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Atmospheric heat transport (AHT) moderates spatial gradients in surface temperature, and its efficiency (hereinafter referred to as diffusivity) shapes the distribution of moist static energy and the hydrological cycle. Using a linear downgradient rule for AHT, we diagnose zonal-mean diffusivity using observational and model data. We find it varies two- to threefold with season and latitude, but is nearly invariant across different climate states. We then employ a moist energy balance model (MEBM) to explore the impacts of changing the magnitude and spatial pattern of diffusivity on the climatology and climate response to forcing. Spatial anomalies in diffusivity in the extra-tropics have a larger impact on temperature and hydrology than diffusivity anomalies in the tropics. We demonstrate that compensating dynamical adjustments in the MEBM act to mute the impact of changing diffusivity patterns on the resulting climate. We isolate the impacts of spatial patterns of forcing, ocean heat uptake, radiative feedbacks, and diffusivity on the spatial pattern of climate change; and find that the pattern of climate change is least sensitive to the detailed pattern of diffusivity. Overall, these results suggest that although diffusivity is far from spatially invariant, understanding the climatology and spatial patterns of climate change does not depend on a detailed characterization of the spatial pattern of diffusivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In secure two-party computation protocols, the cut-and-choose paradigm is used to prevent the malicious party who constructs the garbled circuits from cheating. In previous realization of the cut-and-choose technique on the garbled circuits, the delivery of the random keys is divided into multiple stages. Thus, the round complexity is high and the consistency of cut-and-choose challenge should be proved. Based on DDH assumption, we build a so-called cut-and-choose bilateral oblivious transfer protocol, which transfers all necessary keys of garbled circuits in one process. Specifically, in our oblivious transfer protocol, the sender inputs two pairs (k 0 1 , k 1 1) , (k 0 2 , k 1 2) and a bit τ ; the receiver inputs two bits σ and j. After the protocol execution, the receiver obtains k τ 1 , k σ 2 for j = 1 , and k 0 1 , k 1 1 , k 0 2 , k 1 2 for j = 0 . The protocol inherit the cut-and-choose OT protocol in Lindell and Pinkas (Proceedings of the 8th conference on theory of cryptography, Springer, 2011), and can be applied into the state-of-the-art cut-and-choose secure two party computation protocol without any obstacles. By the cut-and-choose bilateral oblivious transfer protocol, the cut-and-choose challenge j is no need to be opened anymore, therefore the consistency proof of j is omitted, and the round complexity of secure two-party computation protocol can be decreased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies revealed that NOP2/Sun RNA methyltransferase 5 (NSUN5) - ferritin heavy chain (FTH1) pathway is associated with ferroptosis in stem cells, whereas its roles in gastric cancer are still unclear. Our study aims to investigate the roles of the NSUN5-FTH1 axis in gastric cancer (GC) and its molecular mechanisms. Stable cell lines were constructed on SGC7901 cells by using shRNAs and pcDNA3.1 expression vectors, respectively. CCK-8 kits were used to determine cell viability. Biochemicals assays were used to detect lipid reactive oxygen species (ROS) and intracellular Fe2+ levels. RNA immunoprecipitation assay, qPCR, and Western blotting were used to determine the changes in biomarkers. GC xenograft mouse model was established to confirm the observation in vivo. An elevation of NSUN5 was observed in GC tumor tissues. NSUN5 inhibited ferroptosis including decreasing cell viability and increasing levels of lipid ROS and Fe2+ in GC cells. Besides, a positive correlation was also observed between NSUN5 and FTH1. Interestingly, NSUN5 regulated the levels of FTH1, instead of FTH1 regulating NSUN5 in GC cells. NSUN5-FTH1 axis regulated erastin-induced ferroptosis in SGC7901 cells. Consistently, silencing NSUN5 or FTH1 inhibited the growth of the SGC7901 tumor in vivo. NSUN5-FTH1 axis promoted the growth of GC cells in part by the regulation of ferroptosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we reported on wafer-scale nanoporous (NP) AlGaN-based deep ultraviolet (DUV) distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) with 95% reflectivity at 280 nm, using epitaxial periodically stacked n-Al0.62Ga0.38N/u-Al0.62Ga0.38N structures grown on AlN/sapphire templates via metal–organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The DBRs were fabricated by a simple one-step selective wet etching in heated KOH aqueous solution. To study the influence of the temperature of KOH electrolyte on the nanopores formation, the amount of charge consumed during etching process was counted, and the surface and cross-sectional morphology of DBRs were characterized by Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). As the electrolyte temperature increased, the nanopores became larger while the amount of charge reduced, which revealed that the etching process was a combination of electrochemical and chemical etching. The triangular nanopores and hexagonal pits further confirmed the chemical etching processes. Our work demonstrated a simple wet etching to fabricate high reflective DBRs, which would be useful for AlGaN based DUV devices with microcavity structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Side-to-side jejunoileal bypass with proximal loop ligation (SSJIBL) has significant glucose-lowering and weight-control effects; however, no study has elucidated which segment is most effective in SSJIBL. This study investigated the effect of proximal small intestinal bypass (PSIB), middle small intestinal bypass (MSIB), and distal small intestinal bypass (DSIB) on metabolic improvement in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic rats. Materials and Methods: STZ-induced diabetic rats were divided into four groups: PSIB, MSIB, DSIB, and sham-operated. The primary outcome measures were body weight, food intake, fasting blood glucose (FBG) levels, oral glucose tolerance (OGTT), insulin tolerance (ITT), serum insulin, gut hormones, serum lipid profile, and liver function levels. Results: Global body weight in the DSIB group was lower than that in the PSIB group. The global food intake in the PSIB group was lower than that in the MSIB group. The PSIB group had a slightly better glucose-lowering effect than the MSIB and DSIB groups. The PSIB, MSIB, and DSIB groups all had improvement in insulin sensitivity at postoperative week 6. The MSIB group exhibited the best improvement in lipid homeostasis. Serum insulin and leptin levels were higher, and serum ghrelin levels were lower in the operated groups than in the sham group. Conclusions: This study provides experimental evidence that PSIB surgery induces a better glucose-lowering effect than DSIB surgery, and MSIB induced the best improvement in lipid homeostasis, whereas DSIB was even more advantageous in terms of weight control in the STZ-induced diabetic rat model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The change in gut microbiota is an important mechanism of the amelioration of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) after bariatric surgery. Here, we observe that the modified jejunoileal bypass effectively decreases body weight gain, fasting blood glucose, and lipids level in serum; additionally, islet β-cell function, glucose tolerance, and insulin resistance were markedly ameliorated. The hypoglycemic effect and the improvement in islet β-cell function depend on the changes in gut microbiota structure. modified jejunoileal bypass increases the abundance of gut Escherichia coli and Ruminococcus gnavus and the levels of serum glycine, histidine, and glutamine in T2DM rats; and decreases the abundance of Prevotella copri and the levels of serum branched chain amino acids, which are significantly related to the improvement of islet β-cell function in T2DM rats. Our results suggest that amino acid metabolism may contribute to the islet β-cell function in T2DM rats after modified jejunoileal bypass and that improving gut microbiota composition is a potential therapeutic strategy for T2DM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless energy transfer (WET) is a promising technology to fundamentally settle energy and lifetime problems in a wireless sensor network (WSN). In this paper, we study the operation of WSN based on WET using a mobile charging vehicle (MCV) and construct a periodic strategy to make the network operational permanently. Our goal is to decrease energy consumption of the entire system while maintaining the network operational forever. Based on the analysis of total energy consumption, we propose an energy-efficient renewable scheme (ERSVC) to achieve energy saving. Compared to previous schemes where the MCV visits and charges all nodes in each cycle, the MCV only needs to visit a portion of nodes in ERSVC. Numerical results show that our scheme can significantly decrease the total energy consumption with no performance loss. It is also validated that ERSVC can maintain the network operational forever with lower complexity than other schemes, making it more practical for real networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the attribute-based encryption (ABE) systems, users could encrypt and decrypt messages based on some attributes or access policies. Due to the functionality and flexibility of ABE, it is considered to be very suitable for secure data sharing in cloud storage environment. However, in the real world, users’ access rights are often dynamic; therefore, we need ABE schemes to support revocation to meet this requirement. In this work, we construct a novel directly revocable ciphertext-policy ABE (DR-CP-ABE) scheme based on the multilinear maps and prove its selective security under (d+3)-multilinear decisional Diffie-Hellman assumption in the random oracle model. In addition, we extend our DR-CP-ABE scheme to support verifiable ciphertext delegation property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the attribute-based encryption (ABE) systems, users can encrypt and decrypt messages based on their attributes. Because of the flexibility of ABE, it is more and more widely used in various network environments. However, complex functionality of ABE may cause an enormous computational cost. This reason greatly restricts the application of ABE in practice. In order to minimize the local computation of ABE, we introduce the concept of verifiable outsourced ABE system, in which key generation center, encryptor and decryptor, are able to outsource their computing tasks to the corresponding service providers, respectively, to reduce the local load. In addition, they are also able to verify the correctness of outsourcing calculation efficiently by using the outsourcing verification services. This is useful to save local computational resources, especially for mobile devices. Then, we propose a specific verifiable outsourced ABE scheme and prove its adaptive security in the standard model using the dual-system encryption method. Finally, we introduce how to deploy our outsourced CP-ABE scheme in cloud computing environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attribute-based encryption (ABE) is a special type of cryptosystem, which provide encryption and decryption functions based on users attributes. Due to the functionality and flexibility of ABE, it is considered to be suitable for providing data security and privacy preserving security in the cloud storage environment. However, lack of user revocation mechanism is considered to be a disadvantage of traditional ABE. In this paper, we study the direct revocation mechanism of ciphertext-policy ABE (CP-ABE), construct a new directly revocable CP-ABE in the composite order group, and prove it to achieve adaptive security using dual system encryption in the standard model. On this basis, we introduce user revocation centre (URC) in this system, and outsource the revocation tasks to URC. Users need not to master the latest revocation list for encrypting, and need not to pay any additional computing for revocation. In addition, when revocation list changes, URC can update the ciphertexts for users. Finally, we introduce how to deploy our schemes in cloud storage environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The solubility data of tetranitroglycoluril in acetone, methanol, ethanol, ethyl acetate, nitromethane and chloroform at temperatures ranging from 295-318 K were measured by gravimetric method. The solubility data of tetranitroglycoluril were fitted with Apelblat semiempirical equation. The dissolution enthalpy, entropy and Gibbs energy of tetranitroglycoluril were calculated using the Van't Hoff and Gibbs equations. The results showed that the Apelblat semiempirical equation was significantly correlated with solubility data. The dissolving process was endothermic, entropy-driven, and nonspontaneous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Off-label drug use is unavoidable, especially in children. Legal justice originates from ethical justice; therefore, ethical off-label drug use can be considered legal. We share our successful experiences with this issue in China, which may provide a reference to Indian healthcare professionals, to develop a common executable standard to be applied to evaluate the off-label drug use in clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peptidoglycan recognition proteins (PGRPs) are non-specific immune molecules of insects, and vertebrates etc., but are not present in plants and nematodes. In the current experiment, a PGRP DNA sequence (2,910 bp containing four exons) was identified from genomic DNA library of Asian corn borer, Ostrinia furnacalis, and a full-length cDNA programming PGRP was cloned (designed as OfPGRP-S) with an open reading frame of 579 bp, having 192 amino acid. This inferred amino acid sequence showed maximum similarity to known lepidopteran PGRPs. Quantitative real-time PCR investigation disclosed the level of mRNA of OfPGRP-S to be constitutively expressed in the whole developmental stages and with higher expression in the mature larvae. Even more the OfPGRP-S was mainly expressed in immune capable organs i.e., fat body and midgut, and was strongly induced by injecting gram-positive bacteria i.e., Staphylococus aureus. Recombinant protein OfPGRP-S could bind to S. aureus and Bacillus thuringiensis which enhance proPO activation in the presence of these microbes. The results indicated that OfPGRP-S is an inducible protein acting as a receptor-type PGRP for enhancing the proPO activation on exposure to bacteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]