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It has emerged the gut microbiome is crucially linked to metabolic health and obesity. Macronutrient distribution has been discussed as a key parameter in weight-loss programs, but little is known about its impact on the gut microbiome. We investigated the effects of weight-loss meal replacement programs with different macronutrient ratios on the gut microbiota and metabolic parameters in subjects with overweight and obesity. Three low-calorie meal replacement programs with different ratios of carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids were designed: a balanced diet (Group B, 60:15:30), a high-lipid−low-carbohydrate diet (Group F, 35:20:55), and a protein-enriched diet (Group P, 40:25:35). Sixty overweight or obese participants were provided with the meals twice daily for 3 weeks. In all groups, diet intervention resulted in reduced body weight and BMI. The relative abundance of Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes phyla decreased and increased, respectively, which increased the Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes (F/B) ratio in all subjects, particularly in Groups B and P. Alpha- and beta-diversity were augmented at the phylum level in Group P. In conclusion, short-term interventions with weight-loss meal replacement programs increased butyrate-producing bacteria and the F/B ratio. Moreover, the protein-enriched diet significantly increased alpha- and beta-diversity compared to the balanced diet and the high-lipid−low-carbohydrate diet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the increasing demand for data collection and sharing for analysis purposes has raised concerns regarding privacy violations. Protecting individual privacy during the collection and dissemination of sensitive information has emerged as a critical concern. In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving framework for collecting users' medical microdata, utilizing geo-indistinguishability (Geo-I), a concept based on well-known differential privacy. We adapt Geo-I, originally designed for protecting location information privacy, to collect medical microdata while minimizing the reduction in data utility. To mitigate the reduction in data utility caused by the perturbation mechanism of Geo-I, we propose a novel data perturbation technique that utilizes the prior distribution information of the data being collected. The proposed framework enables the collection of perturbed microdata with a distribution similar to that of the original dataset, even in scenarios that demand high levels of privacy protection, typically requiring significant perturbations to the original data. We evaluate the performance of our proposed algorithms using real-world data and demonstrate that our approach significantly outperforms existing methods, ensuring user privacy while preserving data utility in medical data collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a non-contact and unrestrained respiration monitoring system based on the optical triangulation technique. The proposed system consists of a red-green-blue (RGB) camera and a line laser installed to face the frontal thorax of a human body. The underlying idea of the work is that the camera and line laser are mounted in opposite directions, unlike other research. By applying the proposed image processing algorithm to the camera image, laser coordinates are extracted and converted to world coordinates using the optical triangulation method. These converted world coordinates represent the height of the thorax of a person. The respiratory rate is measured by analyzing changes of the thorax surface depth. To verify system performance, the camera and the line laser are installed on the head and foot sides of a bed, respectively, facing toward the center of the bed. Twenty healthy volunteers were enrolled and underwent measurement for 100s. Evaluation results show that the optical triangulation-based image processing method demonstrates non-inferior performance to a commercial patient monitoring system with a root-mean-squared error of 0.30rpm and a maximum error of 1rpm ( p > 0.05 ), which implies the proposed non-contact system can be a useful alternative to the conventional healthcare method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every year, invasive pathogens cause significant damage to crops. Thus, identifying genes conferring broad-spectrum resistance to invading pathogens is critical for plant breeding. We previously demonstrated that OsWRKY114 contributes to rice (Oryza sativa L.) immunity against the bacterial pathovar Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo). However, it is not known whether OsWRKY114 is involved in defense responses to other pathogens. In this study, we revealed that OsWRKY114 enhances innate immunity in rice against the fungal pathogen Fusarium fujikuroi, which is the causal agent of bakanae disease. Transcript levels of various gibberellin-related genes that are required for plant susceptibility to F. fujikuroi were reduced in rice plants overexpressing OsWRKY114. Analysis of disease symptoms revealed increased innate immunity against F. fujikuroi in OsWRKY114-overexpressing rice plants. Moreover, the expression levels of OsJAZ genes, which encode negative regulators of jasmonic acid signaling that confer immunity against F. fujikuroi, were reduced in OsWRKY114-overexpressing rice plants. These results indicate that OsWRKY114 confers broad-spectrum resistance not only to Xoo but also to F. fujikuroi. Our findings provide a basis for developing strategies to mitigate pathogen attack and improve crop resilience to biotic stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The WRKY family of transcription factors plays a pivotal role in plant responses to biotic and abiotic stress. The WRKY Group III transcription factor OsWRKY114 is a positive regulator of innate immunity against Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae; however, its role in abiotic stress responses is largely unknown. In this study, we showed that the abundant OsWRKY114 transcripts present in transgenic rice plants are reduced under drought conditions. The overexpression of OsWRKY114 significantly increased drought sensitivity in rice, which resulted in a lower survival rate after drought stress. Moreover, we showed that stomatal closure, which is a strategy to save water under drought, is restricted in OsWRKY114-overexpressing plants compared with wild-type plants. The expression levels of PYR/PYL/RCAR genes, such as OsPYL2 and OsPYL10 that confer drought tolerance through stomatal closure, were also markedly lower in the OsWRKY114-overexpressing plants. Taken together, these results suggest that OsWRKY114 negatively regulates plant tolerance to drought stress via inhibition of stomatal closure, which would otherwise prevent water loss in rice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context-aware recommender systems (CARS) exploit multiple contexts to improve user experience in embracing new information and services. Tensor factorization (TF), a type of latent factor model, has achieved remarkable performance in CARS. TF learns latent representations of contexts by decomposing an observed rating tensor and combines the latent representations as a vector form to represent contextual influence on users and items. However, due to the limitation of the contextual expression power, they have difficulties in effectively capturing complex correlations among multiple contexts, and also the meaning of each context is diluted. To address the issue, we propose a reliable TF-based recommender system based on a proposed context tensor (CT-CARS), which incorporates a variety of correlations among contexts. CT-CARS contains a novel recommendation rating function and a learning algorithm. Specifically, the proposed context tensor elaborately captures the influences of both individual contexts and context combinations. Moreover, we introduce a novel parameter initialization based on past-learned results to improve the reliability of recommendations. The overall time complexity of our parameter learning algorithm grows linearly as dataset size increases. Experiments on six real-world datasets including two large-scaled datasets show that CT-CARS outperforms the existing state-of-the-art models in terms of both accuracy and reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: Two novel accepter units, namely, difluoroquinoxaline and monofluoroquinoxaline, were prepared and used for the synthesis of the conjugated polymers containing electron donor–acceptor pairs for use in organic photovoltaics. The introduction of a fluorine atom into the quinoxaline moiety resulted in polymers with lowered highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) energy levels; this increased the open circuit voltage of the devices based on the synthesized polymers. The conjugated polymers containing difluoroquinoxaline and monofluoroquinoxaline, namely, thiophene and benzodithiophene, were synthesized using the Stille polymerization reaction to produce PEHBQxF2, PEHBQxF1, PEHBDTQxF2, and PEHBDTQxF1. The HOMO energy levels of PEHBQxF2, PEHBQxF1, PEHBDTQxF2, and PEHBDTQxF1 were determined to be −5.66, −5.52, −5.54, and −5.39 eV, respectively. The device with PEHBDTQxF2/PC71BM (1:2, w/w) and containing diiodooctane (3 vol %) exhibited the best photovoltaic performance, with its VOC being 0.79 V, JSC being 10.44 mA/cm2, FF being 68%, and PCE being 5.58%. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2018, 56, 821–830 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ceria‐‐zirconia nanoparticles 2 nm in size and with an increased Ce3+ ratio exhibit greatly enhanced scavenging performance for reactive oxygen species (ROS). In their Communication on page 11399 ff., S.‐H. Lee, T. Hyeon et al. report the superiority of Ce0.7Zr0.3O2 nanoparticles in regulating inflammatory cells. They work as a potent ROS scavenger for multiple organ dysfunction in sepsis by reducing the mortality and inflammatory responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ceroxid‐Zirconiumoxid‐Nanopartikel von 2 nm Größe und mit erhöhtem Ce3+‐Gehalt zeigen eine stark erhöhte Fähigkeit zum Abfangen reaktiver Sauerstoffspezies (ROS). S.‐H. Lee, T. Hyeon et al. beschreiben in der Zuschrift auf S. 11557 die überlegenen Eigenschaften von Ce0.7Zr0.3O2‐Nanopartikeln bei der Regulation von Entzündungszellen. Sie wirken als effiziente ROS‐Fänger gegen Multiorganversagen bei Sepsis und verringern so Mortalität und Entzündungsreaktionen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The two oxidation states of ceria nanoparticles, Ce3+ and Ce4+, play a pivotal role in scavenging reactive oxygen species (ROS). In particular, Ce3+ is largely responsible for removing O2− and .OH that are associated with inflammatory response and cell death. The synthesis is reported of 2 nm ceria-zirconia nanoparticles (CZ NPs) that possess a higher Ce3+/Ce4+ ratio and faster conversion from Ce4+ to Ce3+ than those exhibited by ceria nanoparticles. The obtained Ce0.7Zr0.3O2 (7CZ) NPs greatly improve ROS scavenging performance, thus regulating inflammatory cells in a very low dose. Moreover, 7CZ NPs are demonstrated to be effective in reducing mortality and systemic inflammation in two representative sepsis models. These findings suggest that 7CZ NPs have the potential as a therapeutic nanomedicine for treating ROS-related inflammatory diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We demonstrate a unique synthetic route for oxygen-deficient mesoporous TiO x by a redox-transmetalation process by using Zn metal as the reducing agent. The as-obtained materials have significantly enhanced electronic conductivity; 20 times higher than that of as-synthesized TiO2 material. Moreover, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and galvanostatic intermittent titration technique (GITT) measurements are performed to validate the low charge carrier resistance of the oxygen-deficient TiO x. The resulting oxygen-deficient TiO x battery anode exhibits a high reversible capacity (∼180 mA h g−1 at a discharge/charge rate of 1 C/1 C after 400 cycles) and an excellent rate capability (∼90 mA h g−1 even at a rate of 10 C). Also, the full cell, which is coupled with a LiCoO2 cathode material, exhibits an outstanding rate capability (>75 mA h g−1 at a rate of 3.0 C) and maintains a reversible capacity of over 100 mA h g−1 at a discharge/charge of 1 C/1 C for 300 cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT A multipolarization reconfigurable microstrip array antenna that can be used selectively for four polarizations [vertical polarization (VP), horizontal polarization (HP), right hand circular polarization (RHCP), left hand circular polarization (LHCP)] at the S-band is proposed. To control the four polarization states, a single element consisting of four PIN diodes and a microstrip patch with a circular slot is need. The fabricated array antenna has a VSWR below 2 from 3.32 to 3.39 GHz for VP, from 3.30 to 3.375 GHz for HP, from 3.285 to 3.405 GHz for LHCP, and from 3.27 to 3.40 GHz for RHCP. The 3-dB axial ratio bandwidth is wider than 19 MHz in the circular polarization states, and the cross-polarization levels are higher than −20 dB in the linear polarization and −17 dB in the circular polarization, respectively. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 56:104-110, 2014 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The self-expandable metallic stent (SEMS) has been widely used for unresectable malignant biliary obstruction but eventually becomes occluded by tumor ingrowth/overgrowth and sludge. Therefore, we aimed to determine the therapeutic effectiveness of secondary stents and to find differences according to various combinations of the first and second stents for the management of occluded SEMSs in patients with malignant distal biliary obstruction. Methods: Between 1999 and November 2008, 77 patients with malignant biliary obstruction underwent secondary biliary stent placement as 'stent-in-stent' at three university hospitals in Korea (40 covered, 26 uncovered, and 11 plastic stents). The membrane of the covered SEMS was regarded as the barrier against tumor ingrowth. We categorized the patients into three groups based on whether the covered SEMS was either the first or the second stent: membrane-SEMS (18 covered-covered; 9 covered-uncovered; 22 uncovered-covered SEMS), bare-SEMS (17 uncovered-uncovered SEMS), and plastic stent (3 covered-plastic; 8 uncovered-plastic). Results: The median patency of second stents was 138, 109, and 88 days (covered, uncovered, and plastic stents). The second covered SEMSs had a significantly longer patency than plastic stents ( p = 0.047). In a multivariate analysis including membrane-SEMS, bare-SEMS, and plastic stent groups, the bare-SEMS had a worse cumulative stent patency (HR = 2.04, CI = 1.08-3.86) and survival time (HR = 2.37, CI = 1.25-4.49) than the membrane-SEMS. Patients with ampulla of Vater cancer had better stent patency (HR = 0.27, CI = 0.08-0.98) and survival (HR = 0.17, CI = 0.04-0.77) than those with other pancreatobiliary malignancies. In addition, antitumor treatment prolonged survival time (HR = 0.50, CI = 0.26-0.99). Conclusions: The placement of additional biliary stents using the 'stent-in-stent' method is an effective treatment for an occluded metallic primary stent. In addition, double biliary SEMS placement using at least one covered SEMS (in the primary and/or secondary procedure) might provide longer cumulative stent patency and survival than using uncovered SEMSs in both procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transition metal ion dissolution due to hydrofluoric acid attack is a long‐standing issue in the Mn‐based spinel cathode materials of lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs). Numerous strategies have been proposed to address this issue, but only a fragmentary solution has been established. In this study, reported is a seaweed‐extracted multitalented material, namely, agar, for high‐performance LIBs comprising Mn‐based cathode materials at a practical loading density (23.1 mg cm−2 for LiMn2O4 and 10.9 mg cm−2 for LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4, respectively). As a surface modifier, 3‐glycidoxypropyl trimethoxysilane (GPTMS) is employed to enable the agar to have different phase separation behaviors during the nonsolvent‐induced phase separation process, thus eventually leading to the fabrication of an outstanding separator membrane that features a well‐defined porous structure, superior mechanical robustness, high ionic conductivity, and good thermal stability. The GPTMS‐modified agar separator membrane coupled with a pure agar binder to the LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4/graphite full cell leads to exceptional improvement in electrochemical performance outperforming binders and separator membrane in current commercial products even at 55 °C; this improvement is due to beneficial features such as Mn2+ chelation and PF5 stabilizing capabilities. This study is believed to provide insights into the potential energy applications of natural seaweeds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]