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The demand for cellulosic fibres as a reinforcement in polymers is growing due to their renewable, biodegradable, and ecologically favourable properties. In addition, they are lower in density than e.g. glass fibres, which will help in making lightweight composites. Besides, there is no health hazard with ease of processing and minimum damage to the processing equipment. Despite their advantages and high demand, their utilization in industrial applications is still limited. This is due to their inherent polar and hydrophilic nature and their consequent incompatibility with hydrophobic polymers. Therefore, it is often necessary to do hydrophobic modification treatment. The review examines a range of strategies for modifying ramie surfaces, encompassing physical, chemical, and biological processes. It also analyzes the procedures and techniques involved in the preparation and manufacturing of ramie-reinforced polymeric biocomposites. Moreover, an investigation is conducted to evaluate the performance of the composites produced. The performance evaluation includes both before and following fibre treatment, covering surface morphology, wettability, chemical composition, mechanical properties, and flame retardancy. Most of the researchers reported that alkaline and silane coupling agent treatments are the most prevalently applied pretreatments. Compared to biological and physical methods, the application of chemical agents enables excellent adhesion of fibre to polymer resins. However, the utilization of solvents such as ethanol and methanol increases the amount of waste produced and toxic compounds released.

Summary: Pyroptosis, a pro-inflammatory form of programmed cell death, is crucial for host defense against pathogens and danger signals. Proteolytic cleavage of gasdermin proteins B–E (GSDMB–GSDME) is well established as a trigger for pyroptosis, but the intracellular activation mechanism of GSDMA remains elusive. Here, we demonstrate that severe starvation induces pyroptosis through phosphorylation-induced activation of GSDMA. Nutrient stresses stimulate GSDMA activation via phosphorylation mediated by Unc-51-like autophagy-activating kinase 1 (ULK1). Phosphorylation of Ser353 on human GSDMA by ULK1 or the phospho-mimetic Ser353Asp mutant of GSDMA liberates GSDMA from auto-inhibition, facilitating its membrane targeting and initiation of pyroptosis. To further validate the significance of GSDMA phosphorylation, we generated a constitutively active mutant Ser354Asp of mouse Gsdma, which induced skin inflammation and hyperplasia in mice, reminiscent of phenotypes with activated Gsdma. This study uncovers phosphorylation of GSDMA as a mechanism underlying pyroptosis initiation and cellular response to nutrient stress.

Demands for smart textiles have recently increased quickly in terms of functionality and responsiveness to wearers and environmental changes. This paper explores the development of hydrothermal responsive shape memory woven fabric from Microcrystalline Cellulose Reinforced Shape Memory Polyurethane Microcomposite Filament. The concentration of microcrystalline cellulose and drawing ratio of the filaments were first optimized according to the tensile strength and shape recovery ratio and taken as 15 wt% and 2.0 respectively. Hydrothermal responsive shape memory micro-composite filaments were then produced from shape memory polyurethane (SMPU) and microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) with optimized concentration and draw ratio by wet spinning process. The physical, mechanical, thermal and shape memory performances of the filaments were studied. The optimized filament was found to have a tensile strength of 0.91 cN/dtex and elongation of 385.2% in which the strength is much more improved when compared to a pure SMPU filament of strength 0.72 cN/dtex. The shape fixity and shape recovery results of the micro-composite filament were found to be 71.2% and 93.6% respectively. A woven fabric was manufactured from pure polyester, cotton as warp and SMPU-MCC filaments as weft and its breathability and shape memory properties were investigated. The air permeability of SMPU-PE fabrics was found to be 172.9 mm/s and 155.1 mm/s in its fixed temporary shape and recovered shape respectively. The water vapour permeability of SMPU-CT fabric was found to be 612.01 g/m2.h and 540.28 g/m2.h in its fixed temporary and recovered shape respectively which shows smart breathable fabrics can be made and adopted with enhanced properties.

Abstract Background Gastric cancer is currently estimated to be the fifth leading common cancer in the world, and responsible for about one million new cases and an estimated 769,000 cancer-related deaths each year. WFDC21P is long non-coding RNA and has been reported to play critical roles in serval types of cancer. Our research aims to investigate the biological effects and molecular mechanism of WFDC21P in gastric cancer. Methods Datasets (GSE53137, GSE58828, and GSE109476) in GEO database were used to screen differential expressed lncRNAs in gastric cancer by online GEO2R analysis tool. Quantitative RT-PCR was used to verify the above prediction in ten pairs of gastric cancer and corresponding paracancerous tissues. Pan-cancer analysis was used to analyze the expression of WFDC21P in different types of cancer. Small interfering RNAs were used to WFDC21P knockdown. CCK-8 and colony formation assays were used to measure the proliferation and tumorigenesis abilities. Wound healing and Transwell assay were used to detect the migration and invasion abilities. Proteins that interact with WFDC21P were predicted by catRAPID database. RNA pull down and RNA Immunoprecipitation were used to confirm the interaction. Western blotting was used to detect the key proteins level in calcium homeostasis signaling pathway. Loss-of-function and rescue assays were used to evaluate the biological function of SEC63 at the background of WFDC21P silencing. Results WFDC21P was upregulated in gastric cancer tissues and cell lines. WFDC21P downregulation suppressed proliferation, tumorigenesis, migration, invasion, and promoted apoptosis in gastric cancer. SEC63 protein had the capability to bind with WFDC21P and the expression of SEC63 was regulated by WFDC21P. SEC63 was also upregulated in gastric cancer and exerted effects during tumor growth and metastasis. Conclusions This study confirmed that lncRNA WFDC21P aggravated gastric cancer malignant behaviors by interacting with SEC63 to regulate the calcium homeostasis signaling pathway.

Abstract Lysosomal Storage Disorders (LSDs), which share common phenotypes, including enlarged lysosomes and defective lysosomal storage, are caused by mutations in lysosome-related genes. Although gene therapies and enzyme replacement therapies have been explored, there are currently no effective routine therapies against LSDs. During lysosome reformation, which occurs when the functional lysosome pool is reduced, lysosomal lipids and proteins are recycled to restore lysosome functions. Here we report that the sorting nexin protein SNX8 promotes lysosome tubulation, a process that is required for lysosome reformation, and that loss of SNX8 leads to phenotypes characteristic of LSDs in human cells. SNX8 overexpression rescued features of LSDs in cells, and AAV-based delivery of SNX8 to the brain rescued LSD phenotypes in mice. Importantly, by screening a natural compound library, we identified three small molecules that enhanced SNX8–lysosome binding and reversed LSD phenotypes in human cells and in mice. Altogether, our results provide a potential solution for the treatment of LSDs.

With the variety of fibers and fabrics, the studies of the surface structure of the textile yarns, the weave fabric, and their surface wettability are still potential factors to improve and optimize the fog harvesting efficiency. In this work, inspired by the fog harvesting behavior of the desert beetle dorsal surface, a wavy–bumpy structure of post-weave yarn (obtained from woven fabric) was reported to improve large droplet growth (converge) efficiency. In which, this study used tetrabutyl titanate (Ti(OC4H9)4) to waterproof, increase hydrophobicity, and stabilize the surface of yarns and fabric (inspired by the feather structure and lotus leaf surface). Moreover, PDMS oil was used (lubricated) to increase hydrophobicity and droplet shedding on the yarns (inspired by the slippery surface of the pitcher plant) and at the same time, enhance the fog harvesting efficiency of the warp yarn woven fabric (Warp@fabric). In addition, a three-dimensional adjacent yarn structure was arranged by two non-parallel fabric layers. The yarns of the inner and outer layers were intersected at an angle decreasing to zero (mimicking the water transport behavior of Shorebird’s beaks). This method helped large droplets quickly form and shed down easily. More than expected, the changes in fabric texture and fiber surface yielded an excellent result. The OBLWB-Warp@fabric’s water harvesting rate was about 700% higher than that of the original plain weave fabric (Original@fabric). OBLWB-Warp@fabric’s water harvesting rate was about 160% higher than that of Original–Warp@fabric. This shows the great practical application potential of woven fabrics with a low cost and large scale, or you can make use of textile wastes to collect fog, suitable for the current circular economy model. This study hopes to further enrich the materials used for fog harvesting.

In the original publication [...]

Abstract The oocyte cumulus complex is mainly composed of an oocyte, the perivitelline space, zona pellucida and numerous granulosa cells. The cumulus granulosa cells (cGCs) provide a particularly important microenvironment for oocyte development, regulating its growth, maturation and meiosis. In this study, we studied the internal structures and cell-to-cell connections of mouse cGCs using focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM). We reconstructed three-dimensional models to display characteristic connections between the oocyte and cGCs, and to illustrate various main organelles in cGCs together with their interaction relationship. A special form of cilium identified in granulosa cell was never reported in previous literature.

Abstract Solar‐driven interfacial evaporation (SDIE) has attracted great attention by offering a zero‐carbon‐emission solution for clean water production. The manipulation of the surface structure of the evaporator markedly promotes the enhancement of light capture and the improvement of evaporation performance. Herein, inspired by seedless lotus pod, a flexible pristine polypyrrole (PPy) membrane with macro/micro‐bubble and nanotube asymmetric structure is fabricated through template‐assisted interfacial polymerization. The macro‐ and micro‐hierarchical structure of the open bubbles enable multiple reflections inner and among the bubble cavities for enhanced light trapping and omnidirectional photothermal conversion. In addition, the multilevel structure (macro/micro/nano) of the asymmetric PPy (PPy‐A) membrane induces water evaporation in the form of clusters, leading to a reduction of water evaporation enthalpy. The PPy‐A membranes achieve a full‐spectrum light absorption of 96.3% and high evaporation rate of 2.03 kg m−2 h−1 under 1 sun. Long‐term stable desalination is also verified with PPy‐A membranes by applying one‐way water channel. This study demonstrates the feasibility of pristine PPy membranes in SDIE applications, providing guidelines for modulation of the evaporator topologies toward high‐efficient solar evaporation.

BackgroundDysregulation of the long non-coding RNA metastasis-associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 (MALAT1) has been linked to some oncogenic pathways that induce cancer initiation and progression. This meta-analysis was conducted to specifically summarize the most recent research on MALAT1 function in human gastric cancer (GC).MethodsThe eligible studies were first identified by searching HowNet, Web of Science, PubMed, The Cochrane Library, Embase, and Nature databases for studies published as of April 1, 2023. The meta-analysis included 14 studies assessing MALAT1 expression and presenting clinical parameters and survival outcomes.ResultsThe results illustrated that high MALAT1 expression is predictive of lymph node metastasis (pooled odds ratio [OR] = 2.99, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.97–4.54, P < 0.001) and distant metastasis in GC (OR = 3.11, 95% CI = 1.68–5.75, P < 0.001). In addition, MALAT1 was associated with GC tumor invasion (T3/T4 vs. T1/T2: OR = 2.90, 95% CI = 1.90- 4.41, P

Objective To study the safety, effectiveness and nursing of blood/fluid warmer during the process of plateletpheresis in winter. Methods The blood re-transfusion speed during plateletpheresis in winter and the time of blood passing through the blood return pipeline was counted. The vitro blood was heated with a blood/fluid warmer under different temperature settings, and the rising speed of blood temperature was recorded. The blood samples were tested for blood routine examination, free Hb and erythrocyte morphology at 0, 15 and 30 minutes. In the process of plateletpheresis in winter, the blood donors′ ear temperature and the skin temperature near the reinfusion needle in the observation group and the controls were measured, and the blood donors were observed for shivering, arm chills, pain or other discomfort. After the blood donation, the thermal comfort was evaluated. Results There was no difference in the results of routine blood test and plasma free Hb test of vitro blood after warming at 41℃, 42℃ and 43℃ for 0, 15 and 30 minutes (P>0.05), and no change in erythrocyte morphology was found. The skin temperature near the reinfusion needle (before vs. after the start of phlebotomy) was statistically different by applying blood/fluid warmer or not(P0.05). The vitro blood heating experiment showed that when the room temperature was within 22~24℃, the blood retransfusion speed was (100-120) mL/min; after the application of blood/fluid warmer, the temperature of reinfusion blood could be raised from 27℃ to 33~37℃. The proportion of feeling comfortable and very comfortable and the score of thermal comfort in the blood donors who used the warmer were higher than those in the controls (P

Primary ovarian insufficiency (POI) is a clinical syndrome of ovarian dysfunction that results in infertility. Here they show that BCN1 mutation results in premature ovarian follicle activation and atresia through dysregulation of ferroptosis.

Most unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) methods align feature distributions across different domains through adversarial learning. However, many of them require introducing an auxiliary domain alignment model, which incurs additional computational costs. In addition, they generally focus on the global distribution alignment and ignore the fine-grained domain discrepancy, so target samples with significant domain shifts cannot be detected or processed for specific tasks. To solve these problems, a bi-discrepancy network is proposed for the cross-domain prediction task. Firstly, target samples with significant domain shifts are detected by maximizing the discrepancy between the outputs of the dual regressor. Secondly, the adversarial training mechanism is adopted between the feature generator and the dual regressor for global domain adaptation. Finally, the local maximum mean discrepancy is used to locally align the fine-grained features of different degradation stages. In 12 cross@-domain prediction tasks generated on the C-MAPSS dataset, the root-mean-square error (RMSE) was reduced by 77.24%, 61.72%, 38.97%, and 3.35% on average, compared with the four mainstream UDA methods, which proved the effectiveness of the proposed method.

In recent years, there has been growing interest in using plant fibers to reinforce materials in modern manufacturing. This study focuses on the development of a novel biocomposite made from an enset fiber (EF) and polylactic acid (PLA) matrix using compression molding at a hot-pressing temperature of 170 °C and pressure of 7 MPa for 7 min. Before preparing the biocomposites, the fibers were chemically modified with different concentrations of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and cut into shorter fibers with a 40 mm average length in size. Then, the extent of modifications on the mechanical properties, dynamic mechanical behavior, morphology, and water absorption were investigated. The tensile, flexural, and Charpy impact tests were carried out to evaluate the mechanical properties of the samples as per ASTM standards. Moreover, dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) and the water absorbency of the biocomposites were investigated, and the results were graphically shown and explained. The results indicate that the biocomposite treated with 5% NaOH exhibited significant improvements in tensile strength, flexural strength, and impact strength compared to the untreated composite. The tensile modulus and flexural modulus of 5% NaOH-modified enset fiber biocomposite were also enhanced by 55.8% and 70.3% compared to untreated enset fiber biocomposite. The highest tensile strength, flexural strength, and impact strength found for the PLA composite reinforced by EF treated with 5% w/v NaOH solution were 20.16 MPa, 30.21 MPa, and 12.02 kJ/m2, respectively. In general, the modification of natural fibers improves adhesion at the interface and therefore decreases the water absorption and improves the dynamic mechanical properties of biocomposites.

Recently, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) task allocation is a hot topic both in the civilian and military, while the research of considering uncertainty and multi-objective is still in its infancy. Firstly, based on the uncertainty theory, a mathematical model of the uncertain multi-objective UAV task allocation problem with uncertain variables in both objective function and constraint conditions is established. The expected value criterion and opportunity constraint are introduced to transform the model into a deterministic optimization model. Furthermore, because traditional fireworks algorithm (FWA) has the shortcomings of low solution accuracy and slow convergence speed in solving the UAV task allocation problem, a novel Tent-Levy FWA (TLFWA) based on discrete update process is designed by introducing integer coding, Tent chaotic mapping and Levy variation. Experimental results show that the mean cost calculated by TLFWA is 8.17% and 13.73% lower than that of FWA and particle swarm optimization algorithm respectively, which proves the effectiveness of TLFWA. This study provides a new way to solve multi-objective and uncertain decision-making problems.

Abiotic stresses are wide-ranging environmental factors that adversely affect the yield and quality of tea plants (Camellia sinensis). As perennial woody economic plants, various environmental factors affect its growth and development. To survive under stress conditions, plants adapt to or withstand these adverse external environments by regulating their growth and morphological structure. Recently, there have been knowledges regarding the significant progress in the mechanisms of abiotic stresses (including cold and heat, drought, salt and heavy metal stresses) tolerance in tea plants. Many evidences suggest that several phytohormones are in response to various environmental stresses, and regulate plant stress adaptation. However, the regulatory mechanisms of plant abiotic stress responses and resistance remain unclear. In this review, we mainly summarize the studies on the adaptive physiological and molecular mechanisms of tea plants under abiotic stress, and discuss the direction for tea plant resistance and breeding strategies.

The maximum information coefficient (MIC) is a novel and widely-using measure of association detection in large datasets. The most outstanding feature of MIC is that it has both generality and equability. However, MIC can only deal with two variables and cannot precisely estimate coupling associations of multiple variables. In this paper, we propose an extension of MIC to deal with multi-variable datasets, called the multi-variable maximum information coefficient (MMIC). Some inherited and novel properties of MMIC are proved, including generality, equability, monotonicity, and subadditivity. We design an algorithm based on greedy stepwise strategy and upper confidence bound (UCB) for an approximate calculation of MMIC. The tests of MMIC on generated datasets and examples on real datasets are carried out to detect known and novel associations.

Pyroptosis is an inflammatory form of programmed cell death triggered by caspase-1/4/5/11 that plays an important role in the occurrence and development of gastric cancer (GC). We investigated the prognostic value of pyroptosis-related genes in GC. The “LIMMA” R package and univariate Cox analysis were used to find pyroptosis-related genes with differential expression and prognostic value in the TCGA cohort and the identified genes were analyzed for GO enrichment and KEGG pathways. The selected genes were then included in a multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression analysis, and a ten genes prognostic model (BIRC2, CD274, IRGM, ANXA2, GBP5, TXNIP, POP1, GBP1, DHX9, and TLR2) was established. To evaluate the predictive value of the risk score on prognosis, patients were divided into high-risk and low-risk groups according to the median risk score, and survival analysis was carried out. Compared with the low-risk group, the OS of GC patients in the high-risk group was significantly worse. Additionally, these results were verified in the GSE84437 and GSE66229 datasets. Finally, through the combination of prognostic gene characteristics and clinicopathological features, a nomogram was established to predict individual survival probability. The results show that the genetic risk characteristics related to clinical features can be used as independent prognostic indicators for patients with GC. In summary, the pyroptosis-related risk signals proposed in this study can potentially predict the prognosis of patients with GC. In addition, we also found significant infiltration of dendritic cells, macrophages, and neutrophils in tissues of high-risk patients.

Accumulating evidence has uncovered long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) as central regulators in the pathogenesis of diverse human cancers including colorectal cancer (CRC). The present study discovered that a novel lncRNA ITIH4 antisense RNA 1 (ITHI4-AS1) was frequently under-expressed in most normal human tissues, including colon tissues. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the role of ITHI4-AS1 in CRC. Interestingly, a significant overexpression of ITIH4-AS1 was observed in CRC cell lines relative to normal NCM460 cells. Also, we investigated the facilitating role of ITIH4-AS1 in CRC cell growth and metastasis both in vitro and in vivo. Additionally, we explained that ITIH4-AS1 upregulation in CRC was attributed to downregulation or even depletion of RE1 silencing transcription factor (REST), a presently identified transcriptional repressor for ITIH4-AS1. Meanwhile, the contribution of ITIH4-AS1 to CRC development was validated to rely on the activation of the JAK/STAT3 pathway. More importantly, we verified that FUS interacted with both ITIH4-AS1 and STAT3, and that ITIH4-AS1 evoked nuclear translocation of phosphorylated (p)-STAT3 in CRC through recruiting FUS. In summary, our findings unveiled for the first time that REST downregulation-enhanced ITIH4-AS1 exerts pro-tumor functions in CRC through FUS-dependent activation of the JAK/STAT3 pathway, implying that targeting ITIH4-AS1 may be a novel effective strategy for CRC therapy. Keywords: ITIH4-AS1, colorectal cancer, REST, FUS, STAT3

Accurate prediction of aviation safety levels is significant for the efficient early warning and prevention of incidents. However, the causal mechanism and temporal character of aviation accidents are complex and not fully understood, which increases the operation cost of accurate aviation safety prediction. This paper adopts an innovative statistical method involving a least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) and long short-term memory (LSTM). We compiled and calculated 138 monthly aviation insecure events collected from the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) and took minor accidents as the predictor. Firstly, this paper introduced the group variables and the weight matrix into LASSO to realize the adaptive variable selection. Furthermore, it took the selected variable into multistep stacked LSTM (MSSLSTM) to predict the monthly accidents in 2020. Finally, the proposed method was compared with multiple existing variable selection and prediction methods. The results demonstrate that the RMSE (root mean square error) of the MSSLSTM is reduced by 41.98%, compared with the original model; on the other hand, the key variable selected by the adaptive spare group lasso (ADSGL) can reduce the elapsed time by 42.67% (13 s). This shows that aviation safety prediction based on ADSGL and MSSLSTM can improve the prediction efficiency of the model while keeping excellent generalization ability and robustness.

The γδ T cell is a promising candidate cell in tumor immunotherapy. However, γδ T cells polarize to CD39+γδ Tregs upon colorectal cancer (CRC) induction, and the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Here, we show that the frequency of CD39+γδ Tregs, which positively correlated with poor prognosis, was significantly higher in right-sided CRC (RSCRC) than in the left-sided CRC (LSCRC). Interestingly, CD39+γδ Tregs from RSCRC showed stronger immunosuppressive phenotype and function than LSCRC. Furthermore, the quantitative mass spectrometry data show that CD39+γδ Treg polarization was related to the abnormal activation of the Phospholipase a2-IVa/Arachidonic acid (PLA2G4A/AA) metabolic pathway in RSCRC. Using an in vitro coculture system and an orthotopic murine model of CRC, we show that the overexpression of Pla2g4a in CT26 cells induced CD39+γδ Tregs, inhibiting the antitumor immune response. Finally, we found that the overall survival of the PLA2G4Ahi group was significantly shortened compared with PLA2G4Alo RSCRC, while the survival of LSCRC showed the opposite. Collectively, RSCRC with abnormal PLA2G4A expression educates γδ T cells into CD39+γδ Tregs to promote tumor progression and metastasis. Our work highlights the interaction between cancer cells and immune cells by distinguishing the primary tumor site and deepens the understanding of the tumor microenvironment and immunosuppression.

Diverse signaling pathways regulated by phytohormones are essential for the adaptation of plants to adverse environments. Root endophytic bacteria can manipulate hormone-related pathways to benefit their host plants under stress conditions, but the mechanisms underlying endophyte-mediated plant stress adaptation remain poorly discerned. Herein, the acetic acid-producing endophytic bacteria Lysinibacillus fusiformis Cr33 greatly reduced cadmium (Cd) accumulation in tomato plants. L. fusiformis led to a marked increase in jasmonic acid (JA) content and down-regulation of iron (Fe) uptake-related genes in Cd-exposed roots. Accordantly, acetic acid treatment considerably increased the JA content and inhibited root uptake of Cd uptake. In addition, the Cr33-inoculated roots displayed the increased availability of cell wall and rhizospheric Fe. Inoculation with Cr33 notably reduced the production of nitric oxide (NO) and suppressed Fe uptake systems in the Cd-treated roots, thereby contributing to hampering Cd absorption. Similar results were also observed for Cd-treated tomato plants in the presence of exogenous JA or acetic acid. However, chemical inhibition of JA biosynthesis greatly weakened the endophyte-alleviated Cd toxicity in the plants. Collectively, our findings indicated that the endophytic bacteria L. fusiformis effectively prevented Cd uptake in plants via the activation of acetic acid-mediated JA signaling pathways.

In this study, the properties of molded ramie fibers reinforced with polylactic acid (PLA) biocomposites were investigated. Before preparation of composites, diammonium phosphate (DAP) was applied to the surface of ramie fibers with and without pretreatments to analyze the interfacial adhesion of ramie–PLA composite. Wettability and adhesion behavior of ramie fibers in the PLA resin were characterized by contact angle (CA) measurements. The surface chemical analysis was performed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The thermal properties were recorded using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The wetting analysis results showed that the introduction of DAP treatment to ramie fibers significantly improved the wetting behavior of ramie in the PLA resin. Similarly, the results of TGA indicated that DAP treatment substantially decreased the degradation temperature of the composites. The result of FTIR was also consistent with the results of wettability, TGA, and DSC for the observed changes of peaks in the transmission spectrum.

Uncertainty theory is a branch of mathematics for modeling indeterminacy, especially belief degrees. This paper considers an application of uncertainty theory in team orienteering problem with time windows. In the problem, travel time is uncertain with known uncertainty distribution, and the impact of uncertainties on visit time and total profit cannot be ignored. Based on the uncertainty theory, a model of uncertain team orienteering problem with time windows (UTOPTW) is established. Since the UTOPTW cannot be solved to optimality within polynomial time, an improved iterated search algorithm is designed considering uncertainties in the insertion step. Finally, several numerical instances are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed model and algorithm.

In this paper, a discriminative autoencoding framework is proposed for semi-supervised anomaly detection using reconstruction errors. The framework only consists of a generator and a discriminative encoder, and the output of the latter is a vector. In the training process, the framework is trained as a generative adversarial network based on quadratic potential divergence. An extra loss added in the objective function enforces the discriminative encoder to use the mean value of the output vector for discrimination, which also empowers it with encoding ability. In the testing process, the trained framework can be used as an autoencoder to reconstruct test samples, where the trained discriminative encoder works as an encoder, and samples with reconstruction errors above a predefined threshold are determined as anomalies. The properties of quadratic potential divergence ensure a simple training process with comparable performance, meanwhile the discriminative encoder with two functions makes full use of training resources and reduces required network structures. Comparisons on benchmark datasets also show the efficiency and superiorities of the proposed methods.

Similarity search is a foundational task in time series data mining. Although there are many ways to measure the similarity of time series, a lot of evidence indicates that dynamic time warping (DTW) has the best robustness in many applications. Unfortunately, the expensive computational cost limits its application in large-scale databases. To speed up similarity search under DTW, we design a framework of two-stage similarity search for time series. In the first stage, we propose an improved lower bounding distance, which can be used to discard plenty of dissimilar series to get a set of candidate sequences. In the second stage, to efficiently get the retrieval result from the set of candidate sequences, we explore early abandoning strategy to avoid the full calculation of DTW. Extensive experiments are conducted on real-world data sets. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method can improve the retrieval efficiency of similarity search under DTW and guarantee no false dismissals.

Super-Resolution (SR) techniques for image restoration have recently been gaining attention due to their excellent performance. For powerful learning abilities, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have been proven to have achieved great success. In this paper, we propose an Enhanced Generative Adversarial Network (EGAN) for improving its effects for a real-time Super-Resolution task. The main content of this paper are as follows: (1) We adopted the Laplacian pyramid framework as a pre-trained module, which is beneficial for providing multiscale features for our input. (2) At each feature block, a convolutional skip-connections network, which may contain some latent information, was significant for the generative model to reconstruct a plausible-looking image. (3) Considering that the edge details usually play an important role in image generation, a perceptual loss function was defined to train and seek the optimal parameters. Quantitative and qualitative evaluations were demonstrated so that our algorithm not only took full advantage of the Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to improve the image quality, but also performed better than other algorithms in speed and performance for real-time Super-Resolution tasks.

Mounting evidence has indicated that beneficial rhizobacteria can suppress foliar pathogen invasion via elicitation of induced systemic resistance (ISR). However, it remains elusive whether long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are involved in the mediation of the rhizobacteria-primed ISR processes in plants. Herein, we demonstrated the ability of the rhizobacterial strain Bacillus subtilis SL18r to trigger ISR in tomato plants against the foliar pathogen Botrytis cinerea. Comparative transcriptome analysis was conducted to screen differentially expressed lncRNAs (DELs) between the non-inoculated and SL18r-inoculated plants. Among these DELs, four variants of MSTRG18363 possessed conserved binding sites for miR1918, which negatively regulates immune systems in tomato plants. The expression of MSTRG18363 in tomato leaves was significantly induced by SL18r inoculation. The transcription of MSTRG18363 was negatively correlated with the expression of miR1918, but displayed a positive correlation with the transcription of the RING-H2 finger gene SlATL20 (a target gene of miR1918). Moreover, MSTRG18363-overexpressing plants exhibited the enhanced disease resistance, reduction of miR1918 transcripts, and marked increases of SlATL20 expression. However, the SL18r-induced disease resistance was largely impaired in the MSTRG18363-silenced plants. VIGS-mediated SlATL20 silencing also greatly weakened the SL18r-induced disease resistance. Collectively, our results suggested that induction of MSTRG18363 expression in tomato plants by SL18r was conducive to promoting the decoy of miR1918 and regulating the expression of SlATL20, thereby provoking the ISR responses against foliar pathogen infection.

Coordination of cell growth is essential for the development of the brain, but the molecular mechanisms underlying the regulation of glial and neuronal size are poorly understood. To investigate the mechanisms involved in glial size regulation, we used Caenorhabditis elegans amphid sheath (AMsh) glia as a model and show that a conserved cis-Golgi membrane protein eas-1/GOLT1B negatively regulates glial growth. We found that eas-1 inhibits a conserved E3 ubiquitin ligase rnf-145/RNF145, which, in turn, promotes nuclear activation of sbp-1/ SREBP, a key regulator of sterol and fatty acid synthesis, to restrict cell growth. At early developmental stages, rnf-145 in the cis-Golgi network inhibits sbp-1 activation to promote the growth of glia, and when animals reach the adult stage, this inhibition is released through an eas-1-dependent shuttling of rnf-145 from the cis-Golgi to the trans-Golgi network to stop glial growth. Furthermore, we identified long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFAs), especially eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), as downstream products of the eas-1-rnf-145-sbp-1 pathway that functions to prevent the overgrowth of glia. Together, our findings reveal a novel and potentially conserved mechanism underlying glial size control.

The comparative advantage of using vegetable fibers as reinforcement (fillers) attracted manufacturing industries over conventional composites. Natural fibers are purely green features that can easily decompose in a normal way to water and CO2 when encountered with moisture during their disposal. In this research, the effect of pre-treatment and properties of ramie fibers reinforced polylactic acid (PLA) composite were studied. Before the composite preparation, ramie fibers were soaked in a solution of alkali (sodium hydroxide) and silane coupling agent to provide better compatibility between ramie fibers and PLA interface. Additionally, a design containing nine samples was conducted to study the effect of temperature, fiber volume ratio, molding pressure and time on composite fabrication. From the results, optimum processing parameters were identified based on the tensile, bending and impact strengths improvement from various tested samples. Furthermore, this study highlights the degradation process and properties of ramie fibers reinforced PLA composites by underground burial experimental procedures.

Pogostemon auricularius, an aromatic plant in Lamiaceae, has wide application in pharmaceutical preparations. However, little is known about the secretory structures that contain the medicinal compounds. In this study, two kinds of glandular trichome types, including peltate glandular trichomes and short-stalked capitate trichomes, were identified in the leaves and stems by cryo-scanning electron microscope. Oil secretion from the glands contained lipids, flavones, and terpenes, and the progresses of secretion were different in the two glands types. The investigation by transmission electron microscope indicated that the endoplasmic reticulum system and plastids were involved in the biosynthesis of oils in the two glandular trichomes. The vacuoles showed a new role in the oil preparations and storage. The synthesized oil could be transported from the head cell to the sub-cuticular space by different way in the two glands. Comparative analysis of the development, distribution, histochemistry and ultrastructures of the secretory structures in Pogostemon auricularius led us to propose that the two glands may make different contribution to the collection of medicinal compounds. Furthermore, the characteristics of two glands in the secretory stage probably indicated the synthesizing site of metabolite.

Induction of ethylene biosynthesis by aphids increases the susceptibility of several plant species to aphids. Recent studies have indicated that some MYB transcription factors regulate the phloem-based defense against aphid infestation by modulating ethylene (ET) signaling. Arabidopsis MYB102 has previously been shown to be induced by wound signaling and regulate defense response against chewing insects. However, it remains unclear whether Arabidopsis MYB102 takes part in the defense response of plants to aphids. Here, we investigated the function of MYB102 in the response of Arabidopsis to aphid infestation. Arabidopsis MYB102 was primarily expressed in vascular tissues, and its transcription was remarkably induced by green peach aphids (GPA; Myzus persicae). The results of RNA-Sequencing revealed that overexpression of MYB102 in Arabidopsis promoted ET biosynthesis by upregulation of some 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate synthase (ACS) genes, which are rate-limiting enzymes of the ET-synthetic pathway. Enhanced ET levels led to reduced Arabidopsis resistance to GPA. Furthermore, dominant suppression of MYB102 inhibited aphid-induced increase of ET levels in Arabidopsis. In agreement with a negative regulatory role for ET in aphid defense responses, the MYB102-overexpressing lines were more susceptible to GPA than wild-type (WT) plants. Overexpression of MYB102 in Arabidopsis obviously repressed aphid-induced callose deposition. Conversely, overexpression of MYB102 failed to increase aphid susceptibility in both the ET-insensitive mutants and plants treated with inhibitors of ET signaling pathways, demonstrating that the ET was critical for promoting aphid performance conferred by overexpression of MYB102. Collectively, our findings indicate that the Arabidopsis MYB102 increases host susceptibility to GPA through the ET-dependent signaling pathways.

Pogostemon cablin possesses two morphologically and ontogenetically different types of glandular trichomes, one type of bristle hair on the surfaces of leaves and stems and one type of internal gland inside the leaves and stems. The internal gland originates from elementary meristem and is associated with the biosynthesis of oils present inside the leaves and stems. However, there is little information on mechanism for the oil biosynthesis and secretion inside the leaves and stems. In this study, we identified three kinds of glandular trichome types and two kinds of internal gland in the Pogostemon cablin. The oil secretions from internal glands of stems and leaves contained lipids, flavones and terpenes. Our results indicated that endoplasmic reticulum and plastids and vacuoles are likely involved in the biosynthesis of oils in the internal glands and the synthesized oils are transported from endoplasmic reticulum to the cell wall via connecting endoplasmic reticulum membranes to the plasma membrane. And the comparative analysis of the development, distribution, histochemistry and ultrastructures of the internal and external glands in Pogostemon cablin leads us to propose that the internal gland may be a novel secretory structure which is different from external glands.

Background and aims: Long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) FOXD2 adjacent opposite strand RNA 1 (FOXD2-AS1) is aberrantly expressed in various cancers and associated with cancer progression. A comprehensive meta-analysis was performed based on published literature and data in the Gene Expression Omnibus database, and then the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset was used to assess the clinicopathological and prognostic value of FOXD2-AS1 in cancer patients. Methods: Gene Expression Omnibus databases of microarray data and published articles were used formeta-analysis, and TCGA dataset was also explored using the GEPIA analysis program. Hazard ratios (HRs) and pooled odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used to assess the role of FOXD2-AS1 in cancers. Results: This meta-analysis included 21 studies with 2391 patients and 25 GEO datasets with 3311 patients. The pooled HRs suggested that highly expressed FOXD2-AS1 expression was correlated with poor overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS). Similar results were obtained by analysis of TCGA data for 9502 patients. The pooled results also indicated that FOXD2-AS1 expression was associated with bigger tumor size and advanced TNM stage, but was not related to age, gender, differentiation and lymph node metastasis. Conclusion: The present study demonstrated that FOXD2-AS1 is closely related to tumor size and TNM stage. Additionally, increased FOXD2-AS1 was a risk factor of OS and DFS in cancer patients, suggesting FOXD2-AS1 may be a potential biomarker in human cancers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the fast development of solar energy harvesting technology, various portable harvesters with excellent energy capture properties are highly desired, especially those devices used for facades and roofs of buildings. This study proposed a new energy absorption model by integrating wave-guiding polymer materials and fluorescent substance coated textiles, which aimed to address the issues of current energy shortage and excessive pollutant emissions in the ambient environment. Besides, this textile-based production was multifunctional in that it possessed the compelling features of solar radiation collection, thermal insulation and surface decoration. Compared with the conventional solar energy harvester, the as-fabricated device exhibited the merits of light weight, better mechanical flexibility and wider extended applicability. This study has achieved some progress in the area of solar energy harvesting and could have a possible informative effect on the future related research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crypton is a SP-network block cipher that attracts much attention because of its excellent performance on hardware. Based on Crypton, mCrypton is designed as a lightweight block cipher suitable for Internet of Things (IoT) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). The security of Crypton and mCrypton under meet-in-the-middle attack is analyzed in this paper. By analyzing the differential properties of cell permutation, several differential characteristics are introduced to construct generalized δ-sets. With the usage of a generalized δ-set and differential enumeration technique, a 6-round meet-in-the-middle distinguisher is proposed to give the first meet-in-the-middle attack on 9-round Crypton-192 and some improvements on the cryptanalysis of 10-round Crypton-256 are given. Combined with the properties of nibble permutation and substitution, an improved meet-in-the-middle attack on 8-round mCrypton is proposed and the first complete attack on 9-round mCrypton-96 is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is very useful for information gathering in Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) mission. On the basis of uncertainty theory, the main purpose of this paper is to study a new kind of UAV ISR mission planning problem involving multiple objectives under uncertain environment. In particular, the mission planning objectives are influenced by the same uncertain factors simultaneously, that is to say, they are correlated or dependent with each other. In this case, the traditional multiobjective approach cannot guarantee the uncertain nature and take into account the dependence among uncertain objectives in the UAV ISR mission planning problem. In order to overcome the disadvantage in traditional approach, a new solution approach is introduced for obtaining the PE Pareto efficient routes for it, which involves transforming the original ISR mission planning problem into a single objective uncertain programming problem. Two specific compromise models are proposed using this new solution approach respectively, whose validity is proved theoretically. Finally, an application case study with 13 ISR targets is provided and solved. The results show that the proposed model and solution approach have excellent consistency and efficiency in solving the uncertain UAV ISR mission planning problem presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Xiong Ma Tang (XMT), one of the ancient herbal prescriptions, has been used in treatment of migraine disease. In this study, efficient high-performance liquid chromatographic fingerprints were developed for identification of 11 major marker components, named 1-(β-D-ribofuranosyl)-1H-1,2,4-triazone, gastrodin, ligustrazine, 3,4-bihydroxy benzaldehyde, p-hydroxy benzaldehyde, p-hydroxybenzoic acid, benzoic acid, vanillin, ferulic acid, caffeic acid and senkyunolide I, respectively, in XMT and three related preparations. The analysis of 11 marker compounds was carried out using a Kromasil C18 reserved-phase column (5 μm, 4.6 × 250 mm) and gradient elution with methanol and aqueous phosphoric acid (0.1%, v/v). The flow rate was 1.0 mL/min and the detector wavelength was set at 276 nm. Mean chromatograms and correlation coefficients of samples were calculated by the software "Similarity Evaluation System for Chromatographic Fingerprint of Traditional Chinese Medicine". The correlation coefficients of XMT and three related preparations ranged from 0.935 to 0.986, 0.909 to 0.949, 0.900 to 0.926 and 0.937 to 0.988, respectively. It was the first time 11 peaks of XMT and three related preparations were identified by comparing with standard compounds. These results have shown that the developed methodwas efficient for the quality evaluation of XMT and its related preparations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well documented that the homeodomain-leucine zipper (HD-Zip) transcription factors play diverse roles during plant growth and development. The Class I HD-Zip genes are shown to be involved in the regulation of abiotic stress responses and tolerance. Herein, a novel Class I HD-Zip gene, EsHD1, was isolated from Eutrema salsugineum, and an investigation was performed of its physiological functions in response to drought stress. The analyses of gene expression profiles revealed that the EsHD1 transcripts quickly accumulated upon exposure to various abiotic stress conditions or abscisic acid treatments. Furthermore, the overexpression of EsHD1 in tobacco plants conferred improved tolerance to drought stress. The EsHD1-overexpressing lines had lower levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS), ion leakage, and malondialdehyde, but they manifested higher activities of antioxidant enzymes and the transcription of pathogenic-related genes as compared to wild-type plants under drought stress conditions. Therefore, our findings demonstrated that EsHD1 positively regulated plant drought tolerance via alleviation of ROS-mediated membrane damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of the uncertainty theory, this paper is devoted to the uncertain multiobjective programming problem. Firstly, several principles are provided to define the relationship between uncertain variables. Then a new approach is proposed for obtaining Pareto efficient solutions in uncertain multiobjective programming problem based on PE principle, which involves transforming the uncertain multiobjective problem into a problem with only one uncertain objective function, and its validity has been proved. Due to the complexity of this problem, it is very suitable for the use of genetic algorithm. Finally, a numerical example is presented to illustrate the novel approach pro- posed, and the genetic algorithm is adopted to solve it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Salt stress can trigger several physiological responses in plants such as increased accumulation of ABA and antioxidant enzyme activities, which have been closely associated with the tolerance of plants to salt stress. In the present study a novel zeaxanthin epoxidase gene, designated EsABA1, was isolated from Eutrema salsugineum. EsABA1 contained a full-length open reading frame (ORF) of 2001 bp, encoding 666 amino acids. Transcription of EsABA1 rapidly accumulated after exposure to various abiotic stresses, suggesting that the EsABA1 gene was involved in multiple stress responses and tolerance. To further investigate the roles of EsABA1 under salt-stress conditions, transgenic tobacco lines that ectopically overexpressed EsABA1 were obtained. These transgenic lines exhibited more tolerance to salt stress than wild-type (WT) plants, and overexpression of EsABA1 increased the contents of ABA and proline as compared to WT plants under salt-stress conditions. Moreover, the expression levels of stress responsive genes and activities of antioxidant enzymes were much higher in the EsABA1-overexpressing lines than in WT plants. Therefore, our findings indicated that the elevated expression of EsABA1 enhanced the tolerance of transgenic tobacco plants to high salinity stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With limited computing and storage resources, many network applications of encryption algorithms require low power devices and fast computing components. CHESS-64 is designed by employing simple key scheduling and Data-Dependent operations (DDO) as main cryptographic components. Hardware performance for Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and for Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) proves that CHESS-64 is a very flexible and powerful new cipher. In this paper, the security of CHESS-64 block cipher under related-key differential cryptanalysis is studied. Based on the differential properties of DDOs, we construct two types of related-key differential characteristics with one-bit difference in the master key. To recover 74 bits key, two key recovery algorithms are proposed based on the two types of related-key differential characteristics, and the corresponding data complexity is about 242.9 chosen-plaintexts, computing complexity is about 242.9 CHESS-64 encryptions, storage complexity is about 226.6 bits of storage resources. To break the cipher, an exhaustive attack is implemented to recover the rest 54 bits key. These works demonstrate an effective and general way to attack DDO-based ciphers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to investigate the predictability of the warp breakage rate from a sizing yarn quality index using a feed-forward back-propagation network in an artificial neural network system. In order to achieve the objective, a series of trials is conducted. An eight-quality index (size add-on, abrasion resistance, abrasion resistance irregularity, hairiness beyond 3 mm, breaking strength, breaking strength irregularity, breaking elongation, and breaking elongation irregularity) and warp breakage rates are rated in controlled conditions. A good correlation between predicted and actual warp breakage rates indicates that warp breakage rates can be predicted by neural networks. A model with a single sigmoid hidden layer with four neurons is able to produce better predictions than the other models of this particular data set in the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macroautophagy (autophagy) utilizes a serial of receptors to specifically recognize and degrade autophagy cargoes, including damaged organelles, to maintain cellular homeostasis. Upstream signals spatiotemporally regulate the biological functions of selective autophagy receptors through protein post-translational modifications (PTM) such as phosphorylation. However, it is unclear how acetylation directly controls autophagy receptors in selective autophagy. Here, we report that an ER-phagy receptor FAM134B is acetylated by CBP acetyltransferase, eliciting intense ER-phagy. Furthermore, FAM134B acetylation promoted CAMKII-mediated phosphorylation to sustain a mode of milder ER-phagy. Conversely, SIRT7 deacetylated FAM134B to temper its activities in ER-phagy to avoid excessive ER degradation. Together, this work provides further mechanistic insights into how ER-phagy receptor perceives environmental signals for fine-tuning of ER homeostasis and demonstrates how nucleus-derived factors are programmed to control ER stress by modulating ER-phagy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]