Search

• Interaction of H with incoherent NbC precipitates was revealed by in-situ SKPFM. • Interactions of H with the border regions varies amongst different precipitates. • H-trapping behaviors of incoherent NbC precipitates could be intrinsically diverse. • Strains and defects on the border area may be critical to the H-trapping behavior. One of the most intriguing methods of mitigating the hydrogen embrittlement of steels entails nanoprecipitates that can trap H from enriching at vulnerable locations. However, controversial findings have been reported on whether the incoherent NbC precipitates trap hydrogen. Here, by using in-situ scanning Kelvin probe force microscopy (SKPFM), we reveal the dynamic interaction of H with the border area of incoherent NbC nanoprecipitates in steel. Results indicate that the interaction between H flux and the interfaces varies amongst different precipitates, implying that H-trapping behaviours of incoherent NbC precipitates could be intrinsically diverse. Potential origins underlying the distinct behaviours are analyzed. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working temperatures, thermal insulation performance, and life span of thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) are primarily influenced by their high-temperature stability, thermal expansion coefficients (TECs), thermal conductivity, and fracture toughness. To address the limitations of current zirconate- and tantalate-based oxides, dual-phase zirconate/tantalate high-entropy ceramics (HECs) are designed and synthesized to improve their thermal and mechanical properties. The combined effects of high entropy, high concentrations of oxygen vacancies, and relatively low phonon velocity result in glass-like thermal conductivity, with a minimum value of 1.55 W m−1 K−1at 1200 °C. The high TECs (10.6–10.9 × 10−6 K−1 at 1400 °C) and exceptional high-temperature stability demonstrate that these materials can withstand 1300 °C for more than 300 h, significantly surpassing the performance of traditional yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ). Compared with YSZ (3.6 MPa m1/2) and YTaO4(2.5 MPa m1/2), the increments in fracture toughness (4.4 MPa m1/2) of dual-phase zirconate/tantalate HECs are as high as 22.2% and 76.0%, respectively. It is evident that the designed dual-phase zirconate/tantalate HECs can effectively promote thermal properties and fracture toughness, positioning them as the next-generation TBCs with high operating temperatures and outstanding thermal insulation performance.

Federated learning (FL) has attracted increasing attention in recent years due to its data privacy preservation and great applicability to large-scale user scenarios. However, when FL faces numerous clients, it is inevitable to emerge the non-independent and identically distributed (non-iid) data between clients, which brings an enormous challenge for model training and performance analysis like convergence. Besides, due to the non-iid data, the participating clients of FL tend to be extremely heterogeneous so the number of samplings among clients causes a sampling variance problem, which induces a huge variation in convergence. More importantly, although FL can foster privacy security via locally retaining the training data, if local data is secret and sensitive, FL should have more powerful privacy protection to resist the cloud server or third party to infer private information from shared models or intermediate gradients. Facing the non-iid and privacy challenges, we propose a differential privacy (DP) based non-iid FL algorithm called DPNFL to jointly tackle these two issues. Specifically, motivated by the DP and its variants, we are the first to adopt the truncated concentrated differential privacy technique under the FL scenario to more tightly track end-to-end privacy loss, while requiring less noise injection for the same level of DP. To avoid the sampling variance problem, we enable the server to sample the partial clients uniformly without replacement, which also guarantees unbiased sampling. To further improve the algorithm performance, we also propose an adaptive version of DPNFL named AdDPNFL, which adopts the adaptive optimization on the server-side to simultaneously alleviate the impact of non-iid data and DP noise on model utility. Finally, we perform extensive experiments to validate the effectiveness and superiority of our algorithms.

This paper investigates the impact of trade tariffs on the global value chains (GVCs) embeddedness across 42 economies during the period 2007-2021. We employ empirical analysis to discern the nuanced effects of trade tariffs on GVCs embeddedness, with a focus on asymmetries between developed and developing countries and variations across industry sectors. Our findings reveal a significant dampening effect of trade tariffs on GVCs embeddedness, particularly pronounced in developing countries and the secondary industry sector. The exacerbating influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the inhibitory relationship between trade tariffs and GVCs embeddedness is also considered, highlighting intensified effects, especially within developing countries and secondary industries.

• Porosity is increased to 44% by novel closed spherical pore strucuture. • Bonding strength and abradability are 4 times higher than reported metal-based ASC. • Spherical shell fragmentation improves abradability while retaining high strength. To solve the long-standing contradiction between the bonding strength and abradability of an abradable seal coating (ASC), a novel spherical closed-pore structure was proposed. The new structure consisted of three discontinuous phases, including locally enriched metals, hollow thin-shell spheres, and pores. The results show that the bonding strength of the abradable seal coating reaches 25.4 MPa, and the abrasion ratio between the coating and blade tip, as a characteristic of the abradability of ASCs, is > 5900. The dewetting kinetics of the metal film on the ceramic sphere were calculated. The size of the shrink metal hemisphere is 3.6 times the metal film thickness. The locally enriched metal enables a high bonding strength, while the fragmentation of the hollow thin-shell spheres enhances the abradability, thus simultaneously improving the strength and abradability. The coating is expected to be used in next-generation turbines to improve efficiency and stability. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copper(I) bis-diimine complexes have played important roles in light-activated processes that can lead to their potential applications in photocatalysis and chemical sensing. Their metal-to-ligand charge-transfer (MLCT) excited-state properties are tunable by various structural factors. Dimeric Cu(I) complexes with connecting diimine derivative ligands offer another structural tuning platform for the excited-state properties. Here, we investigate excited-state properties in two covalently connected dimeric Cu(I)’s with varying structural constraints exerted by the number of carbons in the polyethylene bridge (C0and C4) connecting the two copper(I) diimine moieties. An interesting feature of Cu(I) diimine complexes is their ability to flatten following a photoinduced structural change. Herein, we observe larger structural constraints and more structural rearrangement required upon excitation of the longer bridged complex C4to achieve a conformation toward a more flattened tetrahedral coordination geometry compared to the shorter bridged C0. Vibrational wavepacket analysis of these complexes further supports the effect of these structural constraints where we observe a more rapid dephasing of the C0complex, as opposed to the C4complex, despite similar normal mode vibrations. The experimental results were supplemented by TDDFT calculations. The studies provide insight into using metal–metal interactions through constraints to tune excited-state dynamics and pathways.

Online condition monitoring of wire arc additive manufacturing using plasma arc spectra is essential. Purely data-driven monitoring models often cannot provide reliable classifications for out-of-sample scenarios. This article proposes an optical spectral physics-informed global-local network (GLNet) based on attention and optical spectral domain knowledge. Initially, an analysis of the physical characteristics of optical spectral signals is undertaken, with domain knowledge subsequently incorporated into the channel information during the network input construction. The architecture of GLNet includes a local branch (L-branch) to extract local structural features and a global branch (G-Branch) to consider how local patches interact globally. Additionally, this article devises a multiscale feature fusion block, which integrates multilevel features to enhance the discrimination ability of the fault condition monitoring model. In essence, the proposed network combines the power of deep learning with the generalizability of physics-based optical spectral features, enabling condition monitoring under varying conditions. Finally, the proposed method is experimentally verified on the copper and chrome zirconium copper dataset, which has considerable improvements in terms of classification accuracy.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a globally increasing autoimmune disorder, is associated with increased disability rates due to the disruption of iron metabolism. Tripterygiumglycoside tablets (TGTs), a Tripterygium wilfordiiHook. f. (TwHF)-based therapy, exhibit satisfactory clinical efficacy for RA treatment. However, drug-induced liver injury (DILI) remains a critical issue that hinders the clinical application of TGTs, and the molecular mechanisms underlying the efficacy and toxicity of TGTs in RA have not been fully elucidated. To address this problem, we integrated clinical multi-omics data associated with the anti-RA efficacy and DILI of TGTs with the chemical and target profiling of TGTs to perform a systematic network analysis. Subsequently, we identified effective and toxic targets following experimental validation in a collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) mouse model. Significantly different transcriptome–protein–metabolite profiles distinguishing patients with favorable TGTs responses from those with poor outcomes were identified. Intriguingly, the clinical efficacy and DILI of TGTs against RA were associated with metabolic homeostasis between iron and bone and between iron and lipids, respectively. Particularly, the signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3)–hepcidin (HAMP)/lipocalin 2 (LCN2)–tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase type 5 (ACP5) and STAT3–HAMP–acyl-CoA synthetase long-chain family member 4 (ACSL4)–lysophosphatidylcholine acyltransferase 3 (LPCAT3) axes were identified as key drivers of the efficacy and toxicity of TGTs. TGTs play dual roles in ameliorating CIA-induced pathology and in inducing hepatic dysfunction, disruption of lipid metabolism, and hepatic lipid peroxidation. Notably, TGTs effectively reversed “iron–bone” disruptions in the inflamed joint tissues of CIA mice by inhibiting the STAT3–HAMP/LCN2–ACP5 axis, subsequently leading to “iron–lipid” disturbances in the liver tissues via modulation of the STAT3–HAMP–ACSL4–LPCAT3 axis. Additional bidirectional validation experiments were conducted using MH7A and AML12 cells to confirm the bidirectional regulatory effects of TGTs on key targets. Collectively, our data highlight the association between iron-mediated metabolic homeostasis and the clinical efficacy and toxicity of TGT in RA therapy, offering guidance for the rational clinical use of TwHF-based therapy with dual therapeutic and toxic potential.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is prototypical autoimmune disease driven by pathological T cell–B cell interactions1,2. Expansion of T follicular helper (TFH) and T peripheral helper (TPH) cells, two T cell populations that provide help to B cells, is a prominent feature of SLE3,4. Human TFHand TPHcells characteristically produce high levels of the B cell chemoattractant CXCL13 (refs. 5,6), yet regulation of T cell CXCL13 production and the relationship between CXCL13+T cells and other T cell states remains unclear. Here, we identify an imbalance in CD4+T cell phenotypes in patients with SLE, with expansion of PD-1+/ICOS+CXCL13+T cells and reduction of CD96hiIL-22+T cells. Using CRISPR screens, we identify the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) as a potent negative regulator of CXCL13 production by human CD4+T cells. Transcriptomic, epigenetic and functional studies demonstrate that AHR coordinates with AP-1 family member JUN to prevent CXCL13+TPH/TFHcell differentiation and promote an IL-22+phenotype. Type I interferon, a pathogenic driver of SLE7, opposes AHR and JUN to promote T cell production of CXCL13. These results place CXCL13+TPH/TFHcells on a polarization axis opposite from T helper 22 (TH22) cells and reveal AHR, JUN and interferon as key regulators of these divergent T cell states.

In this study, endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress inducer tunicamycin (TM) and inhibitor 4-phenylbutyric acid (4-PBA) were used to treat postmortem chicken breast muscle to investigate changes in tenderness and effects on apoptosis and autophagy during 5 days ageing. TM-induced ER stress reduced shear force, enhanced myofibril fragmentation index (MFI), disrupted myofibril structure, increased desmin degradation, and activated μ-calpain and caspase-12. In addition, TM-induced ER stress increased the expression of Bax, Bim, and cytochrome c, and decreased the expression of Bcl-xL. Furthermore, TM-induced ER stress improved the conversion of LC3I to LC3II, raised the expression of Beclin-1, and decreased the expression of p62, PI3K, and mTOR. The opposite results were observed after 4-PBA treatment. These results suggested that ER stress could improve chicken tenderness, promote apoptosis and autophagy during chicken postmortem ageing.

AbstractThere are longstanding international housing policy concerns about the well-being and satisfaction of public housing residents and other low-income households. However, little is known about whether the location of public housing requires such lengthy commutes that it retards their fertility intentions. As a result, this study aims to examine the relationship between long commutes and the fertility intentions of young public housing residents and the underlying mechanism linking them. Based on data from the 2022 Public Housing Survey in Guangzhou, China, the results show that long commutes can weaken the intention to have children among young public housing residents. However, this effect is only found to be significant for the self-employed, part-time workers, and those working in the private sector, not for those working in the public sector. Moreover, the effects turn out to be more pronounced for those who commute by private car and active transportation than those who take public transportation. Finally, this study reveals that residential satisfaction mediates the nexus between long commutes and fertility intentions. This study makes an important step in advancing the scholarly understanding of the differential fertility intentions as a result of the spatial mismatch.

Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-tyrosine kinase inhibitors (HER2-TKIs) have been extensively utilized for treating HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer (MBC), with numerous clinical trial reports available. We aim to systematically perform a comprehensive clinical evaluation on HER2-TKIs, provide a reference for the clinical rational use of drugs, and serve for the decision-making of the national drug policy. We performed comprehensive clinical evaluation in six dimensions including safety, effectiveness, economy, suitability, accessibility, and innovation through meta-analysis, literature review, drug administration websites, and other relevant medication data to analyze HER2-TKIs in treating HER2-positive MBC. For safety, the risk of ≥ grade 3 adverse events among pyrotinib, lapatinib, and neratinib is not significantly different. Furthermore, pyrotinib and neratinib were found to be higher in the risk of ≥ grade 3 diarrhea than lapatinib, however the risk could be reversed and prevented with loperamide. Regarding effectiveness and economy, pyrotinib was confirmed to have the best efficacy and cost-utility value, neratinib the second, and lapatinib the third. As regards innovation and suitability, pyrotinib showed better than other HER2-TKIs. In addition, pyrotinib received a higher recommendation than other HER2-TKIs in patients with HER2-positive MBC. The accessibility of pyrotinib was found to be the best with better urban, rural, and national affordability and lower annual treatment costs. Pyrotinib is more valuable in clinics with better safety, effectiveness, economy, suitability, accessibility, and innovation in HER2-positive MBC. This study could provide references for the clinical application of HER2-TKIs in treating HER2-positive MBC.

In this study, for the first time, we isolated a naringinase-producing strain from the Citrus aurantium L. var. amaraEngl flower soil and identified it as Serratia marcescensC10. In order to improve naringinase activity for its industrial application, single-factor experiments were carried out to obtain the factors that greatly affect naringinase activity, and based on three factors and three levels of Box-Behnken Designs (BBD), response surface methodology (RSM) was used to optimize the culture conditions consisting of naringin concentration, inoculation size and fermentation time. Results showed that naringin concentration and fermentation time had a highly significant influence and significant influence on naringinase activity, respectively. Additionally, inoculation size and fermentation time had an interaction with naringinase activity. The optimized conditions were a naringin concentration of 0.09 mg/mL, an inoculation size of 5.5%, and a fermentation time of 60 h. Under optimal culture conditions, the experiment naringinase activity was 30.81 U/mL, which was close to the predicted theoretical value of 31.23 U/mL. The optimized naringinase was used to remove naringin in grapefruit juice, and the removal rate was 88.85% under optimal reaction conditions.

The selective extraction of chromium (Cr) from Chromium-bearing electroplating sludge (CES) has positive significance for harmless disposal and reducing dependence on native resources. Herein, the process of pressure oxidation alkaline leaching of CES is reported. The leaching ratio of Cr was reached 89.9 % under the optimal conditions, i.e., temperature of 125℃, NaOH concentration of 1.5 mol/L, liquid-solid ratio of 10, oxygen partial pressure of 2Mpa and reaction time of 2 h, while other elements such as Cu, Ni, Fe and Zn were virtually not leached out. In addition, the concentration of NaOH required for the maximum of the leaching ratio of Cr decreased with the increase of temperature, which attributed to the synergistic effect of temperature and NaOH concentration on the solubility and diffusion coefficient of the oxidant. As the oxygen partial pressure was increased to 2 MPa, the liquid-solid ratio was raised to 10, and the reaction time was extended to 2 h, respectively, the leaching ratio of Cr reached maximum and then remained as a constant. Kinetic studies showed the leaching process of chromium was controlled by chemical reaction, and the apparent activation energy was 112.1 kJ/mol. The efficient selective recovery of Cr is of great significance to reduce the difficulty of comprehensive recovery of valuable metal elements in the CES.

The core of multirobot collision avoidance lies in developing a decentralized policy that can guide robots from their initial positions to target locations based on the environment states perceived by the robots and ensure collision avoidance. However, the current multirobot collision avoidance policy network is challenging to simultaneously extract the global spatial state, temporal state, and reciprocity among robots, which limits its performance. In this work, we have developed a novel reciprocal velocity obstacle (RVO) spatial-temporal network and employed the proximal policy optimization algorithm to train the network parameters during interactions with a multirobot simulation environment. Specifically, a temporal state encoder module, utilized to represent the temporal characteristics of observation sequence data, is designed and achieved through the combination of the graph attention mechanism and the transformer encoding module. Furthermore, we design a reciprocal spatial state encoder module achieved through the use of a transformer encoding module to merge feature data from long short-term memory (LSTM), GRU, and bidirectional gated recurrent units (BiGRUs) branches, serving the purpose of representing spatial characteristics in RVO sequence data. Extensive simulation experiments demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art distributed policy reinforcement learning (RL)-RVO. We further conducted physical experiments using three Crazyflie quadcopter drones, illustrating its ability to effectively guide agents’ movements and avoid collisions.

One of the primary methods for band gap tuning in metal halide perovskites has been halide (I/Br) mixing. Despite widespread usage of this type of chemical substitution in perovskite photovoltaics, there is still little understanding of the structural impacts of halide alloying, with the assumption being the formation of ideal solid solutions. The FASnI3–xBrx(x= 0–3) family of compounds provides the first example where the assumption breaks down, as the composition space is broken into two unique regimes (x= 0–2.9; x= 2.9–3) based on their average structure with the former having a 3D and the latter having an extended 3D (pseudo 0D) structure. Pair distribution function (PDF) analyses further suggest a dynamic 5s2lone pair expression resulting in increasing levels of off-centering of the central Sn as the Br concentration is increased. These antiferroelectric distortions indicate that even the x= 0–2.9 phase space behaves as a nonideal solid-solution on a more local scale. Solid-state NMR confirms the difference in local structure yielding greater insight into the chemical nature and local distributions of the FA+cation. In contrast to the FAPbI3–xBrxseries, a drastic photoluminescence (PL) quenching is observed with x≥ 1.9 compounds having no observable PL. Our detailed studies attribute this quenching to structural transitions induced by the distortions of the [SnBr6] octahedra in response to stereochemically expressed lone pairs of electrons. This is confirmed through density functional theory, having a direct impact on the electronic structure.

The tight sandstone reservoir is recognized as a promising alternative resource in the realm of oil and gas exploration. However, once the peak production of the reservoir is surpassed, there is a sharp decline in output. The implementation of CO2injection in these tight oil blocks for enhanced oil recovery is seen as a viable development strategy. The traditional Darcy flow model has faced significant challenges in accurately capturing the intricate dynamics of multiphase flow within the fine-grained matrix of such reservoirs. The characterization of micro pore models in tight reservoirs presents a major obstacle.This study employs advanced morphological operations and level set methods to characterize and establish a high-fidelity microscale mesh model for the pore throat network in tight reservoir rocks. By utilizing the Navier Stokes equation and phase field equation, we simulated the concurrent flow behavior of oil and CO2within the model. We elucidated the factors contributing to the formation of multiple residual oils within the pores. Through varying simulation parameters, we demonstrated that the reduction in fluid dynamics, coupled with decreased interfacial tension and increased carbon dioxide injection rate, synergistically enhance the overall displacement effect following enhanced injection schemes.

JPEG‐LS is a lossless/near‐lossless image compression algorithm based on context modeling, which has the advantages of easy implementation, low resource consumption and high compression rate. It is widely used in the compression field of continuous‐tone still images. However, single image compression has significant latency and high hardware resource consumption issues, as the JPEG‐LS algorithm requires pixel by pixel prediction and real‐time context updates during the compression process, which is not conducive to algorithm IP implementation. Based on Demura compensation data compression requirements, this article has made changes to the pixel prediction method of the JPEG‐LS algorithm and delayed the update of the context to solve the compression latency and resource consumption issues. After algorithm optimization (NJPEGLS), the linebuffer resource occupation was reduced by 8/9, the clock frequency reached above 140 MHz, and the comprehensive compression rate loss was within 4.5%, meeting the demand for Demura compensation data compression/decompression. In this paper, we also conducted statistics and analysis on the distribution of values, and found that the distribution of values was very regular, and we propose an adaptive value scheme (KNJPEG‐LS) to further simplify the hardware circuit.

IMPORTANCE: Clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) may contribute to the risk of atrial fibrillation (AF) through its association with inflammation and cardiac remodeling. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether CHIP was associated with AF, inflammatory and cardiac biomarkers, and cardiac structural changes. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This was a population-based, prospective cohort study in participants of the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study and UK Biobank (UKB) cohort. Samples were collected and echocardiography was performed from 2011 to 2013 in the ARIC cohort, and samples were collected from 2006 to 2010 in the UKB cohort. Included in this study were adults without hematologic malignancies, mitral valve stenosis, or previous mitral valve procedure from both the ARIC and UKB cohorts; additionally, participants without hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and congenital heart disease from the UKB cohort were also included. Data analysis was completed in 2023. EXPOSURES: CHIP (variant allele frequency [VAF] ≥2%), common gene-specific CHIP subtypes (DNMT3A, TET2, ASXL1), large CHIP (VAF ≥10%), inflammatory and cardiac biomarkers (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, interleukin 6 [IL-6], IL-18, high-sensitivity troponin T [hs-TnT] and hs-TnI, N-terminal pro–B-type natriuretic peptide), and echocardiographic indices. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Incident AF. RESULTS: A total of 199 982 adults were included in this study. In ARIC participants (4131 [2.1%]; mean [SD] age, 76 [5] years; 2449 female [59%]; 1682 male [41%]; 935 Black [23%] and 3196 White [77%]), 1019 had any CHIP (24.7%), and 478 had large CHIP (11.6%). In UKB participants (195 851 [97.9%]; mean [SD] age, 56 [8] years; 108 370 female [55%]; 87 481 male [45%]; 3154 Black [2%], 183 747 White [94%], and 7971 other race [4%]), 11 328 had any CHIP (5.8%), and 5189 had large CHIP (2.6%). ARIC participants were followed up for a median (IQR) period of 7.0 (5.3-7.7) years, and UKB participants were followed up for a median (IQR) period of 12.2 (11.3-13.0) years. Meta-analyzed hazard ratios for AF were 1.12 (95% CI, 1.01-1.25; P = .04) for participants with vs without large CHIP, 1.29 (95% CI, 1.05-1.59; P = .02) for those with vs without large TET2 CHIP (seen in 1340 of 197 209 [0.67%]), and 1.45 (95% CI, 1.02-2.07; P = .04) for those with vs without large ASXL1 CHIP (seen in 314 of 197 209 [0.16%]). Large TET2 CHIP was associated with higher IL-6 levels. Additionally, large ASXL1 was associated with higher hs-TnT level and increased left ventricular mass index. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Large TET2 and ASXL1, but not DNMT3A, CHIP was associated with higher IL-6 level, indices of cardiac remodeling, and increased risk for AF. Future research is needed to elaborate on the mechanisms driving the associations and to investigate potential interventions to reduce the risk.

Supercritical CO2-based soil remediation technology has become one new method with its advantages of high efficiency, environmental protection, and no secondary pollution. In this study, experiments on a kilogram-scale experimental system have been conducted under different pressures, temperatures, processing times, etc. A wide range of parameter conditions (∼75 °C, ∼40 MPa, ∼40 min) have been tested to explore parameter effects on the removal efficiencies (RE) of metal contaminants: lead, chromium, and arsenic. Comparisons between Cyanex 302 and Ethylene Diamine Tetraacetic Acid (EDTA) as chelators have been conducted: (1) Both Cyanex 302 and EDTA show significant role in promoting the soil remediation process under supercritical CO2remediation process. Additionally, the removal efficiency of EDTA for the three metals is generally lower than that of Cyanex 302 under the same operating conditions. (2) Cyanex 302 exhibits selectivity for metals. For Cyanex 302, the RE of both lead (Pb) and arsenic (As) was quite high (>93 %), while the removal efficiency of chromium (Cr) showed an obvious regularity with the increase of temperature, pressure and processing time, from 37 % to 83 %. (3) For EDTA cases, the RE of lead (Pb), chromium (Cr) and arsenic (As) showed different trends: the lowest removal efficiency found to be 48 %, 15 %, 28 % at 20 MPa, 35 °C, 20 min conditions, respectively; and the highest of 83 %, 63 %, 64 %, respectively, at 30 MPa, 55 °C conditions. EDTA cases showed different results for all three metals: the influence of temperature on removal efficiency is most obvious, while the influence of processing time on efficiency is neglectable.

Phytophthora blight of pepper, which is caused by the notorious oomycete pathogen Phytophthora capsici, is a serious disease in global pepper production regions. Our previous study had identified two WRKY transcription factors (TFs), CaWRKY01-10 and CaWRKY08-4, which are prominent modulators in the resistant pepper line CM334 against P. capsiciinfection. However, their functional mechanisms and underlying signaling networks remain unknown. Herein, we determined that CaWRKY01-10 and CaWRKY08-4 are localized in plant nuclei. Transient overexpression assays indicated that both CaWRKY01-10 and CaWRKY08-4 act as positive regulators in pepper resistance to P. capsici. Besides, the stable overexpression of CaWRKY01-10 and CaWRKY08-4 in transgenic Nicotiana benthamianaplants also significantly enhanced the resistance to P. capsici. Using comprehensive approaches including RNA-seq, CUT&RUN-qPCR, and dual-luciferase reporter assays, we revealed that overexpression of CaWRKY01-10 and CaWRKY08-4 can activate the expressions of the same four Capsicum annuumdefense-related genes (one PR1, two PR4, and one pathogen-related gene) by directly binding to their promoters. However, we did not observe protein–protein interactions and transcriptional amplification/inhibition effects of their shared target genes when coexpressing these two WRKY TFs. In conclusion, these data suggest that both of the resistant line specific upregulated WRKY TFs (CaWRKY01-10 and CaWRKY08-4) can confer pepper’s resistance to P. capsiciinfection by directly activating a cluster of defense-related genes and are potentially useful for genetic improvement against Phytophthora blight of pepper and other crops.

20(S)-Protopanaxadiol (PPD) is one of the bioactive ingredients in ginseng and possesses neuroprotective properties. Brain-type creatine kinase (CK-BB) is an enzyme involved in brain energy homeostasis via the phosphocreatine–creatine kinase system. We previously identified PPD as directly bound to CK-BB and activated its activity in vitro. In this study, we explored the antidepressive effects of PPD that target CK-BB. First, we conducted time course studies on brain CK-BB, behaviors, and hippocampal structural plasticity responses to corticosterone (CORT) administration. Five weeks of CORT injection reduced CK-BB activity and protein levels and induced depression-like behaviors and hippocampal structural plasticity impairment. Next, a CK inhibitor and an adeno-associated virus-targeting CKBwere used to diminish CK-BB activity or its expression in the brain. The loss of CK-BB in the brain led to depressive behaviors and morphological damage to spines in the hippocampus. Then, a polyclonal antibody against PPD was used to determine the distribution of PPD in the brain tissues. PPD was detected in the hippocampus and cortex and observed in astrocytes, neurons, and vascular endotheliocytes. Finally, different PPD doses were used in the chronic CORT-induced depression model. Treatment with a high dose of PPD significantly increased the activity and expression of CK-BB after long-term CORT injection. In addition, PPD alleviated the damage to depressive-like behaviors and structural plasticity induced by repeated CORT injection. Overall, our study revealed the critical role of CK-BB in mediating structural plasticity in CORT-induced depression and identified CK-BB as a therapeutic target for PPD, allowing us to treat stress-related mood disorders.

Development of a highly performing heterojunction photoanode is significantly important for photoelectrochemical cells. Herein, a novel strategy is proposed to construct a protonated g-C3N4nanosheets/nitrogen-doped TiO2photoanode inspired by polydopamine microspheres. The polydopamine microspheres can enhance the adsorption of protonated g-C3N4nanosheets via electrostatic interaction, facilitating heterojunction formation. Moreover, the addition of the polydopamine microspheres into the preparation process can not only dope a nitrogen element into TiO2, improving solar energy utilization, but also create a vigorous pore structure in the photoanode, promoting mass transport and light scattering. Besides, the specific surface area can also be increased. Owing to these merits, the photoelectrochemical activity of this newly developed photoanode is greatly improved. Furthermore, the superiority of this photoanode is evaluated by integrating it into a photoelectrochemical cell for simultaneous wastewater treatment and power generation. The maximum power density generated by the newly developed protonated g-C3N4nanosheets/nitrogen-doped TiO2photoanode is about 138.5% and 40.9% higher than the TiO2photoanode and the protonated g-C3N4nanosheets/TiO2photoanode prepared without using the polydopamine microspheres, respectively. The present study provides a novel strategy for developing a highly performing heterojunction photoanode.

We report a step-economic strategy for the direct synthesis of spiro polycyclic N-heterocycles and indolecarbazole-fused naphthoquinones by merging oxidative coupling and cascade palladium-catalyzed intramolecular oxidative cyclization. In the protocol, bi-indolylnaphthoquinones were first synthesized by oxidative coupling of indoles and naphthoquinones. Subsequent cascade palladium-catalyzed intramolecular oxidative cyclization of bi-indolylnaphthoquinones gave spiro polycyclic N-heterocycles and indolecarbazoles. The intramolecular oxidative cyclization approach could also be realized by the presence or absence of iron catalysts under standard conditions. This protocol is featured with moderate to excellent yields, a wide substrate scope, and divergent structures of products.

Guided by the retrobiosynthesis hypothesis, we characterized a fungal polyketide synthase–nonribosomal peptide synthetase (PKS–NRPS) hybrid megasynthetase pathway to generate 2-trans-4-trans-2-methylsorbyl-d-leucine (1), a polyketide amino acid conjugate that inhibits Arabidopsisroot growth. The biosynthesis of 1includes a PKS–NRPS enzyme to assemble an N-acyl amino alcohol intermediate, which is further oxidized to an N-acyl amino acid (NAAA), demonstrating a new biosynthetic logic for synthesizing NAAAs and expanding the chemical space of products encoded by fungal PKS–NRPS clusters.

Absent, small, or homeotic1-like (ASH1L) is a histone lysine methyltransferase that generally functions as a transcriptional activator in controlling cell fate. So far, its physiological relevance in bone homeostasis and osteoclast differentiation remains elusive. Here, by conditional deleting Ash1lin osteoclast progenitors of mice, we found ASH1L deficiency resulted in osteoporosis and potentiation of osteoclastogenesis in vivo and in vitro. Mechanistically, ASH1L binds the promoter of the Src homology 3 and cysteine-rich domain 2 (Stac2) and increases the gene’s transcription via histone 3 lysine 4 (H3K4) trimethylation modification, thus augmenting the STAC2’s protection against receptor activator of nuclear factor kB ligand (RANKL)-initiated inflammation during osteoclast formation. Collectively, we demonstrate the first piece of evidence to prove ASH1L as a critical checkpoint during osteoclastogenesis. The work sheds new light on our understanding about the biological function of ASH1L in bone homeostasis, therefore providing a valuable therapeutic target for the treatment of osteoporosis or inflammatory bone diseases.