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We used two approaches, fish hard‐part microchemistry and genetics, to quantify effects of low‐use lock‐and‐dam structures on riverine fish movement. Each approach varied in temporal scope, with microchemistry addressing effects within a lifetime and genetics addressing effects across generations. Water samples and individuals of two species (Paddlefish Polyodon spathulaand Smallmouth Buffalo Ictiobus bubalus) were collected from four river sections that were separated by three low‐use lock‐and‐dam structures on the Alabama River. Quarterly water samples were collected from 15 sites during 2017–2018, and concentrations of Sr, Ba, Mn, Mg, and Ca were quantified using mass spectrometry. Water elemental signatures were spatially variable but temporally consistent. The Sr:Ca ratios in fish hard parts differed significantly among river sections for both species. Additionally, discriminant function analyses classified fish to their river capture section with accuracy between 55% and 74% for Paddlefish (errors nearly always assigned individuals to adjacent river sections) and 37–47% for Smallmouth Buffalo. Population genetic analyses included fish from each river section, as well as from Alabama River tributaries and a neighboring watershed. Genotyping‐by‐sequence techniques identified 1,889 and 3,737 single nucleotide polymorphisms postfiltering in Paddlefish and Smallmouth Buffalo, respectively, which we used to estimate population diversity indices and conduct differentiation analyses. Analysis of molecular variance, discriminant analysis of principal components, Bayesian clustering, and pairwise comparisons of FSTvalues indicated no strong evidence for genetic divergence in either species among river sections. Within‐lifespan results based on hard‐part microchemistry suggested a potential for population isolation. However, longer‐term genetic effects were not apparent, possibly because the life span of these large and relatively long‐lived species means that few generations have passed since dam construction, and there could be sufficient mixing or population connectivity to prevent genetic divergence across river sections, particularly at the most downstream structure. Impact StatementPaddlefish and Smallmouth Buffalo showed evidence of population separation by Alabama River lock‐and‐dams via a within‐generation measure (chemical composition of fish jaw bones and ear stones) but not with a longer‐term metric (genetic isolation). Both species are long lived relative to the age of the dams; effects may be more apparent in shorter‐lived species. Paddlefish and Smallmouth Buffalo showed evidence of population separation by Alabama River lock‐and‐dams via a within‐generation measure (chemical composition of fish jaw bones and ear stones) but not with a longer‐term metric (genetic isolation). Both species are long lived relative to the age of the dams; effects may be more apparent in shorter‐lived species.

Background: Both thyroid-stimulating immunoglobulins immunoassay (TSI IA) and thyrotrophin receptor antibody immunoassay (TRAb IA) are commonly used for the diagnosis of Graves’ disease (GD). The aim of the present study was to compare the clinical diagnostic performance of these two methods. Methods: Sera were obtained from 1103 subjects presenting a variety of clinical conditions from three centers: 100 subjects with untreated GD, 200 with treated GD, 62 with autoimmune thyroid disease(AIT), 216 with other thyroid diseases (OTHER-T), 214 with non-thyroid autoimmune diseases (NTAD), 191 with other diseases (OD), and 120 healthy subjects (HS). Both TSI and TRAb IAs were performed for all 1013 serum samples. Bioassay was performed for 86 samples whose TSI results were inconsistent the TRAb assay results. Results: Comparing untreated GD patients with the control groups (AIT, NTAD, OTHER-T, OD, and HS) resulted in an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.992 for the TSI IA and 0.989 for the TRAb IA with no statistically significant difference observed between these AUC values (P?=?0.2733). The best TSI CDP (clinical decision point) value was 0.42?IU/L. The differences in sensitivity (100% vs. 95%, P?=?0.7991) and specificity (97.1% vs. 97.6%, P?=?0.9426) between the TSI and TRAb IA were not statistically significant. TSI IA had a higher agreement with the TSI bioassay than TRAb IA. Conclusion: The clinical diagnostic performance of the TSI IA for diagnosing Graves’ disease was very similar to that of the TRAb IA. TSI IA can be used to diagnose GD in the Chinese.

In the current multimodal retrieval field, CoOp is the preferred approach among many models due to its simplicity and powerful adaptive capability. However, CoOp focuses primarily on optimizing prompts to perform contrast learning, without considering image-text interactions and the impact on the model when visual information is incorporated into the prompts. In this work, we propose a prompt tuning method for simulating image-text interaction based on CoOp: Decoding context optimization (DeCoOp). Through extensive experiments on 11 image classification datasets, seven datasets under the few-shot setting and all 11 datasets under the zero-shot setting are ahead of CoOp in our method. Experiments on four target datasets of ImageNet show a model performance improvement of more than 10%, demonstrating that our approach substantially outperforms the baseline model CoOp in terms of point domain generalization and robustness. In addition, ablation experiments performed on three representative datasets confirmed the effectiveness and further improvement of the accuracy of DeCoOp. Finally, experiments are performed on 11 datasets using different visual backbones, and it is not difficult to find that the gap between our approach and handcrafted prompts is large in all architectures and shows better performance than CoOp.

Biodegraded oils have been widely discovered throughout the world, whereas the alteration of the molecular composition of oils at extreme levels (>PM8) has been insufficiently documented. A suite of crude oils from Carboniferous volcanic reservoirs in the eastern Chepaizi Uplift, Junggar Basin, experienced severe to extreme biodegradation (from PM6+ to PM9+), which provided an ideal case for the present study. This investigation showed that the variations in molecular composition were not strictly consistent with their stepwise fashion in established schemes. The idea that 25-norhopanes are derived from hopanes was confirmed by the sharp decreases in the C29hopane/gammacerane (C29H/G) and C30hopane/gammacerane (C30H/G) values at the level of extreme biodegradation, which were associated with the increases in their counterparts of C2825-norhopane/gammacerane (C2825-NH/G) and C2925-norhopane/gammacerane (C2925-NH/G). 25-Norhopanes were also biodegraded at an extreme level, with C2925-NH being more susceptible than C2825-NH. The preferential biodegradation of individual homohopanes by carbon number occurred at an extreme level, whereas C29H featured more bioresistance than C30H and shared a similar susceptibility to biodegradation as 18α-30-norneohopane (C29Ts). The formation of 22Risomers for 25-norhopanes seemed to be favored over that of 22Sisomers, although the 22Sisomer was degraded faster that the 22Repimer for the C31, C32, and C33homohopanes. However, the constant values of 22S/(22S+ 22R) for the C34homohopane implied no preferential biodegradation of 22Sor 22Risomers for this extended hopane. Lower molecular weight tricyclic terpanes (TTs) were preferentially removed at extreme biodegradation levels, and the late eluting stereoisomers were degraded faster than the early eluting stereoisomers for C26TT, C28TT, and C29TT. C24tetracyclic terpane (C24Tet) is much more resistant to biodegradation than TTs. Pregnanes have a similar susceptibility to biodegradation as gammacerane, but they are more resistant than C23TT. The biodegradation of regular steranes was characterized by their faster depletion than diasteranes and the preferential depletion of C27regular sterane to the C29homologue and the 20Risomers to the 20Sisomers. At the extreme level, even C20and C21triaromatic steroids (TAS) were distinctively reduced, coexisting with the relatively highly degraded steranes and terpanes, although water washing can also be responsible for the decreases in (C20+ C21)-TAS/C26–28-TAS values.

A green and simple chemistry approach was demonstrated to prepare reduced graphene oxide (rGO) using sodium humate (SH) as the reducing agent. Without using toxic and harmful chemicals, this method is environmentally friendly and suitable for the large-scale production of graphene. At first, the improved Hummers method to oxidize graphite for the synthesis of graphene oxide (GO) was applied, and then the as-prepared GO was reduced by SH to form rGO. Characterization was performed using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), X-ray photoelectron spectrometry (XPS) and Raman spectra. The intensity ratio of the D and G band (ID/IG) of GO after reduction with SH increases from 0.96 (GO) to 1.11 (rGO), the results obtained from the Raman spectra proved high purity of the final products.

Background: We examined the dose‐related influence of alcohol consumption on cerebral ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury and the potential mechanism that accounts for the disparate effects of high‐dose and low‐dose alcohol consumption on cerebral I/R injury.

Background: Chronic alcohol consumption increases ischemic stroke and exacerbates ischemic brain injury. We determined the role of NAD(P)H oxidase in exacerbated ischemic brain injury during chronic alcohol consumption.

Apparent molal volumes of a number of n-perfluoroalkanes (PA) and perfluoroalkylalkanes (PFAA) in n-octane have been measured at 298.15 K as a function of composition. The corresponding partial molal volumes at infinite dilution have been obtained by extrapolating the apparent molal volumes to zero composition. The results were interpreted using the hetero-SAFT-VR equation of state. The perfluoroalkylalkanes were modeled as heterosegmented diblock chains, and the cross interactions, both intra- and intermolecular, were characterized using parameters developed in earlier studies of alkane perfluoroalkane mixtures. Through this strategy, a fully predictive approach has been developed that is able to accurately predict the volumetric behavior of the solutions of perfluoroalkylalkanes studied, without fitting to any experimental data for perfluoroalkylalkanes.

Cognitive deficits could be alleviated by transplantation of neural stem cells in animals. Grafted cells may differentiate into neurons, thereby improving animal cognition. Alternatively, grafted cells may provide neurotrophic factors to modify neuronal functions and to alleviate cognitive deficits. To test which mechanism is underlying this recovery process, senescence-accelerated mice were transplanted with human neural stem cells into the hippocampus. The effect of cell transplantation was assessed in the Morris water maze. The survival and differentiation of grafted cells and the expression of NMDA receptors were examined. The data suggested that in addition to the neural differentiation of grafted neural stem cells, up-regulation of NMDA receptors after transplantation also contributed to the alleviation of cognitive deficits in this animal model.

Abstract: In unconventional natural gas development, the true triaxial stress field and anisotropic structure plane play an important role in the deformation and permeability evolution of reservoir rocks. In this research, the true triaxial experiments of sandstone, shale and coal with their own unique structural characteristics under the identical mean principal stress (p) and generalized shear stress (q) are performed. The results show that the volumetric strain of sandstone is not affected by the stress path within the elastic range. However, that of shale is closely related to the deformation of shale bedding. The stress path of shale has a significant impact on its deformation behavior and permeability evolution. Interestingly, the sandstone permeability is strongly dependent on the shear behavior under fixed pand q, i.e., it increases with the increasing generalized shear strain. The frictional sliding between sandstone particles induced by shear effect plays an important role in promoting the permeability. For shales, the stress normal to bedding planes plays an important role in permeability evolution, which is stronger than the frictional sliding effect between shale particles. The permeability of coal evolves between sandstones and shales, which is related to its unique cleat system. To avoid neglecting the important factors affecting permeability evolution in unconventional natural gas extraction, the permeability model should be selected according to the structural characteristics of reservoir rocks. Article highlights:

Frictional sliding between particles determines the sandstone permeability.

Stress normal to bedding planes plays an important role in shale permeability.

The permeability of coal is related to its unique cleat system.

The mucosal barriers of catfish (Ictalurus spp) constitute the first line of defense against pathogen invasion while simultaneously carrying out a diverse array of other critical physiological processes, including nutrient adsorption, osmoregulation, waste excretion, and environmental sensing. Catfish depend more heavily on mucosal barriers than their terrestrial counterparts as they are continuously interacting with the aquatic microbiota. Our understanding of these barriers, while growing, is still limited relative to that of mammalian model systems. Nevertheless, a combination of molecular and cellular studies in catfish over the last few decades, and particularly within the last few years, has helped to elucidate many of the primary actors and pathways critical to their mucosal health. Here we describe aspects of innate and adaptive immune responses in the primary mucosal tissues (skin, gill, and intestine) of catfish, focusing on mucus-driven responses, pathogen recognition, soluble mediators, and immunoglobulin and T-cell derived immunity. Modulation of mucosal barriers will be critical moving forward for crafting better diets, improving vaccine delivery, enhancing water quality, and ensuring sustainable production practices in catfish.