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The present study aims to explore the etiology of Diabetic osteoporosis (DOP), a chronic complication associated with diabetes mellitus. Specifically, the research seeks to identify potential miRNA biomarkers of DOP and investigated role in regulating osteoblasts. To achieve this, an animal model of DOP was established through the administration of a high-sugar and high-fat diet, and then injection of streptozotocin. Bone microarchitecture and histopathology analysis were analyzed. Rat calvarial osteoblasts (ROBs) were stimulated with high glucose (HG). MiRNA profiles of the stimulated osteoblasts were compared to control osteoblasts using sequencing. Proliferation and mineralization abilities were assessed using MTT assay, alkaline phosphatase, and alizarin red staining. Expression levels of OGN, Runx2, and ALP were determined through qRT-PCR and Western blot. MiRNA-sequencing results revealed increased miRNA-702-5p levels. Luciferase reporter gene was utilized to study the correlation between miR-702-5p and OGN. High glucose impaired cell proliferation and mineralization in vitro by inhibiting OGN, Runx2, and ALP expressions. Interference with miR-702-5p decreased OGN, Runx2, and ALP levels, which were restored by OGN overexpression. Additionally, downregulation of OGN and Runx2 in DOP rat femurs was confirmed. Therefore, the miRNA-702-5p/OGN/Runx2 signaling axis may play a role in DOP, and could be diagnostic biomarker and therapeutic target for not only DOP but also other forms of osteoporosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intussusception is a common cause of acute abdominal pain in children and the most frequent cause of intestinal obstruction in infants. Although often idiopathic, it can stem from conditions like lymphoma. This study delves into lymphoma-related intussusception in children, aiming to enhance early detection and management. A retrospective review encompassed children admitted from 2012 to 2023 with intussusception due to intestinal lymphoma. Demographic, clinical, and imaging data were meticulously extracted and analyzed. The study included 31 children in the lymphoma-related intussusception group. Contrasted with non-lymphoma-related cases, the patients of lymphoma-related intussusception were notably older (median age: 87 months vs. 18.5 months), predominantly male, and demonstrated protracted abdominal pain. Ultrasound unveiled mesenteric lymph node enlargement and distinct intra-abdominal masses; enema reduction success rates were notably diminished. Detecting lymphoma-related intussusception remains intricate. Age, prolonged symptoms, and distinctive ultrasound findings can arouse suspicion. Timely surgical intervention, based on preoperative imaging, proves pivotal for accurate diagnosis. Conclusion: Swift identification of lymphoma-related intussusception, distinguished by unique clinical and ultrasound features, is imperative for timely intervention and treatment. Further research is warranted to refine diagnostic approaches. What is Known: • Intussusception in pediatric patients can be caused by a wide spectrum of underlying diseases including lymphoma. • Early Identifying the exact underlying cause of intussusception is crucial for tailored therapy, however often challenging and time-consuming. What is New: • Lymphoma-related intussusception may present with increased abdominal fluid accumulation, intestinal obstruction, and a higher likelihood of failed reduction during enema procedures. • For high-risk children, repeated ultrasound examinations or further investigations may be necessary to confirm the diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The forthcoming generation of materials, including artificial muscles, recyclable and healable systems, photochromic heterogeneous catalysts, or tailorable supercapacitors, relies on the fundamental concept of rapid switching between two or more discrete forms in the solid state. Herein, we report a breakthrough in the "speed limit" of photochromic molecules on the example of sterically-demanding spiropyran derivatives through their integration within solvent-free confined space, allowing for engineering of the photoresponsive moiety environment and tailoring their photoisomerization rates. The presented conceptual approach realized through construction of the spiropyran environment results in ~1000 times switching enhancement even in the solid state compared to its behavior in solution, setting a record in the field of photochromic compounds. Moreover, integration of two distinct photochromic moieties in the same framework provided access to a dynamic range of rates as well as complementary switching in the material's optical profile, uncovering a previously inaccessible pathway for interstate rapid photoisomerization. Rapid switching between discrete states in the solid state is a cornerstone for the technological development of devices based on stimuli-responsive materials. Here authors break the speed limit of common classes of photochromic molecules through tailoring framework environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of International Business Studies is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Objectives: To evaluate AI biases and errors in estimating bone age (BA) by comparing AI and radiologists' clinical determinations of BA. Methods: We established three deep learning models from a Chinese private dataset (CHNm), an American public dataset (USAm), and a joint dataset combining the above two datasets (JOIm). The test data CHNt (n = 1246) were labeled by ten senior pediatric radiologists. The effects of data site differences, interpretation bias, and interobserver variability on BA assessment were evaluated. The differences between the AI models' and radiologists' clinical determinations of BA (normal, advanced, and delayed BA groups by using the Brush data) were evaluated by the chi-square test and Kappa values. The heatmaps of CHNm-CHNt were generated by using Grad-CAM. Results: We obtained an MAD value of 0.42 years on CHNm-CHNt; this result indicated an appropriate accuracy for the whole group but did not indicate an accurate estimation of individual BA because with a kappa value of 0.714, the agreement between AI and human clinical determinations of BA was significantly different. The features of the heatmaps were not fully consistent with the human vision on the X-ray films. Variable performance in BA estimation by different AI models and the disagreement between AI and radiologists' clinical determinations of BA may be caused by data biases, including patients' sex and age, institutions, and radiologists. Conclusions: The deep learning models outperform external validation in predicting BA on both internal and joint datasets. However, the biases and errors in the models' clinical determinations of child development should be carefully considered. Key Points: • With a kappa value of 0.714, clinical determinations of bone age by using AI did not accord well with clinical determinations by radiologists. • Several biases, including patients' sex and age, institutions, and radiologists, may cause variable performance by AI bone age models and disagreement between AI and radiologists' clinical determinations of bone age. • AI heatmaps of bone age were not fully consistent with human vision on X-ray films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three-dimensional (3D) structures dictate the functions of RNA molecules in a wide variety of biological processes. However, direct determination of RNA 3D structures in vivo is difficult due to their large sizes, conformational heterogeneity, and dynamics. Here we present a method, Spatial 2′-Hydroxyl Acylation Reversible Crosslinking (SHARC), which uses chemical crosslinkers of defined lengths to measure distances between nucleotides in cellular RNA. Integrating crosslinking, exonuclease (exo) trimming, proximity ligation, and high throughput sequencing, SHARC enables transcriptome-wide tertiary structure contact maps at high accuracy and precision, revealing heterogeneous RNA structures and interactions. SHARC data provide constraints that improves Rosetta-based RNA 3D structure modeling at near-nanometer resolution. Integrating SHARC-exo with other crosslinking-based methods, we discover compact folding of the 7SK RNA, a critical regulator of transcriptional elongation. These results establish a strategy for measuring RNA 3D distances and alternative conformations in their native cellular context. Determination of RNA 3D structures in vivo is a challenging problem. Here, the authors describe a chemical crosslinking method (SHARC) that they use in combination with RNA sequencing to measure distances between nucleotides in RNA 3D structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using PitchBook's private equity (PE) database of 4548 PE funds from 42 countries for the 2000 to 2012 period, we find that higher reporting frequency is associated with lower information asymmetry in performance reports from general partners (GPs) to limited partners. We also find that endowments are systematically associated with less reported unrealized returns as a percentage of total returns generated from GPs. Moreover, endowments receive more performance reports from their PE funds, implying more stringent governance. These findings persist after controlling for various institutional and GP characteristics and are robust to several adjustments for endogeneity concerns. This study also contributes to the finance, accounting, and business ethics literature on financial reporting quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic flow prediction plays an important role in intelligent transportation applications, such as traffic control, navigation, path planning, etc., which are closely related to people's daily life. In the last twenty years, many traffic flow prediction approaches have been proposed. However, some of these approaches use the regression based mechanisms, which cannot achieve accurate short-term traffic flow predication. While, other approaches use the neural network based mechanisms, which cannot work well with limited amount of training data. To this end, a light weight tensor-based traffic flow prediction approach is proposed, which can achieve efficient and accurate short-term traffic flow prediction with continuous traffic flow data in a limited period of time. In the proposed approach, first, a tensor-based traffic flow model is proposed to establish the multi-dimensional relationships for traffic flow values in continuous time intervals. Then, a CANDECOMP/PARAFAC decomposition based algorithm is employed to complete the missing values in the constructed tensor. Finally, the completed tensor can be directly used to achieve efficient and accurate traffic flow prediction. The experiments on the real dataset indicate that the proposed approach outperforms many current approaches on traffic flow prediction with limited amount of traffic flow data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agent-based scheduling refers to applying intelligent agents to autonomously allocate resources to jobs. Decentralized agent-based scheduling approaches have achieved good performance in open and dynamic environments because the relationships of agents are flexible. For new jobs and resources and unexpected events, decentralized agents can respond adaptively and flexibly. Besides, decentralized approaches are easy to be extended because there is no central control agent that limits the scalability. However, decentralized approaches might have low efficiency in large-scale environments because behaviors of agents may be self-interested and competitive, due to their local views during decision making. When interacting with a large number of agents, each agent may spend a considerable amount of time on failed attempts before reaching the final agreements with other agents. To improve the efficiency of decentralized agent-based scheduling approaches in large-scale environments, and to keep the flexibility and adaptability of decentralized agents for the decision-making on scheduling, this paper provides a new agent-based adaptive mechanism for efficient job scheduling. A new type of agent named host agent is introduced to coordinate self-interested behaviors of agents without participating in the decision making of agents during job scheduling. The proposed mechanism was developed in JADE and tested in open and large-scale environments. The experimental results indicate that the proposed mechanism is effective and efficient in open and large-scale environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In online discussion platforms, participants gather to discuss the effective approaches to solve the common issues they face. To facilitate these discussions proceeding smoothly and reaching consensus efficiently, human facilitators are introduced into these discussions. However, human facilitator-related problems such as human bias and scalability arise with the increasing sophistication of these online discussions. As a result, it becomes critical to find approaches that support facilitation in these online discussions. Towards this end, we propose a novel case-based reasoning framework to support online discussion facilitation. In the proposed framework (CBR), each discussion thread is styled using an issue-based information system (IBIS), where complex problems are modeled as argumentation processes among several stack holders. Upon identifying a new discussion case, facilitation suggestions are generated by retrieving the most similar facilitated case from the discussion case base. For the sake of experimental evaluation, we build an online facilitation dataset that contains the facilitation information from annotated real-world discussion data. The experimental results show the validity of the generated facilitation suggestions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Direct determination of RNA structures and interactions in living cells is critical for understanding their functions in normal physiology and disease states. Here, we present PARIS2, a dramatically improved method for RNA duplex determination in vivo with >4000-fold higher efficiency than previous methods. PARIS2 captures ribosome binding sites on mRNAs, reporting translation status on a transcriptome scale. Applying PARIS2 to the U8 snoRNA mutated in the neurological disorder LCC, we discover a network of dynamic RNA structures and interactions which are destabilized by patient mutations. We report the first whole genome structure of enterovirus D68, an RNA virus that causes polio-like symptoms, revealing highly dynamic conformations altered by antiviral drugs and different pathogenic strains. We also discover a replication-associated asymmetry on the (+) and (−) strands of the viral genome. This study establishes a powerful technology for efficient interrogation of the RNA structurome and interactome in human diseases. RNA crosslinking and proximity ligation methods are used to identify transcriptome-wide base pairing interactions. Here, the authors report PARIS2 (psoralen analysis of RNA interactions and structures 2), a method for RNA duplex determination in vivo with higher efficiency than the previous PARIS method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Daqingshan area in China located in the center part of the Khondalite belt, north of the Ordos Block and south of the Yinshan Block. The Daqingshan basin is the best-preserved Mesozoic basin that is oriented nearly east-west. Previous studies suggest that the provenance of Jurassic sediment is mainly the Khondalite belt and no material from Yinshan Block. We present detailed data on the detrital-zircon geochronology of the Jurassic sandstones from the Daqingshan area. The detrital-zircon U–Pb age data of the Wudanggou and Changhangou Formations show two peaks at ~2450 Ma and 1970–1930 Ma, with a few of Archean ages. The detrital-zircon age data of the Daqingshan Formation show three distinctive age populations of 2560–2460 Ma, 1950–1750 Ma, and 320–265 Ma. Comparison with the age of the surrounding magmatic rocks suggests that the main source area is the Wulashan–Daqingshan Complex, with the Yinshan Block being a lesser source. However, more Archean and Paleozoic detrital zircon occurs in the Daqingshan Formation, probably as a result of the rise of the western part of the basin and eastward movement of the center of the basin, thereby increasing provenance from the Yinshan Block. The Yanshan movement caused massive amounts of Yinshan material to move southward during the Middle-Late Jurassic. However, the barrier of the Yinshan Mountains caused Yinshan material to be deposited mainly in the eastern part of the basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first and the second Zagreb indices of a graph G are defined as M 1 (G) = ∑ v ∈ V G d v 2 and M 2 (G) = ∑ u v ∈ E G d u d v , where d v , d u are the degrees of vertices v , u in G. The difference of Zagreb indices of G is defined as Δ M (G) = M 2 (G) - M 1 (G) . A cactus is a connected graph in which every block is either an edge or a cycle. Let C n , k be the set of all n-vertex cacti with k pendant vertices and let C n r be the set of all n-vertex cacti with r cycles. In this paper, the sharp upper bound on Δ M (G) of graph G among C n , k (resp. C n r ) is established. Combining the results in Furtula et al. (Discrete Appl Math 178:83–88, 2014) and our results obtained in the current paper, sharp upper bounds on Δ M (G) of n-vertex cacti and n-vertex unicyclic graphs are determined, respectively. All the extremal graphs are characterized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of International Business Studies is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The carbon sequestration potential of different crops in their mature period in Northern China was analyzed in order to promote the selection of green species. Carbon dioxide infrared gas detection, three-dimensional fluorescence, fixed carbon enzyme activity analysis and other methods were used to test the carbon sequestration capacity of nine representative mature crops in the Beijing area. Results show that the carbon sequestration capacity of the nine crops was: corn > sorghum > wheat > tomato > cucumber > cabbage > celery > eggplant > pepper. Among them, the carbon sequestration capacity of corn and sorghum which are C4 crops was stronger than that of other crops. Meanwhile, the three-dimensional fluorescence spectra of corn were closer to sorghum, and there were significant differences in the characteristics of the three-dimensional fluorescence spectra of C3 crops. Based on the analysis of the activity of the fixed carbon enzyme—Phosphoenolpyruvate Carboxylase (PEP) carboxylase and Ribulose-1, 5-Bisphosphate (RuBP) Carboxylase of these plants show that the carbon sequestration capacity of C4 crops was much larger than C3 crops because of its higher PEP carboxylase activity. The carbon sequestration capacity of C3 crops was positively correlated with the activity of RuBP carboxylase in addition to cabbage. Therefore, the carbon sequestration capacity of crops can be measured by using the portable carbon dioxide infrared analyzer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A broker in an open e-marketplace enables buyers and sellers to do business with each other. Although a broker plays an important role in e-marketplaces, theory and guidelines for matching between buyers and sellers in multi-attribute exchanges are limited. Therefore, a challenge for a broker’s responsibility is how to maximize a buyer’s total satisfaction degree as its goals under the consideration of trade-off between a buyer’s buying quantity and price paid to a seller, and other attributes. To solve this challenge, this paper proposes an economic model-based matching approach between a buyer’s requirements and a seller’s offers. The major contributions of this paper are that (i) a broker can model a seller’s price policy as per a buyer’s buying quantity through communication between a broker and a seller; (ii) due to each buyer’s different quantity demand, a broker models a buyer’s satisfaction degree as per a buyer’s buying quantity based on communication between a broker and a buyer; and (iii) to carry out a broker’s matching processes, an objective function and a set of constraints are generated to help a broker to maximize a buyer’s total satisfaction degree. Experimental results demonstrate the good performance of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-agent technologies have been widely employed for the development of web-based systems, including web-based e-markets, web-based grid computing, e-governments and service-oriented software systems. In these service-oriented systems, service provider agents and service consumer agents are autonomous and rational entities, which can enter and leave the environments freely. For simplicity, we use terms 'provider' and 'consumer' to represent this two types of agents. How to select the most suitable service providers according to a service request from a consumer in such an open environment is a very challenging issue. In this paper, we propose an innovative trust model, called the GTrust model, for service group selection in general service-oriented environments. In the GTrust model, the trust evaluation for a service group is based on the functionality coverage of the group, the dependency relationships among individual services in the group, the ratings of individual services on the attributes of the service request and a similarity measurement of the extent to which reference reports can reflect the service request in terms of the priority distribution of attributes. The experimental results and analysis demonstrate the good performance of the GTrust model on the service group selection in service-oriented environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reciprocal degree distance of a simple connected graph $$G=(V_G, E_G)$$ is defined as $$\bar{R}(G)=\sum _{u,v \in V_G}(\delta _G(u)+\delta _G(v))\frac{1}{d_G(u,v)}$$ , where $$\delta _G(u)$$ is the vertex degree of $$u$$ , and $$d_G(u,v)$$ is the distance between $$u$$ and $$v$$ in $$G$$ . The reciprocal degree distance is an additive weight version of the Harary index, which is defined as $$H(G)=\sum _{u,v \in V_G}\frac{1}{d_G(u,v)}$$ . In this paper, the extremal $$\bar{R}$$ -values on several types of important graphs are considered. The graph with the maximum $$\bar{R}$$ -value among all the simple connected graphs of diameter $$d$$ is determined. Among the connected bipartite graphs of order $$n$$ , the graph with a given matching number (resp. vertex connectivity) having the maximum $$\bar{R}$$ -value is characterized. Finally, sharp upper bounds on $$\bar{R}$$ -value among all simple connected outerplanar (resp. planar) graphs are determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of the GATA protein family play important roles in lineage specification and transdifferentiation. Previous reports show that some members of the GATA protein family can also induce pluripotency in somatic cells by substituting for Oct4, a key pluripotency-associated factor. However, the mechanism linking lineage-specifying cues and the activation of pluripotency remains elusive. Here, we report that all GATA family members can substitute for Oct4 to induce pluripotency. We found that all members of the GATA family could inhibit the overrepresented ectodermal-lineage genes, which is consistent with previous reports indicating that a balance of different lineage-specifying forces is important for the restoration of pluripotency. A conserved zinc-finger DNA-binding domain in the C-terminus is critical for the GATA family to induce pluripotency. Using RNA-seq and ChIP-seq, we determined that the pluripotency-related gene Sall4 is a direct target of GATA family members during reprogramming and serves as a bridge linking the lineage-specifying GATA family to the pluripotency circuit. Thus, the GATA family is the first protein family of which all members can function as inducers of the reprogramming process and can substitute for Oct4. Our results suggest that the role of GATA family in reprogramming has been underestimated and that the GATA family may serve as an important mediator of cell fate conversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complex problem solving requires diverse expertise and multiple techniques. In order to solve such problems, complex multi-agent systems that include both of human experts and autonomous agents are required in many application domains. Most complex multi-agent systems work in open domains and include various heterogeneous agents. Due to the heterogeneity of agents and dynamic features of working environments, expertise and capabilities of agents might not be well estimated and presented in these systems. Therefore, how to discover useful knowledge from human and autonomous experts, make more accurate estimation for experts’ capabilities and find out suitable expert(s) to solve incoming problems (“Expert Mining”) are important research issues in the area of multi-agent system. In this paper, we introduce an ontology-based approach for knowledge and expert mining in hybrid multi-agent systems. In this research, ontologies are hired to describe knowledge of the system. Knowledge and expert mining processes are executed as the system handles incoming problems. In this approach, we embed more self-learning and self-adjusting abilities in multi-agent systems, so as to help in discovering knowledge of heterogeneous experts of multi-agent systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temozolomide (TMZ) was used for the treatment of glioblastoma (GBM) for over a decade, but its treatment benefits are limited by acquired resistance, a process that remains incompletely understood. Here we report that an enhancer, located between the promoters of marker of proliferation Ki67 (MKI67) and O6-methylguanine-DNA-methyltransferase (MGMT) genes, is activated in TMZ-resistant patient-derived xenograft (PDX) lines and recurrent tumor samples. Activation of the enhancer correlates with increased MGMT expression, a major known mechanism for TMZ resistance. We show that forced activation of the enhancer in cell lines with low MGMT expression results in elevated MGMT expression. Deletion of this enhancer in cell lines with high MGMT expression leads to a dramatic reduction of MGMT and a lesser extent of Ki67 expression, increased TMZ sensitivity, and impaired proliferation. Together, these studies uncover a mechanism that regulates MGMT expression, confers TMZ resistance, and potentially regulates tumor proliferation. Temozolomide (TMZ) resistance in glioblastomas (GBM) is associated with increased MGMT expression. Here, the authors identify an enhancer between the promoters of MKI67 and MGMT, that when activated drives MGMT expression despite MGMT promoter methylation to confer TMZ resistance in GBM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]