Search

Isthmin-1 (ISM1) was initially thought to be a brain secretory factor, but with the development of technical means of research and the refinement of animal models, numerous studies have shown that this molecule is expressed in multiple tissues, suggesting that it may have multiple biological functions. As a factor that regulates growth and development, ISM1 is expressed in different animals with spatial and temporal variability and can coordinate the normal development of multiple organs. Recent studies have found that under the dependence of a non-insulin pathway, ISM1 can lower blood glucose, inhibit insulin-regulated lipid synthesis, promote protein synthesis, and affect the body's glucolipid and protein metabolism. In addition, ISM1 plays an important role in cancer development by promoting apoptosis and anti-angiogenesis, and by regulating multiple inflammatory pathways to influence the body's immune response. The purpose of this paper is to summarize relevant research results from recent years and to describe the key features of the biological functions of ISM1. We aimed to provide a theoretical basis for the study of ISM1 related diseases, and potential therapeutic strategies. Graphical abstract The main biological functions of ISM1. Current studies on the biological functions of ISM1 focus on growth and development, metabolism, and anticancer treatment. During embryonic development, ISM1 is dynamically expressed in the zebrafish, African clawed frog, chick, mouse, and human, is associated with craniofacial malformations, abnormal heart localization, and hematopoietic dysfunction. ISM1 plays an important role in regulating glucose metabolism, lipid metabolism, and protein metabolism in the body. ISM1 affects cancer development by regulating cellular autophagy, angiogenesis, and the immune microenvironment.

BackgroundPrimary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL) is a type of extranodal non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Although there are widely used prognostic scores, their accuracy and practicality are insufficient. Thus, a novel prognostic prediction model was developed for risk stratification of PCNSL patients in our research.MethodsWe retrospectively collected 122 patients with PCNSL from two medical centers in China from January 2010 to June 2022. Among them, 72 patients were used as the development cohort to construct a new model, and 50 patients were used for the validation. Then, by using univariate and multivariate Cox regression analsis and Lasso analysis, the Xijing model was developed and composed of four variables, including lesion number, β2-microglobulin (β2-MG), systemic inflammation response index (SIRI) and Karnofsky performance status (KPS). Finally, we evaluated the Xijing model through internal and external validation.ResultsCompared with the original prognostic scores, the Xijing model has an overall improvement in predicting the prognosis of PCNSL according to the time-dependent area under the curve (AUC), Harrell’s concordance index (C-index), decision curve analysis (DCA), integrated discrimination improvement (IDI) and continuous net reclassification index (NRI). For overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS), the Xijing model can divide PCNSL patients into three groups, and shows more accurate stratification ability. In addition, the Xijing model can still stratify and predict prognosis similarly better in the elderly with PCNSL and subgroups received high-dose methotrexate (HD-MTX) or Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitors (BTKi). Finally, external validation confirmed the above results.ConclusionsIntegrating four prognostic factors, including imaging findings, tumor burden, systemic inflammation response index, and comprehensive physical condition, we provided a novel prognostic model for PCNSL based on real-world data and evaluated its predictive capacity.

The frequent intrusion of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into civil aviation airports poses a severe challenge to the safety management of the airport. The subsequent flight delays and even the closure of the runway have seriously affected the normal operation of the airport. To measure the collision risk of the Unmanned-Manned (U-M) encounter (intruding UAV to manned aircraft), a collision risk assessment platform is developed in this paper to predict the U-M encounter collision risk of the airport restricted area. The designed platform can be used to dynamically generate 3D trajectories of the U-M encounter, and to assess the collision risk with the changing of the relative distance in the probabilistic curve. Further, to predict the collision risk of the airport restricted area, the collision risk heatmap representation is then introduced. A case study of Changi Airport, Singapore is employed to generate the runway collision risk heatmap based on the designed collision risk assessment platform. The results demonstrate how the collision risk of the separate runway and the integrated runway distributes. Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) National Research Foundation (NRF) Submitted/Accepted version This project is supported by the National Research Foundation, Singapore, and the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore, under the Aviation Transformation Programme.

Semantic face image manipulation has received increasing attention in recent years. StyleGAN-based approaches to face morphing are among the leading techniques; however, they often suffer from noticeable blurring and artifacts as a result of the uniform attention in the latent feature space. In this paper, we propose to develop a transformer-based alternative to face morphing and demonstrate its superiority to StyleGAN-based methods. Our contributions are threefold. First, inspired by GANformer, we introduce a bipartite structure to exploit long-range interactions in face images for iterative propagation of information from latent variables to salient facial features. Special loss functions are designed to support the optimization of face morphing. Second, we extend the study of transformer-based face morphing to demorphing by presenting an effective defense strategy with access to a reference image using the same generator of MorphGANFormer. Such demorphing is conceptually similar to unmixing of hyperspectral images but operates in the latent (instead of pixel) space. Third, for the first time, we address a fundamental issue of vulnerability-detectability trade-off for face morphing studies. It is argued that neither doppelganger norrandom pair selection is optimal, and a Lagrangian multiplier-based approach should be used to achieve an improved trade-off between recognition vulnerability and attack detectability., Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures

The aim of this umbrella review was to 1) get a systematic, comprehensive overview of the existing evidence regarding the associations between factors and risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) incidence; and 2) to assess the strength and validity of the evidence on these association.

Peer relationships during childhood are strong predictors of developmental outcomes later in adolescence (e.g., internalizing and externalizing problems, academic achievement, health risk behaviors) and in adulthood (e.g., employment, income, wellbeing) (Prinstein & Giletta, 2020). For example, in families where one parent has an anxiety disorder, children with poorer peer relationships are more likely to develop an anxiety disorder. Shyness and unsociability in childhood are characteristics of social withdrawal and have been found to have a negative impact on peer relationships (Eggum et al., 2022; Chen and Bruce Santo, 2016). In addition to these, parental factors such as parent-child relationships and interparental conflict may influence the quality of children’s peer relationships (Engels et al., 2002; Stocker and Youngblade,1999; Lindsey et al., 2009). The current study aims to understand processes involved in the development of peer relationships in a sample of youth with a parent with an anxiety disorder. We will examine: Whether shyness and unsociability at baseline would be associated with decreased quality of peer relationship 6 years later. Whether perceived interparental conflict and parent-child relationship would moderate the relations of shyness and unsociability on quality of peer relationship 6 years later.

MOBIO is a bi-modal database that was captured almost exclusively on mobile phones. It aims to improve research into deploying biometric techniques to mobile devices. Research has been shown that face and speaker recognition can be performed in a mobile environment. Facial landmark localization aims at finding the coordinates of a set of pre-defined key points for 2D face images. A facial landmark usually has specific semantic meaning, e.g. nose tip or eye centre, which provides rich geometric information for other face analysis tasks such as face recognition, emotion estimation and 3D face reconstruction. Pretty much facial landmark detection methods adopt still face databases, such as 300W, AFW, AFLW, or COFW, for evaluation, but seldomly use mobile data. Our work is first to perform facial landmark detection evaluation on the mobile still data, i.e., face images from MOBIO database. About 20,600 face images have been extracted from this audio-visual database and manually labeled with 22 landmarks as the groundtruth. Several state-of-the-art facial landmark detection methods are adopted to evaluate their performance on these data. The result shows that the data from MOBIO database is pretty challenging. This database can be a new challenging one for facial landmark detection evaluation., Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures

Unconstrained face recognition is an active research area among computer vision and biometric researchers for many years now. Still the problem of face recognition in low quality photos has not been well-studied so far. In this paper, we explore the face recognition performance on low quality photos, and we try to improve the accuracy in dealing with low quality face images. We assemble a large database with low quality photos, and examine the performance of face recognition algorithms for three different quality sets. Using state-of-the-art facial image enhancement approaches, we explore the face recognition performance for the enhanced face images. To perform this without experimental bias, we have developed a new protocol for recognition with low quality face photos and validate the performance experimentally. Our designed protocol for face recognition with low quality face images can be useful to other researchers. Moreover, experiment results show some of the challenging aspects of this problem., Comment: 8 pages, 11 figures

How can we teach a computer to recognize 10,000 different actions? Deep learning has evolved from supervised and unsupervised to self-supervised approaches. In this paper, we present a new contrastive learning-based framework for decision tree-based classification of actions, including human-human interactions (HHI) and human-object interactions (HOI). The key idea is to translate the original multi-class action recognition into a series of binary classification tasks on a pre-constructed decision tree. Under the new framework of contrastive learning, we present the design of an interaction adjacent matrix (IAM) with skeleton graphs as the backbone for modeling various action-related attributes such as periodicity and symmetry. Through the construction of various pretext tasks, we obtain a series of binary classification nodes on the decision tree that can be combined to support higher-level recognition tasks. Experimental justification for the potential of our approach in real-world applications ranges from interaction recognition to symmetry detection. In particular, we have demonstrated the promising performance of video-based autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis on the CalTech interview video database., Comment: Accepted by ACM Multimedia Systems Conference 2023

Additional file 1. This file contains the questionnaire used in this study.

Supplementary Material 1

Roots are the major organs for water and nutrient acquisition and substantially affect plant growth, development and reproduction. Improvements to root system architecture are highly important for the increased yield potential of bread wheat. QMrl-7B, a major stable quantitative trait locus (QTL) that controls maximum root length (MRL), essentially contributes to an improved root system in wheat. To further analyze the biological functions of QMrl-7B in root development, two sets of Triticum aestivum near-isogenic lines (NILs), one with superior QMrl-7B alleles from cultivar Kenong 9204 (KN9204) named NILKN9204 and another with inferior QMrl-7B alleles from cultivar Jing 411 (J411) named NILJ411, were subjected to transcriptomic analysis. Among all the mapped genes analyzed, 4871 genes were identified as being differentially expressed between the pairwise NILs under different nitrogen (N) conditions, with 3543 genes expressed under normal-nitrogen (NN) condition and 2689 genes expressed under low-nitrogen (LN) condition. These genes encode proteins that mainly include NO3− transporters, phytohormone signaling components and transcription factors (TFs), indicating the presence of a complex regulatory network involved in root determination. In addition, among the 13524 LN-induced differentially expressed genes (DEGs) detected in this study, 4308 and 2463 were specifically expressed in the NILKN9204 and NILJ411, respectively. These DEGs reflect different responses of the two sets of NILs to varying N supplies, which likely involve LN-induced root growth. These results explain the better-developed root system and increased root vitality conferred by the superior alleles of QMrl-7B and provide a deeper understanding of the genetic underpinnings of root traits, pointing to a valuable locus suitable for future breeding efforts for sustainable agriculture.

Background During cerebral ischemia, inflammatory factors such as tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and IL-1β released from the ischemic core may trigger neuronal death in the ischemic penumbra, influencing infarct volume. This study aimed to understand the relationship between serum IL-1β, IL-6, and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) levels with infarct core and ischemic penumbra volume in patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) and its influence on prognosis. Methods The serum levels of IL-1β, IL-6, and hs-CRP were measured in 65 patients within 24h of AIS onset. The infarcts of the patients were imaged with magnetic resonance imaging and magnetic resonance angiography. Alberta Stroke Program Early Computed Tomography Score (ASPECTS) and core volume on computed tomography perfusion or perfusion-weighted imaging were used to calculate infarct volume and ischemic penumbra volume. The Tan collateral score was calculated with Neusoft Brain Clinical Assistant Ration Evaluate (NeuBrainCARE). Results We found a significant correlation between infarct core volume and serum hs-CRP levels (P

Oxidative stress (OS) has been suggested to be involved in the pathogenesis of fertility reduction in aged patient. Silent Information Regulator 1 (SIRT1) is involved in antioxidant defense and also plays a role in regulation ovarian function. The purpose of this study was to evaluate SIRT1 and OS markers in follicular fluid (FF) and granulosa cells (GCs) for aged patient undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF)/intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).This single-center prospective cohort study was performed from May 2020 to October 2021, including 92 patients undergoing IVF/ICSI at authors' institute. The patients were grouped by age, including group A (35 year, n = 28, age range 24-29), group B (35-40 year, n = 33, age range 35-40), and group C (40 year, n = 31, age range 41-47). The outcomes included in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer (IVF-ET) results, OS markers and SIRT1 levels.Women in group B and group C had a significantly lower estradiol (EThe oxidative stress may be related to the decrease of SIRT1 in aged patients undergoing IVF-ET.

Coupling rod bracket, which responds for connecting shock absorbers to coupling rods, is one of safety related parts in vehicle suspensions. During vehicle maneuvering, coupling road bracket will suffer the dynamic load caused by uneven roads. Fatigue life bench test shows that the cracks around bracket holes are unacceptable, which is a security risk. Therefore, in this paper, ARIZ (Algorithm for Inventive Problem Solving) algorithm is employed to generate optimization schemes. Further, finite element analysis was applied to compare pre-optimized and optimized solutions, which will give the optimal solution of coupling rod bracket. Finally, fatigue life bench tests were carried out to verify the optimized shock absorber coupling rod bracket. Simulation results show that 39% reduction in stress concentration of the optimized coupling rod bracket can be realized based on the proposed optimization scheme. Experimental results show that the bracket crack is less than 5 mm which can eventually satisfy customer requirements. Research in this paper finally indicates the applicability and reliability of the proposed ARIZ and finite element based method in the actual production process.

Rare-earth AB5-type hydrogen storage alloys are widely studied due to their extensive application potentials in hydrogen compressors, heat pump, Ni–MH batteries etc. However, their shortcomings such as plateau splitting and capacity degradation during hydrogen absorption/desorption hinder their practical applications. In this paper, we study the effect of Mn partial substitution for Ni on the plateau characteristics and long-term cycling performance of LaNi5-xMnx alloys. It is found that Mn addition expands the lattice interstitial for hydrogen accommodation, thus prohibiting the plateau splitting phenomenon. In addition, the substitution of Mn for Ni stabilizes the crystal structure of the alloys against hydrogen absorption/desorption, thus relieving the capacity degradation. The capacity retention of the alloys at the 1000th cycle (S1000) increases from 83.2% (x = 0) to 94.0% (x = 0.75). But when x reaches 1, the hydrogen desorption reversibility is reduced due to the low plateau pressure, resulting in a slight decrease in capacity retention.

The formation and quality of nutrients before and after fermentation depends on microbial community dynamics. In this study, the nutrients and microflora of mare milk were studied before and after traditional fermentation. To achieve this goal, ultra-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and Illumina MiSeq sequencing were used to study the changes in the main nutrients and microbial communities, respectively, before and after mare milk traditional fermentation. A total of 81 nutrients were identified before and after the fermentation of mare milk into koumiss; among these, 6 compounds [citraconic acid, 6-hydroxycaproic acid, creatine, adenine, d-(+)-proline, and histamine] were differentially upregulated. Histamine levels increased after traditional fermentation, whereas Lactobacillus, Dekkera, and Acetobacter grew rapidly and became the dominant microorganisms in the fermentation process. These three genera were positively correlated with creatine and proline levels, whereas Lelliottia was negatively correlated with citraconic acid and proline levels. Prediction of the functions of bacteria and fungi in the mare milk before and after fermentation included carbohydrate metabolism, cofactors and nutrition, and plant pathogens. The results of this study provide new insights into the formation of nutrients in koumiss; it is important to study changes in bacteria and fungi before and after traditional fermentation.

Background：Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a major rescue measure for cardiac arrest (CA) patients, and chest compression is the key of CPR. The Thumper devices has been invented to solve the deficiency of manual compression.However, current randomized controlled trials (RCTs) provide controversial findings. Objectives: This meta-analysis aimed to compare the clinical benefits of using the Thumper devices with manual chest compressions during the provision of CPR of patients in CA. Methods: Relevant studies were retrieved from the Ovid, PubMed, Web of Science, EMBASE, Cochrane, CNKI etc.,electronic databases and by manually searching the reference lists of research and review articles. All RCTs published in either English or Chinese until June 31, 2020, were included in the meta-analysis. The odds ratios (ORs) and their 95% confidence intervals (95%CIs) for the return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC), survival rate (SR), and the incidence of rib fractures (RFs) were compared between the manual and Thumper chest compressions. Results: A total of 2164 records were identified, of which 16 were RCTs with an overall risk of bias ranging from low to medium classification.Following CPR, the hazard ratios for ROSC, SR, and RF were significantly better for the Thumper chest compression with ORs of 2.56, (95%CI 2.11-3.11, I2=0%), 4.06, (95%CI 2.77-5.93, I2=0%), and 0.24 (95%CI 0.14-0.41, I2=0%), respectively. Conclusions: The Thumper compression device improved the ROSC, SR and decreased the incidence of RFs in CA patients when compared with manual chest compression. Its use is, therefore, recommended during the resuscitation of CA patients.

ObjectiveAdolescents' alcohol consumption has lifetime adverse physical and mental health effects. Family environment factors have a significant influence in shaping adolescents' beliefs and habits. We conducted the multicenter cross-sectional study aiming to investigate the association between family environment factors and adolescent drinking behavior in China.MethodsThe study investigated 27,762 middle school students from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Jinan, Chengdu, and Harbin. A logistic regression model was used to explore the association between family environmental factors and adolescent drinking behavior. Participants were asked to self-report previous experiences of drinking and getting drunk to access their drinking status. Factors of family environment related to alcohol consumption included: parents' educational level, family economic status, family composition, the number of times parents drank alcohol in the past 30 days, and parents' attitudes toward their drinking behavior. The logistic regression model was used to adjust the demographic confounders, including gender, age, city, location, and smoking status, and to explore the association between family environmental factors and adolescent alcohol drinking behaviors.ResultsCompared with students whose parents prohibited drinking, students who were approved drinking were more likely to drink in this year (OR = 16.544, 95%CI:15.265–17.929, P < 0.001; Full adjustment: OR = 13.111, 95% CI: 12.031–14.288, P < 0.001), drink in this month (OR = 7.791, 95% CI: 7.077–8.565, P < 0.001; Full adjustment: OR = 6.010, 95% CI: 5.439–6.641, P < 0.001). In addition, Low family economic status, not living with the mother, parents' ambivalent attitudes toward their children's drinking and parental drinking were risk factors for drinking among middle school students.ConclusionThe family environment, especially parents' attitudes, is associated with students' drinking and drunken behavior. Mobilizing the power of parents may play a positive role in the effective prevention and control of adolescent drinking.

SARS-CoV-2 and its mutant strains continue to rapidly spread with high infection and fatality. Large-scale SARS-CoV-2 vaccination provides an important guarantee for effective resistance to existing or mutated SARS-CoV-2 virus infection. However, whether the host metabolite levels respond to SARS-CoV-2 vaccine-influenced host immunity remains unclear. To help delineate the serum metabolome profile of SARS-CoV-2 vaccinated volunteers and determine that the metabolites tightly respond to host immune antibodies and cytokines, in this study, a total of 59 sera samples were collected from 30 individuals before SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and from 29 COVID-19 vaccines 2 weeks after the two-dose vaccination. Next, untargeted metabolomics was performed and a distinct metabolic composition was revealed between the pre-vaccination (VB) group and two-dose vaccination (SV) group by partial least squares-discriminant and principal component analyses. Based on the criteria: FDR < 0.05, absolute log2 fold change greater than 0.25, and VIP >1, we found that L-glutamic acid, gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), succinic acid, and taurine showed increasing trends from SV to VB. Furthermore, SV-associated metabolites were mainly annotated to butanoate metabolism and glutamate metabolism pathways. Moreover, two metabolite biomarkers classified SV from VB individuals with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.96. Correlation analysis identified a positive association between four metabolites enriched in glutamate metabolism and serum antibodies in relation to IgG, IgM, and IgA. These results suggest that the contents of gamma-aminobutyric acid and indole in serum could be applied as biomarkers in distinguishing vaccinated volunteers from the unvaccinated. What’s more, metabolites such as GABA and taurine may serve as a metabolic target for adjuvant vaccines to boost the ability of the individuals to improve immunity.

During the storage of yogurt, acid-resistant bacteria continue to produce lactic acid (i.e., post-acidification process), leading to undesirable taste and flavor. Many methods have been proposed to inhibit post-acidification. However, the specific genes involved during this biological process have not yet been systematically studied. Hence, herein, we assessed the culture starter Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus ATCC11842 with regards to its transcriptomes under in vitro acid- and cold-culture conditions. Through differential gene expression analysis, we screened out 69 candidate genes that persistently responded to acid with or without cold stress. qPCR was then used to determine the in situ expression levels of these candidate genes at different stages of yogurt fermentation and storage. Genes whose expression levels did not change much from the end of fermentation to the early stage of yogurt storage were more likely to be post-acidification genes, as such stability indicated that they were not affected by cold stress. LDB_RS05285 was determined to be one such gene; the overexpression of this gene showed that the increase of gene expression could reduce the acid production of the strain without affecting normal growth. Therefore, the genetic manipulation techniques that increased the expression level of the LDB_RS05285 gene might have the potential to inhibit the post-acidification of yogurt. Thus, LDB_RS05285 plays an important role in the post-acidification process and would become a new target for regulating yogurt post-acidification.

Herein, a new type of highly-active platinum (Pt) nanoparticle encapsulated alumina-doped resorcinol–formaldehyde carbon composite (Al@RFC) is fabricated based on resorcinol–formaldehyde (RF) resin and aluminum acetylacetonate using a one-step carbonization approach and evaluated for an asymmetric hydrogenation (AH) reaction. The carbonization process of RF is essentially completed at 700 °C and resulted in Al@RFC with uniform and ordered porous structures. The Pt/Al@RFC catalysts are decorated with uniformly dispersed Pt nanoparticles of around 4 nm diameter over the Al@RFC support. The prepared catalysts are chirally modified with cinchonidine (CD) to explore the catalytic efficiency of AH of ethyl 2-oxo-4-phenylbutanoate (EOPB). The Pt/Al@RFC catalysts have substantially circumvented the shortcomings of poor repeatability of Pt/Al2O3 and low ee values of Pt/C catalysts, displaying conversion efficiencies and ee values of 99% and 82%, respectively. Furthermore, the catalyst could be reused 16 times. Notably, the optimized catalyst displayed turn-over frequency (TOF) values of more than 80 000 h−1, which is the highest reported activity in this hydrogenation reaction. Graphene formation during the high temperature (700 °C) carbonization process is proposed to play a role in its exceptionally high activity.

Protein phosphorylation is a crucial posttranslational modification for the regulation of many different biological functions. Selective enrichment of phosphopeptides from the complex biological samples is an essential step for the mass spectrometry analysis of protein phosphorylation. In this study, an arsenate functionalized monolithic column was first prepared by a single-step copolymerization of p-methacryloylaminophenylarsonic acid and ethylene dimethacrylate. Then the metal ions Zr4+ were attached onto the prepared monolithic column via metal-chelate complex formation by Zr4+ and arsenate groups. The obtained monolithic column was employed as a new sorbent for the phosphopeptide enrichment via immobilized metal affinity chromatography. Phosphopeptides analysis was realized by polymer monolith microextraction using this monolithic column coupled to both matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry. The proposed method exhibited a high selectivity for phosphopeptide enrichment in complex matrices, and was applied to the analysis of phosphopeptides in human serum and tryptic digests of rat brain proteins. Four phosphopeptides could be selectively captured from human serum and 2608 endogenous phosphopeptides were identified from the tryptic digests of rat brain proteins, indicating a satisfactory performance of this method for the enrichment of phosphopeptides from complex biological samples.

China has had explosive growth in ischemic stroke (IS) burden with significant ethnic and geographic disparities. The aim of this study was to explore the possible combination effect between gut microbiota and traditional potentially modifiable risk factors for IS among two ethnic minorities (Tujia and Miao) and the Han population. Herein, we first used the 16 S rRNA sequencing to compare the gut microbial compositions of 82 patients with first-ever IS vs. 82 normal controls (NCs) among Han, Tujia, and Miao people between 1 May 2018 and 30 April 2019, from Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture in China. An additive model was used to study the interaction between traditional risk factors and gut microbiota with R software. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and LDA effect size (LEfSe) results showed that the identified key gut microbiota's taxonomic composition varied in different ethnicity between the IS patients and NCs. Furthermore, families Lactobacillaceae, Enterococcaceae, Streptococcaceae, and Enterobacteriaceae were found to be positively correlated with high-risk factors and negatively correlated with preventive factors in the IS patients, but families Ruminococcaceae and Lachnospiraceae were just the opposite in the NCs. There were additive interactions between traditional risk factors (systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and high-sensitive C-reactive protein) and family Enterococcaceae for first-ever IS with the attributable proportion due to the interaction was 0.74, 0.71, and 0.85, respectively; and the synergy index was 4.45, 3.78, and 7.01, respectively. This preliminary but promising study showed that the gut microbiota disturbances may potentially interact to IS with different ethnic host's traditional risk factors.

The gastrointestinal microbiota plays a vital role in ensuring the maintenance of host health through interactions with the immune system. The Heterophil/Lymphocyte (H/L) ratio reflects poultry’s robustness and immune system status. Chickens with low H/L ratio are superior to the chickens with high H/L ratio in survival, immune response, and resistance to Salmonella infection, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. This study aimed to identify microorganisms associated with resistance to Salmonella Enteritidis infection in chickens based on the H/L ratio. The 16S rRNA and metagenomic analysis were conducted to examine microbiome and functional capacity between the 2 groups, and Short Chain Fatty Acids (SCFAs) and histopathology were conducted to explore the potential difference between susceptible and resistant groups at 7 and 21 days post-infection (dpi). The microbiome exploration revealed that low H/L ratio chickens, compared to high H/L ratio chickens, displayed a significantly higher abundance of Proteobacteria (Escherichia coli) and Bacteroidetes (Bacteroides plebeius) at 7 and 21 dpi, respectively. Anaerostipes (r = 0.63) and Lachnoclostridium (r = 0.63) were identified as bacterial genus significantly correlated with H/L (P < 0.001). Interestingly, Bacteroides was significantly and positively correlated with bodyweight post-infection (r = 0.72), propionate (r = 0.78) and valerate (r = 0.82) contents, while Salmonella was significantly and negatively correlated with bodyweight post-infection (r = − 0.67), propionate (r = − 0.61) and valerate (r = − 0.65) contents (P < 0.001). Furthermore, the comparative analysis of the functional capacity of cecal microbiota of the chickens with high and low H/L ratio revealed that the chickens with low H/L ratio possess more enriched immune pathways, lower antibiotic resistance genes and virulence factors compared to the chickens with high H/L ratio. These results suggest that the chickens with low H/L ratio are more resistant to Salmonella Enteritidis, and it is possible that the commensal Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes are involved in this resistance against Salmonella infection. These findings provide valuable resources for selecting and breeding disease-resistant chickens.

Gut microbiota plays an essential role in the development of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and affects drug responses. However, the underlying mechanism remains elusive and urgent to elucidate to explore the pathology and clinical treatment of RA. Therefore, we selected methotrexate (MTX) as an example of RA drugs to explore the interactions between the gut microbiota and drug responses and obtain an in-depth understanding of their correlation from the perspective of the metabolic capability of gut microbiota on drug metabolism. We identified 2,654 proteins and the corresponding genes involved in MTX metabolism and then profiled their abundances in the gut microbiome datasets of four cohorts. We found that the gut microbiota harbored various genes involved in MTX metabolism in healthy individuals and RA patients. Interestingly, the number of genes involved in MTX metabolism was not significantly different between response (R) and non-response (NR) groups to MTX, but the gene composition in the microbial communities significantly differed between these two groups. Particularly, several models were built based on clinical information, as well as data on the gene, taxonomical, and functional biomarkers by using the random forest algorithm and then validated. Our findings provide bases for clinical management not only of RA but also other gut microbiome–related diseases. First, it suggests that the potential metabolic capability of gut microbiota on drug metabolism is important because they affect drug efficiency; as such, clinical treatment strategies should incorporate the gene compositions of gut microbial communities, in particular genes involved in drug metabolism. Second, a suitable model can be developed to determine hosts’ responses to drugs before clinical treatment.

Here, it reports a high-throughput detection method for reliably quantitative analysis of illegal drugs in complex biological samples by means of a surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) active microcavity and rapid pretreatment device. Based on the well-made hemispherical microcavities that regularly distributed on a glass array, the quality-controllable microcavity device is fabricated by the compact self-assembly of core-shell nanopeanuts (CSNPs) onto the inside surface. Both the CSNPs with a quantifiable internal standard signal of crystal violet acetate anchored inside their gap and the well-made microcavity referred to the physical amplification of the microscale groove surface will do well in trace analysis, which will allow us to realize the accurately quantitative SERS analysis of targeted analytes spread on the bottom area of the microcavity array. As an example, 0.8 nM malachite green and 160 ppb methamphetamine (MATM) have been successively detected in a wide range as standard, while even 0.01 ppm MATM mixed in the urine/serum samples has been efficiently tested by the microcavity device equipped with a rapid pretreatment device (manual monolithic column syringe needle). All of the above suggest that the SERS-active microcavity equipped with a rapid pretreatment device has potential in the on-site quick test of trace amounts of illegal drugs in bodily fluid samples or other field analysis of food sanitation, environmental safety, and public health.

Lasioseius japonicus is a species of soil-dwelling predatory mite with great potential for controlling insect pests and has a broad application prospect in biological control. This study was conducted under indoor conditions to explore the development, survival and reproduction of L. japonicus on two diets. Through the construction of two-sex life table of L. japonicus, it was revealed that, when it preyed on eggs of Drosophila melanogaster, the intrinsic rate of increase (r) was 0.2614 d-1, the net reproductive rate (R0) was 57.76 offspring, the finite rate of increase (λ) was 1.2988 d-1, and the mean generation time (T) was 15.49 d. When preying on eggs of Sitotroga cerealella, the intrinsic rate of increase (r) of L. japonicus was 0.1560 d-1, the net reproductive rate (R0) was 20.96 offspring, the finite rate of increase (λ) was 1.1690d-1, and the mean generation time (T) was 19.41 d. In addition, the life expectancy and population growth trend of L. japonicus were simulated based on the above two alternative prey species. The results showed that feeding on the eggs of D. melanogaster is more beneficial to the growth and reproduction of L. japonicus.

This communication describes the facile and surfactant-free synthesis of Pt3Pd icosahedral nanocrystals through propionic acid (PA)–assisted solvothermal method. The complexes of N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) and PA play critical roles in stabilizing the icosahedral shape with {111} surfaces. Icosahedral Pt3Pd nanocrystals exhibit an impressive methanol oxidation activity and durability. The enhanced electrochemical performance is attributed to the electron effects induced by the surface strain and some steps or kinks enclosed by high energy plane of {533}, {553}, and {554}.

Blue, green, and red phosphor thin films (PTFs) used for NUV LED were prepared by hot pressing method. The excitation spectrums of PTFs have broadband absorption characteristics owing to the 4f7 → 4f65d transition of Eu2+; the emission peaks are 445 nm, 520 nm, and 627 nm, respectively. The phosphor conversion efficiency (PCE) gradually increases and finally remains unchanged with phosphor mass fractions because of absorption saturation effect. Different color LEDs are packaged by NUV chips and PTFs; spectral decomposition and data fitting methods are used to achieve the fitting of the relationship between the phosphor mass fraction and the emission light intensity of the NUV chip and phosphor. The double Gaussian model is used to express the spectral power distribution (SPD) of a single-primary color LED and compare it with the measured results. White LEDs (WLEDs) were prepared by two methods, the first is the combination of multi-LEDs, the second is NUV chip pumps three-color-mixed phosphor directly. Experimental results showed that the WLEDs prepared by first method with the light color parameters of CCT = 5342 K, LER = 274 lm/W, show small parameter difference of ΔCCT = 24 K, ΔLER = 15 lm/W, NCC = 98.94% compared with the calculated results. The WLEDs prepared by second method with the light color parameters of CCT = 5292 K, LER = 263 lm/W shows a 4.0% decrease in LER.

The regional multi-energy system (RMES) can realize the coupling and complementation of different energy sectors, including electricity, heat, and gas, with the advantage of energy cascade utilization. With the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle (FCV) technology, hydrogen has great application potential in the transportation sector. The use of surplus electricity to produce hydrogen through water electrolysis technology can increase renewable energy penetration in power systems. This paper proposed an optimal design and operation method of RMES that considers system reliability constraints under different-level renewable energy penetrations. The RMES includes renewable generation devices, conversion devices such as fuel cells and electric boilers, and emerging devices such as electrolysis cells and hydrogen storage tanks. In order to improve the reliability of the planning results, we consider the reliability constraints of crucial devices in the planning model. In addition, we paid attention to the potential of hydrogen storage tanks for inter-seasonal energy complementation. In the solution of the model, the optimization model can be transformed into a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem by linearizing the non-linear constraints, which can be directly solved by CPLEX, showing good performances in practical applications. Finally, case studies are performed to show the superiority of the planning model.

Grapevines are widely planted around the world. Although grapes have high nutritional value, they are highly perishable. To explore the effect of ozone concentration on the postharvest quality of Muscat Hamburg grapes, the ethylene production rate, respiratory intensity, soluble solids, titratable acidity, firmness, threshing rate, total yeast and mold counts, and the activities of superoxide dismutase, peroxidase, catalase, polyphenol oxidase and phenylalanine ammonia lyase were determined, and the fungal metagenome on the grape surface was analyzed. Among the ozone treatment groups, 14.98 mg m−3 ozone showed a positive effect on grape preservation. After 80 days of storage, the contents of soluble solids and titratable acidity increased by 3.1% and 0.03%, respectively, compared with the control group. Over the same period, firmness increased by 4.22 N and the threshing rate decreased by 0.5%. During storage, the activity of polyphenol oxidase was inhibited and the activities of superoxide dismutase, peroxidase, catalase, and phenylalanine ammonia lyase were maintained, which delayed the senescence of grapes and maintained freshness. Ozone can reduce the number of fungi on the grape surface, change the colony structure, and reduce the occurrence of diseases. An ozone concentration of 14.98 mg m−3 can delay the senescence of Muscat Hamburg grapes and improve storage quality.

Additional file 1: S1. CIH treatment did not significant influence the expression of PDP1/PDHA1 in vitro. (A, B) The IH program and the sequence of experiment process. (C) BODIPY (green) and DAPI (blue) staining of the HT22. Magnification:600��. (D-F) The number of LDs per cell. Compared with the NC group, the number of LDs in the IH group were obviously increased. However, treated with 3-FP could not reduce the number of LDs. (G, H) Quantitative real-time PCR experiments showed the expression levels of PDP1 and PDHA1 in Ht22 cells. The results showed no statistically difference among four groups. (I-L) The PDP1/PDHA1 pathway was activated by Western blot, and no statistically difference among four groups. (M) The activity of PDC and no significant difference could be found. All experiments were repeated three times. Data are expressed as the mean �� SEM. Statistical analysis was performed through two-way ANOVA. The treated samples were different from the controls at p < 0.05.

Figure S1 | Identification of chromatin accessibilities using ATAC-seq profiles. (A)For the analysis of chromatin accessibilities, peak calling function was performed.The upset plot and vennpie plot revealed that a considerable fraction of open chromatin regions were around gene promoters. Figure S2 | Integrative analysis identified STAT2 as a potential upstream for PD-L1. (A) Correlation analysis between open chromatin regions and all the database-recorded TFs was performed. The TFs, which were correlated with Region 1 or Region 2, were displayed in the heatmap (r > 0.4, p < 0.05). Compared with other TFs, STAT2 was closely related with both Region 1 (left, r = 0.6, p < 0.05) and Region 2 (right, r = 0.5, p < 0.05). (B) Correlation analysis between PD-L1 expression and expression of the top 5 TFs associated with PD-L1 promoter region 1 or region 2 in Figure S2A. Of these top candidates, STAT2 was the TF with the strongest correlation with PD-L1 expression (r = 0.53, p < 0.05). Figure S3 | Validation of the interaction between STAT2 and PD-L1. (A) The analysis of protein-protein interactions, based on GeneMANIA database, indicated a potential interaction between STAT2 and PD-L1. (B) In cancer cell line HeLa, the overexpression of STAT2 could lead to upregulation of PD-L1 significantly (p < 0.05).

Additional file 1. Supplementary results.

Capillary dominated flow or imbibition—whether spontaneous or forced—is an important physical phenomena in understanding the behavior of naturally fractured water-driven reservoirs (NFR’s). When the water flows through the fractures, it imbibes into the matrix and pushes the oil out of the pores due to the difference in the capillary pressure. In this paper, we focus on modeling and quantifying the oil recovered from NFR’s through the imbibition processes using a novel fully implicit mimetic finite difference (MFD) approach coupled with discrete fracture/discrete matrix (DFDM) technique. The investigation is carried out in the light of different wetting states of the porous media (i.e., varying capillary pressure curves) and a full tensor representation of the permeability. The produced results proved the MFD to be robust in preserving the physics of the problem, and accurately mapping the flow path in the investigated domains. The wetting state of the rock affects greatly the oil recovery factors along with the orientation of the fractures and the principal direction of the permeability tensor. We can conclude that our novel MFD method can handle the fluid flow problems in discrete-fractured reservoirs. Future works will be focused on the extension of MFD method to more complex multi-physics simulations.Other Information Published in: Transport in Porous Media License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0See article on publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11242-021-01585-3

Additional file 2. Supplementary results of indexes related to the determination of doubly labeled water.

There is limited work on the development of posttraumatic growth (PTG) among children and adolescents who have experienced a highly stressful event, such as the death of a parent. The present study aims to examine the cascading pathways by which the Family Bereavement Program (FBP), a family intervention designed for bereaved youth and their surviving caregiver, yielded higher levels of PTG at 6- and 15-year follow-ups. Multi-method, multi-informant, five-wave longitudinal data from the randomized controlled trial of the FBP is used to test the hypothesized cascade model.

The vulnerability of face recognition systems to morphing attacks has posed a serious security threat due to the wide adoption of face biometrics in the real world. Most existing morphing attack detection (MAD) methods require a large amount of training data and have only been tested on a few predefined attack models. The lack of good generalization properties, especially in view of the growing interest in developing novel morphing attacks, is a critical limitation with existing MAD research. To address this issue, we propose to extend MAD from supervised learning to few-shot learning and from binary detection to multiclass fingerprinting in this paper. Our technical contributions include: 1) We propose a fusion-based few-shot learning (FSL) method to learn discriminative features that can generalize to unseen morphing attack types from predefined presentation attacks; 2) The proposed FSL based on the fusion of the PRNU model and Noiseprint network is extended from binary MAD to multiclass morphing attack fingerprinting (MAF). 3) We have collected a large-scale database, which contains five face datasets and eight different morphing algorithms, to benchmark the proposed few-shot MAF (FS-MAF) method. Extensive experimental results show the outstanding performance of our fusion-based FS-MAF. The code and data will be publicly available at https://github.com/nz0001na/mad maf.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-tej-10.1177_20417314221087417 for Delivery of Wnt inhibitor WIF1 via engineered polymeric microspheres promotes nerve regeneration after sciatic nerve crush by Na Zhang, Junquan Lin, Jiah Shin Chin, Christian Wiraja, Chenjie Xu, Duncan Angus McGrouther and Sing Yian Chew in Journal of Tissue Engineering