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In this study, we used a network meta-analysis (NMA) to compare the effectiveness of medicines and supplements for idiopathic male infertility and to identify the best treatment. Medline, Excerpta Medica Database (EMBASE), Ovid, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), were searched for the period from January 1990 to June 2021 using the keywords “male infertility,” “medical therapy,” “supplement/nutrient therapy,” and related terms. Studies involving randomized controlled trials (RCTs) investigating medicines (mainly follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), androgen, and clomiphene/tamoxifen) or supplements (mainly zinc, selenium, vitamin C or E, carnitine, coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), or combined treatment) for idiopathic infertile men were selected for meta-analysis. Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA) was used for data extraction, and a risk-of-bias tool and grades of recommendation, assessment, development, and evaluation (GRADE) system adapted to the NMA were employed to assess the quality of the evidence. The primary outcomes were live birth and spontaneous pregnancy rate (SPR). The secondary outcomes were sperm parameters (including concentration, progressive motility, and morphology) and side effects. In total, 65 RCTs involving 7541 men with sperm abnormalities but normal hormone levels were included. A total of 36 studies reported SPR but only three reported live birth rates. The quality of the included studies was found to be moderate to high. Compared with a placebo or being untreated, carnitine plus vitamins significantly improved SPR (relative risk (RR) = 3.7, 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.6–8.5); fatty acids significantly increased sperm concentrations (mean difference (MD) = 12.5 × 106 mL–1, 95%CI, 3.1 × 106–22.0 × 106); and selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERM) plus CoQ10 significantly improved sperm progressive motility (MD = 11.0%, 95%CI, 0.1%–21.9%) and normal sperm morphology (MD = 11.0%, 95%CI, 4.6%–17.4%). The most optimal intervention was carnitine plus vitamins and fatty acids for SPR and sperm concentrations, respectively, even after excluding trials at a high risk of bias. Compared with a placebo or being untreated, FSH (RR = 4.9, 95%CI, 1.1–21.3) significantly increased SPR, whereas SERM plus kallikrein increased sperm concentration (MD = 16.5 × 106 mL–1, 95%CI, 1.6 × 106–31.4 × 106), and SERM plus CoQ10 significantly improved sperm progressive motility (MD = 11.3%, 95%CI, 7.3%–15.4%) and normal morphology (MD = 11.2%, 95%CI, 5.4%–16.9%) in men with oligoasthenozoospermia (OA). In terms of side effects, fatty acids and pentoxifylline were associated with foul breath and/or a bad taste (RR = 8.1, 95%CI, 1.0–63.5) and vomiting (RR = 8.0, 95%CI, 1.0–63.0), respectively. In conclusion, the optimal treatment for male infertility for live birth is still unknown. Carnitine plus vitamins and FSH are likely to be better than other therapies in achieving successful spontaneous pregnancy in couples overall and in couples with men with OA, respectively. The efficacy of other treatments on pregnancy outcomes warrants further verification.

In unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA), many efforts are taken to pull the source domain and the target domain closer by adversarial training. Most methods focus on aligning distributions or features between the source domain and the target domain. However, little attention is paid to the interaction between finer-grained levels, such as classes or samples of the two domains. In contrast to UDA, another transfer learning task, i.e., few-shot learning (FSL), takes full advantage of the finer-grained-level alignment. Many FSL methods implement the interaction between samples of support sets and query sets, leading to significant improvements. We wonder whether we can get some inspiration from these methods and bring such ideas of FSL to UDA. To this end, we first take a closer look at the differences between FSL and UDA and bridge the gap between them by high-confidence sample selection (HCSS). Then we propose cross-attention map generation module (CAMGM) to interact samples selected by HCSS. Moreover, we propose a simple but efficient method called cross-attention-map-based regularization (CAMR) to regularize the feature maps generated by the feature extractor. Experiments on three challenging datasets demonstrate that CAMR can bring solid improvements when added to the original objective. More specifically, the proposed CAMR can outperform original methods by 1% to 2% in most tasks without bells and whistles.

Application of metal organic frameworks (MOFs) on sensors is of great interest for researchers. Film forming ability of the sensing material is very important for both the preparation process and sensing properties of the devices. Humidity sensors based on UIO-66 derived polyelectrolyte films were well prepared by in situ thiol-ene click cross-linking polymerization in this work. The hydrophilicity of the sensing film could be controlled by the feed ratios. The optimized humidity sensor shows a fast response to RHs change (Res/Rec time is 3.1 s/1.5 s, respectively) with ∼1.2% RH of humidity hysteresis. The water molecules adsorption behavior of the film and the sensing mechanism were also be investigated. The humidity sensor with good water and thermal stability and repeatability was applied in breath monitoring, which can well distinguish different breath states.

To prepare supported catalysts with high loading and high dispersion of active metals is a crucial challenge in heterogeneous catalysis. Here we report the fabrication of very reactive catalyst that contains finely dispersed copper with 20 wt% content supported on high-surface area CeO2 for the water–gas shift (WGS) reaction. This copper-ceria catalyst shows superb activity with a CO consumption rate of 116.7 μmolCO gcat-1 s−1 at 300 ℃, nearly one order of magnitude more active than other copper-based catalysts ever reported. Based on the precise and integrated characterizations, the oxidized not the metallic Cu are proved to be active centers where the adsorbed CO directly reacted with bridged —OH groups to finish the WGS reaction. The oxidized Cu sites are confirmed to be originated from the activation effect from Cu to CeO2, which promotes the oxygen of CeO2 diffuse from the bulk to surface, making Cu oxidized even under reductive atmosphere.

A study of magnesia refractories containing glucose, citric acid, and metallic Al and their influences on structure, mechanical strength, and thermal shock resistance, is presented. Combined with thermodynamic calculation, microstructure, and properties analysis, the results show that formation of gluconates and citrates from the introduced glucose and citric acid enhanced the bonding of raw materials and the curing strength of samples. The pyrolysis of gluconates and citrates, and the oxidation and nitridation of metallic Al had significant effects on the microstructural evolution of magnesia refractories after high temperature treatments, mainly AlN and MgAl2O4 whiskers in pores and particle gaps. The formation and development of whiskers give rise to samples improved toughness and thermal shock resistance. Increasing the metallic Al content from 0 wt% to 2 wt% enhanced the fracture surface energy of samples heat treated at 1400 °C from 82.22 kJ/m2 to 119.75 kJ/m2. Meanwhile, after three thermal-shock cycles, the residual strength ratios of heat treated samples were elevated from 52.8% to 67.9%. On the basis of influences of phase transformation on the structure and properties of samples at different temperatures, considering the structural compactness and ability to withstand external stress for magnesia refractories used in metallurgical field, it is suggested that when glucose and citric acid are used as binders, the addition of metallic Al should be less than 3 wt%.

Symmetrical solid oxide fuel cells (SSOFCs) could be alternative energy conversion devices due to their simple fabrication process and low cost. Herein, perovskite La0.6Ce0.1Sr0.3Fe0.95Ru0.05O3–δ (LCSFR) was synthesized and evaluated as a high-performance electrode for SSOFCs based on the electrolyte of La0.9Sr0.1Ga0.8Mg0.2O3–δ (LSGM). LCSFR retains their stable perovskite crystal structure in both reducing and oxidizing atmospheres, though a minor amount of LaSrFeO4 phase is present under reducing conditions. Morphology investigation shows that homogeneously dispersed Ru metallic nanoparticles are exsolved on the surface of LCSFR after being reduced. The polarization resistance (Rp) of LCSFR-CGO (Ce0.9Gd0.1O2–δ) is about 0.11 Ω⋅cm2 at 800 °C in air, while the value of Rp for LCSFR-CGO in wet H2 (3% H2O) increases up to 0.32 Ω⋅cm2. The symmetrical LCSFR-CGO|LSGM|LCSFR-CGO cell demonstrates a performance with an open circuit potential (OCV) of 1.07 V and a maximum peak power density of 904 mW/cm2 at 800 °C using wet H2 as the fuel. This high performance indicates that LCSFR is a candidate electrode for SSOFCs.

Intra-arterial infusion chemotherapy (IAIC), using immunomodulatory cisplatin, is a novel treatment for bladder cancer (BC) that allows the delivery of specific drugs to the local malignant lesion. To explore the immunomodulatory effect of cisplatin during IAIC, we detected the proportion of immunosuppressed cells in BC tissue from eight BC patients, with the reduction of myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs), more specifically fibrocytic-MDSCs (f-MDSCs). Further, we demonstrated that cisplatin inhibits their proliferation and immunosuppressive activity. f-MDSCs promote tumor proliferation and metastasis in the BC immune environment. Then, we analyzed the genetic differences detected in samples before and after chemotherapy and found that granulocyte colony-stimulating factors (G-CSF) decreased after IAIC. Furthermore, G-CSF methylation decreased following treatment with cisplatin. Specifically, treatment with cisplatin decreased the methylase (METTL3) levels in BC cells, which is important for G-CSF production. Collectively, cisplatin decreased the number of f-MDSCs during IAIC, by blocking G-CSF methylation via targeting METTL3.

This paper presents a novel fixed abrasive tool namely grain boundary cohesion fixed abrasive pellet (GBCFAP) which is able to provide higher finishing efficiency as well as better surface/subsurface quality of sapphire substrate during the chemo-mechanical grinding (CMG) process. The manufacturing procedures of GBCFAP are introduced in detail in this paper. It is found that the sintering temperature plays an important role to the strength of GBCFAP, and the strength of GBFCAP could be flexibly adjusted by sintering temperature. The experiment result suggests that the recommended sintering temperature ranges from 600 to 650 °C according to current CMG conditions. Meanwhile, comparing with conventional resin bound CMG wheel, 600 °C sintered GBCFAP CMG wheel performs better in terms of material removal rate and surface/subsurface quality since the chemical effect and mechanical effect during CMG process are well balanced. Meanwhile, the solid phase reaction between sapphire and Cr2O3 abrasive is demonstrated by TEM observation and XPS quantification.