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Micropores and elemental segregation are detrimental to the high-temperature properties of nickel-based single-crystal (SX) superalloys and hot isostatic pressing (HIP) treatment has been considered as an appropriate method to reduce micropores and elemental segregation. In this study, the effect of a two-step HIP treatment on the solution-treated nickel-based SX superalloy was investigated. An elemental uphill diffusion with the micropores reduction was discovered during HIP treatment and caused the elemental segregation of Al, Cr and Ta at the dendritic scale. It indicates that the HIP treatment is not always beneficial for alloy homogenization. The results show that the first-step HIP treatment could promote the uphill diffusion and cause the elemental segregation with the significant micropores reduction. The second-step HIP treatment could decrease the elemental segregation with further micropores reduction. During subsequent heat treatments, the elemental segregation caused by HIP treatment could be basically eliminated with a slight increase of micropores. During HIP treatment, the micropores reduction and elemental segregation were correlated with the HIP temperature and pressure. This study will provide the supports for controlling micropores and homogenization of nickel-based SX superalloys.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have demonstrated anatomical and functional alterations of brain regions in patients with migraine, and the efficacy of acupuncture for migraine could regulate these abnormal alterations. However, its pathogenesis remains ambiguous, and inconsistent results have been reported. The purpose of this study was to explore abnormal structural and functional alterations in patients with migraine using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis and a seed-based functional connectivity (FC) approach and to provide a basis for future research.

Pulmonary fibrosis is an important factor affecting the prognosis of severe septic patients with acute lung injury. The objective of this study was to explore the effect of norepinephrine (NE) and α2-adrenoreceptor (AR) on sepsis-associated pulmonary fibrosis and the mechanism underlying these effects. We found pulmonary fibrotic changes, and increased NE production and α2A-AR expression in the pulmonary tissue of mice subjected to cecal ligation and puncture surgery. Reserpine and yohimbine alleviated pulmonary fibrosis in mice with sepsis by exhausting NE derived from the lung's adrenergic nerve and blocking α2-AR, respectively. There was no significant difference in the expression of the three α1-AR subtypes. The effect of NE on promoting pulmonary fibroblast differentiation in vitrowas suppressed by yohimbine. Both the protein and mRNA expression levels of α2A-AR were increased in pulmonary fibroblasts treated with LPS. Clonidine, a selective α2-AR agonist, enhanced LPS-induced differentiation in pulmonary fibroblasts, as indicated by the increase in α-smooth muscle actin and collagen I/III, which was mitigated by inhibiting PKC and p38. Further in vivoresults indicated that yohimbine alleviated pulmonary fibrosis and inhibited the phosphorylation of PKC, p38, and Smad2/3 in lung tissue of mice exposed to LPS for 4 weeks. Clonidine showed the opposite effect to yohimbine, which aggravated LPS-induced pulmonary fibrosis. These findings demonstrated that the sepsis-induced increase in NE promoted fibroblast differentiation via activating α2-AR. Blockage of α2-AR effectively ameliorated sepsis-associated pulmonary fibrosis by abolishing NE-induced lung fibroblast differentiation and inhibiting the PKC-p38-Smad2/3 pathway.

Anthropogenic nitrogen inputs lead to a high ammonium (NH4+)/nitrate (NO3-) ratio in the soil, which restricts hyphal spreading of soil fungi. Access of symbiotic fungi to roots is a prerequisite for plant-fungal interactions. Hyphosphere bacteria protect fungi from environmental stress, yet the impact of hyphosphere bacteria on adaptation of host fungi to NH4+-enriched conditions remains unclear. By developing soil microcosm assays, we report that a plant-symbiotic fungus, Phomopsis liquidambaris, harbors specific hyphosphere bacteria that facilitate hyphal spreading and assist in the root colonization in NH4+-enriched soil. Genetic manipulation, 16S rRNA gene analysis and coinoculation assays revealed that the genus Enterobacterwas enriched in the hyphosphere of NH4+-sensitive wild-type compared to NH4+-preferring nitrite reductase-deficient strain. The representative Enterobactersp. SZ2-promoted hyphal spreading is only evident in nonsterilized soil. We further identified an increased abundance and diversity of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and a synchronously decreased NH4+:NO3-ratio following SZ2 inoculation. Microbial supplementation and inhibitor assays showed that AOA-mediated reduction in NH4+:NO3-ratio is responsible for SZ2-enhanced fungal adaptation to NH4+-enriched conditions. The Ph. liquidambaris-Enterobacter-AOA triple interaction promoted rice growth in NH4+-enriched soil. Our study reveals the essential role of hyphosphere microorganism-based hyphal spreading in plant-fungal symbiosis establishment within nitrogen-affected agroecosystems.

Point cloud registration is a fundamental problem in 3D computer vision. Outdoor LiDAR point clouds are typically large-scale and complexly distributed, which makes the registration challenging. In this paper, we propose an efficient hierarchical network named HRegNet for large-scale outdoor LiDAR point cloud registration. Instead of using all points in the point clouds, HRegNet performs registration on hierarchically extracted keypoints and descriptors. The overall framework combines the reliable features in deeper layer and the precise position information in shallower layers to achieve robust and precise registration. We present a correspondence network to generate correct and accurate keypoints correspondences. Moreover, bilateral consensus and neighborhood consensus are introduced for keypoints matching, and novel similarity features are designed to incorporate them into the correspondence network, which significantly improves the registration performance. In addition, we design a consistency propagation strategy to effectively incorporate spatial consistency into the registration pipeline. The whole network is also highly efficient since only a small number of keypoints are used for registration. Extensive experiments are conducted on three large-scale outdoor LiDAR point cloud datasets to demonstrate the high accuracy and efficiency of the proposed HRegNet. The source code of the proposed HRegNet is available at https://github.com/ispc-lab/HRegNet2.

Point cloud registration is a fundamental problem in 3D computer vision. Previous learning-based methods for LiDAR point cloud registration can be categorized into two schemes: dense-to-dense matching methods and sparse-to-sparse matching methods. However, for large-scale outdoor LiDAR point clouds, solving dense point correspondences is time-consuming, whereas sparse keypoint matching easily suffers from keypoint detection error. In this paper, we propose SDMNet, a novel Sparse-to-Dense Matching Network for large-scale outdoor LiDAR point cloud registration. Specifically, SDMNet performs registration in two sequential stages: sparse matching stage and local-dense matching stage. In the sparse matching stage, we sample a set of sparse points from the source point cloud and then match them to the dense target point cloud using a spatial consistency enhanced soft matching network and a robust outlier rejection module. Furthermore, a novel neighborhood matching module is developed to incorporate local neighborhood consensus, significantly improving performance. The local-dense matching stage is followed for fine-grained performance, where dense correspondences are efficiently obtained by performing point matching in local spatial neighborhoods of high-confidence sparse correspondences. Extensive experiments on three large-scale outdoor LiDAR point cloud datasets demonstrate that the proposed SDMNet achieves state-of-the-art performance with high efficiency.

Forecasting the future environment is an essential and fundamental capability of autonomous driving systems. In contrast to the widely studied video prediction, only a few literatures have explored LiDAR point cloud prediction. To achieve future point cloud generation, most existing methods are based on free-form 3D scene flow prediction. However, these simple scene flow prediction-based methods may cause distortions since the motions of 3D scenes can be seen as a combination of rigid (static background) and flow (dynamic foreground) motions. To address this issue, we propose a simple but effective rigid constrained point cloud prediction network named RPP-Net. The key component of the proposed method is the hybrid motion decoder, which generates motion masks and combines flow motions and rigid motions to produce hybrid motions without additional annotations and sensors. Besides, to reduce running time, we provide a hierarchical cell, which uses a feature encoder to extract deep features and an RPP-RNN module to capture temporal correlations across frames. To evaluate the effectiveness of our RPP-Net, we have conducted extensive experiments on both KITTI dataset and Argoverse dataset and the results show that our RPP-Net significantly outperforms existing methods and achieves a new state-of-the-art.

•Filamin A associates with both inactive and active platelet integrin αIIbβ3 to differentially regulate bidirectional signaling.•Filamin A induces a structural transition in the αIIb CT to strongly link αIIbβ3 with actin to promote outside-in signaling.

No consensus has been reached on the optimal position of PCL tibial tunnel. The purpose of this study was to compare the biomechanical properties of proximal, distal and anatomic tibial tunnel in transtibial posterior cruciate ligament reconstruction. An in-vitro model of transtibial posterior cruciate ligament reconstruction was simulated using porcine tibias and bovine extensor tendons. Two models of biomechanical testing, load-to-failure loading, and cyclic loading, were performed in this study. The load-to-failure loading found that distal tibial tunnel resulted in greater ultimate load and yield load than the anatomic and proximal tunnel group (p< 0.05), whereas there were no significant differences in mean tensile stiffness among three groups (p> 0.05). The cyclic loading found no differences in the graft displacement at 250, 500, and 1000 cycles among three groups (p> 0.05). It was found that distal tibial tunnel showed superior ultimate load and yield load in load-to-failure loading testing compared with proximal and anatomic tibial tunnels, whereas no significant difference was found in terms of the mean displacement of the survived grafts in cyclic loading testing among three groups.

The array antenna will be inevitably deformed affected by the motion of the communication system or other special requirements, which will reduce the original good radiation performance, such as gain dropping, sidelobe increasing, and even beam splitting. To cope with the beam deterioration caused by the array antenna’s deformation, it is necessary to quickly manipulate the amplitude and phase distribution according to the current conformal array shape to stabilize the beam. This article proposes a physical-method-driven deep-learning-based (PMDL-based) fast beam stabilization algorithm for antenna array deformation. First, we theoretically analyze the radiation pattern synthesis of the conformal array with the arbitrary surface to design the corresponding physical method, and we verify the accuracy of the method by the calculated and simulated results. Then, the deep neural network (DNN) driven by the physical method is designed integrated with the aforementioned radiation pattern synthesis, whose training process is given. Finally, a $1\times16$ array antenna is taken as an example to verify the validity of the beam stabilization algorithm when the designed array is deformed. The simulated and measured results indicate that gain dropping and sidelobe level (SLL) rising are, respectively, less than 1.5 and 2 dB by applying the proposed PMDL-based fast beam stabilization when the array antenna is deformed within the range of ${\mathrm {100}}^{\circ }$ of the normal vector of each array element, while the beam stabilization time is less than 1.0 ms (testing time).

Objective: To investigate relationship of the retinal capillary plexus (RCP) and ganglion cell complex (GCC) with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia in a community-based study1. Methods: This cross-sectional study incorporated the participants of the Jidong Eye Cohort Study. Optical coherence tomography angiography was performed to obtain RCP vessel density and GCC thickness with detailed segments. The Mini-mental State Examination and Montreal Cognitive Assessment were used to assess cognitive status by professional neuropsychologists. Participants were thus divided into three groups: normal, mild cognitive impairment, and dementia. Multivariable analysis was used to measure relationship of ocular parameters with cognitive impairment. Results: Of the 2678 participants, the mean age was 44.1 ± 11.7 years. MCI and dementia occurred in 197 (7.4%) and 80 (3%) participants, respectively. Compared to the normal group, the adjusted odds ratio (OR) with the 95% confidence interval was 0.76 (0.65–0.90) for the correlation of lower deep RCP with MCI. We found the following items significantly associated with dementia compared with the normal group: a superficial (OR, 0.68 [0.54–0.86]) and deep (OR, 0.75 [0.57–0.99]) RCP, as well as the GCC (OR, 0.68 [0.54–0.85]). Compared to the MCI group, those with dementia had decreased GCC (OR, 0.75 [0.58–0.97]). Conclusions: Decreased deep RCP density was associated with MCI. Decreased superficial and deep RCP and the thin GCC were correlated with dementia. These implied that the retinal microvasculature may develop into a promising non-invasive imaging marker to predict severity of cognitive impairment.

ABSTRACTPiezo1, a mechanosensitive ion channel, participates in a variety of biological processes in maintaining bone homeostasis. As the most abundant cells in bones of the mammals, osteocytes play an essential role in bone formation, remodeling, and bone mass maintenance. Here, by exposing MLO-Y4 osteocytes to the fluid shear stress (FSS) microenvironment, we explored the effect of Piezo1-mediated FSS on the expression of the molecules critical to the process of bone formation and resorption, Receptor Activator of Nuclear Factor-Kappa-B Ligand (RANKL) and Osteoprotegerin (OPG). It was found that 9 dyne/cm2loading for 30 minutes showed an upregulation trend on Piezo1 when MLO-Y4 osteocytes were exposed to an FSS microenvironment. FSS promotes the expression of OPG and inhibits the expression of RANKL. The blocker of Piezo1, GsMTx4, downregulates the effect of FSS on the expression of these two molecules. In addition, NOTCH3 was involved in this process. Thus, the results demonstrated that Piezo1-mediated FSS promotes the expression of OPG and inhibits the expression of RANKL via NOTCH3 in MLO-Y4 osteocytes.

Atherosclerosis is characterized by inflammation in the arterial wall, which is known to be exacerbated by diabetes. Therapeutic repression of inflammation is a promising strategy for treating atherosclerosis. In this study, we showed that diabetes aggravated atherosclerosis in apolipoproteinE knockout (ApoE−/-) mice, in which increased expression of long-chain acyl-CoA synthetase 1 (Acsl1) in macrophages played an important role. Knockdown of Acsl1in macrophages (MφshAcsl1) reprogrammed macrophages to an anti-inflammatory phenotype, especially under hyperglycemic conditions. Injection of MφshAcsl1reprogrammed macrophages into streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic ApoE−/-mice (ApoE−/-+ STZ) alleviated inflammation locally in the plaque, liver and spleen. Consistent with the reduction in inflammation, plaques became smaller and more stable after the adoptive transfer of reprogrammed macrophages. Taken together, our findings indicate that increased Acsl1expression in macrophages play a key role in aggravated atherosclerosis of diabetic mice, possibly by promoting inflammation. Adoptive transfer of Acsl1silenced macrophages may serve as a potential therapeutic strategy for atherosclerosis.

Accurate measurements of choroidal structure and vascularity are important for ocular disease diagnosis and monitoring. The impact of optical coherence tomography penetration and image analysis on choroidal vascularity parameters remains unclear. We discover automatic segmentation can improve the ability of choroidal boundary identification with deficient penetration, which has certain clinical application value.

ABSTRACTSeismic exploration of complex geological structure model has been paid much attention as the increasing complexity of geological structure in seismic exploration, and especially, the research on saturated porous medium saturated with fluid has become a hot topic. In our study, we propose a new Padé approximation (PAM) method of solving the elastic wave equation in the porous medium of low-frequency case. This method uses an implicit scheme derived from the rational function of time difference operator for the time discretization, which has the characters of low-dispersion and high-efficiency for time advancing. An explicit iteration for this implicit algorithm is obtained for avoiding solving a large linear system with a block tridiagonal coefficient matrix at each time step. Then, we employ the stereo-modelling method with the eighth-order accuracy for space discretization, which uses linear combination of wave field displacements and their gradients to discretize spatial derivatives and obtains a high-order approximation. Compared with the traditional method, this discretization operator has shorter operator radius and better compactness, which is beneficial for increasing the precision and imaging quality of seismic inversion and seismic migration. Theoretical analysis and numerical experiments verify that the PAM method is an accurate forwarding modelling tool. Waveforms obtained by the PAM method can well match the analytical solutions. Moreover, the seismic wave fields including fast Pwave, Swave, and slow Pwave for the saturated fluid porous medium can be observed clearly on coarser grids. This is in contrast with the FD method, which suffers from serious numerical dispersion.

The adhesion and modification of wet surfaces by an interfacial adlayer remain a key challenge in chemistry and materials science. Herein, we report a transparent and biocompatible amyloid-like nanofilm that breaks through the hydration layer of a wet surface and achieves strong adhesion with a hydrogel/tissue surface within 2 s. This process is facilitated by fast amyloid-like protein aggregation at the air/water interface and the resultant exposure of hydrophobic groups. The resultant protein nanofilm adhered to a hydrogel surface presents an adhesion strength that is 20 times higher than the maximum friction force between the upper eyelid and eyeball. In addition, the nanofilm exhibits controllable tunability to encapsulate and release functional molecules without significant activity loss. As a result, therapeutic contact lenses (CLs) could be fabricated by adhering the functionalized nanofilm (carrying drug) on the CL surface. These therapeutic CLs display excellent therapeutic efficacy, showing an increase in cyclosporin A (CsA) bioavailability of at least 82% when compared to the commercial pharmacologic treatment for dry eye syndrome. Thus, this work underlines the finding that the bioinspired amyloid-like aggregation of proteins at interfaces drives instant adhesion onto a wet surface, enabling the active loading and controllable release of functional building blocks.

Introduction: Migraine is a common headache disorder. Many studies have used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to explore the possible pathogenesis of migraine, but they have not reached consistent conclusions and lack rigorous multiple comparison correction. Thus, this study investigates the mechanisms of migraine development from the perspective of altered functional connectivity (FC) in brain regions by using data-driven and regions of interest (ROI)-based approaches. Methods: Resting-state functional MRI data were collected from 30 patients with migraine and 40 healthy controls (HCs) matched for age, gender, and years of education. For the data-driven method, we used a voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) approach to compare the FC between the patients and HCs. For the ROI-based method, significant differences in VMHC maps between the patients and HCs were defined as ROI. The seed-based approach further revealed significant differences in FC between the seeds and the other brain regions. Furthermore, the correlations between abnormal FC and clinical characteristics of patients were investigated. A rigorous multiple comparison correction was used with false discovery rate and permutation test (5000 times). Results: In comparison with the controls group, patients showed enhanced VMHC in the bilateral thalamus. We also observed enhanced FC between the left thalamus and the left superior frontal gyrus, and increased FC between the right thalamus and the left middle frontal gyrus (Brodmann area 45 and Brodmann area 8) in patients. Further analysis showed that the FC values in the left superior frontal gyrus and left middle frontal gyrus were negatively corrected with visual analogue scale scores or attack times for headaches. Conclusions: Patients with migraine showed altered VMHC in the bilateral thalamus, and abnormal FC of bilateral thalamus and other brain regions. The abnormalities in thalamic FC are a likely mechanism for the development of migraine. Trial Registration: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, ChiCTR2000033995. Registered on 20 June 2020.

Grover quantum algorithm is an unstructured search algorithm that can run on a quantum computer with the complexity of ON, and is one of the typical algorithms of quantum computing. Recently, it has served as a routine for pattern-matching tasks. However, the original Grover search algorithm is probabilistic, which is not negligible for problems involving determinism. Besides that, efficient data loading is also a key challenge for the practical applications of the Grover algorithm. Here in this work, we propose a modified pattern-matching scheme with Long’s quantum search algorithm, in which the quantum circuit structure search algorithm requires fewer multi-qubit quantum gates, and can obtain the desired results deterministically. Then, the comparison of the performance of our scheme and the previous algorithms is presented through numerical simulations, indicating our algorithm is feasible with current quantum technologies which is friendly to noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices.

A simple and flexible mass balance approach was applied to observations of XCH4from TROPOMI to estimate CH4emissions over Shanxi Province, including the impacts of advective transport, pressure transport, and atmospheric diffusion. High-frequency eddy-covariance flux observations were used to constrain the driving terms of the mass balance equation. This equation was then used to calculate day-to-day and 5 km × 5 km grided CH4emissions from May 2018 to July 2022 based on TROPOMI RPRO column CH4observations. The Shanxi-wide emissions of CH4, 126 ± 58.8 ug/m2/s, shows a fat tail distribution and high variability on a daily time scale (the 90th percentile is 2.14 times the mean and 2.74 times the median). As the number of days in the rolling average increases, the change in the variation decreases to 128 ± 35.7 ug/m2/s at 10-day, 128 ± 19.8 ug/m2/s at 30-day and 127 ± 13.9 ug/m2/s at 90-day. The range of values of the annual mean emissions on coal mine grids within Shanxi for the years 2018 to 2022 was 122 ± 58.2, 131 ± 71.2, 111 ± 63.6, 129 ± 87.1, and 138 ± 63.4 ug/m2/s, respectively. The 5-year average emissions from TROPOMI are 131 ± 68.0 ug/m2/s versus 125 ± 94.6 ug/m2/s on the grids where the EDGAR bottom-up database also has data, indicating that those pixels with mines dominate the overall emissions in terms of both magnitude and variability. The results show that high-frequency observation-based campaigns can produce a less biased result in terms of both the spatial and temporal distribution of CH4emissions as compared with approaches using either low-frequency data or bottom-up databases, that coal mines dominate the sources of CH4in Shanxi, and that the observed fat tail distribution can be accounted for using this approach.

ABSTRACTPreeclampsia (PE) is a serious pregnancy syndrome, which is mainly caused by attenuated trophoblast proliferation and invasion. It has been verified that E2F transcription factor 1 (E2F1) is lowly expressed in PE. It is identified that E2F1 binds to the promoter region of Zinc Finger E-Box Binding Homeobox 1 (ZEB1) in JASPAR datasets. ZEB1 is also a transforming factor that can facilitate EMT. The present work was designed to investigate the biological functions of E2F1 and ZEB1 on the proliferation, invasiveness and EMT of trophoblast cells and further explore the molecular mechanism underlying the participation of E2F1 and ZEB1 in the behaviors of trophoblast cells. Results revealed that upregulation of E2F1 reinforced the proliferation, invasiveness and EMT of trophoblast cells and downregulation of E2F1 exhibited opposite effects on trophoblast proliferation, invasion and EMT. It was confirmed that E2F1 bound to the promoter region of ZEB1 and two binding sites (E1 and E2) in ZEB1 promoter region to E2F1 was identified by CHIP assays. Luciferase reporter assay further verified the binding relationship between E2F1 and ZEB1. Overexpression of ZEB1 rescued the suppressing effects of E2F1 knockdown on proliferation, invasiveness and EMT of trophoblast cells. To conclude, E2F1 could promote trophoblast proliferation and invasion and strengthen EMT of trophoblast cells by enhancing ZEB1 expression.

ABSTRACTEndothelial cell dysfunction is an essential pathophysiological feature of preeclampsia (PE). It has been reported that cathepsin C is upregulated in the maternal vascular endothelium of PE patients. The excessive activation of p38 MAPK leads to various diseases, including PE. NF-κB pathway can promote uteroplacental dysfunction, endothelial stress and development of PE. Moreover, it has been verified that cathepsin C can activate p38 MAPK/NF-κB pathway. In the present work, hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R) injury model of HUVECs was established to discuss the biological functions of cathepsin C in endothelial cell dysfunction and to elucidate the underlying molecular mechanism. The correlation between cathepsin C and p38 MAPK/NF-κB pathway in H/R-stimulated HUVECs as well as the effects of cathepsin C and p38 MAPK/NF-κB pathway on viability, apoptosis, invasion, in vitro angiogenesis of HUVECs and oxidative stress were assessed. The results revealed that H/R injury elevated cathepsin C expression and activated p38 MAPK/NF-κB pathway in HUVECs and cathepsin C knockdown inhibited the activity of p38 MAPK/NF-κB pathway in H/R-stimulated HUVECs. Downregulation of cathepsin C improved viability, inhibited apoptosis and enhanced invasion of H/R-stimulated HUVECs. In addition, downregulation of cathepsin C alleviated oxidative stress and induced stronger HUVEC angiogenesis in vitro. Furthermore, the protective effects of cathepsin C knockdown against endothelial cell dysfunction were reversed by p38 MAPK activator anisomycin. In other words, downregulation of cathepsin C could improve HUVEC viability and enhance anti-apoptotic capacity, anti-oxidative capability, invasive ability, as well as angiogenic potential of H/R-stimulated HUVECs by repressing p38 MAPK/NF-κB pathway.

Objectives: To investigate the reliability and validity of Chinese version of the Pediatric Eye Questionnaire (PedEyeQ-CN) by testing ophthalmic patients in China. Methods: The PedEyeQ (standard English version) was translated by local researchers. Children were asked to complete the Child section, and their parents the Proxy and Parent sections. 160 children (32 normal controls, 77 with refractive error, 48 with strabismus/amblyopia, 3 with other eye conditions) aged 5-11 years old, and one parent of each child were recruited. Cronbach’s α and intraclass correlation coefficient were calculated to examine the reliability and test-retest reliability; the score differences between controls and patients were compared to examine the validity. Results: The internal consistency (Cronbach’s α ≥ 0.76) and test-retest reliability (r> 0.80) of PedEyeQ-CN were robust. Children with eye conditions had lower scores compared with children with normal vision (refractive error: 10 out of 13 domains, P≤ 0.021; strabismus/amblyopia: all domains, P≤ 0.015). Children with strabismus/amblyopia had lower scores compared with children with refractive error (two domains, P= 0.048, P= 0.001). Visual acuity was significantly correlated with functional vision (P= 0.005), but not significantly correlated with the eye-related quality of life (ER-QOL). Conclusions: The PedEyeQ-CN is a valuable tool for assessing the functional vision and ER-QOL of Chinese children and help us increase our understanding about the impact of eye conditions on children and their families.

AimsTo evaluate the 1-year efficacy of two new myopia control spectacle lenses with lenslets of different asphericity.MethodsOne hundred seventy schoolchildren aged 8–13 years with myopia of −0.75 D to −4.75 D were randomised to receive spectacle lenses with highly aspherical lenslets (HAL), spectacle lenses with slightly aspherical lenslets (SAL), or single-vision spectacle lenses (SVL). Cycloplegic autorefraction (spherical equivalent refraction (SER)), axial length (AL) and best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) were measured at baseline and 6-month intervals. Adaptation and compliance questionnaires were administered during all visits.ResultsAfter 1 year, the mean changes in the SER (±SE) and AL (±SE) in the SVL group were −0.81±0.06 D and 0.36±0.02 mm. Compared with SVL, the myopia control efficacy measured using SER was 67% (difference of 0.53 D) for HAL and 41% (difference of 0.33 D) for SAL, and the efficacy measured using AL was 64% (difference of 0.23 mm) for HAL and 31% (difference of 0.11 mm) for SAL (all p<0.01). HAL resulted in significantly greater myopia control than SAL for SER (difference of 0.21 D, p<0.001) and AL (difference of 0.12 mm, p<0.001). The mean BCVA (−0.01±0.1 logMAR, p=0.22) and mean daily wearing time (13.2±2.6 hours, p=0.26) were similar among the three groups. All groups adapted to their lenses with no reported adverse events, complaints or discomfort.ConclusionsSpectacle lenses with aspherical lenslets effectively slow myopia progression and axial elongation compared with SVL. Myopia control efficacy increased with lenslet asphericity.Trial registration numberChiCTR1800017683.

Increased blood lipid levels are heritable risk factors of cardiovascular disease with varied prevalence worldwide owing to different dietary patterns and medication use1. Despite advances in prevention and treatment, in particular through reducing low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels2, heart disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide3. Genome-wideassociation studies (GWAS) of blood lipid levels have led to important biological and clinical insights, as well as new drug targets, for cardiovascular disease. However, most previous GWAS4–23have been conducted in European ancestry populations and may have missed genetic variants that contribute to lipid-level variation in other ancestry groups. These include differences in allele frequencies, effect sizes and linkage-disequilibrium patterns24. Here we conduct a multi-ancestry, genome-wide genetic discovery meta-analysis of lipid levels in approximately 1.65 million individuals, including 350,000 of non-European ancestries. We quantify the gain in studying non-European ancestries and provide evidence to support the expansion of recruitment of additional ancestries, even with relatively small sample sizes. We find that increasing diversity rather than studying additional individuals of European ancestry results in substantial improvements in fine-mapping functional variants and portability of polygenic prediction (evaluated in approximately 295,000 individuals from 7 ancestry groupings). Modest gains in the number of discovered loci and ancestry-specific variants were also achieved. As GWAS expand emphasis beyond the identification of genes and fundamental biology towards the use of genetic variants for preventive and precision medicine25, we anticipate that increased diversity of participants will lead to more accurate and equitable26application of polygenic scores in clinical practice.

In loess regions, landfilling is the predominant solid waste disposal and loess is usually used as landfill cover soil. However, the methane (CH4) bio-oxidation activity of virgin loess is usually below 0.01 µmol/(h g-soil). In this study, we proposed a method to improve CH4removal capacity of loess by amelioration with mature landfill leachate, which is in-situ, easily available, and appropriate. The organic matter content of the ameliorated loess increased by 180%, reaching 19.69–24.88 g/kg-soil, with more than 90% being non-leachable. The abundance of type I methane-oxidizing bacteria and methane monooxygenase gene pmoA increased by 5.0 and 79 times, respectively. Consequently, the maximum CH4removal rate of ameliorated loess reached 0.74–1.41 µmol/(h g-soil) at 25°C, which was 4-fold higher than that of water-irrigated loess. Besides, the CH4removal rate peaked at 10 vt% CH4concentration and remained at around 1.4 µmol/(h g-soil) at 15°C–35°C. The column test confirmed that the highest CH4removal efficiency was at 30–10 cm below the surface, reaching 26.1%±0.4%, and the 50-cm-thick loess layer irrigated with leachate achieved more than 85% CH4removal efficiency. These results could help to realize carbon neutrality in landfill sites of global loess regions.

Purpose To quantify the presence of early structural alterations in the outer retinal layer and choroid among healthy subjects and diabetic patients with no or mild diabetic retinopathy, and to establish the correlation between the measured structural parameters and retinal sensitivity.Methods In total, 31 eyes from subjects with type 2 diabetes and 29 eyes from healthy subjects were enrolled. Optical coherence tomography was used to measure outer retina layers and choroid, while microperimetry was used to characterize the changes of visual function in a 6-mm diameter area at macula. Quantitative analysis of structural and functional changes was performed between groups and the structure-function correlations were determined.Results The thickness of myoid and ellipsoid zone, choroid and the mean retinal sensitivity were significantly smaller in diabetic group than that in controls (all P values < 0.05). Besides, thinner choroid and outer retina was associated with the decreased retinal sensitivity，especially in diabetic patients (r= 0.377, P= 0.048; r= 0.401, P= 0.034; respectively). Final multiple regression models showed the outer retinal thickness (ORT) (P= 0.033), choroidal thickness (P= 0.003) and the interaction between ORT and choroidal thickness (P= 0.001) were significant predictors to retinal sensitivity.Conclusions Thinning of choroid and outer retina were significantly correlated with reduced retinal sensitivity, which indicate outer retina and choroid might be potential imaging markers for evaluation of visual function related to neural impairment in type 2 diabetic patients without or in the early stage of diabetic retinopathy.

It is well-known that body composition metrics can influence the prognosis of various diseases. This study investigated how body composition metrics predict acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) prognosis, focusing on the ratio of visceral fat area (VFA) to subcutaneous fat area (SFA), SFA to standard body weight (SBW), VFA to SBW, and muscle area (MA) to SBW. These metrics were assessed at the level of the twelfth thoracic vertebra (T12 computed tomography [CT] level) to determine their correlation with the outcomes of ARDS. The goal was to utilize these findings to refine and personalize treatment strategies for ARDS.

The creep performance at low temperature and high stress is one crucial property for the single crystal superalloys widely used for turbine blades. In this study, the creep behavior of a CoNi-based single crystal superalloy with super-high γ′ volume fraction (Vγ′ = ∼90%) was investigated at 760 °C/550 MPa based on microstructural (γ and γ′ phases) and deformation substructural (dislocations, anti-phase boundaries (APBs) and stacking faults (SFs)) analyses to reveal its creep mechanism under low temperature/high stress conditions. The super-high Vγ′contributes to the rapid transformation of creep mechanisms from the matrix dislocation movement in the initial decelerating stage to the APB-coupled dislocation pairs and their evolving non-planar SF ribbons inside γʹ precipitates during the accelerating stage. In the following second decelerating stage, the interactions between SFs and APBs improve the deformation resistance of γ′ precipitates and decrease the creep rate. Subsequently, the high density of APBs is believed to play a significant role in microstructural stability and promotes the accumulation of matrix dislocations, which is responsible for the steady and final accelerating stages. Appropriate Vγ′and increasing the APB energy are assumed to improve the creep resistance of CoNi-based single crystal superalloys by enhancing the strengthening effect of dislocation accumulation in γ matrix and critical shear stress of γ′ phase.

α-Synuclein (α-Syn) is a key determinator of Parkinson disease (PD) pathology, but synapse and microcircuit pathologies in the retina underlying visual dysfunction are poorly understood. Using the old transgenic M83 PD model (mice aged 16 to 18 months) coupled with histochemical and ultrastructural analyses and ophthalmologic measurements, we revealed that abnormal α-Syn aggregation in the outer plexiform layer (OPL) was associated with degeneration in the CtBP2+ribbon synapses of photoreceptor terminals and protein kinase Cα+rod bipolar cell terminals, whereas α-Syn aggregates in the inner retina correlated with the reduction and degeneration of tyrosine hydroxylase– and parvalbumin-positive amacrine cells. Phosphorylated Ser129 α-synuclein expression was strikingly restricted in the OPL, with the most severe degenerations in the entire retina, including mitochondrial degeneration and loss of ribbon synapses in 16- to 18-month–old mice. These synapse- and microcircuit-specific deficits of the rod pathway at the CtBP2+rod terminals and protein kinase Cα+rod bipolar and amacrine cells were associated with attenuated a- and b-wave amplitudes and oscillatory potentials on the electroretinogram. They were also associated with the impairment of visual functions, including reduced contrast sensitivity and impairment of the middle range of spatial frequencies. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that α-Syn aggregates cause the synapse- and microcircuit-specific deficits of the rod pathway and the most severe damage to the OPL, providing the retinal synaptic and microcircuit basis for visual dysfunctions in PD.

Eye trauma, decreased immunity, and contact lens wear often cause serious bacterial infections and irreversible corneal damage. To realize the responsive release of antibiotics such as gentamicin sulfate (GS), a novel antibacterial contact lens was constructed through self-assembly of antibiotics loaded ADA-GS/PEI (polyethyleneimine) multilayer films on the surface. Both in vitro and in vivo antibacterial tests demonstrated high efficient and fast antibacterial property based on the smart responsive to bacterial infections and reversible drug loading and release. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Background: Thermophilic proteins can maintain good activity under high temperature, therefore, it is important to study thermophilic proteins for the thermal stability of proteins. Objective: In order to solve the problem of low precision and low efficiency in predicting thermophilic proteins, a prediction method based on feature fusion and machine learning was proposed in this paper. Methods: For the selected thermophilic data sets, firstly, the thermophilic protein sequence was characterized based on feature fusion by the combination of g-gap dipeptide, entropy density and autocorrelation coefficient. Then, Kernel Principal Component Analysis (KPCA) was used to reduce the dimension of the expressed protein sequence features in order to reduce the training time and improve efficiency. Finally, the classification model was designed by using the classification algorithm. Results: A variety of classification algorithms was used to train and test on the selected thermophilic dataset. By comparison, the accuracy of the Support Vector Machine (SVM) under the jackknife method was over 92%. The combination of other evaluation indicators also proved that the SVM performance was the best. Conclusion: Because of choosing an effectively feature representation method and a robust classifier, the proposed method is suitable for predicting thermophilic proteins and is superior to most reported methods.

ABSTRACTThere is little consensus on how discrimination against racial minorities affects their potential for forming political alliances with out-groups who are also targets of racial discrimination. Furthermore, the relationship between Latinos and Asian Americans is an under-explored area in the study of inter-minority relations. Using data from the 2008 National Asian American Survey (NAAS), I test the argument that individual and group-based discrimination against Asian Americans increase their perceptions of political commonality with Latino Americans. There is only partial support for this argument. The relationship between discrimination and perceptions of political commonality varies by the context in which discrimination occurs and the Asian ethnic group in question.

Drainage conditions can significantly affect the coalbed methane (CBM) production, which is accomplished by reducing the gas partial pressure in the coal seam. This can be achieved by pumping the formation water or gas injection. In this study, the Baode region is selected to study the drainage conditions and production characteristics on the early stage of CBM production. The temporal trends of water production, wellhead pressure and gas production have been analysed. Results show that the favourable burial depth for CBM accumulation between 500 and 700 m. Sandy mudstone and mudstone are beneficial to CBM preservation. The wellhead pressure should be maintained between 0.4 MPa and 1.0 MPa, and the optimal range of wellhead pressure lies between 0.5 and 0.8 MPa for stable production. The gas production increases with increased water production when the wellhead pressure has become progressively stable in the middle phase of early stage. [Received: September 9, 2018; Accepted: October 24, 2018]

Corneal elasticity can resist elastic deformations under intraocular pressure to maintain normal corneal shape, which has a great influence on corneal refractive function. Elastography can measure tissue elasticity and provide a powerful tool for clinical diagnosis. Air-coupled ultrasound optical coherence elastography (OCE) has been used in the quantification of ex-vivo corneal elasticity. However, in-vivo imaging of the cornea remains a challenge. The 3D air-coupled ultrasound OCE with an axial motion artifacts correction algorithm was developed to distinguish the in-vivo cornea vibration from the axial eye motion in anesthetized rabbits and visualize the elastic wave propagation clearly. The elastic wave group velocity of in-vivo rabbit cornea was measured to be 5.96 ± 0.55 m/s, which agrees with other studies. The results show the potential of 3D air-coupled ultrasound OCE with an axial motion artifacts correction algorithm for quantitative in-vivo assessment of corneal elasticity.

Objectives: This study investigates the macular vasculature of both vascular layers in different degrees of myopia by optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA). Methods: One hundred and forty-five eyes of 145 healthy subjects with spherical equivalents (SE) ranging from +0.50 to −16.50 dioptres were divided into three groups. The foveal avascular zone (FAZ) area and vessel density (VD) of OCTA images were compared. Results: Compared with other groups, high myopia had a larger FAZ and less perifoveal VD in both layers and less deep total VD. Compared with other myopia, high myopia had less total VD in the superficial layer and parafoveal VD in the deep layer. Between emmetropia and low myopia, there was a difference only in the deep parafoveal VD. Except for the parafoveal VD in both layers and the superficial total VD, there were significant correlations of the FAZ with axial length (AL) and SE as well as VD. The deep perifoveal VD was most associated with high myopia. Conclusions: An increased FAZ and decreased VD in both layers were correlated with AL elongation. The decreasing deep perifoveal VD was most associated with high myopia. OCTA may provide additional information regarding the progression of pathologies in high myopia.

AgLi1/3Sn2/3O2with delafossite structure is prepared by treating Li2SnO3with molten AgNO3and it exhibits improved electrochemical performance compared to Li2SnO3.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajo.2009.01.008 Byline: Lei Sun (a)(b), Meixiao Shen (a)(b), Jianhua Wang (c), Aiwu Fang (a)(b), Aiqin Xu (a)(b), Haizhen Fang (a)(b), Fan Lu (a)(b) Abstract: To measure corneal hysteresis (CH) in unilateral chronic primary angle-closure glaucoma (CPACG) patients to determine if it was affected by high intraocular pressure (IOP). Author Affiliation: (a) School of Optometry and Ophthalmology and Eye Hospital, Wenzhou Medical College, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China (b) State Key Laboratory Cultivation Base and Key Laboratory of Vision Science, Ministry of Health PR China and Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Ophthalmology and Optometry, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China (c) Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, University of Miami, Miami, Florida Article History: Accepted 7 January 2009

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajo.2006.12.031 Byline: Fan Lu (a), Suzhong Xu (a), Jia Qu (a), Meixiao Shen (a), Xiaoxing Wang (a), Haizhen Fang (a), Jianhua Wang (a)(b) Abstract: To determine if corneal hysteresis (CH) was associated with increased central corneal thickness (CCT) induced by wearing soft contact lenses during eye closure. Author Affiliation: (a) School of Ophthalmology and Optometry, Wenzhou Medical College, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China (b) University of Rochester Eye Institute, Rochester, New York. Article History: Accepted 17 December 2006