Search

Additional file 1: Figure S1. The distribution plot of ln(-ln(S(t))) relative to ln(t) for assessing Weibull assumptions. Figure S2. The cut-off value was determined for ASR using the standard ROC curve in male group. Table S1. Weighted Hazard ratio (95% CI) of All-cause Mortality across tertiles of ASR, excluding participants who died in the first year of the follow-up. Multivariable-Adjusted analysis n=489. Table S2. The weighted Hazard ratio (95% CI) of All-cause Mortality uses the cut-off value or Median of ASR in CVD survivors according to sex, excluding participants who died in the first year of the follow-up. Multivariable-Adjusted analysis n=489.

Additional file 1:. Table. S1: Primers of RT-PCR.

Recently, neural implicit surfaces have become popular for multi-view reconstruction. To facilitate practical applications like scene editing and manipulation, some works extend the framework with semantic masks input for the object-compositional reconstruction rather than the holistic perspective. Though achieving plausible disentanglement, the performance drops significantly when processing the indoor scenes where objects are usually partially observed. We propose RICO to address this by regularizing the unobservable regions for indoor compositional reconstruction. Our key idea is to first regularize the smoothness of the occluded background, which then in turn guides the foreground object reconstruction in unobservable regions based on the object-background relationship. Particularly, we regularize the geometry smoothness of occluded background patches. With the improved background surface, the signed distance function and the reversedly rendered depth of objects can be optimized to bound them within the background range. Extensive experiments show our method outperforms other methods on synthetic and real-world indoor scenes and prove the effectiveness of proposed regularizations.

Simultaneous achievement in high solid content and high microsphere yield is deemed a challenge in the fabrication of monodisperse microspheres by precipitation polymerization. We herein demonstrate that micro-sized monodisperse poly(methacrylic monomer-divinylbenzene) microspheres containing epoxy, lauyl, carboxyl and hydroxyl functions can be fabricated by solvothermal precipitation co-polymerization at 20% (mass) monomer loading with over 94% microsphere yield. The morphology and porosity of the obtained particles can be readily tuned by cosolvent-acetonitrile binary solvents. Addition of a small amount of cosolvent that has similar solubility parameter to that of the functional monomer can significantly improve the monodispersity of the obtained microspheres. When tetrahydrofuran was used as the co-solvent, the surface area of the highly porous microspheres achieved higher than 400 m2·g−1. Solvothermal precipitation co-polymerization can be expected in scale-up fabrication of various monodisperse functional microspheres free of any surfactant and additive.

Fluorescent polymer dots (Pdots) are a new type of efficient fluorophores with superior optical properties. However, their practical applications in bioimaging and biosensing are being hampered by their potential toxicity, poor water-solubility and the aggregation caused quenching effect. Herein, we report an effective strategy for the preparation of a series of new small-size aggregation-induced emission (AIE) active non-conjugated Pdots, which were self-assembled from three amphiphilic block copolymers, 4s-TPE-PCL-b-PNIPAM-Eu(III) (TPNE), 4s-TPE-PCL-b-PAA-Eu(III) (TPAE) and 4s-TPE-PCL-b-PVP-Eu(III) (TPVE). All of the blocks were synthesized by free-radical polymerization using a macroazoinitiator containing AIE fluorophore tetraphenylethene (TPE), poly(e-caprolactone) (PCL) segment and azo group, respectively. The obtained TPNE, TPAE and TPVE Pdots had small diameters down to 5 nm and good monodispersity. The Pdots not only exhibited well-separated dual-wavelength emission by 430 and 615 nm upon excitation at 360 and 395 nm, but also displayed thermo-tunable and pH-dependent fluorescence properties, excellent photostability, good water-solubility, good biocompatibility, favorable photoreversibility and noncytotoxicity. More interestingly, the as-prepared three kinds of Pdots displayed reversibly distinct dual-color (blue-red) fluorescence in the targeted three cancer cells (HepG2, A549 and HeLa cells) by merely tuning the excitation wavelength, indicating their potential applications as sensor and multicolour imaging agents in cell biology and diagnostics.

Additional file 1: Table S1. Characteristics of HF patients in the discovery phase (n=40). Table S2. Characteristics of HF patients in the training phase (n=30) and validation phase (n=50). Table S3. Home made circulating miRNA panel which was used for the miRNA screening analysis in the discovery phase. Table S4. The features of 11 overlapped target genes of miR-30a-5p in Heart Failure (ICM or DCM). Table S5. The features of 9 overlapped target genes of miR-654-5p between Heart Failure (ICM or DCM). Figure S1. Expression patterns of circulating miR-100, miR-320a, miR-433 and miR-499b-3p in each patient in the discovery phase with paired plasma samples collected at times of check-in and check-out. The p-values showed significant change of the four miRNAs (p < 0.05). Figure S2. Expression patterns and change trends of the rest of 83 circulating miRNAs in all patients in the discovery phase. The p-values of these miRNAs did not show significant change. Figure S3. Correlation analysis between miR-30a-5p, miR-654-5p and NT-proBNP in the 40 HF patients enrolled in the discovery phase before and after treatment. Figure S4. Correlation analysis between the differential miRNA expression change and the NT-proBNP reduction by comparing 5 patients with ~80% NT-proBNP reduction and 5 patients with ~40% NT-proBNP reduction upon medical therapy (n=5, *p < 0.05).

Additional file 1.

Additional file 2.

Employing natural polymers as building blocks is favorable to construct sustainable functional materials and realize biomass utilization. Here we developed a series of supramolecular polyion complexes (PICs) composed of lignosulfonate and double-hydrophilic diblock copolymer poly(ethylene oxide-b-N, N-dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate) (PEO114-b-PDMAEMA24), which performed a blue emission with quenching-enhancing tendency and copolymer distribution inversion-involved assembling transformation at pH 5.6 and monotonic greenish-blue fluorescence promotion at pH 9.5 by increasing PEO114-b-PDMAEMA24 contents. Electrostatic interactions and multiple hydrogen bonds were revealed controlled the assembling behavior and affected the emission via altering the restriction of molecular motion, through-space conjunction, and non-luminous complexation. The multiple interacting sites and special topology of diblock copolymer contributed to the efficient fluorescence regulation. Information writing-erasing and encryption-decryption systems were established by utilizing emission intensity regulation and pH-responsive emission chromism. This work paved a new way to enhance lignin fluorescence and broadened potential applications of lignin composites in realms of sensing, imaging, monitoring, and anticounterfeiting.

Low yield and unremarkable electrochemical performance of MCMB prepared from conventional thermal polymerization are inevitable, which limits its large-scale application as anode material for lithium-ion batteries. Hence, in this work, MCMBs were prepared by co‑carbonization of low-valued FCC decant oil and conductive carbon black (CCB). CCB can enhance the nucleation, inhibit the growth of the mesophase spheres and adhere on the surface of spheres, thereby increasing the yields (38.9 wt%), influencing the microstructure and subsequent electrochemical performance of MCMB. The MCMBs prepared by doping with 3 wt% CCB exhibited a small particle size (15.0 μm) and moderate structural disorder degree with wide interlayer spacing (AD3/Aall = 18.15%, d002 = 3.5342 A), which shortened the transport pathway of Li+ inside the microbeads. Besides, chain-like conductive carbon black connected to the surface of the MCMBs, forming a continuous and developed conductive network, which was benefit for increasing of electron conduction and enhancing the Li+ transport rate outside the microbead. Such MCMB delivered the superior long-term cyclability with specific capacity of 394.5 mAh g−1 at 0.5 A g−1 (over 400 cycles) and presented a high-rate capability with reversible capacity of 276.0 mAh g−1 at an ultra-high current density of 3 A g−1.

Cell therapy has great promise for treating gastrointestinal motility disorders caused by intestinal nervous system (ENS) diseases. However, appropriate sources, other than enteric neural stem cells and human embryonic stem cells, are seldom reported. Here, we show that neural progenitors derived from the dorsal root ganglion (DRG) of EGFP mice survived, differentiated into enteric neurons and glia cells, migrated widely from the site of injection, and established neuron-muscle connections following transplantation into the distal colon of postnatal mice. The exogenous EGFP+ neurons were physiologically functional as shown by the activity of calcium imaging. This study shows that that other tissues besides the postnatal bowel harbor neural crest stem cells or neural progenitors that have the potential to differentiate into functional enteric neurons in vivo and can potentially be used for intestinal nerve regeneration. These DRG-derived neural progenitor cells may be a choice for cell therapy of ENS disease as an allograft. The new knowledge provided by our study is important for the development of neural crest stem cell and cell therapy for the treatment of intestinal neuropathy.

Research on topic evolution of Microblog is an effective way to analyze network public opinions. This paper proposes a method for mining changing of Microblog topics with time, and realizes topic evolution through topic extraction and topic relevance calculation. Firstly, latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) model is used to automatically extract topics from different time slices; secondly, a similarity calculation algorithm is designed to calculate relevance of topic content through normalization of similarities among characteristic words and co-occurrence relations, to get evolutionary relationship among sub-topics of different time slices; thirdly, using probability distribution of blog article-topic to calculate topic intensity in each time slice, and then gets evolutionary relationship of topic intensity over time. Experiments show that the proposed topic evolution analysis model can effectively detect the evolution of topic content and intensity of real blogs.

Long wavelength (i.e., orange- to red-light) fluorescence emission and functionality are critically longing for the development and applications of carbon dots (CDs) toward biosensor and bioimaging analysis. Herein, the N-doped carbon dots (N-CDs) with bright orange fluorescence emission at 592 nm were facilely synthesized via p-phenylenediamine as a carbon precursor by microwave method. The as-prepared N-CDs exhibit favorable biocompatibility, excellent water solubility, highly optical stabilities and display sensitive pH response behavior. When the pH is decreased from 9.45 to 2.45, its emission fluorescence intensity will be significantly enhanced. The pKa value of N-CDs is 5.80 and it shows linear response to the physiological pH range of 4.45–7.00. Moreover, the N-CDs also possess high selectivity of hydrogen ions over common metal ions and some bioactive molecules, excellent photostability and reversibility. Based on this, a fluorescence sensing platform is established for the detection of pH in the environment. The N-CDs were successfully used as the fluorescent probe for cellular imaging and applied to monitor pH fluctuations in live cells based on its biocompatibility and cell membrane permeability. It is also anticipated that the N-CDs are potential bio-nano-materials for real-time tracking of the intracellular pH especially under physiological conditions in the disease diagnosis, biosensing and biomedical fields.

A series of lacquer saps were prepared by prepolymerization under oxygen atmosphere. The prepolymerization process was investigated by GPC, UV-Vis, FT-IR, NMR, and microscope. The results showed that the polymerization of urushiol monomer was accelerated. The content of monomer in the lacquer sap swiftly decreased from 82.68% to 47.75% in 0.5 h. The mechanism of polymerization was complex and was involved in the coupling reaction of phenyl ring, the addition reaction of the unsaturated carbon-carbon double bond groups with urushiol hydroxyl groups, and other reactions that occurred on the side chains. In addition, the prepolymerization also improved significantly the drying property of lacquer film, especially at low relative humidity. At the same time, the sizes of the water drops in the lacquer saps significantly decreased with increasing the stirring time and the surface of lacquer film became smoother, which resulted in its excellent gloss (109–125). Due to the prepolymerization, the pencil hardness and the thermal stability of lacquer film were slightly improved as well.

Fast and accurate fault diagnosis of substation, it plays an important role in the operation of power system, limit the impact of power outages to a minimum. However, there will inevitably exist some uncertain and misstated information in the actual fault diagnosis. Meanwhile, most troubleshooting methods of the traditional substation only rely on the information of the primary system. Therefore, a new method is presented in this paper for substation fault diagnosis by combining the primary and secondary systems of multi-source information. Firstly, a fuzzy Petri net is developed to cope with the uncertainties. And then, a three stages fault diagnosis process will be carry out to make a comprehensive diagnosis by using the information of both the primary and secondary system. According to the fault diagnosis result of the illustrative example, the method developed can not only dealing with the uncertainties of the information, but also the overall performance of fault diagnosis can be improved by using Petri nets and find all the malfunctioned devices.

The split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) technique and the wave propagation inverse analysis (WPIA) technique are both extensively used to experimentally investigate the impact behavior of materials, although neither of them alone provides a fully satisfactory analysis. In the present paper, attention is given to new experimental techniques by incorporating a damage-modified constitutive model into the SHPB technique and combining the Hopkinson pressure bar (HPB) technique with WPIA. First, to distinguish the response due to dynamic constitutive behavior and the response due to dynamic damage evolution, the SHPB method incorporating a damage-modified constitutive model is developed, including an explicit damage-modified Zhu–Wang–Tang model and an implicit damage-modified constitutive model. Second, when the SHPB results become invalid, a method of combining new Lagrange inverse analyses with the HPB technique is developed, including cases of the HPB arranged in front of a long specimen and behind the specimen. As examples of these new methods, typical results are given for nonlinear viscoelastic polymers and concretes considering damage evolution, a super-elastic Ti–Ni alloy with phase transformation and an aluminum foam with shock waves propagating within it.

The aim of this study was to investigate the antiviral effects of salidroside, a major component of Rhodiola rosea L. First, the antiviral effects of salidroside against coxsackievirus B3 (CVB3) were determined in vitro and in vivo. Then, the effect of salidroside on the mRNA expression of some important cytokines was measured in hearts of infected BALB/c mice by RT-PCR. Salidroside exhibited obvious antiviral effects both in in vitro and in vivo experiments. Salidroside was found to modulate the mRNA expression of interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma), interleukin-10 (IL-10), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), and interleukin-2 (IL-2). In conclusion, salidroside possesses antiviral activities against CVB3 and it may represent a potential therapeutic agent for viral myocarditis.

This study was designed to examine the effects of cinnamaldehyde on coxsackievirus B3 (CVB3)-induced viral myocarditis (VMC) and underlying signaling, with a focus on the toll-like receptor (TLR)4-nuclear factor (NF)-kappaB pathway.The antiviral and myocardial effects of cinnamaldehyde and its metabolite cinnamic acid were evaluated both in vitro and in vivo. Our results showed that cinnamic acid but not cinnamaldehyde reduced the viral titer in CVB3-infected myocardial cells. Our in vivo study demonstrated that intraperitoneal injection of either cinnamaldehyde or cinnamic acid significantly enhanced the survival rate and reduced myocardial viral titer in VMC mice compared with CVB3-infected controls (P0.05). There was no significant difference in effectiveness between the cinnamic acid and the cinnamaldehyde groups (P0.05). Cinnamaldehyde reduced plasma nitric oxide (NO) content, NF-kappaB, inducible nitric oxide synthase and TLR4 expression and decreased inflammatory cell infiltrate in myocardium from VMC mice 7 days after viral inoculation (P0.05). However, these effects were not observed with cinnamic acid treatment. Statistical significance was present between cinnamic acid and cinnamaldehyde in their effects on plasma NO content, NF-kappaB, inducible nitric oxide synthase and TLR4 expression (P0.05).Our data suggest that although cinnamaldehyde has antiviral effects on VMC through its metabolite, cinnamic acid, it directly reduces the inflammation in VMC by inhibiting the TLR4-NF-kappaB signal transduction pathway.

China is today the third largest importer of crude oil in the world. Since 1993 when the country's consumption of oil first exceeded the capacity of its domestic production, China has become a net importer and has witnessed a growing appetite for oil during the past decade. Energy security has been given enormous emphasis in the country's foreign policy making, and is believed to be one of the most important components of China's foreign policy in the 21st century. While enough ink has been spilled on the assessment of what China's energy security policy looks like, few scholarly inquiries have been made into the domestic sources of China's energy security policy. The purpose of this article is to reevaluate such a policy by identifying the different domestic stakeholders and analyzing how the potential divergence between the state and the oil companies influences the final policy outcome.