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Hai Fan,1 Yuesong Wang,1 Xuezhong Wang,1 Xuebin Dong,1 Xuwu Shao,1 Fei Yang2 1Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, People’s Hospital of Maanshan, Maanshan, Anhui, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Laboratory, People’s Hospital of Maanshan, Maanshan, Anhui, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Hai Fan, Tel +86-18255552083, Email 491640302@qq.comPurpose: This study aimed to investigate the effect of emergency percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) combined with sacubitril-valsartan (Entresto) on the cardiac prognosis in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI).Patients and Methods: A total of 78 AMI patients who were treated in our hospital between January 2020 and September 2021 were included and randomly divided into treatment group and control group (n=39 per group). In the control group, patients were treated with primary PCI combined with irbesartan; in the treatment group, patients were treated with primary PCI combined with Entresto; pharmacotherapy lasted for 3 months. The left ventricular remodeling indexes, serum N-terminal B-type natriuretic peptide precursor (NT-proBNP), serum homocysteine (HCY), cystatin C (CysC) and results of 6-minute walk test (6MWT) before and after treatment were compared between two groups. The incidence of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) was determined and compared between them.Results: (1) Before treatment, there were no marked differences in the left ventricular end-systolic diameter (LVESD), left ventricular end-diastolic diameter (LVEDD), interventricular septum thickness (IVST), NT-proBNP, left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), HCY, CysC, and results of 6MWT between two groups (P> 0.05). After treatment, the LVEDS, LVEDD, NT-proBNP, HCY and CysC in the control group were significantly higher than in the treatment group (P< 0.05). The recovery of LVEF and 6MWT in the treatment group was significantly better than in the control group (P< 0.05). After treatment, there was no significant difference in the IVST between two groups (P> 0.05). (2) The incidence of MACE in the control group was significantly higher than in the treatment group (P< 0.05).Conclusion: Compared with irbesartan, Entresto can further improve the cardiac function, prevent ventricular remodeling, and further optimize the clinical efficacy of PCI in AMI patients.Keywords: percutaneous coronary intervention, sacubitril-valsartan, acute myocardial infarction, ventricular remodeling

Complete endoscopic radical resection of thyroid cancer, especially through the areolar approach, can achieve curative and acceptable cosmetic effects in patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma. However, some inherent characteristics of endoscopic procedures hamper functional protection of the recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN). Intraoperative neuromonitoring (IONM) is considered the most important accessory to protect the nerves during conventional radical thyroidectomy. This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility and necessity of IONM during complete endoscopic radical resection of thyroid cancer.A total of 106 patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma were enrolled in the study between February 2013 and April 2018. Based on the use of the IONM technique, all patients were divided into the IONM (Compared to the non-IONM group, the IONM group required less time for RLN identification (3.05 ± 1.58 vs. 9.36 ± 4.82 min,IONM significantly improved RLN identification and reduced transient RLN injuries during complete endoscopic radical resection.3b.

An independent set (IS) is a set of vertices in a graph such that no edge connects any two vertices. In adiabatic quantum computation [E. Farhi, et al ., Science 292, 472–475 (2001); A. Das, B. K. Chakrabarti, Rev. Mod. Phys. 80, 1061–1081 (2008)], a given graph G ( V , E ) can be naturally mapped onto a many-body Hamiltonian H IS G ( V , E ) , with edges E being the two-body interactions between adjacent vertices V . Thus, solving the IS problem is equivalent to finding all the computational basis ground states of H IS G ( V , E ) . Very recently, non-Abelian adiabatic mixing (NAAM) has been proposed to address this task, exploiting an emergent non-Abelian gauge symmetry of H IS G ( V , E ) [B. Wu, H. Yu, F. Wilczek, Phys. Rev. A 101, 012318 (2020)]. Here, we solve a representative IS problem G ( 8 , 7 ) by simulating the NAAM digitally using a linear optical quantum network, consisting of three C-Phase gates, four deterministic two-qubit gate arrays (DGA), and ten single rotation gates. The maximum IS has been successfully identified with sufficient Trotterization steps and a carefully chosen evolution path. Remarkably, we find IS with a total probability of 0.875(16), among which the nontrivial ones have a considerable weight of about 31.4%. Our experiment demonstrates the potential advantage of NAAM for solving IS-equivalent problems.

The heart is a vital organ in the human body. Research and treatment for the heart have made remarkable progress, and the functional mechanisms of the heart have been simulated and rendered through the construction of relevant models. The current methods for rendering cardiac functional mechanisms only consider one type of modality, which means they cannot show how different types of modality, such as physical and physiological, work together. To realistically represent the three-dimensional synergetic biological modality of the heart, this paper proposes a WebGL-based cardiac synergetic modality rendering framework to visualize the cardiac physical volume data and present synergetic correspondence rendering of the cardiac electrophysiological modality. By constructing the biological detailed interactive histogram, users can implement local details rendering for the heart, which could reveal the cardiac biology details more clearly. We also present cardiac physical-physiological correlation visualization to explore cardiac biological association characteristics. Experimental results show that the proposed framework can provide favorable cardiac biological detailed synergetic modality rendering results in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency. Compared with existing methods, the framework can facilitate the study of the internal mechanism of the heart and subsequently deduce the process of initiation, development, and transformation from a healthy heart to an ill one, and thereby improve the diagnosis and treatment of cardiac disorders.

The formation control problem for a group of first-order agents with model uncertainty and actuator saturation is investigated in this manuscript. An algorithm-and-observer-based formation controller is developed to ensure the semi-global boundedness of the formation tracking error with actuator saturation. First, a fully local-error-related cooperative weight tuning procedure is proposed for the adaptive uncertainty estimation of each agent. The effect of actuator saturation on both the cooperative adaptive estimation and the controller design part is then analysed and discussed. A three-layer neural-based observer is further constructed to achieve finite-time uncertainty approximation with actuator saturation. Besides, the reverse effect led by coupled and saturated control inputs is defined and a new control input distribution algorithm is presented to attenuate the potential oscillation in system states. Finally, comparative simulations based on a multiple omnidirectional robot system are conducted to illustrate the performance of the proposed formation controllers and the new algorithm.

N-4 cytidine acetylation (ac4C) is an epitranscriptome modification catalyzed by N-acetyltransferase 10 (NAT10) and is essential for cellular mRNA stability, rRNA biosynthesis, cell proliferation, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Numerous studies have confirmed the inextricable link between NAT10 and the clinical characteristics of malignancies. It is unclear, however, how NAT10 might affect pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. We downloaded pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma patients from the TCGA database. We obtained the corresponding clinical data for data analysis, model construction, differential gene expression analysis, and the GEO database for external validation. We screened the published papers for NAT10-mediated ac4C modifications in 2156 genes. We confirmed that the expression levels and genomic mutation rates of NAT10 differed significantly between cancer and normal tissues. Additionally, we constructed a NAT10 prognostic model and examined immune infiltration and altered biological pathways across the models. The NAT10 isoforms identified in this study can effectively predict clinical outcomes in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Furthermore, our study showed that elevated levels of NAT10 expression correlated with gemcitabine resistance, that aberrant NAT10 expression may promote the angiogenic capacity of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma through activation of the TGF-β pathway, which in turn promotes distal metastasis of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, and that NAT10 knockdown significantly inhibited the migration and clonogenic capacity of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma cells. In conclusion, we proposed a predictive model based on NAT10 expression levels, a non-invasive predictive approach for genomic profiling, which showed satisfactory and effective performance in predicting patients’ survival outcomes and treatment response. Medicine and electronics will be combined in more interdisciplinary areas in the future.

Intramedullary fixation is currently used to stabilize intertrochanteric fractures. Surgical reduction of the medial arch cortex is crucial to achieve stabilization of the internal fixation system, however, it is challenging to perform. To ensure anatomical reduction, we developed a novel surgical technique to assist in achieving accurate and convenient reduction. In this technique, right-angle forceps were used to pry and reset medial arch cortex fragments via a mini-helical blade incision. Noteworthily, all patients who underwent this technique achieved anatomical reduction with reduced operation times and bleeding. Our article illustrates intraoperative reduction techniques and summarizes tips and tricks that may be beneficial and educative for orthopedists.

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-3-jcb-10.1177_0271678X231165653 for H3K9 trimethylation dictates neuronal ferroptosis through repressing Tfr1 by Ting Lan, Liye Hu, Tingting Sun, Xuechun Wang, Zhongnan Xiao, Danmin Shen, Weihua Wu, Zhaoli Luo, Chao Wei, Xiaotong Wang, Meng Liu, Yi Guo, Liyong Wang, Yamei Wang, Yabin Lu, Yan Yu, Fei Yang, Chenguang Zhang and Qian Li in Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-3-jcb-10.1177_0271678X231165653 for H3K9 trimethylation dictates neuronal ferroptosis through repressing Tfr1 by Ting Lan, Liye Hu, Tingting Sun, Xuechun Wang, Zhongnan Xiao, Danmin Shen, Weihua Wu, Zhaoli Luo, Chao Wei, Xiaotong Wang, Meng Liu, Yi Guo, Liyong Wang, Yamei Wang, Yabin Lu, Yan Yu, Fei Yang, Chenguang Zhang and Qian Li in Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-4-jcb-10.1177_0271678X231165653 for H3K9 trimethylation dictates neuronal ferroptosis through repressing Tfr1 by Ting Lan, Liye Hu, Tingting Sun, Xuechun Wang, Zhongnan Xiao, Danmin Shen, Weihua Wu, Zhaoli Luo, Chao Wei, Xiaotong Wang, Meng Liu, Yi Guo, Liyong Wang, Yamei Wang, Yabin Lu, Yan Yu, Fei Yang, Chenguang Zhang and Qian Li in Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism

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Supplemental material, sj-pdf-4-jcb-10.1177_0271678X231165653 for H3K9 trimethylation dictates neuronal ferroptosis through repressing Tfr1 by Ting Lan, Liye Hu, Tingting Sun, Xuechun Wang, Zhongnan Xiao, Danmin Shen, Weihua Wu, Zhaoli Luo, Chao Wei, Xiaotong Wang, Meng Liu, Yi Guo, Liyong Wang, Yamei Wang, Yabin Lu, Yan Yu, Fei Yang, Chenguang Zhang and Qian Li in Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism

OBJECTIVE: : To explore the association between napping status and depressive symptoms in urban residents during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic. METHODS: : The survey was embedded in the Wellness Living Laboratory-China (WELL China) cohort study. Health and lifestyle information during the COVID-19 epidemic were obtained via the telephone interview from April 8, 2020 to May 29, 2020. A total of 3075 residents aged 18 to 80 years from Gongshu district of Hangzhou city with complete data were included in the analyses. The World Health Organization-Five Well-being Index (WHO-5) was used to measure depressive symptoms. Multiple logistic regression model was used to assess the association between napping status and depressive symptoms in the participants. RESULTS: : The prevalence of depressive symptoms was 20.6% in the participants during the COVID-19 epidemic. Daytime napping behavior, especially napping time ≤30 min, was associated with a lower risk of prevalent depressive symptoms ( OR=0.61, 95% CI: 0.47–0.79, P

BackgroundGenetic factors have been found to be associated with the efficacy and adverse reactions of antiseizure medications. BCL11A is an important regulator of the development of neuronal networks. However, the role of BCL11A in epilepsy remains unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the genetic association of BCL11A with the susceptibility to develop epileptic seizures and therapeutic response of patients with epilepsy in Han Chinese.MethodsWe matched 450 epilepsy cases with 550 healthy controls and 131 drug-resistant epilepsy patients with 319 drug-responsive epilepsy patients from two different centers. Genetic association analysis, genetic interaction analysis, expression quantitative trait loci analysis and protein–protein interaction analysis were conducted.ResultsOur results showed that rs2556375 not only increases susceptibility to develop epileptic seizures (OR = 2.700, 95% = 1.366–5.338, p = 0.004 and OR = 2.984, 95% = 1.401–6.356, p = 0.005, respectively), but also increases the risk of drug resistance(OR = 21.336, 95%CI =2.489–183.402, p = 0.005). The interaction between rs2556375 and rs12477097 results in increased risk for pharma coresistant. In addition, rs2556375 regulated BCL11A expression in human brain tissues (p = 0.0096 and p = 0.033, respectively). Furthermore, the protein encoded by BCL11A interacted with targets of approved antiepileptic drugs.ConclusionBCL11A may be a potential therapeutic target for epilepsy. Rs2556375 may increase the risks of epilepsy and drug resistance by regulating BCL11A expression in human brain tissues. Moreover, the interaction between rs2556375 and rs12477097 results in increased risk for drug resistance.

Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) has a high metastatic rate, and its incidence and mortality are still rising. The aim of this study was to identify the key tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TIICs) affecting the distant metastasis and prognosis of patients with ccRCC and to construct a relevant prognostic panel to predict immunotherapy response. Based on ccRCC bulk RNA sequencing data, resting mast cells (RMCs) were screened and verified using the CIBERSORT algorithm, survival analysis, and expression analysis. Distant metastasis-associated genes were identified using single-cell RNA sequencing data. Subsequently, a three-gene (CFB, PPP1R18, and TOM1L1) panel with superior distant metastatic and prognostic performance was established and validated, which stratified patients into high- and low-risk groups. The high-risk group exhibited lower infiltration of RMCs, higher tumor mutation burden (TMB), and worse prognosis. Therapeutically, the high-risk group was more sensitive to anti-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4 immunotherapy, whereas the low-risk group displayed a better response to anti-PD-L1 immunotherapy. Furthermore, two immune clusters revealing distinct immune, clinical, and prognosis heterogeneity were distinguished. Immunohistochemistry of ccRCC samples verified the expression patterns of the three key genes. Collectively, the prognostic panel based on RMCs is able to predict distant metastasis and immunotherapy response in patients with ccRCC, providing new insight for the treatment of advanced ccRCC.

Polylactic acid (PLA)/poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) blends have exhibited good shape memory properties and degradable characteristics in various 4D printing fields such as biomedicine, flexible electronics, and soft robotics, where the service temperature fluctuates easily by environment temperature and polymer characteristics. In this work, printed PLA/PCL 4D samples with different infill densities were prepared by material extrusion printing of pre-extruded filaments and characterized under different temperatures. The results show that the microstructures of printed samples are not influenced by printing process and have similar unique orientation as that of filaments. The thermal properties are stable and show obvious phase transition temperatures, while the mechanical properties decrease slightly in low temperature region and then decrease rapidly when temperature is over 60 °C. The increase in infill density can further improve the storage modulus more than 40% and have no significant influence on the thermal properties. The printed samples also exhibit good shape memory performances with fast recovery speeds less than 22 s. Furthermore, a two-step model is provided to predict the effective modulus of printed PLA/PCL samples and agrees well with experimental data. The results prove that temperature and infill density have different influences on the thermal, mechanical and shape memory properties of PLA/PCL blends.

Background: Carbon monoxide (CO) is gaining increased attention in air pollution-induced arrhythmias. The severe cardiotoxic consequences of CO urgently require effective pharmacotherapy to treat it. However, existing evidence demonstrates that CO can induce arrhythmias by directly affecting multiple ion channels, which is a pathway distinct from heart ischemia and has received less concern in clinical treatment.Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of some common clinical antiarrhythmic drugs for CO-induced arrhythmias, and to propose a potential pharmacotherapy for CO-induced arrhythmias through the virtual pathological cell and tissue models.Methods: Two pathological models describing CO effects on healthy and failing hearts were constructed as control baseline models. After this, we first assessed the efficacy of some common antiarrhythmic drugs like ranolazine, amiodarone, nifedipine, etc., by incorporating their ion channel-level effects into the cell model. Cellular biomarkers like action potential duration and tissue-level biomarkers such as the QT interval from pseudo-ECGs were obtained to assess the drug efficacy. In addition, we also evaluated multiple specific IKr activators in a similar way to multi-channel blocking drugs, as the IKr activator showed great potency in dealing with CO-induced pathological changes.Results: Simulation results showed that the tested seven antiarrhythmic drugs failed to rescue the heart from CO-induced arrhythmias in terms of the action potential and the ECG manifestation. Some of them even worsened the condition of arrhythmogenesis. In contrast, IKr activators like HW-0168 effectively alleviated the proarrhythmic effects of CO.Conclusion: Current antiarrhythmic drugs including the ranolazine suggested in previous studies did not achieve therapeutic effects for the cardiotoxicity of CO, and we showed that the specific IKr activator is a promising pharmacotherapy for the treatment of CO-induced arrhythmias.

Interest in probiotic use has surged in past decades and the current evidence-base suggests clinical benefits of many probiotic strains. Given the industry’s expansion, it is likely that patients will continue to seek guidance from healthcare providers about probiotics. Therefore, healthcare providers should be knowledgeable about how and when to recommend probiotics. The purpose of this systematic review was to understand how knowledge and attitudes impact physicians, nurses, and pharmacists (PNPs) in their probiotic recommendation behaviour. MEDLINE, EMBASE, Web of Science, CINAHL and PsycINFO were systematically searched from inception until December 17, 2021. Title/abstract and full-text screening, along with quality assessment using the JBI's Critical Appraisal Checklist for Analytical Cross-Sectional Studies, were conducted independently and in duplicate. Seventeen studies were included; all were cross-sectional surveys. PNPs generally had good knowledge and/or could provide the definition of probiotics. Pharmacists possessed the most knowledge. Physicians and pharmacists conveyed positive attitudes about the safety, efficacy, and clinical role of probiotics, while nurses’ attitudes were not reported. The majority of PNPs stated that they lacked experience and/or would not recommend probiotics to their patients, however, probiotics were regularly recommended for less severe conditions, like bloating and diarrhea. Common barriers preventing recommendation included a lack of supporting information and a perceived lack of efficacy. Our findings demonstrate that PNPs made limited probiotics recommendations. Limited evidence was identified on how knowledge of probiotics was acquired or applied. Future research should investigate the inclusion of probiotics in PNP curricula and scope of practice.

Chuankezhi injection (CKZ) is a traditional Chinese medicine for the treatment of respiratory diseases and has been often used off-label as a nebulization therapy. However, little is known about the aerosolization performance and pulmonary fate of the inhaled CKZ. This study aimed to evaluate the aerodynamic characteristics of nebulizer generated aerosols and to compare the properties of pharmacokinetics, lung distribution and anti-inflammation effects of CKZ after intratracheal and intravenous administration.The nebulization performance was evaluated in vitro based on the aerodynamic particle size distribution and aerosol output. The concentrations of epimedins A, B, C and icariin, the main active ingredients of CKZ, in plasma, bronchoalveolar lavage fluids (BALF) and lung tissues were measured by LC-MS/MS analysis. The pulmonary anti-inflammatory efficacy were tested using LPS-induced pulmonary inflammation mice model as indicated by the total cells counts, and the levels of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) in BALF.The aerosols of CKZ generated by a commercial nebulizer showed excellent aerodynamic properties and delivery output. Following intratracheal instillation of CKZ, epidemins A, B and C, and icariin, were absorbed into the bloodstream with the mean absorption time varying from 101.8 min to 271.8 min, and their absolute bioavailabilities ranging from 26.4 % to 104 %. The instillation of CKZ increased the lung to plasma concentration ratios by 25.5-718 folds compared to intravenous administration, leading to improved and prolonged local anti-inflammatory effects.Nebulization therapy of CKZ could be a promising alternative to the injectable counterpart.

Surgery is currently a mainstream treatment modality for various solid tumor indications. However, aggressive resection of tumor tissues frequently causes postoperative complications, which severely undermine the well-being of patients. Moreover, the residue tumor cells may substantially increase the risk of local and distant tumor relapse. The recent development in black phosphorus (BP)-based nanomaterials offers a promising opportunity to address these clinical challenges. BP is an emerging nanomaterial with excellent biocompatibility and versatile functionality, which has already demonstrated great potential for a variety of biomedical applications including tumor therapy and tissue engineering. In this review, the recent advances in BP-based nanobiomaterials for the post-surgery treatment of solid tumor have been summarized, while specific emphasis was placed on their capability to continuously inhibit residue tumor growth at the surgery site as well as stimulating various healing mechanisms, aiming to preventing tumor relapse while promoting the healing of surgery-induced traumatic soft/hard tissue injuries. It is anticipated that the nanoengineered BP-based materials may open new avenues to tackle those clinical challenges in surgical treatment of solid tumors.

Thermal remediation has been widely used for the removal of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) from contaminated soil. The method has a high removal rate for semi-volatile organic pollutants; however, soil functionality is affected by the method because of the alteration of the soil properties. In this study, experimental soil was impregnated with phenanthrene (Phe), pyrene (Pyr), and benzo(a)pyrene (BaP); after natural air-dry aging, the thermal remediation experiment was carried out, using a tube-furnace and thermal gravimetry–Fourier transform infrared (TG-FTIR) equipment. More than 84% of the Phe and Pyr were lost in the aging stage, whereas the BaP was stable with 41% retention in the soil. After the thermal treatment, the desorption and decomposition of the pollutants and organic matter led to the removal of the PAHs; about 1% of the PAHs remained in the soil treated at 400 °C. The presence of the PAHs can promote the thermal reaction by slightly reducing the reaction activation energy by ~7−16%. The thermal remediation had a significant influence on the physical properties of the soil and destroyed the bioavailability by reducing the organic matter content. Therefore, a comprehensive consideration of effective PAH removal while preserving soil functionality may require a low temperature (100 °C) method for thermal remediation.

This paper aims to study the content innovation of cultivating the awareness of Chinese national community in the western region. Firstly, it elaborates on the definition and connotation of Chinese national community awareness, and then analyzes the current situation and existing problems of Chinese national community awareness education in the western region. On this basis, the necessity of innovating the content of education on strengthening the awareness of the Chinese national community in the western region was explored, and corresponding strategies were proposed. These strategies will help promote the development of community awareness education for the Chinese nation in the western region, enhance the cohesion and unity consciousness of the Chinese nation, and promote the economic and social development of the western region.

In this paper, the problem of formation control is studied for second-order multi-agent systems with practical issues like mismatched uncertainties and obstacle avoidance. A reference correction algorithm based sliding mode control scheme is proposed to ensure the boundedness of each agent’s position tracking error. Both disturbance observer and artificial potential field are implemented to first tackle the problem of obstacle avoidance with the existence of mismatched uncertainties. The unreachable reference scenarios are then defined to describe the passive correcting behaviours of the multi-agent system when agents are trying to avoid obstacles. A distributed reference correction algorithm is developed for each agent to attenuate the harmful effects of passive correcting behaviours. The effectiveness of obstacle avoidance and boundedness of position tracking error are both verified by Lyapunov stability theory. Finally, multi-robot system based numerical simulations and comparisons are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and controller.

The track geometry is essential for the safety, stability and comfort of passing trains. Track irregularities, which have been extensively studied with specified single irregularity type, frequently exist in complex form, leading to potential derailment accidents especially in curved lines. This study investigates the dynamic vehicle-track interaction considering a series of complex irregularities. Furthermore, the safety indices indicating the possibility of derailment, e.g., derailment coefficient, wheel unloading rate and wheelset lateral force, are obtained for both C70 freight train track and 25 tons passenger train. The results indicate that the most dangerous situation is continuous multi-wave reverse complex irregularity of cross level and alignment on the high rail at the point of curve to spiral. We also found that the most unfavorable wavelength of complex irregularity is 10 m, and derailment risk of light freight train passing is obviously greater than that of passenger trains and heavy freight trains. Certain results can give further guideline for the condition monitoring and maintenance of the rail management.

An in-depth understanding of the ecological and health risks posed by heavy metals originating from various pollution sources is critical for foresighted soil-quality management. Based on 220 grid samples (2 × 2 km) analyzed for eight heavy metals (Cd, Hg, As, Pb, Cr, Ni, Cu, and Zn) in the Chenshui (CS) watershed of Hunan Province, China, we applied an integrated approach for identifying and apportioning pollution sources of soil heavy metals and exploring their source-specific pollution risks. This approach consists of three sequential steps: (1) source identification by combining the positive matrix factorization model with geostatistical analysis; (2) quantification of ecological, carcinogenic, and non-carcinogenic risks in a source-specific manner; (3) prioritization of sources in a holistic manner, considering both ecological risks and human health risks. Cd (68.0%) and Hg (13.3%) dominated the ecological risk in terms of ecological risk index; As dominated the non-carcinogenic health risk in terms of total hazard index (THI; adults: 84.8%, children: 84.7%) and the carcinogenic health risk in terms of total carcinogenic risk index (TCRI; adults: 69.0%, children: 68.8%). Among three exposure routes, oral ingestion (89.4-95.2%) was the predominant route for both adults and children. Compared with adults (THI = 0.41, TCRI = 7.01E-05), children (THI = 2.81, TCRI = 1.22E-04) had greater non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic risks. Four sources (F1-4) were identified for the CS watershed: atmospheric deposition related to coal-burning and traffic emissions (F1, 18.0%), natural sources from parent materials (F2, 34.3%), non-ferrous mining and smelting industry (F3, 37.9%), and historical arsenic-related activity (F4, 9.8%). The F3 source contributed the largest (45.2%) to the ecological risks, and the F4 source was the predominant contributor to non-carcinogenic (52.4%) and carcinogenic (64.6%) risks. The results highlight the importance of considering legacy As pollution from abandoned industries when developing risk reduction strategies in this region. The proposed methodology for source and risk identification and apportionment formulates the multidimensional concerns of pollution and the various associated risks into a tangible decision-making process to support soil pollution control.

During the past decade, various novel tissue engineering (TE) strategies have been developed to maintain, repair, and restore the biomechanical functions of the musculoskeletal system. Silk fibroins are natural polymers with numerous advantageous properties such as good biocompatibility, high mechanical strength, and low degradation rate and are increasingly being recognized as a scaffolding material of choice in musculoskeletal TE applications. This current systematic review examines and summarizes the latest research on silk scaffolds in musculoskeletal TE applications within the past decade. Scientific databases searched include PubMed, Web of Science, Medline, Cochrane library, and Embase. The following keywords and search terms were used: musculoskeletal, tendon, ligament, intervertebral disc, muscle, cartilage, bone, silk, and tissue engineering. Our Review was limited to articles on musculoskeletal TE, which were published in English from 2010 to September 2019. The eligibility of the articles was assessed by two reviewers according to prespecified inclusion and exclusion criteria, after which an independent reviewer performed data extraction and a second independent reviewer validated the data obtained. A total of 1120 articles were reviewed from the databases. According to inclusion and exclusion criteria, 480 articles were considered as relevant for the purpose of this systematic review. Tissue engineering is an effective modality for repairing or replacing injured or damaged tissues and organs with artificial materials. This Review is intended to reveal the research status of silk-based scaffolds in the musculoskeletal system within the recent decade. In addition, a comprehensive translational research route for silk biomaterial from bench to bedside is described in this Review.

This article investigates the collision-free cooperative formation control problem for second-order multiagent systems with unknown velocity, dynamics uncertainties, and limited reference information. An observer-based sliding mode control law is proposed to ensure both the convergence of the system's tracking error and the boundedness of the relative distance between each pair of agents. First, two new finite-time neural-based observer designs are introduced to estimate both the agent velocity and the system uncertainty. The sliding mode differentiator is then employed for every agent to approximate the unknown derivatives of the formation reference to further construct the limited-information-based sliding mode controller. To ensure that the system is collision-free, artificial potential fields are introduced along with a time-varying topology. An example of a multiple omnidirectional robot system is used to conduct numerical simulations, and necessary comparisons are made to justify the effectiveness of the proposed limited-information-based control scheme.

Self-germinated seedlings of Citrus sinensis and C. grandis were supplied with nutrient solution with 0 mM AlCl(3)·6H(2)O (control, −Al) or 1 mM AlCl(3)·6H(2)O (+Al) for 18 weeks. The DW (Dry weights) of leaf, stem, shoot and the whole plant of C. grandis were decreased and the ratio of root DW to shoot DW in C. grandis were increased by Al, whereas these parameters of C. sinensis were not changed by Al. Al treatment dramatically decreased the sulfur (S) content in C. grandis roots and the phosphorus (P) content in both C. sinensis and C. grandis roots. More Al was transported to shoots and leaves in C. grandis than in C. sinensis under Al treatment. Al treatment has more adverse effects on C. grandis than on C. sinensis, as revealed by the higher production of superoxide anion (O(2)(·−)), H(2)O(2) and thiobarbituric acid reactive substace (TBARS) content in C. grandis roots. Via the Illumina sequencing technique, we successfully identified and quantified 12 and 16 differentially expressed miRNAs responding to Al stress in C. sinensis and C. grandis roots, respectively. The possible mechanism underlying different Al tolerance of C. sinensis and C. grandis were summarized as having following aspects: (a) enhancement of adventitious and lateral root development (miR160); (b) up-regulation of stress and signaling transduction related genes, such as SGT1, PLC and AAO (miR477, miR397 and miR398); (c) enhancement of citrate secretion (miR3627); (d) more flexible control of alternative glycolysis pathway and TCA cycle (miR3627 and miR482); (e) up-regulation of S-metabolism (miR172); (f) more flexible control of miRNA metabolism. For the first time, we showed that root development (miR160) and cell wall components (cas-miR5139, csi-miR12105) may play crucial roles in Al tolerance in citrus plants. In conclusion, our study provided a comprehensive profile of differentially expressed miRNAs in response to Al stress between two citrus plants differing in Al tolerance which further enriched our understanding of the molecular mechanism underlying Al tolerance in plants. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s12298-020-00895-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Background: lncRNAs play a critical role in multiple steps of gene regulation associated with tumor progression. However, the engagement of DDX59-AS1, a lncRNA, remains equivocal, particularly in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). In this study, the expression of DDX59-AS1 and its association with immune infiltration were investigated, and its prognostic value in OSSC was evaluated.Methods: OSCC patients were collected from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The expression of DDX59-AS1 in OSCC and healthy tissue was compared using Wilcoxon rank sum test. The relationship between DDX59-AS1 and clinicopathological features was analyzed using Logistic regression. Gene ontology (GO) terminology analysis, gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA), and single sample GSEA (ssGSEA) were utilized to interpret the enrichment pathway and functionality and to quantify the immune cell infiltration of DDX59-AS1. The correlation between survival and DDA59-AS1 was evaluated by Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox regression. The prognostic impact of DDX59-AS1 was predicted by the nomogram based on Cox multivariate analysis.Results: High expression of DDX59-AS1 was significantly correlated with T stage, clinical stage, race, and age (p < 0.05). Multivariate survival analysis demonstrated that the high expression of DDX59-AS1 was associated with lower overall and specific survival rates. The prognosis prediction was validated by the nomogram and calibration curves. The expression of DDX59-AS1 was negatively correlated with Mast cells, Tfh, T cells, Treg, and B cells, and positively related with the Tgd infiltration level.Conclusion: DDX59-AS1 played a crucial role in the progression and prognosis of OSCC and was potentially a predictive biomarker for OSCC.

Additional file 9: Fig. S9. The map of pTRV2 vector used for the virus induced gene silencing (VIGS) of the tomato SlAMS gene.

Additional file 10: Fig. S10. The map of pCRISPR/Cas9- SlAMS vector used for the tomato SlAMS knockout.

Additional file 6: Fig. S6. PCR identification of the overexpression vector pCAMBIA2301-SlAMS. Lane A: 5 k Marker; Lane 1: -CK; Line2: SlAMS gene amplification products.

Additional file 4: Fig. S4. VIGS-mediated silencing of SlAMS in tomato plants. a Infected with A. tumefaciens carrying pTRV2-SlAMS + pTRV1. b Infected with A. tumefaciens carrying pTRV2-PDS + pTRV1. c Negatively infected with A. tumefaciens carrying the basic vector pTRV2 + pTRV1. d Uninfected wild type.

Additional file 11: Fig. S11. The map of pCAMBIA2301-SlAMS vector used for the tomato SlAMS overexpression.

Additional file 3: Fig. S3. PCR detection of colonies carrying pTRV2-SlAMS and positively transformed tomato plants.

Additional file 3.

Additional file 16.

Additional file 1: Fig. S1. Sequence of the tomato SlAMS gene and the deduced protein sequence. The region highlighted in yellow was used for the VIGS experiment.

We propose a new method for exemplar-free class incremental training of ViTs. The main challenge of exemplar-free continual learning is maintaining plasticity of the learner without causing catastrophic forgetting of previously learned tasks. This is often achieved via exemplar replay which can help recalibrate previous task classifiers to the feature drift which occurs when learning new tasks. Exemplar replay, however, comes at the cost of retaining samples from previous tasks which for many applications may not be possible. To address the problem of continual ViT training, we first propose gated class-attention to minimize the drift in the final ViT transformer block. This mask-based gating is applied to class-attention mechanism of the last transformer block and strongly regulates the weights crucial for previous tasks. Importantly, gated class-attention does not require the task-ID during inference, which distinguishes it from other parameter isolation methods. Secondly, we propose a new method of feature drift compensation that accommodates feature drift in the backbone when learning new tasks. The combination of gated class-attention and cascaded feature drift compensation allows for plasticity towards new tasks while limiting forgetting of previous ones. Extensive experiments performed on CIFAR-100, Tiny-ImageNet and ImageNet100 demonstrate that our exemplar-free method obtains competitive results when compared to rehearsal based ViT methods.

Additional file 12: Table S1. The AMS gene sequences in Genebank used for nucleotide similarity analysis compared with the cloned SlAMS gene from tomato.

We prove the existence of rational maps having smooth degenerate Herman rings. This answers a question of Eremenko affirmatively. The proof is based on the construction of smooth Siegel disks by Avila, Buff and Ch\'{e}ritat as well as the classical Siegel-to-Herman quasiconformal surgery. A crucial ingredient in the proof is the surgery's continuity, which relies on the control of the loss of the area of quadratic filled-in Julia sets by Buff and Ch\'{e}ritat. As a by-product, we prove the existence of rational maps having a nowhere dense Julia set of positive area for which these maps have no irrationally indifferent periodic points, no Herman rings, and are not renormalizable., Comment: 29 pages, 3 figures

Additional file 1. Sensitivity and interaction analyses.

Additional file 14: Table S3. Accession numbers of the AMS proteins used in the phylogenetic tree.

Additional file 13: Table S2. Primer sequences used in this paper (designed using Primer 5.0).