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The current morphology of Earth’s time-averaged magnetic field can be approximated to a geocentric axial dipole (GAD), but whether such an approximation remains valid in deep time needs to be investigated. Studies have used paleomagnetic data to reconstruct the ancient field and generally support a GAD morphology since 2 Ga. Recently, the GAD model for mid-Proterozoic time has been challenged, and an alternative model was proposed wherein the mid-Proterozoic field was dominated by a normal-tesseral quadrupole (NTQ) with spherical harmonics of degree l = 2 and order m = 1. We performed forward modeling to quantitatively compare whether a GAD or an NTQ could provide a better fit to mid-Proterozoic paleomagnetic directions. To deal with the ambiguity in plate reconstruction, we first considered data only from Laurentia, and then we expanded the analysis to Baltica by reconstructing its position relative to Laurentia using the geologically based Northern Europe–North America (NENA) configuration. Finally, we included data from Siberia using two reconstruction models. Results showed that in three mid-Proterozoic intervals (1790–1740 Ma, 1485–1425 Ma, 1095–1080 Ma), a GAD morphology gives better, or equally good, fits compared to the NTQ morphology. In addition, a stable NTQ that persisted for hundreds of millions of years is disfavored from a geodynamic perspective. Overall, mid-Proterozoic paleomagnetic directions are more consistent with a dipolar field. We suggest that the GAD remains the most parsimonious model to describe the morphology of the mid-Proterozoic magnetic field.

Since the globalization of the economy, energy cooperation between countries has achieved excellent results, with Russia meeting the energy import needs of its neighbors, especially the EU countries, with its abundant hydrocarbon supplies. However, as the productivity of countries increases, the uneven distribution of energy around the world has created a tighter energy supply situation and the need for security of energy supply is growing in the EU. At the same time, Russia and Ukraine have been involved in a number of conflicts over geopolitical and ideological issues, which could lead to the risk of disruption or reduction of energy supplies to end-consuming countries around the world. Although many scholars have studied Russia's energy cooperation with other countries, the process of international cooperation is fluid and therefore this paper will continue to analyse Russia's energy export policy for 2022, analyze the main drivers and impediments to Russia's energy cooperation with the European Union, and provide an outlook on future cooperation. The paper will therefore continue to analyse Russia's energy export policy in 2022, analyse the main drivers and impediments of energy cooperation between Russia and the EU, and provide an outlook on future cooperation.

The rearrangement of drainage basins provides critical insight into crustal deformation and geodynamic mechanisms. Near the southeastern boundary of the Tibetan Plateau, the Dadu River abruptly shifts from south- to east-flowing, providing important implications for regional tectonogeomorphic development since the mid-Pleistocene. South of the bend, the headwaters of the Anning River occupy an unusually wide valley. Field investigations show that large quantities of fluvial/lacustrine sediments are widespread along the Dadu and Anning rivers and are exposed at their drainage divide. Detrital zircon U-Pb age patterns confirm that these fluvial/lacustrine sediments are the remnants of the paleo-Dadu River, which strongly suggests that the paleo-Dadu River originally flowed southward into the Anning River. The cosmogenic nuclide burial ages of the lacustrine sediments along the Dadu and Anning rivers suggest deposition of these sediments from separate dammed lakes ca. 1.2 Ma ago, ca. 0.6 Ma ago, and ca. 0.9 Ma ago from north to south, respectively. Provenance and burial-age studies indicate that reorganization of the Dadu drainage occurred within the last 0.6 Ma. We propose that this drainage reorganization in southeastern Tibet resulted from progressive convergence between the India and Eurasian plates during the Pleistocene.

This perspective highlights recent advances in improving the mechanical robustness of FPSCs and prospects to clarify the mechanism between the mechanical behavior and the photoelectric performance.

We investigate how historical price information (e.g., accessed through price trackers) influences consumers’ purchase decisions and thus affects a firm’s dynamic pricing strategy. We first show that when consumers with heterogeneous tastes are not informed about historical prices, the monopolist charges a high regular price for most of the time and periodically holds low-price sales. Then we consider the case in which a small fraction of consumers (such as price tracker users) become informed of historical prices. At the new equilibrium, the monopolist lowers the regular price and advances sales, implying shorter price cycles, more frequent sales, and a positive spillover effect of price tracker users’ informational advantage on the rest of uninformed consumers. We conclude with a discussion of the impact of price trackers on firms and other relevant managerial implications of the model. This paper was accepted by Dmitri Kuksov, marketing. Funding: Y. Chen thanks the National Science Foundation of China [Grant 71972043] for the support. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4309 .

On white-box implementations, it has been proven that differential computation analysis (DCA) can recover secret keys without time-costly reverse engineering. At CHES 2021, Seker et al. combined linear and non-linear masking protections (SEL masking) to prevent sensitive variables from being predicted by DCA. At Eurocrypt 2021, Biryukov and Udovenko introduced a public dummy shuffling construction (BU shuffling) to protect sensitive functions. In this paper, we extend higher-order DCA (HO-DCA) to higher-degree context for exploiting the vulnerabilities against the state-of-the-art countermeasures. The data-dependency HO-DCA (DDHO-DCA), which is proposed at CHES 2020, is improved to successfully recover the correct key of SEL masking. In specific, our improved DDHO-DCA can also enhance the attack result of #100 which is the third winning challenge in WhibOx 2019. Since the XOR phase plays the same role as linear masking, we prove that a specific BU shuffling is vulnerable to HO-DCA attacks. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the combination of SEL masking and the specific BU shuffling still cannot defeat our higher-degree HO-DCA and improved DDHO-DCA attacks.

Alternative splicing (AS) is a fundamental process that governs almost all aspects of cellular functions, and dysregulation in this process has been implicated in tumor initiation, progression and treatment resistance. With accumulating studies of carcinogenic mis-splicing in cancers, there is an urgent demand to integrate cancer-associated splicing changes to better understand their internal cross-talks and functional consequences from a global view. However, a resource of key functional AS events in human cancers is still lacking. To fill the gap, we developed ASCancer Atlas (https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/ascancer), a comprehensive knowledgebase of aberrant splicing in human cancers. Compared to extant databases, ASCancer Atlas features a high-confidence collection of 2006 cancer-associated splicing events experimentally proved to promote tumorigenesis, a systematic splicing regulatory network, and a suit of multi-scale online analysis tools. For each event, we manually curated the functional axis including upstream splicing regulators, splicing event annotations, downstream oncogenic effects, and possible therapeutic strategies. ASCancer Atlas also houses about 2 million computationally putative splicing events. Additionally, a user-friendly web interface was built to enable users to easily browse, search, visualize, analyze, and download all splicing events. Overall, ASCancer Atlas provides a unique resource to study the functional roles of splicing dysregulation in human cancers.

An effective path-following guidance algorithm for unmanned combat aerial vehicles by pursuing a look-ahead target-point along the desired path is devised. The concept of look-ahead pursuit for 3-D path-following was extended from the planar ${\mathcal {L}_1}$ guidance, which has been widely adopted in the application of lateral guidance of fixed-wing drone. Decoupled implementation of the planar guidance action on each of the longitudinal (vertical) and lateral (horizontal) planes supplies longitudinal-lateral acceleration commands in two perpendicular planes which is well accepted by aviation engineers. The computation of the look-ahead point utilizes a finite and iterative numerical search method by introducing an auxiliary path-related parameter. Furthermore, additional implementation-specific details such as the modification of adaptive ${\mathcal {L}_1}$ length and the protection strategies ensuring wide applicability of the algorithm indeed guarantee certain necessity to be considered in real implementation of the guidance law. The improved schemes eliminate complicated coordinate transformations and are built on the path-independent assumption, thus making them easier to be adjusted between various types of paths, including discrete optimal trajectories. Monte Carlo simulations and real-world flight tests have confirmed the effectiveness of the nonlinear guidance algorithm.

为有效融合工业设计方案决策中的异构信息, 引入云模型处理定性语言评价, 基于黄金分割方法将语言信息量化为云模型的数字特征, 分别构建语言值、区间数和实数相对优势矩阵。考虑决策过程的模糊性与不确定性, 将决策属性判断的自然语言采用区间标度量化, 构建非线性优化模型求解最优决策属性权重, 以最大似然估计实现群体决策的区间标度集结, 通过综合效用函数计算工业设计方案优劣。以某型指挥用控制台工业设计方案决策为例, 验证了所提方法能够有效融合异构决策信息, 辅助工业设计师和决策者准确把控意见并进行方案优选。

Pulmonary benign metastasizing leiomyoma (PBML) is a type of benign metastasizing leiomyoma (BML), which metastasizes to lungs. In view of the rarity and nonspecific imaging characteristics of PBML, this condition is easily misdiagnosed as malignant lung cancer. This is a case report of a 39-year-old lady in whom multiple bilateral lung nodules were found during a health checkup and was diagnosed with PBML. The patient had recurrent uterine fibroids and underwent myomectomy twice, 7 years and 3 years ago, respectively, before the diagnosis of PBML was made. This patient was asymptomatic, and regular examinations were normal. Her laboratory investigations were all within normal range. Computed tomography (CT) showed multiple nodules in bilateral lungs. In order to confirm the disease, thoracoscopic nodule resection and tissue biopsy were performed. Hematoxylin eosin (HE) staining showed spindle-shaped cells, while immunohistochemical staining revealed positive for desmin, smooth muscle actin (SMA), estrogen receptor (ER), and progesterone receptor (PR), which are all PBML markers. The patient was followed-up without any further treatment. After 8 months of follow-up, CT scan revealed an increased number of nodules. This is unique case because of the recurrence of uterine fibroids, which means that the patient is susceptible to it. Our report may give a new insight to the relationship between the susceptibility of uterine fibroids and the onset and progression of PBML.

Ophthalmologists have used fundus images to screen and diagnose eye diseases. However, different equipments and ophthalmologists pose large variations to the quality of fundus images. Low-quality (LQ) degraded fundus images easily lead to uncertainty in clinical screening and generally increase the risk of misdiagnosis. Thus, real fundus image restoration is worth studying. Unfortunately, real clinical benchmark has not been explored for this task so far. In this paper, we investigate the real clinical fundus image restoration problem. Firstly, We establish a clinical dataset, Real Fundus (RF), including 120 low- and high-quality (HQ) image pairs. Then we propose a novel Transformer-based Generative Adversarial Network (RFormer) to restore the real degradation of clinical fundus images. The key component in our network is the Window-based Self-Attention Block (WSAB) which captures non-local self-similarity and long-range dependencies. To produce more visually pleasant results, a Transformer-based discriminator is introduced. Extensive experiments on our clinical benchmark show that the proposed RFormer significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods. In addition, experiments of downstream tasks such as vessel segmentation and optic disc/cup detection demonstrate that our proposed RFormer benefits clinical fundus image analysis and applications.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common cancers and has continued to increase in incidence worldwide. Moreover, the involvement of microRNAs (miRs) has been reported in the development and progression of HCC. Here, we investigated the role of miR-206 in HCC growth and metastasis. HCC-related microarray datasets were harvested to screen differentially expressed miRNAs in HCC samples followed by prediction of downstream target genes. The dual-luciferase reporter assay verified the target-binding relationship between miR-206 and CREB5. The human HCC cell line MHCC97-H was cultured

An endoplasmic reticulum resident protein, calreticulin (CRT), participates in many cellular processes. CRT is a tumor-associated antigen with an important role in antitumor immunity. Previously, we reported that the recombinant CRT fragment 39-272 (CRT/39-272) exhibited superior immunobiological activity, activating macrophages to release cytokines and promoting dendritic cell (DC) maturation. However, the effect of CRT/39-272 in vivo, especially its adjuvant effect on in vivo antitumor immune responses, was not fully investigated. In this study, we constructed a fusion protein linking CRT/39-272 to an ovalbumin (OVA) peptide (residues 182–297, OVAp) and used the fusion protein (OVAp-CRT) to examine the adjuvant effect of CRT. We investigated whether CRT/39-272 could induce bone marrow-derived DC maturation and strongly promote the proliferation of OVA-specific T cells in vitro. Compared with OVAp, OVAp-CRT induced stronger antigen-specific T lymphocyte responses, including antigen-specific T cell proliferation, interferon-γ secretion, and cytotoxic T lymphocyte responses. OVAp-CRT-immunized mice generated significantly increased OVAp-specific antibody and CD4+/CD8+ memory T cells, which mediated long-term protective effects. OVAp-CRT upregulated CD40, CD80, and CD86 expressions in splenic conventional DCs. Furthermore, OVAp-CRT protected immunized mice against OVA-expressing B16 melanoma cells in vivo. Moreover, mice that were adoptively transferred with OVAp-CRT-pulsed DCs showed inhibited tumor growth and prolonged mouse survival. Our results demonstrate that CRT/39-272 can be used as a potential new adjuvant for tumor vaccines, and this finding may be useful in tumor vaccine development.

Background: This study aimed to explore the efficacy and safety of drug-eluting beads bronchial arterial chemoembolization (DEB-BACE) compared with conventional bronchial arterial chemoembolization (cBACE) in lung cancer patients with hemoptysis. Materials & methods: Thirty-six lung cancer patients with hemoptysis treated by DEB-BACE or cBACE were retrospectively analyzed. Results: Technical success of BACE and clinical success of hemoptysis treatment were no different between DEB-BACE and cBACE (both p > 0.050), whereas DEB-BACE achieved increased total clinical response (p = 0.021), objective response rate (p = 0.035) and prolonged hemoptysis relapse-free survival (p = 0.013) compared with cBACE. The adverse event rates were similar between these two groups (all p > 0.05). Conclusion: DEB-BACE presents with higher tumor treatment response, prolonged hemoptysis relapse-free survival and comparable safety profiles compared with cBACE in lung cancer patients with hemoptysis.

Root crops grow in the soil deeply and bond with soil closely, which results in that the process of the separation between soil and root becomes the most difficult during the harvesting processes. In order to harvest root crops efficiently, the mechanical harvesting has become the main developing trend. However, high power and high damage rate are still occurred when mechanical harvester gets in touch with the roots. In this paper, we review the research of the development and evaluation of the mechanical harvesting of root crops and its performance optimization on the past years. The process of soil separation mainly consists in the initial separation between root and the ground and further separation between root and adhered soil. In general, the soil-cutting operation in the initial separation and the sieving mechanism in the further separation require high draught and power. And the dramatic friction, impact, pressure and so on, which happen in the components and soil-roots, are the key reasons to lead to root damage. The optimization of harvesting methods and parameters, including the digging shovel shape, working conditions, vibration, and screening way, is more significant in improving the harvesting performance. But there are still some limitations in the research and application of the mechanical harvester for root crops. Future research is suggested to focus on the development of the soil break-up when the digging shovel cutting soil, the insight into the interaction between soil and roots by different external compression loads, and the long-term studies to verify the high-efficiency and low-damage performances of mechanical harvester in practical application.

Neurofunctional dysregulations in spatially discrete areas or isolated pathways have been suggested as neural markers for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, multiscale perspectives into the neurobiological underpins of ADHD spanning multiple biological systems remain sparse. This points to the need of multi-levels of analysis encompassing brain functional organization and its correlation with molecular and cell-specific transcriptional signatures are stressed. Here, we capitalized on diffusion mapping embedding model to derive the functional connectome gradient, and deployed multivariate partial least square (PLS) method to uncover the enrichment of neurotransmitomic, cellular and chromosomal connectome-transcriptional signatures of ADHD. Compared to typical control, ADHD children presented connectopic cortical perturbations in lateral orbito-frontal and superior temporal regions, which had also been validated in another independent sample. This gradient-derived variants in ADHD further aligned spatially with distributions of GABAA/BZand 5-HT2Areceptors and co-varied with genetic transcriptional expression. Cognitive decoding and gene-expression annotation showed the correlates of these variants in memory, emotional regulation and spatial attention. Moreover, the gradient-derived transcriptional signatures of ADHD exhibited enriched expression of oligodendrocyte precursors and endothelial cells, and were mainly involved as variants of chromosome 18, 19 and X. In conclusion, our findings bridged in-vivo neuroimging assessed functional brain organization patterns to a multi-level molecular pathway in ADHD, possibly shedding light on the interrelation of biological systems that may coalesce to the emergence of this disorder.

Descriptions of the forward model, compilations of paleomagnetic data, and figures showing additional modeling results.

The construction industry has fared poorly in the process of digital transformation, while the main challenge is the digitalization of construction projects. Changes in project management approaches are urgently required in construction organizations to better align digital technology and organizational conditions. However, little literature has explored the pivotal role of the project management approach from an organizational perspective. To fill this gap, this research investigates ways of using a project governance model for integration to promote the digitalization of construction projects through a case study. The three integration dimensions, namely stakeholder integration, lifecycle integration, and project management knowledge integration, are identified, and governance elements under each dimension are displayed—and further stratified—based on the three levels of the governance model, including institutional level, organizational level, and behavioral level. The logical relationship between elements and their roles in project digitization is finally summarized. The developed conceptual model will provide an approach for construction enterprises to promote project digitalization.

Polyimides are widely used in the MEMS and flexible electronics fields due to their combined physicochemical properties, including high thermal stability, mechanical strength, and chemical resistance values. In the past decade, rapid progress has been made in the microfabrication of polyimides. However, enabling technologies, such as laser-induced graphene on polyimide, photosensitive polyimide micropatterning, and 3D polyimide microstructure assembly, have not been reviewed from the perspective of polyimide microfabrication. The aims of this review are to systematically discuss polyimide microfabrication techniques, which cover film formation, material conversion, micropatterning, 3D microfabrication, and their applications. With an emphasis on polyimide-based flexible MEMS devices, we discuss the remaining technological challenges in polyimide fabrication and possible technological innovations in this field.

Anxiety has been linked to altered belief formation and uncertainty estimation, impacting learning. Identifying the neural processes underlying these changes is important for understanding brain pathology. Here, we show that oscillatory activity in the medial prefrontal, anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal cortex (mPFC, ACC, OFC) explains anxiety-related learning alterations. In a magnetoencephalography experiment, two groups of human participants pre-screened with high and low trait anxiety (HTA, LTA: 39) performed a probabilistic reward-based learning task. HTA undermined learning through an overestimation of volatility, leading to faster belief updating, more stochastic decisions and pronounced lose-shift tendencies. On a neural level, we observed increased gamma activity in the ACC, dmPFC, and OFC during encoding of precision-weighted prediction errors in HTA, accompanied by suppressed ACC alpha/beta activity. Our findings support the association between altered learning and belief updating in anxiety and changes in gamma and alpha/beta activity in the ACC, dmPFC, and OFC.

Trait-based approaches have been widely used to evaluate the effects of variable environments on submerged macrophytes communities. However, little research focused on the response of submerged macrophytes to variable environmental factors in impounded lakes and channel rivers of water transfer project, especially from a whole plant trait network (PTN) perspective. Here, we conducted a field survey designed to clarify the characteristic of PTN topology among impounded lakes and channel rivers of the East Route of South-to-North Water Transfer Project (ERSNWTP) and to unravel the effects of determining factors on the PTN topology structure. Overall, our results showed that leaf-related traits and organ mass allocation traits were the hub traits of PTNs in impounded lakes and channel rivers of the ERSNWTP, which traits with high variability were more likely to be the hub traits. Moreover, PTNs showed different structures among impounded lakes and channel rivers, and PTNs topologies were related to the mean functional variation coefficients of lakes and channel rivers. Specially, higher mean functional variation coefficients represented tight PTN, and lower mean functional variation coefficients indicated loose PTN. The PTN structure was significantly affected by water total phosphorus and dissolved oxygen. Edge density increased, while average path length decreased with increasing total phosphorus. Edge density and average clustering coefficient showed significant decreases with increasing dissolved oxygen, while average path length and modularity exhibited significant increases with increasing dissolved oxygen. This study explores the changing patterns and determinants of trait networks along environmental gradients to improve our understanding of ecological rules regulating trait correlations.

An active and precise method for three-dimensional (3D) droplet manipulation is introduced. By modulating the local electrostatic force acting on droplets in carrier oil between needle plate electrodes, the vertical motion of droplets can be controlled, including the droplet levitation at the interface between the carrier oil and the air. Levitated droplets can be translated horizontally with high efficiency by the motion of the needle electrode. With controllable local deformation on the flexible plate electrode, selective manipulation can be realized for multiple droplets. Applying the manipulation method proposed, a platform is built and various droplet handling, such as transport, merging, and mixing, is performed effectively. Complex droplet transport trajectories are achieved by moving the needle electrode. The droplet transport velocity can reach up to 37 mm/s. The introduced method has fundamental advantages of avoiding cross-contamination between droplets, enhancing the flexibility, eliminating the transport track constraint, and lowering costs with straightforward and precise droplet manipulation.

Fast tool servo (FTS) is an efficient and reliable method in precision machining for fabricating freeform surfaces or microarrays with sub-micrometric form accuracy. In this paper, a Lorentz force FTS is designed where the voice coil motor is located inside the slide, and four air bearings are used as support components. Three different control algorithms, namely conventional PID control, advanced PID control with velocity/acceleration feed-forward (FF) and sliding mode control (SMC) are implemented in the system, and corresponding Simulink simulation models are built including for both mechanical and electrical systems. The results show that advanced PID and SMC can reduce phase error and overshoot, and tracking error can be controlled at 3.13% at 50 Hz. A new hybrid control algorithm (PID + SMC + FF) is developed, with system tracking error subsequently decreased to 0.871% at 50 Hz. In addition, with a suitable compensation method, the steady state tracking error is further decreased to 0.029%. Consistent results from testing with signals of different input frequency also indicate the general effectiveness of the algorithm.

To achieve early recognition of lettuce diseases, this paper combines the technology of image processing and the classifier of support vector machine (SVM) to identify and classify two common diseases of hydroponic lettuce: leafroll and brown blotch disease (BBD). Specifically, the authors designed programs for the acquisition and preprocessing, segmentation, and feature extraction of hydroponic lettuce images, and developed an identification program for hydroponic lettuce diseases based on the SVM. On this basis, the color, shape, and texture features were extracted from these images, and adopted as the training set of the SVM. Then, the identification model for hydroponic lettuce diseases was trained with the radial kernel function as the core, and applied to identify the different types of diseases. In total, 1,800 images were selected as samples, and subjected to denoising, enhancement, segmentation, and feature extraction. The leaf features of hydroponic lettuce were extracted, and used to establish the SVM-based disease identification model. The experimental results on the test set show that the identification model could recognize 93% of hydroponic lettuce diseases, achieving an excellent identification effect.

To eliminate the weighting factor tuning effort of typical finite-set model predictive control (FS-MPC), this paper proposes a weighting factor-less sequential model predictive control (SMPC) scheme for LC-filtered voltage source inverters. Two independent cost functions for minimizing capacitor-voltage and inductor-current tracking errors are deployed in a cascaded structure, eliminating the weighting factor. First, the optimal cascade order of the cost function is selected by the internal relationship of two control variables. Then, a graphical method is proposed to determine the optimal number of candidate voltage vectors selected from the first cost function. Moreover, to realize the strict current limitation, the current-constraint term is proved to be included in the voltage-related cost function. Another attractive feature of the proposed SMPC is that a smoother inductor-current starting response can be obtained compared to typical FS-MPC. Simulation and experimental results verify the feasibility of the presented approach.

Adhesion G protein-coupled receptors (aGPCRs) constitute an evolutionarily ancient family of receptors that often undergo autoproteolysis to produce α and β subunits

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease with nearly 1.6 billion patients worldwide and an incidence of 0.5-1%. In recent years, basic and clinical studies have revealed that immune cell responses and corresponding secretion of inflammatory factors are important in the control of RA development. Our study found that a natural plant ingredient, menthone, could be used as a potential antirheumatism compound.