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The "average occupant" methodology is widely used in energy consumption simulations of residential buildings; however, it fails to consider the differences in energy use behavior among family members. Based on a field survey on the Central Shaanxi Plain, to identify the energy use behavior patterns of typical families, a stochastic energy use behavior model considering differences in energy use behavior among family members was proposed, to improve the accuracy of energy consumption simulations of residential buildings. The results indicated that the surveyed rural families could be classified into the following four types depending on specific energy use behavior patterns: families of one elderly couple, families of one middle-aged couple, families of one elderly couple and one child, and families of one couple and one child. Moreover, on typical summer days, the results of daily building energy consumption simulation obtained by the "average occupant" methodology were 25.39% and 28% lower than the simulation results obtained by the model proposed in this study for families of one elderly couple and families of one middle-aged couple, and 13.05% and 23.05% higher for families of one elderly couple and one child, and families of one couple and one child. On typical winter days, for the four types of families, the results of daily building energy consumption simulation obtained by the "average occupant" methodology were 21.69%, 10.84%, 1.21%, and 8.39% lower than the simulation results obtained by the model proposed in this study, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil aggregates, formed by soil particles and organic matter, have significant impacts on the physical properties of soil and play a crucial role in the migration of nutrients and pollutants. Heavy metals, as harmful soil pollutants, pose important risks to human health and ecosystems. Therefore, understanding the distribution, forms, and migration characteristics of heavy metals in soil aggregates is crucial. This study aims to investigate heavy metal pollution from the perspective of microscopic soil aggregates. A bibliometric analysis was conducted to review studies on the distribution and remediation of heavy metals in soil aggregates over the past 30 years. Based on keyword analysis, the review focused on three main themes: different soil types, adsorption mechanisms and influencing factors of heavy metals on aggregates of different particle sizes, and biochemical remediation. Generally speaking, microaggregates have a strong enrichment capacity for most heavy metals due to their large surface area and numerous adsorption sites. However, the adsorption of aggregates on heavy metals is also related to the physicochemical properties of the soil. Currently, there is relatively little research on the impact of various soil heavy metal remediation techniques on soil aggregates. In the future, this can be strengthened through advanced analytical techniques and modeling methods. Understanding the interaction between heavy metals and soil aggregates is essential for comprehending migration and transformation mechanisms and developing effective remediation technologies. Remediation of heavy metal-contaminated soils using soil aggregates can enhance adsorption and immobilization of heavy metals and improve soil structure. Additionally, the restoration of soil aggregates is vital for soil remediation, enhancing stability, reducing erosion, and promoting the overall recovery of soil ecosystems. Thus, studying heavy metals in soil aggregates is of practical significance for sustainable agriculture and ecological protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two-dimensional (2D) metal-free ferromagnetic materials are ideal candidates to fabricate next-generation memory and logic devices, but optimization of their ferromagnetism at atomic-scale remains challenging. Theoretically, optimization of ferromagnetism could be achieved by inducing long-range magnetic sequence, which requires short-range exchange interactions. In this work, we propose a strategy to enhance the ferromagnetism of 2D graphite carbon nitride (g-C3N4), which is facilitating the short-range exchange interaction by introducing in-planar boron bridges. As expected, the ferromagnetism of g-C3N4 was significantly enhanced after the introduction of boron bridges, consistent with theoretical calculations. Overall, boosting ferromagnetism of 2D materials by introducing bridging groups is emphasized, which could be applied to manipulate the magnetism of other materials. Metal free' materials offer a cheap and chemical benign platform for magnetism, however, the typical source of magnetism are unpaired electrons of a metal, thus designing 'metal free' magnetic materials represents a significant challenge. Here, Du et al present a strategy for enhancing the magnetism in carbon nitride using boron bridges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Immunoglobulin A vasculitis (IgAV) is a systemic small vessel vasculitis common in children. Pancreatic involvement in IgAV is rare. The purpose of this study was to analyze the clinical characteristics of IgAV-related acute pancreatitis in children. Methods: Records of patients with IgAV-related acute pancreatitis admitted to our institution between January 2016 and December 2019 were reviewed. We summarized the clinical characteristics, laboratory characteristics, imaging findings, treatment, and outcomes of 15 children with IgAV-related acute pancreatitis. Results: The patients' median age was 9.6 years. Pancreatitis was the initial manifestation of IgAV in 3 patients. All patients had abdominal manifestations, including abdominal pain (15/15), vomiting (10/15), and gastrointestinal bleeding (7/15). Serum amylase and lipase levels were elevated in all patients. Serum amylase in 4 cases reached more than three-fold elevation and serum lipase in 14 cases reached more than three-fold elevation. Morphological abnormalities and abnormal signals of the pancreas were observed in 13 cases by magnetic resonance imaging. Pancreaticobiliary maljunction was seen in 3 cases by magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography. Glucocorticoid therapy and intravenous immunoglobulins were used to treat acute pancreatitis in IgAV. All patients showed clinical improvement after treatment. During the follow-up period of 6–12 months, all 15 cases with pancreatitis were cured without recurrence. Conclusions: Pancreatic involvement is rare in IgAV; however, this should be considered in IgAV patients with severe abdominal pain. The timely application of steroid therapy is important for IgAV-associated pancreatitis. Key Points • Acute pancreatitis is a rare complication of immunoglobulin A vasculitis (IgAV). • Acute pancreatitis can be the initial manifestation of IgAV. It is important to evaluate for pancreatitis while IgAV patients with severe abdominal pain. • A common image finding of IgAV-associated pancreatitis was swelling of the pancreas. • Glucocorticoid therapy and intravenous immunoglobulins is helpful in alleviating acute pancreatitis in IgAV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In HTTP adaptive video streaming service, video clarity and fluency are the two most important Influencing Factors (IFs) affecting user's Quality of Experience (QoE). In this paper, a Video Clarity-Fluency Network (VCFNet) is proposed to establish a QoE evaluation model, which focuses on characterizing the clarity-fluency characteristics of video. Firstly, the Harmonic-ResNeXt101 network is constructed by introducing the Harmonic Network into ResNeXt101 to capture the clarity information of video frames. The output of the Fully Connected (FC) layer of the Harmonic-ResNeXt101 network is fed into the Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), which is used to perform short-term temporal modeling to capture the fluency information of video chunk. Then, the final output of GRU is extracted as the clarity-fluency features, which are concatenated with the statistical features of other IFs (including video quality level, re-buffering duration, re-buffering frequency, etc.) to form the feature parameter vector of IFs. Finally, a neural network composed of One-Dimensional Convolutional Neural Network (1D CNN) layer and two FC layers is designed to establish the mapping relationship model between the feature parameter vector of IFs and Mean Opinion Score (MOS) to predict user's QoE. Experimental results on SQoE-III and SQoE-IV datasets demonstrate that the proposed VCFNet can effectively capture the clarity-fluency information of video, and the resulted QoE model can achieve the state-of-the-art performance compared with the existing QoE evaluation models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For mobile streaming media service providers, it is necessary to accurately predict the quality of experience (QoE) to formulate appropriate resource allocation and service quality optimization strategies. In this paper, a QoE evaluation model is proposed by considering various influencing factors (IFs), including perceptual video quality, video content characteristics, stalling, quality switching and video genre attribute. Firstly, a no-reference video multimethod assessment fusion (VMAF) model is constructed to measure the perceptual quality of the video by the deep bilinear convolutional neural network. Then, the deep spatio-temporal features of video are extracted using a TSM-ResNet50 network, which incorporates temporal shift module (TSM) with ResNet50, obtaining feature representation of video content characteristics while balancing computational efficiency and expressive ability. Secondly, video genre attribute, which reflects the user's preference for different types of videos, is considered as a IF while constructing the QoE model. The statistical parameters of other IFs, including the video genre attribute, stalling and quality switching, are combined with VMAF and deep spatio-temporal features of video to form an overall description parameters vector of IFs for formulating the QoE evaluation model. Finally, the mapping relationship model between the parameters vector of IFs and the mean opinion score is established through designing a deep neural network. The proposed QoE evaluation model is validated on two public video datasets: WaterlooSQoE-III and LIVE-NFLX-II. The experimental results show that the proposed model can achieve the state-of-the-art QoE prediction performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immunoglobulin A vasculitis (IgAV), also known as Henoch-Schönlein Purpura, is one of the most common kind of systemic vasculitis in children, and due to the involvement of small blood vessels throughout the body, this disease can cause a variety of symptoms in different organs. Our aim was to review the data on various systemic manifestations of IgAV. A research of the literature was performed in PubMed database, utilizing the MeSH terms "IgA vasculitis" and "Henoch Schönlein Purpura". According to the predetermined structure of the manuscript, we extracted and sorted out the relevant data. Clinically, almost all the patients will present with palpable skin purpura, together with arthritis, gastrointestinal tract involvement, or kidney damage. Other rare systemic manifestations include neurological symptoms, scrotal involvement, and cardiopulmonary disease. When uncommon complications occur, patients may be misdiagnosed as other diseases, thus delaying treatment. Although the course of IgAV is mostly self-limited, misdiagnosis can also lead to a poor prognosis. A comprehensive awareness to the clinical manifestations of IgAV is the necessary prerequisite for its timely diagnosis. Prompt diagnosis and adequate treatment are essential for optimal results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key message: RsMYB1a was the crucial MYB, and RsbHLH4 is the essential partner in regulating the anthocyanin biosynthesis in radish. There are four color types of radish according to whether or not the anthocyanin accumulates in the skin and flesh of taproot. Red radishes accumulate a substantial amount of anthocyanins in both the skin and flesh. It is well known that the MYB-bHLH-WD40 transcription factor(s) complex regulates the biosynthesis of anthocyanin in plants. Here in, four candidate MYB and bHLH genes, RsMYB1a, RsMYB1b, RsbHLH2 and RsbHLH4, were isolated from red radish 'Hongxin 1'. The expression of RsbHLH4 and the two structural genes RsANS and RsUFGT was significantly positively correlated with anthocyanin contents. The expression of RsMYB1a was also highly correlated with anthocyanin accumulation, particularly when the white flesh sample of 'Hongxin 1-1' was excluded. The transient expression of RsMYB1a in the radish cotyledon and leaf induced anthocyanin accumulation with even stronger promoting role when expression in combination with RsbHLH4. These results suggested that RsMYB1a was the crucial MYB, and that RsbHLH4 is an essential partner in regulating the biosynthesis of anthocyanins in radish. The low or undetectable RsbHLH4 expression paralleled the lack of anthocyanin accumulation in the white flesh of 'Hongxin 1-1' and 'Shaguan 1'. Assays demonstrated that RsMYB1a interacted with RsbHLH4 and activated the expression of RsbHLH4. Notably, all the dark red radish cultivars have a longer RsMYB1a genomic DNA sequence, while the short and nonfunctional RsMYB1a is present in non-red cultivars. The length of the first intron and the presence of an early stop codon of RsMYB1 might underlie the differential anthocyanin accumulation in the radish taproot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), known as the third-generation molecular markers, are extensively used in genetic studies. The rapid development of high-throughput sequencing technologies has enabled the development of a large number of SNP markers to be cost-effective and rapid. Based on the genome resequencing dataset of Rhinopithecus roxellana, we characterized 34 polymorphic SNP markers using a high resolution melting diversity assay. The observed heterozygosity varied from 0.323 to 0.725, while the expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.352 to 0.638. In addition, the MAF varied from 0.206 to 0.5000, while HWE values varied from 0.060 to 0.725. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest set of SNP markers developed for R. roxellana by far, and could be useful in further geographic populations, analysis of evolutionary relationships and conservation genetics of this species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Only one bifunctional metal-chelator was used to prepare immunogen and coating antigen in all of the previous researches. However, the antibody-specific recognition to the spacer arm of the bifunctional metalchelator might lower the specificity of heavy metal ions immunoassay. Two different bifunctional metal-chelators were adopted to prepare the immunogen and coating antigen respectively in our study to avoid this problem. The conjugates of keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH) and p-SCN-Bz-DTPA-Pb were used as immunogen, whereas the conjugates of bovine serum albumin (BSA) and p-NH-Bn-DTPA-Pb were used as coating antigen. Polyclonal antibodies specific to DTPA-Pb chelates were obtained from rabbits. Indirect competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was adopted to detect Pb ion solutions prepared by Pb standard solution and ultrapure water. In the mixing microplate, DTPA and Pb ions formed chelates and combined with specific antibodies. After incubation, the DTPA-Pb and the antibodies complex were added into the wells of the reaction microplate. The reaction microplate was coated by the conjugates of BSA and p-NH-DTPA-Pb, which competed for the specific antibodies. The result signals presented a good sigmoid curve when the Pb concentration ranges from 0.01 to 100 mg·L. The IC50 of the indirect competitive ELISA is 0.23±0.04 mg·L Pb ion. The cross-reaction with Cd, Cu, Fe, Mn, Zn, and other divalent ions were less than 5%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the phylogeny of the viviparid genus Margarya, endemic to Yunnan, China, using two mitochondrial gene fragments (COI and 16S rRNA). The molecular phylogeny based on the combined dataset indicates that Margarya is polyphyletic, as two of the three well-supported clades containing species of Margarya also comprise species from other viviparid genera. In one clade, sequences of four species of Margarya even cluster indiscriminately with those of two species of Cipangopaludina, indicating that the current state of Asian viviparid taxonomy needs to be revised. Additionally, these data suggest that shell evolution in viviparids is complex, as even the large and strongly sculptured shells of Margarya, which are outstanding among Asian viviparids, can apparently be easily converted to simple smooth shells. The molecular data also indicate that the species status of the six extant species of Margarya should be re-assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrostatic effects play an important role in protein interactions and may alter the biodistribution of antibodies. To study the effect of molecular charge on the biodistribution and infection imaging properties of human polyclonal immunoglobulin G (IgG), its iso electric point was varied by changing the level of diethylene triamine penta-acetic acid (DTPA) substitution: 0.8, 0.9, 3.7, 5.1 and 5.9 DTPA/IgG. Biodistributions of the different IgG preparations were determined at 10 min, 1, 6, 24, and 48 h post injection in normal rats, and infection imaging properties were determined in rats with Escherichia coli thigh infections. The biodistribution was significantly affected by pl. The immunoglobulin preparations with 0.9 and 3.7 DTPA/IgG showed faster clearance from the circulation and generally lower accumulation in most organs. The images had a target-to-background ratio of approximately 1.3-2.3:1. These results suggest that even though targeting is not affected by the level of DTPA substitutions, preparations with 0.9 and 3.7 DTPA/IgG may be superior imaging agents because of reduced accumulation by background organs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]