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Governments worldwide have announced stimulus packages to remobilize the labor force after COVID-19 and therefore to cope with the COVID-19-related recession. However, it is still unclear how to facilitate large-scale work resumption. This paper aims to clarify the issue by analyzing the large-scale prefecture-level dataset of human mobility trajectory information for 320 million workers and about 500,000 policy documents in China. We model work resumption as a collective behavioral change due to configurations of capacity, motivation, and policy instruments by using qualitative comparative analysis. We find that the effectiveness of post-COVID-19 recovery stimulus varied across China depending on the fiscal and administrative capacity and the policy motivation of the prefecture. Subnational fiscal and procurement policies were more effective for the wholesale and retail sector and the hotel and catering sector, whereas the manufacturing and business services sectors required more effort regarding employment policies. Due to limited prefectural capacity and wavering policy motivation, the simultaneous adoption of fiscal, employment, and procurement policy interventions endangered post-COVID-19 work resumption. We highlight the necessity of tailored postcrisis recovery strategies based on local fiscal and administrative capacity and the sectoral structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The preservation of the left colic artery (LCA) during rectal cancer resection remains a topic of controversy, and there is a notable absence of robust evidence regarding the outcomes associated with LCA preservation. And the advantages of robotic-assisted laparoscopy (RAL) surgery in rectal resection remain uncertain. The objective of this study was to assess the influence of LCA preservation surgery and RAL surgery on intraoperative and postoperative complications of rectal cancer resection. Patients who underwent laparoscopic (LSC) or RAL with or without LCA preservation resection for rectal cancer between April 2020 and May 2023 were retrospectively assessed. The patients were categorized into two groups: low ligation (LL) which with preservation of LCA and high ligation (HL) which without preservation of LCA. A one-to-one propensity score-matched analysis was performed to decrease confounding. The primary outcome was operative findings, operative morbidity, and postoperative genitourinary function. A total of 612 patients were eligible for this study, and propensity score matching yielded 139 patients in each group. The blood loss of the LL group was significantly less than that of the HL group (54.42 ± 12.99 mL vs. 65.71 ± 7.37 mL, p

Abstract Notch signaling activation drives an endothelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EndMT) critical for heart development, although evidence suggests that the reprogramming of endothelial cell metabolism can regulate endothelial function independent of canonical cell signaling. Herein, we investigated the crosstalk between Notch signaling and metabolic reprogramming in the EndMT process. Biochemically, we find that the NOTCH1 intracellular domain (NICD1) localizes to endothelial cell mitochondria, where it interacts with and activates the complex to enhance mitochondrial metabolism. Targeting NICD1 to mitochondria induces more EndMT compared with wild-type NICD1, and small molecule activation of PDH during pregnancy improves the phenotype in a mouse model of congenital heart defect. A NOTCH1 mutation observed in non-syndromic tetralogy of Fallot patients decreases NICD1 mitochondrial localization and subsequent PDH activity in heart tissues. Altogether, our findings demonstrate NICD1 enrichment in mitochondria of the developing mouse heart, which induces EndMT by activating PDH and subsequently improving mitochondrial metabolism.

Abstract Background Heat stress (HS) commonly occurring in summer has gradually become a factor threatening the reproductive performance of male dairy goats by reducing their fecundity. Despite the melatonin is applied to relieve HS, it is still unclear whether melatonin protects against reproductive damage induced by HS in dairy goats and how it works. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the role of melatonin in alleviating HS-induced spermatogenesis dysfunction in male dairy goats and further explore its mechanism. Results HS impaired spermatogenesis, sperm formation in the testes, and sperm maturation in the epididymis of dairy goats, resulting in decreased sperm quality. Melatonin rescued the decrease of sperm quality induced by HS via decreasing inflammatory and oxidative stress levels in testicular tissue and enhancing intercellular barrier function within the testes. Amplicon-based microbiota analysis revealed that despite gut microbiota differences between melatonin-treated dairy goats and NC dairy goats to some extent, melatonin administration tends to return the gut microbiota of male dairy goats under HS to the levels of natural control dairy goats. To explore whether the protective role of melatonin in sperm quality is mediated by regulating gut microbiota, fecal microbiota of HS dairy goats with or without melatonin treatment were transferred to HS mice, respectively. We found HS mice that had received fecal bacteria of HS dairy goats experienced serious testicular injury and dyszoospermia, while this phenomenon was ameliorated in HS mice that had received fecal bacteria of dairy goats treated with melatonin, indicating melatonin alleviates HS-induced spermatogenic damage in a microbiota dependent manner. We further found that the testicular tissue of both HS dairy goats and mice transplanted with HS dairy goat feces produced large amounts of arachidonic acid (AA)-related metabolites, which were closely associated with semen quality. Consistently, supplementation with AA has been shown to elevate the levels of inflammation and oxidative stress in the testicular tissue of mice, disrupting intercellular connections and ultimately leading to spermatogenic disorders. Conclusion This study has revealed that melatonin can effectively alleviate spermatogenic disorders in dairy goats caused by HS. This beneficial effect was primarily achieved through the modulation of gut microbiota, which subsequently inhibited the excessive synthesis of AA in testicular tissue. These discoveries are of great significance for preventing or improving the decline in male livestock reproductive performance caused by HS, enhancing the reproductive efficiency of elite male breeds, and ultimately improving the production efficiency of animal husbandry. Video Abstract

Abstract Tropical cyclones have a big impact on flood risk, and understanding how their activity interacts with population exposure under climate change is critical. Here we investigate spatiotemporal changes in flood risk using numerical models together with historical observations and future projections of tropical cyclone tracks. We find that tropical cyclone-related flood risk shifts from the Mekong Delta to the eastern lower Mekong Basin, driven by the interaction between tropical cyclones and population exposure. Historically, extreme precipitation from tropical cyclones increased flood risk in about 14% and decreased in 7% of the basin. Future tropical cyclones may increase flood risk in about 7% and reduce in nearly 18% of the basin. Moreover, population exposure growth has historically increased flood risk in 3% of the basin and is projected to result in a 1% increase. These findings highlight the complex interactions of tropical cyclone hazards and socioeconomic factors influencing flood risk.

Abstract Sepsis is a clinical syndrome caused by infection, leading to organ dysfunction due to a dysregulated host response. In recent years, its high mortality rate has made it a significant cause of death and disability worldwide. The pathophysiological process of sepsis is related to the body’s dysregulated response to infection, with microcirculatory changes serving as early warning signals that guide clinical treatment. The Peripheral Perfusion Index (PI), as an indicator of peripheral microcirculation, can effectively evaluate patient prognosis. This study aims to develop two new prediction models using PI and other common clinical indicators to assess the mortality risk of sepsis patients during hospitalization and within 28 days post-ICU admission. This retrospective study analyzed data from sepsis patients treated in the Intensive Care Unit of Peking Union Medical College Hospital between December 2019 and June 2023, ultimately including 645 patients. LASSO regression and logistic regression analyses were used to select predictive factors from 35 clinical indicators, and two clinical prediction models were constructed to predict in-hospital mortality and 28-day mortality. The models’ performance was then evaluated using ROC curve, calibration curve, and decision curve analyses. The two prediction models performed excellently in distinguishing patient mortality risk. The AUC for the in-hospital mortality prediction model was 0.82 in the training set and 0.73 in the validation set; for the 28-day mortality prediction model, the AUC was 0.79 in the training set and 0.73 in the validation set. The calibration curves closely aligned with the ideal line, indicating consistency between predicted and actual outcomes. Decision curve analysis also demonstrated high net benefits for the clinical utility of both models. The study shows that these two prediction models not only perform excellently statistically but also hold high practical value in clinical applications. The models can help physicians accurately assess the mortality risk of sepsis patients, providing a scientific basis for personalized treatment.

Abstract Due to the influence of construction quality, engineering geology and hydrological environment, defects such as dehollowing and insufficient compaction can occur in tunnels. Aiming at the problems of complex detection model, poor real-time performance and low accuracy of the current tunnel lining defect detection methods, the study proposes a lightweight defect detection algorithm of tunnel lining based on knowledge distillation. Firstly, a high-precision teacher model based on yolov5s was constructed by constructing a C3CSFM module that combines residual structure and attention mechanism, a MDFPN network structure with multi-scale feature fusion and a reweighted RWNMS re-screening mechanism. Secondly, in the distillation process, the feature and output dimension results are fused to improve the detection accuracy, and the mask feature relationship is learned in the space and channel dimension to improve the real-time detection. Tests on the tunnel lining radar defect image dataset showed that the number of parameters of the improved model was reduced from 16.03 MB to 3.20 MB, a reduction of 80%, and the average accuracy was improved from 83.4 to 86.5%, an increase of 3.1%. On the basis of maintaining the structure and detection performance of the model, the lightweight degree of the model is greatly improved, and the high-precision and real-time detection of tunnel lining defects is realized.

Abstract Due to the polycrystalline cubic boron nitride tool has the characteristics of high hardness, brittleness, etc., it is easy to break the tool or produce defects in the laser cutting process, which affects the cutting performance of the tool. Traditional defect detection methods can no longer meet the needs of modern manufacturing. Aiming at the problems of low accuracy and poor real-time detection of surface defects on laser-cutting polycrystalline cubic boron nitride tools, this study proposes the surface defect detection model of laser cutting polycrystalline cubic boron nitride tool based on asymptotic fusion strategy, which fills the gap in the field. In the backbone network, the C3SE module is constructed by modeling the correlation between feature channels to improve the model’s focus on key features in order to enhance the feature extraction and processing capability of the backbone network; In the neck network, adaptive spatial fusion operation and direct interaction of non-adjacent layers are utilized for multi-scale information fusion, and the asymptotic feature pyramid network for object detection (AFPN) is used instead of the FPN structure to improve the detection performance; In the head network, a soft suppression mechanism is introduced to reduce the overlapping frame score using a decay function, thus improving the detection accuracy. The experimental results based on the self-constructed laser-cutting polycrystalline cubic boron nitride tool surface defects dataset show that the average accuracy of the AFFS-YOLO model is improved by 5.6% compared with that of the YOLOv5 model, reaching 86.1%, and the detection effect is better than that of the original network and other classical target detection networks.

Abstract Neurons often grow highly branched and cell-type specific dendrite morphologies to receive and integrate information, which is the basis of precise neural circuit formation. Previous studies have identified numerous mechanisms that promote dendrite branching. In contrast, it is much less understood how this process is negatively regulated. Here we show that EAT-17/EVI5 acts together with the dynein adaptor protein BICD-1 and the motor protein dynein in C. elegans epidermal cells to restrict branching of PVD sensory dendrites. Loss-of-function mutants of these genes cause both ectopic branching and accumulation of the dendrite branching ligand SAX-7/L1CAM on epidermal plasma membranes. Mutants of genes regulating endo-lysosomal trafficking, including rab-5/RAB5 and dyn-1/DNM1, show similar defects. Biochemical characterization, genetic analysis, and imaging results support that EAT-17 and BICD-1 directly interact with each other and function in the endocytic degradation pathway to remove ectopically localized dendrite branching ligands to restrict abnormal branching.

Abstract The 2023/24 El Niño ranks as the second strongest event in the twenty-first century thus far. The event exhibited a two-step warming tendency and two warming centers, which could not be explained by the heat content buildup. Here, by conducting observational analysis and model experiments, we show that the record-breaking pantropical warming in 2023 mitigated this El Niño and confined the warming to the eastern basin, and that a series of westerly wind bursts induced another warming center in the central equatorial Pacific toward the end of 2023. Yet the effects of pantropical forcing and wind bursts coincidentally offset each other, leaving the heat content buildup appearing as the primary cause of the 2023/24 El Niño. Our results not only confirm the essential role of equatorial ocean heat recharge for El Niño development, but also demonstrate the necessity of accounting for multi-scale interactions from a global perspective to predict El Niño.

In this paper, the content of active ingredients and antioxidant capacity of different parts of Hoxylon and Red Willow Cistanche deserticola, from Hotan Cele County, Xinjiang, were evaluated. The results showed that the active substances, including total phenols, total flavonoids, total sugars, and verbascoside of Red Willow Cistanche deserticola, were the highest in the lower part of the plant, and decreased in the middle and upper parts. In terms of total phenols and total flavonoids, the contents of the lower part of Red Willow Cistanche deserticola (38.35 mg GAE/g DW, 35.61 mg RE/g DW) were 2.47 and 10.95 times compared to the lower part of Hoxylon Cistanche deserticola, respectively. The upper part of Hoxylon Cistanche deserticola showed the highest content of echinacoside with 92.93 mg/g DW. And the total triterpene content of the lower part-especially that of Hoxylon Cistanche deserticola was significantly higher than the upper and middle part (P