot segmentation. However, many previous works overlooked the crucial support-query set interaction and the deeper information that needs to be explored. This oversight can lead to model failure when confronted with complex scenarios, such as ambiguous boundaries. To solve this problem, a duplex network that utilizes the suppression and focus concept is proposed to effectively suppress the background and focus on the foreground. Our network includes dynamic convolution to enhance the support-query interaction and a prototype match structure to fully extract information from support and query. The proposed model is called dynamic prototype mixture convolutional networks (DPMC). To minimize the impact of redundant information, we have incorporated a hybrid attentional module called double-layer attention augmented convolutional module (DAAConv) into DPMC. This module enables the network to concentrate more on foreground information. Our experiments on PASCAL-5i and COCO-20i datasets suggested that DPMC and DAAConv outperform traditional prototype-based methods by up to 5-8% on average., 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 Zeng, Yang, Luo and Ruan.)

The aim of this study is to explore the active components and potential molecular mechanism of action of Rubia cordifolia L. against nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). We used network pharmacology, molecular docking, and bioinformatics analysis to identify the active components and their role against NPC. The experimental verification was detected by MTT, AnnexinV-FITC/PI double fluorescence staining and Western blotting method. Network pharmacology identified that mollugin is one of the most effective components in Rubia cordifolia L. Important NPC targets included HSP90AA1, CDK1, EGFR, PIK3CA, MAPK14, and CDK2. Molecular docking revealed considerable binding activity of mollugin with either of the 6 important NPC targets. Bioinformatics analysis showed that these 6 important targets were mutated in NPC, and the expression of HSP90AA1, PIK3CA, and CDK2 in cancer tissues was significantly different from that in normal tissues. MTT detection and AnnexinV-FITC/PI double fluorescence staining showed that mollugin inhibited the proliferation and induced apoptosis of NPC cells. Western blotting indicated that the molecular mechanism of mollugin against NPC was related to the regulation of the expression of Survivin and XIAP. This study predicted and partially verified the pharmacological and molecular mechanism of action of Rubia cordifolia L. against NPC. Mollugin was identified as a potential active ingredient against NPC. These results prove the reliability of network pharmacology approaches and provide a basis for further research and application of Rubia cordifolia L. against NPC., Competing Interests: 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., (© 2023 The Authors.)

Background: It is common to obtain a low detection rate and unsatisfactory detection results in complex infection or rare pathogen detection. This retrospective study aimed to illustrate the application value and prospect of the third-generation sequencing technology in lower respiratory tract infection disease., Methods: This study recruited 70 patients with lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI). Pathogen detection of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) from all patients was performed using nanopore metagenomic sequencing technology and traditional culture. BALF culture combined with quantitiative PCR (qPCR) was used as a reference standard to analyze the sensitivity and specificity of nanopore sequencing technology. The current study also collected the examination results of enrolled samples using technical methods sputum culture, tuberculosis DNA (TB-DNA), and Xpert MTB/RIF and analyzed the detection efficiency of nanopore sequencing for Mycobacterium tuberculosis ., Results: The positive rates of pathogens in 70 BALF samples detected by conventional culture and nanopore sequencing were 25.71% and 84.29%, respectively. Among the 59 positive BALF cases using nanopore sequencing, a total of 31 pathogens were identified, of which the proportions of bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other pathogens were 50%, 17%, 32%, and 1%, respectively. Using the results combined with culture and qPCR detection methods as the standard, the pathogen detection of BALF using nanopore sequencing had a sensitivity of 70% and a specificity of 91.7%. Additionally, the positive rate of the detection of M. tuberculosis using nanopore sequencing was 33.3% (6/18). The clinical medication plans of 74.3% (52/70) of the patients were referred to the nanopore sequencing results, of which 31 cases changed their treatment strategy, 21 supported the previous treatment plans, and 90% (47/52) of the patients finally had clinical improvement., Conclusions: BALF detection using nanopore sequencing technology improves the process of detecting pathogens in patients with LRTI, especially for M. tuberculosis , fungi, and viruses, by reducing the report time from three days to six hours. The clinical application prospect of nanopore sequencing technology is promising in the pathogen diagnosis of LRTI., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest. YH, JL and ZO are employees of Dian Diagnostics Group Co., Ltd., they declare no conflict of interest (even superficial conflict) with the company, its shareholder and its customers., (© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Discovery Medicine.)

Magnetic anomaly detection technologies have been widely used for tracking moving targets. In this paper, we present a fast-tracking method for magnetic abnormalities using a distributed Overhauser magnetometer system based on the genetic algorithm. Our proposed framework of the Overhauser magnetometer system employs multiple sensors to eliminate background interference, and the genetic algorithm efficiently solves magnetic anomaly data without requiring the derivation of the objective function. Test platforms were built to evaluate the distributed Overhauser magnetometer system and the genetic algorithm. Results from the natural outdoor magnetism laboratories showed that the noise of our presented magnetometers was below 0.134 nT. The optimal factors for solution precision and effectiveness in the genetic algorithm were obtained from the simulation. Moreover, the outdoor tracking experiments indicated that the proposed method could accurately and quickly detect the moving ferromagnetic object within 6.9% maximum positioning error in 0.55 m, and the tracking precision of the object velocity can get 5.88% maximum error in 4.33 km/h., (© 2023 Author(s). Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing.)

Scintillating materials that convert ionizing radiation into low-energy photons hold great potential for radiation detection, nondestructive inspection, medical radiography, and space exploration. However, organic scintillators are characterized by low radioluminescence, while bulky inorganic scintillators are not suitable for the development of flexible detectors. Here, high-resolution X-ray imaging using solution-processable lanthanide-based metal-organic frameworks as microscale scintillators is demonstrated. Mechanistic studies suggest that lanthanide ions absorb X-rays to generate high-density molecular triplet excitons, and excited linkers subsequently sensitize lanthanide ions via nonradiative resonance energy transfer. Furthermore, the crystalline nature offers a delocalized electronic feature rather than isolated subunits, which enables direct trapping of charge carriers by lanthanide emitters. By controlling the concentration ratio between Tb 3+ and Eu 3+ ions, efficient and color-tunable radioluminescence of lanthanide ions can be achieved. When coupled with elastic, transparent polymer matrices, these metal-organic framework-based microscintillators allow the fabrication of flexible X-ray detectors. Such detectors feature a detection limit of 23 nGy s -1 , which is 240 times lower than the typical radiation dose for medical diagnosis. X-ray imaging with resolution higher than 16.6 line pairs per millimeter is further demonstrated. These findings provide insight into the future design of hybrid scintillators for optoelectronics and X-ray sensing and imaging., (© 2023 The Authors. Advanced Science published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

Ion chromatography (IC) has grown in usage rapidly since its first introduction in 1975. However, IC is still sometimes unable to separate target analytes from coexisting components well with identical elution time, due to the limited resolution and column capacity, especially in the presence of high-level salt matrix. These limitations hence drive IC to develop two-dimensional IC (2D-IC). In this review, we capture the 2D-IC applications in environmental samples via the perspective of coupling different IC columns, which aim to summarize where these 2D-IC methods fit in. In sequence, we firstly review the principles of 2D-IC and emphasize one-pump column-switching IC (OPCS IC) because it is a simplified 2D-IC that only uses one set of IC system. We then compare typical 2D-IC and OPCS IC performances in terms of application scope, method detection limit, drawbacks, and expectations. Finally, we propose some challenges of current methods and opportunities for future research. For instance, it is challenging to couple anion exchange column and capillary column in OPCS IC due to the incompatibility between flow path dimensions and suppressor; coupling ion exclusion column and mixed-bed column may be promising to simultaneously determine anions and cations in weak acids or salts. The details of this study may help practitioners to better understand and implement 2D-IC methods and meanwhile motivate researchers to fill in the knowledge gap in the future., 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 B.V. All rights reserved.)

In this work, we propose a hairpin probe-mediated exponential amplification reaction (HEAR) strategy that combines DNA strand displacement with a "who triggers, who gets generated" mode, providing excellent single-base discrimination and a reduced background signal. The detection limit is 19 aM, which is reduced by 3 orders of magnitude compared to traditional exponential amplification approaches. This one-pot strategy also exhibits a wide dynamic range, high specificity and short detection time. It is expected to become a powerful tool for clinical diagnosis.

Materials with tunable emission colors has attracted increasing interest in both fundamental research and applications. As a key member of light-emitting materials family, lanthanide doped upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) have been intensively demonstrated to emit light in any color upon near-infrared excitation. However, realizing the trichromatic emission in UCNPs with a fixed composition remains a great challenge. Here, without excitation pulsed modulation and three different near-infrared pumping, we report an experimental design to fine-control emission in the full color gamut from core-shell-structured UCNPs by manipulating the energy migration through dual-channel pump scheme. We also demonstrate their potential application in full-color display. These findings may benefit the future development of convenient and versatile optical methos for multicolor tuning and open up the possibility of constructing full-color volumetric display systems with high spatiotemporal resolution., (© 2023 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

Nucleic acid nanotechnologies based on toehold-mediated strand displacement are ideally suited for single-nucleotide variations (SNVs) detection. But only a limited number of means could be used to construct selective hybridization probes via finely designed toehold and regulation of branching migration. Herein, we present a cooperative hybridization strategy relying on a dual-toehold and bulge-loop (DT&BL) probe, coupled with the strand displacement catalytic (SDC) cycle to identify SNVs. The dual-toehold can simultaneously hybridize the 5' and 3' ends of the target, so that it possessed the mutual correction function for improving the specificity in comparison with the single target-binding domain. Insertion of BLs into the dual-toehold probe allows tuning of Gibbs free energy change (ΔG) and control of the reaction rate during branching migration. Using the SDC cycle, the reactivity and selectivity of the DT&BL probe were increased drastically without elaborate competitive sequences. The feasibilities of this platform were demonstrated by the identification of three cancer-related genes. Moreover, the applicability of this biosensor to detect clinical samples showed satisfactory accuracy and reliability. We envision it would offer a new perspective for the construction of highly specific probes based on dynamic DNA nanotechnology, and serves as a promising tool for clinical diagnostics., 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 © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) technology has achieved great breakthroughs in terms of convenience and sensitivity; it is becoming the most promising molecular tool. However, only two CRISPR activation modes (single and double stranded) are available, and they have specificity and universality bottlenecks that limit the application of CRISPR technology in high-precision molecular recognition. Herein, we proposed a novel CRISPR/Cas12a unrestricted activation mode to greatly improve its performance. The new mode totally eliminates the need for a protospacer adjacent motif and accurately activates Cas12a through toehold-mediated strand displacement and branch migration, which is highly universal and ultra-specific. With this mode, we discriminated all mismatch types and detected the EGFR T790M and L858R mutations in very low abundance. Taken together, our activation mode is deeply incorporated with DNA nanotechnology and extensively broadens the application boundaries of CRISPR technology in biomedical and molecular reaction networks., (© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.)

Macrophages are well known for their phagocytic functions in innate immunity across species. In mammals, they rapidly consume a large amount of energy by shifting their metabolism from mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation toward aerobic glycolysis, to perform the effective bactericidal function upon infection. Meanwhile, they strive for sufficient energy resources by restricting systemic metabolism. In contrast, under nutrient deprivation, the macrophage population is down-regulated to save energy for survival. Drosophila melanogaster possesses a highly conserved and comparatively simple innate immune system. Intriguingly, recent studies have shown that Drosophila plasmatocytes, the macrophage-like blood cells, adopt comparable metabolic remodeling and signaling pathways to achieve energy reassignment when challenged by pathogens, indicating the conservation of such metabolic strategies between insects and mammals. Here, focusing on Drosophila macrophages (plasmatocytes), we review recent advances regarding their comprehensive roles in local or systemic metabolism under homeostasis or stress, emphasizing macrophages as critical players in the crosstalk between the immune system and organic metabolism from a Drosophila perspective., Competing Interests: Conflict of interestThe authors declare no conflict of interest., (© The Author(s) 2022.)

According to the difference in temperature, thermotherapy can be divided into thermal ablation and mild hyperthermia. The main advantage of thermal ablation is that it can efficiently target tumors in situ, while mild hyperthermia has a good inhibitory effect on distant metastasis. There are some similarities and differences between the two therapies with respect to inducing anti-tumor immune responses, but neither of them results in sustained systemic immunity. Malignant tumors (such as breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, nasopharyngeal carcinoma, and brain cancer) are recurrent, highly metastatic, and highly invasive even after treatment, hence a single therapy rarely resolves the clinical issues. A more effective and comprehensive treatment strategy using a combination of hyperthermia and immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapies has gained attention. This paper summarizes the relevant preclinical and clinical studies on hyperthermia combined with ICI therapies and compares the efficacy of two types of hyperthermia combined with ICIs, in order to provide a better treatment for the recurrence and metastasis of clinically malignant tumors., 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 Yang, Gao, Xu, Tao, Luo, Wang, Zhong, He and He.)

An integrated digital magnetic resonance imaging spectrometer was proposed in this study. By using the FPGA chip Artix7 200T, timing control, data processing, digital frequency conversion and phase control were implemented into a single-chip, thus effectively improved timing accuracy and phase accuracy, while avoided the structural design complexity caused by multi-board connection and improved system integration and imaging quality.

Aim: To confirm whether exosome-mediated delivery of aptamer S58 (Exo-S58) has a better antifibrotic effect than naked S58 in human conjunctival fibroblasts (HConFs) and a rat glaucoma filtration surgery (GFS) model., Methods: To enhance the effective reaction time of aptamer S58 in vivo , we loaded aptamer S58 into exosomes derived from HEK293T cells by PEI transfection to determine the effect of Exo-S58 in HConFs and a rat GFS model., Results: Exo-S58 can significantly reduce cell proliferation, migration and fibrosis in TGF-β2-induced HConFs. In an in vivo experiment, Exo-S58 treatment prolonged filtering bleb retention and reduced fibrosis compared with naked S58 treatment in GFS rats., Conclusion: The exosomes are safe and valid carriers to deliver aptamers. Furthermore, Exo-S58 exhibited superior antifibrotic effect than naked S58 both in HConFs cells and rat GFS models., (International Journal of Ophthalmology Press.)

Objectives: Our study aimed to investigate the relationship between the severity of frailty and the long-term care (LTC) needs of older adults from Chinese communities., Design: A cross-sectional study., Setting: Three Chinese community health centres. All data were collected by trained researchers through face-to-face collection., Participants: We surveyed a total of 540 older residents who aged 60 or older from community in Guangzhou, China., Measures: The Chinese version of the Tilburg frailty indicator was used to assess the frailty status of participants. LTC needs was evaluated by Integrated Home Care Services Questionnaire. Using non-adjusted and multivariate adjusted logistic regression analysis to evaluate frailty and LTC needs, then smoothed plots, threshold effect analysis and P for trend were used to further investigate the relationship between them., Results: The prevalence of frailty was 45.2% among the 540 older adults enrolled (aged 70.4±8.3 years; 65.7% females). 27% had higher LTC needs, which increased to 65.1% for individuals with frailty. Logistic regression analysis showed that frailty was strongly associated with LTC needs (OR 3.06, 95% CI 2.06 to 4.55, p<0.01). In the multivariate model, after adjusting for demographic characteristics, economic situation, activities of daily living and comorbidities, frailty remained significantly associated with LTC needs (OR 2.32, 95% CI 1.39 to 3.88, p<0.01). The smoothed plots showed a nearly linear relationship between frailty and LTC needs. Threshold effect analysis showed that every point increase in frailty, the score of LTC needs increased 1.3 points. The IQR to regroup individuals with frailty. Compared with the first quartile (scores ≤2), the incidence of LTC needs increased with the frailty status (p value for trend <0.01)., Conclusion: There is a linear relationship between frailty and LTC needs. With the increasing degree of frailty, the LTC needs of older adults dramatically increases., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2022. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.)

Background: Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), a neoplasm of the head and neck, has high incidence and mortality rates in East and Southeast Asia. Evodia rutaecarpa is a tree native to Korea and China, and its fruit (hereafter referred to as Evodia) exhibits remarkable antitumour properties. However, little is known about its mechanism of action in NPC. In this study, we employed network pharmacology to identify targets of active Evodia compounds in nasopharyngeal carcinoma and generate an interaction network., Methods: The active ingredients of Evodia and targets in NPC were obtained from multiple databases, and an interaction network was constructed via the Cytoscape and STRING databases. The key biological processes and signalling pathways were predicted using Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopaedia of Genes and Genomes pathway enrichment analyses. Molecular docking technology was used to identify the affinity and activity of target genes, and The Cancer Genome Atlas and Human Protein Atlas databases were used to analyse differential expression. Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) and Annexin V-fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)/propidium iodide (PI) dual-fluorescence staining were used for experimental verification., Results: Active Evodia compounds included quercetin, isorhamnetin, and evodiamine, and important NPC targets included MAPK14, AKT1, RELA, MAPK1, JUN, and p53, which were enriched in lipid and atherosclerosis signalling pathways. Additionally, we verified the high affinity and activity of the active compounds through molecular docking, and the target proteins were verified using immunohistochemistry and differential expression analyses. Furthermore, CCK-8 assays and Annexin V-FITC/PI dual-fluorescence staining showed that isorhamnetin inhibited the proliferation of NPC cells and induced apoptosis., Conclusion: Our results identified the molecular mechanisms of Evodia and demonstrated its ability to alter the proliferation and apoptosis of NPC cells through multiple targets and pathways, thereby providing evidence for the clinical application of Evodia., Competing Interests: The authors declared that they have no conflicts of interest regarding this work., (Copyright © 2022 Runshi Xu et al.)

Nucleic acid hybridization plays a critical role in medical diagnostics and nanotechnology, but its selectivity and robustness remain to be improved. Here, focusing on double-stranded nucleic acid-based hybridization, we present a series of related strategies. Above all, two simple strategies for enriching toehold-included double-stranded nucleic acids have been proposed. On this basis, two universal hybridization methods with higher selectivity than typical toehold exchange reaction and a long target detection method using short probes to extend the detectable length range are realized. We also provide a double-stranded nucleic acids-catalyzed cycle amplification reaction to improve sensitivity, which has superior interference resistance and excellent discrimination for single-base mismatches. Besides, double-stranded nucleic acids with forked toeholds are used as essential elements to construct a series of logic gates that can evaluate different input combinations. Given the unique advantages of double-stranded nucleic acids, we expect the current work to advance the application of double-stranded nucleic acid-based hybridization in medical diagnostics and nanotechnology., 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 © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Oxaliplatin is an effective chemotherapeutic agent for the treatment of malignant tumors. However, severe oxaliplatin-induced neurotoxicity has been well documented. Memantine is a drug for the management of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) due to its promising neuroprotective properties. We hypothesize that Memantine possesses a beneficial role against chemotherapy-induced neuronal damages. In this study, we established an oxaliplatin-induced neurotoxicity assay model in human SHSY-5Y neuronal cells and investigated the protective effect of Memantine. We showed that Memantine treatment ameliorated oxaliplatin-elevated intracellular production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), lipid product malondialdehyde (MDA), and NOX-2 expression. Memantine alleviated impairment of the mitochondrial membrane potential and ATP production by oxaliplatin. As a result, Memantine showed a protective role against oxaliplatin-induced cytotoxicity. Moreover, the terminal deoxynucleotidyl Transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) apoptosis assay revealed that Memantine protected oxaliplatin-induced apoptosis through mitigating the ratio of Bax/Bcl-2 and Caspase-3 cleavage. We concluded Memantine ameliorated the neurotoxicity of oxaliplatin in a mitochondrial-dependent pathway.

Background: Laparoscopic anatomic mesohepatectomy for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains technically challenging, especially for those with a massive tumor larger than 10 cm., Methods: In this study, a 65-year-old man with a 13 × 10-cm 2 solitary liver tumor located at segments 4, 5, and 8 underwent laparoscopic mesohepatectomy. To reduce the possibility of releasing cancer cells from the primary tumor, the in situ resection strategy for tumor removal was implemented. The intrafascial approach was used to dissect the right Glissonean pedicle, to transect the right anterior hepatic artery, and to ligate the right anterior portal vein. The extrafascial and transfissural approach was performed along the umbilical fissure to transect the Glissonean pedicle of segment 4. Indocyanine green (ICG) then was applied using "reverse staining" to visualize the resection extent and the right posterior hepatic duct (RPHD). During parenchymal resection, the right anterior Glissonean pedicle was adequately exposed and transected via the extrafascial approach above the plane of the RPHD. Finally, the right coronary ligament was dissected, and the tumor was removed., Results: The operation was completed in 360 min, with a blood loss of 200 mL. The histopathologic diagnosis indicated a moderately differentiated HCC. The patient was discharged on postoperative day 8 without any complications., Conclusion: Laparoscopic in situ anatomic mesohepatectomy using combined intra- and extrafascial approaches with ICG navigation may be feasible for patients with a centrally located solitary massive HCC., (© 2021. Society of Surgical Oncology.)

Fluxgate sensors are currently widely used for weak magnetic field measurement because of their relatively great performance, such as resolution, power consumption, and measurement of vector magnetic fields directly. Since the analog fluxgate sensor has some drawbacks, e.g., it would be influenced by the noise of the analog circuit. Hence, in recent years, the analog circuit is gradually inclined to be realized by digital processing in which the software parameter adjustment is employed to replace the analog components, which can greatly improve the flexibility of the design. This paper proposes a digital single-axis fluxgate sensor according to the cobalt-based amorphous effect. To be specific, the analog signal output by the fluxgate is sampled directly by an analog-to-digital converter to obtain the signal waveform in digital form after amplification. The demodulation, filtering, and integration of the signal are all solved by mathematical algorithms. Based on the working principle of the fluxgate sensor, the selection of the magnetic core material and coil winding method of the fluxgate sensor probe is introduced in detail. The design and function of the excitation circuit and preamplifier circuit, as well as the specific realization of digital signal processing, are described. Finally, the performance test of the digital fluxgate sensor was performed under laboratory conditions, and the magnetic anomaly detection comparison experiment was performed outdoors with commercial fluxgate sensors. To sum up, the linearity of the digital single-axis fluxgate sensor is better than 1 × 10 -5 , and the root mean square noise value is below 0.1 nT. At the same time, it has good magnetic field tracking performance and is extremely sensitive to the magnetic field of the measurement area.

DNA strand displacement plays an essential role in the field of dynamic DNA nanotechnology. However, flexible regulation of strand displacement remains a significant challenge. Most previous regulatory tools focused on controllable activation of toehold and thus limited the design flexibility. Here, we introduce a regulatory tool termed cooperative branch migration (CBM), through which DNA strand displacement can be controlled by regulating the complementarity of branch migration domains. CBM shows perfect compatibility with the majority of existing regulatory tools, and when combined with forked toehold, it permits continuous fine-tuning of the strand displacement rate spanning 5 orders of magnitude. CBM manifests multifunctional regulation ability, including rate fine-tuning, continuous dynamic regulation, reaction resetting, and selective activation. To exemplify the powerful function, we also constructed a nested if-function signal processing system on the basis of cascading CBM reactions. We believe that the proposed regulatory strategy would effectively enrich the DNA strand displacement toolbox and ultimately promote the construction of DNA machines of higher complexity in nucleic acid research and biomedical applications.