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Ion-conductive hydrogels have received great attention due to their significant potential in flexible electronics. However, achieving hydrogels that simultaneously possess high ionic conductivity and stability under varying humidity conditions remains a challenge, limiting their practical applications. Herein, we propose a thermally controlled chemical cross-linking strategy to prepare an elastic and conductive hydrogel (ECH) of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) with high content of H2SO4. The covalent cross-links formed effectively tackle the instability issue in high humidity of physically cross-linked PVA/H2SO4hydrogels with high ionic conductivity, which were previously developed via the polymer-in-salt strategy. We systematically investigated the reaction conditions and clarified the methods to optimize the hydroxyl dehydration of PVA, resulting in excellent mechanical properties and ion conductivity simultaneously. The ECH demonstrates impressive ionic conductivity (up to 392 ± 49 mS cm–1) and elasticity (over 80% resilience upon stretching and compression after being equilibrated at various humidity levels for 24 days). Thanks to the excellent water retention of the high H2SO4content, the ECH maintains an ionic conductivity exceeding 210 mS cm–1for over 420 days at 50% relative humidity (RH) and retains over 100 mS cm–1even after 3 days under extremely dry conditions (7% RH). These remarkable properties make the ECH an ideal candidate for applications requiring reliable ionic conductivity in diverse environmental conditions. Additionally, we demonstrated that the ECH can function as a stretchable Joule heater with high conformability for heating up objects with curved surfaces. The heating rate could reach a fast rate of ∼12 °C s–1even when a human-safe alternating current voltage is below 36 V, attributed to the high ionic conductivity. We believe that the high performance and ease of fabrication make our hydrogels a promising candidate for use as electrolytes in flexible energy storage devices, electrolyte gates in electrochemical transistors, and artificial skin, which often face long-term stability challenges under varying humidity conditions.

Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), an immunological disorder that arises from donor T cell activation through recognition of host alloantigens, is the major limitation in the application of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT). Traditional immunosuppressive agents can relieve GVHD, but they induce serious side effects. It is highly required to explore alternative therapeutic strategy. Human amniotic epithelial stem cells (hAESCs) were recently considered as an ideal source for cell therapy with special immune regulatory property. In this study, we evaluated the therapeutic role of hAESCs in the treatment of GVHD, based on our previous developed cGMP-grade hAESCs product. Humanized mouse model of acute GVHD (aGVHD) was established by injection of huPBMCs via the tail vein. For prevention or treatment of aGVHD, hAESCs were injected to the mice on day -1 or on day 7 post-PBMC infusion, respectively. We showed that hAESCs infusion significantly alleviated the disease phenotype, increased the survival rate of aGVHD mice, and ameliorated pathological injuries in aGVHD target organs. We demonstrated that hAESCs directly induced CD4+T cell polarization, in which Th1 and Th17 subsets were downregulated, and Treg subset was elevated. Correspondingly, the levels of a series of pro-inflammatory cytokines were reduced while the levels of the anti-inflammatory cytokines were upregulated in the presence of hAESCs. We found that hAESCs regulated CD4+subset polarization in a paracrine mode, in which TGFβ and PGE2 were selectively secreted to mediate Treg elevation and Th1/Th17 inhibition, respectively. In addition, transplanted hAESCs preserved the graft-versus-leukemia (GVL) effect by inhibiting leukemia cell growth. More intriguingly, hAESCs infusion in HSCT patients displayed potential anti-GVHD effect with no safety concerns and confirmed the immunoregulatory mechanisms in the preclinical study. We conclude that hAESCs infusion is a promising therapeutic strategy for post-HSCT GVHD without compromising the GVL effect. The clinical trial was registered at www.clinicaltrials.govas #NCT03764228.

This paper provides new insights into the industry spillover on labor productivity by discussing the spillover effects of robot application among industries in three spillover directions: horizontal, forward, and backward spillover. In addition, this paper measures the three spillovers with the weight matrices from the year 2012 input-output table by the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics. Using a spatial econometric model and 2000–2010 data on China's secondary industry, this paper tests three hypotheses relating to the direct effect and the spillover effects of robot applications. The main results show that the robot application of one industry can improve labor productivity significantly. Moreover, all three kinds of spillover have significant positive effects on the labor productivity of a focal industry. Among them, the forward spillover exerts the greatest impact on labor productivity. The heterogeneity effects exist due to the industry's factor intensity and technological structure etc. The findings of this study could provide several important implications for the development of a given industry and the industry chain of a country as well.

This paper presents an analog low-power sub-sampling phase locked loop (PLL) that tackles the reference spur caused by VCO load modulation from the sub-sampling operation. A complete analysis on the binary frequency shift keying (BFSK) effect including the impact of the VCO buffer is provided, followed by practical design guide that achieves the optimum spur/jitter trade-off. The proposed sub-sampling phase detector incorporates an active primary-secondary architecture for improved isolation to suppress the load modulation. The adaptive frequency locked loop (FLL) consumes zero power in the locked state and activates itself once unlocking is detected. The sub-sampling PLL is fabricated in a 40nm CMOS process. It achieves -121.5dBc/Hz phase noise at 1MHz offset frequency and an RMS jitter of 185fs integrated from 10k to 10MHz. The power dissipation is 1.14mW at 0.95V supply with a -254.1dB figure-of-merit. The proposed phase detector results in -73dBc reference spur that is among the lowest in state-of-art works.

Summary SentenceHOTAIR and FBN2 reduced the risk of URSA by enhancing cell viability, migration, and invasion, while miR-1277-5p exerted the opposite effects.Graphical AbstractVillus tissues from unexplained recurrent spontaneous abortion patients (unexplained recurrent spontaneous abortion group, n = 47) and women with voluntary termination of pregnancy (Normal group, n = 47) were collected. lncRNA- HOX transcript antisense intergenic RNA siRNA, pcDNA3.1-lncRNA- HOX transcript antisense intergenic RNA, miR-1277-5p inhibitor, miR-1277-5p mimics, and si-fibrillin 2 were transfected into human trophoblast HTR-8/SVneo. Real-time quantitative PCR was used to detect the level of lncRNA HOX transcript antisense intergenic RNA. Then cell counting kit-8 assay, scratch assay, and Transwell assay were used to detect cell viability, migration ability, and invasion ability. The interaction between HOX transcript antisense intergenic RNA and miR-1277-5p, as well as between miR-1277-5p and fibrillin 2, was determined by bioinformatics prediction and Dual-luciferase reporter assay.Our research results indicate that HOX transcript antisense intergenic RNA was downregulated in chorionic villi tissues from unexplained recurrent spontaneous abortion patients. Overexpression of HOX transcript antisense intergenic RNA significantly enhanced the viability, migration, and invasion of HTR-8/SVneo cells, while knockdown of HOX transcript antisense intergenic RNA had the opposite effects. We further confirmed the regulatory effect of the HOX transcript antisense intergenic RNA /miR-1277-5p/fibrillin 2 signaling axis in unexplained recurrent spontaneous abortion. Specifically, HOX transcript antisense intergenic RNA and fibrillin 2 were found to reduce the risk of unexplained recurrent spontaneous abortion by enhancing cell viability, migration, and invasion, whereas miR-1277-5p exerted the opposite effects.

Nucleophilic substitution of B–H is an important strategy for the synthesis of carborane derivatives. Although the intermolecular B–H nucleophilic substitution has been widely explored, intramolecular B–H nucleophilic substitution has rarely been reported. Herein, we synthesized a novel carborane-fused N-heteroaromatic through a transition-metal-free reaction between carboranyl lithium and 2,3-dichloroquinoxaline. Two intermolecular C–Cl nucleophilic substitutions and one intramolecular B–H nucleophilic substitution with carboranyl lithium were involved in this transformation. Instead of the most electron-deficient B(3)–H vertex, the B–H nucleophilic substitution selectively occurred on the B(4)–H vertex. This method provides a new method for the synthesis of carborane-fused ring compounds.

This paper presents a power-efficient constant-slope digital-to-time converter (DTC) with embedded nonlinearity cancellation. By utilizing the capacitor based digital-to-analog converter (C-DAC) to adjust the initial voltage of the discharging process, the DTC achieves a fine resolution of < 600-fs. Sources of nonlinearity are quantitatively analyzed, followed by circuit implementations that intrinsically cancel them. The range-extension technique is proposed to increase the range of the DTC by a factor of two without further complicating the capacitor array. The power consumption of the DTC is reduced by the self-power down technique that automatically detects the end of the conversion and shuts off the current. The proposed DTC consumes 120- $\mu \text{W}$ at 50-MHz clock rate. It achieves a fine resolution of 563-fs over a 10-bit range. The measured differential nonlinearity (DNL) and integral nonlinearity (INL) are 0.14/0.96-LSB, respectively.

Reconstituted sheet tobacco (RST) is critical to the quality of cigarette. The purpose of this study was to extract and cultivate bacteria from tobacco leaf stalks, scraps, and concentrate from RST production lines. A total of 21 strains with unique morphologies were obtained. Through a series of screening tests, a Bacillus subtilisstrain B-NS-7 was found for its ability to produce high levels of protease, amylase, and pectinase, as well as ferment tobacco concentrate to enhance aroma. The B-NS-7 fermented concentrate had a 48.3% increase in aroma compared to the original concentrate as determined by HS–SPME–GC–MS. The concentrate was inoculated with a 1% volume fraction of the strain and fermented at 37 °C for 24 h to achieve maximum aroma production of 116.3 μg/mL. Among these, neophytadiene was responsible for the majority of the fragrance enhancement, and B-NS-7 was identified as an aldehydic and alkene-flavored strain with superior sensory quality to the original liquid. This strain has been deposited at the China General Microbiological Culture Collection Center (CGMCC No. 23716). By way of this study, B. subtilisB-NS-7 was intended to be used in the manufacturing of RST through microbial fermentation to improve the quality, and the fermentation conditions for aroma creation were optimized, providing suggestions for the microbial development of the RST industry.

Lung carcinoma is one of the most common cancers and has one of the lowest survival rates in the world. Cytokines such as interleukin-12 (IL-12) have demonstrated considerable potential as robust tumour suppressors. However, their applications are limited due to off-target toxicity. Here we report on a strategy involving the inhalation of IL-12 messenger RNA, encapsulated within extracellular vesicles. Inhalation and preferential uptake by cancer cells results in targeted delivery and fewer systemic side effects. The IL-12 messenger RNA generates interferon-γ production in both innate and adaptive immune-cell populations. This activation consequently incites an intense activation state in the tumour microenvironment and augments its immunogenicity. The increased immune response results in the expansion of tumour cytotoxic immune effector cells, the formation of immune memory, improved antigen presentation and tumour-specific T cell priming. The strategy is demonstrated against primary neoplastic lesions and provides profound protection against subsequent tumour rechallenge. This shows the potential for locally delivered cytokine-based immunotherapies to address orthotopic and metastatic lung tumours.

The significance of RFID-based information collection is becoming increasingly visible as more and more sensor-augmented RFID systems are deployed. Tag information collection aims at efficiently and accurately collecting valuable information from target objects attached with RFID tags. Polling-based information collection can effectively avoid response collisions between RFID tags, and it is widely adopted to accurately inventory tags. However, in the traditional polling mode, a polling vector can only be used to query a tag at a time, which is inefficient. In this paper, we design a double polling mode to improve the utilization of polling vectors, which can simultaneously interrogate a pair of tags. Afterwards, several techniques are developed to reduce the polling vector length. First, the Basic Double Polling-based protocol (BDP) employs double indexes to collect information, which greatly reduces the number of polling vectors. Second, the Segmented Double Polling-based protocol (SDP) divides the double indexes into several segments to cut the polling vector length down. Third, the Partial Double Polling-based protocol (PDP) replaces the double index with the size of the empty segment between two adjacent non-zero indexes to further reduce the average polling vector length. Finally, the Differential Double Polling-based protocol (DDP) utilizes the size of the empty segment between two double indexes to improve the utilization of polling vectors. After that, extensive theoretical analyses and simulations are conducted, which demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed protocols.

This paper develops an optimal design for device scheduling, alignment coefficient, and aggregation rounds within a differentially private over-the-air federated averaging (DP-OTA-FedAvg) system considering a constrained sum power budget. In DP-OTA-FedAvg, gradients are aligned using an alignment coefficient and then aggregated over the air, utilizing channel noise to ensure participant privacy. This study highlights two critical tradeoffs in aligned over-the-air federated learning (OTA-FL) systems with limited power and privacy budgets. Firstly, it reveals the tradeoff between the number of scheduled devices and the alignment coefficient. Secondly, it investigates the balance between aggregation distortion and local training error while adhering to the sum power constraint. Specifically, we measure privacy using differential privacy (DP) and perform convergence analyses for both convex and non-convex loss functions. These analyses provide insights into how device scheduling, the alignment coefficient, and the number of global aggregations affect both privacy preservation and the learning process. Building on these analytical results, we formulate an optimization problem aimed at minimizing the optimality gap of DP-OTA-FedAvg under power and privacy constraints. By specifying the number of aggregation rounds, we derive a closed-form expression describing the relationship between the alignment coefficient and the number of scheduled devices. We then tackle the problem through iterative optimization of scheduling and aggregation rounds. The effectiveness of the proposed policies is verified through simulations, and the performance advantage is particularly pronounced in scenarios where devices have poor channel conditions and limited sum-power budgets.

Over the last decade, the Internet of Things (IoT) technology has advanced significantly in a variety of fields. As a pivotal application of IoT, intelligent transportation systems (ITS) have harvested great attention from the research community. Radio frequency identification (RFID) which is an essential technology in IoT plays a key role in ITS to identify tagged vehicles. Unknown tag identification which aims at identifying the existing unknown tags is crucial to monitor the newly entering vehicles in the RFID-assisted intelligent transportation systems. However, the COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) RFID tags that harvest energy from the reader can not support the hash function in reality, which hinders the widespread deployment of hash-enabled unknown tag identification protocols. To conquer this tough issue, we propose two approaches to efficiently identify unknown COTS RFID tags. We first propose a Single-Point Selective unknown tag identification approach called SPS, where an analog hash pattern using the EPC (Electronic Product Code) segments is deployed to exclusively identify unknown tags. An unknown tag will be identified when it selects a singleton slot to reply. To improve the time efficiency of SPS, we further propose a Multi-Point Selective unknown tag identification approach called MPS. In MPS, two techniques of batch identification and batch division are developed to reduce the number of empty slots and avoid tag collisions, respectively. Then the parameters are theoretically analyzed to maximize the identification efficiency. The effectiveness of the proposed approaches is validated via both the simulations and COTS RFID device based experiments.

Objective: Post-stroke cognitive impairment (PSCI) develops in approximately one-third of stroke survivors and is associated with ingravescence. Nonetheless, the biochemical mechanisms underlying PSCI remain unclear. The study aimed to establish an ischemic mouse model by means of transient unilateral middle cerebral artery occlusions (MCAOs) and to explore the biochemical mechanisms of p25/cyclin-dependent kinase 5 (CDK5)-mediated tau hyperphosphorylation on the PSCI behavior. Methods: Cognitive behavior was investigated, followed by the detection of tau hyperphosphorylation, mobilization, activation of kinases and/or inhibition of phosphatases in the lateral and contralateral cerebrum of mice following ischemia in MACO mice. Finally, we treated HEK293/tau cells with oxygen-glucose deprivation (OGD) and a CDK5 inhibitor (Roscovitine) or a GSK3β inhibitor (LiCl) to the roles of CDK5 and GSK3β in mediating ischemia-reperfusion-induced tau phosphorylation. Results: Ischemia induced cognitive impairments within 2 months, as well as causing tau hyperphosphorylation and its localization to neuronal somata in both ipsilateral and contralateral cerebra. Furthermore, p25 that promotes CDK5 hyperactivation had significantly higher expression in the mice with MCAO than in the shamoperation (control) group, while the expression levels of protein phosphatase 2 (PP2A) and the phosphorylation level at Tyr307 were comparable between the two groups. In addition, the CDK5 inhibitor rescued tau from hyperphosphorylation induced by OGD. Conclusion: These findings demonstrate that upregulation of CDK5 mediates tau hyperphosphorylation and localization in both ipsilateral and contralateral cerebra, contributing to the pathogenesis of PSCI.

In this work, we developed a facile and controllable electrophilic aromatic nitration method with commercially available 68% HNO3as the nitrating reagent and trifluoromethanesulfonic acid (HOTf) as the catalyst in hexafluoroisopropanol or under solvent-free conditions. The electrophilic nitration products of different arenes can be obtained in almost quantitative yields by tuning the loading of HOTf. The strong acidity and water absorbing property of HOTf allowed this transformation to reach completion in a short time at room temperature.

This article presents a wideband, low-jitter frequency synthesizer utilizing a dual-mode voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO). Mode imbalance in the dual-mode VCO is analyzed theoretically and compensated through the proposed symmetric figure-8 transformer and capacitor arrays. The compact mode-switching circuitry fundamentally eliminates mode ambiguity in multi-mode autonomous circuits. A computer-aided algorithm based on sequential least-squares programming (SLSQP) and hierarchical optimization method is developed to automatically optimize the capacitor array in the wideband VCO. The implemented dual-mode VCO suppresses the phase noise (PN) difference across the operating frequency range, which further enables a sub-sampling phase-locked loop (SSPLL) to achieve near-minimum jitter across a wide frequency range without loop gain adaptation. Fabricated in a 40-nm CMOS process, the wideband SSPLL covers the frequency range of 7.9–14.3 GHz with 14.1–17.2-mW power consumption and occupies only 0.18-mm2 area. The SSPLL achieves better than −115-dBc/Hz in-band PN at a 10-GHz carrier. The rms jitter is less than 85 fs across the whole frequency range. The corresponding figure-of-merit tuning (FoM $_{T}$ ) is −247.1 to −248.1 dB.

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This paper quantifies and compares the influence of two modes of transport on tourism, namely, high-speed rail (HSR) and air travel, and explores their substitute or complementary relationships. To facilitate the analysis, we apply data from 291 prefectural administrative cities in China from 2003 to 2019. Empirical tests show that both modes have a significant positive influence on the development of tourism. Moreover, the effect of air travel is greater than that of HSR. The findings remain robust and reliable with changes in the explanatory variables and sample size, and with regard to time window adjustment and endogeneity. Further, we explore the differences in the strength of the influences and find the two modes exhibit various effects according to regional heterogeneity. Finally, we investigate the joint effect of the two modes and find the existence of a substitute relationship. However, the relationship changes to complementary in specific areas. The findings of this paper provide important implications for the development of the regional tourism economy and the spatial layout of the transport infrastructure.

A facile halogenation method for highly selective synthesis of 9-X-o-carboranes, 9,12-X2-o-carboranes, 9-X-12-X’-o-carboranes, 9-X-m-carboranes, 9,10-X2-m-carboranes, and 9-X-10-X’-m-carboranes (X, X’ = Cl, Br, I) has been developed on the basis of our previous work. The success of this transformation relies on the usage of trifluoromethanesulfonic acid (HOTf), the easily available strong Brønsted acid. The addition of HOTf greatly increases the electrophilicity of N-haloamides through hydrogen bonding interaction, resulting in the low loading of N-haloamides, short reaction time, and mild reaction conditions. Additionally, the solvent 1,1,1,3,3,3-hexafluoro-2-propanol (HFIP) is also essential to further increase the acidity of HOTf.

This paper presents a wideband 6-12GHz two-stage low noise amplifier (LNA) that utilizes capacitor assisting triple-winding transformer in the inter-stage matching network. The electric coupling introduced by the assisting capacitor expands the design space by allowing independent control of each effective coupling strength of the three coupled inductors. The equivalent negative resistor enhanced by this capacitor improves the quality factor of the inter-stage network at high frequencies, which further improves the overall design trade-off among gain, bandwidth and noise figure. Fabricated in a 130nm SOI CMOS process, the LNA achieves a remarkable 0.8-1.5dB NF, $&lt; $ -14dB S11, $&lt; $ -8dB S22, -11.8dBm IP $_{\mathbf{1dB}}$ and 21.8-23.3dB power gain across the 6-12GHz passband with ±0.75dB ripple while drawing 20mA from a 3.3V supply.

Mechanoluminescent (ML) materials have shown promising prospects for various applications, e.g.in stress sensing, information anti-counterfeiting and bio stress imaging fields. However, the development of trap-controlled ML materials is still limited, because the trap formation mechanism is not always clear. Here, inspired by a defect-induced Mn4+→ Mn2+self-reduction process in suitable host crystal structures, a cation vacancy model is creatively proposed to determine the potential trap-controlled ML mechanism. Combined with the theoretical prediction and experimental results, both the self-reduction process and ML mechanism are clarified in detail, where the contribution of and defects dominates the ML luminescent process. Electrons/holes are mainly captured by the anionic/cationic defects, followed by the combination of electrons and holes to transfer energy to the Mn2+3d states under mechanical stimuli. Based on the multi-mode luminescent features excited by X-ray, 980 nm laser and 254 nm UV lamp, together with the excellent persistent luminescence and ML, a potential application in advanced anti-counterfeiting is demonstrated. These results will deepen the understanding of the defect-controlled ML mechanism, and inspire more defect-engineering strategies to develop more high-performance ML phosphors for practical application.

With the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoTs), an increasing number of computation intensive or delay sensitive biomedical data processing and analysis tasks are produced in vehicles, bringing more and more challenges to the biometric monitoring of drivers. Edge computing is a new paradigm to solve these challenges by offloading tasks from the resource-limited vehicles to Edge Servers (ESs) in Road Side Units (RSUs). However, most of the traditional offloading schedules for vehicular networks concentrate on the edge, while some tasks may be too complex for ESs to process. To this end, we consider a collaborative vehicular network in which the cloud, edge and terminal can cooperate with each other to accomplish the tasks. The vehicles can offload the computation intensive tasks to the cloud to save the resource of edge. We further construct the virtual resource pool which can integrate the resource of multiple ESs since some regions may be covered by multiple RSUs. In this paper, we propose a Multi-Scenario offloading schedule for biomedical data processing and analysis in Cloud-Edge-Terminal collaborative vehicular networks called MSCET. The parameters of the proposed MSCET are optimized to maximize the system utility. We also conduct extensive simulations to evaluate the proposed MSCET and the results illustrate that MSCET outperforms other existing schedules.

AbstractAimsWe aimed to report an overview of trends in suicide mortality and years of life lost (YLLs) among adolescents and young adults aged 10–24 years by sex, age group, Socio-demographic Index (SDI), region and country from 1990 to 2021 as well as the suicide mortality with age, period and birth cohort effects.MethodsEstimates and 95% uncertainty intervals for suicide mortality and YLLs were extracted from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2021. Joinpoint analysis was used to calculate the annual percentage change (APC) and average annual percentage change (AAPC) to describe the mortality and rate of YLLs trends. Age, period and cohort model was utilized to disentangle age, period and birth cohort effects on suicide mortality trends.ResultsGlobally, suicide mortality and the rate of YLLs among adolescents and young adults both declined from 1990 to 2021 (AAPC: −1.6 [−2.1 to −1.2]). In 2021, the global number of suicide death cases was 112.9 thousand [103.9–122.2 thousand] and led to 7.9 million [7.2–8.6 million] YLLs. A significant reduction in suicide mortality was observed in all sexes and age groups. By SDI quintiles, the high SDI region (AAPC: −0.3 [−0.6 to 0.0]) had the slowest decline trend, and low-middle SDI region remained the highest suicide mortality till 2021 (7.8 per 100,000 population [6.9–8.6]). Most SDI regions showed generally lower period and cohort effects during the study period, whereas high SDI region showed more unfavourable risks, especially period and cohort effects in females. Regionally, Central Latin America (AAPC: 1.7 [1.1–2.3]), Tropical Latin America (AAPC: 1.5 [0.9–2.0]), High-income Asia Pacific (AAPC: 1.2 [0.7–1.7]) and Southern sub-Saharan Africa (AAPC: 0.8 [0.4–1.2]) had the significance increase in suicide mortality. In 2021, Southern sub-Saharan Africa had the highest mortality (10.5 per 100,000 population [8.6–12.5]). Nationally, a total of 29 countries had a significant upward trend in suicide mortality and rate of YLLs over the past three decades, and certain countries in low-middle and middle regions exhibited an extremely higher burden of suicide.ConclusionsGlobal suicide mortality and the rate of YLLs among adolescents and young adults both declined from 1990 to 2021, but obvious variability was observed across regions and countries. Earlier mental health education and targeted management are urgently required for adolescents and young adults in certain areas.

Auxin response transcription factors (ARFs) form a large gene family, many of whose members operate at the final step of the auxin signaling pathway. ARFs participate directly in many aspects of plant growth and development. Here we summarize recent advances in understanding the roles of ARFs in regulating aspects of fleshy fruit development and ripening. ARFs play a crucial role in regulating fruit size, color, nutrients, texture, yield, and other properties that ultimately influence the ripening and quality of important crops such as tomato, apple, strawberry, and peach. ARFs impact these processes acting as positive, negative, or bidirectional regulators via phytohormone-dependent or -independent mechanisms. In the phytohormone-dependent pathway, ARFs act as a central hub linking interactions with multiple phytohormones generating diverse effects. The three domains within ARFs, namely the DNA-binding domain, the middle region, and the carboxy-terminal dimerization domain, exhibit distinct yet overlapping functions, contributing to a range of mechanisms mediated by ARFs. These findings not only provide a profound understanding of ARF functions, but also raise new questions. Further exploration can lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the regulatory mechanisms of fleshy fruit development and ripening mediated by ARFs.

Periodontitis is a chronic inflammatory disease caused by the interaction of oral microorganisms with the host immune response. Porphyromonas gingivalis(P.g.) acts as a key mediator in subverting the homeostasis of the local immune system. On the one hand, P.g. inhibits phagocytosis and the killing capacity of immune cells. On the other hand, P.g. increases selective cytokine release, which is beneficial to its further proliferation. Here, we prepared a penetrating macrophage-based nanoformulation (MZ@PNM)-encapsulating hydrogel (MZ@PNM@GCP) that responded to the periodontitis microenvironment. MZ@PNM targeted P.g. via the Toll-like receptor complex 2/1 (TLR2/1) on its macrophage-mimicking membrane, then directly killed P.g. through disruption of bacterial structural integrity by the cationic nanoparticles and intracellular release of an antibacterial drug, metronidazole (MZ). Meanwhile, MZ@PNM interrupted the specific binding of P.g. to immune cells and neutralized complement component 5a (C5a), preventing P.g. subversion of periodontal host immune response. Overall, MZ@PNM@GCP showed potent efficacy in periodontitis treatment, restoring local immune function and killing pathogenic bacteria, while exhibiting favorable biocompatibility, all of which have been demonstrated both in vivoand in vitro.

This study aimed to investigate the prevalence characteristics of human papillomavirus (HPV) infections in 29,508 female cases in Jinshan District, Shanghai.

With the rapid development of electric vehicles, electric vehicle battery health diagnosis has become a hot issue. In order to realize online battery health diagnosis, an online battery health diagnosis platform based on DTW-XGBoost was proposed. The feature extraction method of multi-source data fusion based on clustering was adopted. DTW clustering was used to perform data aggregation and feature extraction for real-time battery data during charging process, and XGBoost algorithm was used to establish SOH prediction model. Build an online battery health diagnosis platform including acquisition and control module, modeling and analysis module and application service module by using cloud platform to improve charging operation and maintenance management level.

With the rapid development of power electronic conversion technology, energy conversion has become more common than ever, and magnetic devices are more widely utilized. In power electronic conversion, magnetic devices are becoming more important and prominent, which puts forward higher requirements for the design and stability of magnetic devices. Many of domestic and foreign studies on magnetic devices pay particular attention to influence of air gap and loose magnetic field on inductance, but there is little analysis on the air gap energy storage of magnetic devices.  This paper focuses on the energy storage relationship in magnetic devices under the condition of constant inductance, and finds energy storage and distribution relationship between Magnetic material and gap. The energy distribution ratio between material and gap of Magnetic Devices is verified on the dual-input power supply transformer of the energy storage converter.

In this work, the first version of “Glycomapping” software is developed for the analysis of the most common low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH), enoxaparin. Using ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, size exclusion chromatography is applied, and a virtual database of glycans in enoxaparin is established for the initial searching. With “Glycomapping”, a complex chromatogram can be fitted, significantly improving resolution and confirming an accurate distribution range for each size of glycan within enoxaparin. In addition, randomly matched MS data can be corrected, with the constraint of the corresponding chromatographic retention time range, to remove most false positive data. The analytical stability of “Glycomapping” software was confirmed. Enoxaparin, prepared by different manufacturers and from different animal sources, was analyzed using “Glycomapping.” Compared to raw data, data processed with “Glycomapping” are more robust and accurate. Another two LMWHs, nadroparin and dalteparin could also be analyzed with this software. This work lays a solid foundation for the automated analysis of heterogeneous mixtures of natural glycans, such as LMWHs and other complex oligosaccharides and polysaccharides.

The quinolone ciprofloxacin is a broad-spectrum bactericidal antibiotic used for human medicine as well as the aquaculture industry. The emergence of ciprofloxacin-resistant Vibrio parahaemolyticusstrains is currently a global public health concern. However, the mechanism of ciprofloxacin resistance in V. parahaemolyticusis not yet fully clarified. We generated mutants with decreased ciprofloxacin susceptibility using in vitroselection and investigated genes associated with ciprofloxacin resistance on a genetic level. Our selection process yielded mutants that possessed altered minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) for ciprofloxacin and other unrelated antibiotics. These included Ser83Ile mutations in GyrA and Val461Glu in ParE as well as mutations in the resistance nodulation cell division (RND) family transporter gene vmeDand the putative TetR family regulator gene vp0040upstream of the vmeCDoperon. Measurements of steady-state mRNA levels revealed that the ciprofloxacin-resistant mutants overexpressed vmeCD. Further, the introduction of the vp0040mutated allele from H512 into the sensitive parental strain increased the MIC for ciprofloxacin 31.25-fold. Taken together, these results indicated that ciprofloxacin resistance in these mutants was due to the quinolone resistance determining region mutation as well as overexpression of vmeCDcaused by a loss of vp0040gene repression. This also accounted for the presence of the multidrug resistance phenotype for these mutant strains since RND efflux system can export structurally unrelated antibiotics.

• With the increase of cooling rate, the volume fraction of ε-martensite increases and the stacking fault probability of γ-austenite rises in Fe-17%Mn alloy. • The formation of ε-martensite phase was remarkable for the increase of damping capacity and rise of microhardness. • The stacking fault probability plays an important role in the damping behavior of Fe-17%Mn alloy, and the damping capacity is enhanced with the increase of stacking fault probability. • The rapid solidification was beneficial for the formation of ε-martensite and the improvement of damping capacity. This effect can be facilitated by the incorporation of heat treatment process. The rapid solidification of Fe-17%Mn alloy was performed to investigate the influence of cooling rate on its damping performance and martensitic transformation mechanism. A proper heat treatment was also carried out to clarify its coupled effects with rapid solidification. The stacking fault probability and martensitic transformation temperature were determined to demonstrate their relationship with the cooling rate and the heat treatment process. With the increase of cooling rate, the volume fraction of ε-martensite increased and the stacking fault probability of ε-martensite was enhanced. The formation of ε-martensite phase was remarkable for the increase of damping capacity and microhardness. It was found that rapid solidification was beneficial for the formation of ε-martensite and the improvement of damping capacity. This effect can be facilitated by the incorporation of the heat treatment process. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we restudy the scale-invariant features of X-ray bursts from the soft gamma repeater (SGR) J1935+2154. To compare with previous studies, we choose 75 bursts from a dedicated 33 days-long observation carried out by Insight-HXMT. We investigate the size difference distributions of net counts, duration, and waiting time. It is found that the cumulative difference distributions of net counts and duration follow the q-Gaussian models with approximately steady q-values, confirming that the scale-invariant features exist in X-ray bursts of SGR J1935+2154. Regarding the varying results of waiting time reported by Sang & Lin and Wei et al, we find that the distributions of waiting time can be well described by the q-Gaussian model. Furthermore, the q-values of waiting time remain relatively stable at the 3σconfidence level, corroborating the scale invariance in the X-ray bursts. Additionally, we note that there is no significant q-value evolution across three Insight-HXMT telescopes. These findings statistically affirm that the X-ray bursts from SGR J1935+2154 can be attributed to an fractal-diffusive self-organized criticality system with a plausible Euclidean spatial dimension S= 3, implying that X-ray bursts from SGR J1935+2154 and associated astrophysical phenomena may share a similar magnetically dominated stochastic process.

The B(9)-H halogenation of o-carborane and m-carborane was achieved with excellent selectivities in hexafluoroisopropanol (HFIP) under simple reaction conditions: single reagent [trichloroisocyanuric acid (TCCA), tribromoisocyanuric acid (TBCA) or N-iodosuccinimide (NIS)], catalyst-free, air-/moisture-tolerant, and convenient work-up. With this method, a variety of 9-halogenated o-carboranes and m-carboranes were obtained in good to excellent yields with broad tolerance of functional groups.

Primary porcine tracheal epithelial cells (PTECs) are an appropriate model for studying the molecular mechanism of various porcine respiratory diseases, including swine-origin mycoplasmas, which are isolated from respiratory tract of pigs and mainly found on the mucosal surface surrounding swine trachea. However, the short proliferation ability of primary PTECs greatly limits their lifespan. In this study, primary PTECs were carefully isolated and cultured, and immortal PTECs were constructed by transfecting primary PTECs with the recombinant constructed plasmid pEGFP-hTERT containing human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT). Immortal PTECs (hTERT-PTECs) maintained both the morphological and functional characteristics of primary PTECs, as indicated by the expression of cytokeratin 18, cell-cycle analysis, proliferation assay, Western blotting, telomerase activity assay, karyotype analysis and quantitative RT-PCR. Compared to primary PTECs, hTERT-PTECs had an extended replicative lifespan, higher telomerase activity, and enhanced proliferative activity. In addition, this cell line resulted in a lack of transformed and grown tumors in nude mice, suggesting that it could be safely applied in further studies. Moreover, hTERT-PTECs were vulnerable to all swine-origin mycoplasmas through quantitative analysis as indicated by 50% color changing unit (CCU50) calculation, and no significant differences of adhesion ability between primary and immortal PTECs were observed. For the representative swine mycoplasma Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae(Mhp), except for DNA copies quantitative real-time PCR assay, indirect immunofluorescence assay and Western blotting analysis also depicted that hTERT-PTECs was able to adhere to different Mhp strains of different virulence. In summary, like primary PTECs, hTERT-PTECs could be widely used as an adhesion cell model for swine-origin mycoplasmas and in infection studies of various porcine respiratory pathogens.

To evaluate shear wave elastography (SWE) technology diagnosis value of endometrial cancer (EC) and atypical endometrial hyperplasia (AEH), and to establish predictive logistic regression models for the diagnosis of EC and AEH. Clinical information collection, transvaginal conventional ultrasonography, and SWE check were performed on 122 patients, who were perimenopausal or postmenopausal vaginal bleeding with ≥4.5 mm thick endometrium. The maximal (Emax) and mean (Emean) of Young's modulus for the endometrium were obtained. Using pathology as the gold standard, ROC curves were plotted to evaluate Young's modulus on the diagnostic effectiveness of EC and AEH. Single‐factor analysis and bivariate logistic regression methods were applied to assess the clinical variables, transuaginal conventional ultrasonography variables, and Young's modulus on the identification of EC and AEH. Out of 122 cases of endometrial lesions, 85 cases were benign lesions, and the remaining 37 cases were EC and AEH. The Emax and Emean for the benign group were 29.80 ± 11.40 and 17.96 ± 8.05 kPa, respectively. The Emax and Emean values for EC and AEH group were 59.49 ± 16.95 and 38.46 ± 17.10 kPa, respectively. Emax and Emean for both groups were statistically significant, with p<.001. In the logistical regression analysis, endometrial thickness, Color score, and Young's modulus were identified as independent risk factors for EC and AEH. SWE technology plays an important role in the diagnosis of EC and AEH, and the diagnostic effectiveness would be higher when combined with conventional ultrasonography. Access the CME test hereand search by article title.

The biological effect of engineered carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as beneficial biomaterials on the intestine, especially on its development, remains unclear. Here, we investigated the profitable effect of CNTs with a different graphene layer and surface modification on the 3D model of intestinal organoids and demonstrated that CNTs (50 μg/mL) promoted the development of intestinal organoids over time (0–5 days). The mechanisms involve the modulation of extracellular matrix (ECM) viscoelasticity and intracellular energy metabolism. In particular, CNTs reduced the hardness of the extracellular matrix through decreasing the elasticity and increasing the viscosity as a result of elevated metalloproteinase and binding to a protein scaffold, which activated the mechanical membrane sensors of cells, Piezo, and downstream P-p38-yes-associated protein (YAP) pathway. Moreover, CNTs altered the metabolic profile of intestinal organoids and induced increased mitochondria activity, respiration, and nutrient absorption. These mechanisms cooperated with each other to promote the proliferation and differentiation of intestinal organoids. In addition, the promoted effect of CNTs is highly dependent on the number of graphene layers, manifested as multiwalled CNTs > single-walled CNTs. Our findings highlight the CNT–intestine interaction and imply the potential of CNTs as biomaterials for intestine-associated tissue engineering.