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The photoactive metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are good candidates for photocatalysts, but the quick electron-hole pairs recombination has greatly restricted the photocatalytic ability of MOFs. To improve the photoactivity of MOFs, MOFs-based composite materials have been extensively studied. Here, we successfully integrated MoS2 quantum dots (QDs) with UiO-66-NH2 for the first time under hydrothermal conditions. The as-prepared MoS2 QDs/UiO-66-NH2 (MS-U) had good visible light response ability (absorption edge at 445 nm), and charge separation and transfer ability, which lays the foundation for the photocatalytic Cr(VI) reduction. Photocatalytic studies revealed that MoS2 QDs-5/UiO-66-NH2 (MS-U-5) had superior Cr(VI) reduction activity than pure MoS2 QDs and UiO-66-NH2. MS-U-5 could remove 98% Cr(VI) at pH= 2 with visible light irradiation for 20 min, which is the fastest visible light driven Cr(VI) reduction rate among the reported MOFs-based composite photocatalysts without the presence of any cocatalysts or scavengers as far as we know. Importantly, MS-U-5 could be reused at least three times. In the end, the possible electron transfer path and mechanism of Cr(VI) reduction was also investigated.

【Objective】Chlorpyrifos is widely used and has good stability, and its residue has been detected in the environmental medium in many areas. In order to monitor the residues of chlorpyrifos in soil, water and other environmental substrates, and to ensure the quality and safety of environment, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to detect chlorpyrifos rapidly in the environment.【Method】Based on the principle of specific binding of antigen and antibody, an indirect competitive ELISA was established to detect chlorpyrifos in the environment. The test conditions were optimized, and the sensitivity, cross-reaction and effect of organic solvents on the antibody were studied.【Result】Under the optimal conditions, the logarithm of chlorpyrifos concentration was linearly related to the absorbance value, the regression equationwas B/B0=-24.87 logC + 97.55 and the correlation coefficient (R2) was over 0.99. The IC50 of chlorpyrifos was 81.65 ng/mL, and the detection limit IC20 was 5.1 μg/L. The method was validated by selecting appropriate pretreatment methods according to different substrates. The recovery rates of chlorpyrifos ranged from 70% to 115% and the relative standard deviation was less than 11%. The relative standard deviation of precision was less than 10%. The accuracy of the method was verified by comparison with the gas chromatography. The prepared reagents shall not be stored for more than 6 months. The detection effects were not affected by reagents at 4 ℃ and -20 ℃ within 180 days.【Conclusion】With certain specificity, stability and precision, the established indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay can be used for rapid and flexible detection of chlorpyrifos residues in different types of soil and water samples.

【Objective】The study was conducted to establish a fast method for the detection of formaldehyde content in vegetables, identify the residue level and understand the dietary exposure risk of formaldehyde in vegetables.【Method】The single factor experiment was used to optimize the key experimental conditions, and then a method acetylacetone spectrophotometry for the detection of formaldehyde contents in vegetables was established. The formaldehyde contents of 383 vegetable samples were analyzed and the exposure risk of formaldehyde in vegetables was assessed with point evaluation method.【Result】The detection limit and the quantitation limit for the determination of formaldehyde in vegetables with acetylacetone spectrophotometry were 0.45 and 1.5 mg/kg, respectively; At the added levels of 1.5, 7.5 and 15 mg/kg, the recovery rates ranged from 86.33% to 92.4% with the relative standard deviations were of 2.23%-4.21%. The detection rates of formaldehyde in different vegetables were 5.00%-72.73% with the total detection rate of 26.37%, and the average detection values of different vegetables were 0.47-1.67 mg/kg. The dietary exposure levels of formaldehyde contents in different vegetables to the general population ranged from 0.0019 to 0.068 mg/kg (bw/d) with the MOS ranging from 14.1 to 289.8, and the dietary exposure levels of formaldehyde contents in vegetables to different populations were 0.0060-0.15 mg/kg (bw/d) with the MOS ranging from 10.1 to 33.3. All the evaluated values of MOS were greater than 1.【Conclusion】The method of acetylacetone spectrophotometry is simple, accurate and sensitive, which is suitable for the fast determination of formaldehyde in vegetables. The dietary intake risk of formaldehyde residues in vegetables is low and within the acceptable range.

Abstract Background To explore the value of preoperative prognostic immune and nutritional index (PINI) in predicting postoperative complications and long-term outcomes in patients with stage I–III colorectal cancer (CRC). Methods Restricted cubic splines were used to assess the relationship between PINI and survival in patients with CRC. The Kaplan–Meier method and log-rank test were used to plot the survival curves. The Cox proportional hazards model was used to evaluate independent prognostic predictors in patients with CRC. A logistic regression analysis was performed to identify independent predictors of postoperative complications. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) logistic regression algorithm was used for feature screening. Results An evident positive dose–response relationship between PINI and survival in patients with CRC was identified. Compared with patients with a high PINI, those with a low PINI had worse disease-free survival (DFS) (47.9% vs. 66.9%, p

Abstract Background Both TP53 mutation and MYC amplification indicate poor outcomes in breast cancer (BC), but the clinical values of concurrent TP53 and MYC alterations have not been well‐characterized. Methods A total of 494 BC patients diagnosed at Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital (GDPH) were retrospectively analyzed. Genomic alterations were determined using next‐generation sequencing. Survival analysis was applied to assess the effects of genetic alterations on relapse‐free survival. The prognosis was verified based on 1405 patients from METABRIC cohort. Additionally, we used logistic regression to identify the factors associated with pathological complete response (pCR) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Results In GDPH cohort, patients with TP53/MYC co‐alteration exhibited higher grade and stage, more positive HER2 status and higher Ki67 levels, but less luminal A subtypes. They also had more mutations in genes involved in ERBB and TGF‐β signaling pathways, as well as exclusive FANCG/CDKN2B/QKI copy number amplifications and SUFU/HIST3H3/ERCC4/JUN/BCR mutations. Concurrent TP53 and MYC alterations independently increased hazards of relapse (HR, 5.425; 95% CI: 2.019–14.579; p

Hyperuricemia is an independent risk factor for the progression of chronic kidney disease. High levels of uric acid can lead to a series of pathological conditions, such as gout, urinary stones, inflammation, and uric acid nephropathy. There is a close relationship between uric acid and the NLRP3 inflammasome. NLRP3 inflammasome activation can cause cell damage and even death through endoplasmic reticulum stress, lysosome destruction, mitochondrial dysfunction, and the interaction between the Golgi apparatus and extracellular vesicles. In addition, the NLRP3 inflammasome acts as a molecular platform, triggering the activation of caspase-1 and the lysis of IL-1β, IL-18 and Gasdermin D (GSDMD) through different molecular mechanisms. Cleaved NT-GSDMD forms pores in the cell membrane and triggers pyrophosphorylation, thereby inducing cell death and releasing many intracellular proinflammatory molecules. In recent years, studies have found that hyperuricemia or uric acid crystals can activate NLRP3 inflammasomes, and the activation of NLRP3 inflammasomes plays an important role in kidney disease. This article reviews the possible pathophysiological mechanisms by which uric acid activates inflammasomes and induces kidney damage at the cellular and molecular levels.

Falls are considered one of the most ubiquitous problems leading to morbidity and disability in the elderly. This paper presents a vision-based approach toward the care and rehabilitation of the elderly by examining the important body symmetry features in falls and activities of daily living (ADL). The proposed method carries out human skeleton estimation and detection on image datasets for feature extraction to predict falls and to analyze gait motion. The extracted skeletal information is further evaluated and analyzed for the fall risk factors in order to predict a fall event. Four critical risk factors are found to be highly correlated to falls, including 2D motion (gait speed), gait pose, 3D trunk angle or body orientation, and body shape (width-to-height ratio). Different variants of deep architectures, including 1D Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Network, Gated Recurrent Units (GRU) model, and attention-based mechanism, are investigated with several fusion techniques to predict the fall based on human body balance study. A given test gait sequence will be classified into one of the three phases: non-fall, pre-impact fall, and fall. With the attention-based GRU architecture, an accuracy of 96.2% can be achieved for predicting a falling event.

Abstract Background DBA/1 mice have a higher susceptibility to generalized audiogenic seizures (AGSz) and seizure-induced respiratory arrest (S-IRA) than C57/BL6 mice. The gene expression profile might be potentially related to this difference. This study aimed to investigate the susceptibility difference in AGSz and S-IRA between DBA/1 and C57BL/6 mice by profiling long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) and mRNA expression. Methods We compared lncRNAs and mRNAs from the brainstem of the two strains with Arraystar Mouse lncRNA Microarray V3.0 (Arraystar, Rockville, MD). Gene Ontology (GO) and pathway analyses were performed to determine the potentially related biological functions and pathways based on differentially expressed mRNAs. qRT–PCR was carried out to validate the results. Results A total of 897 lncRNAs and 438 mRNAs were differentially expressed (fold change ≥2, P

In this study, orthogonal experiments were carried out under different processing parameters to tackle the cracking issue of Hastelloy X (HX) fabricated by laser powder bed fusion (LPBF). The metallurgical defects, molten pool characteristics, cracking and residual stresses under various parameters were studied. The results show that when the volume energy density (VED) is controlled within the range of 83.33–200.00 J/mm3, the as-built samples have a greater density and a smoother surface. Cracking propagation occurs mostly along high-angle grain boundaries, and Mo6C carbides develop at cracks and between dendrites, which are liquation cracking characteristics. Cracks can be effectively suppressed by altering the morphology of the molten pool and minimizing residual stress. The cracking density of as-built HX can be lowered by 93% after optimizing the process settings so that the produced samples with nearly full density and minimal surface roughness can be obtained.

Abstract Limited studies have been conducted to identify and validate multiple sclerosis (MS) genetic loci associated with disability progression. We aimed to identify MS genetic loci associated with worsening of disability over time, and to develop and validate ensemble genetic learning model(s) to identify people with MS (PwMS) at risk of future worsening. We examined associations of 208 previously established MS genetic loci with the risk of worsening of disability; we learned ensemble genetic decision rules and validated the predictions in an external dataset. We found 7 genetic loci (rs7731626: HR 0.92, P = 2.4 × 10–5; rs12211604: HR 1.16, P = 3.2 × 10–7; rs55858457: HR 0.93, P = 3.7 × 10–7; rs10271373: HR 0.90, P = 1.1 × 10–7; rs11256593: HR 1.13, P = 5.1 × 10–57; rs12588969: HR = 1.10, P = 2.1 × 10–10; rs1465697: HR 1.09, P = 1.7 × 10–128) associated with risk worsening of disability; most of which were located near or tagged to 13 genomic regions enriched in peptide hormones and steroids biosynthesis pathways by positional and eQTL mapping. The derived ensembles produced a set of genetic decision rules that can be translated to provide additional prognostic values to existing clinical predictions, with the additional benefit of incorporating relevant genetic information into clinical decision making for PwMS. The present study extends our knowledge of MS progression genetics and provides the basis of future studies regarding the functional significance of the identified loci.

Receptor-interacting serine/threonine-protein kinase 1 (RIPK1) is an important regulator of cell death pathways during embryogenesis and in infection/inflammation. Here authors show that tyrosine phosphorylation of RIPK1 by upstream kinases limits systemic inflammation and regulates haematopoietic homeostasis.

Radiation therapy in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma can cause chronic progressive carotid artery injury, but acute ischemic stroke caused by carotid artery high-load thrombosis rarely occurs in patients with tandem lesions. We performed carotid mechanical thrombectomy combined with angioplasty in a 57-year-old man who received radiotherapy for nasopharyngeal carcinoma more than 10 years before presentation. He presented with acute-onset left hemiplegia, confusion, and mixed aphasia. Head CT revealed a hyper-dense sign in the right middle cerebral artery M1 region, and angiography disclosed occlusion in the right internal carotid artery C5 region with extremely severe stenosis in the middle C1 region. Intra-arterial mechanical thrombectomy with carotid stenting was performed, and re-canalization was achieved. Re-examination angiography after 3 months revealed worsening of ulcerative plaques and pseudoaneurysms in the left common carotid artery. Consequently, we performed carotid stenting over the left common carotid artery, and the patient recovered well postoperatively. Our experience suggests that early detection of large blood vessel damage and intervention are necessary to prevent large-vessel ischemic stroke in patients who received radiotherapy for nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

Laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) processed components usually exhibit reduced fatigue performance owing to unavoidable defects at multiple scales, especially when the loading direction is parallel to the building direction. In this study, hot isostatic pressing (HIP) was applied to the L-PBFed Al-4.74Mg-0.70Sc-0.32Zr (wt.%) alloy to enhance the fatigue properties with a focus on the defect (porosities and inclusions) effects, compared with the direct-aged samples. The results demonstrated that HIP induced inconspicuous microstructural effects, but it healed the porosities and promoted oxidation. Therefore, the fatigue crack initiation transformed the oxide-associated porosity into an oxide, with a significant fatigue strength improvement.

In order to study the effect of different film packaging on storage quality and physiological characteristics of pitaya fruit, with 'Zihonglong' pitaya as the experimental material, three film packaging bags of polyethylene fresh-keeping bag (PE), polyvinyl chloride fresh-keeping bag (PVC), and polyethylene microporous fresh-keeping bag (WK) were used to process and package the fruit. Then they were stored at (6±1) °C. The results illustrated that compared with the control (CK), the different film packaging could inhibit the increase of pitaya fruit decay rate and weight loss rate, and delay the appearance of respiration peak of pitaya fruit, inhibit the decrease of the total soluble solids (TSS), titratable acid (TA), soluble protein and soluble sugar, vitamin C (VC) and glutathione (GSH), reduce the accumulation of malondialdehyde (MDA), increase superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and peroxidase (POD) activities. The decay rates of pitaya fruit in groups CK, PVC, WK, PE were 44.44%, 33.33%, 22.22% and 11.11%, respectively after storage for 30 d. PE film packaging had the best preservation effect, which could effectively delay the deterioration of pitaya after harvest and was more conducive to the maintenance of fruit quality.

Abstract Here, the transient surface charge distribution of a basin‐type insulator is investigated under thermal–electric coupled fields. Horizontally installed ±200 kV direct current gas‐insulated transmission lines (DC‐GIL) are employed, and a 3D geometric model is applied. An improved method is introduced in the transient simulation under coupled fields, which involves simplifying geometric model, decoupling calculation, applying weak form partial differential equation, and simplifying ion transport equation. The influence of volume and surface electric conductivity on the transient surface charge and electric field distribution is discussed. With increasing volume conductivity, the transient charge accumulation is accelerated due to the promotion of conduction through the insulator. With increasing volume conductivity, the polarity of the charge on convex surface changes from negative to positive, while it changes from positive to negative with increasing surface conductivity. This is the consequence of the transition in dominant conduction mechanism. Non‐monotonic variation of charge density is observed attributing to the variation transient field distribution. It can be concluded that the influence of volume and surface conductivity should be focused on when evaluating the insulation characteristics of DC‐GIL insulators, and the thermal gradient should be considered in dealing with the long‐term operating insulators.

Abstract In the field of preference-based evolutionary multiobjective optimization, optimization algorithms are required to search for the Pareto optimal solutions preferred by the decision maker (DM). The reference point is a type of techniques that effectively describe the preferences of DM. So far, the reference point is either static or interactive with the evolutionary process. However, the existing reference point techniques do not cover all application scenarios. A novel case, i.e., the reference point changes over time due to the environment change, has not been considered. This paper focuses on the multiobjective optimization problems with dynamic preferences of the DM. First, we propose a change model of the reference point to simulate the change of the preference by the DM over time. Then, a dynamic preference-based multiobjective evolutionary algorithm framework with a clonal selection algorithm (ĝa-NSCSA) and a genetic algorithm (ĝa-NSGA-II) is designed to solve such kind of optimization problems. In addition, in terms of practical applications, the experiments on the portfolio optimization problems with the dynamic reference point model are tested. Experimental results on the benchmark problems and the practical applications show that ĝa-NSCSA exhibits better performance among the compared optimization algorithms.

Abstract Surface charge accumulation is an important issue when dealing with the insulation property of direct‐current gas‐insulated transmission lines with insulators. An improved method is introduced to calculate the surface charge distribution of insulators based on three‐dimensional (3D) geometry models with high solution accuracy and computing efficiency. More than 90% of the computing memory and time are reduced by applying weak form partial differential equation (PDE) to the ion transport equation compared to adding artificial diffusion term. The computing memory and time are further reduced by 70% when removing the diffusion term from the ion transport equation, whereas the accuracy remains unchanged. Thus, the method of combining the modification of ion transport equation and the application of weak form PDE is suggested in calculating the surface charge of 3D geometry models. Finally, this method is applied in calculating the surface charge distribution of a ±200‐kV basin‐type insulator under thermal‐electric coupled fields and a ±500‐kV tri‐post insulator. Results show satisfying accuracy and efficiency. It is concluded that the proposed method can be applied in analysing the charge accumulation and ion transport behaviour based on 3D models under various operating conditions.

The mechanical and combustion properties of metal-nested composite hybrid rocket fuel grains composed of spiral aluminium (Al) frameworks fabricated using three-dimensional (3D) printing with an embedded paraffin-based fuel were investigated. The mechanical properties of the resulting grains were evaluated by compression tests. In addition, the combustion characteristics of the Al composite grains were examined in a lab-scale hybrid rocket engine with gaseous oxygen as the oxidizer at an initial mass flow rate of 17.9 g/s. Pure paraffin-based (PP) and acrylonitrile–butadiene-styrene (ABS) composite grains were also tested as baseline fuels for comparison. The Al-A composite grain exhibited superior mechanical and combustion properties, with Young modulus, yield stress, and regression rate increased by 757.1%, 381.3% and 52.5% compared with the PP grain. The Young modulus and combustion efficiency were also further improved, by 51.0% and 14.9%, respectively, by including perforations in the spiral blades. These improvements are discussed in detail herein based on experimental data together with numerical simulations. Emission spectra of the engine plumes were also acquired and used to qualitatively analyze the combustion characteristics of the Al blades.

In situ monitoring during the selective laser melting (SLM) process is a promising solution to mitigate defects and improve the quality of as-built parts. However, the existing monitoring platform lacks collaborative control of the process monitoring components, and as a result, it cannot realize a real-time and accurate signal acquisition at a close distance and multiple angles during the whole printing process. In this paper, driven by multiple motors, an off-axis monitoring platform is constructed that enables movement in conjunction with the scraper and laser beam. A fuzzy control-based velocity optimization is proposed to avoid the shock effect on the imaging quality of the CMOS camera and the collision of the scraper and laser. The error between the current location and target location of the molten pool is utilized as the input of the fuzzy controller. Then, the parameters of the PI controller of the stepping motor are dynamically adjusted. ADAMS and SIMULINK co-simulation are conducted to verify the feasibility of the fuzzy algorithm. Finally, the experiment of collaborative motion and the responses of each module are conducted. The results show that with the proposed collaborative platform, the response speed of the system is improved by about 49.6%, and the initial speed of the motor is decreased by about 12.6%, thus avoiding excessive acceleration of the motor. The response time of each motor is ahead of schedule by about 31.8%, which meets the requirements of motion response for SLM process monitoring.

Quasicrystal (QC)-reinforced metal matrix composites fabricated by rapid solidification present promising new opportunities to develop high-strength alloys with multiple functions. In this research, specially designed Al–Fe–Cr samples possessing an Al–Fe–Cr quasicrystal-reinforced Al matrix structure were manufactured using a laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) process. Based on the optimized process parameters of laser scanning speed and hatch distance, an almost dense (99.8%) free-crack sample was obtained with the multiscaled heterogenous structure induced by the nonuniform rapid solidification in a single molten pool. The results show that nanosized Al–Fe–Cr quasicrystalline particles of different sizes are heterogeneously distributed in the α-Al columnar grain structure. In detail, the coarse flower-like and spherical QC particles can be observed at the molten pool boundary, and the fine spherical Al–Fe–Cr QC is located inside the laser fusion zone. The orientation relationship between the Al matrix and the icosahedral Al–Fe–Cr QC is as follows: Al [ ​− ​112 ] ∥ i5 with a semicoherency feature. The novel designed LPBF-processed Al–Fe–Cr alloy exhibits high mechanical strength due to the ultrafine multireinforced microstructure-induced Orowan strengthening effect. For instance, the ultimate tensile strength, yield strength and elongation of the sample processed with LPBF are 530.80 ​± ​3.19 ​MPa, 395.06 ​± ​6.44 ​MPa, and 4.16% ​± ​0.38%, respectively. The fractographic analysis shows that the fracture mechanism presents a combination of ductile‒brittle fracture.

Screening and identifying the active compounds in foods are important for the development and utilization of functional foods. In this study, the anti-enteritis activity of ethanol extract from Camellia oleifera oil (PECS) was quickly evaluated using a Smurf Drosophila model and the metabolomics approach, combined with molecular docking techniques, were performed to rapidly screen and identify compounds with potential anti-enteritis activity in PECS. PECS showed good anti-enteritis activity and inhibited the activity of 5-lipoxygenase (LOX), cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2) and inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS). In particular, wighteone and p-octopamine were newly identified in C. oleifera oil and were proven to have good anti-enteritis activity. The inhibitory activity of kaempferitrin (IC50 = 0.365 mmol L−1) was higher than that of wighteone (IC50 = 0.424 mmol L−1) and p-octopamine (IC50 = 0.402 mmol L−1). Of note, the IC50 value of salazosulfapyridine was 0.810 mmol L−1. Inhibition of LOX activity is likely one of the anti-enteritis mechanisms of PECS. These new findings lay the foundation for further investigations into the underlying mechanisms of anti-enteritis activity in C. oleifera oil.

Voids behind tunnel linings are critical factors affecting tunnels’ safety and durability. For automatic, rapid, and accurate detection of void defects behind tunnel linings, this paper proposes an intelligent recognition method of void detection based on deep learning (DL) and percussion method. Extensive indoor percussion experiments were first conducted to obtain a total of 77,925 percussion signals. Afterward, the mel-frequency cepstrum coefficients (MFCCs) are utilized for signal feature extraction, based on which a convolutional neural network (CNN) is developed for automatic void defect diagnosis. The void automated diagnosis tests are subsequently performed, and the impact of three key factors on the recognition results is investigated. The results show that the proposed CNN can accurately identify voids ranging from 0.10 to 0.30 m, with an average accuracy of 94.96% and an F1 score of 72.29%. The exploration of the slab thickness indicates that the proposed method is capable of detecting voids with an average accuracy of 94.37% and an F1 score of 74.55%, with the slab thicknesses ranging from 0.10 to 0.30 m. Furthermore, the boundary effects of concrete slabs are analyzed. Finally, an on-site validation is carried out, and the good agreements between the developed method and ultrasonic detection method indicate that the CNN-aided percussion method is feasible in practical tunnel lining void inspection tasks.

The grouting quality of the grouting sleeve connector is crucial for ensuring the stability of prefabricated building components. In practical engineering, the grouting sleeve is often arranged with multiple sleeves, and there is no feasible nondestructive testing method for testing the complex arrangement of the sleeve grouting joints in the embedded state. Building upon the feasibility of nondestructive detection of single socket grouting connectors, this study discusses the feasibility of defect detection and the severity of defects. Simulation results are used to investigate the choice of the best excitation signal. For different simulated damage cases, it is proven that the selected damage index can be very sensitive, and both the location and the extent of the damage can be detected successfully. The results demonstrate that with the section injury rate ranging from 10% to 40%, the reverse focus peak decreased from 20% to 60% compared to no injury. The effectiveness of the Lamb−wave−based time reversal method in detecting the internal grouting defects of multiple grouting sleeve joints is proven. This paper focuses on the detection study of the Lamb−wave−based time reversal method and proves its ability to perform the detection task effectively and accurately.

Vast amounts of monitoring data can be obtained through various optical sensors, and mask detection based on deep learning integrates neural science into a variety of applications in everyday life. However, mask detection poses technical challenges such as small targets, complex scenes, and occlusions, which necessitate high accuracy and robustness in multi-scene target detection networks. Considering that multi-scale features can increase the receptive field and attention mechanism can improve the detection effect of small targets, we propose the YOLO-MSM network based on the multi-scale residual (MSR) block, multi-scale residual cascaded channel-spatial attention (MSR-CCSA) block, enhanced residual CCSA (ER-CCSA) block, and enhanced residual PCSA (ER-PCSA) block. Considering the performance and parameters, we use YOLOv5 as the baseline network. Firstly, for the MSR block, we construct hierarchical residual connections in the residual blocks to extract multi-scale features and obtain finer features. Secondly, to realize the joint attention function of channel and space, both the CCSA block and PCSA block are adopted. In addition, we construct a new dataset named Multi-Scene-Mask, which contains various scenes, crowd densities, and mask types. Experiments on the dataset show that YOLO-MSM achieves an average precision of 97.51%, showing better performance than other detection networks. Compared with the baseline network, the mAP value of YOLO-MSM is increased by 3.46%. Moreover, we propose a module generalization improvement strategy (GIS) by training YOLO-MSM on the dataset augmented with white Gaussian addition noise to improve the generalization ability of the network. The test results verify that GIS can greatly improve the generalization of the network and YOLO-MSM has stronger generalization ability than the baseline.

Abstract Breast cancer (BC) is characterized by high morbidity. Mitochondrial ribosomal protein (MRP) family participates in mitochondrial energy metabolism, underlying BC progression. This study aims to analyze the expression and prognosis effect of the MRP genes in BC patients. GEPIA2, UALCAN, cBioPortal, and MethSurv were used to demonstrate the differential expression, genomic alteration profiles, and DNA methylation of the MRP gene family in BC. Functional enrichment analysis and protein–protein interaction network construction were performed to understand the biological function. Based on 1056 TCGA samples with the transcriptional level of MRPs, Kaplan–Meier curves, Cox, and LASSO regression were applied to explore their prognostic effects. 12 MRPs were upregulated in BC, which were associated with gene amplification and DNA methylation. MRP genetic alteration occurred in 42% of BC patients, and amplification was the most frequent variation. Functioning in its entirety, the MRP family was involved in mitochondrial translational termination, elongation, translation, and poly(A) RNA binding. High expression of MRPL1, MRPL13, MRPS6, MRPS18C, and MRPS35, as well as low levels of MRPL16, and MRPL40 significantly indicated poor prognosis in BC patients. Thus, a novel MRP-based prognostic nomogram was established and verified with favorable discrimination and calibration. We not only provided a thorough expression and prognosis analysis of the MRP family in BC patients but also constructed an MRP-based prognostic nomogram. It was suggested that MRPs acted as biomarkers in individualized risk prediction and may serve as potential therapeutic targets in BC patients.

Abstract The surface charge characteristics of a ±200 kV gas‐insulated transmission lines spacer are studied to understand the influence of geometry, ion transportation, applied voltage, and gas pressure on the surface charge distribution. The simulation result indicates that the geometry simplification would affect the surface charge distribution. A millimeter‐level protrusion on the spacer causes an increase of 20 μC m−2 in charge density. A difference of 10 μC m−2 is found between the simulations based on the measured and calculated ion mobility. Moreover, it is found that the identical surface charge distribution cannot be achieved with the downsized model based on the identity of field strength, since ion transportation is affected by the scaling of geometry. The influence of gas pressure on the ion migration results in an initial excitation to the field variation, which further promotes the variation of surface charge via the dominative bulk conduction. Thus, with increasing pressure from 0.3 to 0.6 MPa, an increase of 8.4 μC m−2 is found on the convex surface, while a decrease of 5.5 μC m−2 is found on the concave surface. This investigation would be helpful for the simulation and experiment concerning the surface charge characteristics of spacers.

Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) additive manufacturing has been advancing in the fabrication of metallic multi-material structures with intricate structures and refined material layouts. Herein, a comprehensive review of the recent achievements of multi-material structures via LPBF is provided in terms of interface characteristics and strengthening methods, critical technical issues and potential applications. It begins with the introduction of multi-material structures and the scope of the review. The interface characteristics (including representative multi-material types printed by LPBF, interfacial microstructure, defects, etc.) and strengthening methods of multi-material structures are then presented. Thereafter, the critical technical issues in LPBF for multi-material structures are discussed with regard to equipment development, data preparation, thermodynamic calculation and process simulation, and powder cross-contamination and recycling. Moreover, the potential applications (particularly in biomedical, electronic, aerospace) are illustrated and discussed. Finally, the outlook is outlined to provide guidance for future research.

IntroductionThe Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic affects individuals' mental health that can result in fear of getting COVID-19 infection and depression. Prior research has demonstrated that both psychological capital and perceived social support are related to the severity of depression. Yet no study explored the direction of associations between these factors. This undermines the validity of psychological capital as a basis for health interventions.MethodsThis study aimed to explore the association between psychological capital, perceived social support, employment pressure, and depressive symptoms during COVID-19. A cross-sectional design was employed in a sample of 708 Chinese senior medical students who were asked to complete an online questionnaire survey.ResultsResults indicated that psychological capital negatively predicts depressive symptoms (β = −0.55, p < 0.001); perceived social support plays a mediating role in the impact of psychological capital on depressive symptoms (indirect = −0.11, SE = 0.02, p < 0.001, 95%CI [−0.16, −0.07]), and these associations were moderated by employment pressure. Medical students with high employment pressure, the negative impact of psychological capital on depressive symptoms was statistically significant (β = −0.37, SE = 0.05, p < 0.001, 95% CI [−0.046, −0.27]); when the perceived employment pressure was low, the negative effect of psychological capital on depressive symptoms, although significant, was stronger (β = −0.49, SE = 0.04, p < 0.001, 95% CI [−0.57, −0.40]).DiscussionThe current study highlights that it is of great significance to address Chinese medical students' employment pressure and improve their mental health during the COVID-19 epidemic.

Skin lesion segmentation is a crucial step in the process of skin cancer diagnosis and treatment. The variation in position, shape, size and edges of skin lesion areas poses a challenge for accurate segmentation of skin lesion areas through dermoscopic images. To meet these challenges, in this paper, using UNet as the baseline model, a convolutional neural network based on position and context information fusion attention is proposed, called PCF-Net. A novel two-branch attention mechanism is designed to aggregate Position and Context information, called Position and Context Information Aggregation Attention Module (PCFAM). A global context information complementary module (GCCM) was developed to obtain long-range dependencies. A multi-scale grouped dilated convolution feature extraction module (MSEM) was proposed to capture multi-scale feature information and place it in the bottleneck of UNet. On the ISIC2018 dataset, a large volume of ablation experiments demonstrated the superiority of PCF-Net for dermoscopic image segmentation after adding PCFAM, GCCM and MSEM. Compared with other state-of-the-art methods, the performance of PCF-Net achieves a competitive result in all metrics.

CARD14-associated papulosquamous eruption is an autosomal dominant genodermatosis characterized by early-onset, generalized erythematous patches and plaques with prominent scales, mostly with facial involvement. Heterozygous gain-of-function variants in the CARD14 gene have been reported to be causative for this entity. The pathogenesis mainly involves the IL-23‒IL-17 inflammatory circuit, yet the efficacy of anti‒IL-17 treatment remained less examined. In this study, we report one previously unidentified variant underlying the CARD14-associated papulosquamous eruption and showed its gain-of-function property. Furthermore, we present the beneficial effect of anti‒IL-17A treatment in our patient.

BackgroundWe developed a novel system for quantifying DNA damage response (DDR) to help diagnose and predict the risk of Alzheimer’s disease (AD).MethodsWe thoroughly estimated the DDR patterns in AD patients Using 179 DDR regulators. Single-cell techniques were conducted to validate the DDR levels and intercellular communications in cognitively impaired patients. The consensus clustering algorithm was utilized to group 167 AD patients into diverse subgroups after a WGCNA approach was employed to discover DDR-related lncRNAs. The distinctions between the categories in terms of clinical characteristics, DDR levels, biological behaviors, and immunological characteristics were evaluated. For the purpose of choosing distinctive lncRNAs associated with DDR, four machine learning algorithms, including LASSO, SVM-RFE, RF, and XGBoost, were utilized. A risk model was established based on the characteristic lncRNAs.ResultsThe progression of AD was highly correlated with DDR levels. Single-cell studies confirmed that DDR activity was lower in cognitively impaired patients and was mainly enriched in T cells and B cells. DDR-related lncRNAs were discovered based on gene expression, and two different heterogeneous subtypes (C1 and C2) were identified. DDR C1 belonged to the non-immune phenotype, while DDR C2 was regarded as the immune phenotype. Based on various machine learning techniques, four distinctive lncRNAs associated with DDR, including FBXO30-DT, TBX2-AS1, ADAMTS9-AS2, and MEG3 were discovered. The 4-lncRNA based riskScore demonstrated acceptable efficacy in the diagnosis of AD and offered significant clinical advantages to AD patients. The riskScore ultimately divided AD patients into low- and high-risk categories. In comparison to the low-risk group, high-risk patients showed lower DDR activity, accompanied by higher levels of immune infiltration and immunological score. The prospective medications for the treatment of AD patients with low and high risk also included arachidonyltrifluoromethane and TTNPB, respectively,ConclusionsIn conclusion, immunological microenvironment and disease progression in AD patients were significantly predicted by DDR-associated genes and lncRNAs. A theoretical underpinning for the individualized treatment of AD patients was provided by the suggested genetic subtypes and risk model based on DDR.

Purpose: Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common degenerative disease, which still lacks specific therapeutic drugs. Synovitis is one of the most important pathological process in OA. Therefore, we aim to identify and analyze the hub genes and their related networks of OA synovium with bioinformatics tools to provide theoretical basis for potential drugs.Materials and methods: Two datasets were obtained from GEO. DEGs and hub genes of OA synovial tissue were screened through Gene Ontology (GO) annotation, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment as well as protein—protein interaction (PPI) network analysis. Subsequently, the correlation between expression of hub genes and ferroptosis or pyroptosis was analyzed. CeRNA regulatory network was constructed after predicting the upstream miRNAs and lncRNAs. The validation of hub genes was undertook through RT-qPCR and ELISA. Finally, potential drugs targeting pathways and hub genes were identified, followed by the validation of the effect of two potential drugs on OA.Results: A total of 161 commom DEGs were obtained, of which 8 genes were finally identified as hub genes through GO and KEGG enrichment analysis as well as PPI network analysis. Eight genes related to ferroptosis and pyroptosis respectively were significantly correlated to the expression of hub genes. 24 miRNAs and 69 lncRNAs were identified to construct the ceRNA regulatory network. The validation of EGR1, JUN, MYC, FOSL1, and FOSL2 met the trend of bioinformatics analysis. Etanercept and Iguratimod reduced the secretion of MMP-13 and ADAMTS5 of fibroblast-like synoviocyte.Conclusion: EGR1, JUN, MYC, FOSL1, and FOSL2 were identified as hub genes in the development of OA after series of bioinformatics analysis and validation. Etanercept and Iguratimod seemed to have opportunities to be novel drugs for OA.

Neddylation plays a vital role in post-translational modification, intricately shaping the regulation of diverse biological processes, including those related to cellular immune responses. In fact, neddylation exerts control over both innate and adaptive immune systems via various mechanisms. Specifically, neddylation influences the function and survival of innate immune cells, activation of pattern recognition receptors and GMP-AMP synthase–stimulator of interferon genes pathways, as well as the release of various cytokines in innate immune reactions. Moreover, neddylation also governs the function and survival of antigen-presenting cells, which are crucial for initiating adaptive immune reactions. In addition, neddylation regulates T cell activation, proliferation, differentiation, survival, and their effector functions, thereby ensuring an appropriate adaptive immune response. In this review, we summarize the most recent findings in these aspects and delve into the connection between dysregulated neddylation events and immunological disorders, especially inflammatory diseases. Lastly, we propose future directions and potential treatments for these diseases by targeting neddylation.

An improved method of extracting small-signal equivalent circuit model parameters for gallium nitride high electron mobility transistors (GaN HEMTs) is presented. This paper intends to present a method to extract the parasitic inductance and resistance of transistors based on the short-test structure without the open-circuit test structure. The parasitic capacitance of transistors is extracted by the method based on the size scalable model. Compared with the traditional COLD-FET method, the extraction procedure is simpler and more convenient. After removing the influence of parasitic elements, the intrinsic parameters of the model can be extracted by the S-parameters measured at different bias points. The experimental results show that the simulation results have good agreement with the measured results in the range of 0.5∼110 GHz.

Coastal eutrophication and hypoxia remain a persistent environmental crisis despite the great efforts to reduce nutrient loading and mitigate associated environmental damages. Symptoms of this crisis have appeared to spread rapidly, reaching developing countries in Asia with emergences in Southern America and Africa. The pace of changes and the underlying drivers remain not so clear. To address the gap, we review the up-to-date status and mechanisms of eutrophication and hypoxia in global coastal oceans, upon which we examine the trajectories of changes over the 40 years or longer in six model coastal systems with varying socio-economic development statuses and different levels and histories of eutrophication. Although these coastal systems share common features of eutrophication, site-specific characteristics are also substantial, depending on the regional environmental setting and level of social-economic development along with policy implementation and management. Nevertheless, ecosystem recovery generally needs greater reduction in pressures compared to that initiated degradation and becomes less feasible to achieve past norms with a longer time anthropogenic pressures on the ecosystems. While the qualitative causality between drivers and consequences is well established, quantitative attribution of these drivers to eutrophication and hypoxia remains difficult especially when we consider the social economic drivers because the changes in coastal ecosystems are subject to multiple influences and the cause–effect relationship is often non-linear. Such relationships are further complicated by climate changes that have been accelerating over the past few decades. The knowledge gaps that limit our quantitative and mechanistic understanding of the human-coastal ocean nexus are identified, which is essential for science-based policy making. Recognizing lessons from past management practices, we advocate for a better, more efficient indexing system of coastal eutrophication and an advanced regional earth system modeling framework with optimal modules of human dimensions to facilitate the development and evaluation of effective policy and restoration actions.

Melanoma is a malignancy of melanocytes, responsible for a high percentage of skin cancer mortality. Ligand-Receptor pairs, a type of cellular communication, are essential for tumor genesis, growth, metastasis, and prognosis. Yet, the role of Ligand-Receptor pairs in melanoma has not been fully elucidated. Our research focused on the function of Ligand-Receptor pairs in melanoma prognosis. We screened 131 melanoma prognosis corresponded ligand-receptor pairs by analyzing the TCGA data of melanoma and the 2293 LR pairs retrieved from the connectomeDB2020 database. And further developed subtypes of melanoma according to the expression of these ligand-receptor pairs by Consensus Clustering. Then we using lasso cox regression and stepwise multivariate regression analysis established a ligand-receptor pairs-based scoring model for the evaluation of melanoma prognosis. Our study demonstrated that the ligand-receptor pairs are vital to the molecular heterogeneity of melanoma, and characterized three different melanoma ligand-receptor pairs subtypes. Among them, the C3 subtype showed a better prognosis, while the C1 subtype exhibited a low prognosis state. And our analysis then found out that this could be related to the differed activation and inhabitation of the cell cycle and immune-related pathways. Using lasso cox regression and stepwise multivariate regression analysis, we further identified 9 key ligand-receptor pairs and established a scoring model that effectively correlated with the prognosis, immune pathways, and therapy of melanoma, showing that the LR.score model was a trustworthy and independent biomarker for melanoma prognosis evaluation. In sum, we found that ligand-receptor pairs are significantly associated with the prognosis and therapy of melanoma. And our ligand-receptor-based scoring model showed potential for the evaluation of melanoma prognosis and immune therapy outcome prediction, which is crucial to the survival for the patients.

BackgroundThis study investigated the cortical activation mechanism underlying locomotor control during healthy and hemiplegic walking.MethodsA total of eight healthy individuals with right leg dominance (male patients, 75%; mean age, 40.06 ± 4.53 years) and six post-stroke patients with right hemiplegia (male patients, 86%; mean age, 44.41 ± 7.23 years; disease course, 5.21 ± 2.63 months) completed a walking task at a treadmill speed of 2 km/h and a functional electrical stimulation (FES)-assisted walking task, respectively. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to detect hemodynamic changes in neuronal activity in the bilateral sensorimotor cortex (SMC), supplementary motor area (SMA), and premotor cortex (PMC).ResultsfNIRS cortical mapping showed more SMC-PMC-SMA locomotor network activation during hemiplegic walking than during healthy gait. Furthermore, more SMA and PMC activation in the affected hemisphere was observed during the FES-assisted hemiplegic walking task than during the non-FES-assisted task. The laterality index indicated asymmetric cortical activation during hemiplegic gait, with relatively greater activation in the unaffected (right) hemisphere during hemiplegic gait than during healthy walking. During hemiplegic walking, the SMC and SMA were predominantly activated in the unaffected hemisphere, whereas the PMC was predominantly activated in the affected hemisphere. No significant differences in the laterality index were noted between the other groups and regions (p > 0.05).ConclusionAn important feature of asymmetric cortical activation was found in patients with post-stroke during the walking process, which was the recruitment of more SMC-SMA-PMC activation than in healthy individuals. Interestingly, there was no significant lateralized activation during hemiplegic walking with FES assistance, which would seem to indicate that FES may help hemiplegic walking recover the balance in cortical activation. These results, which are worth verifying through additional research, suggest that FES used as a potential therapeutic strategy may play an important role in motor recovery after stroke.

Objectives: This study involved a multi-omics analysis of glioblastoma (GBM) samples to elaborate the potential mechanism of drug treatment.Methods: The GBM cells treated with or without orexin A were acquired from sequencing analysis. Differentially expressed genes/proteins/metabolites (DEGs/ DEPs/ DEMs) were screened. Next, combination analyses were conducted to investigate the common pathways and correlations between the two groups. Lastly, transcriptome-proteome-metabolome association analysis was carried out to determine the common pathways, and the genes in these pathways were analyzed through Kaplan-Meier (K-M) survival analysis in public databases. Cell and animal experiments were performed to investigate the anti-glioma activity of orexin A.Results: A total of 1,527 DEGs, 52 DEPs, and 153 DEMs were found. Moreover, the combination analyses revealed that 6, 4, and 1 common pathways were present in the transcriptome-proteome, proteome-metabolome, and transcriptome-metabolome, respectively. Certain correlations were observed between the two data sets. Finally, 11 common pathways were discovered in association analysis, and 138 common genes were screened out in these common pathways. Six genes showed significant differences in terms of survival in both TCGA and CGGA. In addition, orexin A inhibited the proliferation, migration, and invasion of glioma in vitro and in vivo.Conclusion: Eleven common KEGG pathways with six common genes were found among different omics participations, revealing the underlying mechanisms in different omics and providing theoretical basis and reference for multi-omics research on drug treatment.

Highlights The success rate of the lower leg salvage is high, reach the percentage of 91.8% (90/98). External fixation is less invasive, with achieving adequate stability to repair the arterial injury timely, can lower the ischemic time, and beneficial for the following bone or soft tissue repair. Treating the patients with external fixators timely is beneficial to the following vascular anticoagulation, bone defect and vein graft, as a result, the protection of lower limb can be improved.

In this study, the effect of Al addition on the microstructure and microhardness of Inconel 718 superalloy fabricated by laser additive manufacturing (LAM) was studied. The addition of Al had little effect on the grain morphology and orientation, but the segregation of Nb element intensified with the increase of Al content, which promoted the formation of Laves phase in the inter-dendritic region. After HSDA (Homogenization + Solution + Double aging) heat treatment, the precipitation of δ phase at grain boundaries changed from cross needle-like to the rod-like, and at the same time, the more content of Al was added, the more rod-like δ phase formed inside the grains. Besides, the addition of Al can promote the precipitation of γ′ phase, and inhibit the precipitation of γ'' phase through promoting the segregation of Nb element. When 5% wt.% Al was added, only γ′ phase was precipitated in the matrix. With the increase of Al content, the microhardness of as-deposited LAMed Inconel 718 increased and reached 325 HV when 5% wt.% Al was added. For microhardness of heat-treated samples, it showed the similar evolution trend with the increase of Al content.

Cells in the tumor microenvironment are well known for their role in cancer development and prognosis. The processes of genetic changes and possible remodeling in the tumor microenvironment of lung squamous cell carcinoma, on the other hand, are mainly unclear. In this investigation, 1164 immunological differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were shown to have predictive significance. A prognostic model with high prediction accuracy was constructed using these genes and survival data. There were 1020 upregulated genes and 144 downregulated genes found, with 57 genes found to be important in the development of LUSC. We used least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression analysis to determine the risk profiles of 9 genes based on the expression values of 57 prognosis-related genes. The AUCs of the developed prognostic model for predicting patient survival at 1, 3, and 5 years were 0.66, 0.61, and 0.63, respectively, based on the training data. For immune-correlation analysis in this survival model, we chose IGLC7, which was seen to predict patient survival with high accuracy. The effects on immune cells and synergistic effects with other immunomodulators were then investigated. We discovered that IGLC7 is involved in immune response and inflammatory activity using gene ontology analysis and genomic sequence variance analysis (GSVA), with a potential effect, especially on B cells and T cells. In conclusion, IGLC7 expression levels are related to the malignancy of LUSC based on the constructed prognostic model and can thus be a therapeutic target for patients with LUSC. Furthermore, IGLC7 may work in concert with other immune checkpoint members to regulate the immune microenvironment of LUSC. These discoveries might lead to a fresh understanding of the complicated interactions between cancer cells and the tumor microenvironment, particularly the population of immune cells, and a novel approach to future immunotherapeutic treatments for patients with LUSC.

Flashover at gas/insulator interface acts as a vital challenge to the safe and stable operation of gas-insulated system especially when involved with surface metallic particle. In this paper, flashover characteristics at SF6/epoxy insulator interface were investigated concerning on the tracking property based on image analysis. DC flashover experiments were operated for basin-type spacer with metallic particle at various locations. Flashover voltage was obtained and tracking on the surface after successive flashover was captured. Improved image analysis method based on fractal theory was carried out to evaluate tracking pattern quantitatively. The relation between the fractal dimension of tracking and field distribution at particle tip was revealed. Obtained results showed that flashover voltage decreased due to severe field distortion with moving particle from ground to HV electrode. Meanwhile, fractal dimension of tracking covering the area from particle to ground electrode indicated centralized tendency. Simulation result confirmed this variation as the consequence of centralized field distribution at the tip of particle. The quantitative relation between fractal dimension and field distribution suggests new sight to estimate the influence of metallic particle on insulation property in the gas-insulated system.

The insulator in direct current gas-insulated transmission lines (DC-GIL) would suffer discharge risk due to surface charge accumulation under thermal-electric coupled fields. In this paper, the transient surface charge accumulation characteristics of a basin-type DC-GIL insulator is investigated via finite element method based on a three-dimension horizontally installed GIL model. The stationary temperature distribution of the model is obtained and then applied to the transient simulation of charge. Weak form partial differential equation is employed to deal with the ion transportation equation. Equations and parameters in the simulation are optimized to reduce the computing memory and time. Results indicate that the charge accumulation is accelerated due to the promotion of conduction through the insulator under thermal gradient. Higher charge density is obtained under thermal gradient. And the surface charge density of the convex surface is higher due to the promoted conduction. The highest field strength increases and the corresponding location moves along the convex surface during the transient process. This could attribute to the influence of transient charge behavior under thermal gradient on the electric field distribution. This study indicates that the thermal gradient and transient charge accumulation should be considered when dealing with the insulation characteristics of DC-GIL with insulators.

The goal of scene graph generation (SGG) is to classify objects and their pair-wise relationships in a visual scene. Object occlusion is a critical challenge when generating scene graphs in complex scenes. However, this issue has rarely been explored in recent works. Accordingly, in this paper, we propose a subset matching network (SM-Net) that handles the above problem. First, we decompose SGG into two types of subset matching problems: node subset matching and edge subset matching. Each node/edge subset handles the occlusion between one node/edge pair, thereby reducing the difficulty of SGG in a “divide and conquer” manner. Second, we introduce a node subset prediction module that utilizes a subset-based message passing module to refine the node subset representation and a matching loss to supervise node subset prediction. Third, we propose an edge subset prediction module that applies a feature selection-based fusion function to obtain edge subset features and a matching loss to supervise edge subset predictions. Experiments on three popular datasets show that our model achieves state-of-the-art performance. The code of SM-Net will be released.

To investigate the differences in the volatile compounds of plum fruit samples from different cultivars, the volatile compounds of the ‘Fengtang’ plum, ‘Kongxin’ plum, and ‘Cuihong’ plum fruits were analyzed using headspace solid-phase microextraction–gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (HS-SPME-GC-MS). The results demonstrated that a total of 938 volatile compounds were identified in three plum fruits, including 200 terpenoids, 171 esters, 116 heterocyclic compounds, 89 hydrocarbons, 82 ketones and alcohols, 63 aldehydes, 54 aromatic hydrocarbons, 21 amines, 18 acids, 17 phenols, 10 nitrogenous compounds, 7 sulfur compounds, and other compounds, 470 of which were common to all the cultivars. Moreover, 704, 691, and 704 volatile substances were detected, respectively, in the ‘Fengtang’ plum, ‘Kongxin’ plum, and ‘Cuihong’ plum, with terpenoids, esters, and heterocycles as the main compounds, accounting for 62.12~72.03% of the volatile compounds. The results of principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA) illustrated that the ‘Fengtang’ plum and ‘Cuihong’ plum were similar in terms of volatile compounds; the ‘Kongxin’ plum compounds were different from those in the other cultivars. Orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis was performed, revealing the typical volatile compounds that differed among the plum fruits of the different varieties; thus, the three plum fruits could be better distinguished. These results can provide a theoretical basis for the studies of plum fruit flavor, quality, and geographical origin identification.

Sonodynamic therapy (SDT) induces reactive oxygen species (ROS) to kill tumor cells. Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), as an important antioxidant enzyme, resists killing by scavenging ROS. Zinc protoporphyrin (ZnPP) not only effectively inhibits HO-1 activity, but also becomes a potential sonosensitizer. However, its poor water solubility limits its applications. Herein, we developed an improved water-soluble method. It was proved that pegylated zinc protoporphyrin-mediated SDT (PEG-ZnPP-SDT) could significantly enhance ROS production by destroying the HO-1 antioxidant system in ovarian cancer. Increased ROS could cause mitochondrial membrane potential collapse, release cytochrome c from mitochondria to the cytoplasm, and trigger the mitochondrial–caspase apoptotic pathway. In conclusion, our results demonstrated that PEG-ZnPP-SDT, as a novel sonosensitizer, could improve the antitumor effects by destroying the HO-1 antioxidant system. It provided a new therapeutic strategy for SDT to treat cancers, especially those with higher HO-1 expression.

The combustion characteristics of a swirl-radial-injection composite fuel grain were experimentally and numerically investigated. This composite grain permits swirl-radial oxidizer injection based on three hollow helical blades, each having a constant hollow space allowing uniform oxidizer injection into the main chamber along the axial direction. The oxidizer enters from channel inlets located along a hollow outer wall. This wall, together with the three blades, is fabricated as one piece from acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene using three-dimensional printing. Paraffin-based fuel is embedded in the spaces between adjacent blades. Firing tests were conducted with gaseous oxygen as the oxidizer, using oxidizer mass flow rates ranging from 7.45 to 30.68 g/s. Paraffin-based fuel grains using conventional fore-end injection were used for comparison. Regression rate boundaries were determined taking into account the erosion of the oxidizer channels. The data show that the regression rate was significantly increased even at the lower limit. Images of the combustion chamber flame and of the exhaust plume were also acquired. The flame was found to be concentrated in the main chamber and a smoky plume was observed, consistent with the high regression rate. A three-dimensional simulation was employed. The present design was found to improve fuel/oxidizer mixing and combustion efficiency compared with a fuel grain using fore-end injection. Both the experimental results and numerical simulations confirmed the potential of this swirl-radial-injection fuel grain.