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We report high pressure studies on the C-type antiferromagnetic semiconductor EuTe2 up to 36.0 GPa. A structural transition from the I4/mcm to C2/m space group is identified at ~16 GPa. Superconductivity is discovered above ~5 GPa in both the I4/mcm and C2/m space groups. In the low-pressure phase (< 16 GPa), the antiferromagnetic transition temperature is enhanced with increasing pressure due to the enhanced magnetic exchange interactions. Magnetoresistance measurements indicate an interplay between the local moments of Eu2+ and the conduction electrons of Te 5p orbits. The upper critical field of the superconductivity is well above the Pauli limit. Across the structural transition to the high-pressure phase (> 16 GPa), EuTe2 becomes nonmagnetic and the superconducting transition temperature evolves smoothly with the upper critical field below the Pauli limit. Therefore, the high upper critical field of EuTe2 in the low-pressure phase is due to the exchange field compensation effect of the Eu magnetic order and the superconductivity in both structures may arise in the framework of the BCS theory., 11 pages,5 figures with 8 pages supplementary

Urbanization has induced significant changes on local climate in urban areas. For sustainable urban planning, it is necessary to identify the distribution characteristics of urban heat island (UHI) and the effects of land cover properties. In situ measurements are frequently carried out to obtain critical data in urban climate studies. However, long-time continuous observations on multiple sites are still rare, even though they would be useful in mapping the distribution of UHI intensity. In the current work, three observation campaigns were carried out in Xi&rsquo, an, China. Pedestrian- level air temperatures (PLAT) were measured with potable micro-environment stations on 50 sites in 11 local climate zone (LCZ) types. The normalized PLAT was used to investigate the canopy layer UHI characteristics and the effects of LCZ types. Results revealed that the land coverage type and the surface structure have significant influence on the local climate. The PLAT in high-surface-fraction building covered areas was higher than that in low-surface-fraction building covered areas. In areas with similar building surface fraction, building height influences the UHI magnitude as well, as tall buildings would provide more shielding on the pedestrian level. The average UHI magnitude and the standard deviation within each LCZ type were calculated by statistical analysis of the observed results, which proved to be useful for UHI mapping based on the LCZ classification results in urban areas.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects that the Al on blood pressure and the effect of hypertension in aluminum-induced cognitive impairment in electrolytic aluminum worker.The study was conducted 392 male aluminum electrolytic workers in an aluminum plant of China. The concentration of alumina dust in the air of the electrolytic aluminum workshop is 1.07 mg/m3-2.13 mg/m3. According to the Permissible concentration-Time Weighted Average of alumina dust is 4 mg/m3, which does not exceed the standard. The blood pressure of the workers was measured. The plasma aluminum concentration of workers was determined by ICP-MS (Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry). Cognitive functions were measured using MMSE (Mini-Mental State Examination), VFT (Verbal Fluency Test), ATIME (Average Reaction Time), FOM (Fuld Object Memory Evaluation), DST (Digit Span Test), CDT (Clock Drawing Test) scales. Modified Poisson regression was used to analyze the risk of hypertension and cognitive impairment with different plasma aluminum concentrations. Generalized linear regression model was used to analyze the relationship between aluminum and cognitive function, blood pressure and cognitive function. Causal Mediation Analysis was used to analyze the mediation effect of blood press in aluminum-induced cognitive impairment.Plasma aluminum appeared to be a risk factor for hypertension (PR (prevalence ratio) = 1.630, 95 %-CI (confidence interval): 1.103-2.407), systolic blood pressure (PR = 1.578, 95 %-CI: 1.038-2.399) and diastolic blood pressure (PR = 1.842, 95 %-CI: 1.153-2.944). And plasma aluminum increased by e-fold, the scores of MMSE and VFT decreased by 0.630 and 2.231 units respectively and the time of ATIME increased by 0.029 units. In addition, generalized linear regression model showed that blood press was negatively correlated with the scores of MMSE and VFT. Finally, causal Mediation Analysis showed that hypertension was a part of the mediating factors of aluminum-induced decline in MMSE score, and the mediating effects was 16.300 % (7.100 %, 33.200 %). In addition, hypertension was a part of the mediating factors of aluminum-induced decline in VFT score, and the mediating effects was 9.400 % (2.600 %, 29.000 %) CONCLUSION: Occupational aluminum exposure increases the risk of hypertension and cognitive impairment. And hypertension may be a mediating factor of cognitive impairment caused by aluminum exposure.

In the study of animal behavior, the prevention of sickness, and the gait planning of legged robots, pose estimation, and gait parameter extraction of quadrupeds are of tremendous importance. However, there are several varieties of quadrupeds, and distinct species frequently have radically diverse body types, limb configurations, and gaits. Currently, it is challenging to forecast animal pose estimation with any degree of accuracy. This research developed a quadruped animal pose estimation and gait parameter extraction method to address this problem. A computational framework including three components of target screening, animal pose estimation model, and animal gaits parameter extraction, which can totally and efficiently solve the problem of quadruped animal pose estimation and gait parameter extraction, makes up its core. On the basis of the HRNet network, an improved quadruped animal keypoint extraction network, RFB-HRNet, was proposed to enhance the extraction effect of quadruped pose estimation. The basic concept was to use a DyConv (dynamic convolution) module and an RFB (receptive field block) module to propose a special receptive field module DyC-RFB to optimize the feature extraction capability of the HRNet network at stage 1 and to enhance the feature extraction capability of the entire network model. The public dataset AP10K was then used to validate the model’s performance, and it was discovered that the proposed method was superior to alternative methods. Second, a two-stage cascade network was created by adding an object detection network to the front end of the pose estimation network to filter the animal object in input images, which enhanced the pose estimation effect of small targets and multitargets. The acquired keypoints data of animals were then utilized to extract the gait parameters of the experimental objects. Experiment findings showed that the gait parameter extraction model proposed in this research could effectively extract the gait frequency, gait sequence, gait duty cycle, and gait trajectory parameters of quadruped animals, and obtain real-time and accurate gait trajectory.

Alkyl organophosphate flame retardants (OPFRs), tri-n-butyl phosphate (TnBP) and tris(2-butoxyethyl) phosphate (TBOEP), are ubiquitously detected in indoor and outdoor environments and their inhalation may result in lung damage. This study examined pulmonary toxicity after exposure to TnBP or TBOEP and investigated aggravation of inflammation and immunoreaction by TnBP in an ovalbumin (OVA)-induced mice model. Transcriptomics were used to further reveal the underlying mechanism. Exposure to TnBP or TBOEP resulted in pathological damage, including edema and thickened alveolar septum. In comparison with the control, enhanced levels of superoxide dismutase (SOD) (p 0.01 in TnBP (High) group and p 0.05 in TBOEP (High) group), glutathione peroxidase (GSH-px) (p 0.05), malondialdehyde (MDA) (p 0.01), and cytokines under a dose-dependent relationship were noted, and the expression of the Fkbp5/Nos3/MAPK/NF-кB signaling pathway (p 0.01) was upregulated in the TnBP and TBOEP groups. Moreover, the combined exposure of TnBP and OVA exacerbated the allergic inflammatory response, including airway hyperresponsiveness, leukocytosis, cellular exudation and infiltration, secretion of inflammatory mediators, and higher expression of IgE (p 0.01). Transcriptomics results demonstrated that the PI3K/Akt/NF-кB signal pathway was involved in TnBP-aggravated asthmatic mice. Exposure to TnBP or TBOEP resulted in oxidative damage and leukocyte-induced lung injury. TnBP can further facilitate OVA-induced asthma through an inflammatory response. This study is the first to reveal the pulmonary toxicity and potential mechanism induced by OPFRs through an in-vivo model.

Funder: RCUK | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000266, Funder: funding from the Royal society through a Newton international fellowship, Funder: the Winton programme for the physics of sustainability, Funder: The Royal society and Tata group. The Royal society funding through a Newton international fellowship. The Winton programme for the physics of sustainability., There is a growing interest in obtaining high quality monolayer transition metal disulfides for optoelectronic applications. Surface treatments using a range of chemicals have proven effective to improve the photoluminescence yield of these materials. However, the underlying mechanism for the photoluminescence enhancement is not clear, which prevents a rational design of passivation strategies. Here, a simple and effective approach to significantly enhance the photoluminescence is demonstrated by using a family of cation donors, which we show to be much more effective than commonly used p-dopants. We develop a detailed mechanistic picture for the action of these cation donors and demonstrate that one of them, bis(trifluoromethane)sulfonimide lithium salt (Li-TFSI), enhances the photoluminescence of both MoS2 and WS2 to a level double that of the currently best performing super-acid trifluoromethanesulfonimide (H-TFSI) treatment. In addition, the ionic salts used in our treatments are compatible with greener solvents and are easier to handle than super-acids, providing the possibility of performing treatments during device fabrication. This work sets up rational selection rules for ionic chemicals to passivate transition metal disulfides and increases their potential in practical optoelectronic applications.

Background Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is notorious for the rapid progression especially early tumor metastasis due to the unclear mechanism. Recently, ETV5 attracts much attention for its potential role as an oncogenic transcription factor involved in multiple cancers. However, no one reported the mechanism behind the association between ETV5 expression and Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) progression. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to investigate the role of ETV5 in ESCC. Methods The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and GEO database was used to explore ETV5 expression in ESCC. ECA109, KYSE150 and TE1 cell lines were used in the experiments. The Cell Counting Kit 8 (CCK8), migration, invasion, wound healing assays were exerted to evaluate proliferation, migration and invasion of ESCC cells. RNA sequencing was performed to find downstream genes regulated by ETV5. Real-time PCR, Western blotting, Chromatin immunoprecipitation (CHIP) and Dual luciferase reporter assays were used to assess the underlying mechanism. Immunohistochemistry was used to evaluate the relationship between ETV5 expression, clinicopathological parameters and patient prognosis. Tumor metastasis was investigated in BALB/c nude mice. Results ETV5 was observed upregulated in ESCC both from online database and our ESCC tissues and ETV5 was associated with tumor staging. Knockdown of ETV5 or its downstream genes SKA1 and TRPV2 significantly suppress ESCC cells migration and invasion, respectively. Additionally, in vivo study showed knockdown of ETV5 inhibited tumor metastasis. Further experiments unveiled ETV5 could transcriptionally upregulate the expression of SKA1 and TRPV2 and further activate MMPs in ESCC progression. Conclusion ETV5 promoted metastasis of ESCC by activating MMPs through augmenting the transcription of SKA1 and TRPV2. ETV5 was likely to be a novel diagnostic marker and therapeutic target in ESCC treatment.

The dispersion behavior of pollutants in realistic street canyons is dominated by the pattern of airflow, which is closely linked to the building layout and air inflow at the street canyon boundary. Although uneven building layouts and time-varying inflows have been individually investigated for their influence on air flow pattern and pollutant dispersion in street canyons, the combined effects of these two factors have not been examined. In this study, four street canyon models, one even and three uneven models with different occupying ratios of high-rise buildings, were numerically studied using large-eddy simulation under steady inflow and time-varying inflow conditions. The results showed that both the uneven building layouts and the time-varying inflow condition enhanced the air flow strength and pollutant removal efficiency inside the street canyon. However, the composite effects of these factors were not simply additive. The worst pollutant removal efficiency was observed for air flow in the even street canyon with the steady inflow, which is the typical benchmark case in studies. With the time-varying inflow, the induced updrafts prevented the relatively tall high-rise buildings from restricting the height of the pollutant dispersion during the inflow in the valley. The pattern of the pollutant isoconcentration plane and the time-series curves of normalized concentrations in the even and uneven street canyon models exhibited fluctuant features with the time-varying inflow.

In the process of indoor localization, the existence of the non-line of sight (NLOS) error will greatly reduce the localization accuracy. To reduce the impact of this error, a 3 dimensional (3D) indoor localization algorithm named LMR (LLS-Minimum-Re-sidual) is proposed in this paper. We first estimate the NLOS error and use it to correct the measurement distances, and then calculate the target location with linear least squares (LLS) solution. The final nodes location can be obtained accurately by NLOS error mitigation. Our algorithm can work efficiently in both indoor 2D and 3D environments. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has better performance than traditional algorithms and it can significantly improve the localization accuracy.

Transgenic switchgrass overexpressing Lolium perenne L. delta1-pyrroline 5-carboxylate synthase (LpP5CS) in group I (TG4 and TG6 line) and group II (TG1 and TG2 line) had significant P5CS and ProDH enzyme activities, with group I plants (TG4 and TG6) having higher P5CS and lower ProDH enzyme activity, while group II plants had higher ProDH and lower P5CS enzyme activity. We found group II transgenic plants showed stunted growth, and the changed proline content in overexpressing transgenic plants may influence the growth and development in switchgrass. RNA-seq analysis showed that KEGG enrichment included phenylpropanoid biosynthesis pathway among group I, group II and WT plants, and the expression levels of genes related to lignin biosynthesis were significantly up-regulated in group II. We also found that lignin content in group II transgenic plants was higher than that in group I and WT plants, suggesting that increased lignin content may suppress switchgrass growth and development. This study uncover that proline can appropriately reduce lignin biosynthesis to improve switchgrass growth and development. Therefore, appropriate reduction in lignin content and increase in biomass are important for bioenergy crop to lower processing costs for biomass fermentation-derived fuels.

Binary communication systems that involve sex‐specific signaling and sex‐specific signal perception play a key role in sexual selection and in the evolution of sexually dimorphic traits. The driving forces and genetic changes underlying such traits can be investigated in systems where sex‐specific signaling and perception have emerged recently and show evidence of potential coevolution. A promising model is found in Drosophila prolongata, which exhibits a species‐specific increase in the number of male chemosensory bristles. We show that this transition coincides with recent evolutionary changes in cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) profiles. Long‐chain CHCs that are sexually monomorphic in the closest relatives of D. prolongata (D. rhopaloa, D. carrolli, D. kurseongensis, and D. fuyamai) are strongly male‐biased in this species. We also identify an intraspecific female‐limited polymorphism, where some females have male‐like CHC profiles. Both the origin of sexually dimorphic CHC profiles and the female‐limited polymorphism in D. prolongata involve changes in the relative amounts of three mono‐alkene homologs, 9‐tricosene, 9‐pentacosene, and 9‐heptacosene, all of which share a common biosynthetic origin and point to a potentially simple genetic change underlying these traits. Our results suggest that pheromone synthesis may have coevolved with chemosensory perception and open the way for reconstructing the origin of sexual dimorphism in this communication system., Uniquely among Drosophila species, Drosophila prolongata shows a dramatic male‐specific expansion of the leg chemosensory organs. We show that this change is accompanied by an equally recent evolution of sexually dimorphic pheromones. Long‐chain hydrocarbons that are sexually monomorphic in other species are strongly enriched in D. prolongata males.

Aluminum honeycombs are widely applied in weight sensitive applications, increasing their specific strength and energy absorption capacity are rather important. Thin-walled metallic tube was used to enhance the mechanical properties of aluminum honeycomb and formed a novel tube-reinforced honeycomb structure. Its compressive and three-point bending performances were studied experimentally and numerically. Due to tube filling, the specific compressive strength, elastic modulus and energy absorption have been increased by 16%, 26% and 73%, and the specific bending load and stiffness increased by 42% and 62% respectively. The strengthen mechanism study indicated that the sum of tube and honeycomb caused the increase of compressive properties, and aluminum tube filling changed the stress distribution and expanded the stress concentration region which led to a transformation of bending failure mode. The present reinforcement method will make honeycomb more competitive in light-weight structure applications.

Baking is an important wall conditioning method that is widely used in tokamak devices to obtain high quality plasma discharges. In order to create a theoretical analysis method for the baking of tokamak plasma facing components (PFCs), the COMSOL Multiphysics software is used to establish and solve a series of the heat transfer models of the experimental advanced superconducting tokamak (EAST) PFCs, as a representative calculation case. The thermohydraulic measurement system (including the temperature, pressure and flow sensors) is successfully installed on EAST to verify the accuracy of the heat transfer model, as a calorimetry verification example. The uncertainty of this analysis method as compared to the experimental results is less than 5% and the robustness of this analysis method is satisfied. These heat transfer models are used to obtain the temperatures on the surface, the internal temperature distributions of the components, and the internal temperature and velocity distributions of the cooling ducts numerically. The significance of these parameters for the fusion reactor design is discussed in detail. This analysis method is an important component of the fusion reactor thermohydraulic analysis method (FRTHAM), and it provides an accurate computing method for fusion reactor baking analysis.

Field observation data have shown that the actual wind speed and direction in an urban built environment always vary with time. Realizing the flow field simulation under time-varying inflows can have a great significance in fully understanding the airflow and the transportation of air pollutants in the atmospheric boundary layer. A new scheme based on the standard SIMPLE (Semi-Implicit Method for Pressure Linked Equations) algorithm has been implemented in OpenFOAM, named as TimeVarying-SIMPLE approach, to simulate the time-series airflow field under time-varying inflows in this study. The accuracy of TimeVarying-SIMPLE approach compared with PISO (Pressure-Implicit with Splitting of Operators) algorithm and PIMPLE (merged PISO-SIMPLE) algorithm was validated by solving the fully developed laminar flow in a straight pipe under sinusoidally varying inflow. The wind field and pollutant dispersion in an ideal street canyon with an aspect ratio of 1 under time-varying inflows were calculated using the TimeVarying-SIMPLE approach. The flows show an obvious flapping of the shear layer near the roof layer and the expansion or shrinkage of the main vortex under time-varying inflows, resulting in a significant increase of the removal efficiency of pollutants inside the street canyon compared to that under steady inflow. The average time of actual high-frequency wind speed data is critical to produce the time-varying inflows for the boundary conditions of numerical simulations, which could produce different simulated removal efficiency of pollutants inside the street canyon. The appropriate average time should be estimated by the pre-multiplied power spectrum of the measured high-frequency wind-speed data.

This paper characterizes the morphological and elemental compositions of individual particles in seven micro-environments of Xi’an. Atmospheric particulate matter samples were collected at one subu...

Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) is a bioenergy crop; thus, it is important to improve biomass to effectively produce bioethanol, particularly under adverse stress conditions. NAC transcription factors are involved in the abiotic stress response. PvNAC1 was isolated in the nucleus of switchgrass, with its C-terminal region containing a transcriptional activation domain. PvNAC1 expression was induced by dehydration, salt, H2O2, and abscisic acid treatments. Overexpressing (OE) PvNAC1 improved growth performance, leading to significantly taller and heavier (dry weight) plants. Moreover, cellulose content was significantly higher in OE plants, indicating that PvNAC1 plays an important role regulating growth and bioethanol production. PvNAC1 RNA interference (RNAi) switchgrass plants exhibited reduced dry weight and cellulose content. OE PvNAC1 enhanced tolerance to salt stress, through higher reactive oxygen species scavenging ability and less Na+ and more K+ accumulation in roots and shoots. RNAi plants were more sensitive to salt stress. The quantitative polymerase chain reaction results revealed that some stress responsive genes, three antioxidant enzymatic genes, and an ion homeostasis-related gene were upregulated in OE plants and downregulated in RNAi plants. These results show that PvNAC1 functions as a transcriptional activator in response to salt stress and growth.

The Radial Basis Function (RBF) network is one of the most widely used surrogate models in multidisciplinary design optimization. However, one of the challenges of applying the RBF network to engineering problems is how to efficiently optimize its width parameters. In this work, a novel space division–based width optimization (SDWO) method is proposed to decompose the complex multivariable width optimization into several small-scale single-variable width optimizations. The SDWO method consists of two main steps. First, a two-stage fuzzy clustering algorithm is carried out to group the samples and divide the input space into several overlapping local regions, and the overlapping degree is controlled by a dimensionless expansion factor. Second, in each local region, one small-scale local RBF network (LRBFN) is constructed by solving a single-variable optimization problem when the LRBFN is needed for prediction. All these LRBFNs are independent of each other and can be constructed in parallel. The proposed method is efficient and particularly suitable for large sample sets. Test results of four sample sets verify that the proposed SDWO method has better performance than the conventional width optimization method in terms of both training efficiency and approximation accuracy. An inter-stage structure optimization is carried out, which demonstrates the efficiency of the proposed method in practical engineering applications.

Context: Insomnia is prevalent among elderly individuals and has become a public health problem receiving increasing concern. Low sleep quality is related to a number of negative health outcomes. Objective: This research aims to investigate the sleep status of community-dwelling elderly individuals (aged 60 years or older) in Shanghai, China, to explore the impact factors affecting sleep quality. Methods: One street in Shanghai city was randomly selected, and 50% of the elderly residents were randomly selected as participants for a total number of 9,616 people. Investigations were conducted by indoor surveys through home doctors and paper questionnaires. For statistical analysis, univariate and multivariate regression analysis and the Spearman correlation model were performed using SAS 9.4 to analyze the effects of the impact factors on the sleep quality of elderly individuals. Results: Sleep quality is greatly affected by physical pain in both the elderly individual and the individual’s spouse. Healthy elderly people tend to have better sleep quality, and the more chronic diseases an elderly individual suffers, the worse their sleep quality is. In addition, the physical pain of a cohabiting spouse is one of the most significant impact factors influencing sleep quality. Conclusion: We suggest that community-dwelling elderly people maintain moderate outdoor activities and a healthy mental state, which will improve their sleep quality.

The miR156-targeted SQUAMOSA PROMOTER BINDING PROTEIN-LIKE (SPL) transcription factors play key roles in regulating plant development, but little is known about their function in abscisic acid (ABA) signaling. Here, we report that the miR156-targeted SPLs enhance ABA responses and contribute to the inhibition of pre-harvest sprouting. We find that SPL9 directly activates the expression of ABA responsive genes through binding to their promoters. SPL9 was further shown to physically interact with ABSCISIC ACID INSENSITIVE 5 (ABI5), a master transcription factor in ABA signaling, thus promoting its association with the promoters of ABA responsive genes. Furthermore, we reveal that the protein kinases SnRK2s interact with and phosphorylate SPL9, which is essential for its role in the activation of ABA responses. Together, our results disclose a SnRK2s-SPLs-ABI5 regulatory module in ABA signaling inArabidopsis.

Survival analysis is a branch of statistics that deals with both, the tracking of time and of the survival status simultaneously as the dependent response. Current comparisons of survival model performance mostly center on clinical data with classic statistical survival models, with prediction accuracy often serving as the sole metric of model performance. Moreover, survival analysis approaches for censored omics data have not been thoroughly investigated. The common approach is to binarise the survival time and perform a classification analysis.Here, we develop a benchmarking framework, SurvBenchmark, that evaluates a diverse collection of survival models for both clinical and omics datasets. SurvBenchmark not only focuses on classical approaches such as the Cox model, but it also evaluates state-of-art machine learning survival models. All approaches were assessed using multiple performance metrics, these include model predictability, stability, flexibility and computational issues. Our systematic comparison framework with over 320 comparisons (20 methods over 16 datasets) shows that the performances of survival models vary in practice over real-world datasets and over the choice of the evaluation metric. In particular, we highlight that using multiple performance metrics is critical in providing a balanced assessment of various models. The results in our study will provide practical guidelines for translational scientists and clinicians, as well as define possible areas of investigation in both survival technique and benchmarking strategies.Contactjean.yang@sydney.edu.au

A Cu–Fe oxygen carrier (OC) with oxygen uncoupling capability is proposed to be applied in chemical-looping gasification with oxygen uncoupling (CLGOU) technology to increase the gasification rate. Density functional theory analysis shows that a chemical reaction occurs after Cu4O4 cluster adsorption onto α - Fe2O3 (001) surface. Extension of bond length and transfer of charge indicate the composite oxide has been activated. An optimal molar ratio of 2:1 of CuO to Fe2O3 is determined for the preparation the OC and the oxygen transport capacity is determined at 3.65 wt% with a starting oxygen uncoupling temperature is 749.5 °C. The composite OC exhibits good low-temperature oxygen uncoupling characteristics. This OC exhibits stable behaviour and satisfactory oxygen recyclability over 15 consecutive redox cycles at 900 °C / 700 °C oxygen uncoupling and absorbing temperatures. The high stability is corresponding to the calculation result (high adsorption energy of CuO onto Fe2O3). And oxygen uncoupling rates are much higher than the lower limit (0.4 wt%/min) for cracking. The chemical phases and surface micromorphology all retain stable after cycles. Using combined Coats-Redfern and Malek method, the oxygen uncoupling kinetic model of Cu–Fe OC is determined as a shrinking core model (m = 3).

Improvements in plant architecture, such as reduced plant height under high-density planting, are important for agricultural production. Light and gibberellin (GA) are essential external and internal cues that affect plant architecture. In this study, we characterize the direct interaction of distinct receptors that link light and GA signaling in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). We show that the light receptor CRY1 represses GA signaling through interaction with all five DELLA proteins and promotion of RGA protein accumulation in Arabidopsis. Genetic analysis shows that CRY1-mediated growth repression is achieved by means of the DELLA proteins. Interestingly, we find that CRY1 also directly interacts with the GA receptor GID1 to competitively inhibit the GID1-GAI interaction. We also show that overexpression of TaCRY1a reduces plant height and coleoptile growth in wheat and that TaCRY1a interacts with both TaGID1 and Rht1 to competitively attenuate the TaGID1-Rht1 interaction. Based on these findings, we propose that the photoreceptor CRY1 competitively inhibits the GID1-DELLA interaction, thereby stabilizing DELLA proteins and enhancing their repression of plant growth., The photoreceptor CRY1 interacts directly with both GID1 and DELLA proteins in a blue light-dependent manner to competitively inhibit the GID1-DELLA interaction, thereby stabilizing DELLA proteins and enhancing their repression of plant growth.

Experimental progress finally reached the metallic solid hydrogen phase, which was predicted by Wigner and Huntington over 80 years ago. However, the different structures in the phase diagram are still been debated due to the difficulty of diffraction experiments for high-pressured hydrogen. The determination of crystal structures under extreme condition is both of the basic condensed matter physics, and in planetary science: the behavior of giant gaseous planets (e.g. Jupiter, Saturn...) strongly depends on the properties of inner high-pressured hydrogen. This work describes new possible structures appearing under high pressures of 400$\sim$600 GPa. We applied a structural search using particle swarm optimization with density functional theory (DFT) to propose several candidate structures. For these structures, we performed fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo simulations combined with DFT zero-point energy corrections to confirm their relative stability. We found $P2_{1}/c$-8 as a promising candidate structure for the H$_2$-PRE phase. $P2_{1}/c$-8 is predicted the most stable at 400 and 500~GPa. $P2_{1}/c$-8 reproduces qualitatively the IR spectrum peaks observed in the H$_2$-PRE phase.

Cancer cells develop under nutrient and oxygen deficient microenvironment caused by insufficient vascularization. Reprogramming metabolism meets the needs of the rapid growth of cancer cells in nutrient stress conditions. But the precise mechanism of metabolic abnormalities in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) remains largely unclear. Using omics technology, we measured the changes of metabolic enzymes and pathways on ESCC under the microenvironment of hypoxia and nutrient deficiency. Consequently, the expression of argininosuccinate synthetase 1 (ASS1) and pyrroline-5-carboxylate reductase 1 (PYCR1) was enhanced and may promoted the proliferation and migration of ESCC by its catalyzed metabolites. Clinically, high levels of ASS1 and PYCR1 were significantly associated with advanced stages and metastasis, even early stage compared to intraepithelial neoplasia. In mechanism, IGF1R regulated ASS1 and PYCR1 by affecting IGF1R - Ras/MAPK - c-MYC axis. In vivo, ASS1 and PYCR1 could promote tumor growth and chemotherapeutic resistance. In summary, enhanced ASS1 and PYCR1 induces ESCC tolerance to nutrient stress and maintains cancer development and IGF1R-cMYC axis is the key factor upregulating ASS1 and PYCR under harsh conditions. The study also provides a molecular aspect for developing biomarkers of ESCC and therapeutic benefits of targeting IGF1R/ASS1/PYCR1 axis. Funding Information: This study was supported by grants from The Top- level Clinical Discipline Project of Shanghai Pudong (PWYgf2018-04), National Natural Science Foundation of China (82073224, 82072684 and 81872351) and Shanghai Committee of Science and Technology (18140900100) Declaration of Interests: The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest. Ethics Approval Statement: This study was approved by the institutional review board of Shanghai East Hospital, School of Medicine, Tongji University. The in vivo study was approved by the animal care and use committee of Tongji University.

The domestication gene Q is largely responsible for the widespread cultivation of wheat because it confers multiple domestication traits. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms of how Q regulates these domestication traits remain unclear. In this study, we identify a Q-interacting protein TaLAX1, a basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor, through yeast two-hybrid assays. Using biochemical and genetic approaches, we explore the roles of TaLAX1 in regulating wheat domestication traits. Overexpression of TaLAX1 produces phenotypes, reminiscent of the q allele; loss-of-function Talax1 mutations confer compact spikes, largely similar to the Q-overexpression wheat lines. The two transcription factors TaLAX1 and Q disturb each other's activity to antagonistically regulate the expression of the lignin biosynthesis-related gene TaKNAT7-4D. More interestingly, a natural variation (InDel, +/- TATA), which occurs in the promoter of TaLAX1, is associated with the promoter activity difference between the D subgenome of bread wheat and its ancestor Aegilops tauschii accession T093. This study reveals that the transcription factor TaLAX1 physically interacts with Q to antagonistically regulate wheat domestication traits and a natural variation (InDel, +/- TATA) is associated with the diversification of TaLAX1 promoter activity.

In engineering design, the performance of the system and the budget of design uncertainty should be balanced, which means that it is best to optimize design variables and allocate the manufacturing uncertainty simultaneously. This work formulates this problem as an uncertainty optimization problem, where the input uncertainty is modeled by the probability method and both the design variables and the uncertainty magnitude are included in the optimization variables. A sequence optimization framework is proposed to solve the optimization problem. The Taylor-based first-order method is used to translate the probability constraint into a deterministic constraint. A correction coefficient is calculated by the dimensional adaptive polynomial chaos expansion method to improve the accuracy of the uncertainty analysis. The constraint translation and the correction coefficient calculation are executed sequentially. The accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed framework are validated by three benchmark problems, including a mathematical problem, a cantilever I-beam, and a ten-bar truss case.

To explore the role of calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase Ⅱ(CaMK-Ⅱ) and protein phosphatase-2 A(PP2 A) on hyperphosphorylation of tau induced by AlCl_3 in SH-SY5 Y cell.SH-SY5 Y cells were assigned to the control group, AlCl_3 low, middle, high exposed groups(200, 400800 μmol/L Al~(3+)), KN93 intervention group(800 μmol/L Al~(3+)+0. 5 μmol/L KN93) and sphingosine intervention group(800 μmol/L Al~(3+)+5 nmol/L sphingosine). After 48 h of exposure and intervention, the viabilities of cells were measured by CCK-8 assay, the contents of CaMK-Ⅱ and PP2 A were determined by ELISA, and the expression of tau5 and phosphorylation of Thr-181, Thr-231, Ser-262 and Ser-396 were detected by Western-Blot.The viabilities of cells in AlCl_3 middle and high exposed groups were significantly lower than that of the control group(Plt;0. 05). Compared with the AlCl_3 high exposed group, the viabilities of cells in KN93 intervention group and sphingosine intervention group were significantly increased(Plt;0. 05), as well as the difference of the cell viability between sphingosine intervention group and the control group was not statistically significant. Compared with the control group, the contents of CaMK-Ⅱin AlCl_3 low, middle, high exposed groups were significantly increased(Plt;0. 05), while the contents of PP2 A in those groups were significantly decreased(Plt;0. 05). Compared with AlCl_3 high exposed group, the contents of CaMK-Ⅱ in KN93 intervention group and sphingosine intervention group were significantly decreased(Plt;0. 05), and PP2 A in those groups were significantly increased(Plt;0. 05). The expression of tau5 and phosphorylation of Thr-181, Thr-231, Ser-396 in AlCl_3 low, middle, high exposed group showed significantly higher than those of the control group(Plt;0. 05), while the phosphorylation of Ser-262 in AlCl_3 high exposed group showed significantly higher than that of the control group(Plt;0. 05). After intervention with KN93 and sphingosine, the expression of tau5, and phosphorylation of Thr-181, Thr-231, Ser-262, Ser-396 in KN93 intervention group and sphingosine intervention group were significantly lower than those of AlCl_3 high exposed group( Plt;0. 05), as well as compared with the control group, the phosphorylation of Ser-262 in KN93 intervention group and Thr-181, Thr-231 and Ser-396 in sphingosine intervention group were not statistical difference.AlCl_3 could increase the phosphorylation of Thr-181, Thr-231, Ser-262 and Ser396 in SH-SY5 Y cells, which mechanism may relate to the changes of CaMK-Ⅱand PP2 A. CaMK-Ⅱ mainly regulates the phosphorylation of Ser-262 induced by AlCl_3, while PP2 A mainly regulates the phosphorylation of Thr-181, Thr-231 and Ser-396 induced by AlCl_3. It is suggested that hyperphosphorylated tau protein induced by AlCl_3 is closely related to PP2 A.

Polylactic acid (PLA) hexagonal honeycomb structures were fabricated by using 3D-printing technology. By filling with absorbent polymethacrylimide (PMI) foam, a novel absorbent-foam-filled 3D-printed honeycomb was obtained. The in-plane (L- and W-direction) and out-of-plane (T-direction) compressive performances were studied experimentally and numerically. Due to absorbent PMI foam filling, the elastic modulus, compressive strength, energy absorption per unit volume, and energy absorption per unit mass of absorbent-foam-filled honeycomb under L-direction were increased by 296.34%, 168.75%, 505.57%, and 244.22%, respectively. Moreover, the elastic modulus, compressive strength, energy absorption per unit volume, and energy absorption per unit mass, under W-direction, also have increments of 211.65%, 179.85, 799.45%, and 413.02%, respectively. However, for out-of-plane compression, the compressive strength and energy absorption per unit volume were enhanced, but the density has also been increased, thus, it is not competitive in energy absorption per unit mass. Failure mechanism and dimension effects of absorbent-foam-filled honeycomb were also considered. The approach of absorbent foam filling made the 3D-printed honeycomb structure more competitive in electromagnetic wave stealth applications, while acting simultaneously as load-carrying structures.

Background Both hypertension and obesity are strongly associated with disability, but these associations are in debate among older people. In this context, our study aimed to examine the interactive effect of hypertension and obesity with disability, especially including the control of blood pressure. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted from August to October 2018 in Shanghai, 8648 community-dwelling individuals with a mean age of 70.39 years. Obesity was measured using the body mass index (BMI) in World Health Organization (WHO) Asia criteria. Hypertension control was defined as treatment with antihypertensive medication and a measured blood pressure of less than 140/90 mm Hg. Disability was measured using the self-reported physical self-maintenance scale (PSMS) and the instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) scale developed by Lawton and Brody. Logistic regression with 95% confidence intervals (CI) was used to explore the interactive effect of hypertension and obesity on disability. Results A total of 33.60% of participants reported hypertension control, 6.54% for poor hypertension control, 9.27% for ADL disability, and 32.47% for IADL disability. After adjusting social demographics and chronic conditions, versus without hypertension: in independent analyses, poor hypertension control was a risk factor (OR for ADL disability = 1.47, 95% CI = 1.10–1.96; OR for IADL disability = 1.55, 95% CI = 1.27–1.91); in interactive analyses, poor hypertension control was a risk factor in obese subset (OR for ADL disability = 1.73, 95% CI = 1.09–2.74; OR for IADL disability = 1.80, 95% CI = 1.31–2.47), but a protective factor in underweight subset (OR for ADL disability = 0.33, 95% CI = 0.18–0.62; OR for IADL disability = 0.32, 95% CI = 0.20–0.51). Conclusions Poor hypertension control, independent of its consequences, is a risk factor for disability among older people. In addition, hypertension and BMI status have interactive effect on disability among older people. Poor hypertension control is a risk factor among obese individuals, but a protective factor among underweight individuals.

PvArf regulate proline biosynthesis by physically interacting with PvP5CS1 to improve salt tolerance in switchgrass. The genetic factors that contribute to stress resiliency are yet to be determined. Here, we identified three ADP-ribosylation factors, PvArf1, PvArf-B1C, and PvArf-related, which contribute to salinity tolerance in transgenic switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.). Switchgrass overexpressing each of these genes produced approximately twofold more biomass than wild type (WT) under normal growth conditions. Transgenic plants accumulated modestly higher levels of proline under normal conditions, but this level was significantly increased under salt stress providing better protection to transgenic plants compared to WT. We found that PvArf genes induce proline biosynthesis genes under salt stress to positively regulate proline accumulation, and further demonstrated that PvArf physically interact with PvP5CS1. Moreover, the transcript levels of two key ROS-scavenging enzyme genes were significantly increased in the transgenic plants compared to WT, leading to reduced H2O2 accumulation under salt stress conditions. PvArf genes also protect cells against stress-induced changes in Na+ and K+ ion concentrations. Our findings uncover that ADP-ribosylation factors are key determinants of biomass yield in switchgrass, and play pivotal roles in salinity tolerance by regulating genes involved in proline biosynthesis.

An electride, a generalized form of cavity-trapped interstitial anionic electrons (IAEs) in a positively charged lattice framework, shows exotic properties according to the size and geometry of the cavities. Here, we report that the IAEs in layer structured [Gd2C]2+·2e− electride behave as ferromagnetic elements in two-dimensional interlayer space and possess their own magnetic moments of ~0.52 μB per quasi-atomic IAE, which facilitate the exchange interactions between interlayer gadolinium atoms across IAEs, inducing the ferromagnetism in [Gd2C]2+·2e− electride. The substitution of paramagnetic chlorine atoms for IAEs proves the magnetic nature of quasi-atomic IAEs through a transition from ferromagnetic [Gd2C]2+·2e− to antiferromagnetic Gd2CCl caused by attenuating interatomic exchange interactions, consistent with theoretical calculations. These results confirm that quasi-atomic IAEs act as ferromagnetic elements and trigger ferromagnetic spin alignments within the antiferromagnetic [Gd2C]2+ lattice framework. These results present a broad opportunity to tailor intriguing ferromagnetism originating from quasi-atomic interstitial electrons in low-dimensional materials., Ferromagnetic quasi-atomic behavior of interstitial anionic electrons (IAEs) in practical electrides is yet to be discovered experimentally. Here, the authors reveal that IAEs in two-dimensional electride [Gd2C]²+⋅2e- behave as magnetic elements with their own magnetic moment.

Intercropping can effectively control some plant soil-borne diseases. However, few studies on intercropping have focused on forage grass as companion plants. In this experiment, Festuca arundinacea (tall fescue) was selected as the intercropping forage to explore whether it could control tomato stem rot. We found that: (1) tomato intercropped with tall fescue had a significantly lower disease incidence and disease index of tomato stem rot than sole tomato; (2) the antifungal activities of the root exudates of tomato and tall fescue in intercropping system were significantly higher than those of sole tomato or tall fescue. Meanwhile, it was inferred that the main allelochemicals might be cyclohexane-1, 2-diol and putrescine based on the GC-MS analysis of root exudates of tall fescue. (3) RNA-seq suggested that intercropping with tall fescue significantly upregulated the expression of genes related to pathogenesis-related proteins and hormone metabolism of tomato compared to those in sole tomato.

Melatonin (N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine) is a pleiotropic signaling molecule that plays important roles in plant growth, development and stress responses. Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) is an important and widely cultivated leguminous forage crop with high biomass yield and rich nutritional value. The effects of exogenous melatonin content regulation on alfalfa stress tolerance have been investigated in recent years. Here, we isolated and introduced the MsASMT1 (N-acetylserotonin methyltransferase) gene into alfalfa, which significantly improved the endogenous melatonin content. Compared with wild-type (WT) plants, MsASMT1 overexpression (OE-MsASMT1) plants exhibited a series of phenotypic changes, including vigorous growth, increased plant height, enlarged leaves and robust stems with increased cell sizes, cell numbers and vascular bundles, as well as more branches. We also found that the flavonoid content and lignin composition of syringyl to guaiacyl ratio (S/G) the lignin monomer S/G ratio was were decreased and the cellulose content was increased in OE-MsASMT1 transgenic alfalfa. Further transcriptomic and metabolomic exploration revealed that a large group of genes in phenylalanine pathway related to flavonoids and lignin biosynthesis were significantly altered, accompanied by significantly reduced concentrations of the glycosides of quercetin, kaempferol, formononetin and biochanin in OE-MsASMT1 transgenic alfalfa. Our study first uncovers the effects of endogenous melatonin on alfalfa growth and metabolism. This report provides insights into the regulation regulatory effects and mechanisms of melatonin on manipulating plant growth and phenylalanine metabolism pathway, especially flavonoids and lignin biosynthesis.

Forecasting the state of health and remaining useful life of Li-ion batteries is an unsolved challenge that limits technologies such as consumer electronics and electric vehicles. Here, we build an accurate battery forecasting system by combining electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS)—a real-time, non-invasive and information-rich measurement that is hitherto underused in battery diagnosis—with Gaussian process machine learning. Over 20,000 EIS spectra of commercial Li-ion batteries are collected at different states of health, states of charge and temperatures—the largest dataset to our knowledge of its kind. Our Gaussian process model takes the entire spectrum as input, without further feature engineering, and automatically determines which spectral features predict degradation. Our model accurately predicts the remaining useful life, even without complete knowledge of past operating conditions of the battery. Our results demonstrate the value of EIS signals in battery management systems., Forecasting the state of health and remaining useful life of batteries is a challenge that limits technologies such as electric vehicles. Here, the authors build an accurate battery performance forecasting system using machine learning.

There is a lot of redundancy in the high dimensional raw images, which not only greatly increases the computational burden of image classification process, but also inevitably degrades the classification performance of the model. High-performance dimensionality reduction algorithms are in urgent need of development. To solve this problem, we develop a novel feature selection model for dimension reducing. It greatly reduces redundant features and selects the most representative features for classification. Besides, we also design a novelty version of the lightweight convolutional neural network (newCNN). The newCNN can enhance the classification performance of the system. To improve the classification accuracy, we build a hybrid classification (HC) model with the newCNN and Support Vector Machines (SVM). This model not only solves the problem of overfitting in the training process, but also has excellent generalization ability and robustness. The experimental results verify the effectiveness of our proposed methods.

Arylalkylamine N-acetyltransferase (AANAT) catalyses the acetylation of serotonin, a rate-limiting process in melatonin biosynthesis. To obtain better insight into the underlying mechanism of AANAT's actions in switchgrass growth, flowering and defence, we performed integrated morphological, physiological and omics analyses between overexpressed oAANAT transgenic lines in wild-type and transgenic control (expressing only the empty vector) plants. We showed that oAANAT played pivotal roles in modulating plant growth through its regulation of cell elongation, and regulating flowering through photoperiod and GA pathways. In relation to photosynthesis, oAANAT promoted photosynthetic efficiency primarily through regulating leaf anatomical structures, stomatal development and chlorophyll metabolism. Moreover, oAANAT overexpression can trigger a number of defence responses or strategies, including antioxidant enzymatic properties, non-enzymatic capacity, significantly activated phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, and adaptive morphological characteristics. This study unveils the possible molecular mechanisms underlying oAANAT dependent melatonin functions in switchgrass, providing an important starting point for further analyses.

To improve the efficiency of solving uncertainty design optimization problems, a gradient-based optimization framework is herein proposed that combines the dimension adaptive polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) and sensitivity analysis. The dimension adaptive PCE is used to quantify the quantities of interest (e.g. reliability, robustness metrics) and sensitivity. The dimension adaptive property is inherited from the dimension adaptive sparse grid, which is used to evaluate the PCE coefficients. Robustness metrics, referred to as statistical moments, and their gradients with respect to design variables are easily derived from the PCE, whereas the evaluation of the reliability and its gradient require integrations. To quantify the reliability, the framework uses Heaviside step function to eliminate the failure domain and computes the integration by Monte Carlo Simulation with the function replaced by PCE. The PCE is further derived to compute the function gradient on the definition domain and is combined with Taylor’s expansion and the finite difference to compute the reliability sensitivity. Since the design vector may affect the sample set determined by dimension adaptive sparse grid, the update of the sample set is controlled by the norm variations of the design vector. The optimization framework is formed by combining reliability, robustness quantification and sensitivity analysis and the optimization module. The accuracy and efficiency of reliability quantification and the reliability sensitivity are verified through canonical examples of a mathematical example，a system of springs ,and a cantilever beam. The effectiveness of the framework for solving optimization problem is verified through a multiple limit states example, a truss optimization example with eight random variables and three design variables, and an airfoil problem with three random variables and eighteen design variables. The results demonstrate that the framework obtains accurate solutions at a manageable computational cost.

Studies on urban climatic mapping and local climate zones are urgently needed due to rapid urbanisation in China, to identify and predict serious air pollution problems and occurrence of urban heat...

The city’s local climate zone (LCZ) has been considered as a useful guiding tool for urban climate mapping and classification of urban canopy in cities. However, the LCZ classification methods and ...