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The article presents a novel soft contrastive mathematical framework for sequential recommendation, addressing the limitations of traditional models that rely on human-designed positive and negative samples. Topics include the introduction of adversarial contrastive loss for improved robustness, the exploration of perturbation strategies at the sequence and item levels and extensive experiments conducted on five real-world datasets to demonstrate the model's effectiveness and potential.

Objectives: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a nutritional and metabolic disease with a high prevalence today. Artemisia capillaris has anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and other effects. However, the mechanism of A. capillaris in treating NAFLD is still poorly understood. Methods: This study explored the mechanism of A. capillaris in the treatment of NAFLD through network pharmacology and molecular docking, and verified the results through in vivo experiments using a high-fat diet-induced mouse model and in vitro experiments using an oleic acid-induced HepG2 cell model. Key findings: Aqueous extract of A. capillaris (AEAC) can reduce blood lipids, reduce liver lipid accumulation and liver inflammation in NAFLD mice, and improve NAFLD. Network pharmacology analysis revealed that 51 drug ingredients in A. capillaris correspond to 370 targets that act on NAFLD. GEO data mining obtained 93 liver differentially expressed genes related to NAFLD. In the UHPLC-MS detection results, 36 components were characterized and molecular docked with JNK. Verified in vitro and in vivo, the results show that JNK and the phosphorylation levels of IL-6, IL-1β, c-Jun, c-Fos, and CCL2 are key targets and pathways. Conclusions: This study confirmed that AEAC reduces lipid accumulation and inflammation in the liver of NAFLD mice by inhibiting the JNK/AP-1 pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been applied to assess the microstructure of the kidney. However, it is not clear whether fMRI could be used in the field of kidney injury in patients with Antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis (AAV). Methods: This study included 20 patients with AAV. Diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) and blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) scanning of the kidneys were performed in AAV patients and healthy controls. The mean kurtosis (MK), mean diffusivity (MD), and fractional anisotropy (FA) parameters of DKI, the R2* parameter of BOLD, and clinical data were further analyzed. Results: In AAV patients, the cortex exhibited lower MD but higher R2* values compared to the healthy controls. Medullary MK values were elevated in AAV patients. Renal medullary MK values showed a positive correlation with serum creatinine levels and negative correlations with hemoglobin levels and estimated glomerular filtration rate. To assess renal injury in AAV patients, AUC values for MK, MD, FA, and R2* in the cortex were 0.66, 0.67, 0.57, and 0.55, respectively, and those in the medulla were 0.81, 0.77, 0.61, and 0.53, respectively. Conclusions: Significant differences in DKI and BOLD MRI parameters were observed between AAV patients with kidney injuries and the healthy controls. The medullary MK value in DKI may be a noninvasive marker for assessing the severity of kidney injury in AAV patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the detection of a long X-ray burst from the ultracompact binary 4U 1850–087. The type I X-ray burst was observed on MJD 60171.65 by the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image and Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER). We analyze the NICER data between MJD 60095.19 and 60177.43, which includes the observation covering parts of the long X-ray burst decay phase, i.e., 0.15–3.8 hr after the trigger. The persistent spectra are well described by a multicolor disk blackbody, with an inner temperature of ∼0.5 keV, a thermally Comptonized continuum, an asymptotic power-law photon index of Γ ∼ 2.2, and an electron temperature of kT e ∼ 20–30 keV. The mean persistent flux was around 3.8 × 10−10 erg cm−2 s−1, corresponding to a local mass accretion rate of ∼ 1 % m ̇ Edd . Part of the time-resolved burst spectra show a clear deviation from the blackbody model, which can be improved by considering the enhanced persistent emission due to the Poynting–Robertson drag or the reflected disk emission illuminated by the burst. From the burst flux during the cooling phase, we estimate the burst duration, τ ≈ 0.78 hr, the burst fluence, E b ≈ 4.1 × 1041 erg, and the ignition column depth, y ign ≈ 3.5 × 1010 g cm−2. These long X-ray burst parameters from 4U 1850–087 suggest a regime of unstable burning of a thick, pure helium layer slowly accreted from a helium donor star. Moreover, we identify 7 σ significant ∼1 keV emission lines in the burst spectra, which may originate from the surrounding accretion disk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sorghum is not only an important bio-energy crop but also a vital raw material for brewing. Exogenous copper affects the growth and metabolism of crops in specific ways. This study identified 8475 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) by high-throughput transcriptome sequencing in the sorghum cultivar 'Jinnuoliang 2' after 24 h of treatment with 10 mM CuSO. Using GO analysis, 476 genes were functionally annotated, which were mainly related to catabolism and biosynthetic processes. Additionally, 90 pathways were annotated by employing the KEGG analysis. Among them, glutathione metabolism and peroxisome were induced, while photosynthesis, photosynthesis-antenna protein, and carbon sequestration of photosynthetic organisms were inhibited. Of the DEGs, 399 were identified to encode transcription factors belonging to 49 families. This study also identified a WRKY transcription factor-encoding gene SbWRKY24 from the transcriptome data. For studying its function, the relative expression levels of SbWRKY24 in roots and leaves post-treatment with different growth hormones and exposure to a variety of abiotic stresses were detected by RT-qPCR. SbWRKY24 showed treatment-and tissue-specific expression patterns, indicating its unique role in stress tolerance. This study lays a theoretical basis for the functional exploration of SbWRKY24 , elucidating the mechanism of copper resistance, and elaborating on the stress responses in sorghum. It also guides the exploration of the molecular mechanism of copper ions inducing intracellular signal transduction pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foveation has two methods: single image mode and dual images mode. For the former, SOC transmits the compressed image consists of different low‐resolution blocks, some of which have very large differences after up‐scaling may cause flickering risks when displayed. For the latter, SOC processes the compressed periphery and foveated images sequentially, therefor DDIC uses large GRAM to cache these bitstreams, which will also introduce huge latency. In order to solve these problems existing in two modes, this paper presents a scheme to process the image or compressed bitstreams with coding unit rearrangement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renal fibrosis is a typical pathological change in chronic kidney disease (CKD). Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is the predominant stage. Activation of macroautophagy/autophagy plays a crucial role in the process of EMT. Lycopene (LYC) is a highly antioxidant carotenoid with pharmacological effects such as anti-inflammation, anti-apoptosis and mediation of autophagy. In this study, we demonstrated the specific mechanism of LYC in activating mitophagy and improving renal fibrosis. The enrichment analysis results of GO and KEGG showed that LYC had high enrichment values with autophagy. In this study, we showed that LYC alleviated aristolochic acid I (AAI)-induced intracellular expression of PINK1, TGFB/TGF-β, p-SMAD2, p-SMAD3, and PRKN/Parkin, recruited expression of MAP1LC3/LC3-II and SQSTM1/p62, decreased mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP), and ameliorated renal fibrosis in mice. When we simultaneously intervened NRK52E cells using bafilomycin A1 (Baf-A1), AAI, and LYC, intracellular MAP1LC3-II and SQSTM1 expression was significantly increased. A similar result was seen in renal tissue and cells when treated in vitro and in vivo with CQ, AAI, and LYC, and the inhibitory effect of LYC on the AAI-activated SMAD2-SMAD3 signaling pathway was attenuated. Molecular docking simulation experiments showed that LYC stably bound to the AKT active site. After intervention of cells with AAI and GSK-690693, the expression of PINK1, PRKN, MAP1LC3-II, BECN1, p-SMAD2 and p-SMAD3 was increased, and the expression of SQSTM1 was decreased. However, SC79 inhibited autophagy and reversed the inhibitory effect of LYC on EMT. The results showed that LYC could inhibit the AKT signaling pathway to activate mitophagy and reduce renal fibrosis. Abbreviation: AA: aristolochic acid; ACTA2/α-SMA: actin alpha 2, smooth muscle, aorta; ACTB: actin beta; AKT/protein kinase B: thymoma viral proto-oncogene; BAF-A1: bafilomycin A1; BECN1: beclin 1, autophagy related; CCN2/CTGF: cellular communication network factor 2; CDH1/E-Cadherin: cadherin 1; CKD: chronic kidney disease; COL1: collagen, type I; COL3: collagen, type III; CQ: chloroquine; ECM: extracellular matrix; EMT: epithelial-mesenchymal transition; FN1: fibronectin 1; LYC: lycopene; MAP1LC3/LC3: microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3; MMP: mitochondrial membrane potential; MTOR: mechanistic target of rapamycin kinase ; PI3K: phosphoinositide 3-kinase; PINK1: PTEN induced putative kinase 1; PRKN/Parkin: parkin RBR E3 ubiquitin protein ligase; PPI: protein-protein interaction; SMAD2: SMAD family member 2; SMAD3: SMAD family member 3; SQSTM1/p62: sequestosome 1; TGFB/TGFβ: transforming growth factor, beta; VIM: vimentin [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]