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Oxidative stress is crucial in ulcerative colitis (UC) and colitis‐associated colorectal cancer (CAC). Intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) are an important component of the intestinal barrier. In previous studies, we have demonstrated that suppressing microRNA‐222‐3p (miR‐222‐3p) can protect against oxidative stress in IECs, which ameliorates colonic injuries in UC mice and prevents the conversion of UC to CAC. In this case, we hope to explore whether moxibustion can alleviate UC and CAC by inhibiting miR‐222‐3p based on mouse models of UC and CAC. After herb‐partitioned moxibustion (HPM) intervention, the disease activity index (DAI) and colon macroscopic damage index (CMDI) were significantly reduced in UC mice, and the number and volume of intestinal tumors were decreased considerably in CAC mice. Meanwhile, we found that HPM suppressed miR‐222‐3p expression and upregulated the mRNA and protein expression of Brahma‐related gene 1 (BRG1), nuclear factor erythroid 2‐related factor 2 (Nrf2), heme oxygenase‐1 (HO‐1), while inhibiting Kelch‐like ECH‐associated protein 1 (Keap1) expression in IECs of UC and CAC mice. With changes in reactive oxygen species (ROS), malondialdehyde (MDA), glutathione peroxidase (GSH‐Px), and inflammatory cytokines interleukin (IL)‐1β and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)‐α), we verified that HPM protects against oxidative stress and inflammation in IECs of UC and CAC mice. The effect of HPM was inhibited in miR‐222‐3p overexpression mice, further demonstrating that the protective effect of HPM on UC and CAC mice was through inhibiting miR‐222‐3p. In summary, HPM regulates the BRG1/Nrf2/HO‐1 pathway by inhibiting miR‐222‐3p to attenuate oxidative stress in IECs in UC and CAC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is one of the most prevalent malignancies with a 5‐year survival rate of only 15% in patients with advanced diseases. Tumor protein 63 (TP63), a master transcription factor (TF) in ESCC, cooperates with other TFs to regulate enhancers and/or promoters of target oncogenes, which in turn promotes tumorigenesis. TAR‐DNA‐binding protein‐43 (TDP‐43) is an RNA/DNA binding protein with elevated expression in several neoplasms. However, it remains unclear how TDP‐43 contributes to ESCC progression. In this study, TDP‐43 is identified as a novel oncogene with markedly upregulated expression in ESCC tissues through profiling expression levels of one hundred and fifty canonical RNA binding protein (RBP) genes in multiple ESCC patient cohorts. Importantly, TDP‐43 boosted TP63 expression via post‐transcriptionally stabilizing TP63 mRNAs as a RBP and promoting TP63 transcription as a TF binding to the TP63 promoter in ESCC cells. In contrast, the master TF TP63 also bound to the TDP‐43 promoter, accelerated TDP‐43 transcription, and caused a noticeable increase in TDP‐43 expression in ESCC cells. The findings highlight TDP‐43 as a viable therapeutic target for ESCC and uncover a hitherto unrecognized TDP‐43/TP63 circuit in cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parental mosaicism is important in families with de novo mutations. Herein, we report a case of fetal CHARGE syndrome (CS) with a CHD7 variant inherited from maternal CHD7 gonosomal mosaicism. The variant was detected through trio‐based whole‐exome sequencing and Sanger sequencing. High‐depth whole‐exome sequencing was performed for the identification of parental mosaicism. A novel heterozygous CHD7 nonsense mutation (c.5794G>T/ p.E1932*) was detected in the tissue from the aborted fetus. The parents were wild‐type, indicating that the mutation was a de novo variant. The mutation was suspected to be the cause of the fetal CS. However, high‐depth whole‐exome sequencing revealed maternal gonosomal mosaicism at a variant allele frequency of 3.2%–23.3%. The variant was identified in various tissues (peripheral blood, hair follicles, buccal epithelia, and pharyngeal epithelia) from the asymptomatic mother. We confirmed maternal CHD7 gonosomal mosaicism as a genetic cause of fetal CS. Our results emphasize the importance of clinical analysis in accurately determining the parents' status in detecting the CHD7de novo variant in fetal CS, as this analysis has vital implications for evaluating the recurrence risk for genetic counseling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Deep learning‐based methods have been successfully applied to MRI image registration. However, there is a lack of deep learning‐based registration methods for magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) spectral registration (SR). Purpose: To investigate a convolutional neural network‐based SR (CNN‐SR) approach for simultaneous frequency‐and‐phase correction (FPC) of single‐voxel Meshcher–Garwood point‐resolved spectroscopy (MEGA‐PRESS) MRS data. Study Type: Retrospective. Subjects: Forty thousand simulated MEGA‐PRESS datasets generated from FID Appliance (FID‐A) were used and split into the following: 32,000/4000/4000 for training/validation/testing. A 101 MEGA‐PRESS medial parietal lobe data retrieved from the Big GABA were used as the in vivo datasets. Field Strength/Sequence: 3T, MEGA‐PRESS. Assessment: Evaluation of frequency and phase offsets mean absolute errors were performed for the simulation dataset. Evaluation of the choline interval variance was performed for the in vivo dataset. The magnitudes of the offsets introduced were −20 to 20 Hz and −90° to 90° and were uniformly distributed for the simulation dataset at different signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) levels. For the in vivo dataset, different additional magnitudes of offsets were introduced: small offsets (0–5 Hz; 0–20°), medium offsets (5–10 Hz; 20–45°), and large offsets (10–20 Hz; 45–90°). Statistical Tests: Two‐tailed paired t‐tests for model performances in the simulation and in vivo datasets were used and a P‐value <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: CNN‐SR model was capable of correcting frequency offsets (0.014 ± 0.010 Hz at SNR 20 and 0.058 ± 0.050 Hz at SNR 2.5 with line broadening) and phase offsets (0.104 ± 0.076° at SNR 20 and 0.416 ± 0.317° at SNR 2.5 with line broadening). Using in vivo datasets, CNN‐SR achieved the best performance without (0.000055 ± 0.000054) and with different magnitudes of additional frequency and phase offsets (i.e., 0.000062 ± 0.000068 at small, −0.000033 ± 0.000023 at medium, 0.000067 ± 0.000102 at large) applied. Data Conclusion: The proposed CNN‐SR method is an efficient and accurate approach for simultaneous FPC of single‐voxel MEGA‐PRESS MRS data. Evidence Level: 4 Technical Efficacy: Stage 2 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oocyte maturation arrest, fertilization failure, and early embryonic arrest are important causes of female infertility, whereas the genetic events that contribute to these processes are largely unknown. Loss‐of‐function of PABPC1L in mice has been suggested to cause female infertility involved in the absence of mature oocytes or embryos in vivo or in vitro. However, the role of PABPC1L in human female reproduction remains largely elusive. In this study, we identified a homozygous missense mutation (c.536G>A, p.R179Q) and a compound heterozygous mutation (c.793C>T, p.R265W; c.1201C>T, p.Q401*) in PABPC1L in two unrelated infertile females characterized by recurrent oocyte maturation abnormalities and early embryonic arrest. These variants resulted in nonfunctional PABPC1L protein and were associated with impaired chromatin configuration and transcriptional silencing in GV oocytes. Moreover, the binding capacity of mutant PABPC1L to mRNAs related to oocyte maturation and early embryonic development was decreased significantly. Our findings revealed novel PABPC1L mutations causing oocyte maturation abnormalities and early embryonic arrest, confirming the essential role of PABPC1L in human female fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

POLR3B gene encodes the 2nd largest catalytic subunit and affects the function of RNA polymerase III enzymes in transcription. Bi‐allelic variants in POLR3B pathogenically cause hypomyelinating leukodystrophy‐8 (HLD8). Herein, we recruited a family with two patients, who presented clinically with cerebellar atrophy, intellectual disability, hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, and visual problems. We identified the two affected siblings carrying the compound heterozygous variations (c.165_167del; c.1615G>T) in POLR3B by trio‐whole‐exome sequencing (trio‐WES). The qPCR and western blot showed that both transcriptional and translational levels of the mutation (c.165_167del, p.I55_K56delinsM) were sharply attenuated. Following that, a thorough functional examination of a zebrafish line disrupted for human POLR3B validated the pathogenic effects of the two mutations. Our research broadens the spectrum of HLD8‐related pathogenic POLR3B mutations and provides new molecular and animal evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to assess the efficacy of electroacupuncture on dry eye (DE). Methods: Eighty‐four DE patients were randomly assigned to receive electroacupuncture (EAG) three times a week or 0.1% sodium hyaluronate artificial tears (ATG) four times per day for 4 weeks. The primary outcomes were non‐invasive tear film breakup time (NIBUT) and tear meniscus height (TMH). The secondary outcomes included the ocular surface disease index (OSDI), Schirmer I test (SIT), corneal sodium fluorescein staining (CFS) score, corneal topography descriptors surface asymmetry index (SAI) and surface regularity index (SRI), corneal sensitivity, 36‐item Short‐form Health Survey (SF‐36) score and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) score. All outcomes were assessed at Week 0 (baseline), Week 4 (after‐treatment) and Week 8 (follow‐up). Results: Between‐group comparisons showed significant differences in the changes in NIBUT (Week 4, p = 0.003; Week 8, p = 0.008), TMH (Week 4, p = 0.014; Week 8, p = 0.009), OSDI (Week 4, p = 0.029; Week 8, p = 0.022), CFS score (Week 8, p = 0.036) and SF‐36 role‐physical score (Week 4, p = 0.010), favouring EAG. Mean changes in SIT, SAI, SRI, corneal sensitivity and HADS scores were statistically equal between the two groups (all p > 0.05). Treatment with electroacupuncture was well‐tolerated and showed minimal adverse events. Conclusions: Compared with artificial tears, electroacupuncture shows superior efficacy in improving tear film stability and symptoms of DE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low temperature is one of the abiotic factors that limit the biomass of Medicago ruthenica (L.), and carbon and nitrogen have important roles in the plant's growth and development. However, the information on the distribution of carbon and nitrogen under low temperature conditions is limited. In this study, we investigated the influence of carbon and nitrogen distribution on M. ruthenica (L.) Trautv. cv. 'Zhilixing' based on 13C and 15N isotope tracers in two temperature‐controlled chambers (4–10°C and 25°C, respectively) for 30 days. Results showed that under low temperature, plant height significantly decreased by 22.74%, whereas the ratio of underground to aboveground biomass considerably increased by 146.31% compared to the control plants at 30 days. Moreover, low temperature stress significantly increased the activities of sucrose synthase and glutamine synthase in leaves, shoots and roots. The total carbon content and the abundance of 15N increased in leaves, shoots and roots under low temperature, with a greater level of increase in shoots than in leaves and roots. The weight of leaves, shoots and roots was correlated with δ15N. Hence, low temperature inhibited growth and promoted the transport of carbon and nitrogen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Multiple morphological abnormalities of the sperm flagella (MMAF), which is characterized as asthenoteratospermia involving absent, short, bent, coiled, and/or irregular‐caliber flagella, is a rare recessive inherited disorder associated with male infertility. To date, genetic causes of MMAF cases are not fully explored. Methods: Whole‐exome sequencing was conducted to identify pathogenic variants in a patient with MMAF. The functional effect of the identified mutations was investigated by immunofluorescence staining and western blotting. Intracytoplasmic sperm injection was used to assist fertilization for the patient with MMAF. Results: We identified novel biallelic mutations, a splicing variant NC_000004.12:g.146937593C>T (c.254+1G>A), and a nonsense mutation NM_001300761.4:c.1185C>G (NP_001287690.1:p.Tyr395*), in TTC29 from an infertile patient. In addition to the typical MMAF phenotype, the patient also presented aberrant morphology of sperm heads. Further functional experiments confirmed the absence of TTC29 expression in the spermatozoa. We also explored the specific expression pattern of TTC29 in human and mouse spermatogenesis. The outcome of intracytoplasmic sperm injection in the patient was unsuccessful, while additional female risk factors should not be excluded. Conclusions: Our study revealed the novel biallelic mutations in TTC29 in a MMAF patient, which findings expand the mutational spectrum of TTC29 and further contribute to the diagnosis, genetic counseling, and prognosis of male infertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methylmalonic acidemia (MMA) is an autosomal recessive metabolic disorder mainly caused by mutations in the methylmalonyl coenzyme A mutase (MCM) gene (MMUT) and leads to the reduced activity of MCM. In this study, a 3-year-old girl was diagnosed with carnitine deficiency secondary to methylmalonic acidemia by tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GS/MS). Whole-exome sequencing (WES) was performed on the patient and identified two compound heterozygous mutations in MMUT: c.554C>T (p. S185F) and c.729–730insTT (p. D244Lfs ∗ 39). Bioinformatics analysis predicted that the rare missense mutation of c.554C>T would be damaging. Moreover, this rare mutation resulted in the reduced levels of MMUT mRNA and MMUT protein. Collectively, our findings provide a greater understanding of the effects of MMUT variants and will facilitate the diagnosis and treatment of patients with MMA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the distributed filtering problem for discrete‐time nonlinear systems with colored measurement noise obeying a nonlinear autoregressive process in sensor networks. A novel block‐decomposed information‐type filter for such systems is proposed in a centralized fusion structure, by using the statistical linear regression to deal with model nonlinearities and the measurement difference approach to overcome the noise correlation caused by colored measurement noises. Meanwhile, with the help of block matrix inverse operation to realize the high‐dimensional block matrix decomposition, the information vector and information matrix of the original system state in the designed information filter is directly estimated recursively, so as to own good numerical stability. Then, the finite‐time distributed implementation of the proposed filter is put forward, where the final filtering estimate in each sensor node is consistent with the centralized filtering result, by ensuring that each sensor node directly obtains the average values of shared variables in the sensor network through finite iterations of average consensus. Finally, the posterior Cramér–Rao lower bound is derived to show the proposed filter reaches the optimal theoretical performance bound in the premise of statistical linear regression and Gaussian posterior probability density approximation. A target tracking example with colored measurement noise obeying a linear and a nonlinear autoregressive processes validates the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The enhanced magnetoelectric properties of Ba0.5Sr1.5Zn2(In0.08Fe0.92)12O22 are demonstrated. This hexaferrite exhibits great magnetoelectric tunability and high electrical resistivity. Mutual modulation of ferroelectricity and magnetism is simultaneously achieved near room temperature. Moreover, the reversal of M direction by an electrical field is obtained at low magnetic field. This study illuminates a potential application in magnetoelectric devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photocatalytic g‐C3N4/Bi2WO6 nanocomposites were synthesized by solvothermal method and grind‐calcination method, and then the phases, microstructure, components and photodegradation to ciprofloxacin (CIP) were studied in detail. The surface area of g‐C3N4/Bi2WO6 nanocomposites decreases with the increasing g‐C3N4 content. Bi2WO6 nanoparticles prepared with solvothermal method present the smaller grain size and the higher effective interface with the similar components. The photocatalytic activity of g‐C3N4/Bi2WO6 nanocomposites is higher than those of pristine g‐C3N4 nanosheets and Bi2WO6 nanoparticles, which the optimized CIP removal percent reaches about 98% in 120 min under visible light irradiation. The Z‐scheme g‐C3N4/Bi2WO6 heterojunctions facilitate the effective separation and accumulation of photogenerated electrons at conduction band of g‐C3N4 and holes at valence band of Bi2WO6, resulting in hydroxyl and superoxide radicals for the redox of CIP. S‐CN‐40presents the highest CIP removal percent due to the effective heterogeneous interface and C–CN‐20 possesses the good application prospects in practice for the simple preparation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The filtering problem is considered for dynamic systems perturbed by additive and multiplicative noises under interval constraints. Interval constraints induce unknown inputs existing in the reconstructed dynamical model when transforming the state constrained problem into the unconstrained one, which makes the filter design based on minimising the estimate error covariance fail. Due to the coexistence of multiplicative noises and unknown inputs caused by interval uncertainty, a novel recursive upper bound filtering structure is designed for the considered system by a series of linear matrix inequalities. Then, the recursion of the upper bound of the estimate error covariance is realised through the scalar parameter optimisation, based on scaling the diagonal sub‐block matrices and non‐diagonal sub‐block matrices of the innovation covariance which is dependent on the arriving measurement adaptively. Finally, a numerical example shows the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional inequality‐constrained H∞ filter needs checking whether each inequality is active or not, where the true but unknown state has to be approximated by its prediction in inequality check, and hence the prediction error unavoidably triggers decision risks and further causes the inequality mis‐utilisation, implying the optimality loss. Here, the authors reformulate the interval constraints as equality constraints via the sine functions. However, the resultant equality constraints contain unknown parameters, i.e. the corresponding angles in the sine functions, and hence cannot be directly dealt within the framework of equality‐constrained filtering. Through maximising the cost function with respect to the initial state, modelling errors, measurements and angles while minimising it with respect to state estimates, the interval‐constrained H∞ filter is derived optimally and analytically, and validated via a road target tracking simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary An improved nanocomposite-based packaging material (NCP) was prepared by blending polyethylene with nano-Ag, nano-TiO2 and attapulgite. And its effect on preservation quality of green tea (Biluochun and Qingfeng) during one-year ambient storage was investigated. The results showed that adding nanoparticles to the polyethylene could significantly improve the barrier property. After one-year ambient storage, the moisture of Biluochun and Qingfeng with NCP was decreased by 10.3% and 6.1% compared with the normal packaging material. Meanwhile, the contents of amino acid, tea polyphenols, chlorophyll and ascorbic acid were increased by 22.8%, 9.4%, 30.4% and 9.5% for Biluochun and 19.2%, 9.3%, 27.3% and 21.6% for Qingfeng, respectively, compared with the normal packaging material. Moreover, the sensory quality of NCP was also superior to that with the control. Therefore, the improved NCP material probably provides an attractive alternative to maintain the preservation quality of green tea at a high level during storage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]