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Funding: We acknowledge the financial support from Aalto Centre for Quantum Engineering, Academy of Finland (grants 333099, 314810, 333982, 336144, and 336818), Academy of Finland Flagship Programme (320167, PREIN), the European Union’s Horizon research and innovation program (grant agreement no. 101067269, ChirLog), the EU H2020-MSCA-RISE-872049 (IPN-Bio), and ERC advanced grant (834742). Publisher Copyright: Copyright © 2022 The Authors, some rights reserved; | openaire: EC/H2020/834742/EU//ATOP The ever-growing demand for faster and more efficient data transfer and processing has brought optical computation strategies to the forefront of research in next-generation computing. Here, we report a universal computing approach with the chirality degree of freedom. By exploiting the crystal symmetry–enabled well-known chiral selection rules, we demonstrate the viability of the concept in bulk silica crystals and atomically thin semiconductors and create ultrafast (

Detecting trace molecules remains a significant challenge. Surface-enhanced infrared absorption (SEIRA) based on plasmonic nanostructures, particularly graphene, has emerged as a promising approach to enhance sensing sensitivity. While graphene-based SEIRA offers advantages such as ultrahigh sensitivity and active tunability, intrinsic molecular damping weakens the interaction between vibrational modes and plasmons. Here, we demonstrate ultrahigh-sensitive molecular sensing based on synthesized complex-frequency waves (CFW). Our experiment shows that CFW can amplify the molecular signals (~1.2-nm-thick silk protein layer) detected by graphene-based sensor by at least an order of magnitude and can be universally applied to molecular sensing in different phases. Our approach is highly scalable and can facilitate the investigation of light-matter interactions, enabling diverse potential applications in fields such as optical spectroscopy, metasurfaces, optoelectronics, biomedicine and pharmaceutics., Comment: 21 pages, 4 figures

Additional file 1. Table S1. The sequences of primers for siRNA and qPCR.

Superlenses made of plasmonic materials and metamaterials have been exploited to image features of sub-diffractional scale. However, their intrinsic losses impose a serious restriction on the imaging resolution, which is a long-standing problem that has hindered wide-spread applications of superlenses. Optical waves of complex frequency exhibiting a temporally attenuating behavior have been proposed to offset the intrinsic losses in superlenses via virtual gain, but the experimental realization has been missing due to the challenge involved in preparing the illumination with temporal decay. Here, by employing multi-frequency measurement, we successfully implement a synthetic optical wave of complex frequency to experimentally observe deep-subwavelength superimaging patterns enabled by the virtual gain. Our work represents a practical approach to overcoming the intrinsic losses of plasmonic systems for imaging and sensing applications., Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is still a serious public health problem worldwide. Antiviral therapies such as interferon and nucleos(t)ide analogs efficiently control HBV replication, but they cannot eradicate chronic hepatitis B (CHB) because of their incapacity to eliminate endocellular covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA). Thus, there is a necessity to develop new strategies for targeting cccDNA. As cccDNA is difficult to clear, transcriptional silencing of cccDNA is a possible effective strategy. HBx plays a vitally important role in maintaining the transcriptional activity of cccDNA and it could be a target for blocking the transcription of cccDNA. To screen new drugs that may contribute to antiviral therapy, the ability of 2,000 small-molecule compounds to inhibit HBx was examined by the HiBiT lytic detection system. We found that the macrolide compound rapamycin, which is clinically used to prevent acute rejection after organ transplantation, could significantly reduce HBx protein expression. Mechanistic studies demonstrated that rapamycin decreased the stability of the HBx protein by promoting its degradation via the ubiquitin-proteasome system. Moreover, rapamycin inhibited HBV RNA, HBV DNA, and cccDNA transcription levels in HBV-infected cells. In addition, HBx deficiency abrogated the inhibition of cccDNA transcription induced by rapamycin. Similar results were also confirmed in a recombinant cccDNA mouse model. In summary, we report a new small-molecule, rapamycin, which targets HBx to block HBV cccDNA transcription and inhibit HBV replication. This approach can identify new strategies to cure CHB.

Founded in 1994, Friends of Nature was the first green NGO created in China. The group has served as an incubator for the explosion of environmental organizations over the last few decades. Friends of Nature has worked to inform Chinese citizens on critical environmental issues through a host of educational programs, policy reform initiatives, and community advocacy. The Friends of Nature Greenbook, published annually, provides the definitive record of the ongoing top environmental issues in China. Zhang Boju, CEO of Friends of Nature, leads a team of more than 20,000 members working to preserve fragile Chinese ecosystems and promote the development of more green citizens in the rapidly developing country.

We present the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of a recently described new leech species named

We present the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of a recently described new leech species named Hemiclepsis yangtzenensis Yang & Bolotov 2021 collected in central China. The mitochondrial genome is 14,984 bp in length and consists of 13 protein-coding genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes, and 22 transfer RNA genes, all of which are encoded on a single strand. It exhibited a strong A + T bias of 72.87%. There is a large non-coding region (614 bp) located between the tRNA-Arg and tRNA-His genes, wherein we identified 40 short dispersed repeats, 13–22 bp long, 8 of which were direct, 20 inverted, and 12 palindromic. Phylogenetic analysis of 20 Hirudinea mitogenome sequences resolved monophyletic Glossiphoniidae, and H. yangtzenensis formed a sister lineage with Glossiphonia concolor.

Chronic hepatitis B (CHB) virus infection is one of the leading causes of cirrhosis and liver cancer. Although the major drugs against CHB including nucleos(t)ide analogs and PEG-interferon can effectively control human hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, complete cure of HBV infection is quite rare. Targeting host factors involved in the viral life cycle contributes to developing innovative therapeutic strategies to improve HBV clearance. In this study, we found that the mRNA and protein levels of SIRT2, a class III histone deacetylase, were significantly upregulated in CHB patients, and that SIRT2 protein level was positively correlated with HBV viral load, HBsAg/HBeAg levels, HBcrAg, and ALT/AST levels. Functional analysis confirmed that ectopic SIRT2 overexpression markedly increased total HBV RNAs, 3.5-kb RNA and HBV core DNA in HBV-infected HepG2-Na+/taurocholate cotransporting polypeptide cells and primary human hepatocytes. In contrast, SIRT2 silencing inhibited HBV transcription and replication. In addition, we found a positive correlation between SIRT2 expression and HBV RNAs synthesis as well as HBV covalently closed circular DNA transcriptional activity. A mechanistic study suggested that SIRT2 enhances the activities of HBV enhancer I/HBx promoter (EnI/Xp) and enhancer II/HBc promoter (EnII/Cp) by targeting the transcription factor p53. The levels of HBV EnI/Xp and EnII/Cp-bound p53 were modulated by SIRT2. Both the mutation of p53 binding sites in EnI/Xp and EnII/Cp as well as overexpression of p53 abolished the effect of SIRT2 on HBV transcription and replication. In conclusion, our study reveals that, in terms of host factors, a SIRT2-targeted program might be a more effective therapeutic strategy for HBV infection.

Cavitating flows are dominated by large gradients of physical properties and quantities containing complicated interfacial structures and lots of multi-scale eddies that need to be accurately characterized using a high-resolution mesh. The present work, within OpenFOAM, proposes an effective modeling framework using the large eddy simulation (LES) approach along with the volume of fluid (VOF) method to simulate the two-phase flow system and applies the Schnerr-Sauer model to calculate the mass-transfer rate between water and vapor. The adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) which is a powerful tool for allocating high-resolution grids only to the region of the greatest concern is adopted for improving the solution of interfacial structures. The effect of grid size is firstly investigated and the time-averaged quantities are verified against the experimental data, and then simulations of cavitating flows are successfully achieved to precisely characterize the features of cavitation with automatically and dynamically refining the mesh. As the refinement only takes place in the interfacial region, high-precision simulations can be achieved with limited computational resources, and the method shows promising prospects for modeling of the multi-scale, time-critical and computationally intensive cavitating flows.

The heart is one of the target organs vulnerable to sepsis. About 50% of sepsis patients will suffer from myocardial injury and cardiac dysfunction, which will aggravate the sepsis and affect its prognosis. Here, we attempt to investigate the function of long non coding RNA PVT1 in LPS-induced cardiac fibroblasts in vitro, and explore its potential mechanism. The expression of PVT1 in LPS-induced cardiac fibroblasts was detected by qRT-PCR. CCK-8 assay, cell migration, qRT-PCR and western blotting analysis were applied to evaluating the effect of PVT1 knockdown on LPS-induced cardiac fibroblasts. The bioinformatics analysis and the rescue experiment were devoted to the underlying mechanism. PVT1 expression was up-regulated in LPS-induced cardiac fibroblasts. And knockdown of PVT1 inhibited cell viability and migration, alleviated inflammation cytokines production of LPS-treated cardiac fibroblasts. The bioinformatics analysis predicted PVT1 negatively regulates miR-24 and KLF6 is a direct target of miR-24. In a word, we observed PVT1 expression level was up-regulated in LPS- treated cardiac fibroblasts. PVT1 knockdown could alleviate LPS-induced biological behavior of cardiac fibroblasts through sponging miR-24 in vitro.

Additional file 1: Fig. S1. Numbers and comparisons of genes containing m6A in the 4 brain regions (cortex, cerebellum, hippocampus and hypothalamus) at 2-week, 6-week and 52-weeks post birth in mice. Fig. S2. PCA plots showing reproducibility amongst replicates and differences between samples. Fig. S3. UCSC screenshots showing m6A associated exon inclusion events. Fig. S4. Integrative Genomics Viewer (IGV) screenshots showing tissue-specific m6A methylation. Fig. S5. Uncropped full Western blots.

Supplemental Document

Additional file 9: Review history.

Additional file 3. Review history.

Additional file 1. Supplementary figures. Supplementary figures S1-S4.

We examined the effects of root extracts of利用滤纸培养皿法研究藜科植物梭梭和甜菜根水浸提和乙醇浸提两种浸提液对肉苁蓉种子萌发和吸器形成的影响。结果表明: 水和乙醇浸提的根浸提液对肉苁蓉种子萌发和吸器形成无明显作用;两种根醇浸提液添加10 mg·kg

Additional file 1. Details of Figure S1, Figure S2, Table S1, Table S2, Table S3 are shown in Additional file 1.

Versatile quantum modes emerge for plasmon describing the collective oscillations of free electrons in metallic nanoparticles when the particle sizes are greatly reduced. Rather than traditional nanoscale study, the understanding of quantum plasmon desires extremal atomic control of the nanoparticles, calling for size dependent plasmon measurement over a series of nanoparticles with atomically adjustable atom number over several orders of magnitude. Here we report the N dependent plasmonic evolution of atomically size selected gold particles with N= 100 70000 using electron energy loss (EEL) spectroscopy in a scanning transmission electron microscope. The EEL mapping assigns a feature at 2.7 eV as the bulk plasmon and another at 2.4 eV as surface plasmon, which evolution reveals three regimes. When N decreases from 70000 to 887, the bulk plasmon stays unchanged while the surface plasmon exhibits a slight red shift from 2.4 to 2.3 eV. It can be understood by the dominance of classical plasmon physics and electron boundary scattering induced retardation. When N further decreases from 887 to 300, the bulk plasmon disappears totally and the surface plasmon shows a steady blueshift, which indicates that the quantum confinement emerges and modifies the intraband transition. When N 100 300, the plasmon is split to three fine features, which is attributed to superimposed single electron transitions between the quantized molecular like energy level by the time dependent density functional theory calculations. The surface plasmon's excitation ratio has a scaling law with an exponential dependence on N ( N^0.669), essentially the square of the radius. A unified evolution picture from the classical to quantum, molecular plasmon is thus demonstrated.

A four-fold interpenetrated Zn(II)-based coordination polymer with the chemical formula of {[Zn2(L)2(bdc)]·(H2O)2·DMF}n (1) was synthesized by solvent method using terephthalic acid (H2bdc) and N1,N1,N4,N4-tetrakis(4-(1H-imidazol-1-yl)phenyl)benzene-1,4-diamine (L) as the mixed ligands. The as-prepared complex 1 was measured via the elemental analysis and single crystal X-ray diffraction. Furthermore, due to its strong intense emission, complex 1 could be applied as luminescent sensor to sensitively detect 2,4,6-trinitrophenol (TNP), which has the characteristics of high sensitivity and selectivity. In addition, to evaluate the anti-bacterial effect of compound 1 in vitro, the P.gingivalis growth curves were measured. And the relative expression of ragA and ragB was detected by RT-PCR to reveal the mechanism of the compound in the anti-infectious activity. The potential anti-infectious criteria that has been observed in the experimental measurement has been further studied by using molecular docking technique.

Load-holding after the forming load reached the limit of hydraulic press is a sufficient method to promote further forming and ensure the filling quality of large Al-5.9Zn-2.1Mg-2.1Cu (wt%) alloy die forgings. To investigate the deformation behavior of the alloy during load-holding process, the thermophysical simulation tests at the holding pressure range of 20–60 MPa, temperature range of 350–450 ℃ with the pressure-holding time of 5–30 s and/after compression tests with the strain rate of 1 s−1 and strain of 0.231 were conducted on a Gleeble-3500 isothermal simulator. The strain rate variation during pressure-holding reveals that the critical holding pressure of accelerating deformation is between 40 and 60 MPa at the temperature higher than 400 ℃. The microstructures of the tested specimens were analyzed by optical microscopy (OM) and electron back-scattered diffraction (EBSD). The pre-deformation promotes the intragranular deformation and hinders grain rotation during following pressure-holding process. Besides, the processing map based on Kumar-Prasad criterion is not as accurate as that based on Murty-Rao criterion in predicting the instability during pressure-holding. Based on the processing map and microstructure analysis, the best pressure-holding conditions are recommended to be 400 ℃&40 MPa, 450 ℃&40 MPa and 450 ℃&60 MPa.

This study aimed to investigate the effect of different levels of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) supplementation in the diet feed on growth performance, survival rate, biochemical parameters in swamp eels. Healthy fishes were randomly assigned to five groups feeding with different supplementation of AMPs (0, 200, 400, 600, or 800 mg/kg) in diets for 68 days. Results showed that relative weight gain, feed coefficient and survival rate were significantly (p