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Klinefelter syndrome (KS) is a leading contributor to male infertility and is characterised by complex and diverse clinical features; however, genetic changes in the KS transcriptome remain largely unknown. We therefore used transcriptomic and single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) datasets from KS versus normal populations through the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database to identify gene biomarkers associated with the occurrence of KS. We identified a total of 700 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and completed Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), enrichment pathway analysis and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network analysis. A total of four unreported KS-related hub genes (KIF2C, MRPS2, RPS15 and TSFM) were identified. Validation of the single-cell sequencing dataset showed that only KIF2C and RPS15 were expressed in spermatocytes and that they were differentially expressed in sperm cells. Further construction of the developmental trajectories of these two genes in sperm cells showed that the KIF2C gene showed an upward trend throughout the differentiation and development of sperm cells. In conclusion, we report here that KIF2C may be closely related to the differentiation and development of sperm cells in KS patients, which is important for revealing the molecular mechanism of KS and conducting further studies.

Acquiring desirable device performance with deep-blue color purity that fulfills practical application requirements is still a challenge. Bipolar fluorescent emitters with hybrid local and charge transfer (HLCT) state may serve to address this issue. Herein, by inserting anthracene core in the deep-blue building blocks, the authors successfully developed two highly twisted D-π-A fluorescent emitters, ICz-An-PPI and IP-An-PPI, featuring different acceptor groups. Both exhibited superb thermal stabilities, high photo luminescent quantum yields and excellent bipolar transport capabilities. The non-doped OLEDs using ICz-An-PPI and IP-An-PPI as the emitting layers showed efficient blue emission with an external quantum efficiency (EQEmax ) of 4.32 % and 5.41 %, and the CIE coordinates of (0.147, 0.180) and (0.149, 0.150), respectively. In addition, the deep blue doped device based on ICz-An-PPI was achieved with an excellent CEmax of 5.83 cd A-1 , EQEmax of 4.6 % and the CIE coordinate of (0.148, 0.078), which is extremely close to the National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) standard. Particularly, IP-An-PPI-based doped device had better performance, with an EQEmax of 7.51 % and the CIE coordinate of (0.150, 0.118), which was very impressive among the recently reported deep-blue OLEDs with the CIEy

Here we report stepwise solution-synthesis of linear nonalternant nanoribbons (NNRs), featuring pentagonal rings peri-fused onto the repeating perylene unit. The X-ray single-crystal structures demonstrated their π-backbones as a twisted ribbon, with the longest crystalline length of the nanoribbon up to 3.9 nm. NNRs exhibited an orange to deep-red photoluminescence even under the room light, with absolute Φ

To explore the correlation of the acceptor electron affinity and the molecular conformation to the thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) feature, a series of d-π-A molecules were designed and synthesized with triazine (Trz) as the acceptor (A) and carbazole (Cz) or tert-butylcarbazole (BuCz) as the donor (D). On the phenylene bridge between D and A, methyl or trifluoromethyl was incorporated close either to D or to A to tune the molecular conformation and the electron-withdrawing ability of acceptor. Both the twist angles and the singlet and triplet energy difference (ΔEST ) were observed strongly dependent on the type and position of the substituent on the π-bridge. Only those molecules with trifluoromethyl locating close to the D side, namely TrzCz-CF3 and TrzBuCz-CF3 , exhibit TADF feature, verifying that both sufficient electron affinity of the A unit and large dihedral angle between D and the π-bridge are necessary to ensure the occurrence of TADF. The blue organic light-emitting diodes fabricated with TrzCz-CF3 and TrzBuCz-CF3 achieved external quantum efficiencies of 9.40 % and 14.22 % with CIE coordinates of (0.19, 0.23) and (0.18, 0.29) respectively. This study provides practical design strategy for blue TADF materials particularly when planar and less crowded group is used as donor.

Two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials have drawn a wide range of research interests because of their unique ultrathin layered structures and attractive properties. In particular, the electrochemical properties and great variety of 2D nanomaterials make them highly attractive candidates for electrochemical capacitors, such as supercapacitors, lithium-ion capacitors, and sodium-ion capacitors. Herein, a comprehensive review of recent progress towards the application of 2D nanomaterials for electrochemical capacitors is provided. Several typical types of 2D nanomaterials are first briefly introduced, followed by detailed descriptions of their electrochemical capacitor applications. Finally, research perspectives and future research directions of these interesting areas are also provided.

Objective Delayed thrombolytic therapy with recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) may exacerbate blood‐brain barrier (BBB) breakdown after ischemic stroke and lead to catastrophic hemorrhagic transformation (HT). Rosiglitazone(RSG), a widely used antidiabetic drug that activates peroxisome proliferator‐activated receptor‐γ (PPAR‐γ), has been shown to protect against cerebral ischemia through promoting poststroke microglial polarization toward the beneficial anti‐inflammatory phenotype. However, whether RSG can alleviate HT after delayed tPA treatment remains unknown. In this study, we sort to examine the role of RSG on tPA‐induced HT after stroke. Methods and results We used the murine suture middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) models of stroke followed by delayed administration of tPA (10 mg/kg, 2 hours after suture occlusion) to investigate the therapeutic potential of RSG against tPA‐induced HT. When RSG(6 mg/kg) was intraperitoneally administered 1 hour before MCAO in tPA‐treated MCAO mice, HT in the ischemic territory was significantly attenuated 1 day after stroke. In the tPA‐treated MCAO mice, we found RSG significantly mitigated BBB disruption and hemorrhage development compared to tPA‐alone‐treated stroke mice. Using flow cytometry and immunostaining, we confirmed that the expression of CD206 was significantly upregulated while the expression of iNOS was down‐regulated in microglia of the RSG‐treated mice. We further found that the expression of Arg‐1 was also upregulated in those tPA and RSG‐treated stroke mice and the protection against tPA‐induced HT and BBB disruption in these mice were abolished in the presence of PPAR‐γ antagonist GW9662 (4 mg/kg, 1 hour before dMCAO through intraperitoneal injection). Conclusions RSG treatment protects against BBB damage and ameliorates HT in delayed tPA‐treated stroke mice by activating PPAR‐γ and favoring microglial polarization toward anti‐inflammatory phenotype.

The laser diffraction method (LDM) has been increasingly applied for quantifying soil particle size distribution (PSD), owing to its advantages of rapid analysis, high reproducibility, and continuous PSD measurement for a wide range of size fractions. However, some ambiguities exist regarding the comparability of results with those obtained using other classical methods. The objective of the current study was to evaluate LDM-derived PSDs via comparisons with PSDs obtained with the standard sieve–pipette method (SPM) and from the absolute method of microscopy. A total of 277 soil samples were collected at different soil depths in a typical cropland in the northeast mountainous region of Beijing and analyzed with both SPM and LDM. Due to time and labor constraints, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was performed on 100 samples randomly selected for the PSDs within the clay fraction withdrawn by SPM. The results manifested on the average 18.9% underestimation of clay content and 25.3% overestimation of silt content by LDM compared to SPM. These disagreements directly caused the shifts of soil texture class in 44.8% of the soil samples. Significant linear regression equations were generated to convert LDM–derived sand and silt contents to SPM–derived ones (p < 0.01). The linear conversions for the clay content were only significant for the calibration samples, but possessed negative coefficients of determination for the validation set. According to SEM, silt-sized particles were wrongly included in the clay fraction identified by SPM. Eliminating such particles, the clay contents corrected by SEM were significantly lower when assuming the shape of clay particles < 2 µm as plates or discs with constant thickness–diameter ratio of 1/10, and higher when considering the clay particles as spheres for volume calculation, in contrast to those measured by LDM (P < 0.01). Detailed volume-based PSDs within the clay fraction were further compared between SEM and LDM, revealing dissimilar PSD patterns but statistically similar median particle diameters. These findings suggest the effectiveness of LDM in soil PSD determination. Future work is needed to systematically quantify the impact of other possible factors such as clay mineralogy and refractive index on LDM-derived PSDs.

Saturated hydraulic conductivity (Kₛ) usually varies at multiple scales in space, as affected by different soil and environmental processes operating at diverse scales. Identifying spatial process relationships can be challenging due to overlapping of underlying processes at different scales. The objective of this study was to evaluate noise-assisted multivariate empirical mode decomposition (NA-MEMD) for characterizing Kₛ variability and depicting its scale-dependent relationships with different soil properties and environmental factors. At an interval of 10 km along an 860-km south-north transect across the Loess Plateau of China, Kₛ, bulk density, soil organic carbon content, sand and clay contents at three depths of 0 to 10, 10 to 20 and 20 to 40 cm were investigated as well as four environmental factors of elevation, slope gradient, annual precipitation and temperature. Decomposed into different intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) and residues by NA-MEMD, Kₛ at all depths were found to vary at the smallest scale of 29 km mainly, corresponding to IMF1s, which manifested 33.0 to 48.1% of the total Kₛ variance. The small-scale variations of Kₛ reflected not only in IMF1s but also in IMF2s and IMF3s were dominated by soil properties especially bulk density, and the large-scale variations corresponding to IMF4s and IMF5s were controlled by environmental factors in general. For each depth, Kₛ at the scale of investigation was estimated by adding all the IMFs and residue derived from the factor components at equivalent scales using multiple linear regression (MLR). Such Kₛ estimations after NA-MEMD evidently outperformed the MLR before NA-MEMD by explaining additional 9.4 to 18.7% of the total Kₛ variance, but underperformed the artificial neural network and state-space approach also implemented on undecomposed spatial series of Kₛ and its underlying factors. NA-MEMD serves as a useful tool for Kₛ characterization and its incorporation with nonlinear functions or spatial interactions with impact factors is suggested for the estimation of Kₛ and other soil processes.

A well-controlled bioenhanced reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) in the presence of air is carried out by using glucose oxidase (GOx), glucose, ascorbic acid (Asc acid), and ppm level of hemin. The catalytic concentration of hemin is employed to enhance hydrogen peroxide (H

Pim-1 is a proto-oncogene which has been discovered to involve in cell proliferation, differentiation, and survival. In this study, we observed the expression of Pim-1 in neonatal and adult rat retina and the changes in rat retina following optic nerve crush (ONC) in order to explore the relationship between Pim-1 and the survival of retinal ganglion cells (RGC). We discovered that Pim-1 was distributed mainly in retinal pigment epithelial cells (RPE) and retinal ganglion cell layer (GCL) in normal newborn rats, and it appeared in RPE, cone rod cell layer and GCL in normal adult rats by immunohistochemistry. Our double immunofluorescent staining of Pim-1 and γ-synuclein further confirmed that Pim-1 was localized in 80% of RGC. Moreover, we found that the amount of Pim-1 mRNA and protein in adult rat retina was transiently increased after ONC and then decreased 2 weeks after ONC, and the expression level was lower than that of neonatal rat retina under all conditions. We also discovered that Pim-1 expression in GCL detected by immunohistochemistry was upregulated at Day 1 and Day 3 after ONC, but downregulated at Day 14 after ONC when the survival of RGC was decreased and the apoptotic cells in GCL were increased by hematoxylin-eosin staining, immunohistochemistry, and TUNEL detection. We suggest that the overexpression of Pim-1 in the RGC is related to the optic nerve repair while the low expression of Pim-1 in RGC may be associated with apoptosis and weak intrinsic regeneration ability of RGC. Anat Rec, 301:1968-1976, 2018. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Discriminating depressive episodes of bipolar disorder (BD) from major depressive disorder (MDD) is a major clinical challenge. Recently, gut microbiome alterations are implicated in these two mood disorders; however, little is known about the shared and distinct microbial characteristics in MDD versus BD. Here, using 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequencing, the microbial compositions of 165 subjects with MDD are compared with 217 BD, and 217 healthy controls (HCs). It is found that the microbial compositions are different between the three groups. Compared to HCs, MDD is characterized by altered covarying operational taxonomic units (OTUs) assigned to the Bacteroidaceae family, and BD shows disturbed covarying OTUs belonging to Lachnospiraceae, Prevotellaceae, and Ruminococcaceae families. Furthermore, a signature of 26 OTUs is identified that can distinguish patients with MDD from those with BD or HCs, with area under the curve (AUC) values ranging from 0.961 to 0.986 in discovery sets, and 0.702 to 0.741 in validation sets. Moreover, 4 of 26 microbial markers correlate with disease severity in MDD or BD. Together, distinct gut microbial compositions are identified in MDD compared to BD and HCs, and a novel marker panel is provided for distinguishing MDD from BD based on gut microbiome signatures., Gut microbiome alterations are implicated in major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD); however, little is known about the shared and distinct microbial characteristics in MDD versus BD. Here, the distinct microbial covarying units for MDD and BD are first identified, and microbial markers for distinguishing MDD from BD based on gut microbiome signatures are provided.

An enzyme cascade system including glucose oxidase (GOx) and iron porphyrin (DhHP-6) is encapsulated in a metal-organic framework called zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) through one-step facile synthesis. The composite (GOx&DhHP-6@ZIF-8) is then used to initiate oxygen-tolerant reversible addition-fragmentation chain-transfer polymerization for different methacrylate monomers, such as 2-diethylaminoethyl methacrylate, 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate, and poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate (Mn = 500 g mol-1 ). The composite shows the robustness toward solvent and temperatures, all polymerizations using above monomers and catalyzing by GOx&DhHP-6@ZIF-8 exhibits high monomer conversion (>85%) and narrow molar mass dispersity (

Transition metal coordinated porphyins generally exhibit effective carbon-chloride bond cleavage of environmentally harmful organochlorides through electrochemical reductive catalysis in non-aquaous media, but the recyclable use of the catalyst remains a challenge. In this manuscirpt, a new strategy of an efficient and recyclable C−Cl bond cleavage is described, and the structural characterization, electrochemical behaviour and electrochemical catalysis were illustrated by various techniques. It is demonstrated that the Fe3O4@SiO2@Co(II)porphyrin magnetic materials can be effectively used for at least 30 cycles.

Membrane type-1 matrix metalloproteinase (MT1-MMP; also known as MMP14) is a key enzyme involved in tumor invasion and metastasis, and is a potential target for drug discovery for cancer therapy. However, till now there is no MT1-MMP- or MMP-based anticancer drugs in the market mainly because of the high conservation of the MMP family and also because there is no elucidated crystal structure for the mature MT1-MMP. The modeling of the three-dimensional structure of mature MT1-MMP and the finding of MT1-MMP targeted peptides by virtual screening are highly desired. In this study, the three-dimensional structure of mature MT1-MMP is constructed by homology and de novo modeling and later rationalized and optimized by molecular dynamics simulations. An antisense peptide library was constructed against the divergent sense peptide DEGTEEET in the specific region of MT1-MMP, which was found by multiple alignment of the whole MMP family. The antisense peptide library was virtually screened against the constructed three-dimensional model of MT1-MMP. The top 20 novel peptides were further studied, which were found well docked with MT1-MMP at the region of DEGTEEET, again confirming their specific binding to MT1-MMP. Preliminary study of one of the top-ranked peptide SFLLSPFV showed that it could inhibit the viabilities of MG63 and MDA-MB-231 tumor cells. We thus not only successfully modeled the three-dimensional structure of mature MT1-MMP but also provided a new way for the finding of peptide candidates targeting MT1-MMP based on antisense peptide library.

Rationale and aim Facilitators and barriers to satisfaction after implementation of the electronic medical/health record (EMR/EHR) are important to understand as patient satisfaction is linked with improvement in health care and meaningful use of EMR/EHR. The objectives of this systematic review were to evaluate patient satisfaction after implementation and to synthesize available factors regarding the estimates of the patient satisfaction with EMR/EHR. These factors may help vendors to better design EMR/EHR and to assist in providing direction for progression of research in this field. Methods Data sources for the study included reports of studies from the Medline, Ovid, Springerlink, EBSCOhost, Embase and Wiley Online Library, and searching of bibliographies of review and other articles. Our inclusion criteria were the descriptions of patient satisfaction after implementation of EMR/EHR. Results Searching the online database resulted in 1425 articles and 58 articles from reference lists. After removing duplicates and assessing against the selection criteria, 41 articles were for further full-text review. After careful analysis, 33 articles were excluded. Eventually, a total of eight articles met inclusion criteria and were assessed. Conclusions These studies showed a positive patient satisfaction with EMR/EHR, but more rigorous studies should be carried out to more precisely quantify and describe the impact of EMR/EHR on patient satisfaction. Due to many factors influencing patient satisfaction with EMR/EHR, more research is needed to understand these factors before more concrete measurements of satisfaction can be developed to help researchers develop effective evaluation satisfaction.

The ancient structure characteristic, correlation of the oil and the hydrocarbon source rock characteristics, hydrocarbon migration trace, types and conditions of traps, migration passages and characteristic of hydrocarbon accumulation are researched in this paper. It is shown through the analysis that two main large tectonic activities after the Early Hercynian orogeny resulted in different tectonic patterns in the study area. Two main hydrocarbon infills occurred in the Donghetang Formation, the first occurred in the Early Hercynian resulting in the ancient hydrocarbon accumulation in the northern Tahe, the second infill was a large amount that occurred in places beneficial for hydrocarbon accumulation, such as structural traps and structural-stratigraphic traps formed in the Early Himalayan orogeny after migration along the faults through source rocks and other passages. Before the earlier period of the Himalayan orogeny, the petroleum mainly migrated to the north, whereas petroleum migrated to the south and southeast because of the structural reverse in the Himalayan orogeny, so the middle and later period of the Himalayan orogeny is the key period for hydrocarbon accumulation. The model of “oil generation formed early, hydrocarbon accumulation controlled by the faults through source rocks and structures formed late” is proposed. It is pointed out that the south of the research area is currently the beneficial district for hydrocarbon accumulation, which provides the basis for future petroleum exploration.