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The role of GLIS2 in fibrotic diseases is controversial. GLIS2 deficiency has been reported to contribute to renal fibrosis in mice and has also been reported to prevent high lipid-induced mice hepatic fibrosis.Hepatic fibrosis in mice was induced by CCl4. Hematoxylin and eosin, Masson, Sirius red, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay were used to detect and evaluate the stage of hepatic fibrosis in humans or mice. A study model of tetracycline-responsive GLIS2 knockout hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) was constructed and named GLIS2-SG-Dox. By adding transforming growth factor β1 to stimulate the transdifferentiation of HSCs, the activation status of HSCs was comprehensively evaluated from the aspects of cell proliferation, migration, and the amount of lipid droplets. In mechanistic studies, dual-luciferase, coimmunoprecipitation, yeast two-hybrid system, chromatin immunoprecipitation, and DNA pulldown were performed to investigate or to prove the molecular mechanism that GLIS2 was involved in regulating liver fibrosis. Throughout the study, real-time fluorescence polymerase chain reaction (quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction) was used to detect the relative abundance of messenger RNA expression of each target gene, Western blot was used to detect the relative abundance of protein, and immunohistochemistry or immunofluorescence was used to observe the subcellular localization of the target protein.The expression of GLIS2 was significantly decreased in human liver fibrosis tissues and CCL4-induced mouse liver fibrosis tissues, especially in HSCs. In the GLIS2-SG-Dox cells, the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPAR-γ) pathway was inactive and cells underwent myofibroblastic transdifferentiation transformation. Overexpression of GLIS2 can increase the acetylation level of PPAR-γ and alleviate CCL4-induced liver fibrosis in mice. Mechanically, relatively abundant GLIS2 and histone deacetylase 3 (HDAC3) form chelates to avoid the deacetylation of PPAR-γ, so as to maintain the activation level of PPAR-γ signaling pathway in HSCs cells. In this process, HDAC3 acts as a medium for GLIS2 to influence PPAR-γ signaling. Nonetheless, when GLIS2 is absent, HDAC3 deacetylates PPAR-γ, activates HSCs, and leads to liver fibrosis.GLIS2 deficiency promotes myofibroblastic transdifferentiation and activation of HSCs. Mechanically, GLIS2 regulates the acetylation of PPAR-γ by competitively binding to HDAC3 in HSCs.

Improving the interfacial thermal conductance (ITC) is very important for heat dissipation in microelectronic and optoelectronic devices.

Globally, livestock grazing is an important management factor influencing soil degradation, soil health and carbon (C) stocks of grassland ecosystems. However, the effects of grassland types, grazing intensity and grazing duration on C stocks are unclear across large geographic scales. To provide a more comprehensive assessment of how grazing drives ecosystem C stocks in grasslands, we compiled and analyzed data from 306 studies featuring four grassland types across China: desert steppes, typical steppes, meadow steppes and alpine steppes. Light grazing was the best management practice for desert steppes (−1) and typical steppes (3 to 4 sheep ha−1), whereas medium grazing pressure was optimal for meadow steppes (5 to 6 sheep ha−1) and alpine steppes (7 to 8 sheep ha−1) leading to the highest ecosystem C stocks under grazing. Plant biomass (desert steppes) and soil C stocks (meadow steppes) increased under light or medium grazing, confirming the ‘intermediate disturbance hypothesis’. Heavy grazing decreased all C stocks regardless of grassland ecosystem types, approximately 1.4 Mg ha−1 per year for the whole ecosystem. The regrowth and regeneration of grasslands in response to grazing intensity (i.e., grazing optimization) depended on grassland types and grazing duration. In conclusion, grassland grazing is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, proper management (light or medium grazing) can maintain and even increase C stocks above- and belowground, and increase the harvested livestock products from grasslands. On the other hand, human-induced overgrazing can lead to rapid degradation of vegetation and soils, resulting in significant carbon loss and requiring long-term recovery. Grazing regimes (i.e., intensity and duration applied) must consider specific grassland characteristics to ensure stable productivity rates and optimal impacts on ecosystem C stocks. Graphical Abstract

The colonization and expansion of plants on land is considered one of the most profound ecological revolutions, yet the precise timing remains controversial. Because land vegetation can enhance weathering intensity and affect terrigenous input to the ocean, changes in terrestrial plant biomass with distinct negative Δ 199 Hg and Δ 200 Hg signatures may overwrite the positive Hg isotope signatures commonly found in marine sediments. By investigating secular Hg isotopic variations in the Paleozoic marine sediments from South China and peripheral paleocontinents, we highlight distinct negative excursions in both Δ 199 Hg and Δ 200 Hg at Stage level starting in the early Silurian and again in the Carboniferous. These geochemical signatures were driven by increased terrestrial contribution of Hg due to the rapid expansion of vascular plants. These excursions broadly coincide with rising atmospheric oxygen concentrations and global cooling. Therefore, vascular plants were widely distributed on land during the Ordovician-Silurian transition (~444 million years), long before the earliest reported vascular plant fossil, Cooksonia (~430 million years).

Gray matter volume and thickness reductions have been reported in patients with spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3), whereas cortical gyrification alterations of this disease remain largely unexplored. Using local gyrification index (LGI) and fractional anisotropy (FA) from structural and diffusion MRI data, this study investigated the cortical gyrification alterations as well as their relationship with white matter microstructural abnormalities in patients with SCA3 (n = 61) compared with healthy controls (n = 69). We found widespread reductions in cortical LGI and white matter FA in patients with SCA3 and that changes in these 2 features were also coupled. In the patient group, the LGI of the left middle frontal gyrus, bilateral insula, and superior temporal gyrus was negatively correlated with the severity of depressive symptoms, and the FA of a cluster in the left cerebellum was negatively correlated with the Scale for the Assessment and Rating of Ataxia scores. Our findings suggest that the gyrification abnormalities observed in this study may account for the clinical heterogeneity in SCA3 and are likely to be mediated by the underlying white matter microstructural abnormalities of this disease.

ObjectiveTo explore the feasibility of a minimally invasive spine surgery strategy for congenital cervicothoracic scoliosis.Materials and methodsFrom April 2022 to August 2022 in the hospital, three patients with torticollis and/or shoulder imbalance due to a cervicothoracic hemivertebra were performed on by hemivertebra resection and short fusion of the adjacent vertebrae. Resection was operated by a posterior approach. The average age of three patients of surgery was 8 years 2 months and the mean follow-up period was 6 months. Radiographic assessments and cosmetic outcomes were documented on changes in measurements of segmental scoliosis, neck tilt, head shift, shoulder balance, and sagittal profiles.ResultsThe mean operating time of the procedure was 283 min and the instrumentation density was 1.5 pedicle screws per vertebra. The mean estimated blood loss was 257 ml, which was 20% less than the data described in various literatures. The mean segmental Cobb angle at the cervicothoracic deformity was 35.9° before surgery, 20.7° after surgery, and 16.3° at the latest follow-up, with a correction rate of 54.59%. Neck tilt decreased from 17.3° before surgery to 14.3° after surgery, and 11.7° at the latest follow-up, with a correction rate of 32.37%. T1 tilt improved from 16.5° before surgery to 12.9° after surgery, and 7.6° at the latest follow-up, with a correction rate of 53.94%. The clavicle angle improved from 4.8° before surgery to 3.1° after surgery, and 1.9° at the latest follow-up, with a correction rate of 60.42%. Head shift improved from 21.4 mm before surgery to 9.2 mm after surgery, and 12.3 mm at the latest follow-up, with a correction rate of 42.52%. The correction of torticollis and shoulder asymmetry was achieved in all cases.ConclusionsMinimally invasive spine surgery strategy may be an option for congenital cervicothoracic scoliosis. A good correction of cervicothoracic dissymmetry is achieved, accompanied by fewer pedicle screws and less blood loss. By deliberate operation in young kids, surgical intervention for severe compensatory curves can be prevented.

Neutralizing antibody (NtAb) levels are key indicators in the development and evaluation of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccines. Establishing a unified and reliable WHO International Standard (IS) for NtAb is crucial for the calibration and harmonization of NtAb detection assays. National and other WHO secondary standards are key links in the transfer of IS to working standards but are often overlooked. The Chinese National Standard (NS) and WHO IS were developed by China and WHO in September and December 2020, respectively, the application of which prompted and coordinated sero-detection of vaccine and therapy globally. Currently, a second-generation Chinese NS is urgently required owing to the depletion of stocks and need for calibration to the WHO IS. The Chinese National Institutes for Food and Drug Control (NIFDC) developed two candidate NSs (samples 33 and 66–99) traced to the IS according to the WHO manual for the establishment of national secondary standards through a collaborative study of nine experienced labs. Either NS candidate can reduce the systematic error among different laboratories and the difference between the live virus neutralization (Neut) and pseudovirus neutralization (PsN) methods, ensuring the accuracy and comparability of NtAb test results among multiple labs and methods, especially for samples 66–99. At present, samples 66–99 have been approved as the second-generation NS, which is the first NS calibrated tracing to the IS with 580 (460–740) International Units (IU)/mL and 580 (520–640) IU/mL by Neut and PsN, respectively. The use of standards improves the reliability and comparability of NtAb detection, ensuring the continuity of the use of the IS unitage, which effectively promotes the development and application of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in China.

The $η^{(\prime)}$-mesons in the quark-flavor basis are mixtures of two mesonic states $|η_{q}\rangle=|\bar u u+\bar d d\rangle/\sqrt 2$ and $|η_{s}\rangle=|\bar s s\rangle$. In the previous work, we have made a detailed study on the $η_{s}$ leading-twist distribution amplitude. As a sequential work, in the present paper, we fix the $η_q$ leading-twist distribution amplitude by using the light-cone harmonic oscillator model for its wave function and by using the QCD sum rules within the QCD background field to calculate its moments. The input parameters of $η_q$ leading-twist distribution amplitude $ϕ_{2;η_q}$ at an initial scale $μ_0\sim 1$ GeV are then fixed by using those moments. The sum rules for the $0_{\rm th}$-order moment can also be used to fix the magnitude of $η_q$ decay constant, which gives $f_{η_q}=0.141\pm0.005$ GeV. As an application of the present derived $ϕ_{2;η_q}$, we calculate the transition form factors $B(D)^+ \toη^{(\prime)}$ by using the QCD light-cone sum rules up to twist-4 accuracy and by including the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the twist-2 part, and then fix the related CKM matrix element and the decay width for the semi-leptonic decays $B(D)^+ \toη^{(\prime)}\ell^+ ν_\ell$., 14 pages, 7 figures, Comments welcome

Liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry(LC-MS/MS) was used to analyze microbiota-derived metabolites involved in gut-brain communication.

Dialogue response selection aims to select an appropriate response from several candidates based on a given user and system utterance history. Recent studies have been improving the accuracy of dialogue response selection through post-training, mostly relying on naive masked language modeling methods. However, the recently developed generative methods have shown promising text representation capabilities in IR community, which could potentially lead to better dialogue semantics modeling. Thus, in this paper, we propose Dial-MAE (Dialogue Contextual Masking Auto-encoder), a straightforward yet effective post-training technique tailored for dialogue response selection. Dial-MAE uses an asymmetric encoder-decoder architecture that learns to better compress the semantics of the dialogue into dialogue-dense vectors. The process of Dial-MAE involves a deep encoder creating a dialogue embedding with the masked dialogue context, followed by a shallow decoder that uses this embedding along with the highly masked response to restore the original response. Our experiments have demonstrated that Dial-MAE is highly effective, achieving state-of-the-art performance on two commonly evaluated benchmarks.

We present a novel method for precisely determining the QCD running coupling from $R_{\rm uds}$ measurements in electron-positron annihilation. When calculating the fixed-order perturbative QCD (pQCD) approximant of $R_{\rm uds}$, its effective coupling constant $α_s(Q_*^2)$ is determined by using the principle of maximum conformality, a systematic scale-setting method for gauge theories, whose resultant pQCD series satisfies all the requirements of renormalization group. Contribution due to the uncalculated higher-order (UHO) terms is estimated by using the Bayesian analysis. Using $R_{\rm uds}$ data measured by the KEDR detector at $22$ centre-of-mass energies between $1.84$ GeV and $3.72$ GeV, we obtain $α_s(M_Z^2)=0.1227^{+0.0117}_{-0.0132}({\rm exp.})\pm0.0016({\rm the.})$, where the theoretical uncertainty (the.) is negligible compared to the experimental one (exp.). Numerical analyses confirm that the new method for calculating $R_{\rm uds}$ removes conventional renormalization scale ambiguity, and the residual scale dependence due to the UHO-terms will also be highly suppressed due to a more convergent pQCD series. This leads to a significant stabilization of the perturbative series, and a significant reduction of theoretical uncertainty. It thus provides a reliable theoretical basis for precise determination of the QCD running coupling from $R_{\rm uds}$ measurements at future Tau-Charm Facility. It can also be applied for the precise determination of the hadronic contributions to muon $g-2$ and QED coupling $α(M_Z^2)$ within the tau-charm energy range., 22 pages, 8 figures. To be published in JHEP

The Himalaya–Hengduan Mountain (HHM) region consists of two global biodiversity hotspots characterized by a high degree of plant endemism. However, little is known about how these endemic species are formed and maintained in relation to the regional geomorphology of the past or current time. Thus, this study investigated the genetic structure of the herbaceous genus Acanthocalyx (Caprifoliaceae) endemic to the HHM to demonstrate if major geographic or ecological barriers in the HHM region have influenced its phylogeographic patterns. Our analyses revealed distinct genetic structures within A. alba and A. nepalensis and indicated that A. delavayi may have recently evolved from isolated peripheral populations of A. nepalensis. In particular, we not only confirmed a well-known genetic structure of alpine plants between the Himalayas and the Hengduan Mountains but also discovered a notable floristic boundary (bounded by 30° to 31°N latitude) within the Hengduan Mountains from A. alba. This study provides new insights into the dispersal and intraspecific genetic variation of Acanthocalyx and highlights the importance of geomorphological features for the diversification of HHM alpine flora.

Thin-film composite forward osmosis (TFC-FO) membranes show the potential to be applied in water treatment applications. However, the TFC-FO membrane performance was limited by internal concentration polarization (ICP) and membrane fouling. In this study, a well-functioning TFC-FO membrane was produced by embedding biogenic silver nanoparticles (BioAg) into the polysulfone (PSf) substrate of a FO membrane. Effects of BioAg on membrane structure, filtration performance, antifouling, and antibacterial properties of the as-prepared FO membranes were examined. Results indicated that BioAg-modified FO membranes achieved improved surface hydrophilicity, higher porosity, and mitigated ICP, resulting in 2.5–4.4 times higher water flux than the pristine FO membranes. The BioAg-modified FO membrane also showed significantly improved antifouling and antibacterial ability. Moreover, the release velocity of silver nanoparticles in FO membranes was significantly slowed down by the construction of the polyamide layer. After 30 days of immersion in an aqueous solution, 96.5% of silver was retained in the optimized BioAg-modified FO membrane. The study offers an effective approach to simultaneously mitigate ICP and enhance the antifouling property of TFC-FO membranes through substrate modification.

The rapid development of synthesis and fabrication techniques has opened up a research upsurge in two-dimensional (2D) material heterostructures, which have received extensive attention due to their superior physical and chemical properties. Currently, thermoelectric energy conversion is an effective means to deal with the energy crisis and increasingly serious environmental pollution. Therefore, an in-depth understanding of thermoelectric transport properties in 2D heterostructures is crucial for the development of micro-nano energy devices. In this review, the recent progress of 2D heterostructures for thermoelectric applications is summarized in detail. Firstly, we systematically introduce diverse theoretical simulations and experimental measurements of the thermoelectric properties of 2D heterostructures. Then, the thermoelectric applications and performance regulation of several common 2D materials, as well as in-plane heterostructures and van der Waals heterostructures, are also discussed. Finally, the challenges of improving the thermoelectric performance of 2D heterostructures materials are summarized, and related prospects are described.

The thermal transport properties of NiNb2O6 as anode material for lithium-ion battery and the effect of strain were studied by machine learning interatomic potential combined with Boltzmann transport equation. The results show that the lattice thermal conductivity of NiNb2O6 along the three crystal directions [100], [010], and [001] are 0.947 W⋅m−1⋅K−1, 0.727 W⋅m−1⋅K−1, and 0.465 W⋅m−1⋅K−1, respectively, indicating the anisotropy of the lattice thermal conductivity of NiNb2O6. This anisotropy of the lattice thermal conductivity stems from the significant difference of phonon group velocities in different crystal directions of NiNb2O6. When the tensile strain is applied along the [001] crystal direction, the lattice thermal conductivity in all three directions decreases. However, when the compressive strain is applied, the lattice thermal conductivity in the [100] and [010] crystal directions is increased, while the lattice thermal conductivity in the [001] crystal direction is abnormally reduced due to the significant inhibition of compressive strain on the group velocity. These indicate that the anisotropy of thermal conductivity of NiNb2O6 can be enhanced by the compressive strain, and reduced by the tensile strain.

In this study, iron was deposited to titanium dioxide nanotube arrays (TNAs) by impregnation method to enhance its photocatalytic ability. The as-synthesized iron-modified TNAs (Fe-TNAs) was employed in a photoelectrochemical (PEC) system to degrade trichloroethylene (TCE). Results of AFE-SEM analysis showed that the iron nanoparticles (NPs) were successfully attached evenly to the nozzle of Fe-TNAs. Results of XRD analysis confirmed the findings of EDS and XPS, indicating the success of iron modification. The absorption wavelength of Fe-TNAs-27 mL red-shifts to 543 nm which corresponds to the band gap of 2.54 eV after iron modification. Mott-Schottky analysis yielded a donor density of 7.21 × 10

AimsBased on resting-state functional MRI (fMRI), we preliminarily explored brain alterations in asymptomatic patients with vulnerable carotid plaques, but carotid stenosis was < 50%.MethodsA total of 58 asymptomatic patients with vulnerable carotid plaques (stenosis ResultsBoth ReHo and DC values on the left superior occipital gyrus (SOG.L) of the asymptomatic vulnerable carotid plaque group reduced, regardless of plaque location (left, right, or bilateral). Functional connections weakened between the SOG.L and right lingual gyrus (LING.R)/right inferior occipital gyrus (IOG.R), right middle frontal gyrus (MFG.R)/orbital part of superior frontal gyrus (ORBsup.R)/orbital part of middle frontal gyrus (ORBmid.R), left precentral gyrus (PreCG.L)/postcentral gyrus (PoCG.L), left supplementary motor area (SMA.L), right paracentral lobule (PCL.R), left precuneus (PCUN.L), and right postcentral gyrus (PoCG.R)/PCL.R. In ReHo-altered brain regions, ReHo values were positively correlated with Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAMD) scores, and the setting region of abnormal ReHo as seed points, voxel-wise FC between the SOG.L and PreCG.L was negatively correlated with CRP.ConclusionsCerebral alterations of neuronal synchronization, activity, and connectivity properties in the asymptomatic vulnerable carotid plaque group were independent of the laterality of vulnerable carotid plaques. Significant relation between ReHo values on the SOG.L and HAMD indicated that even when there were neither clinical symptoms nor lesions on routine MRI, brain function might have changed already at an early stage of carotid atherosclerosis. Inflammation might play a role in linking vulnerable carotid plaques and changes of resting-state functional connectivity.

Very recently, a stable structure of layered transition metal phosphides MP2 (M = Ni, Pd and Pt) has been discovered. This study reveals that these three materials are semiconductor materials with a direct band gap (0.5–0.85 eV) and also have very high hole and electron mobility. The electron mobility of the PtP2 monolayer is surprisingly as high as 14.4 × 104 cm2 V−1 s−1. Based on their excellent electronic properties, herein we predict the thermoelectric (TE) performance of MP2 monolayers by using first-principles and Boltzmann transport equation. The calculation results show that the single-layer NiP2, PdP2 and PtP2 have low lattice thermal conductivity 7.6 W m−1 K−1, 9.0 W m−1 K−1 and 17.8 W m−1 K−1 at room temperature, respectively, which is mainly caused by the small phonon group velocity, low relaxation time, high Gruneisen parameter and large phonon scattering phase space. Because of the ultra-high carrier mobility and the highly degenerate band structure, MP2 monolayers have large Seebeck coefficient, and the value of PdP2 reaches up to 283 μV K−1 at 300 K. The good phonon and electrical transport properties give the MP2 monolayers a high TE figure of merit (ZT). The maximum ZT of NiP2 and PdP2 monolayers at 500 K is 1.52 (p-type) and 1.95 (n-type), respectively, and the corresponding concentration of maximum ZT MP2 monolayers is around 1011 cm−2. Overall, our work indicates that the MP2 monolayers are the promising candidates in TE applications.

A new species of genus Rorippa, R. hengduanshanensis, from the Hengduan Mountains, is described herein. Comparing the floral structure and overall fruit morphology of R. hengduanshanensis with similar taxa (e.g., R. benghalensis, R. dubia, and R. indica) revealed a series of morphological differences, both qualitative and quantitative. R. hengduanshanensis differs from R. benghalensis in the ebracteate racemes; from R. dubia in the flattened silique, the presence of four petals and the ploidy level (2n=6x=48); and from R. indica in the uniseriate seeds. Phylogenetic analyses using three plastid markers (psbC-trnS, trnG-trnM, and trnL) further revealed clear interspecific divergences that can distinguish R. hengduanshanensis from its morphologically related taxa.

Summary Objective Low back pain (LBP) is the predominant cause of disc degeneration in patients, which brings serious social problems and economic burdens. Increasing evidence has indicated that intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) is one of the most common causes triggering LBP. Accumulating evidence has shown that circRNAs are involved in the pathological process of IDD. Nevertheless, the circRNA-mediated IDD pathogenesis still remains unknown. This study explored the potential mechanism and functions of circ-FAM169A in NPCs. Methods Bioinformatics analysis was conducted to identify key circRNA, miRNA and mRNA and predict their potential role in IDD. Dual-luciferase reporter assay, western blot, qRT-PCR, and fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) were used to demonstrate the interaction among circ-FAM169A, miR-583 and Sox9 in NPCs. Results Herein, we identified circ-FAM169A, which was dramatically up-regulated in degenerative nucleus pulposus (NP) tissues and negatively correlated with expression levels of miR-583. We constructed a circ-FAM169A-miR-583-mRNAs co-expression network and predicted circ-FAM169A-miR-583 pathway predominantly involved in extracellular matrix metabolism and cell apoptosis etc. FISH experiments confirmed circ-FAM169A and miR-583 co-existence in the cytoplasm of NPCs. Luciferase reporter assay illustrated that circ-FAM169A was directly bound to miR-583 and Sox9 was the directly target gene of miR-583. Additionally, miR-583 negatively regulated Sox9 mRNA and protein levels in NPCs. Conclusion Findings of this study indicated that circ-FAM169A-miR-583 pathway may play a significant role in the regulation of IDD, which will provide novel diagnostic biomarkers and develop effective treatment strategy of IDD diseases. The translational potential of this article This study suggested that circ-FAM169A-miR-583 pathway may regulate NPCs apoptosis and extracellular matrix synthesis and catabolism by targeting Sox9. It provides a novel therapeutic target and strategy for IVDD diseases.

The article researches the pedagogical potential of verbal music actualized in music classes. The authors focus their attention on the history of the question, suggesting to supplement the classification presented by S.P. Scher with such a type of interaction between words and music as words spoken during music (melo-recitation). While examining verbal music in the context of the art of music, the authors concentrate on Camille Saint-Saens’ composition “The Swan” from the suite “The Carnival of Animals,” suggesting not only variants of verbalization of the instrumental music itself by the example of Lev Druskin’s poem “The Swan Struggles with Human Anguish…”, Dmitri Bykov’s “The Swan and Archpriest Andrei Tkachev’s prose, but also the an attempt of verbalizing the plastic intonating of Saint-Saens’ piece realized in the work of Anna Pavlova, Galina Ulanova and Maya Plisetskaya. In addition, the authors bring into scholarly use the verbalization of music presented in Evgeny Vodolazkin’s novel “Brisbane.” Proposing a set of assignments aimed at the actualization of verbal music as a unique opportunity of re-expressing musical content into the spoken word presenting itself as a unit of speech of the studying youth, the authors turn to Russian scholarly literature, as well as to that of other countries. According to the authors, the inclusion of the phenomenon of verbal music into lessons provides a maximal problematization of the studied material, helps maintain the students’ interest in their music studies by stimulating children’s creativity, and also sets up the resultative qualities of communication of all the participants of the pedagogical process, enabling the musicians in their realization of the immutability of the following fact: music can be and must be talked about!

We carried out a systematic theoretical study on how spin affects the phononic properties of CrI3 monolayers. We find that the frequencies of two infrared-active (IR) modes are significantly influenced by the magnetic configuration. Thus an IR spectrum may be applied to identify the magnetic order by utilizing the spin–lattice correlation. The thermal expansion coefficients are 2.21, 3.35 and −5.58 × 10−6 K−1 for ferromagnetic (FM), antiferromagnetic (AFM) and paramagnetic (PM) phases at 30 K, because of the competition between the modes with negative and positive Gruneisen constants. Furthermore, the lattice thermal conductivity is also sensitive to the magnetic phase, which is attributed to the spin-dependent lattice anharmonicity. Our results provide fundamental insights into the spin–lattice coupling and clarify the potential of a spintronic monolayer as a thermal switching device for active heat flow control.

Sensing performance is crucial for real-world applications of the embedded piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate (PZT) sensors in concrete structures. Based on the electromechanical impedances (EMIs) obtained numerically and experimentally from the embedded PZT sensors, effects of installation orientation and interfacial roughness were investigated on their sensitivity and reliability for quantitative concrete stress monitoring. The numerical results suggest a better sensitivity in the embedded 90° PZT sensors, with planar normal perpendicular to the loading direction, where the conductance amplitude variation is 6.5 times of that of the 0° PZT sensors, with normal parallel to load direction. Further, the improved reliability of the PZT sensors with rough interfaces is observed experimentally, which makes them robust for concrete stress monitoring over a wider sensing range from 0 to 20 MPa. Based on the static analyses, it is noted that the sensing performance of the embedded sensor is significantly affected by the interfacial stiffness degradation induced by the enhanced strain surrounding the sensor. These findings suggest that delaying the interfacial stiffness degradation, i.e., with proper installation orientation and interfacial treatment, could improve the sensing performance of the embedded sensors for quantitative concrete stress monitoring.

The ability to tune the interfacial thermal conductance of GaN/AlN heterojunction nanowires (NWs) with a core/shell structure is shown using molecular dynamics and non-equilibrium Green’s functions method. In particular, an increase in the shell thickness leads to a significant improvement of interfacial thermal conductance of GaN/AlN core/shell NWs. At room temperature (300 K), the interfacial thermal conductance of NWs with specific core/shell ratio can reach 0.608 nW K−1, which is about twice that of GaN/AlN heterojunction NWs due to the weak phonon scattering and phonon localization. Moreover, changing the core/shell type enables one to vary interfacial thermal conductance relative to that of GaN/AlN heterojunction NWs. The results of the study provide an important guidance for solving the thermal management problems of GaN-based devices.

Tensile failure (spalling or slabbing) often occurs on the sidewall of deep tunnel, which is closely related to the coupled stress state of deep rock mass under high pre-static load and dynamic disturbance. To reveal the mechanism of rock tensile failure caused by this coupled stress mode, the Brazilian disc tests were carried on red sandstone under high pre-static load induced by dynamic disturbance. Based on the pure static tensile fracture load of red sandstone specimen, two static load levels (80% and 90% of the pure static tensile fracture load) were selected as the initial high pre-static loading state, and then the dynamic disturbance load was applied until the rock specimen was destroyed. The dynamic disturbance loading mode adopted a sinusoidal wave (sine-wave) load, and the loading wave amplitude was 20% and 10% of the pure static tensile fracture load, respectively. The dynamic disturbance frequencies were set to 1, 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 Hz. The results show that the tensile failure strength and peak displacement of red sandstone specimens under coupled load actions are lower than those under pure static tensile load, and both parameters decrease significantly with the increase of dynamic disturbance frequency. With the increase of dynamic disturbance frequency, the decrease range of tensile strength of red sandstone increased from 3.3% to 9.4% when the pre-static load level is 80%. While when the pre-static load level is 90%, the decrease range will increase from 7.4% to 11.6%. This weakening effect of tensile strength shows that the deep surrounding rock is more likely to fail under the coupled load actions of pre-static load and dynamic disturbance. In this tensile failure mechanism of the deep surrounding rock, the stress environment of deep sidewall rock determines that the failure mode of rock is a tensile failure, the pre-static load level dominates the tensile failure strength of surrounding rock, and dynamic disturbance promotes the strength-weakening effect and affects the weakening range.

Jin Ke, Jie Wang, Xing Wu, Yuehua Yan Department of Dermatology, Shanghai Pudong Hospital, Fudan University Pudong Medical Center, Shanghai, 201399, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Yuehua Yan, Department of Dermatology, Shanghai Pudong Hospital, Fudan University Pudong Medical Center, No. 2800 Gongwei Road, Pudong New District, Shanghai, 201399, People’s Republic of China, Tel +86-18918181952, Email yanyuehuash@163.comIntroduction: Autophagy is an important process for maintaining intracellular homeostasis and is deregulated in ultraviolet B (UVB)-induced skin injury. Salidroside (SAL) is an active ingredient extracted from Rhodiola rosea, which is a herbal medicine that has shown protection against ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Here, we investigated the functions and mechanisms of SAL on UVB-induced skin cell oxidative damage and autophagy.Methods: Human immortalized keratinocyte cell line HaCaT was used as a cell model of UV injury. HaCaT cells were exposed to UVB irradiation and then incubated with SAL to investigate cell viability, lactate dehydrogenase (LSD) in culture media, intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) level, oxidative stress, autophagy, and regulatory effects on SIRT1 protein.Results: SAL pretreatment (25, 50 and 100 μM) increased cell viability and inhibited LDH release in UVB-challenged HaCaT cells. SAL (100 μM) significantly reduced intracellular ROS level and suppressed oxidative stress, with increased MDA content and increased SOD activity. In addition, SAL pretreatment enhanced autophagy in UVB-irradiated HaCaT cells, increased protein expressions of Beclin-1 and ATG7, and decreased protein expression of P62. We also found that pretreatment with SAL increased the SIRT1 protein in irradiated HaCaT cells. SAL protected UVB-induced damage in a dependent manner on autophagy and SIRT1, as SAL-induced increase in viability was significantly attenuated by specific autophagy inhibitor Wortmannin (1 μM) or SIRT1 inhibitor EX-527 (100 nM).Discussion: The present study results speculate that SAL suppresses UVB-induced injury and autophagy by enhancing SIRT1 expression.Keywords: keratinocytes, salidroside, ultraviolet radiation, oxidative stress, autophagy, SIRT1

Piezoelectric effect has proved itself to be a promising energy conversion mechanism that can convert mechanical energy into electricity. Here, we propose an indirect thermoelectric conversion mechanism based on a combination of the thermophoresis and piezoelectric effects. We first analyze this thermally driven mechanism using a simplified theoretical model and then numerically analyze a molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of a hybrid system constructed of a single-layer MoS2 nanoribbon and a concentric carbon nanotube. We show that the thermophoresis-induced piezoelectric output voltage can reach 3.5 V, and this value can be tuned using a temperature difference. The output voltage obtained using this mechanism is significantly higher than that obtained by heating piezoelectric materials directly. Given the generality of the thermophoresis effect in Van der Waals structures, this mechanism has potential applications in the conversion of thermal energy into electrical energy at the nanoscale level.

Two new fossil taxa of the ash tree, namely F. zlatkoi Meng-Xiao Wu et J.Huang sp. nov. and Fraxinus cf. honshuensis Tanai et Onoe were reported from the early Oligocene of the Lühe flora, Yunnan Province, Southwest China. The fruit traits were used to assign the proposed species to the genus Fraxinus. These traits were a flattened and symmetrical shape, a single seed located in the base of the fruit and veins parallel to the long axis of each fruit. The new species have low length to width ratio and an obovate seed. Our fossils represent the oldest records of Fraxinus in the low latitude region of the Northern Hemisphere. These fossils provide evidence that Section Dipetalae and Section Ornus had appeared in Southwest China by the early Oligocene.

Tu, Wen-Chao, Ding, Lin-Fen, Peng, Li-Yan, Song, Liu-Dong, Wu, Xing-De, Zhao, Qin-Shi (2022): Cassane diterpenoids from the seeds of Caesalpinia bonduc and their nitric oxide production and α-glucosidase inhibitory activities. Phytochemistry (112973) 193: 112973, DOI: 10.1016/j.phytochem.2021.112973, URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.phytochem.2021.112973

Polyploids contribute substantially to plant evolution and biodiversity; however, the mechanisms by which they succeed are still unclear. According to the

Recently, methods have been developed to improve the performance of dense passage retrieval by using context-supervised pre-training. These methods simply consider two passages from the same document to be relevant, without taking into account the possibility of weakly correlated pairs. Thus, this paper proposes query-as-context pre-training, a simple yet effective pre-training technique to alleviate the issue. Query-as-context pre-training assumes that the query derived from a passage is more likely to be relevant to that passage and forms a passage-query pair. These passage-query pairs are then used in contrastive or generative context-supervised pre-training. The pre-trained models are evaluated on large-scale passage retrieval benchmarks and out-of-domain zero-shot benchmarks. Experimental results show that query-as-context pre-training brings considerable gains and meanwhile speeds up training, demonstrating its effectiveness and efficiency. Our code will be available at https://github.com/caskcsg/ir/tree/main/cotmae-qc ., Comment: Work in progress

The best limit on the electron electric dipole moment (eEDM) comes from the ACME II experiment [Nature \textbf{562} (2018), 355-360] which probes physics beyond the Standard Model at energy scales well above 1 TeV. ACME II measured the eEDM by monitoring electron spin precession in a cold beam of the metastable H$^3Δ_1$ state of thorium monoxide (ThO) molecules, with an observation time $τ\approx 1$ ms for each molecule. We report here a new measurement of the lifetime of the ThO (H$^3Δ_1$) state, $τ_H = 4.2\pm 0.5$ ms. Using an apparatus within which $τ\approx τ_H$ will enable a substantial reduction in uncertainty of an eEDM measurement., 6 pages, 5 figures

Additional file 1: Figure S1. The UAP1L1 knockdown cell model was constructed in vitro. Figure S2. The results of diseases and function enrichment and the filtrate of downstream molecules of UAP1L1. Figure S3. The UAP1L1 overexpression, CDCA8 knockdown, and UAP1L1 overexpression as well as CDCA8 knockdown cell models were constructed in vitro. Table S1. The information of antibodies used in western blot and immunohistochemical staining (IHC). Table S2. Target sequences and shRNA sequences used for gene knockdown. Table S3. The primer sequences of genes used for qRT-PCR

Cancer survival prediction is important for developing personalized treatments and inducing disease-causing mechanisms. Multi-omics data integration is attracting widespread interest in cancer research for providing information for understanding cancer progression at multiple genetic levels. Many works, however, are limited because of the high dimensionality and heterogeneity of multi-omics data. In this paper, we propose a novel method to integrate multi-omics data for cancer survival prediction, called Stacked AutoEncoder-based Survival Prediction Neural Network (SAEsurv-net). In the cancer survival prediction for TCGA cases, SAEsurv-net addresses the curse of dimensionality with a two-stage dimensionality reduction strategy and handles multi-omics heterogeneity with a stacked autoencoder model. The two-stage dimensionality reduction strategy achieves a balance between computation complexity and information exploiting. The stacked autoencoder model removes most heterogeneities such as data's type and size in the first group of autoencoders, and integrates multiple omics data in the second autoencoder. The experiments show that SAEsurv-net outperforms models based on a single type of data as well as other state-of-the-art methods.

In this paper, we make a detailed study on the hadronic production of the $Ξ_{bc}$ baryon at a fixed target experiment at the LHC (After@LHC). In estimating the production cross sections, the $(g+g)$, $(g+c)$ and $(g+b)$ production mechanisms are considered. For the initial heavy quarks, in addition to the extrinsic component, we also consider the intrinsic component. It is found that the $(g+c)$ and $(g+b)$ production mechanisms give sizable contributions to the $Ξ_{bc}$ production, and the $(g+b)$ mechanism dominates the production. The results show that there are about $3.40\times10^5$ $Ξ_{bc}$ events can be produced per year at After@LHC if the integrated luminosity of After@LHC can be up to $2\,{\rm fb}^{-1}$ per year. Moreover, the intrinsic heavy quarks can have significant impact on the production, which inversely makes the intrinsic component be possibly tested at the After@LHC., 13 pages, 18 figures

Additional file 3. The information of ZF2001 and RDINA.

In this paper, we calculate the ratio of Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix elements, $|V_{ub}|/|V_{cb}|$, based on the semileptonic decay $B_s^0\to K^-μ^+ν_μ$. Its key component, the $B_s\to K$ transition form factor $f^{B_s\to K}_+(q^2)$, is studied within the QCD light-cone sum rules approach by using a chiral correlator. The derived $f^{B_s\to K}_+(q^2)$ is dominated by the leading-twist part, and to improve its precision, we construct a new model for the kaon leading-twist distribution amplitude $ϕ_{2;K}(x,μ)$, whose parameters are fixed by using the least squares method with the help of the moments calculated by using the QCD sum rules within the background field theory. The first four moments at the initial scale $μ_0 = 1~{\rm GeV}$ are, $\langle ξ^1\rangle _{2;K} = -0.0438^{+0.0053}_{-0.0075}$, $\langle ξ^2\rangle _{2;K} = 0.262 \pm 0.010$, $\langle ξ^3\rangle _{2;K} = -0.0210^{+0.0024}_{-0.0035}$ and $\langle ξ^4\rangle _{2;K} = 0.132 \pm 0.006$, respectively. And their corresponding Gegenbauer moments are, $a^{2;K}_1 = -0.0731^{+0.0089}_{-0.0124}$, $a^{2;K}_2 = 0.182^{+0.029}_{-0.030}$, $a^{2;K}_3 = -0.0114^{+0.0008}_{-0.0016}$ and $a^{2;K}_4 = 0.041^{-0.003}_{+0.005}$, respectively. At the large recoil region, we obtain $f^{B_s\to K} _+ (0) = 0.270^{+0.022}_{-0.030}$. By extrapolating $f^{B_s\to K}_+(q^2)$ to all the physical allowable region, we obtain a $|V_{ub}|$-independent decay width for the semileptonic decay $B_s^0\to K^-μ^+ν_μ$, $5.626^{+1.271}_{-0.864} \times 10^{-12}\ {\rm GeV}$, which then leads to $|V_{ub}|/|V_{cb}| = 0.072\pm0.005$., 34 pages, 11 figures, comments welcome