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Using traditional materials to improve the permeability of silty soils can cause irreversible damage to the environment. Therefore, it is necessary to develop environmentally friendly biopolymers, such as xanthan gum (XG), to replace traditional materials to improve resistance to water erosion by reducing the permeability coefficient. In this study, a series of permeability tests and scanning electron microscope (SEM) tests were conducted on xanthan gum-improved silty soil (XGS). The variations in the permeability coefficient of XG-improved silty soil and the effects of initial dry density, XG-soil ratio, and curing age on the permeability were investigated. Test results show that the permeability coefficient of XGS decreased with the increase of initial dry density, XG-soil ratio, and curing age. With increasing the initial dry density, soil particles compressed against each other, decreasing the actual water flow crossing area, which leads to a decrease in the permeability coefficient. With the increase of the XG-soil ratio, the fill-blocking effect of xanthan gum with hydrogel connections becomes more and more obvious, which leads to a reduction in the permeability coefficient. Xanthan gum hydration takes time, and a lot of crystals are produced in XGS as the curing age increases; these crystals fill larger pores, resulting in the permeability coefficient decrease. At last, a model was developed to predict the permeability coefficient of XG-improved silty soil by using the initial dry density, XG-soil ratio, and curing age. The model can be used to rapidly predict the permeability coefficient of the improved silty soil under different conditions. This research can provide a scientific basis for the safe and scientific application of xanthan gum in seepage damage control and prevention projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adding different materials to soil can improve its engineering properties, but traditional materials such as cement, lime, fly ash, etc., have caused pollution to the environment. Recently, biopolymers have shown many advantages, such as economy and environmental protection, which make them applicable to geotechnical engineering. This study summarizes the effects of biopolymers on soil's engineering properties and the main directions of current research. Firstly, the advantages and disadvantages of a variety of widely used biopolymer materials and their effects on the specific engineering characteristics of soil (i.e., water retention characteristics, strength characteristics, permeability characteristics, microstructure) are introduced, as well as the source, viscosity, pH, and cost of these biopolymers. Then, based on the theory of unsaturated soil, the current research progress on the water retention characteristics of improved soil is summarized. The key factors affecting the strength of biopolymer-treated soil are introduced. Due to the actual environmental conditions, such as rainfall, the permeability and durability of biopolymer-treated soil are also worthy of attention. In summary, it is necessary to study the variation laws of the engineering properties of biopolymer-treated soil in the full suction range, and to predict such laws reasonably. The relevant results are conducive to the safer and more scientific application of biopolymers in geotechnical engineering practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, tremendous progress in flexible devices based on OIHP films has been achieved, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), photodetectors, solar cells and lasers (Fig. In future investigations, it may be possible to realize mid-and-far infrared LEDs by using ultrathin OIHPs according to their excellent bandgap tunability via thickness and doping engineering [[5]]. The past decade has witnessed an explosion of research into organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites (OIHPs) due to their outstanding properties, including high flexibility, high absorption/emission efficiency, large defect tolerance and long-distance carrier diffusion [[1]]. [Extracted from the article]

A series of wetting tests on unsaturated compacted GMZ07 sodium bentonite, taken from the Gaomiaozi area, Inner Mongolia, China, was performed to investigate the swelling characteristics of the GMZ07 sodium bentonite at temperatures of 5, 20, 60 and 75 °C. The influences of temperature and initial dry density on swelling deformation and swelling pressure were studied by performing a series of constant-stress and constant-volume tests under the wetting condition. The test results showed that the swelling deformation and swelling pressure due to saturation decreased slightly with increasing temperature. A linear relationship was present between the vertical pressure and corresponding saturated void ratio in the semi-logarithmic coordinate at a given temperature; this line is referred to as a state line. Swelling or collapse due to saturation was found to be dependent on the relative location of the initial state between the state line and initial state. The void ratios after saturation at different initial dry densities were close at the same temperature and vertical pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrogeological conditions at the Dongzhuang Hydro-Junction site are complex and include underground water divides, a hanging river and hydraulic drops along faults. The site suffers from seepage because of its location in karst terrain. This study addresses dam bypass leakage at the Dongzhuang site and deficiencies in the regional groundwater seepage model. A hydrological conceptual model is generated, as well as a regional numerical simulation of groundwater flow based on analysis of the geology and hydrogeology of the dam site and surrounding area. From the analysis, a detailed 3D model of the groundwater flow field at the dam site is established, in which permeability and precipitation infiltration parameters are corrected using the inversion method. Leakage quantities are calculated for three different conditions: natural state, regular dam impoundment with an impervious curtain, and regular dam impoundment without an impervious curtain. The results show that underground water flows from west to east during all three conditions. The leakage quantity bypassing the dam region without anti-seepage treatment is 220,000 m 3 /d, with seepage concentrated around the dam foundation, dam abutments and the river bend of the reservoir head. Leakage in these areas accounts for 72% of the total leakage in the study area. However, when an impervious curtain is included in the model, the total leakage quantity is reduced to 51,000 m 3 /d and seepage concentrates along the banks of the reservoir. The 3D numerical model of regional groundwater flow is promising in that it can simulate complex hydrogeological conditions, and the accuracy and confidence levels improve when a detailed 3D model of groundwater flow at the dam site is added to the regional model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Most migraineurs develop cutaneous allodynia (CA) during migraine, and the underlying mechanism of CA in migraine is thought to be sensitization of the third-order trigeminovascular neurons in the posterior thalamic nuclei. This study aimed to investigate whether the ascending/descending pathway associated with the thalamus is disturbed in migraineurs with CA (MWCA) using effective connectivity analysis of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Methods: Thirty four migraineurs without aura (14 MWCA and 20 migraineurs without CA (MWoCA)) and 25 matched healthy controls (HC) were recruited in the study. The effective connectivity pathways associated with the posterior thalamus (PTH) were investigated using the Granger causality analysis. We chose bilateral PTH as two individual seeds, and compared MWCA with MWoCA and HC, respectively. Spearman correlation analysis was performed to test the correlation between the abnormal effective connectivity and the allodynia severity of MWCA. Results: Compared with MWoCA, MWCA showed decreased inflows from the left limbic regions and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) to the ipsilateral PTH, as well as increased inflow from the right ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) to the ipsilateral PTH; no significantly different outflows from the bilateral PTH to other regions were found. Compared with HC, MWCA showed increased outflows from the left PTH to the bilateral vmPFC, decreased outflows from the right PTH to the bilateral temporoparietal areas, decreased inflow from the left parietooccipital area to the ipsilateral PTH, and increased inflows from the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the bilateral temporoparietal areas to the right PTH. Correlation analyses revealed that the disturbed connectivities between PTH and cuneus, as well as PTH and middle frontal gyrus were associated with the allodynia severity of MWCA. Conclusions: MWCA demonstrated disrupted effective connection pathways between the PTH and other cortical or subcortical regions that participated in multi-dimentional pain processing. Our findings highlight the dysfunctional ascending and descending pain network at the thalamic-level and may help to illuminate the possible pathophysiologic mechanisms of CA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a number of experimental results of suction-controlled triaxial tests on a compacted weakly expansive soil with different suctions and suction histories. In terms of suction control methods, the high suction level (from 3.29 to 38 MPa) was realized by the vapor equilibrium technique and the low suction level (from 0 to 800 kPa) was controlled by the axis translation technique. Results of the triaxial tests indicate that the specimen with higher suction shows higher strength and lower contractive and higher dilative volumetric strains, and the average skeleton stress ratio ( q/ p′) at failure decreases with increasing suction in the high suction range (3.29∼38 MPa). Given that suction during shearing is constant (e.g., 200 kPa), the specimen dried to a higher suction and the history shows higher strength and lower contractive volumetric strain. Experimental results also show that high pre-applied suction (i.e., the maximum suction in the history) can lead to peak strength, post-peak softening, and shear dilation. Three different methods (pressure plate, filter paper, and vapor equilibrium) were employed to study the soil-water retention behaviour of the unsaturated expansive soil. Test results indicate that by combining these three different methods, it is possible to determine the SWCC in the entire suction range (0∼367 MPa). Test results of the expansive soil also show that the void ratio keeps decreasing with increasing suction in the entire suction range. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We demonstrated the effect of superparamagnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticles on the Schottky barriers of graphene, in which the Fe3O4 nanoparticles were fabricated by a hydrothermal method, and the single-layer graphene sheets were mechanically exfoliated from Kish graphite. The Fe3O4 nanoparticles were superparamagnetic with the saturation magnetic moment of $\sim 32$ emu/g at room temperature. We have found that the Fe3O4 nanoparticles decorated on the graphene surface can dramatically modify the Schottky barriers of the whole devices possibly due to the magnetic stray field from the Fe3O4 nanoparticles in proximity to graphene. The Schottky barrier could be further tuned by the quantity of Fe3O4 nanoparticles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective Cutaneous allodynia (CA) is a characteristic of central sensitization, predicting migraine progression, and poor response to therapy. The present study aimed to find out the cerebral functional alterations related to the establishment of central sensitization in migraineurs using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Design The experiment was performed in 15 migraineurs with Cutaneous allodynia (MWCA) and 19 patients without Cutaneous allodynia (MWoCA) in the interictal phase, and 20 matched healthy controls. Blood oxygen level dependent-fMRI was applied in all subjects when they were given transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation at the left medial forearm, achieving to a predetermined level of pain sensation (i.e., visual analogue scale [VAS] = 40). Contrast images were then produced to determine whether this disorders present functional changes in the brain during pain processing. Results Demographic and headache characteristics were balanced between groups. The contrast images of both migraine groups comparing to healthy controls exhibited weaker activation of various brain regions (e.g., cerebellum and insulae), which might be relevant to the pathophysiological procedure of migraine. The direct comparison between the two migraine groups revealed that activation in the dorsal pons and contralateral (right) inferior parietal lobule of MWCA subjects were significantly lower than it in MWoCA ones. Conclusions The interictal dysfunction of pain processing pathway may be responsible for (at least relevant to) central sensitization in migraine patients, via abnormal modulations of nociceptive transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The near- T c behaviors Cr 1/3 NbS 2 are demonstrated simply by magneto-transport measurement. • An anomalous positive MR has been observed as the second-order phase transition caused by thermal. • The abnormal negative MR continues to increase even above H c , and this behavior becomes more pronounced near T c. • A near- T c magnetic phase diagram of Cr 1/3 NbS 2 has been plotted with only using MR measurements. Many interesting physical phenomena emerge in the vicinity of phase transition temperature (T c) for magnetic materials. However, it remains a big challenge to elucidate the near- T c behaviors of chiral helimagnets, owing to their diversified magnetic interactions and complicated phase transitions. Here, we have systematically studied the near- T c properties of a chiral helimagnet Cr 1/3 NbS 2 by magnetotransport measurements with fine tuning of temperature and magnetic field. An anomalous positive magnetoresistance (MR) appears around the critical field (H c) in a narrow temperature range (~ 128–132 K), which can be attributed to the competing scattering effects on electrons between the chiral magnetic order and thermal fluctuation near critical point. Moreover, the negative MR continues to increase even above H c , and this behavior becomes more pronounced near T c. Based on the MR results, a near- T c magnetic phase diagram of Cr 1/3 NbS 2 is presented, with a particular emphasis on the determination of internal phase boundary of chiral soliton lattice (CSL). This work gains an insight on the near- T c behaviors of chiral magnetic materials and sheds light on the related electronic and spintronic applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mediator of DNA damage checkpoint protein-1 (MDC1) is a recently identified nuclear protein that participates in DNA-damage sensing and signaling. Here we report that knockdown of MDC1 by RNA interference results in cellular hypersensitivity to the DNA cross-linking agent mitomycin C and ionizing radiation and in impaired homology-mediated repair of double-strand breaks in DNA. MDC1 forms a complex with Rad51 through a direct interaction with the forkhead-associated domain of MDC1, not the BRCA1 C-terminal domain. Depletion of MDC1 results in impaired formation of Rad51 ionizing radiation–induced foci, reduced amounts of nuclear and chromatin-bound Rad51, and a corresponding increase in Rad51 protein degradation. Together, our findings suggest that MDC1 functions in Rad51-mediated homologous recombination by retaining Rad51 in chromatin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a similarity solution for undrained cylindrical cavity contraction in anisotropic modified Cam-clay (AMCC) model soil. An AMCC model incorporating the spatially mobilized plane (SMP) criterion is used to model the behaviors of soil during cavity contraction. Based on the equilibrium equation, constitutive equation, consistency equation, continuity equation and the undrained condition, the problem is reduced to solving a system of first-order ordinary differential equations. The proposed solution is validated by a FLAC3D numerical model and compared with the solution that does not incorporate SMP criterion to demonstrate the effects of three-dimensional strength on the cavity contraction responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals with methamphetamine use disorder (MUD) often experience anxiety and depressive symptoms during abstinence, which can worsen the likelihood of relapse. Thus, it is essential to understand the neuro‐mechanism behind methamphetamine use and its associated emotional withdrawal symptoms in order to develop effective clinical strategies. This study aimed to evaluate associations between emotional withdrawal symptoms and structural covariance networks (SCNs) based on cortical thickness (CTh) across the brain. The CTh measures were obtained from Tl‐weighted MRI data from a sample of 48 males with MUD during abstinence and 48 male healthy controls. The severity of anxiety and depressive symptoms was assessed by the Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAMA) and depression (HAMD) scales. Two important nodes belonging to the brain reward system, the right rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) and medial prefrontal cortex (medPFC), were selected as seeds to conduct SCNs and modulation analysis by emotional symptoms. MUDs showed higher structural covariance between the right rACC and regions in the dorsal attention, right frontoparietal, auditory, visual and limbic networks. They also displayed higher structural covariance between the right medPFC and regions in the limbic network. Moreover, the modulation analysis showed that higher scores on HAMA were associated with increased covariance between the right rACC and the left parahippocampal and isthmus cingulate cortex in the default mode network. These outcomes shed light on the complex neurobiological mechanisms underlying methamphetamine use and its associated emotional withdrawal symptoms and may provide new insights into the development of effective treatments for MUD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transient receptor potential vanilloid 4 (TRPV4) is a widely expressed cation channel that plays an important role in many physiological and pathological processes. However, most TRPV4 drugs carry a risk of side effects. Moreover, existing screening methods are not suitable for the high-throughput screening (HTS) of drugs. In this study, a cell model and HTS method for targeting TRPV4 channel drugs were established based on a calcium-activated chloride channel protein 1 Anoctamin 1 (ANO1) and a double mutant (YFP-H148Q/I152L) of the yellow fluorescent protein (YFP). Patch-clamp experiments and fluorescence quenching kinetic experiments were used to verify that the model could sensitively detect changes in intracellular Ca2+ concentration. The functionality of the TRPV4 cell model was examined through temperature variations and different concentrations of TRPV4 modulators, and the performance of the model in HTS was also evaluated. The model was able to sensitively detect changes in the intracellular Ca2+ concentration and also excelled at screening TRPV4 drugs, and the model was more suitable for HTS. We successfully constructed a drug cell screening model targeting the TRPV4 channel, which provides a tool to study the pathophysiological functions of TRPV4 in vitro. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Recently, deep learning technologies have rapidly expanded into medical image analysis, including both disease detection and classification. As far as we know, migraine is a disabling and common neurological disorder, typically characterized by unilateral, throbbing and pulsating headaches. Unfortunately, a large number of migraineurs do not receive the accurate diagnosis when using traditional diagnostic criteria based on the guidelines of the International Headache Society. As such, there is substantial interest in developing automated methods to assist in the diagnosis of migraine.Methods: To the best of our knowledge, no studies have evaluated the potential of deep learning technologies in assisting with the classification of migraine patients. Here, we used deep learning methods in combination with three functional measures (the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations, regional homogeneity and regional functional correlation strength) based on rs-fMRI data to distinguish not only between migraineurs and healthy controls, but also between the two subtypes of migraine. We employed 21 migraine patients without aura, 15 migraineurs with aura, and 28 healthy controls.Results: Compared with the traditional support vector machine classifier, which has an accuracy of 83.67%, our Inception module-based convolutional neural network approach showed a significant improvement in classification output (over 86.18%). Our data also indicate that the Inception module-based CNN performs better than the AlexNet-based CNN (Inception module-based CNN reached an accuracy of 99.25%). Finally, we also found that regional functional correlation strength (RFCS) could be regarded as the optimum input out of the three indices (ALFF, ReHo, RFCS).Conclusions: Overall, our study shows that combining the three functional measures of rs-fMRI with deep learning classification is a powerful method to distinguish between migraineurs and healthy individuals. Our data also highlight that deep learning-based frameworks could be used to develop more complicated models or systems to aid in clinical decision making in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Major depressive disorder is a common comorbidity in migraineurs. Depression may affect the progression and prognosis of migraine. Few studies have examined the brain function in migraineurs that may cause this comorbidity. Here, we aimed to explore depression-related abnormalities in the intrinsic brain activity of interictal migraineurs with comorbid depression using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging.Results: Significant main effects of migraine and depression provided evidence that migraine and depression jointly affected the left medial prefrontal cortex, which was thought to be the neural basis of self-referential mental activity in previous studies. Abnormalities in this region may contribute to determining the common symptoms of migraine and depression and even result in comorbidity. Additionally, migraineurs with comorbid depression had different developmental trajectories in the right thalamus and fusiform, which were associated with recognizing, transmitting, controlling and remembering pain and emotion.Conclusions: Based on our findings, the abnormal mPFC which may contribute to determining the common symptoms in migraine and depression and may be a therapeutic target for migraineurs comorbid depression. The different developmental trajectory in thalamus and fusiform indicates that the comorbidity may arise through a specific mechanism rather than simple superposition of migraine and depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preclinical in vitro models play an important role in studying cancer cell biology and facilitating translational research, especially in the identification of drug targets and drug discovery studies. This is particularly relevant in breast cancer, where the global burden of disease is quite high based on prevalence and a relatively high rate of lethality. Predictive tools to select patients who will be responsive to invasive or morbid therapies (radiotherapy, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and/or surgery) are relatively lacking. To be clinically relevant, a model must accurately replicate the biology and cellular heterogeneity of the primary tumor. Addressing these requirements and overcoming the limitations of most existing cancer cell lines, which are typically derived from a single clone, we have recently developed conditional reprogramming (CR) technology. The CR technology refers to a co-culture system of primary human normal or tumor cells with irradiated murine fibroblasts in the presence of a Rho-associated kinase inhibitor to allow the primary cells to acquire stem cell properties and the ability to proliferate indefinitely in vitro without any exogenous gene or viral transfection. This innovative approach fulfills many of these needs and offers an alternative that surpasses the deficiencies associated with traditional cancer cell lines. These CR cells (CRCs) can be reprogrammed to maintain a highly proliferative state and reproduce the genomic and histological characteristics of the parental tissue. Therefore, CR technology may be a clinically relevant model to test and predict drug sensitivity, conduct gene profile analysis and xenograft research, and undertake personalized medicine. This review discusses studies that have applied CR technology to conduct breast cancer research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is by nature a multi-modality technique that provides complementary information about different aspects of diseases. So far no attempts have been reported to assess the potential of multi-modal MRI in discriminating individuals with and without migraine, so in this study, we proposed a classification approach to examine whether or not the integration of multiple MRI features could improve the classification performance between migraine patients without aura (MWoA) and healthy controls. Twenty-one MWoA patients and 28 healthy controls participated in this study. Resting-state functional MRI data was acquired to derive three functional measures: the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations, regional homogeneity and regional functional correlation strength; and structural MRI data was obtained to measure the regional gray matter volume. For each measure, the values of 116 pre-defined regions of interest were extracted as classification features. Features were first selected and combined by a multi-kernel strategy; then a support vector machine classifier was trained to distinguish the subjects at individual level. The performance of the classifier was evaluated using a leave-one-out cross-validation method, and the final classification accuracy obtained was 83.67% (with a sensitivity of 92.86% and a specificity of 71.43%). The anterior cingulate cortex, prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex and the insula contributed the most discriminative features. In general, our proposed framework shows a promising classification capability for MWoA by integrating information from multiple MRI features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neural imaging studies have found the connection between strabismus and brain cortex. However, the pathological mechanisms of intermittent exotropia are still not fully understood. In the present study, changes of binocular fusion related cortices in intermittent exotropia were investigated with blood oxygen level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging. Activated cortices induced by fusion stimulus were found to be distributed in several regions such as bilateral middle occipital gyrus, bilateral middle temporal gyrus, left superior parietal lobule and so on. Compared with normal subjects, the increased activation intensity was observed in bilateral superior parietal lobule and inferior parietal lobule in subjects with intermittent exotropia. These findings indicate that binocular fusion involves a complicated brain network including several regions. And cortical activities of bilateral superior parietal lobule and inferior parietal lobule compensate for the binocular fusion dysfunction in intermittent exotropia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lateral loading of a plate anchor is a complicated process that involves complex anchor-soil interactions. The deformation characteristics of the soil around an anchor have an important effect on its lateral bearing capacity. In this paper, the noncontact digital image correlation (DIC) technique is used to study the distribution and variation of the soil deformation field under a laterally loaded anchor in sandy soil. The results show that the sand density and embedment ratio significantly affect the distribution and influence range of the active and passive zones around the anchor. The active zone behind the rod gradually decreases with increasing sand density until ultimately disappearing, and the passive zone increases. The maximum influence height occurs in the passive zone behind the rod in dense sand, and the influence range of the passive zone in front of the rod expands with an increasing embedment ratio. Shear bands form during the lateral loading process, which are accompanied by dilatancy in the shear process. The motion path of the rotation center in loose and medium sand is initially rigid translational and then becomes rigid rotational, while the opposite trend occurs in compact dense sand. The results provide important guidance for the development of predictive models for anchor lateral loading and design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Estrogen receptors α (ERα) and β (ERβ) show distinct contributions to tumor initiation and progression. Given that ERβ mainly functions as a "tumor suppressor", activation of ERβ using its specific agonist should be able to inhibit tumor progression. In this study, we show that a newly developed ERβ agonist, OSU-ERb-12, can not only impede ovarian cancer cell expansion and tumor growth but also reduce the cancer stem cell (CSC) population. OSU-ERb-12 could inhibit epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in ovarian cancer cells by increasing Snail expression, thereby, blocking EMT-mediated cancer cell dedifferentiation. We also found that OSU-ERb-12 inhibits ovarian cancer expansion in an ERα-independent manner while limiting the CSC population in an ERα-dependent manner. Taken together, our data suggest that the newly developed ERβ agonist OSU-ERb-12 can be used not only to hinder tumor growth but also has the potential to prevent tumor relapse and metastasis by depleting CSCs. Epithelial ovarian cancer is the most lethal malignancy of the female reproductive tract. A healthy ovary expresses both Estrogen Receptor α (ERα) and β (ERβ). Given that ERα is generally considered to promote cell survival and proliferation, thereby, enhancing tumor growth, while ERβ shows a protective effect against the development and progression of tumors, the activation of ERβ by its agonists could be therapeutically beneficial for ovarian cancer. Here, we demonstrate that the activation of ERβ using a newly developed ERβ agonist, OSU-ERb-12, can impede ovarian cancer cell expansion and tumor growth in an ERα-independent manner. More interestingly, we found that OSU-ERb-12 also reduces the cancer stem cell (CSC) population in ovarian cancer by compromising non-CSC-to-CSC conversion. Mechanistically, we revealed that OSU-ERb-12 decreased the expression of Snail, a master regulator of the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), which is associated with de novo CSC generation. Given that ERα can mediate EMT and facilitate maintenance of the CSC subpopulation and that OSU-ERb-12 can block the transactivity of ERα, we conclude that OSU-ERb-12 reduces the CSC subpopulation by inhibiting EMT in an ERα-dependent manner. Taken together, our data indicate that the ERβ agonist OSU-ERb-12 could be used to hinder tumor progression and limit the CSC subpopulation with the potential to prevent tumor relapse and metastasis in patients with ovarian cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the high incidence of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) worldwide as well as its rapid and fatal progression, timely microscopy screening of peripheral blood smears is essential for the rapid diagnosis of ALL. However, screening manually is time-consuming and tedious and may lead to missed or misdiagnosis due to subjective bias; on the other hand, artificially intelligent diagnostic algorithms are constrained by the limited sample size of the data and are prone to overfitting, resulting in limited applications. Conventional data augmentation is commonly adopted to expand the amount of training data, avoid overfitting, and improve the performance of deep models. However, in practical applications, random data augmentation, such as random image cropping or erasing, is difficult to realistically occur in specific tasks and may instead introduce tremendous background noises that modify actual distribution of data, thereby degrading model performance. In this paper, to assist in the early and accurate diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, we present a ternary stream-driven weakly supervised data augmentation classification network (WT-DFN) to identify lymphoblasts in a fine-grained scale using microscopic images of peripheral blood smears. Concretely, for each training image, we first generate attention maps to represent the distinguishable part of the target by weakly supervised learning. Then, guided by these attention maps, we produce the other two streams via attention cropping and attention erasing to obtain the fine-grained distinctive features. The proposed WT-DFN improves the classification accuracy of the model from two aspects: (1) in the images can be seen details since cropping attention regions provide the accurate location of the object, which ensures our model looks at the object closer and discovers certain detailed features; (2) images can be seen more since erasing attention mechanism forces the model to extract more discriminative parts' features. Validation suggests that the proposed method is capable of addressing the high intraclass variances located in lymphocyte classes, as well as the low interclass variances between lymphoblasts and other normal or reactive lymphocytes. The proposed method yields the best performance on the public dataset and the real clinical dataset among competitive methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. As a chronic progressive disease, diabetes mellitus (DM) has a high incidence worldwide, and it impacts on cognitive and learning abilities in the lifetime even in the early stage, may degenerate memory in middle age, and perhaps increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease. Method. In this work, we propose a convolutional neural network (CNN) based classification method to help classify diabetes by distinguishing the brains with abnormal functions from the normal ones on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). The proposed classification model is based on the Inception-v4-Residual convolutional neural network architecture. In our workflow, the original rs-fMRI data are first mapped to generate amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) images and then fed into the CNN model to get the classification result to indicate the potential existence of DM. Result. We validate our method on a realistic clinical rs-fMRI dataset, and the achieved average accuracy is 89.95 % in fivefold cross-validation. Our model achieves a 0.8690 AUC with 77.50% and 77.51% sensitivity and specificity using our local dataset, respectively. Conclusion. It has the potential to become a novel clinical preliminary screening tool that provides help for the classification of different categories based on functional brain alteration caused by diabetes, benefiting from its accuracy and robustness, as well as efficiency and patient friendliness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the manifestations of band structure engineering in few-layer PbI2-based heterostructures by probing their tunable optical properties. First, we have successfully prepared atomically thin flakes from PbI2 solution by two distinct approaches. A drop-casting of PbI2 solution onto various substrates followed by a simple heating process yields abundant flakes with different thickness and regular shape. Mechanical exfoliation of PbI2 bulk crystals, obtained from a low-temperature recrystallization process of PbI2 solution, also gives ultrathin PbI2 flakes of high quality. Moreover, these PbI2 flakes are employed to construct various van de Waals heterostructures. A significant enhancement of photoluminescence in MoSe2 interfaced with PbI2 was observed at different laser excitation intensity, due to the forming of type-I band alignment. Type-I band alignment can also be investigated in MoS2/PbI2 heterostructure, while type-II band alignment is built-in WSe2/PbI2 heterostructure. These results demonstrate that the strong interfacial coupling between PbI2 and other two-dimensional semiconductors can modulate their band alignment, and as a result, the exciton properties noticeably, which provides new insights of building a designer heterostructure device at the atomic level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Present a novel two-stage deep learning approach for short-term multihorizon photovoltaic power output forecasting. • Develop and Validate ACCNet model with variational mode decomposition, lightweight convolutional decoupling module, and capsule cell. • Point prediction and probability interval prediction offer valuable operational information in diverse conditions. • The performance of the developed method is proven in detail based on seven different PV systems over multiple data periods, and the experimental results reveal that the proposed approach displays significant improvements and robustness. Due to its importance regarding the integration, economic dispatch, and operation of PV smart grid systems, infrastructure planning, and budgeting, the accurate forecasting of photovoltaic (PV) power generation has drawn increasing research and industry attention. However, the instability, intermittence, and randomness of solar irradiance impose difficulties on the short-term economic dispatch of a smart integrated power, grid and significantly increase the risks arising from PV generation in a power system, exposing PV generators to potential additional costs. A deep convolutional neural network (CNN)-based method can effectively improve the performance of PV generation point prediction and probabilistic interval prediction by efficiently extracting nonlinear features at each frequency. Nevertheless, existing deep learning (DL) studies have mostly focused on more complex network topologies and data decomposition algorithms, ignoring the importance of simultaneously forecasting the PV power produced over multiple temporal periods. To solve the described challenge, we propose a novel two-stage DL approach for PV generation prediction. The end-to-end trained model used in the proposed PV generation forecasting method is an effort to combine the existing methods and avoid the separation of entire task, such as single time-scale PV generation forecasting, independent point forecasting, and probabilistic interval forecasting. A temporal signal decomposition technique called variational mode decomposition (VMD) is employed in the first stage to construct association mappings from fine-grained features to images. In the second stage, an innovative capsule CNN (ACCNet) is proposed to obtain very short-term multihorizon ahead output power predictions for seven different PV systems based on polycrystalline, monocrystalline, cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film, amorphous, copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) thin-film, heterojunction with intrinsic thin layer (HIT) hybrid, and concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) technologies. The input parameters for each system include solar radiation (diffuse/global horizontal radiation (DHR/GHR) and radiation diffuse/global tilted (RDT/RGT)) and ambient temperature, while the output parameter is the power output of each PV system. The proposed model is validated with the historical datasets of a PV system downloaded from the Desert Knowledge Precinct in Central Australia (DKASC) homepage. The performance of the developed method is proven in detail based on seven different PV systems over multiple data periods, and the experimental results reveal that the proposed approach displays significant improvements and robustness in point forecasting and probabilistic forecasting tasks. We will release the source code to ensure reproducibility and facilitate future work. Our model is open-sourced at https://github.com/YunDuanFei/ACCNet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amorphous magnetic CoFeB ultrathin films have been synthesized on the narrow band gap semiconductor InAs(100) surface, and the nature of the interface magnetic anisotropy and electrical contact has been studied. Angle-dependent hysteresis loops reveal that the films have an in-plane uniaxial magnetic anisotropy (UMA) with the easy axis along the InAs [0-11] crystal direction. The UMA was found to be dependent on the annealing temperatures of the substrates, which indicates the significant role of the Fe, Co-As bonding at the interface related to the surface condition of the InAs(100). $I$ – $V$ measurements show an ohmic contact interface between the CoFeB films and the InAs substrates, which is not affected by the surface condition of the InAs (100). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Summary Regulatory T (Treg) cells are important in maintaining self-tolerance and immune homeostasis. The Treg cell transcription factor Foxp3 works in concert with other co-regulatory molecules, including Eos, to determine the transcriptional signature and characteristic suppressive phenotype of Treg cells. Here, we report that the inflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6) actively repressed Eos expression through microRNA-17 (miR-17). miR-17 expression increased in Treg cells in the presence of IL-6, and its expression negatively correlated with that of Eos. Treg cell suppressive activity was diminished upon overexpression of miR-17 in vitro and in vivo, which was mitigated upon co-expression of an Eos mutant lacking miR-17 target sites. Also, RNAi of miR-17 resulted in enhanced suppressive activity. Ectopic expression of miR-17 imparted effector-T-cell-like characteristics to Treg cells via the de-repression of genes encoding effector cytokines. Thus, miR-17 provides a potent layer of Treg cell control through targeting Eos and additional Foxp3 co-regulators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposed a prewhitening invariance of noise space (PW-INN) as a new magnetoencephalography (MEG) source analysis method, which is particularly suitable for localizing closely spaced and highly correlated cortical sources under real MEG noise. Conventional source localization methods, such as sLORETA and beamformer, cannot distinguish closely spaced cortical sources, especially under strong intersource correlation. Our previous work proposed an invariance of noise space (INN) method to resolve closely spaced sources, but its performance is seriously degraded under correlated noise between MEG sensors. The proposed PW-INN method largely mitigates the adverse influence of correlated MEG noise by projecting MEG data to a new space defined by the orthogonal complement of dominant eigenvectors of correlated MEG noise. Simulation results showed that PW-INN is superior to INN, sLORETA, and beamformer in terms of localization accuracy for closely spaced and highly correlated sources. Lastly, source connectivity between closely spaced sources can be satisfactorily constructed from source time courses estimated by PW-INN but not from results of other conventional methods. Therefore, the proposed PW-INN method is a promising MEG source analysis to provide a high spatial-temporal characterization of cortical activity and connectivity, which is crucial for basic and clinical research of neural plasticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Loss of 53BP1 rescues BRCA1 deficiency and is as- sociated with BRCAl-deficient and triple-negative breast cancers (TNBC) and with resistance to genotoxic drugs. The mechanisms responsible for decreased 53BP1 transcript and protein levels in tumors remain unknown. Here, we demonstrate that BRCA1 loss activates cathepsin L (CTSL)-mediated degradation of 53BP1. Activation of this pathway rescued homologous recombination repair and allowed BRCA1-deficient cells to bypass growth arrest. Importantly, depletion or inhibition of CTSL with vitamin D or specific inhibitors stabilized 53BP1 and increased genomic instability in response to radiation and poly(adenosine diphosphate-ribose) polymerase inhibitors, compromising proliferation. Analysis of human breast tumors identified nuclear CTSL as a positive biomarker for TNBC, which correlated inversely with 53BP1. Importantly, nuclear levels of CTSL, vitamin D receptor, and 53BP1 emerged as a novel triple biomarker signature for stratification of patients with BRCA1-mutated tumors and TNBC, with potential predictive value for drug response. We identify here a novel pathway with prospective relevance for diagnosis and customization of breast cancer therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) are generated by the recombination activating gene (RAG) endonuclease in all developing lymphocytes as they assemble antigen receptor genes. DNA cleavage by RAG occurs only at the G1 phase of the cell cycle and generates two hairpin-sealed DNA (coding) ends that require nucleolytic opening before their repair by classical non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ). Although there are several cellular nucleases that could perform this function, only the Artemis nuclease is able to do so efficiently. Here, in vivo, we show that in murine cells the histone protein H2AX prevents nucleases other than Artemis from processing hairpin-sealed coding ends; in the absence of H2AX, CtIP can efficiently promote the hairpin opening and resection of DNA ends generated by RAG cleavage. This CtIP-mediated resection is inhibited by γ-H2AX and by MDC-1 (mediator of DNA damage checkpoint 1), which binds to γ-H2AX in chromatin flanking DNA DSBs. Moreover, the ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM) kinase activates antagonistic pathways that modulate this resection. CtIP DNA end resection activity is normally limited to cells at post-replicative stages of the cell cycle, in which it is essential for homology-mediated repair. In G1-phase lymphocytes, DNA ends that are processed by CtIP are not efficiently joined by classical NHEJ and the joints that do form frequently use micro-homologies and show significant chromosomal deletions. Thus, H2AX preserves the structural integrity of broken DNA ends in G1-phase lymphocytes, thereby preventing these DNA ends from accessing repair pathways that promote genomic instability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: We showed in this study that cells deficient of the BRCA1-associated BACH1 helicase, also known as BRIP1, failed to elicit homologous recombination (HR) after DNA double-stranded breaks (DSBs). BACH1-deficient cells were also sensitive to mitomycin C (MMC) and underwent MMC-induced chromosome instability. Moreover, we identified a homozygous nonsense mutation in BACH1 in a FA-J patient-derived cell line and could not detect BACH1 protein in this cell line. Expression of wild-type BACH1 in this cell line reduced the accumulation of cells at G2/M phases following exposure to DNA crosslinkers, a characteristic of Fanconi anemia (FA) cells. These results support the conclusion that BACH1 is FANCJ. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A correction to the article "H2AX prevents CtIP-mediated DNA end resection and aberrant repair in G1-phase lymphocytes" that was published in the 2010 issue is presented.