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Palm fungi are a diverse and unique group mostly found on Arecaceae hosts. They have been studied for approximately 200 years resulting in a large number of known fungal species representing over 700 genera. The timeline of palm fungal studies could be roughly divided into three phases, based on the methods and frequency of reports. They are the "Historical palm fungi era", "Classical palm fungi era" and "Molecular palm fungi era". In the first two periods, the identification of palm fungi was based on morphology, which resulted in a considerable number of morphological species scattered across the data in books, monographs and papers. With the advancement of molecular techniques, studies on palm fungi accelerated. A large number of new species were introduced in the molecular era, especially from Asia, including China and Thailand. However, there is a necessity to link these three generations of studies into a single platform combining data related to host factors, geography and utilisation. Herein, we introduce the palm fungi website: https://palmfungi.org, an integrated data platform for interactive retrieval, based on palm and fungal species. This website is not only a portal for the latest, comprehensive species information on palm fungi, but also provides a new platform for fungal researchers to explore the host-specificity of palm fungi. Additionally, this study uses palmfungi.org and related data to briefly discuss the current status of research on the distribution of palm fungi populations, showing how palmfungi.org links fungi with their palm hosts. Furthermore, the website will act as a platform for collaboration amongst taxonomists, plant pathologists, botanists, ecologists and those who are interested in palms and their relationship with ecological sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrogen production from photocatalysis via the usage of multicomponent photocatalysts represents a promising pathway for carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, owing to their structural advantages in dealing with the three crucial processes in photocatalysis, namely, light harvesting, charge transfer, and surface redox reactions. We demonstrate the fabrication of a MOF‐based multicomponent photocatalyst, denoted as semiconductor/MOF/cocatalyst, by a one‐pot electrochemical synthetic route. The as‐fabricated multicomponent photocatalyst has a clean interface among the components, leading to close connections that contribute to high‐quality heterojunction and facilitate photogenerated charge transfer and separation, thereby the efficient hydrogen evolution. The hydrogen production rate of the resultant ZrO2/Zr‐MOF/Pt is 1327 μmol ⋅ g−1 ⋅ h−1, which is much higher than that of ZrO2/Zr‐MOF (15 μmol ⋅ g−1 ⋅ h−1) and pure Zr‐MOF (10.1 μmol ⋅ g−1 ⋅ h−1), as well as the photodeposited‐Pt products ZrO2/Zr‐MOF/PtPD (287 μmol ⋅ g−1 ⋅ h−1) and Zr‐MOF/PtPD (192 μmol ⋅ g−1 ⋅ h−1) obtained by the step‐wise synthetic approach. The work gives a good inspiration for the rational design and construction of MOF‐based multicomponent photocatalysts through the one‐pot electrosynthesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional Walsh function just takes values of +1 and −1 and can only track limited signal states. However, based on the characteristics of Walsh functions that can capture the frequency of square wave signals, this article proposes a generalized Walsh transform algorithm to process multi-valued rectangular wave signals. As an extension of the traditional Walsh functions, generalized Walsh functions have advantages in signal frequency matching and sequency spectrum amplitude extraction, which makes them well suited to express the valuable signal. First, we infer the invariance displacement theory in the time and sequency domains, limiting the value of a circular time shift to ensure the concentrated distribution of the signal sequency energy. This limitation lays a good foundation for constructing generalized Walsh functions. Then, two types of generalized Walsh functions are built by combining the characteristics of different periodic rectangular waves. We deduce two properties of orthogonality and completeness to prove the ability of the constructed functions to match the frequency and the extracted energy. Finally, we compare multiple filtering methods to verify the reliability of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Erythrocyte dysfunction is a characteristic of diabetes mellitus (DM). However, erythrocyte-associated biomarkers do not adequately explain the high prevalence of DM. Here, we describe red blood cell distribution width to albumin ratio (RAR) as a novel inflammatory biomarker for evaluating an association with DM prevalence and prognosis of all-cause mortality., Methods: Data analyzed in this study were extracted from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999-2020. A total of 40,558 participants (non-DM and DM) were enrolled in the study; RAR quartiles were calibrated at Q1 [2.02,2.82] mL/g, Q2 (2.82,3.05] mL/g, Q3 (3.05,3.38] mL/g, and Q4 (3.38,12.08] mL/g. A total of 8,482 DM patients were followed (for a median of 84 months), of whom 2,411 died and 6,071 survived. The prevalence and prognosis associated with RAR and DM were analyzed; age and sex were stratified to analyze the prevalence of RAR in DM and the sensitivity of long-term prognosis., Results: Among non-DM ( n =30,404) and DM ( n =10,154) volunteers, DM prevalence in RAR quartiles was 8.23%, 15.20%, 23.92%, and 36.39%. The multivariable odds ratio (OR) was significant for RAR regarding DM, at 1.68 (95% CI 1.42, 1.98). Considering Q1 as a foundation, the Q4 OR was 2.57 (95% CI 2.11, 3.13). The percentages of DM morbidity varied across RAR quartiles for dead ( n =2,411) and surviving ( n =6,071) DM patients. Specifically, RAR quartile mortality ratios were 20.31%, 24.24%, 22.65%, and 29.99% (P<0.0001). The multivariable hazard ratio (HR) for RAR was 1.80 (95% CI 1.57, 2.05). Considering Q1 as a foundation, the Q4 HR was 2.59 (95% CI 2.18, 3.09) after adjusting for confounding factors. Sensitivity analysis revealed the HR of male DM patients to be 2.27 (95% CI 1.95, 2.64), higher than females 1.56 (95% CI 1.31, 1.85). DM patients who were 60 years of age or younger had a higher HR of 2.08 (95% CI1.61, 2.70) as compared to those older than 60 years, who had an HR of 1.69 (95% CI 1.47, 1.94). The HR of RAR in DM patients was optimized by a restricted cubic spline (RCS) model; 3.22 was determined to be the inflection point of an inverse L-curve. DM patients with a RAR >3.22 mL/g suffered shorter survival and higher mortality as compared to those with RAR ≤3.22 mL/g. OR and HR RAR values were much higher than those of regular red blood cell distribution width., Conclusions: The predictive value of RAR is more accurate than that of RDW for projecting DM prevalence, while RAR, a DM risk factor, has long-term prognostic power for the condition. Survival time was found to be reduced as RAR increased for those aged ≤60 years among female DM patients., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Liu, Wang, Gao, Zhang, Zhang, Xu, Yao, Yang and Yan.)

Objective: To investigate the effect of TLK2 expression regulated by miR-21 on proliferation and apoptosis of acute myeloid leukemia cells., Methods: Seventy patients with AML admitted to our hospital from January 2019 to July 2022 were selected, while 30 patients with iron deficiency anemia were selected as the control group. Bone marrow mononuclear cells (BMMNCs) of the patients were obtained using Ficoll density gradient centrifugation. RT-qPCR was used to determine the expression levels of miR-21 and TLK2 mRNA in BMMNCs. Mimics-miR-21, mimics-NC, inhibitor-miR-21, inhibitor-NC and NC were transfected into HL-60 cells using liposome-mediated transfection technology. CCK-8 method was used to determine the activity of transfected HL-60 cells after treatment with cytarabine. The apoptosis rate of HL-60 transfected cells was determined by TUNEL method. The expression of TLK2 mRNA in HL-60 cells transfected with inhibitor-miR-21 was determined by RT-qPCR., Results: The relative expression levels of miR-21 and TLK2 mRNA in BMMNCs of AML patients were significantly higher than those of controls (both P < 0.05). After HL-60 cells were treated with cytarabine, both the cell activity of inhibitor-miR-21 group and mimics-miR-21 group decreased significantly with the increase of cytarabine concentration (both P < 0.05). However, at each concentration point of cytarabine, the cell activity of inhibitor-miR-21 group was lower than that of control group ( P < 0.05), while mimics-miR-21 group was higher than control group ( P < 0.05). After HL-60 cells were treated with cytarabine, the apoptosis rate of inhibitor-miR-21 group was significantly increased ( P < 0.05), while that of mimics-miR-21 group was significantly decreased ( P < 0.05). After HL-60 cells were treated with inhibitor-miR-21, the relative expression of TLK2 mRNA decreased significantly ( P < 0.05)., Conclusion: miR-21 is highly expressed in AML patients, which may promote the apoptosis of AML cells by inhibiting the expression of TLK2 .