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This is an article in the field of metallurgical engineering. In this article, TiH2 powder was selected as the experimental raw material to study the sintering behavior of TiH2 powder under different pressing pressure and holding time in cold isostatic pressing, to reveal the effects of pressing pressure and holding time on the shrinkage as well as the relative density of TiH2 sintered specimens, in order to improve the density of the billet and the performance of the products. The results show that the shrinkage of the sintered sample decreases with the increase of the pressing pressure, and when the pressing pressure reaches 400 MPa, the pressing pressure has little effect on the relative density of the sintered sample. For the consideration of the sample preparation efficiency and the pressing pressure limit of the cold isostatic press, the pressing pressure should not exceed 400 Mpa. The shrinkage of sintered samples decreases with the increase of holding time, and when the holding time reaches 20 min, the relative density of sintered samples changes little with the extension of holding time. For the consideration of sample preparation efficiency, the suitable holding time is 15～20 min.

Suaeda glauca Bunge produces dimorphic seeds on the same plant, with brown seeds displaying non-dormant characteristics and black seeds exhibiting intermediate physiological dormancy traits. Previous studies have shown that black seeds have a very low germination rate under natural conditions, but exogenous GA3 effectively enhanced the germination rate of black seeds. However, the physiological and molecular mechanisms underlying the effects of GA3 on S. glauca black seeds are still unclear. In this study, transcriptomic profiles of seeds at different germination stages with and without GA3 treatment were analyzed and compared, and the TTF, H2O2, O2–, starch, and soluble sugar contents of the corresponding seed samples were determined. The results indicated that exogenous GA3 treatment significantly increased seed vigor, H2O2, and O2– contents but decreased starch and soluble sugar contents of S. glauca black seeds during seed dormancy release. RNA-seq results showed that a total of 1136 DEGs were identified in three comparison groups and were involved mainly in plant hormone signal transduction, diterpenoid biosynthesis, flavonoid biosynthesis, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, and carbohydrate metabolism pathway. Among them, the DEGs related to diterpenoid biosynthesis (SgGA3ox1, SgKAO and SgGA2ox8) and ABA signal transduction (SgPP2Cs) could play important roles during seed dormancy release. Most genes involved in phenylpropanoid biosynthesis were activated under GA3 treatment conditions, especially many SgPER genes encoding peroxidase. In addition, exogenous GA3 treatment also significantly enhanced the expression of genes involved in flavonoid synthesis, which might be beneficial to seed dormancy release. In accordance with the decline in starch and soluble sugar contents, 15 genes involved in carbohydrate metabolism were significantly up-regulated during GA3-induced dormancy release, such as SgBAM, SgHXK2, and SgAGLU, etc. In a word, exogenous GA3 effectively increased the germination rate and seed vigor of S. glauca black seeds by mediating the metabolic process or signal transduction of plant hormones, phenylpropanoid and flavonoid biosynthesis, and carbohydrate metabolism processes. Our results provide novel insights into the transcriptional regulation mechanism of exogenous GA3 on the dormancy release of S. glauca black seeds. The candidate genes identified in this study may be further studied and used to enrich our knowledge of seed dormancy and germination.

Abstract Treatment of osteoporosis commonly diminishes osteoclast number which suppresses bone formation thus compromising fracture prevention. Bone formation is not suppressed, however, when bone degradation is reduced by retarding osteoclast functional resorptive capacity, rather than differentiation. We find deletion of deubiquitinase, BRCA1-associated protein 1 (Bap1), in myeloid cells (Bap1 ∆LysM ), arrests osteoclast function but not formation. Bap1 ∆LysM osteoclasts fail to organize their cytoskeleton which is essential for bone degradation consequently increasing bone mass in both male and female mice. The deubiquitinase activity of BAP1 modifies osteoclast function by metabolic reprogramming. Bap1 deficient osteoclast upregulate the cystine transporter, Slc7a11, by enhanced H2Aub occupancy of its promoter. SLC7A11 controls cellular reactive oxygen species levels and redirects the mitochondrial metabolites away from the tricarboxylic acid cycle, both being necessary for osteoclast function. Thus, in osteoclasts BAP1 appears to regulate the epigenetic-metabolic axis and is a potential target to reduce bone degradation while maintaining osteogenesis in osteoporotic patients.

To promote the application of nanorefrigerant in Organic Rankine Cycle and Integrated Energy System a reliable model with simple structure and favorable accuracy for predicting the flow boiling heat transfer coefficient (HTC) of nanorefrigerant is essential. In this work, four intelligence models—the radial basis function (RBF), multilayer perceptron (MLP), least squares support vector machine (LSSVM), and adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS)—were developed to predict the flow boiling heat transfer coefficient using nanorefrigerants, based on 765 experimental samples. The performances of these artificial intelligence models were comprehensively evaluated through accuracy analysis, variation trend analysis, and sensitivity analysis. Results indicated that the comprehensive performance of the RBF model was superior than those of other intelligence models and the existing empirical models. The RBF model accurately captured the variation trend of the output as the input variables were varied. Meanwhile, the impact degrees of all input variables in decreasing order were nanoparticle concentration (φ), mass flux (G), thermal conductivity of nanoparticle (kp), and vapor quality (x).

The pursuit of operational advancements in direct formic acid fuel cells (DFAFCs) necessitates the development of high-performance platinum (Pt)-based catalysts for formic acid electrooxidation (FAOR). However, FAOR on Pt-based catalysts follows a dual pathway mechanism, in which the direct pathway is a preferred route due to its efficient dehydrogenation process. Conversely, the indirect pathway results in the generation of adsorbed CO species, a process that deleteriously poisons the active sites of the catalyst, with CO species only being oxidizable at higher potentials, causing a significant compromise in catalyst performance. Herein, we have successfully synthesized Pt-C3N4@CNT, where three Pt clusters are precisely dispersed in a triplet form within the C3N4 by virtue of the unique structure of C3N4. The mass activity for the direct pathway (0.44 V) delivered a current density of 1.91 A mgPt−1, while the indirect pathway (0.86 V) had no obvious oxidation peak. The selectivity of Pt-C3N4@CNT catalysts for the direct pathway of FAOR was improved due to the special structure of C3N4, which facilitates the dispersion of Pt tri-atoms in the structure and the electronic interaction with Pt. In this study, we provide a new strategy for the development of highly active and selective catalysts for DFAFCs.

Cadmium (Cd) is a toxic element that endangers crop growth and affects food safety and human health. Therefore, the study of Cd mitigation technology is important. Ultrasonic treatment can improve crop growth and enhance their ability to resist various abiotic stresses. In this study, the effect of ultrasonic treatment on alleviating sugarcane Cd stress was studied in a barrel experiment using sugarcane varieties ‘ROC22’ and ‘LC05‐136’ as test materials. Sugarcane buds without ultrasonic treatment and with ultrasonic treatment (20–40 kHz mixed frequency ultrasound for 2 min, dry treatment) were planted in soil with Cd contents of 0, 50, 100, 250, and 500 mg·kg−1. Compared with non-ultrasonic treatment, Ultrasonic treatment significantly increased the activities of antioxidant enzymes in sugarcane, significantly increased the content of osmoregulation substances, significantly reduced the content of superoxide anion (the highest decreases reached 11.55%) and malondialdehyde (the highest decreases reached 20.59%), and significantly increased the expression level of metallothionein (MT)-related genes, with the expression of ScMT1 increased by 8.80–37.49% and the expression of ScMT2–1–5 increased by 1.55–69.33%. In addition, ultrasonic treatment significantly reduced the Cd contents in sugarcane roots, stems, leaves, bagasse, and juice (the highest reduction in Cd content was 49.18%). In general, ultrasonic treatment regulated the metabolism of reactive oxygen species and MT-related gene expression in sugarcane, increased the Cd tolerance of sugarcane, promoted photosynthesis in sugarcane leaves, improved root morphology, enhanced sugarcane growth, and increased cane and sugar yield.

ABSTRACT Both LRF (Zbtb7a) and ThPOK (Zbtb7b) belong to the POK (BTB/POZ and Kruppel) family of transcription repressors that participate in development, differentiation, and oncogenesis. Although LRF mediates osteoclast differentiation by regulating NFATc1 expression, the principal established function of ThPOK is transcriptional control of T‐cell lineage commitment. Whether ThPOK affects osteoclast formation or function is not known. We find that marrow macrophage ThPOK expression diminishes with exposure to receptor activator of NF‐kB ligand (RANKL), but ThPOK deficiency does not affect osteoclast differentiation. On the other hand, enhanced ThPOK, in macrophages, substantially impairs osteoclastogenesis. Excess ThPOK binds the NFATc1 promoter and suppresses its transcription, suggesting a mechanism for its osteoclast inhibitory effect. Despite suppression of osteoclastogenesis by excess ThPOK being associated with diminished NFATc1, osteoclast formation is not rescued by NFATc1 overexpression. Thus, ThPOK appears to inhibit NFATc1 transcription and its osteoclastogenic capacity, while its depletion has no effect on the bone‐resorptive cell. © 2022 The Authors. JBMR Plus published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.

Obesity predisposes to cancer and a virtual universality of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). However, the impact of hepatic steatosis on liver metastasis is enigmatic. We find that while control mice were relatively resistant to hepatic metastasis, those which were lipodystrophic or obese, with NAFLD, had a dramatic increase in breast cancer and melanoma liver metastases. NAFLD promotes liver metastasis by reciprocal activation initiated by tumor-induced triglyceride lipolysis in juxtaposed hepatocytes. The lipolytic products are transferred to cancer cells via fatty acid transporter protein 1, where they are metabolized by mitochondrial oxidation to promote tumor growth. The histology of human liver metastasis indicated the same occurs in humans. Furthermore, comparison of isolates of normal and fatty liver established that steatotic lipids had enhanced tumor-stimulating capacity. Normalization of glucose metabolism by metformin did not reduce steatosis-induced metastasis, establishing the process is not mediated by the metabolic syndrome. Alternatively, eradication of NAFLD in lipodystrophic mice by adipose tissue transplantation reduced breast cancer metastasis to that of control mice, indicating the steatosis-induced predisposition is reversible.

Summary: The mevalonate pathway is essential for the synthesis of isoprenoids and cholesterol. Adipose tissue is known as a major site for cholesterol storage; however, the role of the local mevalonate pathway and its synthesized isoprenoids remains unclear. In this study, adipose-specific mevalonate pathway-disrupted (aKO) mice were generated through knockout of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA (HMG-CoA) reductase (HMGCR). aKO mice showed serious lipodystrophy accompanied with glucose and lipid metabolic disorders and hepatomegaly. These metabolic variations in aKO mice were dramatically reversed after fat transplantation. In addition, HMGCR-disrupted adipocytes exhibited loss of lipid accumulation and an increase of cell death, which were ameliorated by the supplementation of mevalonate and geranylgeranyl pyrophosphate but not farnesyl pyrophosphate and squalene. Finally, we found that apoptosis may be involved in adipocyte death induced by HMGCR down-regulation. Our findings indicate that the mevalonate pathway is essential for adipocytes and further suggest that this pathway is an important regulator of adipocyte turnover. : Pathophysiology; Molecular Mechanism of Behavior; Diabetology; Specialized Functions of Cells Subject Areas: Pathophysiology, Molecular Mechanism of Behavior, Diabetology, Specialized Functions of Cells

Summary: We explored the relationship of obesity and inflammatory arthritis (IA) by selectively expressing diphtheria toxin in adipose tissue yielding “fat-free” (FF) mice completely lacking white and brown fat. FF mice exhibit systemic neutrophilia and elevated serum acute phase proteins suggesting a predisposition to severe IA. Surprisingly, FF mice are resistant to K/BxN serum-induced IA and attendant bone destruction. Despite robust systemic basal neutrophilia, neutrophil infiltration into joints of FF mice does not occur when challenged with K/BxN serum. Absence of adiponectin, leptin, or both has no effect on joint disease, but deletion of the adipokine adipsin (complement factor D) completely prevents serum-induced IA. Confirming that fat-expressed adipsin modulates the disorder, transplantation of wild-type (WT) adipose tissue into FF mice restores susceptibility to IA, whereas recipients of adipsin-deficient fat remain resistant. Thus, adipose tissue regulates development of IA through a pathway in which adipocytes modify neutrophil responses in distant tissues by producing adipsin. : The relationship of fat and inflammatory arthritis (IA) is poorly defined. Li et al. generate fat-free (FF) mice and observe that they are completely resistant to IA because of a lack of adipsin. Their studies provide evidence that fat regulates IA development by adipsin activation of the complement pathway. Keywords: inflammatory arthritis, adipsin, neutrophils

Toripalimab, a specific immune checkpoint inhibitor targeting the programmed death 1 (PD-1) receptor, represents a novel immunotherapeutic approach for advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma, showing promising curative potential. However, it is not without drawbacks, as some patients experience immune-related adverse events (irAEs) associated with this treatment, and there remains a limited body of related research. Here, we present a case of advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma in a patient who developed colitis as an irAE attributed to Toripalimab. Subsequent to Toripalimab treatment, the patient achieved complete remission. Notably, the development of colitis was accompanied by inflammatory manifestations evident in colonoscopy and pathology results. Further investigation revealed cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection, detected through immunohistochemistry in 11 colon biopsies. Subsequent treatment with ganciclovir and steroids resulted in symptom relief, and colonoscopy indicated mucosal healing. Our case highlights the association between irColitis induced by Toripalimab and CMV infection. Toripalimab demonstrates remarkable efficacy in treating advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma, albeit with a notable risk of irAEs, particularly in the form of colitis. The link between symptoms and endoscopic pathology findings in irColitis is noteworthy. Standardized biopsy procedures can effectively confirm the diagnosis of CMV infection. Our findings may provide valuable guidance for managing acute CMV infection and irAEs associated with Toripalimab in the treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma in the future.

Periodontitis is a bacterial-induced, chronic inflammatory disease characterized by progressive destruction of tooth-supporting structures. Pathogenic bacteria residing in deep periodontal pockets after traditional manual debridement can still lead to local inflammatory microenvironment, which remains a challenging problem and an urgent need for better therapeutic strategies. Here, we integrated the advantages of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and hydrogels to prepare an injectable nanocomposite hydrogel by incorporating dexamethasone-loaded zeolitic imidazolate frameworks-8 (DZIF) nanoparticles into the photocrosslinking matrix of methacrylic polyphosphoester (PPEMA) and methacrylic gelatin (GelMA). The injectable hydrogel could be easily injected into deep periodontal pockets, achieving high local concentrations without leading to antibiotic resistance. The nanocomposite hydrogel had high antibacterial activity and constructs with stable microenvironments maintain cell viability, proliferation, spreading, as well as osteogenesis, and down-regulated inflammatory genes expression in vitro. When evaluated on an experimental periodontitis rat model, micro-computed tomography and histological analyses showed that the nanocomposite hydrogel effectively reduced periodontal inflammation and attenuated inflammation-induced bone loss in a rat model of periodontitis. These findings suggest that the nanocomposite hydrogel might be a promising therapeutic candidate for treating periodontal disease.

Underactuated robotics is an emerging research direction in the field of robotics. The control input of the underactuated robot is less than the degree of freedom of the system. It has the advantages of lightweight, low energy consumption, excellent performance, and broad development prospects. This article reviews the state of the art on underactuated robotics. On the basis of previous studies, this article takes the non-holonomic constraint equation as the entry point to classify and summarize underactuated robot and their common mechanisms. The controllability of underactuated robot is further discussed. The control flow of underactuated robot is described based on the open–closed control method. In the closed-loop control, the control method based on the fuzzy system is mainly used. Finally, the difficulties in the current research of underactuated robot are summarized, and the future research directions are prospected.

Background Cord blood (CB) is widely used in treating haematologic disorders due to its broad availability, tolerance to significant histocompatibility antigen disparities, and low incidence of chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD). The cord blood transplantation (CBT) with anti-thymocyte globulin (ATG)-containing conditioning regimens shows promise in this regard.Methods We conducted a retrospective review of data from patients who underwent CBT at our centre from August 2003 to December 2022. Patients undergoing CBT with ATG were matched with those who received HLA-haploidentical haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (haplo-HSCT). Propensity score matching (PSM) was utilized to form 105 matched pairs (140 patients) for comprehensive trial analysis.Results The cumulative incidence of neutrophil and platelet engraftment was significantly lower in the CBT group. Patients in the CBT group exhibited significantly lower incidences of grade II-IV acute GVHD (aGVHD) and cGVHD compared to the haplo-HSCT group (8.57% vs. 29.52%, p = 0.012; 20% vs. 39.05%, p = 0.031). The overall survival (OS) rate for the CBT and haplo-HSCT groups showed no significant difference. In patients with leukaemia, the CBT cohort showed better OS, GVHD-free and relapse-free survival (GRFS), as well as a lower incidence of disease relapse, although there was no statistical difference.Conclusion Our single-centre retrospective long-term follow-up investigations indicated that although the implantation rate of CBT is lower than that of haplo-HSCT, patients undergoing CBT with ATG-containing conditioning regimens may have a comparable overall survival with a lower risk of GVHD compared to those undergoing haplo-HSCT.

The paper explores religious diversity and pluralism in the religioscape of mainland China with three examples. While religious diversity is de facto practice, “religious pluralism” is not socially recognised, culturally legitimised, or discursively institutionalised. On the one hand, state co-option of religious groups is achieved through particular definition of “religion” without the conceptualisation of pluralism, leaving undefined religious activities to cultural policy or national security measures. On the other hand, practices that might be identified as religious elsewhere does not usually self-identified as such, not to say seek for the right of religious freedom. To explain the absence of articulated/institutionalised “religious pluralism” in China, the paper provides three examples—civil activism against tomb-levelling campaign, “the Society of Disciples” (mentuhui), and a ritual service provider. The paper argues that the religioscape of mainland China is one with de facto religious diversity without the ideology of religious pluralism, because the diverse religious practices do not make a conscious reference to pluralism, remain non-institutional, disinterested in religious freedom, and, most important of all, below the state’s radar.

The properties of nuclear matter at various densities is of great interest, as it is crucial for the understanding of the structure of nuclei and neutron stars, the dynamics of heavy ion collision (HIC), and neutron star mergers. HIC provides a unique opportunity to create nuclear matter with density away from the normal nuclear density (ρ0) in the terrestrial laboratory, however, the created nuclear matter only exists for a very short period and its properties cannot be measured directly. Usually, the properties of nuclear matter are deduced from the comparison of the event-average quantities between experimental measurements and transport model simulations. However, quantities in HIC can be obtained event-by-event both in experiments and in transport model simulations. These event-by-event data usually comprise a huge amount of data which encodes rich physical information, and at the same time, large fluctuations which can be taken as noises. Machine learning (ML) has been proven very powerful for the extraction of information from complex data in many branches of science. In this work, event-by-event observables from Au+Au and Sn+Sn collisions at intermediate energies are generated with the ultrarelativistic quantum molecular dynamics (UrQMD) model. Model parameters with different nuclear incompressibility K0 of isospin symmetric nuclear matter, the slope parameter L of nuclear symmetry energy, and the in-medium correction factor F of nucleon-nucleon cross section were used to generate labeled dataset. The light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM) which is a decision-tree-based algorithm was used to learn the labeled dataset. The advantages of LightGBM include faster training efficiency, low memory usage, higher accuracy, and ability to tackle large-scale data. It is found that the trained machine learning algorithm is able to infer K0 and L, and F from the event-by-event data. The mean absolute errors (MAE) which measure the average magnitude of the absolute differences between the predicted and true values of K0 and L, and F are 52 MeV, 29.6 MeV, and 0.08, respectively. These MAE values can be further reduced by using event-averaged data instead of event-by-event data, as fluctuations in the event-averaged data are largely suppressed. Furthermore, by using the feature_importance technology and shapley additive explanations (SHAP) which are two popular feature attribution methods to identify the most important features that drive predictions, features that have the greatest effect on the extraction of K0 and L, and F are found out. This work suggests that, with the help of ML, physical information can be extracted on the event-by-event basis, and it may offer a new paradigm to study the underlying physics in heavy ion collisions.

We previously established that global deletion of the enhancer of trithorax and polycomb (ETP) gene, Asxl2, prevents weight gain. Because proinflammatory macrophages recruited to adipose tissue are central to the metabolic complications of obesity, we explored the role of ASXL2 in myeloid lineage cells. Unexpectedly, mice without Asxl2 only in myeloid cells (Asxl2ΔLysM) were completely resistant to diet-induced weight gain and metabolically normal despite increased food intake, comparable activity, and equivalent fecal fat. Asxl2ΔLysM mice resisted HFD-induced adipose tissue macrophage infiltration and inflammatory cytokine gene expression. Energy expenditure and brown adipose tissue metabolism in Asxl2ΔLysM mice were protected from the suppressive effects of HFD, a phenomenon associated with relatively increased catecholamines likely due to their suppressed degradation by macrophages. White adipose tissue of HFD-fed Asxl2ΔLysM mice also exhibited none of the pathological remodeling extant in their control counterparts. Suppression of macrophage Asxl2 expression, via nanoparticle-based siRNA delivery, prevented HFD-induced obesity. Thus, ASXL2 controlled the response of macrophages to dietary factors to regulate metabolic homeostasis, suggesting modulation of the cells' inflammatory phenotype may impact obesity and its complications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obesity causes excess fat accumulation in white adipose tissues (WAT) and also in other insulin-responsive organs such as the skeletal muscle, increasing the risk for insulin resistance, which can lead to obesity-related metabolic disorders. Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-α (PPARα) is a master regulator of fatty acid oxidation whose activator is known to improve hyperlipidemia. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying PPARα activator-mediated reduction in adiposity and improvement of metabolic disorders are largely unknown. In this study we investigated the effects of PPARα agonist (fenofibrate) on glucose metabolism dysfunction in obese mice. Fenofibrate treatment reduced adiposity and attenuated obesity-induced dysfunctions of glucose metabolism in obese mice fed a high-fat diet. However, fenofibrate treatment did not improve glucose metabolism in lipodystrophic A-Zip/F1 mice, suggesting that adipose tissue is important for the fenofibrate-mediated amelioration of glucose metabolism, although skeletal muscle actions could not be completely excluded. Moreover, we investigated the role of the hepatokine fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21), which regulates energy metabolism in adipose tissue. In WAT of WT mice, but not of FGF21-deficient mice, fenofibrate enhanced the expression of genes related to brown adipocyte functions, such as Ucp1, Pgc1a, and Cpt1b. Fenofibrate increased energy expenditure and attenuated obesity, whole body insulin resistance, and adipocyte dysfunctions in WAT in high-fat-diet-fed WT mice but not in FGF21-deficient mice. These findings indicate that FGF21 is crucial for the fenofibrate-mediated improvement of whole body glucose metabolism in obese mice via the amelioration of WAT dysfunctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]