Search

Jianlong Zhou,1,2,* Juanmei Mo,2,* Chaohui Tan,1,* Feng Xie,1 Jing Liang,3 Wenhua Huang1 1Xinhui People’s Hospital, Postdoctoral Innovation Practice Base of Southern Medical University, Xinhui, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Oncology, Guangxi International Zhuang Medicine Hospital, Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine, Nanning, People’s Republic of China; 3The School of Basic Medical Science, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Wenhua Huang, School of Basic Medical Science, Southern Medical University, No. 1023 North Shatai Road, Guangzhou, 510515, People’s Republic of China, Email mwmwmw2014@126.com Jing Liang, School of Basic Medical Science, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, No. 232 East Waihuan Road, Guangzhou, 510006, People’s Republic of China, Email webber0755@sohu.comPurpose: Enhancers are genomic regulatory elements located distally from the target gene, which play a critical role in determining cell identity and function. Dysregulation of enhancers has been frequently observed in various types of cancer, including cervical cancer. However, the identity of enhancers and their associated transcriptional regulators that are involved in cervical cancer remains unclear.Methods: With bioinformatics and 3D genomics, we revealed the enhancers in cervical cancer cell line and calculated which transcription factor (TF) is specifically binding on them based on TFs motif database. We knockdowned this TF and studied its function in cervical cancer cell line in vivo and in vitro.Results: We found 14,826 activated enhancers and predicted that JUND (JunD Proto-Oncogene) is relatively enriched in the sequences of these enhancers. Well-known oncogene MYC and JUN were regulated by JUND through enhancers. To further explore the roles of JUND in cervical cancer, we analyzed the gene expression data of clinical cervical cancer samples and knock-downed JUND by CRISPR-Cas9 in Hela cell line. We found JUND is over-expressed in cervical cancer and the expression of JUND increased along with the cervical cancer progresses. Knockdown of JUND decreased the proliferation of Hela cells in vitro and in vivo and blocked cell cycle in G1-phase. Transcriptome sequencing analysis revealed the identification of 2,231 differentially expressed genes in response to the JUND knockdown treatment. This perturbation resulted in the modulation of several biological processes and pathways that have been previously linked to cancer.Conclusion: These findings provide evidence for the significant involvement of JUND in cervical cancer pathogenesis, thereby positioning JUND as a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of this disease.Keywords: cervical cancer, JUND, transcription factor, enhancer

Sepsis-associated encephalopathy (SAE) refers to diffuse brain dysfunction secondary to systemic infection without central nervous system infection. The early diagnosis of SAE remains a major clinical problem, and its diagnosis is still exclusionary. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) related techniques, such as magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), molecular MRI (mMRI), arterial spin-labeling (ASL), fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR), and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), currently provide new options for the early identification of SAE. This review collected clinical and basic research and case reports related to SAE and MRI-related techniques in recent years, summarized and analyzed the basic principles and applications of MRI technology in diagnosing SAE, and provided a basis for diagnosing SAE by MRI-related techniques.

Venture capital (VC) is a relatively newly emergent industry that is still subject to large uncertainties in China. Therefore, building a robust social network with other VC institutions is a good way to share information, various resources, and benefit from skill and knowledge complementarity to against risks. Strong evidences indicate that better networked VC institutions are of a better financial performance, however, most of previous works overlook the evolution of VC institutions and only focus on some simple topology indicators of the static syndication network, which also neglects higher-order network structure and cannot give a comprehensive evaluation. In this paper, based on VC investment records in the Chinese market, we construct temporal syndication networks between VC institutions year by year. As k-shell decomposition considers higher-order connection patterns, we employ k-shell as an evaluation of the influence of VC institutions in syndication networks. By clustering time series of k-shell values, the VC institutions in China fall into five groups that are quite different from each other on financial performances and investment behaviors. This, in turn, proves the power of our method that only based on proper sequential network properties, we can reveal their financial investment performance. Compared to other network centrality measurements, k-shell is a better indicator that is indicated by a smaller intra-group distance and a larger inter-group distance.

The primary processed product of Panax ginseng C.A. Meyer (P. ginseng) is red ginseng. As technology advances, new products of red ginseng have arisen. Red ginseng products, e.g., traditional red ginseng, sun ginseng, black ginseng, fermented red ginseng, and puffed red ginseng, are commonly used in herbal medicine. Ginsenosides are the major secondary metabolites of P. ginseng. The constituents of P. ginseng are significantly changed during processing, and several pharmacological activities of red ginseng products are dramatically increased compared to white ginseng. In this paper, we aimed to review the ginsenosides and pharmacological activities of various red ginseng products, the transformation law of ginsenosides in processing, and some clinical trials of red ginseng products. This article will help to highlight the diverse pharmacological properties of red ginseng products and aid in the future development of red ginseng industrialization.

BackgroundImmune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have revolutionized cancer therapy in the past decade and amplify T-cell-mediated immune responses by disrupting immunoinhibitory signals. The augmented T-cell immune response has led to a range of immune-related adverse effects (irAEs). Immune-related cardiotoxicity has been reported in case series but has been underappreciated due to difficulties in diagnosis. This article describes epidemiological, clinical presentation, subtype, and treatment data and a new systematic framework for the clinical management of cardiotoxicity.MethodsData were extracted for cancer patients who received ICIs in a single center between January 1, 2020, and February 28, 2022. ICI-associated cardiotoxicity was clinically diagnosed based on clinical presentations, biochemical biomarkers, and imaging features.ResultsWe identified a total of 12 (2.46%) cases of ICI-related cardiotoxicity from 487 patients who received PD-1 or PD-L1 inhibitors. All patients were diagnosed with advanced or metastatic solid tumors. The severity of ICI-related cardiotoxicity ranged from subclinical cardiac abnormalities (subclinical type) with only asymptomatic troponin-I (TnI) elevations (25.0%) to symptomatic cardiac abnormalities (clinical type) (75.0%). Patients with symptomatic cardiac abnormalities had several manifestations, including tachyarrhythmia (16.7%), bradyarrhythmia (41.7%), or cardiac failure (8.3%). The median immunotherapy exposure time was 1.5 doses (range: 1 to 5), and the median time from the initial immunotherapy to the onset of ICI-related cardiotoxicity was 33.5 days (IQR: 20.3 to 46.8). Most patients, including those with subclinical cardiac abnormalities, were administered systemic corticosteroids (58.3%). One (8.3%) patient was put on mechanical ventilation, one (8.3%) received plasma exchange therapy, one (8.3%) was implanted with a pacemaker, and one (8.3%) was admitted to the ICU. Three patients with symptomatic cardiac abnormalities (25.0%) died, and other patients presented with significant clinical improvement with good outcomes.ConclusionICI-related cardiotoxicity is uncommon but critical with a high mortality rate and poor prognosis, especially for a small group of patients with symptomatic cardiac abnormalities. More attention should be given to cardiotoxicity associated with ICIs, and these patients should be given baseline examinations and biochemical analyses before and after the initiation of immunotherapy, intensive cardiac assessments, an accurate and rapid diagnosis, and timely multidisciplinary management with immunosuppressive agents and other necessary clinical interventions.

Background The impact of host skin microbiome on horizontal transmission of tick-borne pathogens , and of pathogen associated transstadial and transovarial changes in tick microbiome are largely unknown, but are important to control increasingly emerging tick-borne diseases worldwide. Methods Focusing on a rickettsiosis pathogen, Rickettsia raoultii, we used R. raoultii-positive and R. raoultii-negative Dermacentor spp. tick colonies to study the involvement of skin microbiota in cutaneous infection with rickettsiae in laboratory mice, and the function of the tick microbiome on maintenance of rickettsiae through all tick developmental stages (eggs, larvae, nymphs, adults) over two generations. Results We observed changes in the skin bacteria community, such as Chlamydia, not only associated with rickettsial colonization but also with tick feeding on skin. The diversity of skin microbiome differed between paired tick-bitten and un-bitten sites. For vertical transmission, significant differences in the tick microbiota between pathogenic rickettsia-positive and -negative tick chorts was observed across all developmental stages at least over two generations, which appeared to be a common pattern not only for R. raoultii but also for another pathogenic species, Candidatus Rickettsia tarasevichiae. More importantly, bacterial differences were complemented by functional shifts primed for genetic information processing during blood feeding. Specifically, the differences in tick microbiome gene repertoire between pathogenic Rickettsia-positive and -negative progenies were enriched in pathways associated with metabolism and hormone signals during vertical transmission. Conclusions We demonstrate that host skin microbiome might be a new factor determining the transmission of rickettsial pathogens through ticks. While pathogenic rickettsiae infect vertebrate hosts during blood-feeding by the tick, they may also manipulate the maturation of the tick through changing the functional potential of its microbiota over the tick’s life stages. The findings here might spur the development of new-generation control methods for ticks and tick-borne pathogens.

GRB 221009A is the brightest gamma-ray burst ever detected since the discovery of this kind of energetic explosions. However, an accurate measurement of the prompt emission properties of this burst is very challenging due to its exceptional brightness. With joint observations of \textit{Insight}-HXMT and GECAM-C, we made an unprecedentedly accurate measurement of the emission during the first $\sim$1800 s of GRB 221009A, including its precursor, main emission (ME, which dominates the burst in flux), flaring emission and early afterglow, in the hard X-ray to soft gamma-ray band from $\sim$ 10 keV to $\sim$ 6 MeV. Based on the GECAM-C unsaturated data of the ME, we measure a record-breaking isotropic equivalent energy ($E_{\rm iso}$) of $\bf \sim 1.5 \times 10^{55}$ erg, which is about eight times the total rest-mass energy of the Sun. The early afterglow data require a significant jet break between 650 s and 1100 s, most likely at $\sim950$ s from the afterglow starting time $T_{AG}$, which corresponds to a jet opening angle of $\sim {0.7^\circ} \ (\eta_\gamma n)^{1/8}$, where $n$ is the ambient medium density in units of $\rm cm^{-3}$ and $\eta_\gamma$ is the ratio between $\gamma$-ray energy and afterglow kinetic energy. The beaming-corrected total $\gamma$-ray energy $E_{\gamma}$ is $\sim 1.15 \times10^{51} \ (\eta_\gamma n)^{1/4}$ erg, which is typical for long GRBs. These results suggest that this GRB may have a special central engine, which could launch and collimate a very narrowly beamed jet with an ordinary energy budget, leading to exceptionally luminous gamma-ray radiation per unit solid angle. Alternatively, more GRBs might have such a narrow and bright beam, which are missed by an unfavorable viewing angle or have been detected without distance measurement., Comment: Submitted to National Science Review. This paper is under press embargo, contact the corresponding author for details

Monochamus alternatus Hope (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae), an invasive beetle that has caused billions of dollars of economic losses, is a serious pest of Pinus massoniana in many Asian countries. An efficient RNAi system is helpful for functional genomics research on M. alternatus. In this study, a tryptophan 2,3-dioxygenase (TDO) related to the ommochrome synthesis in insects was identified. Using RNAi technology, the M. alternatus TDO gene was silenced by injecting dsRNA into pupae, and individuals were analyzed by phenotype and expression of the TDO gene by RT-qPCR. The results show that TDO is expressed in different developmental stages of M. alternatus, having its peak expression during the prepupal stage. White-eye phenotypes were observed in the pupal and adult stages after dsRNA injection, and a significant 81% decrease in TDO mRNA levels 48 h after injection was determined by RT-qPCR. This gene can be used as a genetic marker and is an important discovery for future genetic engineering tools to control M. alternatus populations.

Objective: To examine the causal effect of potentially modifiable risk factors contributing to migraine pathogenesis.Methods: We performed Mendelian randomization analyses and acquired data from United Kingdom Biobank, FinnGen Biobank, and the MRC IEU OpenGWAS data infrastructure. An inverse-variance weighted (IVW) model was used to examine the relationship between 51 potentially modifiable risk factors and migraine in 3215 participants with migraine without aura (MwoA), 3541 participants with migraine with aura (MwA), and 176,107 controls. We adopted a Bonferroni-corrected threshold of p = 9.8 × 10–4 (.05 divided by 51 exposures) as a sign of significant effect, and a p < .05 was considered as the sign of a suggestive association.Results: More years of schooling significantly correlated with lower odds of MwoA pathogenesis (OR .57 [95%CI .44 to .75], p < .0001). More vitamin B12 intake (OR .49 [95%CI .24 to .99], p = .046) and lower level of stress [OR 8.17 (95%CI 1.5 to 44.36), p = .015] or anxiety disorder (OR 1.92 × 109 [95%CI 8.76 to 4.23*1017], p = .029) were suggestive to be correlated lower odds of MwoA pathogenesis. More coffee intake (OR .39 [95%CI .22 to .7], p = .001), lower level of eicosapentaenoic acid status (OR 2.54 [95%CI 1.03 to 6.26], p = .043), and more light physical activity (OR .09 [95%CI .01 to .94], p = .046) were suggestive to be associated with lower odds of MwA.Conclusion: The years of schooling, light physical activity, vitamin B12 intake, and coffee intake were the protective factors for migraine; stress, anxiety, and eicosapentaenoic acid status were harmful factors. Interventions could be developed based on modifying these factors for migraine prophylaxis.

Additional file 6: Supplemental Table S2. The laboratory life cycle of Ixodes persulcatus and Dermacentor silvarum.

Additional file 3: Figure S3. PCoA analysis of R. raoultii-positive and -negative groups in second generation.

Additional file 7: Supplemental Table S3. Results of tick fitness post-rickettsial exposure in Ixodes persulcatus and Dermacentor silvarum.

This phase III clinical trial aimed to assess the safety and demonstrate the immunogenicity of a candidate freeze-dried purified Vero cell-based rabies vaccine (PVRV-WIBP) developed for human use. A cohort of 40 participants in stage 1 and 1956 subjects in stage 2 with an age range of 10–50 years were recruited for the phase III clinical trial. For safety analysis in stage 1, 20 participants received either 4-dose or 5-dose regimen of PVRV-WIBP. In stage 2, 1956 subjects were randomly divided into the 5-dose PVRV-WIBP, 5-dose PVRV-LNCD, and 4-dose PVRV-WIBP groups. The serum neutralizing antibody titer against rabies was determined on day 7 or 14 and day 35 or 42. Adverse reactions were recorded for more than 6 months. Most adverse reactions, which were mild and moderate in severity, occurred and resolved within 1 week after each injection in the PVRV-WIBP (4 and 5 doses) and PVRV-LNCD (5 doses) groups. All three groups achieved complete seroconversion 14 days after the initial dose and 14 days after completing the full vaccination schedule, the susceptible subjects in the PVRV-WIBP group (4-dose or 5-dose regimen) displayed higher neutralizing antibody titers against the rabies virus compared to those in the PVRV-LNCD group (5-dose regimen). PVRV-WIBP induced non-inferior immune responses versus PVRV-LNCD as assessed by seroconversion rate. PVRV-WIBP was well tolerated and non-inferior to PVRV-LNCD in healthy individuals aged 10–50 years. The results indicated that PVRV-WIBP (both 4- and 5-dose schedules) could be an alternative to rabies post-exposure prophylaxis.

Additional file 5: Supplemental Table S1. Reads counts of data analyzed in the study.

Additional file 8: Supplemental Table S4. Primers used in this study.

Slip avalanches are ubiquitous phenomena occurring in 3D materials under shear strain and their study contributes immensely to our understanding of plastic deformation, fragmentation, and earthquakes. So far, little is known about the role of shear strain in 2D materials. Here we show some evidence of two-dimensional slip avalanches in exfoliated rhombohedral MoS2, triggered by shear strain near the threshold level. Utilizing interfacial polarization in 3R-MoS2, we directly probe the stacking order in multilayer flakes and discover a wide variety of polarization domains with sizes following a power-law distribution. These findings suggest slip avalanches can occur during the exfoliation of 2D materials, and the stacking orders can be changed via shear strain. Our observation has far-reaching implications for developing new materials and technologies, where precise control over the atomic structure of these materials is essential for optimizing their properties as well as for our understanding of fundamental physical phenomena., Comment: To be published in Nano Letters

Additional file 4: Figure S4. The abundance correlation between Chlamydia and Actinobacteria in skin.

Additional file 1: Figure S1. Phylogenetic analysis of sequences from SFGR specific PCR with other Rickettsial specieses. Phylogenetic trees of ompA and gltA genes of SFGR identified from I. persulcatus cohort A) ompA and B) gltA and from D. silvarum C）ompA, D) gltA, respectively.

Additional file 2: Figure S2. Composition and similarity of bacteria on bitten and un-bitten skins. A) Relative abundance of bacteria between tick-bitten and un-bitten skins. B) Bray−Curtis dissimilarity within bitten or unbitten group and between unbitten and bitten group.

We present CrossLoc3D, a novel 3D place recognition method that solves a large-scale point matching problem in a cross-source setting. Cross-source point cloud data corresponds to point sets captured by depth sensors with different accuracies or from different distances and perspectives. We address the challenges in terms of developing 3D place recognition methods that account for the representation gap between points captured by different sources. Our method handles cross-source data by utilizing multi-grained features and selecting convolution kernel sizes that correspond to most prominent features. Inspired by the diffusion models, our method uses a novel iterative refinement process that gradually shifts the embedding spaces from different sources to a single canonical space for better metric learning. In addition, we present CS-Campus3D, the first 3D aerial-ground cross-source dataset consisting of point cloud data from both aerial and ground LiDAR scans. The point clouds in CS-Campus3D have representation gaps and other features like different views, point densities, and noise patterns. We show that our CrossLoc3D algorithm can achieve an improvement of 4.74% - 15.37% in terms of the top 1 average recall on our CS-Campus3D benchmark and achieves performance comparable to state-of-the-art 3D place recognition method on the Oxford RobotCar. We will release the code and CS-Campus3D benchmark.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the association of serum complement C1q levels with cardiovascular outcomes among patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), and evaluate the value of C1q modified by high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) levels as an independent predictor. METHODS: As a single-center prospective observational study, we analyzed 1701 patients who had received primary or elective PCI for ACS at Beijing Anzhen Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China between June 1, 2016 and November 30, 2017. The associations of C1q modified by hs-CRP with major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) were determined in survival analysis. RESULTS: Patients with the lowest C1q tertile had the highest cumulative risk of MACE (log-rank P = 0.007). In fully adjusted Cox regression models, stratifying the total population according to hs-CRP dichotomy, C1q was significantly associated with MACE in patients with hs-CRP levels less than 2 mg/L but not in those with 2 mg/L or more (P(interaction) = 0.02). In patients with hs-CRP levels less than 2 mg/L, with the lowest C1q tertile as reference, the risk of MACE was reduced by 40.0% in the middle C1q tertile [hazard ratio (HR) = 0.600, 95% CI: 0.423–0.852, P = 0.004] and by 43.9% in the highest C1q tertile (HR = 0.561, 95% CI: 0.375–0.840, P = 0.005). CONCLUSIONS: Serum complement C1q is significantly associated with cardiovascular outcomes in patients with ACS undergoing PCI, only when hs-CRP levels are less than 2 mg/L. This finding implicates the usefulness of C1q for the risk stratification in ACS patients with reduced systemic inflammation.

Gravitational wave high-energy Electromagnetic Counterpart All-sky Monitor (GECAM) is a space-borne instrument dedicated to monitoring high-energy transients, thereinto Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs) and Terrestrial Electron Beams (TEBs). We propose a TGF/TEB search algorithm, with which 147 bright TGFs and 4 TEBs are identified during an effective observation time of $\sim$ 9 months. We show that, with gamma-ray and charged particle detectors, GECAM can effectively identify and distinguish TGFs and TEBs, and measure their temporal and spectral properties in detail. Moreover, we find an interesting TEB consisting of two pulses with a separation of $\sim$ 150 ms, which is expected to originate from a lightning process near the geomagnetic footprint. We also find that the GECAM TGF’s lightning-association ratio is $\sim$ 80\% in the east Asia region using the GLD360 lightning network, which is significantly higher than previous observations.

Ophiocordyceps sinensis is widely utilized due to its pharmaceutical value. Mycelial protein forms a key active component of O. sinensis and determines the medicinal potential of fungus. Here, we describe the development of an optimized fermentation medium to obtain more mycelial soluble protein from O. sinensis using response surface methodology (RSM) and investigate the increased mycelial protein content using transcriptomics. The maximum mycelial protein content of 2.11% was obtained using a medium consisting of 20% beef broth, 0.10% peptone, 2% glucose, 0.15% yeast extract, 0.20% KH2PO4, and 0.02% MgSO4. Transcriptome analysis identified 790 differentially expressed genes (DEGs), including 592 up-regulated genes and 198 down-regulated genes, optimisation resulted in more up-regulated genes. The main DEGs were enriched in metabolic pathways, ABC transporters, starch and sucrose metabolism, tyrosine metabolism, and glutathione metabolism. In addition, some DEGs associated with mycelial protein enhancement such as tyrosinase (TYR), glutathione S-transferase (GST), glutamine synthetase (glnA), and β-glucosidase may contribute to increased mycelial protein content. Real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) was used to confirm gene expression and the results support the accuracy of RNA-Seq and DEG analysis. This study provides an optimized fermentation method for enhancing the mycelial protein content of O. sinensis and a reference for the effective development of O. sinensis protein.

As phenol possesses a threat to human health, there is a great demand to search for fast and efficient methods for it to be discharged. In this study, a novel biomaterial was prepared by the immobilization of bacteria on a cationic straw carrier, and the remediation ability of the biomaterial on phenol-containing wastewater was investigated. The free bacteria could degrade 1,000 mg/L phenol within 240 h, while the prepared biomaterial was 192 h, shortening by 48 h that of free bacteria. In addition, the degradation tolerance of biomaterial increased from 1,000 mg/L to 1,200 mg/L than the free bacteria, within 216 h, which shortened by 24 h the degradation time of 1,000 mg/L phenol by free bacteria (240 h). Further, under different pH conditions, the degradation efficiency of phenol by prepared biomaterial was much higher than that of free bacteria. Especially for the lower pH 5, the degradation efficiency of biomaterial was nearly twice that of the free bacteria. This investigation demonstrates that this biomaterial has great potential in the field of remediation of organic pollution. HIGHLIGHTS A novel biomaterial was prepared by the fixation of bacteria on cationic straw.; The biomaterial can shorten the time and increase phenol concentration for degradation, compared to the free bacteria.; At a lower pH, the degradation efficiency of biomaterial is nearly twice that of the free bacteria.

Three-dimensional green volume (TDGV) reflects the quality and quantity of urban green space and its provision of ecosystem services; therefore, its spatial pattern and the underlying influential factors play important roles in urban planning and management. However, little is known about the factors contributing to the spatial pattern of TDGV. In this paper, TDGV and land use intensity (LUI) extracted from high spatial resolution (0.05 m) remotely sensed data acquired by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), anthropogenic factors1) and natural factors2) were utilized to identify the spatial pattern of TDGV and the potential influencing factors in Lingang New City, a rapidly developed coastal town in Shanghai. The results showed that most of the TDGV was distributed in the western part of this new city and that its spatial variations were significantly axial. TDGV corresponded well with the chronologies of land formation, urban planning, and construction in the city. Generalized least squares (GLS) analysis of TDGV (grid cell size: 100 × 100 m) and its influencing factors showed that the TDGV in this new city was significantly negatively correlated with both LUI and distance from roads and significantly positively correlated with land formation time and distance from water. Distance from buildings did not affect TDGV. Additionally, the degree of influence decreased in the following order: distance from water > land formation time > distance from roads > LUI. These results indicate that the spatial pattern of TDGV in this new town was mainly affected by natural factors (i.e., the distance from water and land formation time) and that the artificial disturbances caused by rapid urbanization did not decrease the regional TDGV. The main factors shaping the spatial distribution of TDGV in this city were local natural factors. Our findings suggest that the improvement in local soil and water conditions should be emphasized in the construction of new cities in coastal areas to ensure the efficient provision of ecological services by urban green spaces.

The Chinese venture capital (VC) market is a young and rapidly expanding financial subsector. Gaining a deeper understanding of the investment behaviours of VC firms is crucial for the development of a more sustainable and healthier market and economy. Contrasting evidence supports that either specialisation or diversification helps to achieve a better investment performance. However, the impact of the syndication network is overlooked. Syndication network has a great influence on the propagation of information and trust. By exploiting an authoritative VC dataset of thirty-five-year investment information in China, we construct a joint-investment network of VC firms and analyse the effects of syndication and diversification on specialisation and investment performance. There is a clear correlation between the syndication network degree and specialisation level of VC firms, which implies that the well-connected VC firms are diversified. More connections generally bring about more information or other resources, and VC firms are more likely to enter a new stage or industry with some new co-investing VC firms when compared to a randomised null model. Moreover, autocorrelation analysis of both specialisation and success rate on the syndication network indicates that clustering of similar VC firms is roughly limited to the secondary neighbourhood. When analysing local clustering patterns, we discover that, contrary to popular beliefs, there is no apparent successful club of investors. In contrast, investors with low success rates are more likely to cluster. Our discoveries enrich the understanding of VC investment behaviours and can assist policymakers in designing better strategies to promote the development of the VC industry.

This article is aim to investigate the safety and immunogenicity of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccine booster in patients with chronic liver disease(CLD). A total of 114 patients with CLD who received a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine booster were enrolled in this study. Serum samples were collected from enrolled patients at least 14 days after the booster dose and tested for SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibody (novel coronavirus neutralizing antibody, nCoV NTAb) and IgG antibody against SARS-CoV-2 spike binding domain (novel coronavirus spike receptor-binding domain antibody, nCoV S-RBD antibody) levels. The positive rates of nCoV NTAb and nCoV S-RBD in patients with CLD were 87.72% and 91.23%, respectively, after the booster injection of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine. The booster injection resulted in the production of nCov NTAb in 66.7% of patients and nCov-SRBD antibody in 71.43% of patients with CLD who failed basic immunization. After basic SARS-CoV-2 immunization, the booster SARS-CoV2 vaccine increased the serum conversion rate and the level of nCov NTAb and nCov-SRBD antibodies in patients with CLD (including patients with cirrhosis). The severity of the liver disease is related to the immune response to COVID-19 vaccine.

Due to the ability to reshape the wireless communication environment in a cost- and energy-efficient manner, the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has garnered substantial attention. However, the explicit power consumption model of RIS and measurement validation, have received far too little attention. Therefore, in this work, we propose the RIS power consumption model and implement the practical measurement validation with various RISs. Measurement results illustrate the generality and accuracy of the proposed model. Firstly, we verify that RIS has static power consumption, and present the experiment results. Secondly, we confirm that the dynamic power consumption of the varactor-diode based RIS is almost negligible. Finally but significantly, we model the quantitative relationship between the dynamic power consumption of the PIN-diode based RIS and the polarization mode, controllable bit resolution, working status of RIS, which is validated by practical experimental results.

The rickettsiae are a group of obligate intracellular Gram-negative bacteria that include human pathogens causing an array of clinical symptoms and even death. There is an important question in the field, that is whether one infection can block the superinfection of other rickettsiae.

In this paper, we have studied the variation of the chaos bound in two regions of the torus-like black hole, i.e., the region close to the black hole horizon and the region at a certain distance from the black hole horizon. The angular momentum of the particle affects the effective potential and influences the magnitude of the chaotic behavior of the particle. Therefore, the angular momentum of particle is important in the study. The angular momentum of a particle not only affects the particle equilibrium orbital position, but also affects the Lyapunov exponent. As the angular momentum of the particle increases, the particle equilibrium position gradually moves away from the black hole horizon. In the near black hole horizon region, the chaos bound is not violated, however, at the far black hole horizon region, the chaos bound is violated. In addition unlike the charged AdS black hole which has a spherical topology of the horizon, the torus-like black hole has a toroidal topology of the horizon., 9 pages, 1 figures, 2 tables

Rickettsiae are obligate intracellular bacteria that can cause life-threatening illnesses. There is an ongoing debate as to whether established infections by one

The interlayer coupling is emerging as a new parameter for tuning the physical properties of two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals materials. When two identical semiconductor monolayers are stacked with a twist angle, the periodic interlayer coupling modulation due to the moir\'e superlattice may endow exotic physical phenomena, such as moir\'e excitons and correlated electronic phases. To gain insight into these new phenomena, it is crucial to unveil the underlying coupling between atomic layers. Recently, the rhombohedral-stacked transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) bilayer has attracted significant interest because of the emergence of an out-of-plane polarization from non-ferroelectric monolayer constituents. However, as a key parameter responsible for the physical properties, the interlayer coupling and its relationship with ferroelectricity in them remain elusive. Here we probe the asymmetric interlayer coupling between the conduction band of one layer and the valence band from the other layer in a 3R-MoS2 bilayer, which can be understood as a result of a layer-dependent Berry phase winding. By performing optical spectroscopy in a dual-gated device, we show a type-II band alignment exists at K points in the 3R-MoS2 bilayer. Furthermore, by unraveling various contributions to the band offset, we quantitatively determine the asymmetric interlayer coupling and spontaneous polarization in 3R-MoS2., Comment: To be published in Physical Review X

We present a novel trajectory traversability estimation and planning algorithm for robot navigation in complex outdoor environments. We incorporate multimodal sensory inputs from an RGB camera, 3D LiDAR, and the robot's odometry sensor to train a prediction model to estimate candidate trajectories' success probabilities based on partially reliable multi-modal sensor observations. We encode high-dimensional multi-modal sensory inputs to low-dimensional feature vectors using encoder networks and represent them as a connected graph. The graph is then used to train an attention-based Graph Neural Network (GNN) to predict trajectory success probabilities. We further analyze the number of features in the image (corners) and point cloud data (edges and planes) separately to quantify their reliability to augment the weights of the feature graph representation used in our GNN. During runtime, our model utilizes multi-sensor inputs to predict the success probabilities of the trajectories generated by a local planner to avoid potential collisions and failures. Our algorithm demonstrates robust predictions when one or more sensor modalities are unreliable or unavailable in complex outdoor environments. We evaluate our algorithm's navigation performance using a Spot robot in real-world outdoor environments. We observe an increase of 10-30% in terms of navigation success rate and a 13-15% decrease in false positive estimations compared to the state-of-the-art navigation methods.

To explore the predictive efficacy of prothrombin time (PT) with regarding for the severity and prognosis of septic patients, along with comparing with other routine coagulation parameters.A retrospective analysis was conducted. The clinical data of 302 septic patients who were admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) of Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology from January 1 to December 31 in 2019 were enrolled. Demographic and basic clinical data were collected. Laboratory data, including PT, activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT), thrombin time (TT), fibrinogen (FIB), D-dimer, fibrin (fibrinogen) degradation product (FDP), antithrombin (AT), platelet count (PLT) at ICU admission were recorded, and sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) score, acute physiology and chronic health evaluation II (APACHE II) score within 24 hours of admission to ICU were also collected. What's more, some major clinical events, such as septic shock, disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), etc. during ICU stay were also monitored. A follow-up 28 days observation of prognosis was performed. The patients were divided into the septic shock group and the non-septic shock group according to the occurrence of septic shock, and they were divided into the survival group and the non-survival group according to the 28-day prognosis. The differences in terms of above parameters between each two groups were compared. Spearman correlation method was used to analyze the correlation between routine coagulation parameters and SOFA score or APACHE II score. Receiver operator characteristic curve (ROC curve) was plotted to determine the predictive efficacy of each routine coagulation parameter with regarding to predict septic shock and 28-day mortality. Based on the cut-off value of PT, the septic patients were divided into two risk stratifications, and then the major clinical and end point outcome were compared. Kaplan-Meier survival curve analysis was applied to investigate the difference of the 28-day cumulated survival rate based on the different risk stratifications of PT level. Finally, multivariate Logistic regression analysis was used to explore whether prolonged PT level was an independent risk factor for septic shock and 28-day mortality.The 302 patients were all enrolled, including 120 patients with septic shock and 182 patients without. Seventy-five patients died within 28 days, while 227 survived. Comparing with the non-septic shock group or the survival group, the septic shock group or the non-survival group patients both had longer PT, APTT and TT, higher D-dimer, FDP and lower PLT, FIB and AT. Correlation analysis revealed that PT and PLT were better correlated with SOFA score (r values were 0.503 and -0.524, both P0.01), and PT was better correlated with APACHE II score (r = 0.407, P0.01). ROC curve analysis showed that PT had the most powerful predictive efficacy for septic shock and 28-day mortality. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) and 95% confidence interval (95%CI) were 0.831 (0.783-0.879) and 0.739 (0.674-0.805), respectively. The cut-off value were 16.8 s and 16.3 s, respectively, with the sensitivity of 64.2%, 72.0% and the specificity of 89.0%, 70.9%, respectively. Risk stratification based on PT level revealed that the patients with PT16.5 s (n = 103) had higher rate of 28-day mortality, incidence of septic shock and DIC, and score of SOFA and APACHE II comparing to those with PT ≤ 16.5 s (n = 199). Kaplan-Meier survival curve analysis showed that the 28-day cumulative survival rate was significantly lower in the patients with PT16.5 s than those with PT ≤ 16.5 s (52.43% vs. 86.93%; Log-Rank test: χCompared with other routine coagulation parameters, PT has the potential best predictive value for evaluating the severity of sepsis and the prognosis. When a patient is diagnosed with sepsis and has a result of PT longer than 16.5 s at ICU admission, the patient may have a higher risk of progression to septic shock and short-term death.