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Background: Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a common microvascular complication of diabetes mellitus and the main cause of chronic renal failure. This study explored the potential immunomodulation-related genes (IRGs) in DN using bioinformatics. Methods: IRGs were identified using GeneCards, and differentially expressed genes were identified using the GSE99339, GSE96804, and GSE30122 datasets. We conducted enrichment analyses using Gene Ontology, gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA), and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes to identify the associated signaling pathways. Prognostic models were constructed using Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator regression. The predictive power of IRGs was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Furthermore, we utilized ssGSEA to determine the relative abundance of immune cell infiltration. The expression of five significant IRGs was further validated using immunohistochemistry (IHC) in individuals with DN and real-time PCR (RT-PCR) in animal experiments. Results: In total, 17 immunomodulation-related differentially expressed genes were identified, which were enriched in immune-associated pathways and inflammation. GSEA unveiled substantial enrichments in metabolic irregularities and the structural composition of the extracellular matrix. ROC analysis results revealed that the diagnostic efficacy of IFNAR2 and CASP3 was comparatively high. Notably, we identified potential IRGs for DN, including CASP3, LGALS9, and SST, using IHC and RT-PCR. Conclusions: CASP3, LGALS9, and SST are potential IRGs in patients with DN. Our findings may offer a theoretical basis for developing more focused and innovative immunotherapy approaches for patients with DN.

A few-layered hexagonal boron nitride nanosheets stabilized platinum nanoparticles (Pt/h-BNNS) is engineered for oxidation-promoted adsorptive desulfurization (OPADS) of fuel oil. It was found that the few-layered structure and the defective sites of h-BNNS not only are beneficial to the stabilization of Pt NPs but also favor the adsorption of aromatic sulfides. By employing Pt/h-BNNS with a Pt loading amount of 1.19 wt% as the active adsorbent and air as an oxidant, a 98.0% sulfur removal over dibenzothiophene (DBT) is achieved along with a total conversion of the DBT to the corresponding sulfones (DBTO2). Detailed experiments show that the excellent desulfurization activity originates from the few-layered structure of h-BNNS and the high catalytic activity of Pt NPs. In addition, the OPADS system with Pt/h-BNNS as the active adsorbent shows remarkable stability in desulfurization performance with the existence of different interferents such as olefin, and aromatic hydrocarbons. Besides, the Pt/h-BNNS can be recycled 12 times without a significant decrease in desulfurization performance. Also, a process flow diagram is proposed for deep desulfurization of fuel oil and recovery of high value-added products, which would promote the industrial application of such OPADS strategy.

BackgroundSarcopenia is a progressive geriatric syndrome that impacts older adults’ quality of life. Insufficient focus has been given to sarcopenia among Chinese residents, resulting in low level of sarcopenia awareness. This study aims to investigate awareness of sarcopenia and its influencing factors and the influencing pathways among older adults in Hangzhou.MethodsA stratified random sample of 942 community-dwelling older adults was evaluated using the SARC-CalF screening tool, along with a questionnaire based on health ecology theory to assess awareness of sarcopenia and its influencing factors and the influencing pathways. Descriptive statistics, linear regression analysis, and path analysis were conducted using SPSS 25.0 and Amos 23.0 to analyze the data.ResultsThe mean awareness score for sarcopenia was 60.26 ± 7.31. Self-rated physical health, daily intake of high-quality protein, exercise frequency, smoking status, self-efficacy, religious beliefs, social support, education level, occupation, participation in community free medical examinations, and awareness of nutrition policy were all factors affecting scores for sarcopenia awareness (p

The segmentation of surface defects in lithium batteries is crucial for enhancing the overall quality of the production process. However, the severe foreground–background imbalance in surface images of lithium batteries, along with the irregular shapes and random distribution of foreground regions, poses significant challenges for defect segmentation. Based on these observations, this paper focuses on the separation of foreground and background in surface defect images of lithium batteries and proposes a novel Mask Space Optimization Transformer (MSOFormer) for semantic segmentation of these images. Specifically, the Mask Boundary Loss (MBL) module in our model provides more efficient supervision during training to enhance the accuracy of the mask computation within the mask attention mechanism, thereby improving the model’s performance in separating foreground and background. Additionally, the Dynamic Spatial Query (DSQ) module allocates spatial information of the image to each query, enhancing the model’s sensitivity to the positions of small foreground targets in various scenes. The Efficient Pixel Decoder (EPD) ensures deformable receptive fields for irregularly shaped foregrounds while further improving the model’s performance and efficiency. Experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms other state-of-the-art methods in terms of mean Intersection over Union (mIoU). Specifically, our approach achieves an mIoU of 84.18% on the lithium battery surface defect test set and 85.53% and 87.05% mIoUs on two publicly available defect test sets with similar defect characteristics to lithium batteries.

Abstract Porous Ionic Liquids (PILs) have gained attention but facing challenges in catalysis, especially in liquid‐liquid two‐phase reactions due to limited catalytic sites and hydrophilicity control. This work engineered a Type III PILs (PILS‐M) using zeolitic imidazolate framework‐8 (ZIF‐8) confined phosphomolybdic acid (HPMo) as the microporous framework and N‐butyl pyridine bis(trifluoromethane sulfonyl) imide ionic liquid ([Bpy][NTf2]) as the solvent. The PILS‐M not only combines the advantages of traditional ionic liquids and microporous frameworks, including excellent extraction, high dispersion of catalytically active species, remarkable stability, etc., but also can make the inner surface of ZIF‐8 turned to be hydrophilic that favors the contact between aqueous hydrogen peroxide oxidant and catalytically active sites for the promotion of catalytic performance in reactive extractive desulfurization (REDS) processes of fuel oils. This study demonstrates Type III PILs' potential as catalysts for sustainable chemical processes, offering insights into versatile PILs applications in diverse fields.