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In this study, the properties of amide Gemini surfactants (DLP-12, DLP-14 and DLP-16) were investigated. The results showed that these surfactants have good wettability and solubility, but these properties deteriorate with increasing hydrophobic chain length. The critical micelle concentrations (CMC) measured by the Wilhelmy method and by the steady-state fluorescence spectroscopy were similar and showed the same trend: The CMC values decreased with increasing hydrophobic chain length. The solubilization capacities in toluene were (6320, 6440 and 6680) mL/mol for DLP-12, DLP-14 and DLP-16, respectively, indicating an improvement in solubilization ability. Thermal stability experiments showed that the initial decomposition temperatures of the three surfactants were (301, 320 and 331) °C, respectively, indicating good thermal stability of these surfactants.

There are often some prior requirements about empirical risk in regression problems. To meet these requirements, this paper firstly proposes two novel support vector regression machine models in which part of empirical risks are given. One is a support vector regression machine in which partial empirical risks are given (PSVR), and the other is a model in which unilateral partial empirical risks are given (UPSVR). For the samples with given empirical risk levels, PSVR meets the requirements by some inequality constraints about empirical risk levels, while for the other samples without empirical risk requirement, PSVR uses the same strategy as the tradition support vector regression (SVR) to meet the requirement of empirical risk. UPSVR is similar to PSVR, except that the inequality constrains of empirical risks are unilateral. Secondly, the dual problems and the solving methods of PSVR and UPSVR are given. Finally, the effectiveness and superiority of PSVR and UPSVR are verified by the experiments on four artificial datasets. Both PSVR and UPSVR achieve better regression performance than the traditional models respectively. At the same time, PSVR is less sensitive to the trade-off coefficient C between empirical risk and confident risk compared with SVR. Thus, PSVR can select parameter C faster and more conveniently. PSVR and UPSVR are the extensions of the traditional models. When the set of samples with given empirical risks is empty, they degenerate into the traditional models. PSVR and UPSVR are suitable for the scene with prior requirements of empirical risk. &nbsp

ObjectivePreoperative noninvasive diagnosis of the benign or malignant solitary pulmonary nodule (SPN) is still important and difficult for clinical decisions and treatment. This study aimed to assist in the preoperative diagnosis of benign or malignant SPN using blood biomarkers.MethodsA total of 286 patients were recruited for this study. The serum FR+CTC, TK1, TP, TPS, ALB, Pre-ALB, ProGRP, CYFRA21-1, NSE, CA50, CA199, and CA242 were detected and analyzed.ResultsIn the univariate analysis, age, FR+CTC, TK1, CA50, CA19.9, CA242, ProGRP, NSE, CYFRA21-1, and TPS showed the statistical significance of a correlation with malignant SPNs (P <0.05). The highest performing biomarker is FR+CTC (odd ratio [OR], 4.47; 95% CI: 2.57–7.89; P <0.001). The multivariate analysis identified that age (OR, 2.69; 95% CI: 1.34–5.59, P = 0.006), FR+CTC (OR, 6.26; 95% CI: 3.09–13.37, P , P P = 0.033) are independent predictors. A prediction model based on age, FR+CTC, TK1, CA50, CA242, ProGRP, NSE, and TPS was developed and presented as a nomogram, with a sensitivity of 71.1% and a specificity of 81.3%, and the AUC was 0.826 (95% CI: 0.768–0.884).ConclusionsThe novel prediction model based on FR+CTC showed much stronger performance than any single biomarker, and it can assist in predicting benign or malignant SPNs.

Two new clerodane diterpenoids (1 and 2), a new pyran-2-one derivative (3), along with five known compounds (4‒8), were isolated from Croton crassifolius. Notably, crassifolin X (1) is a novel clerodane diterpenoid, characterized with a peculiar δ-lactone core being formed between C-1 and C-4. Their structures, including absolute configurations, were established on the basis of spectroscopic methods (UV, IR, HRESIMS and NMR), and circular dichroism experiments. In addition, all compounds were evaluated for their anti-neuroinflammatory activities based on the expression of TNF-α and IL-6 levels on LPS-induced BV2 cells, and compounds 1‒3 and 5 showed potential anti-neuroinflammatory activity.

Background Cancer cells including cancer stem cells exhibit a higher rate of ribosome biogenesis than normal cells to support rapid cell proliferation in tumors. However, the molecular mechanisms governing the preferential ribosome biogenesis in glioma stem cells (GSCs) remain unclear. In this work, we show that the novel INHAT repressor (NIR) promotes ribosomal DNA (rDNA) transcription to support GSC proliferation and glioblastoma (GBM) growth, suggesting that NIR is a potential therapeutic target for GBM. Methods Immunoblotting, immunohistochemical and immunofluorescent analysis were used to determine NIR expression in GSCs and human GBMs. Using shRNA-mediated knockdown, we assessed the role and functional significance of NIR in GSCs and GSC-derived orthotopic GBM xenografts. We further performed mass spectrometry analysis, chromatin immunoprecipitation, and other biochemical assays to define the molecular mechanisms by which NIR promotes GBM progression. Results Our results show that high expression of NIR predicts poor survival in GBM patients. NIR is enriched in the nucleoli of GSCs in human GBMs. Disrupting NIR markedly suppresses GSC proliferation and tumor growth by inhibiting rDNA transcription and pre-ribosomal RNA synthesis. In mechanistic studies, we find that NIR activates rDNA transcription to promote GSC proliferation by cooperating with Nucleolin (NCL) and Nucleophosmin 1 (NPM1), 2 important nucleolar transcription factors. Conclusions Our study uncovers a critical role of NIR-mediated rDNA transcription in the malignant progression of GBM, indicating that targeting this axis may provide a novel therapeutic strategy for GBM.

Carotid jugular fistula and pseudoaneurysm are easy to form after gunshot injury of carotid artery. Endovascular therapy, such as stent graft implantation, can successfully block the fistula and pseudoaneurysm cavity. However, the possibility of in-stent restenosis or occlusion will lead to treatment failure. The authors describe the case of a 30-year-old man with carotid jugular fistula and pseudoaneurysm after gunshot injury of left carotid artery who had received stent graft placement. However, two years after stent graft, the stenosis of proximal carotid artery near stent was found and gradually aggravated. During the follow-up, transient amaurosis of his left eye occurred intermittently and in-stent occlusion and severe stenosis of proximal carotid artery were found by computed tomography angiography (CTA) in our center. Carotid endarterectomy (CEA)with stent graft removal and end to end bypass using vascular graft was performed to reconstruct the blood flow of left carotid artery. To the extent of the authors’ knowledge, this case illustrates a rare CEA and vascular graft bypass in the treatment of in-stent occlusion following the gunshot injury to the carotid artery. The successful treatment of this rare case provides an option to deal with this kind of tricky problem.

Background: Montgomery T-tube (MTT) is a useful airway device but is seldom used. Owing to its specific shape and structure, it is challenging for anesthesiologists to manage airway in patients with MTT in situ who require general anesthesia and continuous positive-pressure ventilation (CPPV). Case: A 48-year-old 74-kg man with an MTT in situ was scheduled for local pancreatic resection under general anesthesia. We transorally inserted a cuffed endotracheal tube into the intratracheal limb of the MTT to achieve CPPV and to deliver the inhalation anesthetic. The endotracheal tube was removed successfully after the patient fully recovered from anesthesia. No tracheal injury or hemorrhage occurred after intubation or extubation, and the location of the MTT remained unchanged.Conclusions: Transoral insertion of a cuffed endotracheal tube into the intratracheal limb of the MTT could therefore be considered as a safe and feasible approach for airway management.

Cancer cells including cancer stem cells exhibit a higher rate of ribosome biogenesis than normal cells to support rapid cell proliferation in tumors. However, the molecular mechanisms governing the preferential ribosome biogenesis in glioma stem cells (GSCs) remain unclear. In this work, we show that the Novel INHAT Repressor (NIR) promotes ribosomal DNA (rDNA) transcription to support GSC proliferation and glioblastoma (GBM) growth, suggesting that NIR is a potential therapeutic target for GBM.Immunoblotting, immunohistochemical and immunofluorescent analysis were used to determine NIR expression in GSCs and human GBMs. Using shRNA-mediated knockdown, we assessed the role and functional significance of NIR in GSCs and GSC-derived orthotopic GBM xenografts. We further performed mass spectrometry analysis, chromatin immunoprecipitation and other biochemical assays to define the molecular mechanisms by which NIR promotes GBM progression.Our results show that high expression of NIR predicts poor survival of GBM patients. NIR is enriched in nucleoli of GSCs in human GBMs. Disrupting NIR markedly suppresses GSC proliferation and tumor growth through inhibiting rDNA transcription and pre-rRNA synthesis. In mechanistic studies, we find that NIR activates rDNA transcription to promote GSC proliferation by cooperating with Nucleolin (NCL) and Nucleophosmin 1 (NPM1), two important nucleolar transcription factors.Our study uncovers a critical of NIR-mediated rDNA transcription in malignant progression of GBM, indicating that targeting this axis may provide a novel therapeutic strategy for GBM.

Background: Endothelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EndMT) is poorly understood in digestive diseases, and the function of metabolism in EndMT is uncertain.Objective: The goal of this study is to elucidate the role of EndMT in digestive diseases and to describe its metabolic state.Method: The GEO database was used to extract single-cell data in order to discover EndMT subpopulations in digestive organs such as premalignant lesions and cancer of the stomach, intestine, and pancreas.Results: By single-cell RNA sequencing in digestive diseases, we generated a single-cell atlas from tissues of patients spanning a cascade of premalignant lesions and cancer. We next established a single-cell network elucidating the cellular and molecular characteristics of endothelial cells (ECs) across many lesions and identified key genes linked with EndMT in premalignant lesions and cancer lesions. The EndMT activation of a wide variety of metabolic signaling pathways was discovered in ECs, and further study of premalignant lesions and cancer tissue indicated that glucose metabolism increased in premalignant lesions and reached a maximum in cancer tissue. Finally, it was shown that INSR and LDHA might be used as prognostic markers for developing premalignant lesions to cancer involving glucose metabolism in digestive diseases.Conclusion: For the first time, we discovered EndMT’s role in digestive diseases and described its metabolism, underscoring its crucial role in glucose metabolism in the disease. We found several targets via gene screening that are beneficial for predicting premalignant lesions that progress to cancer.

The saline groundwater level of many supratidal wetlands is rising, which is expected to continue into the future because of sea level rise by the changing climate. Plant persistence strategies are increasingly important in the face of changing climate. However, the response of seed persistence to increasing groundwater level and salinity conditions is poorly understood despite its importance for the continuous regeneration of plant populations. Here, we determined the initial seed germinability and viability of seven species from supratidal wetlands in the Yellow River Delta and then stored the seeds for 90 days. The storage treatments consisted of two factors: groundwater level (to maintain moist and saturated conditions) and groundwater salinity (0, 10, 20, and 30 g/L). After retrieval from experimental storage, seed persistence was assessed. We verified that the annuals showed greater seed persistence than the perennials in the supratidal wetlands. Overall, seed persistence was greater after storage in saturated conditions than moist conditions. Salinity positively affected seed persistence under moist conditions. Surprisingly, we also found that higher groundwater salinity was associated with faster germination speed after storage. These results indicate that, once dispersed into habitats with high groundwater levels and high groundwater salinity in supratidal wetlands, many species of seeds may not germinate but maintain viability for some amount of time to respond to climate change.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has the characteristics of chronic relapse and remission, which makes early diagnosis and effective evaluation of disease activity especially crucial. With the development of ultrasound technology, its role in the diagnosis and treatment of IBD is increasing. This study aimed to explore the value of multimodal ultrasound in the assessment of disease activity and complications in IBD.Patients with clinically confirmed IBD were selected and examined with two-dimensional ultrasound, Doppler ultrasound, contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS), elastography, endoscopy with biopsies, and whole-abdominal enhanced computed tomography (CT). Collect relevant laboratory data, including C-reactive protein, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, etc. Endoscopy is used as the gold standard for disease activity assessment, and the diagnostic value of each ultrasound parameter is compared separately, and correlation analysis is made.Intestinal maximum wall thickness in patients in the disease activity group (active group) was significantly thicker than that in patients in remission group (7.93±2.65 vs. 4.16±1.08 mm, P0.001). The mean values of Peak Enhancement (PE) and the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) were higher in the active stage than in remission, with a significant difference (-40.66±4.81 vs. -50.47±5.03 db, 356.44±170.67 vs. 194.42±92.09 dBsec, both P0.05). Time To Peak (TTP) showed no significant difference between the active stage and remission (20.04±8.74 vs. 20.09±11.13 s, P0.05). Twenty cases of intestinal stricture were detected by ultrasound, and no fistula or abscesses were detected. CEUS and elastography could distinguish inflammatory bowel stenosis and fibrous bowel stenosis in patients with IBD. In the fibrosis group and inflammation group, the mean shear wave velocity, Young's modulus, TTP, PE, and AUC were statistically significantly different (P0.05). The mean maximum wall thickness and disease extent assessed by ultrasound and CT were strongly correlated (r=0.799, 0.831). Wall thickness showed a moderate positive correlation with CRP and ESR and a strong positive correlation with Mayo score (P0.05), but no significant correlation with CDAI (P0.05).Multimodal ultrasound provides more detailed clinical reference values for the comprehensive evaluation of IBD.

The protein-coding genes and pseudogenes of Cuscuta australis had the diverse contribution to the formation and evolution of parasitism. The codon usage pattern analysis of these two type genes could be used to understand the gene transcription and translation. In this study, we systematically analyzed the codon usage patterns of protein-coding sequences and pseudogenes sequences in C. australis. The results showed that the high frequency codons of protein coding sequences and pseudogenes had the same A/U bias in the third position. However, these two sequences had converse bias at the third base in optimal codons: the protein coding sequences preferred G/C-ending codons while pseudogene sequences preferred A/U-ending codons. Neutrality plot and effective number of codons plot revealed that natural selection played a more important role than mutation pressure in two sequences codon usage bias. Furthermore, the gene expression level had a significant positive correlation with codon usage bias in C. australis. Highly-expressed protein coding genes exhibited a higher codon bias than lowly-expressed genes. Meanwhile, the high-expression genes tended to use G/C-ending synonymous codons. This result further verified the optimal codons usage bias and its correlation with the gene expression in C. australis.

The aim of this study was to investigate the combined effect of n-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA, at an EPA:DHA ratio of 150:500) and phytosterol esters (PS) on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) patients. We conducted a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Ninety-six NAFLD subjects were randomly assigned to the following groups: the PS group (receiving 3·3 g/d PS); the FO group (receiving 450 mg EPA + 1500 mg DHA/d); the PS + FO combination group (receiving 3·3 g/d PS and 450 mg EPA + 1500 mg DHA/d) and the PO group (a placebo group). The baseline clinical characteristics of the four groups were similar. The primary outcome was liver:spleen attenuation ratio (L:S ratio). The percentage increase in liver–spleen attenuation (≤1) in the PS + FO group was 36 % (P = 0·083), higher than those in the other three groups (PS group, 11 %, P = 0·519; FO group, 18 %, P = 0·071; PO group, 15 %, P = 0·436). Compared with baseline, transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) was significantly decreased in the three study groups at the end of the trial (PS, P = 0·000; FO, P = 0·002; PS + FO, P = 0·001) and TNF-α was significantly decreased in the FO group (P = 0·036), PS + FO group (P = 0·005) and PO group (P = 0·032) at the end of the intervention. Notably, TGF-β was reduced significantly more in the PS + FO group than in the PO group (P = 0·032). The TAG and total cholesterol levels of the PS + FO group were reduced by 11·57 and 9·55 %, respectively. In conclusion, co-supplementation of PS and EPA + DHA could increase the effectiveness of treatment for hepatic steatosis.

In order to further improve the performance of scaled silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) and consider the compatibility with mature CMOS process, a novel SiGe HBT is designed by introducing the embedded Si1−yGey stress raiser into the collector. In the proposed HBT structure, the collector region is subjected to additional uniaxial stress, to enhance the characteristic frequency. The effect of embedded Si1−yGey stress raiser on the frequency performance with different Ge mole fractions is simulated and analyzed by employing SILVACO®TCAD tools. The simulation results show that the high frequency performance of the device can be significantly improved by applying additional uniaxial stress in the collector. At y = 0.3, the current gain of the device is increased by approximately 6% compared to the case where no stress is applied to the collector region (y = 0). Taking the uniform SiGe base case with the Ge fraction of 0.25 as an example, by adjusting the Ge fraction of the stress raiser, the peak values of fT and fmax reach about 507.7 GHz and 730.7 GHz, respectively. Compared with the traditional SiGe HBT without any additional stress in the collector region, fT and fmax are respectively increased by 29.1% and 71.5%. When y = 0.1, the proposed device has the best frequency characteristics due to the peak value of the fT ×fmax product.

Additional file 7: Figure S6. Weighted (A) and unweighted (B) UniFrac distance-based beta diversity of the cow rumen microbial communities revealed by DNBSEQ and NovaSeq sequencing platforms.

Additional file 2: Table S2. Details of the 22 ARDS patients.

Additional file 5: Figure S4. Comparison of the amplicon sequencing results of three typical ecological systems between DNBSEQ and NovaSeq sequencing platforms. (A) Evaluation of the reproducibility of the amplicon sequencing results of DNBSEQ and NovaSeq sequencing platform in revealing the accumulated relative abundance of microbes of abundant, moderate and rate taxa subcommunity from ecosystems with various complexity (DNB All, DNB 2, DNB 3 denotes number of all unique OTUs detected by DNBSEQ platform, consistently detected by at least 2 technical replicates, and consistently detected by all three technical replicates, respectively. Similar naming scheme was used for the NovaSeq platform). (B) Cross-verification of the OTUs identified by amplicon sequencing on DNBSEQ and NovaSeq platforms and shotgun sequencing results of the same set of mangrove sediment samples. (C) Cross-verification of the OTUs identified by amplicon sequencing on DNBSEQ and NovaSeq platforms and shotgun sequencing results of the same set of mice gut samples.

Additional file 2: Figure S1. Schematic presentation of the design and flow of this study. This study was designed to evaluate the potential harm of false positives introduced by index misassignment during the sequencing to the interpretation of metabarcoding or here amplicon sequencing studies. In part 1, mock communities with known microbial composition were used to confirm the presence of index misassignment introduced false positives and the rate of this misassignment on different sequencing platform; In part 2, samples from several typical ecosystems with various complexity were sequenced to test how index misassignment could affect the estimation of community diversity for different samples; In part 3, a case study using a set of cow rumen samples was conducted to evaluate how index misassignment caused false positives could affect the interpretation of microbial ecological roles and community assembly mechanisms.

Additional file 4: Figure S3. Venn diagrams showing the shared OTUs among distinct samples sequenced within the same batch of sequencing run on the Novaseq platform. The large number of shared OTUs among distinct samples (including two customized communities) were likely sample wise cross contaminations caused by index misassignment.

Additional file 6: Figure S5. Weighted (A) and unweighted (B) UniFrac distance-based clustering of the amplicon sequencing results revealed by DNBSEQ and NovaSeq sequencing platforms for samples from the three typical ecosystems.

Additional file 3: Figure S2. Comparison of shared fraction of OTUs by different sequencing platforms. UpSet graph showing the number of shared OTUs among the technical triplicates of DNBSEQ and NovaSeq sequencing platforms for customized mock community with four (A) or seven (B) microbes used in the current study. And heatmap showing the phylum rank relative abundances revealed by different sequencing platforms for the commercial mock (C) and customized mock communities with four (D) or seven (E) bacteria.

Additional file 8: Figure S7. Comparison of the results using unoise3 and DADA2 denoising algorithms. The accumulated OTU relative abundances in each phylum based on unoise3 and DADA2 were graphed as bar-chart side-by-side for all the mock communities and samples from three typical ecosystems.

Additional file 1: Table S1. Characteristics of ARDS patients and healthy controls whose neutrophil apoptosis has been detected.

Brain imaging using conventional head coils presents several problems in routine magnetic resonance (MR) examination, such as anxiety and claustrophobic reactions during scanning with a head coil, photon attenuation caused by the MRI head coil in positron emission tomography (PET)/MRI, and coil constraints in intraoperative MRI or MRI-guided radiotherapy. In this paper, we propose a super resolution generative adversarial (SRGAN-VGG) network-based approach to enhance low-quality brain images scanned with body coils. Two types of T1 fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) images scanned with different coils were obtained in this study: joint images of the head-neck coil and digital surround technology body coil (H+B images) and body coil images (B images). The deep learning (DL) model was trained using images acquired from 36 subjects and tested in 4 subjects. Both quantitative and qualitative image quality assessment methods were performed during evaluation. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were used for statistical analysis. Quantitative image quality assessment showed an improved structural similarity index (SSIM) and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) in gray matter and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) tissues for DL images compared with B images (P.01), while the mean square error (MSE) was significantly decreased (P.05). The analysis also showed that the natural image quality evaluator (NIQE) and blind image quality index (BIQI) were significantly lower for DL images than for B images (P.0001). Qualitative scoring results indicated that DL images showed an improved SNR, image contrast and sharpness (P.0001). The outcomes of this study preliminarily indicate that body coils can be used in brain imaging, making it possible to expand the application of MR-based brain imaging.

This paper investigates the shock isolation characteristics of an electromagnetic bistable vibration isolator (BVI) with tunable magnetic controlled stiffness. The theoretical model of the BVI is established. The maximum acceleration ratio (MAR), maximum absolute displacement ratio (MADR), and maximum relative displacement ratio (MRDR) are introduced to evaluate the shock isolation performance of the BVI. The kinetic and potential energy are observed to further explore the performance of the BVI. The effects of the potential barrier, shape of potential well, and damping ratio on the BVI are discussed compared with the linear vibration isolators (LVIs). The results demonstrate that the intrawell oscillations and snap-through oscillations are determined by the excitation amplitude and duration time of main pulse. MADR and MRDR of the BVI are smaller than those of the LVI. The maximum acceleration peak amplitude of the BVI is far below that of the LVI, especially when the snap-through oscillation occurs. In brief, the proposed BVI has a better shock isolation performance than the LVI and has the potential to suppress the shock of space structures during the launch and on-orbit deploying process.

The performance of SOI SiGe HBT structure was enhanced by introducing a buried oxide layer and Si 1-y Ge y collector. Both the base region and the emitter region are subjected to the action of stress, so the characteristic frequency and the current gain are improved. The effects of different step type distributions of Ge mole fraction in the Si 1-x Ge x base and different Ge fraction contents in the Si 1-y Ge y collector on the frequency, the Early voltage, and the current gain are analyzed by employing SILVACO TCAD tools. The results show that the current gain and frequency characteristics of the device can be improved by introducing biaxial stress in the Si 1-x Ge x base region. The step type distribution of Ge components in the Si 1- x Ge x base region can improve the Early voltage. The best performance is achieved when Ge component $y$ is 15% in the collector region. The best current gain is 2386, the Early voltage is 170V, and the cut-off frequency is 240GHz.

In this work, we use ultra-thin thickness-controllable spatial atomic layer deposited (ALD) aluminium oxide (AlOx) tunnel layers, which contain high negative fixed charges (Qf), capped by highly boron-doped polysilicon layers to form tunnel layer passivated contacts. The high Qf of the tunnel layers is expected to enhance the carrier selectivity of these passivated hole-extracting contacts. The dependence of the ALD AlOx tunnel layer contact passivation performance on its thickness is investigated. Furthermore, two different thermal charge activation conditions, i.e., fast firing using a belt furnace at 700 and 800 °C are compared. The best measured recombination current density J0 and implied open-circuit voltage iVoc of the developed AlOx/polysilicon passivated contacts with a symmetrical AlOx/SiNx stack passivation are 6.6 fA/cm2 and 723 mV, respectively. Based on the measured J0 and on the measured total contact resistivity of the passivated contact, the practical efficiency limit of a rear-side full area passivated contact solar cell with a conventionally diffused front side is calculated to be as high as 23.2%. Additionally, three rear-side metallization schemes: (1) thermally evaporated full-area silver contacts; (2) screen-printed non-firing-through aluminium contacts and (3) screen-printed firing-through silver-aluminium contacts, are compared. Finally, rear-emitter solar cells, using a rear-side hole-selective AlOx tunnel layer passivated contact, are fabricated, which shows an efficiency of up to 20.5%. While the proposed hole-selective passivated contact scheme appears to be promising based on the simulation prediction, the efficiency of the fabricated cells is largely limited by the non-optimized front-side reflectance and recombination losses as well as the use of non-optimized rear-side metallization schemes.

In order to further improve the performance of speech bandwidth extension, this paper proposes an end-to-end codec network model for speech bandwidth extension. It is modeled on the time-domain waveform and consists of encoder network, long short-term memory (LSTM) and decoder network. The encoder network is responsible for feature extraction and data dimensionality reduction of the input data, the LSTM is responsible for extracting the context-dependent information of the speech signal, and the decoder network is responsible for wideband speech reconstruction of the potential features output by the LSTM. In addition, this paper also proposes a time-frequency perception loss function to guide model training to generate more accurate time-domain waveforms and more realistic frequency-domain spectrum. Experimental results show that the reconstructed wideband speech generated by the model achieves better results in both subjective and objective evaluation.

Background Phalaenopsis is an important ornamental plant, which occupies an important position in the world flower market and has great economic value due to its rich and diverse flower colors. In order to investigate the flower color formation of Phalaenopsis at transcription level, the flower color formation involved genes were identified from RNA-seq in this study.Results White and purple petals of Phalaenopsis were collected in this study, and results were focused on two aspects: (1) the differential expression genes (DEGs) between white and purple flower color; and (2) association between SNP mutations and DEGs in transcriptome level. Results indicated that a total of 1,175 DEGs were identified, and the up- and down-regulation genes were 718 and 457, respectively. Gene Ontology (GO) and pathway enrichment showed that the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites pathway was key responsible for color formation and twelve crucial genes (C4H, CCoAOMT, F3'H, UA3'5'GT, PAL, 4CL, CCR, CAD, CALDH, bglx, SGTase and E1.11.17) from them involved in the regulation of flower color in Phalaenopsis. Conclusion This study firstly reported that the SNP mutations strongly associated with DEGs in color formation at RNA level, and provides a new insight to further investigate the gene expression and its relationship with genetic variants from RNA-seq data in other species.

Background Klebsiella pneumoniae is a leading cause of hospital-associated (HA) infections. It has been reported that gastrointestinal colonization (GI) is likely to be a common and significant reservoir for the transmission and infections of K. pneumoniae in both adults and neonates. However, the homologous relationship between clinically isolated extraintestinal and enteral K. pneumoniae in neonates hasn’t been characterized yet. Results Forty-three isolates from 21 neonatal patients were collected in this study. The proportion of carbapenem resistance was 62.8%. There were 12 patients (12/21, 57.4%) whose antibiotic resistance phenotypes, genotypes, and ST types (STs) were concordant. Six sequence types were detected using MLST, with ST37 and ST54 being the dominant types. The results of MLST were consist with the results of PFGE. Conclusions These data showed that there might be a close homologous relationship between extraintestinal K. pneumoniae (EXKP) and enteral K. pneumoniae (EKP) in neonates, indicating that the K. pneumoniae from the GI tract is possibly to be a significant reservoir for causing extraintestinal infections.

Additional file 1: Table S1. The 168 panel genes list.

Additional file 1: Figure S1. The hydrated particle size of MS measured by dynamic light scattering (A) and in vitro cytotoxicity of HAuNS-Met@MS at various concentration. Figure S2. The standard curve of Met through HPLC. Figure S3. Proliferation curve of CD8+T cell. Figure S4. (A) IC50 of free 2DG, Met and 2DG plus Met on B16F10 cells. (B) Cell viability of B16F10 after being incubated with free 2DG and Met at different concentration. Figure S5. Mitochondrial membrane potential fluorescence of B16F10 tumor cells. Figure S6. (A) Mitochondrial membrane potential fluorescence of EG7-OVA tumor cells. (B) Flow cytometry plot of mitochondrial membrane potential fluorescence. (C) Quantification based on (B). Figure S7. Representative flow cytometry plots (A) and quantification (B) of apoptosis rates of EG7-OVA cells. Figure S8. Flow cytometry analysis of DC maturation by analyzing CD11c+MHCI+ DCs. Figure S9. H&E staining of skin, lymph nodes, and tumor tissues isolated from B16F10 tumor bearing mice, the red arrows indicate areas of inflammation. Figure S10. Treatment and administration strategy. Figure S11. (A) Flow cytometry plots of DC and OVA-specific DC in lymph nodes of EG7-OVA mice, (B) Quantification of flow cytometry based on (A). Figure S12. Flow cytometry of lymphocytes (A), CD3+T (B) and CD3+CD8+T cells (C) in lymph nodes of EG7-OVA mice. Figure S13. Flow cytometry plots of OVA-specific CD8+T cells in lymph nodes (A), PBMC (B) and spleen (C) of EG7-OVA mice. Figure S14. Flow cytometry of CD3+T cells in tumor of EG7-OVA mice. Figure S15. EG7-OVA tumor model on C57 mice. Figure S16. B16F10 tumor model on C57 mice. Figure S17. H&E assays of tumor cells in the MS (+) NIR plus 2DG group. Figure S18. Flow cytometry plots of CD8+ T cells in LNs, spleen and PBMCs after different treatments. Figure S19. Immunofluorescence images of Treg cells and functional CD8+T cells infiltrated tumor sections after different treatments (A); (B) Quantitation of Treg cells based on flow cytometry; (C) Quantitation of Treg cells based on immunofluorescence images.

Understanding the social attributes of urban residents, such as occupations, settlement characteristics etc., has important significance in social research, public policy formulation and business. Most of the current methods for obtaining people’s social attributes by analyzing of social networks cannot reflect the relationship between the occupational characteristics and their daily movements. However, the current methods of using spatio-temporal data analysis are limited by the characteristics of the samples, and focus more on travel patterns and arrival time predictions. Based on coarse-grained CDR (Call Detail Record) data, this paper proposes an approach to infer occupation attribute by analyzing the travel patterns of personnel and incorporating more enhanced information. Finally we uses the CDR data of 6 million people to analyze and extract two types of people: college students in Beijing and urban hummingbirds and the F1 score of our proposed model is more than 0.95.

Additional file 1.

Atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) materials has been reported in the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors to be one of the potential technological enablers to achieve scaling sizes of 5 nm and lower, digressing away from the conventional silicon material. Given the uniqueness of these 2D materials, with properties ranging from semi-metal to semiconductors to insulating, research scale efforts have demonstrated promising new opportunities for both rigid and flexible nanoelectronics and optoelectronics applications, in numerous fields such as imaging and sensing, medical, industrial, environmental, biological, field-effect transistors, solar cells, batteries, thermoelectrics, light emitting diodes, lasers and ultra-fast optical communications. It is the focus of this chapter to provide an overall review of this fascinating world of atomically thin 2D novel materials, the physics underlying these materials, the recent applications surrounding these novel 2D materials and their devices, and the progressive efforts at large scale commercialization.

With the increase of washing raw coal, the rapid increase of coal slime (CS) production has become an urgent environmental problem. The main purpose of this work is to investigate the pyrolysis behavior and product distribution of CS by using thermogravimetric analyzer coupled to Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (TG-FTIR) and Pyrolyzer-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry analysis (Py-GC/MS). The results showed that the pyrolysis of CS can be divided into three stages. The maximum weight loss of CS occurred in the main devolatilization stage at 178-680 oC. The pyrolysis kinetic mechanism of CS was predicted to be f(α)=(1-α)5.4 via the master-plots method. The increase of inorganic minerals significantly increased the order of CS pyrolysis reaction, indicating that minerals have a great influence on pyrolysis chemical reaction. Compared to raw coal, the alkene contents decreased significantly, while the contents of CO2 and aromatics increased significantly, illustrating that the minerals in CS promoted polymerization and cyclization reactions of alkene as well as the formation of macrocyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in CS tar. This study provided theoretical and practical guidance on efficient thermochemical conversion and utilization of CS.

Additional file 1: Table S1. Literature search strategy in different electronic databases.

Additional file 2: Figure S1. Baseline mutational profile of Training cohort A. The patients were grouped according to the treatment received; A+T, EGFR-TKI with bevacizumab; T, single-agent EGFR-TKI. Figure S2. Heat map illustrating the association between gene mutation or pathway (y-axis) and clinical characteristics, progression-free survival (PFS), and overall survival (OS) (x-axis) for single-agent EGFR-TKI group (A) and EGFR-TKI plus bevacizumab group (B). Blue indicates no statistical difference. The intensity of red color indicates the level of statistical significance with corresponding p-values indicated. Figure S3. Patients in cohort A with brain, liver, or pleural metastasis had significantly shorter progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) with single-agent EGFR-TKI (A) but not on EGFR-TKI plus bevacizumab combination (B). Figure S4. Patients with concomitant TP53 mutation had significantly longer progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) with EGFR-TKI plus bevacizumab combination. Kaplan-Meier curves for PFS (A) and OS (B) of patients with EGFR-mutant advanced NSCLC with concurrent TP53 mutations (TP53+, red color) or wild-type TP53 (TP53-, blue color) treated with either EGFR-TKI with bevacizumab (A+T, solid lines) or EGFR-TKI monotherapy (T-single, dashed lines). The table below summarizes the p-values. Figure S5. Patients with concomitant TP53 mutations located in exons 5-8 had significantly longer progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) with EGFR-TKI plus bevacizumab combination. Kaplan-Meier curves for PFS (A, C) and OS (B, D) of patients with EGFR-mutant advanced NSCLC with or without concurrent TP53 mutations located between exon 5-8 (TP53_hot; A-B) or mutations that result in loss-of-function (TP53_LOF; C-D) and were treated with either EGFR-TKI with bevacizumab (A+T) or EGFR-TKI monotherapy (T-single). Kaplan-Meier curves for PFS (E, G) and OS (F, H) of patients with concomitant TP53 and RB1 mutations who were treated with either T-only (E, F) or A+T (G, H). Figure S6. Nomograms were constructed for predicting the risk of 12-month and 24-month overall survival (OS) (A). Survival analysis of the training cohort A was performed using Kaplan-Meier curves to compare the OS of patients in the T group (B) or A+T (C) group, which were further subgrouped according to the median score into low-risk (< median score) and high-risk (≥ median score). Figure S7. Tabulated summary of the hazard ratios for each molecular and clinical features calculated for the patients treated with EGFR-TKI with bevacizumab (A+T) using Cox multivariable analysis for progression-free survival (A) and overall survival (B).