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This article explores the existing literature on individual and contextual determinants of entrepre- neurial entry / exit and proposes a testable model to study the STEM educated individuals in the United States (hereinafter "U.S."). The literature review in the following areas provides a thorough back- ground for this study: entrepreneurship and self- employment as a unit of study; entrepreneurship and self-employment as a career trajectory; STEM career trajectory and entrepreneurship development in the U.S. Entrepreneurship is a multidimensional notion whose definition is heavily dependent on the research topic., 研究ノート(博士資格論文)(Note(Doctoral Qualification Theses))

Background: Wound treatment in emergency care requires the rapid assessment of wound size by medical staff. Limited medical resources and the empirical assessment of wounds can delay the treatment of patients, and manual contact measurement methods are often inaccurate and susceptible to wound infection. This study aimed to prepare an Automatic Wound Segmentation Assessment (AWSA) framework for real-time wound segmentation and automatic wound region estimation. Methods: This method comprised a short-term dense concatenate classification network (STDC-Net) as the backbone, realizing a segmentation accuracy–prediction speed trade-off. A coordinated attention mechanism was introduced to further improve the network segmentation performance. A functional relationship model between prior graphics pixels and shooting heights was constructed to achieve wound area measurement. Finally, extensive experiments on two types of wound datasets were conducted. Results: The experimental results showed that real-time AWSA outperformed state-of-the-art methods such as mAP, mIoU, recall, and dice score. The AUC value, which reflected the comprehensive segmentation ability, also reached the highest level of about 99.5%. The FPS values of our proposed segmentation method in the two datasets were 100.08 and 102.11, respectively, which were about 42% higher than those of the second-ranked method, reflecting better real-time performance. Moreover, real-time AWSA could automatically estimate the wound area in square centimeters with a relative error of only about 3.1%. Conclusion: The real-time AWSA method used the STDC-Net classification network as its backbone and improved the network processing speed while accurately segmenting the wound, realizing a segmentation accuracy–prediction speed trade-off.

With the development of high-throughput experimental technologies, large-scale RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) data have been and continue to be produced, but have led to challenges in extracting relevant biological knowledge hidden in the produced high-dimensional gene expression matrices. Here, we develop easyMF ( https://github.com/cma2015/easyMF ), a web platform that can facilitate functional gene discovery from large-scale transcriptome data using matrix factorization (MF) algorithms. Compared with existing MF-based software packages, easyMF exhibits several promising features, such as greater functionality, flexibility and ease of use. The easyMF platform is equipped using the Big-Data-supported Galaxy system with user-friendly graphic user interfaces, allowing users with little programming experience to streamline transcriptome analysis from raw reads to gene expression, carry out multiple-scenario MF analysis, and perform multiple-way MF-based gene discovery. easyMF is also powered with the advanced packing technology to enhance ease of use under different operating systems and computational environments. We illustrated the application of easyMF for seed gene discovery from temporal, spatial, and integrated RNA-Seq datasets of maize (Zea mays L.), resulting in the identification of 3,167 seed stage-specific, 1,849 seed compartment-specific, and 774 seed-specific genes, respectively. The present results also indicated that easyMF can prioritize seed-related genes with superior prediction performance over the state-of-art network-based gene prioritization system MaizeNet. As a modular, containerized and open-source platform, easyMF can be further customized to satisfy users' specific demands of functional gene discovery and deployed as a web service for broad applications.

The ability of natural plants to treat chronic diseases is closely related to their antioxidant function. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) fermentation is an effective way to improve the nutritional value, biological activity and flavor of food. This study investigated the pH, titratable acidity, total polysaccharide, total flavone, total saponin, total polyphenol, and antioxidant activity of the FH06 beverage before and after probiotic fermentation. Results: After fermentation, FH06 had lower contents of total polysaccharides, total flavonoids, total saponins and total polyphenols but higher titratable acidity. The antioxidant activity was tested by total antioxidant capacity (FRAP method) and DPPH· scavenging ability. The FRAP value significantly increased after fermentation (P Lactobacillus fermentum grx08 at 25.87%. For DPPH· scavenging ability, the value of all fermentations decreased, and L. fermentum grx08 had the smallest reduction at 2.21% (P L. fermentum grx08 were significantly improved, indicating its great potential as a functional food with both strong antioxidant activity and good flavor. Graphical Abstract

The effect of the water-saturated supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2) flow rate on the corrosion behavior of API 5L X80 steel at a temperature of 35°C and pressure of 80 bar was investigated. Tests were performed with the samples attached to a rotating shaft inside an autoclave. Results indicate that increasing the scCO2 flow rate had no significant influence on the general/localized corrosion rate under the various dynamic conditions considered. The average general corrosion rate was 0.064 mm/y, while the average measured pitting penetration rates were one order of magnitude higher. The size of the corrosion features on the surface of the samples, which were believed to provide an indication as to the size of the condensed water droplets, was much smaller than the calculated critical droplet size needed to be displaced by the flow, supporting the theory as to why flow rate had little effect on the corrosion response.

Polo‐like kinase 4 (PLK4) has been reported to contribute to tumor growth, invasion, and metastasis. However, the role of PLK4 in human bladder cancer (BC) remains unclear. Here, we demonstrate the regulatory function of PLK4 in human BC progression. PLK4 is overexpressed in BC cell lines and tissues, and its overexpression correlated with poor prognosis. Our transcriptome analysis combined with subsequent functional assays indicated that PLK4 inhibition can suppress BC cell growth and induce cell cycle arrest at G1 phase via activation of the p38/p53/p21 pathway in vitro and in vivo. Overall, our data suggest that PLK4 is a critical regulator of BC cell proliferation, and thus, it may have potential as a novel molecular target for BC treatment., We demonstrate that Polo‐like kinase 4 (PLK4) is overexpressed in human bladder cancer (BC) cell lines and tissues, and its overexpression correlates with poor prognosis. PLK4 inhibition suppresses BC cell growth and induces G1 phase arrest via activating the p38/p53/p21 pathway in vitro and in vivo. The data suggest that PLK4 might serve as a novel molecular target for BC treatment.

The study on quantum spin Hall effect and topological insulators formed the prologue to the surge of research activities in topological materials in the past decade. Compared to intricately engineered quantum wells, three-dimensional weak topological insulators provide a natural route to the quantum spin Hall effect, due to the adiabatic connection between them and a stack of quantum spin Hall insulators, and the convenience in exfoliation of samples associated with their van der Waals-type structure. Despite these advantages, both theoretical prediction and experimental identification of weak topological insulators remain scarce. Here, based on first-principles calculations, we show that AuTe2Br locates at the boundary between a strong and a weak topological semimetal state. We identify the key structural parameter that dictates the traversal of the topological transition, which can be easily realized in experiments. More interestingly, the critical topology of AuTe2Br persists up to an applied pressure of ~15.4 GPa before a structural phase transition accompanied by a change of electronic topology and the onset of superconductivity. Our results establish AuTe2Br as a new candidate for an effective tuning between weak and strong topological phases in a single material, with the potential to realize various other topological phases of matter.

Obesity is a common global problem. There are many fat-reducing herbal prescriptions in traditional Chinese medicine that have been proven to be safe and functional during long-term application. Microbial fermentation can improve the efficacy of herbal medicine and improve the unsavory flavor. In this study, Shenheling extract (SHLE) composed of six medicine food homology materials was used as the research object. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of

The quantum-level interplay between geometry, topology and correlation is at the forefront of fundamental physics1–15. Kagome magnets are predicted to support intrinsic Chern quantum phases owing to their unusual lattice geometry and breaking of time-reversal symmetry14,15. However, quantum materials hosting ideal spin–orbit-coupled kagome lattices with strong out-of-plane magnetization are lacking16–21. Here, using scanning tunnelling microscopy, we identify a new topological kagome magnet, TbMn6Sn6, that is close to satisfying these criteria. We visualize its effectively defect-free, purely manganese-based ferromagnetic kagome lattice with atomic resolution. Remarkably, its electronic state shows distinct Landau quantization on application of a magnetic field, and the quantized Landau fan structure features spin-polarized Dirac dispersion with a large Chern gap. We further demonstrate the bulk–boundary correspondence between the Chern gap and the topological edge state, as well as the Berry curvature field correspondence of Chern gapped Dirac fermions. Our results point to the realization of a quantum-limit Chern phase in TbMn6Sn6, and may enable the observation of topological quantum phenomena in the RMn6Sn6 (where R is a rare earth element) family with a variety of magnetic structures. Our visualization of the magnetic bulk–boundary–Berry correspondence covering real space and momentum space demonstrates a proof-of-principle method for revealing topological magnets. Scanning tunnelling microscopy is used to reveal a new topological kagome magnet with an intrinsic Chern quantum phase, which shows a distinct Landau fan structure with a large Chern gap.

In ordinary materials, electrons conduct both electricity and heat, where their charge-entropy relations observe the Mott formula and the Wiedemann-Franz law. In topological quantum materials, the transverse motion of relativistic electrons can be strongly affected by the quantum field arising around the topological fermions, where a simple model description of their charge-entropy relations remains elusive. Here we report the topological charge-entropy scaling in the kagome Chern magnet TbMn

Kagome magnets provide a fascinating platform for a plethora of topological quantum phenomena, in which the delicate interplay between frustrated crystal structure, magnetization and spin-orbit coupling (SOC) can engender highly tunable topological states. Here, utilizing angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we directly visualize the Weyl lines with strong out-of-plane dispersion in the A-A stacked kagome magnet GdMn6Sn6. Remarkably, the Weyl lines exhibit a strong magnetization-direction tunable SOC gap and binding energy tunability after substituting Gd with Tb and Li, respectively. Our results not only illustrate the magnetization direction and valence counting as efficient tuning knobs for realizing and controlling distinct three-dimensional topological phases, but also demonstrate AMn6Sn6 (A = rare earth or Li, Mg, Ca) as a versatile material family for exploring diverse emergent topological quantum responses. Nanyang Technological University National Research Foundation (NRF) Submitted/Accepted version The material characterization (ARPES) is supported by the United States Department of Energy (US DOE) under the Basic Energy Sciences program (Grant No. DOE/BES DE‐FG‐02‐05ER46200). This research used resources of the Advanced Light Source (ALS), a DOE Office of Science User Facility under contract number DE‐AC02‐05CH11231. Use of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Light Source (SSRL), SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under contract no. DE‐AC02‐76SF00515. The authors acknowledge the Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen, Switzerland, for provision of synchrotron radiation beamtime at the ADRESS beamline of the Swiss Light Source. The authors thank Donghui Lu and Makoto Hashimoto at Beamline 5.2 of the SSRL for support. The authors thank C. Polley, J. Adell, and B. Thiagarajan at Beamline Bloch of the Max IV, Lund, Sweden, for support. The authors also want to thank J. Denlinger at Beamline 4.0.3 (MERLIN) of the ALS for support in getting the preliminary data. The authors also acknowledge the use of Princeton University's Imaging and Analysis Center, which is partially supported by the Princeton Center for Complex Materials (PCCM), a National Science Foundation (NSF)‐MRSEC program (DMR‐2011750). I.B. acknowledges the generous support of the Special Postdoctoral Researchers Program, RIKEN during the late stages of this work. T.A.C. acknowledges the support of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (DGE‐1656466). B.L. is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Science Foundation through Princeton University's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (DMR‐2011750), and the National Science Foundation under award DMR‐2141966. G.C. would like to acknowledge the support of the National Research Foundation, Singapore, under its NRF Fellowship Award (NRF‐NRFF13‐2021‐0010), and the Nanyang Assistant Professorship grant from Nanyang Technological University. T.‐R.C. was supported by the 2030 Cross‐Generation Young Scholars Program from the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) in Taiwan (Program No. MOST111‐2628‐M‐006‐003‐MY3), National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Taiwan, and National Center for Theoretical Sciences, Taiwan. This research was supported, in part, by Higher Education Sprout Project, Ministry of Education to the Headquarters of University Advancement at NCKU. The work in Peking University was supported by CAS Interdisciplinary Innovation Team, the strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB28000000), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 12141002 and 12225401). N.B.M.S. was partially supported by Microsoft. The work was also supported partially by the European Research Council (ERC Advanced Grant No. 742068 “TOPMAT”), the DFG through SFB 1143 (Project ID. 247310070), and the Würzburg‐Dresden Cluster of Excellence on Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter ct.qmat (EXC2147, Project ID. 390858490). M.Z.H. acknowledges the support from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Miller Institute of Basic Research in Science at the University of California, Berkeley, in the form of a Visiting Miller Professorship during the early stage of this work.

In this study, the effect of microtab (MT) with different deployed positions and heights on the performance of a vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT) is investigated through two-dimensional CFD simulation. The simulation results show that optimum deployed position for better turbine performance is 96% of chord from leading edge and optimum height is 0.5% of chord, which makes the power coefficient of turbine increase by 13% at TSR = 3.2. The observation of flow fields around turbine blade with MT indicates that MT decreases area of stall region at azimuthal angles ranging from 90° to 270°, leading to the increase of pressure and torque of turbine blade. The simulated results demonstrate that MT is an effective solution to enhance flow characteristics around turbine blade and improve turbine performance at high tip-speed-ratios.

The topological effect in thermoelectric transport is an important research aspect in semimetals, but whether an anomalous Nernst effect exists in nonmagnetic topological semimetals in a finite external field is still under debate. To demonstrate how to discern the topological effect in nonmagnetic topological semimetals, we present a comprehensive study on the magnetothermoelectric properties for four Weyl semimetals: TaAs, TaP, NbAs, and NbP. We observe large magneto-Seebeck and Nernst signals at intermediate temperatures, which are attributed to a multiband ordinary contribution and an inelastic, phonon-drag effect, while the latter is ignored in previous studies. This phonon-drag effect also induces an unusual, prominent temperature and field dependence of quantum oscillations in thermoelectric transport signals. On the other hand, only signatures of a relatively small anomalous thermoelectric effect are found in TaAs compared with the ordinary effect.

Exploration of the topological quantum materials with electron correlation is at the frontier of physics, as the strong interaction may give rise to new topological phases and transitions. Here we report that a family of kagome magnets RMn_{6}Sn_{6} manifest the quantum transport properties analogical to those in the quantum-limit Chern magnet TbMn_{6}Sn_{6}. The topological transport in the family, including quantum oscillations with nontrivial Berry phase and large anomalous Hall effect arising from Berry curvature field, points to the existence of Chern gapped Dirac fermions. Our observation demonstrates a close relationship between rare-earth magnetism and topological electron structure, indicating the rare-earth elements can effectively engineer the Chern quantum phase in kagome magnets.

We report magnetic and electrical properties for single crystals of $\mathrm{Nd}{\mathrm{Mn}}_{6}{\mathrm{Sn}}_{6}$ and $\mathrm{Sm}{\mathrm{Mn}}_{6}{\mathrm{Sn}}_{6}$. They crystallize into a structure that has distorted, Mn-based kagome lattices, compared to the pristine kagome lattices in heavy rare-earth-bearing $\mathrm{R}{\mathrm{Mn}}_{6}{\mathrm{Sn}}_{6}$ compounds. They are high-temperature ferromagnets of which the R moment is parallel with the Mn moment. We observed a large intrinsic anomalous Hall effect (AHE) that is comparable to the ferrimagnetic, heavy-R siblings in a wide range of temperature. We conclude that their intrinsic AHE is stemming from the Mn-based kagome lattice, just as in the heavy $\mathrm{R}{\mathrm{Mn}}_{6}{\mathrm{Sn}}_{6}$.

Fast in-memory key value stores are the keys to building large-scale Internet services. The state-of-the-art solutions mainly focus on optimizing the performance for read-intensive workloads. Nevertheless, a wide range of applications demonstrate a significant amount of updates and range queries, which scale poorly with the current implementations. In this paper, we present BiloKey, a highly scalable in-memory key value store on multi-core machines, significantly outperforming Redis and Memcached for a variety of mixed read and write workloads. To achieve this, BiloKey leverages a fast bi-index comprised by a Hash Table index and a SkipList index, where the former supports feature rich operations including GET, UPDATE and DELETE with $O$O(1) complexity, while the latter supports SCAN with $O$O(log$N$N) complexity. Furthermore, to make the bi-index design scale well, BiloKey adopts three techniques: lazy synchronization for reducing the overhead of maintaining index consistency, lock-free data structure for supporting multi-writers, and locality-aware data parallel processing for preserving the data locality of requests. Compared with two popular in-memory KV stores (i.e., Redis and Memcached), experimental results show that: (1) for write-intensive workloads, BiloKey outperforms Redis and Memcached by 7.8x and 3.7x on average (up to 11.5x and 4.8x), respectively; (2) for scan-intensive workloads, BiloKey achieves an average speedup of 2.3x against Redis; (3) for read-intensive workloads, BiloKey also outperforms Redis and Memcached by 1.2x and 1.8x on average.

Obesity is a common global problem. There are many fat-reducing herbal prescriptions in traditional Chinese medicine that have been proven to be safe and functional during long-term application. Microbial fermentation can improve the efficacy of herbal medicine and improve the unsavory flavor. In this study, Shenheling extract (SHLE) composed of six medicine food homology materials was used as the research object. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of Lactobacillusfermentum grx08 fermentation on the antiobesity efficacy and flavor of SHLE. We found that L. fermentum grx08 grew well in SHLE. After 72 h of fermentation, the total polysaccharides, total flavonoids, total polyphenols and total saponins of SHLE decreased, but the lipase inhibitory activity and total antioxidant capacity (FRAP) were significantly increased (p < 0.01). There were no significant differences in the α-glucosidase inhibition rate and DPPH· clearance rate before or after fermentation (p > 0.05). In addition, the fermentation reduces the unpleasant flavors of SHLE such as bitterness and grassy and cassia flavors. This study demonstrates that SHLE fermented by L. fermentum grx08 improved some anti-obesity functions and improved the unpleasant flavor.

In ordinary materials, electrons conduct both electricity and heat, where their charge-entropy relations observe the Mott formula and the Wiedemann-Franz law. In topological quantum materials, the transverse motion of relativistic electrons can be strongly affected by the quantum field arising around the topological fermions, where a simple model description of their charge-entropy relations remains elusive. Here we report the topological charge-entropy scaling in the kagome Chern magnet TbMn$_6$Sn$_6$, featuring pristine Mn kagome lattices with strong out-of-plane magnetization. Through both electric and thermoelectric transports, we observe quantum oscillations with a nontrivial Berry phase, a large Fermi velocity and two-dimensionality, supporting the existence of Dirac fermions in the magnetic kagome lattice. This quantum magnet further exhibits large anomalous Hall, anomalous Nernst, and anomalous thermal Hall effects, all of which persist to above room temperature. Remarkably, we show that the charge-entropy scaling relations of these anomalous transverse transports can be ubiquitously described by the Berry curvature field effects in a Chern-gapped Dirac model. Our work points to a model kagome Chern magnet for the proof-of-principle elaboration of the topological charge-entropy scaling., Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures

Desiccation cracks form on the surface of foundation soils due to matric suction and surface shrinkage with water loss. This paper investigates the effect of tea waste on the change of water content and cracking characteristics of foundation soil during drying. Digital image processing was carried out based on laboratory experiments. The characteristics are monitored with a variation in water content. The effects of different amounts of tea waste on soil drying and cracking were obtained, in order to provide an efficient and new green sustainable material for improving soil evaporation cracking under drought conditions. The results show that the development of cracks of soil samples with tea waste can be categorized into three stages in accordance with the fractal dimension of the desiccation cracks: Stages I, II, and III. The desiccation cracks in Stage III are wider and longer than those in Stages I and II, however, the maximum fractal dimension and stability are also obtained in Stage III. The residual water content of the sample without tea waste is 1.5%. The residual water content of the samples containing 4% and 8% tea waste is 4.6% and 5.4%, respectively, which shows that the tea waste can effectively improve the residual water content of the foundation soil and the water holding capacity of the soil. The fractal dimension of cracks on the soil samples increases gradually with drying. The total length of cracks increases and the development of cracks is more complex. The cracking time of soil samples with different tea waste contents is different. The soil samples with 8% tea waste content crack first. Combined with the variation characteristics of water content, tea waste has water absorption and improves the water holding capacity and stability of foundation soil.

With the development of high-throughput experimental technologies, large-scale RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) data have been and continue to be produced, but have led to challenges in extracting relevant biological knowledge hidden in the produced high-dimensional gene expression matrices. Here, we present easyMF, a user-friendly web platform that aims to facilitate biological discovery from large-scale transcriptome data through matrix factorization (MF). The easyMF platform enables users with little bioinformatics experience to streamline transcriptome analysis from raw reads to gene expression and to decompose expression matrix from thousands of genes to a handful of metagenes. easyMF also offers a series of functional modules for metagene-based exploratory analysis with an emphasis on functional gene discovery. As a modular, containerized and open-source platform, easyMF can be customized to satisfy users’ specific demands and deployed as a web server for broad applications. easyMF is freely available at https://github.com/cma2015/easyMF. We demonstrated the application of easyMF with four case studies using 940 RNA sequencing datasets from maize (Zea mays L.).

The formation of natural bone tissue is the result of the joint regulation of multiple template molecules. Although its complex hierarchical structure has been studied for many years, the mechanism of biomineralization of hard bone tissue has not been fully clarified. In this paper, the nanocomposites obtained by mineralization were characterized and analyzed, and the effect of the template on the crystal formation of hydroxyapatite was studied. The characterization results show that the main phase of the inorganic mineral obtained by template mineralization is the hydroxyapatite phase. The nano-apatite composite particles with an inorganic component content of 90.2% have the highest loading efficiency, reaching 67.9 mg/g. By statistical analysis of the pain scores at 5 days, 10 days, and 15 days after ankle injury, it was found that the average pain score of the treatment group was smaller than that of the control group. Two weeks later, the clinical efficacy judgment standard statistics show that the treatment group has a 22.5% improvement in healing rate, a significant increase in 3.18%, and a total effective rate of 8.71%, which is significantly better than the control group.

The effect of surface roughness on corrosion behaviour of carbon steel under intermittent oil/water wetting with different flow conditions was investigated by an “alternate wetting cell”, combining with potentiostatic polarisation, contact angle measurement, and computational fluidic dynamics (CFD) analysis. Under static flow conditions, the rough surface increased the oil film lifetime and consequently mitigated the corrosion as the oil film has good adhesion and acted as a blocking barrier. However, under dynamic flow conditions, the smooth surface polished by 6 Micron diamond suspension shows the longest oil film lifetime and highest corrosion mitigation efficiency, caused by small turbulence eddies and low shear stress.

Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) is the blood clot formed in a vein deep in body, mostly occurred in the lower leg or thigh. Early studies indicate that DVT is a complex disorder affected by both environmental and genetic factors. Previous biological evidence have indicated that KEAP1 gene may play an important role in the pathogenesis of DVT. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the genetic association between genetic polymorphisms of KEAP1 gene and the risk of DVT in Han Chinese population. A total of 2558 study subjects comprised of 660 DVT following orthopedics surgery cases and 1898 controls were recruited as discovery sample. In addition, we have also recruited another independent sample sets including 704 DVT following orthopedics surgery cases and 1056 controls for replication. Ten tag SNPs located on KEAP1 gene were selected for genotyping. Single marker based association analyses were conducted at both allelic and genotypic levels. SNPs that passed the Bonferroni correction in the discovery stage were genotyped in the replication dataset. Bioinformatics tools including PolymiRTS, GTEx, STRING and Gene Ontology database were utilized to investigate the functional consequences of the significant SNPs. SNP rs3177696 was identified to be significantly associated with risk of DVT in the study subjects. The G allele of SNP rs3177696 was significantly related to decreased risk of DVT. Functional consequences of SNP rs3177696 were obtained based on bioinformatics analyses. The G allele of SNP rs3177696 was related to the increased gene expression level of KEAP1. In summary, we have identified KEAP1 gene to be a potential susceptible locus for DVT in Han Chinese population. Further bioinformatics analyses have provided supportive evidence for the functional consequence of the significant SNP.

Exploration of the topological quantum materials with electron correlation is at the frontier of physics, as the strong interaction may give rise to new topological phases and transitions. Here we report that a family of kagome magnets RMn_{6}Sn_{6} manifest the quantum transport properties analogical to those in the quantum-limit Chern magnet TbMn_{6}Sn_{6}. The topological transport in the family, including quantum oscillations with nontrivial Berry phase and large anomalous Hall effect arising from Berry curvature field, points to the existence of Chern gapped Dirac fermions. Our observation demonstrates a close relationship between rare-earth magnetism and topological electron structure, indicating the rare-earth elements can effectively engineer the Chern quantum phase in kagome magnets.

Metal–insulator transition (MIT) is one of the most conspicuous phenomena in correlated electron systems. However such a transition has rarely been induced by an external magnetic field as the field scale is normally too small compared with the charge gap. We present the observation of a magnetic-field-driven MIT in a magnetic semiconductor β-EuP3. Concomitantly, we find a colossal magnetoresistance in an extreme way: the resistance drops billionfold at 2K in a magnetic field less than 3T. We ascribe this striking MIT as a field-driven transition from an antiferromagnetic and paramagnetic insulator to a spin-polarized topological semimetal, in which the spin configuration of Eu2+ cations and spin-orbital coupling play a crucial role. As a phosphorene-bearing compound whose electrical properties can be controlled by the application of field, β-EuP3 may serve as a tantalizing material in the basic research and even future electronics.

The oxidative environment within the mitochondria makes them particularly vulnerable to proteotoxic stress. To maintain a healthy mitochondrial network, eukaryotes have evolved multi-tiered quality control pathways. If the stress cannot be alleviated, defective mitochondria are selectively removed by autophagy via a process termed mitophagy. Despite significant advances in metazoans and yeast, in plants, the molecular underpinnings of mitophagy are largely unknown. Here, using time-lapse imaging, electron tomography and biochemical assays, we show that uncoupler treatments cause loss of mitochondrial membrane potential and induce autophagy in Arabidopsis. The damaged mitochondria are selectively engulfed by autophagosomes that are ATG5 dependent and labelled by ATG8 proteins. Friendly, a member of the Clustered Mitochondria protein family, is recruited to the damaged mitochondria to mediate mitophagy. In addition to stress, mitophagy is also induced during de-etiolation, a major cellular transformation during photomorphogenesis that involves chloroplast biogenesis. De-etiolation triggered mitophagy regulates cotyledon greening, pointing towards an inter-organellar cross-talk mechanism. Altogether our results demonstrate how plants employ mitophagy to recycle damaged mitochondria during stress and development.

Postmenopausal osteoporosis (PMOP) is one of systemic bone degenerative diseases characterised by decreased bone mineral density (BMD). Previous studies suggest that the SPON1 gene may be associated with BMD and play an important role in the occurrence and development of PMOP. In this study, we aimed to investigate the potential association between PMOP and the SPON1 gene. A total of 8062 postmenopausal women comprising 2684 primary PMOP patients, and 5378 healthy controls were recruited. Forty tag SNPs were selected for genotyping to evaluate the association of the SPON1 gene with PMOP and BMD. Genetic association and bioinformatics analyses were performed for PMOP. SNP rs2697825 was identified to be significantly associated with the risk of PMOP at both allelic (T-statistics = −3.84, p = .0001) and genotypic levels (χ2=15.86, p = .0004). The G allele of SNP rs2697825 was significantly associated with a decreased risk of PMOP with an OR [95%] of 0.84 [0.77–0.92]. The G allele of SNP rs2697825 was associated with increased BMD at both the lumbar spine and femoral neck. Our results provide further evidence to support the important role for the SPON1 gene in the aetiology of PMOP, adding to the current understanding of the susceptibility to osteoporosis.

High-efficiency in-memory caching databases are the key to building large-scale Internet services. Well-designed cache can reduce the pressure on network servers and the response delay of applications. The popular memory caching system Memcached and Redis have been successfully deployed by the famous Internet enterprises, such as Amazon, GitHub and Sina. The state-of-the-art solutions mainly focus on optimizing the performance by providing a suit of static caching policies for various applications. Take the popular key-value data structure caching store Redis for example, it provides LRU, LFU and random strategies. The current caching approaches are based on either access frequency or access timestamp, not considering data locality. However, data locality has been shown to have significant impacts on big data workloads, which are poorly served by current static caching approaches. In this paper, we present LearnedCache, a highly efficient inmemory caching algorithm. It significantly outperforms various replacement policies of Redis and Memcached for a variety of workloads. LearnedCache accomplishes this by leveraging a locality-aware learning model that provides the hotspot map of hot data based on both access frequency and access timestamp. Furthermore, to make the LearnedCache design light and highly efficient, LearnedCache adopts a collaborative technology: TinyLFU filters the cold request data into cache; lazily trains and learns the model for reducing the overhead of main worker; learned-index data structure for optimizing the data well balanced. Our methods will be useful for all distributed Web, file system, database and content delivery services. Compared with the various caching policies of two popular in-memory KV stores(i.e., Redis and Memcached), experimental results show that LearnedCache outperforms LRU and LFU by 8.7% and 12.6% on average (up to 13.4% and 16.5%), respectively.

Deep learning is a promising technology to accurately select individuals with high phenotypic values based on genotypic data. Genomic selection (GS) is a promising breeding strategy by which the phenotypes of plant individuals are usually predicted based on genome-wide markers of genotypes. In this study, we present a deep learning method, named DeepGS, to predict phenotypes from genotypes. Using a deep convolutional neural network, DeepGS uses hidden variables that jointly represent features in genotypes when making predictions; it also employs convolution, sampling and dropout strategies to reduce the complexity of high-dimensional genotypic data. We used a large GS dataset to train DeepGS and compared its performance with other methods. The experimental results indicate that DeepGS can be used as a complement to the commonly used RR-BLUP in the prediction of phenotypes from genotypes. The complementarity between DeepGS and RR-BLUP can be utilized using an ensemble learning approach for more accurately selecting individuals with high phenotypic values, even for the absence of outlier individuals and subsets of genotypic markers. The source codes of DeepGS and the ensemble learning approach have been packaged into Docker images for facilitating their applications in different GS programs.

Topological semimetal (TSM) AuTe

Polyphyllin I (PPI), an extract from Paris polyphylla, has been demonstrated to possess antitumor activity against multiple cancers. However, whether PPI can inhibit bladder cancer (BCa) and the underlying mechanisms have never been researched. In this study, we initially found that PPI could induce BCa cell apoptosis and cell cycle arrest, as well as inhibit cell proliferation in vitro. Additionally, PPI could effectively suppress the in vivo growth of BCa in the xenograft mice model. Furthermore, we found that forkhead box O3 (FOXO3) and its targets including BIM or NOXA were significantly upregulated in BCa cells following PPI treatment. Interestingly, we observed that FOXO3 knockdown partly reversed the effects of PPI on BCa cells. Taken together, our findings suggested that PPI exerted a cytotoxic effect in vitro and an antitumor activity in vivo against BCa partly by activating FOXO3 signaling pathway. Therefore, PPI may serve as a promising chemotherapy agent for BCa treatment.

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a complex degenerative joint disorder, which is caused by both environmental and genetic factors. Previous studies have indicated that the GNL3 gene is associated with knee osteoarthritis (KOA) susceptibility in Europeans; however, the exact molecular mechanism is still unclear. In the present study, we investigated the potential genetic association of GNL3 with KOA in a two-stage sample of 6,704 individuals from the Han Chinese population. Subjects containing 1,052 KOA patients and 2,117 controls were considered the discovery dataset, while subjects consisting of 1,173 KOA patients and 2,362 controls were utilized as the replication dataset. Single-SNP association, imputation, and haplotypic association analyses were performed. The SNP of rs11177 in GNL3 was identified to be significantly associated with KOA after accounting for age, gender and BMI in both stages. The imputed SNP of rs6617 in SPCS1 was found to be strongly associated with KOA risk, and the significant association signal was confirmed in the replication stage. Moreover, a haplotype-based analysis also indicated a positive genetic effect of GNL3 on KOA susceptibility. In summary, our results proved that GNL3 plays an important role in the etiology of KOA, suggesting that GNL3 is a potential genetic modifier for KOA development.

Heat shock protein 47 (HSP47) is a collagen-specific molecular chaperone and is involved in tumor progression by promoting angiogenesis. However, the regulatory network of HSP47 in angiogenesis remains elusive. In this study, we report a novel mechanism of HSP47-induced angiogenesis in bladder cancer (BC). We find that HSP47 is abnormally overexpressed in BC and is correlated with poor prognosis. HSP47 down-regulation suppresses angiogenesis in BC cells. Mechanistically, activation of the ERK pathway and induction of C-C Motif Chemokine Ligand 2 (CCL2) are responsible for HSP47-induced angiogenesis. The correlation between HSP47 with CCL2 and angiogenesis is further confirmed in BC clinical samples. Taken together, our findings suggest that HSP47 contributes to BC angiogenesis by induction of CCL2 and provide a potential anti-angiogenesis target for BC therapy.

The oxidative environment within the mitochondria makes them particularly vulnerable to proteotoxic stress. To maintain a healthy mitochondrial network, eukaryotes have evolved multi-tiered quality control pathways. If the stress cannot be alleviated, defective mitochondria are selectively removed by autophagy via a process termed mitophagy. Despite significant advances in metazoans and yeast, in plants, the molecular underpinnings of mitophagy are largely unknown. Here, using time-lapse imaging, electron tomography, and biochemical assays, we show that uncoupler treatments cause loss of mitochondrial membrane potential and induce autophagy in Arabidopsis. The damaged mitochondria are selectively engulfed by autophagosomes that are labeled by ATG8 proteins in an ATG5-dependent manner. Friendly, a member of the clustered mitochondria protein family, is recruited to the damaged mitochondria to mediate mitophagy. In addition to the stress, mitophagy is also induced during de-etiolation, a major cellular transformation during photomorphogenesis that involves chloroplast biogenesis. De-etiolation-triggered mitophagy is involved in cotyledon greening, pointing toward an inter-organellar crosstalk mechanism. Altogether, our results demonstrate how plants employ mitophagy to recycle damaged mitochondria during stress and development.

Developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH) is a congenital or developmental deformation or misalignment of the hip joint that is affected by environmental and genetic factors. Recently, polymorphisms in both TGFB1 and IL-6 have been identified as being significantly associated with hip osteoarthritis in Caucasians. In this study, we conducted a case-control study involving 4,206 Han Chinese individuals to investigate the effects of TGFB1 and IL-6 on the disease status and severity of DDH. A total of 32 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were selected to ensure coverage of the two genetic loci. We found SNP rs1800470 in TGFB1 (OR = 1.255, P = 0.0004) and rs1800796 (OR = 0.84, P = 0.0228) in IL-6 to be significantly associated with DDH in this cohort. Further haplotype-based analysis replicated this significant result. Another SNP in IL-6, rs1800796, showed a marginally significant association with DDH. As a non-synonymous SNP, rs1800470 alters the amino acid sequence of the polypeptide encoded by TGFB1; however, bioinformatics analyses revealed that this SNP has limited functional significance. No significant results were obtained in an association study focusing on the severity of DDH and epistasis analysis. Our findings support an important role for TGFB1 in the risk of DDH. Further research is needed to validate the weak association between rs1800796 in IL-6 and DDH.

OBJECTIVE: To explore the feasibility and effectiveness of maintaining the reduction of unstable intertrochanteric fractures by Kirschner wire-fixation-cortical bone technique. METHODS: Forty patients with intertrochanteric fracture [AO/Orthopaedic Trauma Association (AO/OTA) type 31-A2.2] admitted between May 2015 and January 2017 and requiring closed reduction and proximal femoral nail antirotation (PFNA) were randomly divided into trial group (intraoperative Kirschner wire-fixation-cortical bone technique group, 20 cases) and control group (conventional treatment group, 20 cases). There was no significant difference in general data of gender, age, side, body mass index, cause of injury, time from injury to operation between the two groups (P>0.05). The operation time, intraoperative blood loss, and intraoperative fluoroscopy times of the two groups were recorded; the reduction quality of fracture was observed according to the corresponding relationship between medial and anterior cortex (positive, neutral, and negative support) of intraoperative fluoroscopy proposed by ZHANG Shimin, and the stability of internal fixation and fracture healing were observed; Harris score was used to evaluate the recovery of hip function at 12 months after operation. RESULTS: In the trial group, 6 cases (30%) had 2 Kirschner wires implanted less than 4 times, 7 cases (35%) had 5-8 times, and 7 cases (35%) had 9 times or more. There was no significant difference in operation time and intraoperative blood loss between the two groups (P>0.05), but the blood transfusion volume and intraoperative fluoroscopy times in the trial group were significantly less than those in the control group (P

The quantum-level interplay between geometry, topology and correlation is at the forefront of fundamental physics

Reducing the size of an accelerometer overcomes the tradeoff between its sensitivity and resonant frequency, and the theoretical relationships are analyzed. A fiber Bragg grating (FBG) accelerometer with the shortest vibration arm, 7 mm, among FBG accelerometers using the optical fiber to hold its inertial object is demonstrated here. The inertial object was 4.41 g. The experimental crest-to-trough sensitivity and resonant frequency, 244 pm/g and 90 Hz, disagree with the theoretical values, 633 pm/g and 67 Hz, perhaps due to the friction between the inertial object and shell. In order to find the theoretical values, a method to find the pre-stretch of the FBG is also presented here, based on the stretch of the FBG at equilibrium and the mass of the inertial object. The FFT program, experimental data and theoretical calculations are presented in detail in the Supplementary Material.

Summary Research shows a higher incidence of colorectal cancer in men. However, the molecular mechanisms for this gender disparity remain unknown. We report the roles of androgen in proliferation and differentiation of intestinal stem cells via targeting of the androgen receptor (AR) on intestinal stromal cells by negatively regulating BMP signaling. Orchidectomy (ORX) or the AR antagonist promotes expansion of intestinal epithelium but suppresses intestinal stem cell (ISC) proliferation. Conversely, the AR agonist inhibits ISC differentiation but augments proliferation in ovariectomized mice. Mechanistically, activation of the AR increases expression of BMP antagonists but lowers expression of BMP4 and Wnt antagonists in primary stromal cells, which promotes intestinal organoid growth. Interestingly, the BMP pathway inhibitor LDN-193189 reverses the ORX-induced effects. Our results highlight that stromal cells constitute the intestinal stem cell niche and provide a possible explanation for higher incidence rates of colorectal cancer in men., Highlights • Androgen receptor (AR) is expressed in intestinal stromal cells • Androgen regulates the renewal and differentiation of intestinal epithelial stem cells • Androgen regulates expression of BMP-related signal secretion in intestinal stromal cells • Selective inhibition of the BMP pathway reverses orchidectomy-induced effects, In this article, D. Chen, J. Li, and colleagues show that androgen promotes proliferation and inhibits differentiation of intestinal epithelial stem cells in mouse models. Mechanistically, they prove that activation of the androgen receptor regulates BMP-related signal secretion in intestinal stromal cells.

Highly-available datastores are widely deployed for Internet-based applications. However, many Internet-based applications are not contented with the simple data access interface provided by highly-available datastores. Distributed transaction support is demanded by applications such as massive online payment used by Alipay, Paypal or Baidu Wallet. Current solutions to distributed transaction can spend more than half of the whole transaction processing time in distributed commit. The culprits are the multiple write-ahead logging steps and communication roundtrips in the commit process. This paper presents the HACommit protocol, a logless one-phase commit protocol for highly-available datastores. HACommit has transaction participants vote for a commit before the client decides to commit or abort the transaction; in comparison, the state-of-the-art practice for distributed commit is to have the client decide before participants vote. The change enables the removal of both the participant’s write-ahead logging and the coordinator’s write-ahead logging steps in the distributed commit process; it also makes possible that, after the client initiates the transaction commit, the transaction data is visible to other transactions within one communication roundtrip time (i.e., one phase). In the evaluation with extensive experiments, HACommit outperforms recent atomic commit solutions for highly-available datastores under different workloads. In the best case, HACommit can commit in one fifth of the time the widely-used two-phase commit (2PC) does.