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Abstract Objective c-Jun, a prominent member of the activator protein 1 (AP-1) family, is involved in various physiology processes such as cell death and survival. However, a role of hepatic c-Jun in the whole-body metabolism is poorly understood. Methods We generated liver-specific c-Jun knock-out (c-jun △li) mice to investigate the effect of hepatic c-Jun on the whole-body physiology, particularly in blood glucose and body temperature. Primary hepatocytes were also used to explore a direct regulation of c-Jun in gluconeogenesis. Results c-jun △li mice showed higher hepatic gluconeogenic capacity compared with control mice, and similar results were obtained in vitro. In addition, fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21) expression was directly inhibited by c-Jun knockdown and adenovirus-mediated hepatic FGF21 over-expression blocked the effect of c-Jun on gluconeogenesis in c-jun △li mice. Interestingly, c-jun △li mice also exhibited higher body temperature, with induced thermogenesis and uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) expression in brown adipose tissue (BAT). Furthermore, the body temperature became comparable between c-jun △li and control mice at thermoneutral temperature (30 °C). Moreover, the activity of sympathetic nervous system (SNS) was increased in c-jun △li mice and the higher body temperature was inhibited by beta-adrenergic receptor blocker injection. Finally, the activated SNS and increased body temperature in c-jun △li mice was most likely caused by the signals from the brain and hepatic vagus nerve, as the expression of c-Fos (the molecular marker of neuronal activation) was changed in several brain areas controlling body temperature and body temperature was decreased by selective hepatic vagotomy. Conclusions These data demonstrate a novel function of hepatic c-Jun in the regulation of gluconeogenesis and body temperature via FGF21 and neural signals. Our results also provide novel insights into the organ crosstalk in the regulation of the whole-body physiology. Highlights • Liver-specific inactivation of c-Jun increased gluconeogenesis via decreasing FGF21 expression. • Liver-specific inactivation of c-Jun increased body temperature by promoting thermogenesis in BAT. • Hepatic c-Jun modulates body temperature via regulating sympathetic nervous system activity and vagus nerve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sleep is extremely important for protecting people's mental and physical health. Once the sleep disorder occurs, people's lives will be greatly affected. Sleep staging plays an important role in the diagnosis of sleep disorders. In general, experts classify sleep stages manually based on polysomnography (PSG), which is quite time-consuming. Meanwhile, the acquisition process of multiple signals is much complex, which can affect the subject's sleep. Therefore, the use of single-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) for automatic sleep staging has become a popular research topic. For EEG signals, several in-siding salient waveforms used to distinguish sleep stages generally have different scales, and a single-scale convolutional neural network(CNN) cannot fully capture the salient waveforms features. To address this issue, we proposed a multiscale dual attention network (MSDAN) based on raw EEG, which utilizes a 1d CNN to automatically extract features from raw EEG. Experiments were conducted using two datasets with 20-fold cross-validation and hold-out validation method. The final average accuracy, overall accuracy, macro F1 score and Cohen's Kappa coefficient of the model reach 96.70%, 91.74%, 0.8231 and 0.8723 on the Sleep-EDF dataset, 96.14%, 90.35%, 0.7945 and 0.8284 on the Sleep-EDFx dataset. The results show the superiority of our network over the existing methods, reaching state-of-the-arts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Point cloud registration precision degrades when the scene contains symmetric structures or repeated patches. Also, the common operation of continuous downsampling in existing registration methods causes the loss of detailed information and leads to further registration precision degradation. In this paper, we propose a high precision point cloud registration network (HPNet) to learn discriminative features by considering both multi-scale information and position information. We first propose a multi-scale feature extraction module similar to the feature pyramid that allows the extracted features to contain multi-scale information. Then, an information interaction is performed on the features to learn global contextual information by using Transformer with a hybrid position encoding, which takes into account both absolute and relative positions of points. Finally, the features obtained from the information interaction module are directly used to predict the point correspondences. Comprehensive experiments on 3DMatch, 3DLoMatch, ModelNet, and ModelLoNet datasets demonstrate the state-of-the-art performance of the proposed method and the implementation of HPNet in SLAM shows its effectiveness in real application. [Display omitted] • Point cloud registration loses detail information during continuous downsampling. • Feature fusion of low-level detail information and high-level semantic information. • Hybrid position encoding consider both absolute and relative positions. positions. • Point cloud registration algorithms applied to SLAM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • The fermentation with dextran (DX)-producers modified the texture of pea flour (PF). • The in-situ -produced DX was critical for the texture modification of PF pastes. • Two promising DX-producers in PF pastes were screened. • A porous network structure was formed in the presence of the in-situ -produced DX. • The DX-protein interaction contributed more to the texture modification of PF pastes. The application of pea flour (PF) was restricted by the resulting non-satisfying texture of food with a high addition level of PF. Four lactic acid bacteria (LAB) strains with the ability to synthesize dextran (DX) were used to ferment PF in order to modify the texture of PF pastes, screen out promising DX producers, and evaluate the role of the in-situ -produced DX in texture modification. The microbial growth, acidity, and DX contents of PF pastes were first analyzed. Then, the rheological and textural properties of PF pastes after fermentation were assessed. After this, the in-situ -produced DXs in PF pastes were further hydrolyzed, and the corresponding changes were studied. Finally, the protein and starch in PF pastes were hydrolyzed separately to evaluate the role of macromolecular interactions between DX and protein/starch in the texture modification of PF pastes. The four LAB strains were all dominant in PF pastes, and the in-situ -produced DXs by these four strains played a critical role in the texture modification of PF pastes. Among the four DX-positive strains, Ln. pseudomesenteroides DSM 20193 and W. cibaria DSM 15878 were promising DX producers in PF-based media due to their high capacity in synthesizing DX and texture modification. The in-situ -produced DX promoted the formation of a porous network structure that was important for water-holding and texture-retaining. The DX-protein interaction contributed more to the texture modification of PF pastes than did the DX-starch interaction. This study clearly showed the role of the in-situ -produced DX and the DX-protein/starch interactions in the texture modification of PF pastes, which could further guide the utilization of in-situ- produced DXs in legume-based food and promote the exploitation of plant proteins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benzylisoquinoline alkaloids (BIAs) are compounds naturally found in plants and can have significant value in clinical settings. Metabolic engineering and synthetic biology are both promising approaches for the heterologous acquisition of benzylisoquinoline alkaloids. (S)– N -methylcoclaurine 3′-hydroxylase (NMCH), a member of the CYP80 family of CYP450, is the penultimate catalytic enzyme that forms the central branch-point intermediate (S)-reticuline and plays a key role in the biosynthesis of BIAs. In this study, an NMCH gene was cloned from Corydalis yanhusuo, while in vitro reactions demonstrated that CyNMCH can catalyze (S)– N -methylcoclaurine to produce (S)-3′-hydroxy- N -methylcoclaurine. The Km and Kcat of CyNMCH were estimated and compared with those identified in Eschscholzia californica and Coptis japonica. This newly discovered CyNMCH will provide alternative genetic resources for the synthetic biological production of benzylisoquinoline alkaloids and provides a foundation to help analyze the biosynthetic pathway of BIAs biosynthesis in C. yanhusuo. • Benzylisoquinoline alkaloids have commercial potential in the field of pharmaceutical. • Synthetic biology provides an alternative for production of BIAs which relies on varied genetic elements. • A NMCH gene was identified from Corydalis yanhusuo. • Enzyme activity of CyNMCH was compared with those reported NMCHs. • The newly identified NMCH provides elements for production of BIAs by synthetic biology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The clinical efficacy of glucocorticoid therapy on the treatment of patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia was investigated. This retrospective study showed glucocorticoid therapy did not significantly influence the clinical course of COVID-19 pneumonia, including imaging progress and the time duration for negative transformation of nucleic acid, and glucocorticoid therapy did not significantly influence the outcomes nor the adverse events of COVID-19 pneumonia. • Glucocorticoid therapy did not significantly influence the clinical course of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia, including imaging progress and the time duration for negative transformation of nucleic acid. • Glucocorticoid therapy did not significantly influence the adverse events of COVID-19 pneumonia. • Glucocorticoid therapy did not significantly influence the outcomes of COVID-19 pneumonia. The aim of the present study was to identify the clinical efficacy of glucocorticoid therapy on the treatment of patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia. Clinical and laboratory parameters were collected from 308 patients with COVID-19 pneumonia from the fever clinic of Wuhan Pulmonary Hospital (Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China) between January 14, 2020 and February 9, 2020, of which 216 patients received low-dose (equivalent of methylprednisolone 0.75–1.5 mg/kg/d) glucocorticoid treatment. The effect of glucocorticoid on imaging progress, adverse events, nucleic acid results and the outcomes were investigated. Lymphocyte count and C-reactive protein (CRP) significantly differed between the glucocorticoid therapy and non-glucocorticoid therapy groups. Compared with the non-glucocorticoid therapy group, glucocorticoid therapy did not significantly influence the clinical course of COVID-19 pneumonia, including imaging progress and the time duration for negative transformation of nucleic acid. Glucocorticoid therapy did not significantly influence the outcomes nor the adverse events of COVID-19 pneumonia. For the treatment of COVID-19 pneumonia, systemic and in-depth investigation is needed to determine the timing and dosage of glucocorticoids needed to inhibit overwhelming inflammatory response and not the protective immune response to COVID-19 pneumonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A new mechanism that the Breit interaction effects significantly in the highly charged Li- and B-like ions are studied, the strongly correlated many-body wavefunctions of the doubly excited resonant states [1s2p 1/2 2p 3/2 ] 3/2 (or [1s(2s2)2p 1/2 2p 3/2 ] 3/2) 4P 3/2 and 2D 3/2 are drastically influenced by the Breit interaction. • The strong variation of wavefunctions results in a prominent change of the two dominant transitions 2p 3/2 –1 s and 2p 1/2 –1 s of the doubly excited states. The variation of the transitions can be observed in experiment by measuring the branching ratio of the doubly excited Li-like or B-like ions. • The variation of the wavefunctions is due to the ion-core energy inversion induced by the Breit interaction. Based on the mechanism, we propose an alternative experimental determination of the fine structure splitting of [1s2p 1/2 ] 0,1 (or [1s(2s2)2p 1/2 ] 0,1) in heavy He-like (or Be-like) ions from the branching ratio of the doubly excited Li-like (or B-like) ions. • This work extends the conventional wisdom on the role of the relativistic effects in the electric dipole radiative transitions of highly charged ions, which could be useful for future precise high-temperature plasma diagnostics. The Breit interaction is the relativistic correction to the electron-electron interaction which mainly affects the level energies, and it is minor in general. We present a new manifestation of the Breit interaction effects in the highly charged Li- and B-like ions based on the multi-configuration Dirac-Fock calculations, where the strongly correlated many-body wavefunctions of the doubly excited resonant states [1s2p 1/2 2p 3/2 ] 3/2 (or [1s(2s2)2p 1/2 2p 3/2 ] 3/2) 4P 3/2 and 2D 3/2 are drastically influenced by the Breit interaction. The strong variation of wavefunctions results in a prominent enhancement of the radiative branching ratio between the two dominant transitions 2p 3/2 -1s and 2p 1/2 -1s of the doubly excited states. We elucidate the intrinsic mechanism of this effect is due to the ion-core energy inversion induced by the Breit interaction, and suggest that the possible experimental measurements can be achieved via the dielectronic recombination processes in an electron beam ion trap facility. Based on this effect, we also propose an alternative experimental determination of the fine structure splitting of [1s2p 1/2 ] 0,1 (or [1s(2s2)2p 1/2 ] 0,1) in heavy He-like (or Be-like) ions from the branching ratio of the doubly excited Li-like (or B-like) ions, which is sensitive to the fine structure level inversions and can be served as a complementary tool to the available hyperfine quenching experimental method aiming for the absolute value of the splitting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents both experimental and theoretical analysis of the 4 d 2 D 5 / 2 → 2 D 3 / 2 magnetic dipole transition in Rb-like ions. Spectral lines of Xe 17 + , La 20 + and Pr 22 + ions were recorded using an electron beam ion trap. The theoretical framework employed the fully relativistic Multi-configuration Dirac–Hartree–Fock method, accounting for the Breit interaction, QED effects and comprehensive core-valence correlation. An impressive correlation is observed between the theoretical and experimental findings. Notably, this study illustrates that the contribution of the core-valence correlation, especially concerning deep core subshells, is pivotal for the fine structure splittings. • Spectra of 4 d 2 D 5 / 2 → 2 D 3 / 2 transitions in Xe 17 + , La 20 + and Pr 22 + were observed at a compact EBIT. • An MCDHF FCV model with Breit and QED corrections predicts the energies within high accuracy. • Deep CV correlation effect is significant on the 4 d fine structure splitting in Rb-like ions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• K-shell x-ray spectra of hot krypton plasmas were simulated by using a collision-radiative model, for which the atomic parameters were generated by using the flexible atomic code (FAC). • Effects of the generalized Breit interaction (GBI) on the atomic parameters and the K-shell x-ray spectra of hot krypton plasmas have been investigated, and thus the GBI effect on the accuracy of the plasma diagnostics has been estimated. • This work will contribute to plasma diagnostics in fusion science, due to that the krypton is used as a tracer to obtain the temperature and density in the inertial confinement fusion experiments, and it is used as a coolant in magnetic confinement fusion experiments. K -shell spectra are widely used for the plasma diagnostics in fusion science and astrophysics. Here, we report on a theoretical investigation of the relativistic and QED effects, i.e., the Breit interaction (BI) or the generalized Breit interaction (GBI), on the simulation of K -shell x-ray spectra of hot krypton plasmas. The simulation was conducted using a collisional-radiative model, for which the atomic parameters were generated by using the flexible atomic code. As expected, the present work shows that the BI and GBI produce similar effects for such a light element as krypton, which maximum difference of 3.7% in the emission spectra. When comparing to results calculated with just the Coulomb interaction, the GBI affects the specific line intensity by up to 15%, thus bringing about approximately 4%, 13% uncertainties for deducing the electron density and temperature of plasmas, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tetrandrine is the most effective small molecule that has been found to inhibit the Ebola virus. It is a typical bisbenzylisoquinoline alkaloid and is the main active ingredient in Stephania tetrandra. Metabolic engineering and synthetic biology are potential methods for efficient and rapid acquisition of tetrandrine. S -adenosyl- L -methionine: (S)-norcoclaurine-6- O -methyltransferase (6OMT) is a rate-limiting step involved in the biosynthesis of tetrandrine. In this study, we identify S -adenosyl- L -methionine: (S)-norcoclaurine-6- O -methyltransferase from S. tetrandra , which catalyzes the conversion of (S)-norcoclaurine to (S)-coclaurine. Four 6OMT -like genes were cloned from S. tetrandra. An in vitro enzyme assay showed that St6OMT1 could catalyze the conversion of (S)-norcoclaurine to produce (S)-coclaurine. St6OMT2 can catalyze the production of very few (S)-coclaurine molecules, accompanied by more by-products with m/z 300, compared to St6OMT1. The newly discovered 6OMTs will provide an optional genetic component for benzylisoquinoline alkaloid (BIA) synthetic biology research. This work will lay the foundation for the analysis of the biosynthetic pathway of tetrandrine in S. tetrandra. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]