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Piglet birth weight is associated with preweaning survival, and its related traits have been included in the breeding program. Thus, understanding its genetic basis is essential. This study identified four birth weight‐associated genomic regions on chromosomes 2, 4, 5, and 7 through genome‐wide association study analysis in 7286 pigs from three different pure breeds using the FarmCPU model. The genetic and phenotypic variance explained by the four candidate regions is 8.42% and 1.85%, respectively. Twenty‐eight candidate genes were detected, of which APPL2, TGFBI, MACROH2A1, and SEC22B have been reported to affect body growth or development. In addition, 21 H3K4me3‐enriched peaks overlapped with the birth weight‐associated genomic regions were identified by integrating the genome‐wide association study results with our previous ChIP‐seq and RNA‐seq data generated in the pig placenta, a fetal organ relevant to birth weight, and three of the regulatory regions influence TGFBI, MACROH2A1, and SEC22B expression. This study provides new insights into understanding the mechanisms for birth weight. Further investigating the variants in the regulatory regions would help identify the functional variants for birth weight in pigs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Portfolio optimization is an important financial task that has received widespread attention in the field of artificial intelligence. In this paper, a novel deep portfolio optimization (DPO) framework was proposed, combining deep learning and reinforcement learning with modern portfolio theory. DPO not only has the advantages of machine learning methods in investment decision-making, but also retains the essence of modern portfolio theory in portfolio optimization. Additionaly, it was crucial to simultaneously consider the time series and complex asset correlations of financial market information. Therefore, in order to improve DPO performance, features of assets information were extracted and fused. In addition, a novel risk-cost reward function was proposed, which realized optimal portfolio decision-making considering transaction cost and risk factors through reinforcement learning. Our results showed the superiority and generalization of the DPO framework for portfolio optimization tasks. Experiments conducted on two real-world datasets validated that DPO achieved the highest accumulative portfolio value compared to other strategies, demonstrating strong profitability. Its Sharpe ratio and maximum drawdown also performed excellently, indicating good economic benefits and achieving a trade-off between portfolio returns and risk. Additionally, the extraction and fusion of financial information features can significantly improve the applicability and effectiveness of DPO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rare-earth oxysulfides are a class of functional ceramic materials with excellent physico-chemical properties and rich functionality. In this study, La2O2S powders were prepared from La2S3 and La2O3 powders at 1000 °C by pressureless sintering. La2O2S compacts were synthesized from La2S3 and La2O3 powders at 800–1600 °C by spark plasma sintering. The influences of sintering temperature and time on the preparation of La2O2S were studied. XRD results indicated that La2O2S ceramics were synthesized successfully and that the lattice constants of La2O2S were close to the theoretical values. SEM showed that the microstructure of La2O2S compacts was homogeneous. The specific heat of La2O2S mainly came from lattice contribution, and its Debye temperature was 237 K. The UV–visible absorption spectra showed different absorption levels in the 240–300 nm range. Raman spectroscopy revealed distinct peaks at different temperatures, indicating changes in the covalence band. The relative density of La2O2S ceramics was 92% and lower than theoretical values. Hardness of the synthesized La2O2S was greater than that of Gd2O2S ceramics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complex-oxide materials exhibit physical properties that involve the interplay of charge and spin degrees of freedom. However, an ambipolar oxide that is able to exhibit both electron-doped and hole-doped ferromagnetism in the same material has proved elusive. Here we report ambipolar ferromagnetism in LaMnO3, with electron-hole asymmetry of the ferromagnetic order. Starting from an undoped atomically thin LaMnO3 film, we electrostatically dope the material with electrons or holes according to the polarity of a voltage applied across an ionic liquid gate. Magnetotransport characterization reveals that an increase of either electron-doping or hole-doping induced ferromagnetic order in this antiferromagnetic compound, and leads to an insulator-to-metal transition with colossal magnetoresistance showing electron-hole asymmetry. These findings are supported by density functional theory calculations, showing that strengthening of the inter-plane ferromagnetic exchange interaction is the origin of the ambipolar ferromagnetism. The result raises the prospect of exploiting ambipolar magnetic functionality in strongly correlated electron systems.