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In this paper, we design a metasurface terahertz perfect absorber with multi-frequency selectivity and good incident angle compatibility using a double-squared open ring structure. Simulations reveal five selective absorption peaks located at 0-1.2 THz with absorption 94.50% at 0.366 THz, 99.99% at 0.507 THz, 95.65% at 0.836 THz, 98.80% at 0.996 THz, and 86.70% at 1.101 THz, caused by two resonant absorptions within the fundamental unit (fundamental mode of resonance absorption, FRA) and its adjacent unit (supermodel of resonance absorption, SRA) in the structure, respectively, when the electric field of the electromagnetic wave is incident perpendicular to the opening. The strong frequency selectivity at 0.836 THz with a

Objective.To evaluate the ultrasound multiparametric assessment of the impact of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) on fetal cardiac function and growth and development. Methods. In this prospective study, 98 cases of HDP treated in our institution were recruited into a study group, and 100 pregnant women with healthy singleton pregnancies were included in a control group. All eligible patients were also assigned to either study group A (HDP fetuses with growth restriction) or study group B (HDP fetuses with normal growth). Fetal echocardiography was performed on all eligible participants to obtain hemodynamic and cardiac function parameters for the evaluation of fetal growth and development, and the impact of HDP on fetal heart function and growth and development was analyzed. Results. HDP fetuses were associated with smaller head circumference, biparietal diameter, femoral length, and abdominal circumference versus healthy fetuses. The study group had a higher resistance index (RI) and pulsatility index (PI) of umbilical artery (UA), ductus venous (DV), pulmonary vein (PV), and lower RI and PI of aortic isthmus (AoI) than the control group. The study group showed higher left and right ventricular isovolumic contraction time (IVCT), isovolumic relaxation time (IVRT), and myocardial performance index (MPI) values and lower mitral and tricuspid E wave and E/A values than the control group. The systolic blood pressure was positively correlated with PI, RI of UA, DV, and PV, and left and right ventricular IVCT, IVRT, and MPI and negatively correlated with PI and RI of AoI and mitral and tricuspid E wave and E/A values of HDP fetuses. The peak systolic/diastolic flow rate (S/D), PI, and RI of umbilical blood flow in study group A were higher than those in study group B. Umbilical blood flow S/D showed the highest AUC and specificity for predicting fetal growth restriction, and PI had the highest sensitivity for predicting fetal growth restriction. Conclusion. HDP compromises fetal cardiac function and growth, and ultrasound multiparametric assessment provides accurate detection of fetal cardiac function and hemodynamics changes. The patient’s condition can be monitored through the assessment of ultrasound parameters of fetal growth and development.

BackgroundUnderstanding the occurrence and severity of child injuries is the cornerstone of preventing child injuries. Currently, there is no standardized child injury surveillance dataset in China.MethodsMultistage consultation by a panel of Chinese experts in child injury to determine items to include in the core dataset (CDS) was performed. The experts participated in two rounds of the modified Delphi method comprising a consultation questionnaire investigation (Round 1) and a face-to-face panel discussion (Round 2). Final consensus was established based on the opinions of the experts regarding the modified CDS information collection items. Enthusiasm and authority exhibited by the experts were evaluated by the response rate and using the expert authority coefficient, respectively.ResultsThe expert panel included 16 experts in Round 1 and 15 experts in Round 2. The experts during both rounds had a high degree of authority, with an average authority coefficient of 0.86. The enthusiasm of the experts was 94.12%, and the proportion of suggestions reached 81.25% in Round 1 of the modified Delphi method. The draft CDS evaluated in Round 1 included 24 items, and expert panelists could submit recommendations to add items. Based on findings in Round 1, four additional items, including nationality, residence, type of family residence, and primary caregiver were added to the draft of the CDS for Round 2. After Round 2, consensus was reached on 32 items arranged into four domains—general demographic information, injury characteristics, clinical diagnosis and treatment, and injury outcome—to include in the final CDS.ConclusionThe development of a child injury surveillance CDS could contribute to standardized data collection, collation, and analysis. The CDS developed here could be used to identify actionable characteristics of child injury to assist health policymakers in designing evidence-based injury prevention interventions.

Ectoine is a natural amino acid derivative and one of the most widely used compatible solutes produced by Halomonas species that affects both cellular growth and osmotic equilibrium. The positive effects of UV mutagenesis on both biomass and ectoine content production in ectoine-producing strains have yet to be reported. In this study, the wild-type H. campaniensis strain XH26 (CCTCCM2019776) was subjected to UV-mutagenesis to increase ectoine production. Eight rounds of mutagenesis were used to generate mutated XH26 strains with different UV-irradiation exposure times. Ectoine extract concentrations were then evaluated among all strains using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis, alongside whole genome sequencing with the PacBio RS II platform and comparison of the wild type strain XH26 and the mutant strain G8-52 genomes. The mutant strain G8-52 (CCTCCM2019777) exhibited the highest cell growth rate and ectoine yields among mutated strains in comparison with strain XH26. Further, ectoine levels in the aforementioned strain significantly increased to 1.51 ± 0.01 g L− 1 (0.65 g g− 1 of cell dry weight), representing a two-fold increase compared to wild-type cells (0.51 ± 0.01 g L− 1) when grown in culture medium for ectoine accumulation (CMEA). Concomitantly, electron microscopy revealed that mutated strain G8-52 cells were obviously shorter than wild-type strain XH26 cells. Moreover, strain G8-52 produced a relatively stable ectoine yield (1.50 g L− 1) after 40 days of continuous subculture. Comparative genomics analysis suggested that strain XH26 harbored 24 mutations, including 10 nucleotide insertions, 10 nucleotide deletions, and unique single nucleotide polymorphisms. Notably, the genes orf00723 and orf02403 (lipA) of the wild type strain mutated to davT and gabD in strain G8-52 that encoded for 4-aminobutyrate-2-oxoglutarate transaminase and NAD-dependent succinate-semialdehyde dehydrogenase, respectively. Consequently, these genes may be involved in increased ectoine yields. These results suggest that continuous multiple rounds of UV-mutation represents a successful strategy for increasing ectoine production, and that the mutant strain G8-52 is suitable for large-scale fermentation applications.

Here, we report the whole genome of a novel halophilic Halomonas species strain XH36 with high ectoine production potential. The genome was 3,818,310 bp in size with a GC content of 51.97%, and contained 3533 genes, 61 tRNAs and 18 rRNAs. The phylogenetic analysis using the 16s rRNA genes, the UBCGs and the TYGS database indicated that XH36 belongs to a novel Halomonas species, which we named as Halomonas qaidamensis. Osmoadaptation related genes including Na(+) and K(+) transport and compatible solute accumulation were both present in the XH36 genome, the latter of which mainly contained ectoine, 5-hydroxyectoine and betaine. HPLC validation studies showed that H. qaidamensis XH36 accumulated ectoine to cope with salt stress, and the content of ectoine could be as high as 315 mg/g CDW under 3 mol/l NaCl. Our results show that XH36 is a new promising industrial strain for ectoine production, and the genomic analysis will guide us to better understand its salt-induced osmoadaptation mechanisms, and provide theoretical references for future application research of ectoine.

The 3D MSM structured Si detector achieves a high-performance broadband response of 1550 nm and 0.22–0.33 THz at room temperature based on the bolometric effect and EIW mechanisms beyond the cut-off wavelength of Si.

A novel kind of CF2H-containing dispiro[benzo[b]thiophene-oxindole-pyrrolidine] has been achieved via an organocatalyzed 1,3-dipole reaction.

Complete complementary sequence (CCS) design has become an important topic in recent years due to its theoretically ideal zero sidelobe performance. However, the main obstacle for the widespread use of the CCS is its sensitivity to the Doppler shift. In this letter, a method for constructing the CCS with the desired matrix-valued ambiguity functions under a peak-to-average-power ratio (PAR) and an energy constraint is proposed. A gradient-based nonlinear iterative algorithm is used to solve the constrained sequence design problem. Numerical results are presented to show that, compared with the state-of-the-art methods, the proposed method can produce CCS with better correlation properties and the Doppler tolerance. Finally, indoor experiments are conducted to verify the superior performance of the designed CCS, and a peak sidelobe level under -45 dB is realized on the hardware system.

Cadmium (Cd) is a persistent and toxic heavy metal widely present in the environment and can cause damage to a variety of human organs and systems. Based on published studies from 2000 to 2021, this study established a comprehensive database of Cd concentrations in Chinese foods, and described the spatial and temporal trends of Cd concentrations in foods across China. The average Cd concentration in total foodstuff was 0.078 mg/kg, with edible fungi and algae having the highest concentrations, followed by aquatic foods, nuts, cereals, beans, vegetables, meats, eggs, milk, and fruits. The average dietary Cd exposure of Chinese residents was 34.3 μg/day (varying from 22.6 to 54.5 μg/day across regions), with the highest exposures in South China. Cereals (46.2%), vegetables (19.2%), and aquatic food (18.4%) contributed the most to the dietary Cd exposure of Chinese residents. According to Monte Carlo simulations of the risk assessment of dietary exposure to Cd, approximately, 15.4% of the Chinese population exceeded the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives health-based guidance value. The hazard quotient and excess lifetime cancer risk indices of dietary Cd exposure indicated that the Chinese residents would not be at significant non-cancer and carcinogenic risk. In summary, this study obtained comprehensive and reliable results on Cd concentrations in Chinese food and dietary Cd exposure risk of Chinese residents, which can provide a data base for the development of dietary Cd exposure limits in China.

Lavanduquinocin (LDQ) is a potent neuroprotective carbazole alkaloid from

Boson exhibits neutral charge property and negligible contribution to electrical transport. Therefore, it is very significant to enhance the electrical performance of optoelectronics. However, it is difficult to utilize the bosonic behaviors in photodetection due to its fermionic quantum statistical distribution, which is quite different to that of bosons. Herein, we realize a high sensitivity of photodetection via fermion to boson condensation in layered titanium selenide (TiSe2) under rapid and slow cooling procedures. The bosonic condensation, revealed by creative combination of the temperature-dependent electromagnetic induced well (EIW) effect and the resistance of TiSe2, obviously not only decreases the fermionic carrier concentration but also improves its mobility. The noise equivalent power NEP in terahertz waveband based on EIW effect is 35.45 fW·Hz-1/2, 4.53 fW·Hz-1/2 and 2.25 fW·Hz-1/2 at 0.252 THz, 0.14 THz and 0.027 THz, respectively, which shows one order of magnitude enhancement attributed to the excellent performance increase of electrical transport after bosonic condensation. Moreover, the detectivity D* in visible and infrared bands based on photoconductive effect has threefold improvement compared to no bosonic condensation. Our results provide an approach to realize low noise transport from fermion to boson condensation and pave a way for extremely sensitive photodetection in broad bands.

Since the widespread adoption of edge computing and IoT technology, Control-Flow Hijacking (CFH) attacks targeting programs in resource-constrained embedded devices have become prevalent. While the Coarse-Grained Control-Flow integrity Attestation (CGCFA) lacks accuracy for the CFH attacks detection, the Fine-Grained Control-Flow integrity Attestation (FGCFA) detect the attacks more accurately but with high overheads, which can be a big burden (e.g., to industrial control system with strict performance requirements). In this paper, we propose a NSGA-II (Nondominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II) based Granularity-Adaptive Control-Flow Attestation (GACFA) for the programs in embedded devices. Specifically, we propose a Granularity-Adaptive Control-Flow representation model to reduce the complexity of programs’ control-flow graph and propose NSGA-II-based granularity-adaptive strategy generation algorithm to balance the security and performance requirements. Besides, runtime protection for the GACFA at the program end with SGX is proposed to protect the integrity and confidentiality of control-flow measurement data. The experiments show that our work can find out the best-so-far control-flow granularity with stability and provide secure program attestation for the verifier. In addition, the security/performance benefit of adopting our proposal over CGCFA is 13.7, 25.1, and 43.0 times that of adopting FGCFA over ours in different threat scenarios.

Dehydratase (DH), a domain located at polyketide synthase (PKS) modules, commonly catalyzes the dehydration of β-hydroxy to an α,β-unsaturated acyl intermediate. As a unique bifunctional dehydratase, AmbDH3 (the DH domain of module 3 of the ambruticin PKS) is verified to be responsible for both dehydration and the following pyran-forming cyclization. Besides, in vitro studies showed that its catalytic efficiency varies with different chiral substrates. However, the detailed molecular mechanism of AmbDH3 remains unclear. In this work, the structural rationale for the substrate specificity (2R/2S- and 6R/6S-substrates) in AmbDH3 was elucidated and the complete reaction pathways including dehydration and cyclization were presented. Both MD simulations and binding free energy calculations indicated AmbDH3 had a stronger preference for 2R-substrates (2R6R-2, 2R6S-3) than 2S-substrates (2S6R-1), and residue H51 and G61 around the catalytic pocket were emphasized by forming stable hydrogen bonds with 2R-substrates. In addition, AmbDH3's mild tolerance at C6 was explained by comparison of substrate conformation and hydrogen bond network in 6S- and 6R-substrate systems. The QM/MM results supported a consecutive one-base dehydration and cyclization mechanism for 2R6S-3 substrate with the energy barrier of 25.2 kcal mol-1 and 24.5 kcal mol-1, respectively. Our computational results uncover the substrate recognition and catalytic process of the first bifunctional dehydratase-cyclase AmbDH3, which will shed light on the application of multifunctional DH domains in PKSs for diverse natural product analogs and benefit the chemoenzymatic synthesis of stereoselective pyran-containing products.

ObjectiveTo investigate the characteristics of renal pathological grades in Henoch–Schönlein purpura nephritis (HSPN) children with mild to moderate proteinuria and the correlation between pathological grade and severity of proteinuria among this population.MethodsHSPN children who were presented with mild (150 mg Results(1) 72 HSPN children including 46 boys and 26 girls were included, with a mean age of onset of 9.01 ± 2.65 years old. The majority of these patients (62.5%) had a disease course between 1 week to 1 month. 51 patients presented with mild proteinuria and 21 patients with moderate proteinuria. (2) Renal biopsy results showed that ISKDC Grade IIIa were both predominant in mild proteinuria group (25, 49%) and moderate proteinuria group (11, 52.4%). 32 patients had grade II (44.4%), 2 had grade IIIb (2.8%), 1 had grade IV (1.4%), and 1 had grade VI (1.4%). There was no correlation between age, disease course and renal pathological grade (p > 0.05). (3) In patients with mild proteinuria (n = 51), 27 (52.9%) HSPN children had a pathological grade ≥ grade III. In patients with moderate proteinuria (n = 21), 13 (61.9%) HSPN children had grade ≥ III. There was no significant difference in the proportion of renal pathological grade between the 2 groups (p > 0.05). (4) There was no significant correlation between glomerular C3 deposits or immunoglobulin deposit types and renal pathological grade (p = 0.776 and p = 0.056 respectively).ConclusionIn HSPN children with mild to moderate proteinuria, longer disease course or heavier urinary protein level is not completely parallel with higher renal pathological grade. ISKDC grade IIIa is the most common pathological grade. Clinicians should pay great attention to the renal injury in patients with mild to moderate proteinuria.

Purpose: The study aimed to report a rare case of a patient with Alport syndrome, which was manifested as unilateral non-infectious uveitis after bilateral cataract surgery.Methods: A case report.Results: A 2-year-old boy was diagnosed with unilateral panuveitis based on the clinical and multimodal imaging findings. Intraocular fluid samples for metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) and microbial culture were negative. However, urine tests found proteinuria and microscopic hematuria. Pathologic findings of the kidney revealed a thickened membrane, and a diagnosis of Alport syndrome was considered. Gene analysis found deletions in exon 1 of COL4A5 and exons 1 and 2 of COL4A6. The uveitis resolved gradually, following the administration of oral steroids.Conclusion: Uveitis may be an ocular manifestation of Alport syndrome.

Accurate measurement of the complex permittivity of plant is essential for remote-sensing applications. The complex dielectric properties of moso bamboo ( Phyllostachys heterocycla ) were measured from 0.5 to 18 GHz based on the coaxial transmission/reflection method. A high-precision numerically controlled machine was used to process the bamboo samples. Based on the measured data, the complex permittivity can be better modeled as a second-order polynomial about the moisture content than the traditional exponential function. The real parts of the relative dielectric permittivity decrease with the increase in the frequency, while the imaginary parts decline first and then rise. The dielectric permittivity of the longitudinal direction is larger than that of the cross-sectional direction due to the anisotropic fibrocyte structure of moso bamboo.

To reduce the pattern measurement cost of the polarimetric-phased array antenna (PPAA), this letter proposes a novel method to reconstruct the array pattern using that of beam positions fewer than the elements. The method is based on the induced reconstruction matrix, thereby estimating the pattern of any beam position within the scanning range. Our approach has low reconstruction error for both copolarization and cross-polarization patterns while being valid for the beam positions in a wide range. A 6 × 6 dual-polarized microstrip patch array is designed to verify the effectiveness of the method. The near-field measurement of a 4 × 4 microstrip patch array confirms that our method could not only effectively reconstruct an approximate pattern meeting the actual requirements, but also proportionally reduce the pattern measurement cost of the PPAA.

Proteins and translationally modified proteins like phosphoproteins have essential regulatory roles in tumorigenesis. This study attempts to elucidate the dysregulated proteins driving colorectal cancer (CRC). To explore the differential proteins, we performed iTRAQ labeling proteomics and TMT labeling phosphoproteomics analysis of CRC tissues and adjacent non-cancerous tissues. The functions of quantified proteins were analyzed using Gene Ontology (GO), the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), and Subcellular localization analysis. Depending on the results, we identified 330 differential proteins and 82 phosphoproteins in CRC. GO and KEGG analyses demonstrated that protein changes were primarily associated with regulating biological and metabolic processes through binding to other molecules. Co-expression relationships between proteomic and phosphoproteomic analysis revealed that TMC5, SMC4, SLBP, VSIG2, and NDRG2 were significantly dysregulated differential proteins. Additionally, based on the predicted co-expression proteins, we identified that the stem-loop binding protein (SLBP) was up-regulated in CRC cells and promoted the proliferation and migration of CRC. This study reports an integrated proteomic and phosphoproteomic analysis of CRC to discern the functional impact of protein alterations and provides a candidate diagnostic biomarker or therapeutic target for CRC. SIGNIFICANCE: Combining one or more high-throughput omics technologies with bioinformatics to analyze biological samples and explore the links between biomolecules and their functions can provide more comprehensive and multi-level insights for disease mechanism research. Proteomics, phosphoproteomics, metabolomics and their combined analysis play an important role in the auxiliary diagnosis, the discovery of biomarkers and novel therapeutic targets for colorectal cancer. In this integrated proteomic and phosphoproteomic analysis, we identified proteins and phosphoproteins in colorectal cancer tissue and analyzed potential mechanisms contributing to progression in colorectal cancer. The results of this study provide a foundation to focus future experiments on the contribution of altered protein and phosphorylation patterns to prevention and treatment of colorectal cancer.

Widely adopted blockchain-based fair data exchange protocol have the following problems in multi-party scenario: 1) in multi-buyer v.s. one seller scenario, the negotiation for data availability verification between the buyer and seller reduces transaction throughput greatly. Besides, malicious buyers can launch DoS attacks to prevent the seller from serving others by requiring lots of data availability proofs. 2) in multi-seller v.s. one buyer scenario where the buyer pays for the merged data of all sellers, current protocols treat this as multiple independent transactions, resulting in excessive on-chain costs. Moreover, current protocols neglect that data ownership establishment on-chain may be tampered since the registration info is in plaintext and submitted through the Internet. This paper proposes multi-party non-interactive atomic fair data exchange protocol based on blockchain to solve the above problems, providing data confidentiality, transaction atomic fairness, data intellectual property right protection, and high efficiency. Specifically, we propose transparent zero knowledge proof-based data verification guaranteeing the data confidentiality and transaction fairness. With the proof computed once and used everywhere, transaction throughput is improved greatly and DoS attacks initiated by malicious buyers is prevented. Moreover, the agent representing multi-seller is introduced to reduce on-chain costs. Furthermore, two-stage on-chain ownership registration is proposed to prevent eavesdroppers from impersonating the owner. Finally, we implement a POC (Proof of Concept) of our protocol as the BADE (Blockchain-based multi-party non-interactive Atomic fair Data Exchange). Experiments show that, our throughput within 12 hours is 50 times that of existing solution\cite{ref10}. And in multi-seller scenario, the on-chain gas costs of our protocol is reduced by 19.9\%-30.5\% in different seller/buyer ratios. The fairness of data exchange is also ensured by extra gas costs of dishonest party.

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Steroid-resistant nephrotic syndrome (SRNS) is one of the major causes of end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) in children and young adults. For approximately 30% of children with SRNS results from a genetic cause. In this study, genotype-phenotype correlations in a cohort of 283 pediatric patients with SRNS or early-onset NS (nephrotic syndrome presenting within the first year of life) from 23 major pediatric nephrology centers in China were analyzed. All patients were performed with next-generation sequencing and Sanger sequencing. The overall mutation detection rate was 37.5% (106 of 283 patients). WT1 was the most frequently detected mutation, followed by NPHS1, NPHS2, and ADCK4, and these four major causative genes (WT1, NPHS1, NPHS2, and ADCK4) account for 73.6% of patients with monogenic SRNS. Thirteen of 106 individuals (12.3%) carried mutations in ADCK4 that function within the coenzyme Q10 biosynthesis pathway. In the higher frequently ADCK4-related SRNS, two mutations, c.737G>A (p.S246N) and c.748G>C (p.D250H), were the most prevalent. Our study provides not only definitive diagnosis but also facilitate available targeted treatment for SRNS, and prediction of prognosis and renal outcome. Our indications for genetic testing are patients with FSGS, initial SRNS, cases of positive family history or those with extra-renal manifestations.

Difluoromethyl groups possess specific steric and electronic properties due to their slightly acidic C–H bonds and the natural characteristics of fluorine atoms, which allow them to act as chemically inert hydrogen-bond donors and then as surrogates in a wide assortment of important molecular recognition processes. As a result, the construction of chiral carbon centres bearing difluoromethyl groups is not only valuable for the synthesis of various fluorine-containing compounds, but also useful for the modulation of the properties of organic compounds in drug design. The scope of this review is to summarize routine asymmetric synthetic methods which enable the effective and selective introduction of difluoromethyl groups into the desired compounds.

Natural rubber (NR) was reinforced in situ with nano CaCO3 that had been modified with methacrylic acid (MAA)(M-CaCO3). The structures and properties of the resulting composites were studied using attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy(ATR-FTIR), scanning electron microscopy(SEM), and Mooney viscometer and mechanical tests. The results show that when NR is physically blended with CaCO3 and MAA, (Ca2+)-(−OOC) is formed in situ. When dicumyl peroxide (DCP) is added, the (Ca2+)-(−OOC) self-homopolymerizes, and during the curing process poly-(Ca2+)-(−OOC) is formed and grafts to the molecular chains of the NR via carbon-carbon double bonds. The NR/M-CaCO3 composites formed have close interfacial interaction and are well dispersed. Compared with the NR composites reinforced with unmodified nano CaCO3, the NR/M-CaCO3 composites have very different cure characteristics, rheological behavior, and mechanical properties, and these characteristics and properties show a significant relationship with the loading of M-CaCO3.

ObjectivesIntrauterine malnutrition has a long-term effect on respiratory and lung function. However, few studies have explored the association between early-life exposure to famine with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in adulthood. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the association of early-life exposure to the Chinese famine of 1959–1962 with asthma and COPD later in life.MethodsThis national population-based study included 6,771 participants from the baseline survey of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) who were born around the time of the Chinese famine. The famine exposure groups were determined according to the participants' birth year as non-exposed (1964–1967), fetal-exposed (1959–1962), preschool-exposed (1954–1957), and school-age exposed (1950–1953). Information about the demographic characteristics, self-reported doctor-diagnosed asthma and COPD, behavior and lifestyles, and indoor pollution were collected using validated questionnaires. In addition, peak expiratory flow (PEF) was measured to assess pulmonary function. Multivariable logistic regression and generalized linear mixed models were performed to explore the risk of adult asthma and COPD, PEF changes during various famine exposure periods compared with the non-exposed group. Stratified and sensitivity analyses were conducted to examine the modification and robustness of the association.ResultsThe prevalence of doctor-diagnosed asthma and COPD was 2.8 and 8.1%, respectively. Compared with the non-exposed group, the risk was significantly higher in the fetal-exposed group for asthma [adjusted odds ratio, (aOR) = 1.87, 95% confidence interval (CI):1.14–3.07] and the school-age exposed group [1.30 (1.00–1.69)] for COPD after controlling for confounders. Furthermore, we observed that fetal exposure to famine was significantly associated with a decrement of PEF in adulthood [β = −11.38 (−22.75 to −0.02)] compared with the non-exposed group. Stratified analyses showed that the association of asthma was stronger in men, who resided in severely famine-affected areas, smoked, and used solid fuels for cooking. No clearly consistent association was observed for subsequent COPD.ConclusionsOur results suggest that fetal exposure to the Chinese famine is significantly associated with the increased risk of asthma in adulthood. Future prospective studies are warranted to examine the association and mechanisms.

In this work, SnO

In modern societies, the air quality in vehicles has received extensive attention because a lot of time is spent within the indoor air compartment of vehicles. In order to further understand the level of air quality under different conditions in new vehicles, the vehicle interior air quality (VIAQ) in new vehicles with three different brands was investigated under static and driving conditions, respectively. Air sampling and analysis are conducted under the requirement of HJ/T 400-2007. Static vehicle tests demonstrate that with the increasing of vehicle interior air temperature in sunshine conditions, a higher concentration and different types of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) release from the interior materials than that in the environment test chamber, including alkanes, alcohols, ketones, benzenes, alkenes, aldehydes, esters and naphthalene. Driving vehicle tests demonstrate that the concentration of VOCs and total VOCs (TVOC) inside vehicles exposed to high temperatures will be reduced to the same level as that in the environment test chamber after a period of driving. The air pollutants mainly include alkanes and aromatic hydrocarbons. However, the change trends of VOCs and TVOC vary under different conditions according to various kinds of factors, such as vehicle model, driving speed, air exchange rate, temperature, and types of substance with different boiling points inside the vehicles.

Ectoine is an amino acid derivative and an important natural product in halophilic microorganisms. It plays an important role in protecting cells and stabilizing biological macromolecules, and can be widely used in biomedical fields such as drug preparation adjuvants, organ transplantation and preservation, skin wound repair and cosmetics. Due to the medical value and commercial market demand of ectoine, this article summarized the recent advances in the microbial production of ectoine, including the mutation and breeding of hyper-producing strains, construction of genetically and metabolically engineered strains, optimization of fermentation processes, and extraction and purification processes. The application of multi-omics technologies and computational biology to develop an ectoine producing cell factory was prospected, with the aim to provide a reference for ectoine overproduction.

Halophilic bacteria such as the genus Halomonas are promising candidates in diverse industrial, agricultural and biomedical applications. Here, we successfully isolated a halophilic Halomonas alkaliphila strain XH26 from Xiaochaidan Salt Lake, and studied its osmoadaptation strategies using transcriptome and ectoine analysis. Divergent mechanisms were involved in osmoadaptation at different salinities in H. alkaliphila XH26. At moderate salinity (6% NaCl), increased transcriptions of ABC transporters related to iron (III), phosphate, phosphonate, monosaccharide and oligosaccharide import were observed. At high salinity (15% NaCl), transcriptions of flagellum assembly and cell motility were significantly inhibited. The transcriptional levels of ABC transporter genes related to iron (III) and iron

Multi-view clustering, which explores complementarity and consistency among multiple distinct feature sets to boost clustering performance, is becoming more and more useful in many real-world applications. Traditional approaches usually map multiple views to a unified embedding, in which some weighted mechanisms are utilized to measure the importance of each view. The embedding, serving as a clustering friendly representation, is then sent to extra clustering algorithms. However, a unified embedding cannot cover both complementarity and consistency among views and the weighted scheme measuring the importance of each view as a whole ignores the differences of features in each view. Moreover, because of lacking in proper grouping structure constraint imposed on the unified embedding, it will lead to just multi-view representation learned, which is not clustering friendly. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-view clustering method to alleviate the above problems. By dividing the embedding of a view into unified and view-specific vectors explicitly, complementarity and consistency can be reflected. Besides, an adversarial learning process is developed to force the above embeddings to be non-trivial. Then a fusion strategy is automatically learned, which will adaptively adjust weights for all the features in each view. Finally, a Kullback-Liebler (KL) divergence based objective is developed to constrain the fused embedding for clustering friendly representation learning and to conduct clustering. Extensive experiments have been conducted on various datasets, performing better than the state-of-the-art clustering approaches.

This article addresses the polarization scattering matrix (PSM) estimation problem of a point-like moving target. For the alternating measurement scheme, the radial displacement of the target would generate an additional phase error between two columns of the measured target PSM. Due to the decline in the performance of the traditional pulse integration (PI) method when the target is moving, the pulse compensation (PC) is discussed. Then, methods of measurement selection (MS), measurement selection with three polarizations (MS-3-Pol), and measurement selection with two nonorthogonal polarizations (MS-2-Pol) are proposed. By the estimated Doppler frequency, PC can be applied for the uniform moving target. The performance of PC degrades significantly when the target’s velocity is inaccurate or unknown. However, methods of MS, MS-3-Pol, and MS-2-Pol can still be used. As the three methods do not require any a priori information about the target motion, they are suitable for situations when the target is in nonuniform motion. The MS method is sensitive to the structure of the measured PSM. Due to the three polarizations (3-Pol) scheme, MS-3-Pol is robust even for a target with small cross-polar scattering parameters. Furthermore, by the assumption of reciprocity, the 3-Pol can be simplified into a new scheme with two nonorthogonal polarization. Then, MS-2-Pol is able to estimate the moving target PSM, even if the cross-polar echoes of the target are close to zero. Compared with PI and PC, the performance of the proposed methods is irrelevant to the state of the target motion. Furthermore, when the signal-to-noise ratio is greater than 10 dB, the polarized correlation coefficients of MS-3-Pol and MS-2-Pol can be above 0.95. All the conclusions presented in this article are validated by the experimental results.

Atherosclerosis is the pathological basis of most cardiovascular diseases. Reverse cholesterol transport (RCT) is a main mechanism of cholesterol homeostasis and involves the direct transport of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesteryl ester by selective cholesterol uptake. Hepatic scavenger receptor class B member 1 (SR-BI) overexpression can effectively promote RCT and reduce atherosclerosis. SR-BI may be an important target for prevention or treatment of atherosclerotic disease. In our study, we inserted human SR-BI mRNA 3' untranslated region (3'UTR) downstream of the luciferase reporter gene, to establish a high-throughput screening model based on stably transfected HepG2 cells and to screen small-molecule compounds that can significantly enhance the mRNA stability of the SR-BI gene. Through multiple screenings of 25 755 compounds, the top five active compounds that have similar structures were obtained, with a positive rate of 0.19%. The five positive compounds could enhance the SR-BI expression and uptake of DiI-HDL in the hepatocyte HepG2. E238B-63 could also effectively extend the half-life of SR-BI mRNA and enhance the SR-BI mRNA and protein level and the uptake of DiI-HDL in hepatocytes in a time-dependent and dose-dependent manner. The structure-activity relationship analysis showed that the structure N-(3-hydroxy-2-pyridyl) carboxamide is possibly the key pharmacophore of the active compound, providing reference for acquiring candidate compounds with better activity. The positive small molecular compounds obtained in this study might become new drug candidates or lead compounds for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases and contribute to the further study of the posttranscriptional regulation mechanism of the SR-BI gene.