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This study examined the thermal reflective properties of composite inorganic coatings applied to various wall types. It evaluated the influence of these coatings on the thermal insulation and reflectivity of the walls. The findings indicate that coating application markedly enhances a wall’s thermal insulation capabilities and increases its heat flux reflection ratio. These results offer crucial theoretical backing and practical guidance for the future use of coating technologies in construction. By refining the coating formulations and application processes, the thermal insulation properties of walls can be further enhanced, thus making a significant contribution to building energy efficiency and environmental protection. Consequently, this research provides essential references and insights for advancing coating technology in the construction industry.

Adhesion G protein-coupled receptor G2 (ADGRG2) is an orphan adhesion G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR), which performs a tumor-promoting role in certain cancers; however, it has not been systematically investigated in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In the current study, we utilized multiple databases to analyze the expression and diagnostic and prognostic value of ADGRG2 in HCC and its correlation with immune infiltration and inflammatory factors. The function and upstream regulatory miRNA of ADGRG2 were validated through qPCR, Western blot, CCK8, wound healing, and dual luciferase assays. It turned out that ADGRG2 was significantly higher in HCC and had a poor survival rate, especially in AFP ≤ 400 ng/mL subgroups. Functional enrichment analysis suggested that ADGRG2 may be involved in cancer pathways and immune-related pathways. In vitro, siRNA-mediated ADGRG2 silencing could inhibit the proliferation and migration of Huh7 and HepG2 cells. There was a highly significant positive correlation between ADGRG2 and neutrophils. Moreover, NET-related genes were filtered and confirmed, such as ENO1 and S100A9. Meanwhile, the high expression of ADGRG2 was also accompanied by the highest number of inflammatory cytokines, chemokines, and chemokine receptors and good immunotherapy efficacy. Finally, AGDGR2 may be sensitive to two drugs (PIK-93 and NPK76-II-72-1) and can be targeted by miR-326. In conclusion, ADGRG2 may serve as a novel biomarker and drug target for HCC diagnosis, immunotherapy, and prognosis and was related to neutrophils and the inflammatory process of liver cancer development.

Both the nanoscale helium (He) bubble and grain boundaries (GBs) play important roles in the dynamic mechanical behavior of irradiated nanocrystalline materials. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we study the shock-induced deformation and spallation failure of bicrystal copper with a nanoscale He bubble. Two extreme loading directions (perpendicular or parallel to the GB plane) and various impact velocities (0.5–2.5 km/s) are considered. Our results reveal that the He bubble shows hindrance to the propagation of shock waves at lower impact velocities but will accelerate shock wave propagation at higher impact velocities due to the local compression wave generated by the collapse of the He bubble. The parallel loading direction is found to have a greater effect on He bubble deformation during shock compression. The He bubble will slightly reduce the spall strength of the material at lower impact velocities but has a limited effect on the spallation process, which is dominated by the evolution of the GB. At lower impact velocities, the mechanism of spall damage is dominated by the cleavage fracture along the GB plane for the perpendicular loading condition but dominated by the He bubble expansion and void growth for the parallel loading condition. At higher impact velocities, micro-spallation occurs for both loading conditions, and the effects of GBs and He bubbles can be ignored.

Graphite has been the major anode material of choice for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) for over 30 years. This study reports three-dimensional (3D) printing of comb-like 3D natural graphite (NG) electrodes for high-performance interdigitated 3D LIBs. Printable NG inks were developed and 3D NG electrodes with the thickness of 347.3 μm, 581.7 μm and 786.7 μm (corresponding areal mass loading: 16.3 mg cm−2, 24.4 mg cm−2 and 32.9 mg cm−2) were fabricated via a low temperature direct write 3D printing technology. The 3D-printed electrodes had tri-modally hierarchical porous microstructures with a high porosity of 54.84%. In addition, these thick electrodes showed excellent electrochemical performance with an impressive areal capacity of 13.68 mAh cm−2 @ 0.1C for electrodes with the thickness of 786.7 μm. With this type of 3D electrodes, the capacity fade over the increase of discharge rates was greatly reduced in comparison with tape casted electrodes with the same electrode thickness. This study demonstrates the potential of 3D-printed NG electrodes for high-performance LIBs.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has a high mortality rate worldwide, and there are still many problems in the early diagnosis, molecular targeted therapy, and immunotherapy. It is necessary to explore valuable diagnostic markers and new therapeutic targets in HCC. Zinc finger protein 385A (ZNF385A) and zinc finger protein 346 (ZNF346) represent a unique class of RNA-binding Cys2 His2 (C2H2) zinc finger proteins that are involved in the regulation of cell cycle and apoptosis, but little is known of their roles in HCC. Based on multiple databases and analysis tools, we explored the expression, clinical relation, prognostic value, possible biological function, and pathways of ZNF385A and ZNF346, and their relationship with immune infiltration. Our results revealed that ZNF385A and ZNF346 were highly expressed and were associated with poor prognosis in HCC. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection may lead to the overexpression of ZNF385A and ZNF346, which was accompanied by elevated apoptosis and chronic inflammation. Moreover, ZNF385A and ZNF346 were positively correlated with immune-suppressive cells, inflammatory cytokines, immune checkpoint genes, and poor immunotherapy efficacy. Finally, the knockdown of ZNF385A and ZNF346 was observed to negatively affect the proliferation and migration of HepG2 cells in vitro. In conclusion, ZNF385A and ZNF346 are promising candidate biomarkers for the diagnosis, prognosis, and response to immunotherapy in HCC, and this study may help to understand the tumor microenvironment (TME) of liver cancer, and to develop new therapeutic targets.

Inadequate potassium (K) availability is a common abiotic stress that limits the growth and quality of fruit trees. Few studies have investigated the physiological and molecular responses of grapes at different potassium levels. In this study, an integrated approach was developed for grapevines grown at four different potassium fertilization levels [0 (K0-CK), 150 (K150), 300 (K300), and 450 (K450) g/plant] in combination with metabolite measurements and transcript analysis. The results showed that different K levels affected the accumulation of sugars and anthocyanins in the fruit. At 78 days after bloom (DAB), the K150, K300, and K450 treatments increased soluble sugar content by 37.39%, 31.10% and 32.59%, respectively, and anthocyanin content by 49.78%, 24.10%, and 13.06%, respectively, compared to K0. Weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) of DEGs identified a network of 11 grapevines involved. During fruit development, potassium application promoted the accumulation of anthocyanins and sugars in fruit by regulating the up-regulation of GST, AT, UFGT and SPS, HT, PK gene expressions. These results suggest that potassium deficiency inhibits anthocyanin and sugar metabolism. In addition, it promotes the up-regulation of KUP expression, which is the main cause of K accumulation in fruits. Together, our data revealed the molecular mechanism in response to different K levels during fruit quality formation and provides the scientific foundation for the improvement of fruit quality by adding K fertilizer.

Two new benzoic acids, cladoslide A (1) and cladoslide B (2); one new β-carboline derivative, cladospomine (3); and one new pyridin-2(1H)-one, cladoslide C (4), were isolated from the fermentation cultures of the mangrove-derived fungus Cladosporium sp. HNWSW-1, along with the previously reported N-acetyl-β-oxotryptamine (5), (4S,5S,11R)-iso-cladospolide B (6), (4S,5S,11S)-iso-cladospolide B (7), and (4R,5S,11R)-iso-cladospolide B (8). Their structures were elucidated by spectroscopic analysis, Rh2(OCOCF3)4-induced ECD experiments, and Marfey’s method. Compound 1 showed cytotoxicity against the K562 cell line with IC50 values of 13.10 ± 0.08 μM. Moreover, compounds 1 and 5 exhibited inhibitory activity against α-glycosidase with IC50 values of 0.32 ± 0.01 mM and 0.17 ± 0.01 mM, respectively.

Although pulmonary fibrosis (PF) is considered a rare disease, the incidence thereof has increased steadily in recent years, while a safe and effective cure remains beyond reach. In this study, the potential of tocotrienol-rich fractions (TRF) and carotene to alleviate PF was explored. PF was induced in Sprague-Dawley rats via a single intratracheal bleomycin (BLM) (5 mg/kg) instillation. These rats were subsequently treated with TRF, carotene, pirfenidone (Pir) and nintedanib (Nin) for 28 days via gavage administration, whereafter histopathological performance, biochemical functions and molecular alterations were studied in the lung tissues. Our results showed that TRF, carotene, Nin and Pir all ameliorated PF by reducing inflammation and resisting oxidative stress to varying degrees. The related mechanisms involved the TGF-β1/Smad, PI3K/Akt and NF-κB signaling pathways. Ultimately, our findings revealed that, when combined with TRF, the therapeutic effects of Nin and Pir on PF were enhanced, indicating that TRF may, indeed, provide promising potential for use in combination therapy in the treatment of PF.

The dewatering of foundation pits with a suspended waterproof curtain causes different groundwater drawdowns inside and outside the pit, resulting in the drawdown difference between the inside and outside the pit. Maintaining a groundwater drawdown difference between the inside and outside of a foundation pit can eliminate the adverse effects of dewatering on the surrounding environment. According to previous studies on unsteady flow, an analytical solution of the groundwater drawdown with a suspended waterproof curtain under unsteady flow has been proposed. The analytical solution of unsteady flow and the formula of groundwater drawdown difference with a suspended waterproof curtain were validated by comparing pumping tests and finite-element method (FEM), in which a good agreement was observed. The magnitude of the drawdown difference generally represents the extent of surrounding groundwater affected by groundwater drawdown inside the pit. This paper also investigated the effects of sensitivity parameters on the drawdown difference for minimizing the effect of surrounding environment. During the process of dewatering with a suspended waterproof curtain, the groundwater drawdown (Sh) should not exceed the length of the waterproof curtain (L), and the optimal radius of foundation pit (Rw) and length of waterproof curtain (L) were found, i.e., Rw/H0 = 0.781 and L/H0 = 0.813 (H0 is 32 m). Beyond these values, the drawdown difference tends to be stable. The drawdown difference is also significantly affected by the dewatering time. When t < 48 h, the groundwater drawdown difference decreases rapidly; when t > 48 h, the groundwater drawdown difference stabilizes.

The use of molecular imaging technologies for brain imaging can not only play an important supporting role in disease diagnosis and treatment but can also be used to deeply study brain functions. Recently, with the support of reporter gene technology, optical imaging has achieved a breakthrough in brain function studies at the molecular level. Reporter gene technology based on traditional clinical imaging modalities is also expanding. By benefiting from the deeper imaging depths and wider imaging ranges now possible, these methods have led to breakthroughs in preclinical and clinical research. This article focuses on the applications of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), and positron emission tomography (PET) reporter gene technologies for use in brain imaging. The tracking of cell therapies and gene therapies is the most successful and widely used application of these techniques. Meanwhile, breakthroughs have been achieved in the research and development of reporter genes and their imaging probe pairs with respect to brain function research. This paper introduces the imaging principles and classifications of the reporter gene technologies of these imaging modalities, lists the relevant brain imaging applications, reviews their characteristics, and discusses the opportunities and challenges faced by clinical imaging modalities based on reporter gene technology. The conclusion is provided in the last section.

Starch–gluten interactions are affected by biopolymer type and processing. However, the differentiation mechanisms for gluten–starch interactions during heating have not been illuminated. The effects of glutens from two different wheat flours (a weak-gluten (Yangmai 22, Y22) and a medium-strong gluten (Yangmai 16, Y16)) on starch’s (S) structural and physicochemical properties during heating and their molecular interactions were investigated in this study. The results showed that gluten hindered the gelatinization and swelling of starch during heating when temperature was below 75 °C, due to competitive hydration and physical barriers of glutens, especially in Y22. Thus, over-heating caused the long-range molecular order and amylopectin branches of starch to be better preserved in the Y22-starch mixture (Y22-S) than in the Y16-starch mixture (Y16-S). Meanwhile, the starch’s degradation pattern during heating in turn influenced the polymerization of both glutens. During heating, residual amylopectin branching points restricted the aggregation and cross-linking of gluten proteins due to steric hindrance. More intense interaction between Y16 and starch during heating mitigated the steric hindrance in starch–gluten networks, which was due to more residual short-range ordered starch and hydrogen bonds involved in the formation of starch–gluten networks in Y16-S during heating.

The stable operation of the Francis turbine unit (FTU) determines the safety of the hydropower plant and the energy grid. The traditional FTU performance evaluation methods with a fixed threshold cannot avoid the influence of variable operating conditions. Meanwhile, anomaly samples and missing values in the low-quality on-site data distort the monitoring signals, which greatly affects the evaluation and prediction accuracy of the FTU. Therefore, an approach to the performance evaluation and prediction of the FTU considering low-quality data and variable operating conditions is proposed in this study. First, taking the variable operating conditions into consideration, a FTU on-site data-cleaning method based on DBSCAN is constructed to adaptively identify the anomaly samples. Second, the gate recurrent unit with decay mechanism (GRUD) and the Wasserstein generative adversarial network (WGAN) are combined to propose the GRUD–WGAN model for missing data imputation. Third, to reduce the impact of data randomness, the healthy-state probability model of the FTU is established based on the GPR. Fourth, the prediction model based on the temporal pattern attention–long short-term memory (TPA–LSTM) is constructed for accurate degradation trend forecasting. Ultimately, validity experiments were conducted with the on-site data set of a large FTU in production. The comparison experiments indicate that the proposed GRUD–WGAN has the highest accuracy at each data missing rate. In addition, since the cleaning and imputation improve the data quality, the TPA–LSTM-based performance indicator prediction model has great accuracy and generalization performance.

The diversity, community structure and vertical distribution characteristics of bacteria in the surface and subsurface soil and water samples of a closed landfill in Shanghai Jiading District were investigated to reveal the relationships between natural waste degradation degree and the succession of bacterial community composition. High-throughput sequencing of bacteria 16S rDNA genes was used to analyze the bacterial community structure and diversity. The results showed that the diversity of bacteria in the surface samples was higher than that in the deep samples. Proteobacteria was the dominant phylum in all the samples, and the percentage increased with depth. At the genus level, Thiobacillus, Pseudomonas, Aquabacterium, and Hydrogenophaga were the dominant genera in surface, medium, deep and ultra-deep soils, respectively. The Bray–Curtis dissimilarity of the soil bacterial communities in the same layer was small, indicating that the community composition of the samples in the same layer was similar. The RDA result showed that ammonium, nitrate, pH and C/N significantly influenced the community structure of soil bacteria. This is of great relevance to understand the effect of natural waste degradation on bacterial communities in closed landfills.

Promising wound dressings can achieve rapid soft-tissue filling while refactoring the biochemical and biophysical microenvironment to recruit endogenous cells, facilitating tissue healing, integration, and regeneration. In this study, a tissue biomolecule-responsive hydrogel matrix, employing natural silk fibroin (SF) as a functional biopolymer and haemoglobin (Hb) as a peroxidase-like biocatalyst, was fabricated through cascade enzymatic crosslinking. The hydrogels possessed mechanical tunability and displayed adjustable gelation times. A tyrosine unit on SF stabilised the structure of Hb during the cascade oxidation process; thus, the immobilized Hb in SF hydrogels exhibited higher biocatalytic efficiency than the free enzyme system, which provided a continuously antioxidative system. The regulation of the dual enzyme ratio endowed the hydrogels with favourable biocompatibility, biodegradability, and adhesion strength. These multifunctional hydrogels provided a three-dimensional porous extracellular matrix-like microenvironment for promoting cell adhesion and proliferation. A rat model with a full-thickness skin defect revealed accelerated wound regeneration via collagen deposition, re-epithelialisation and revascularisation. Enzyme-loaded hydrogels are an attractive and high-safety biofilling material with the potential for wound healing, tissue regeneration, and haemostasis.

Although ZnSe has been widely studied due to its attractive electronic and optoelectronic properties, limited data on its plastic deformations are available. Through molecular dynamics simulations, we have investigated the indentations on the (001), (110), and (111) planes of ZnSe nano films. Our results indicate that the elastic modulus, incipient plasticity, elastic recovery ratio, and the structural evolutions during the indenting process of ZnSe nano films show obvious anisotropy. To analyze the correlation of structural evolution and mechanical responses, the atomic displacement vectors, atomic arrangements, and the dislocations of the indented samples are analyzed. Our simulations revealed that the plastic deformations of the indented ZnSe nano films are dominated by the nucleation and propagation of 1/2 type dislocations, and the symmetrically distributed prismatic loops emitted during the indenting process are closely related with the mechanical properties. By studying the evolutions of microstructures, the formation process of the dislocations, as well as the formation mechanisms of the emitted prismatic loops under the indented crystalline planes are discussed. The results presented in this work not only provide an answer for the questions about indentation responses of ZnSe nano films, but also offer insight into its plastic deformation mechanisms.

In this study, the effects of Cu nanoparticle inclusion on the dynamic responses of single crystal Al during shockwave loading and subsequent spallation processes have been explored by molecular dynamics simulations. At specific impact velocities, the ideal single crystal Al will not produce dislocation and stacking fault structure during shock compression, while Cu inclusion in an Al–Cu nanocomposite will lead to the formation of a regular stacking fault structure. The significant difference of a shock-induced microstructure makes the spall strength of the Al–Cu nanocomposite lower than that of ideal single crystal Al at these specific impact velocities. The analysis of the damage evolution process shows that when piston velocity up ≤ 2.0 km/s, due to the dense defects and high potential energy at the interface between inclusions and matrix, voids will nucleate preferentially at the inclusion interface, and then grow along the interface at a rate of five times faster than other voids in the Al matrix. When up ≥ 2.5 km/s, the Al matrix will shock melt or unloading melt, and micro-spallation occurs; Cu inclusions have no effect on spallation strength, but when Cu inclusions and the Al matrix are not fully diffused, the voids tend to grow and coalescence along the inclusion interface to form a large void.

In recent years, the involvement of synthetic strongly labeled data, weakly labeled data, and unlabeled data has drawn much research attention in semi-supervised acoustic event detection (SAED). The classic self-training method carries out predictions for unlabeled data and then selects predictions with high probabilities as pseudo-labels for retraining. Such models have shown its effectiveness in SAED. However, probabilities are poorly calibrated confidence estimates, and samples with low probabilities are ignored. Hence, we introduce a confidence-based semi-supervised Acoustic event detection (C-SAED) framework. The C-SAED method learns confidence deliberately and retrains all data distinctly by applying confidence as weights. Additionally, we apply a power pooling function whose coefficient can be trained automatically and use weakly labeled data more efficiently. The experimental results demonstrate that the generated confidence is proportional to the accuracy of the predictions. Our C-SAED framework achieves a relative error rate reduction of 34% in contrast to the baseline model.

A Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) based attention model has been used in code-switching speech recognition (CSSR). However, due to the sequential computation constraint of RNN, there are stronger short-range dependencies and weaker long-range dependencies, which makes it hard to immediately switch languages in CSSR. Firstly, to deal with this problem, we introduce the CTC-Transformer, relying entirely on a self-attention mechanism to draw global dependencies and adopting connectionist temporal classification (CTC) as an auxiliary task for better convergence. Secondly, we proposed two multi-task learning recipes, where a language identification (LID) auxiliary task is learned in addition to the CTC-Transformer automatic speech recognition (ASR) task. Thirdly, we study a decoding strategy to combine the LID into an ASR task. Experiments on the SEAME corpus demonstrate the effects of the proposed methods, achieving a mixed error rate (MER) of 30.95%. It obtains up to 19.35% relative MER reduction compared to the baseline RNN-based CTC-Attention system, and 8.86% relative MER reduction compared to the baseline CTC-Transformer system.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have attracted great interest in biomedical fields. However, the potential toxicity and poor dispersion of CNTs have greatly limited its application. In this work, a mussel-inspired method combined with the “thiol-Michael” click reaction was used to modify the surface of CNT and improve its properties. Firstly, a CNT was treated with dopamine, and then alginate grafted with L-cysteine was anchored onto the surface of CNT via click reaction, which realized the long-time dispersion of CNT in water. Furthermore, the in vitro test also demonstrated that the alginate may improve the biocompatibility of CNT, and thus may broaden the application of CNT in the biomedical field.

Four picrotoxane-type sesquiterpenes, dendroterpene A–D (1–4), together with four known compounds (5–8), were isolated from the stems of Dendrobium nobile Lindl. Their structures were elucidated by spectroscopic analysis, X-ray diffraction analysis, analysis of the ECD data according to the Klyne's lactone sector rule, and quantum ECD calculation. Compounds 1 and 2 are two new picrotoxane-type sesquiterpenes with a new carbon skeleton containing a formamide group, which may be derived from the previously reported dendrobiumane B skeleton by the C(9)-C(11) carbon bond cleavage. Compounds 3, 5, 6, and 8 exhibited inhibitory activity against α-glycosidase. Compounds 5 and 6 were cytotoxic against SGC-7901, K562, A549, BEL-7402, and Hela cell lines.

Well-designed composite photocatalysts are of increasing concern due to their enhanced catalytic performance compared to a single component. Here, a photocatalyst composed of PbMoO4 (PMO) and poly-benzothiadiazole (BBT, a D-A-conjugated polymer) was successfully synthesized by BBT polymerization on the surface of the PMO. The resultant BBT-PMO with a heterojunction structure represented an enhanced ability to reduce highly toxic heavy metal Cr(VI) from water under visible light irradiation. The 16.7% BBT-PMO(N, nanoscale) showed the best performance. The corresponding kobs over the 16.7% BBT-PMO(N) was 26-fold (or 53-fold) of that over the pure BBT (or pristine PMO(N)), and this activity was maintained after four cycles. The reasons for its good performance are discussed in detail based on the experimental results. Moreover, the synthesis of the BBT in situ of the PMO also altered the morphology of the BBT component, increasing the specific surface area of the BBT-PMO(N) and endowing it with the ability to adsorb Cr(VI). Additionally, the photocatalyst was also environmentally friendly as such a wrapped structure could sustain the high stability of the PMO without dissociation. This work provides a good strategy for efficient photocatalytic Cr(VI) reduction by designing an organic–inorganic hybrid system with high redox capacity.

Panels using solar power require high reliability, and the residual stress in the solar panel has an important effect on its reliability and lifetime. The finite element method was adopted to simulate the impacts of the rectangular solar panel encapsulation process parameters, such as the elastic modulus, the thickness of adhesive, and the curing temperature on the residual stress in the solar cell module. The results show that the residual stress in the solar cell module increases linearly with the increase in these three factors. The residual strain is consistent with that of the stress. The generation mechanism and distribution evolution of stress are discussed in detail. Both the thickness and the elastic modulus of the silicone rubber have significant impact on the residual stress. However, the influence of the curing temperature is less observable.

HKT1 and SOS1 are two key Na+ transporters that modulate salt tolerance in plants. Although much is known about the respective functions of HKT1 and SOS1 under salt conditions, few studies have examined the effects of HKT1 and SOS1 mutations on the expression of other important Na+ and K+ transporter genes. This study investigated the physiological parameters and expression profiles of AtHKT1;1, AtSOS1, AtHAK5, AtAKT1, AtSKOR, AtNHX1, and AtAVP1 in wild-type (WT) and athkt1;1 and atsos1 mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana under 25 mM NaCl. We found that AtSOS1 mutation induced a significant decrease in transcripts of AtHKT1;1 (by 56–62% at 6–24 h), AtSKOR (by 36–78% at 6–24 h), and AtAKT1 (by 31–53% at 6–24 h) in the roots compared with WT. This led to an increase in Na+ accumulation in the roots, a decrease in K+ uptake and transportation, and finally resulted in suppression of plant growth. AtHKT1;1 loss induced a 39–76% (6–24 h) decrease and a 27–32% (6–24 h) increase in transcripts of AtSKOR and AtHAK5, respectively, in the roots compared with WT. At the same time, 25 mM NaCl decreased the net selective transport capacity for K+ over Na+ by 92% in the athkt1;1 roots compared with the WT roots. Consequently, Na+ was loaded into the xylem and delivered to the shoots, whereas K+ transport was restricted. The results indicate that AtHKT1;1 and AtSOS1 not only mediate Na+ transport but also control ion uptake and the spatial distribution of Na+ and K+ by cooperatively regulating the expression levels of relevant Na+ and K+ transporter genes, ultimately regulating plant growth under salt stress.

Experiments and numerical simulations demonstrate that when a silver nanowire is placed on a dielectric multilayer, but not the commonly used bare glass slide, the effective refractive index of the propagating surface plasmons along the silver nanowire can be controlled. Furthermore, by increasing the thickness of the top dielectric layer, longer wavelength light can also propagate along a very thin silver nanowire. In the experiment, the diameter of the silver nanowire could be as thin as 70 nm, with the incident wavelength as long as 640 nm. The principle of this control is analysed from the existence of a photonic band gap and the Bloch surface wave with this dielectric multilayer substrate.

Male factor infertility accounts for approximately 50 percent of infertile couples. The male factor-related causes of intracytoplasmic sperm injection failure include the absence of sperm, immotile sperm, immature sperm, abnormally structured sperm, and sperm with nuclear damage. Our knockout and knock-in mice models demonstrated that SEPTIN12 (SEPT12) is vital for the formation of sperm morphological characteristics during spermiogenesis. In the clinical aspect, mutated SEPT12 in men results in oligozoospermia or teratozoospermia or both. Sperm with mutated SEPT12 revealed abnormal head and tail structures, decreased chromosomal condensation, and nuclear damage. Furthermore, several nuclear or nuclear membrane-related proteins have been identified as SEPT12 interactors through the yeast 2-hybrid system, including NDC1 transmembrane nucleoporin (NDC1). NDC1 is a major nuclear pore protein, and is critical for nuclear pore complex assembly and nuclear morphology maintenance in mammalian cells. Mutated NDC1 cause gametogenesis defects and skeletal malformations in mice, which were detected spontaneously in the A/J strain. In this study, we characterized the functional effects of SEPT12–NDC1 complexes during mammalian spermiogenesis. In mature human spermatozoa, SEPT12 and NDC1 are majorly colocalized in the centrosome regions; however, NDC1 is only slightly co-expressed with SEPT12 at the annulus of the sperm tail. In addition, SEPT12 interacts with NDC1 in the male germ cell line through coimmunoprecipitation. During murine spermiogenesis, we observed that NDC1 was located at the nuclear membrane of spermatids and at the necks of mature spermatozoa. In male germ cell lines, NDC1 overexpression restricted the localization of SEPT12 to the nucleus and repressed the filament formation of SEPT12. In mice sperm with mutated SEPT12, NDC1 dispersed around the manchette region of the sperm head and annulus, compared with concentrating at the sperm neck of wild-type sperm. These results indicate that SEPT12–NDC1 complexes are involved in mammalian spermiogenesis.

IgD is considered to be a recently-evolved Ig and a puzzling molecule, being previously found in all vertebrate taxa, except for birds. Although IgD likely plays an important role in vertebrate immune responses, the function of IgD in Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) is virtually unknown. In the present study, a membrane form of IgD (mIgD) heavy chains were cloned from the GIFT strain of Nile tilapia (designated On-mIgD). The On-mIgD heavy chain’s cDNA is composed of 3347 bp with a 31 bp of 5′-UTR, 3015 bp open reading frame (ORF) and 301 bp 3′-UTR, encoding a polypeptide of 1004 amino acids (GenBank accession no: KF530821). Phylogenetic analysis revealed that On-mIgD heavy chains showed the highest similarity to Siniperca chuatsi. Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis showed that On-mIgD expression occurred predominately in head kidney, thymus, spleen, and kidney. After Streptococcus agalactiae infection, transcripts of On-mIgD increased and reached its peak at 48 h in the head kidney and thymus, and 72 h in the spleen, respectively. Taken together, these results collectively indicated that IgD could possibly have a key role to play in the immune response when bacterial infections in Nile tilapia.