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Extremely hard-hit areas face frequent secondary geological hazards and difficulties in vegetation recovery, and subsequent effects have a significant impact on land cover changes. At present, there is a lack of research on the dynamic restoration of, and changes in, the ecological environment before and after an earthquake, and especially a lack of quantitative assessment of the impact of earthquakes on land cover at the microscopic scale of spatial distribution of landscape indices. Taking the Lushan earthquake in Sichuan Province as an example, this paper obtained land cover data from the study area between 2012 and 2020, and analyzes the spatial distribution characteristics and influencing factors of land cover change frequency by using a comprehensive land cover degree index, land cover transfer matrix and landscape ecology index. The results show that the types of cropland, forest, built-up and bare land have changed significantly in the study area. During the earthquake recovery period, the comprehensive land cover index of the study area showed an increasing trend, and land cover has been continuously improved under the effect of artificial measures and natural restoration. After 2013, patch density (PD) and landscape shape index (LSI) values decreased and aggregation index (AI) values increased for the vast majority of landscape land classes, indicating a benign ecological development across the region in the post-earthquake period. The research results are not only helpful to establish scientific ecological environmental management in the earthquake-stricken areas, but also helpful to formulate medium- and long-term ecological environmental monitoring and ecological restoration plans based on land cover change patterns.

Owing to the recent emergence of drug resistance to Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitors (BTK) in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) treatment, it is crucial to identify alternative therapeutic targets. Therefore, we aimed to identify therapeutic options for CLL besides BTK. We identified that HIF1A expression was higher in CLL patients than in controls, which may suggest good prognosis. We used a lentiviral knockdown of EGLN1 (encoding hypoxia-inducible factor prolyl hydroxylase [HIF-PH]) and found that the growth of MEC-1 cells slowed in the knockdown group. Treatment of CLL cell lines MEC-1 and HG3 with the HIF-PH inhibitor molidustat showed that molidustat could induce apoptosis in a concentration-dependent manner in CLL cells and had low cytotoxicity at this concentration. CXCR4, HIF1A, SLC2AI, and VEGF, the downstream molecules of the HIF pathway, were upregulated after molidustat treatment. Western blotting results indicated that molidustat increased HIF1A expression in CLL cell lines and cells from CLL patients, and sequencing/quantitative PCR analysis demonstrated that the ribosome biogenesis pathway was inhibited in MEC-1 cells after molidustat treatment. We further identified synergistic cytotoxicity of molidustat in combination with ibrutinib on the MEC-1 and HG3 cell lines at certain concentrations. Therefore, molidustat is a potential therapeutic option for CLL.

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal SDG11.3.1—the ratio of land consumption rate (LCR) to population growth rate (PGR) (LCRPGR)—aims to measure the efficiency and sustainability of urban land use. In recent years, SDG11.3.1 has been widely used in sustainable urban development research. However, previous studies have focused on the urban core area, while the sustainable development status of the urban peripheral areas (suburban and rural areas) that contribute significantly to the ecological environment has been neglected. To this end, relying on land use/cover change (LUCC) data obtained from high-resolution remote sensing satellite images rather than the single impervious surface data used in traditional research, according to the multiple functions of the land use type, the city is divided into three types of space: production, living, and ecological spaces. Research from the perspective of multi-scale coordination is of great significance for gaining a comprehensive understanding of the sustainable development status of urban space. Taking the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) in China as an example, in this paper, LUCC remote sensing data and comprehensive population and gross domestic product (GDP) data are used. From the multi-functional production-living-ecological space perspective, based on the original land use efficiency indicator, the ratio of land consumption rate (LCR) to economic growth rate (EGR) (LCREGR) is introduced and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is used to comprehensively evaluate the sustainable development level (SDL) of the space between 2000–2010 and 2010–2020 on the urban agglomeration and prefecture-level city scales. The results show that (1) the level of and changes in the spatial sustainable development are significantly different at different scales; (2) the division of the production-living-ecological spaces can guide cities to optimize different types of spaces in the future. This paper proposes a new evaluation method for spatial sustainable development, which provides a useful reference for any country or region in the world.

Due to its enhancement in the flame speed, ozone added in lean premixed syngas turbulent jet flame was investigated by the three-dimensional direct numerical simulation method in the near field of the flame. In the present study, numerical simulations were conducted in the lean premixed syngas turbulent jet flame configuration to explore the effects of ozone addition on freely-propagating turbulent flames. It was seen that turbulence began to significantly affect the flame surface to produce wrinkles in lean premixed gas flame with ozone added after 4D; ozone started to affect the composition field and temperature field after 8D; it accelerated the generation of intermediate products, OH and O radicals; and it will promote the production of CO2 in the near field range. Ozone will increase the flame surface area of the lean premixed syngas flame during the ignition period and can promote the ignition process and make the combustion occur earlier. The flame surface of the case with ozone added is more easily stretched by turbulence, and ozone can improve the stability of combustion. Ozone does not affect the effective radius of the flame curvature but will broaden the distribution of the curvature term because of the enhancement effect on the displacement speed of the flame surface.

Condensate oil is increasingly valued as the high-quality conventional hydrocarbon resources generally decline. The efficient development of condensate oil, however, has always been a world problem; massive condensate oil will be retained in reservoirs in case of improper exploitation process, resulting in a significant resource waste and economic loss. One of the problems closely related to enhancing condensate oil recovery is wax precipitation and deposition in wellbore. Therefore, it is vital to investigate the characterization methods for the wax precipitation and deposition behavior in wellbores. The current status of research on modelling characterization methods, experimental characterization methods and molecular dynamics representation of wax precipitation and deposition behavior is reviewed in this paper; the applicability and limitation of modeling and experiment studies for characterizing wax precipitation and deposition of condensate oil in the wellbore are critically summarized and discussed. Moreover, the molecular dynamics simulation technique characterizes wax precipitation and deposition behavior from the micro scale, which makes up for the deficiencies of macroscopic experiment, enriches the investigation of wax precipitation and deposition, and provides important guidance and reference value for the development of unconventional hydrocarbon exploitation processes.

Liquefaction evaluation on the sands induced by earthquake is of significance for engineers in seismic design. In this study, the random forest (RF) method is introduced and adopted to evaluate the seismic liquefaction potential of soils based on the shear wave velocity. The RF model was developed using the Andrus database as a training dataset comprising 225 sets of liquefaction performance and shear wave velocity measurements. Five training parameters are selected for RF model including seismic magnitude (Mw), peak horizontal ground surface acceleration (amax), stress-corrected shear wave velocity of soil (Vs1), sandy-layer buried depth (ds), and a new introduced parameter, stress ratio (k). In addition, the optimal hyperparameters for the random forest model are determined based on the minimum error rate for the out-of-bag dataset (ERROOB) such as the number of classification trees, maximum depth of trees, and maximum number of features. The established random forest model was validated using the Kayen database as testing dataset and compared with the Chinese code and the Andrus methods. The results indicated that the random forest method established based on the training dataset was credible. The random forest method gave a success rate for liquefied sites and even a total success rate for all cases higher than 80%, which is completely acceptable. By contrast, the Chinese code method and the Andrus methods gave a high success rate for liquefaction but very low for nonliquefaction which led to the increase of engineering cost. The developed RF model can provide references for engineers to evaluate liquefaction potential.

The current liquefaction evaluation methods mainly focus on the success rate for liquefied sites so that the evaluation result tends to be conservative at different seismic intensities. Therefore, a new formula about liquefaction evaluation by introducing logistic regression theory is proposed to solve the deficiencies of the current evaluation method, which is based on 225 sets of shear wave velocity data reported by Andrus. The reliability of the new formula is verified based on 336 sets of Vs data collected from the Kayen database. The performance of the new formula on liquefaction evaluation is compared with existing liquefaction evaluation methods including the Andrus method and the Chinese code method. Compared with the Andrus method and Chinese code method, the success rates of liquefaction evaluation given by the new formula under different seismic intensities are more balanced between liquefied site and nonliquefied site. The new formula at 50% probability of liquefaction is more adaptable for a wide range of seismic intensities, ground water table, and sand buried depth. In addition, the new formula at different probabilistic levels of liquefaction can be adopted based on the importance of the engineering site in risk analysis.

Starting from a reference and comprehensive chemical mechanism for alkali metal emissions (Glarborg and Marshall, 2005), combined with an hydrocarbon oxidation described with a skeleton mechanism (Kazakov and Frenklach, 1994), reduced and optimized chemical kinetics are derived. The objective is to provide a set of chemical schemes useful for three-dimensional (3D) numerical simulations of alkali metal emissions by pulverized solid-fuel combustion systems. An automated procedure relying on one-dimensional (1D) premixed flames is applied to obtain a combined reduced mechanism, whose performance is then evaluated in one-dimensional strained diffusion flames, micro-mixing based canonical problems and three-dimensional carrier-phase direct numerical simulation (DNS) of coal combustion. Predictions of the reduced mechanism on major sodium species, i.e., Na, NaOH, NaCl and Na2SO4 agree well with that of the detail reference scheme under all the considered conditions. A parametric study with 14 two-dimensional (2D) DNS cases is then performed to better understand the reactive flow properties and estimate the prediction capabilities of the reduced mechanism for various Na/Cl/S ratio in the volatiles. After pursuing the chemistry reduction, a global sodium mechanism with only 9 species and 8 reaction-steps is also discussed. The systematic comparison between the 3D DNS results obtained with the reference chemical scheme against those with the reduced ones confirm the validity of the reduction strategy. A reduction of up to 84% in computational cost is reached with the optimized global scheme, thus allowing for addressing real pulverized-coal combustion systems.

Broad-spectrum antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) kill bacteria indiscriminately, increasing the possibility of an ecological imbalance in the microbiota. To solve this problem, new types of AMPs, which kill pathogenic bacteria without breaking the micro-ecological balance of the body, were proposed. Here, we successfully designed a targeting AMP, S2, which is a fusion peptide composed of a species-specific targeting domain and broad-spectrum AMP domain. In the current study, S2 showed specific killing activity against Staphylococcus aureus, and almost no resistance induced compared to penicillin. Mechanism studies indicated that S2 killed S. aureus by destroying the bacterial membrane. Meanwhile, S2 possessed excellent salt-tolerance properties and biocompatibility. Importantly, S2 exhibited perfect treatment efficacy against an S. aureus subcutaneous infection model and remained nontoxic. In conclusion, this study provides a promising strategy for designing specific AMPs against growing bacterial infections.

Alternative splicing is involved in the pathogenesis of human diseases, including cancer. Here, we investigated the potential application of alternative splicing events (ASEs) and splicing factors (SFs) in the prognosis of adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC). Transcriptome data from 79 ACC cases were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas database, and percent spliced-in values of seven splicing types were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas SpliceSeq database. By the univariate Cox regression analysis, 1,839 survival-related ASEs were identified. Prognostic indices based on seven types of survival-related ASEs were calculated by multivariate Cox regression analysis. Survival curves and receiver operating characteristic curves were used to assess the diagnostic value of the prognostic model. Independent prognosis analysis identified several ASEs (e.g., THNSL2| 54469| ME) that could be used as biomarkers to predict the prognosis of patients with ACC accurately. By analyzing the co-expression correlation between SFs and ASEs, 188 highly correlated interactions were established. From the protein interaction network, we finally screened six hub SFs, including YBX1, SART1, PRCC, SNRPG, SNRPE, and SF3B4, whose expression levels were significantly related to the overall survival and prognosis of ACC. Our findings provide a reliable model for predicting the prognosis of ACC patients based on aberrant alternative splicing patterns.

Based on Landsat 8 remote sensing images, a combination of an unsupervised classification algorithm and artificial review was used to extract areas for Chinese offshore raft and cage aquaculture in 2018. The results of the extraction showed that China’s 2018 coastal zone raft aquaculture area comprised 194,110 ha, of which the province having the largest raft aquaculture area was Jiangsu (28.77 %), followed by Fujian (20.42 %) and Shandong (13.11 %). The cage aquaculture area covered 57,847,799 square meters, of which the provinces with the largest cage aquaculture area were Fujian (64.81 %), Guangdong (17.45 %), and Liaoning (5.63 %). In addition, by combining high-resolution remote sensing image visual interpretation and field investigation, the classification of 1200 sample points in four regions was determined, and the accuracy of the aquaculture area extraction was found to be 87.35 %. The extraction results can be used not only to evaluate China’s aquaculture production but also offer significant reference value for scientific planning related to sea use, ecological environmental protection, and marine disaster prevention and mitigation.

This study is dedicated to present a reliable numerical methodology based on Aspen Plus simulation to assess the performance of energy-saving for circulating cooling water waste heat and water resource recovery system. Heat-pump is used in the system to assist or replace cooling towers to recover the waste heat of low-grade industrial circulating cooling water and convert the waste heat into high grade heat, such as hot water at 90 °C or low-pressure saturated steam, to meet the specific cooling and heat requirements of industrial process. The design schemes are simulated using Aspen Plus V10.0 to explore the effects of critical operating parameters, such as working medium temperature and pressure (water, steam, refrigerant), energy efficiency, economic and reliability analysis. The operating conditions of each design scheme are adjusted and optimized to achieve the best energy efficiency and economy. Results proves that it is feasible to use absorption heat pump to recover the waste heat of circulating cooling water and water resource, which provides theoretical guide and reference for the utilization of low-grade waste heat using heat pump.

We explore a sandwich-type gold nanoparticle coated reduced graphene oxide (rGO-AuNP) as an effective nanotheranostic platform for the second near-infrared (NIR-II) window photoacoustic (PA) imaging-guided photothermal therapy (PTT) in ovarian cancer. The PEG was loaded onto the AuNPs surface to increase the stability of nanostructure. The forming rGO-AuNPs- PEG revealed very strong SERS signal, NIR-II PA signal and high photothermal efficiency against tumor upon 1,061 nm laser irradiation. The prominent performance was attributed to the plasmonic coupling of AuNPs, and the enhanced response of rGO and the plasmonic AuNP. Thus, our study demonstrates that the rGO-AuNP nanocomposite could promise to be a potential photothermal agent and pave the way for the diagnosis and therapy of ovarian cancer in the future.

Development of probiotic-ineffective antimicrobial peptides (AMPs)-based coatings that can kill pathogenic bacteria at low concentrations but are essentially harmless (even high concentrations) to probiotic organisms is a relatively new trend for therapy against GI tract infections. In this study, a series of triplet-tryptophan-pivot peptides with various hydrophilic amino acids was constructed. One AMP in particular, S7, showed bactericidal activity against Staphylococcus epidermidis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli and antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, yet was shown to be harmless to Lactobacillus rhamnosus, a key GI tract commensal. Furthermore, antibacterial mechanism assays, drug resistance assays, and mouse model tests suggested that S7 was useful in a clinical setting as it proved to significantly reduce bacterial load and cytokines (TNF-α, IL-6; P < 0.05) with a low probability of resistance via bacterial membrane physical destruction and formation of intracellular ROS. Combined, the results show that a triplet-tryptophan-pivot peptide containing a pair of serine residues was an excellent pathogen-selective candidate for medical devices and was potentially useful in food preservation, crop protection, and human health.

Cobalt-free Fe50Mn20Cr20Ni10 medium-entropy alloys were developed with the metastable engineering strategy at cryogenic temperature. The phase formation rules were calculated and the stacking fault energy was estimated at different temperatures. The uniaxial tensile tests were carried out at a cryogenic temperature and the mechanical properties were completely investigated, displaying excellent strain-hardening capacity. The deformation mechanisms were systematically explained by forest dislocation, twinning strengthening, and phase-transformation strengthening at cryogenic temperature. The precipitation of the second phase sacrifices some ductility, but still achieves excellent strong-plastic synergy.

The ecological and natural conditions in drought regions are harsh. Water shortages and land desertification are prominent features of these regions. The land cover in these regions has a large impact on global climate change, as well as on ecological protection and construction. To make rational and sustainable use of land resources, it is crucial to quickly grasp the accuracy and spatial distribution differences of multi-source remote sensing land cover products in drought regions. Therefore, taking northwestern China as the study area, in this study, the accuracy and spatial pattern distribution differences of three high-resolution (10 m) land cover products, namely, the Finer Resolution Observation and Monitoring of Global Land Cover (FROM-GLC), European Space Agency (ESA), and Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) products, were compared and analyzed via area composition similarity, spatial pattern consistency, and absolute accuracy assessment for three validation samples. The results show that the FROM-GLC product had the highest overall accuracy, ranging from 53.81% to 73.45%. The ESRI product had the lowest overall accuracy, ranging from 35.90% to 64.16%. The spatial consistencies of the three products were low, accounting for 46.26% of the total area, and they were mostly distributed in a single area (mainly bare land and forest). The low accuracy for grassland, bare land, shrubland, and other vegetation types was the primary reason for the large differences between the three products. Future research should focus on improving the mapping accuracy for these vegetation types. Accuracies for water and cropland of the three products were consistent, and, thus, the FROM-GLC, ESA, and ESRI products can be used as auxiliary data in research related to water resources and cropland resources in drought regions.

Aiming at the capture and conversion of multidirection wave energy, a multifreedom direct-drive wave-energy converter (WEC) based on a parallel mechanism is studied. The dynamic model of WEC was conducted based on force analysis and hydrodynamic theory, and the inverse kinematic solutions of each branch chain of the mechanism were obtained following the space vector method. Furthermore, the kinetics response of the linear generator branch chain was obtained. Moreover, the influence on the capture efficiency of the device’s geometric structure scale was investigated under different sea conditions. To evaluate the performance of the WEC, a linear generator model was simulated and analyzed by COMSOL Multiphysics. A laboratory prototype was manufactured. The test results indicated that the multifreedom device can achieve better power conversion performance than traditional single degree of freedom (DOF) devices. This study provides ideas for the design and development of large multi-DOF wave-energy-conversion devices.

Four kinds of 3D models of origami tubes are developed by employing the Miura origami pattern and then assemble into stacked folded structures which are used as the cores of sandwich beams. The quasi-static mechanical behaviors of stacked folded structures and dynamic responses of sandwich beams were theoretically and numerically investigated. The Possion's ratio, force-displacement, back-facet deflection and energy dissipation were considered. The results indicate that the original folding angle has significant effect on Poisson's ratio. The origami tubes with unique mechanical properties can be used as programmable materials to fit specified engineering demand. The arrangement of layers has little influence on the anti-blast performance of corresponding sandwich beams. Compared with the traditional sandwich beams, the influence of core relative density on deformation modes of sandwich beam with foldable core can be ignored. Keywords: Origami-inspired structure, Sandwich beam, Blast loading, Energy absorption

Abstract Background Dysregulation of transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) signaling and hypoxic microenvironment have respectively been reported to be involved in disease progression in malignancies of prostate. Emerging evidence indicates that downregulation of TGFBR2, a pivotal regulator of TGF-β signaling, may contribute to carcinogenesis and progression of prostate cancer (PCa). However, the biological function and regulatory mechanism of TGFBR2 in PCa remain poorly understood. In this study, we propose to investigate the crosstalk of hypoxia and TGF-β signaling and provide insight into the molecular mechanism underlying the regulatory pathways in PCa. Methods Prostate cancer cell lines were cultured in hypoxia or normoxia to evaluate the effect of hypoxia on TGFBR2 expression. Methylation specific polymerase chain reaction (MSP) and demethylation agents was used to evaluate the methylation regulation of TGFBR2 promoter. Besides, silencing of EZH2 via specific siRNAs or chemical inhibitor was used to validate the regulatory effect of EZH2 on TGFBR2. Moreover, we conducted PCR, western blot, and luciferase assays which studied the relationship of miR-93 and TGFBR2 in PCa cell lines and specimens. We also detected the impacts of hypoxia on EZH2 and miR-93, and further examined the tumorigenic functions of miR-93 on proliferation and epithelial-mesenchymal transition via a series of experiments. Results TGFBR2 expression was attenuated under hypoxia. Hypoxia-induced EZH2 promoted H3K27me3 which caused TGFBR2 promoter hypermethylation and contributed to its epigenetic silencing in PCa. Besides, miR-93 was significantly upregulated in PCa tissues and cell lines, and negatively correlated with the expression of TGFBR2. Ectopic expression of miR-93 promoted cell proliferation, migration and invasion in PCa, and its expression could also be induced by hypoxia. In addition, TGFBR2 was identified as a bona fide target of miR-93. Conclusions Our findings elucidate diverse hypoxia-regulated pathways including EZH2-mediated hypermethylation and miR-93-induced silencing contribute to attenuation of TGFBR2 expression and promote cancer progression in prostate cancer.

Abstract Background The current study determined the expression and clinical value of lncRNA AC010761.9 in human gastric adenocarcinoma (GA). Methods Real-time quantitative reverse transcription (qRT)-PCR was used to detect the level of lncRNA expression in 145 GA tissues and three GA cell lines, and the correlation between its level and clinicopathologic characteristics and potential corresponding mRNA of TNF receptor-associated factor 4 gene (TRAF4) was then evaluated. Results Elevated lncRNA AC010761.9 was detected in all 6 GA tissues by previous lncRNA expression profile microarray assay. LncRNA AC010761.9 was over-expressed in 99 of 145 GA tissues (68.3%) with an elevated fold change of up to 35.14 compared to matched paracancerous tissues (p