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In this study, Ti-(N) powders with a core–shell structure were prepared via a nitriding process of titanium (Ti) powders for metal additive manufacturing (AM). Nitriding of spherical Ti powders (D50 = 130 µm and D50 = 63 µm) was carried out at different temperatures from 873 K to 1373 K for 10 min. The nitriding process enabled the manufacture of a core–shell-structured Ti-(N) powder, where an N-enriched shell surrounds a lower N core. The thickness of the N-rich Ti shell increases exponentially with increasing nitriding temperature. Depending on nitriding temperature, a shell layer consisting of Ti2N and TiN compounds can form. Based on X-ray diffraction (XRD) results, it was identified that the N-rich shell is composed of (i) only Ti(N) solid solution when nitrided below 1023 K; and (ii) Ti(N) solid solution, Ti2N and TiN compounds if nitrided at or above 1023 K. The core–shell-structured Ti-(N) powders were subsequently used to manufacture bulk samples by spark plasma sintering (SPS) and laser metal deposition (LMD) processes for comparison. The microstructure was characterized and discussed. LMD-fabricated Ti-N alloy samples exhibited high tensile strength (965 MPa) with good tensile ductility (7.6%) due to the homogeneous distribution of N and fine grain size. In contrast, SPS-fabricated Ti-N alloy samples using the same nitrided Ti-N powder showed much lower tensile strength (708 MPa) with essentially no tensile ductility (0.3%) due to the inhomogeneous distribution of N. LMD can allow the fabrication of strong and ductile Ti-N alloys while it is not possible by SPS.

Graphic abstract Silver nanowires (AgNWs), as one-dimensional nanometallic materials, have attracted wide attention due to the excellent electrical conductivity, transparency and flexibility, especially in flexible and stretchable electronics. However, the microscopic discontinuities require AgNWs be attached to some carrier for practical applications. Relative to the preparation method, how to integrate AgNWs into the flexible matrix is particularly important. In recent years, plenty of papers have been published on the preparation of conductors based on AgNWs, including printing techniques, coating techniques, vacuum filtration techniques, template-assisted assembly techniques, electrospinning techniques and gelating techniques. The aim of this review is to discuss different assembly method of AgNW-based conducting film and their advantages. Conducting films based on silver nanowires (AgNWs) have been reviewed with a focus on their assembly and their advantages.

Objective: Zearalenone (ZEA) has estrogen-like effects. Our previous study has shown that ZEA (0.5 to 1.5 mg/kg) could induce abnormal uterine proliferation through transforming growth factor signaling pathway. To further study the other regulatory networks of uterine hypertrophy caused by ZEA, the potential mechanism of ZEA on porcine endometrial epithelial cells (PECs) was explored by the Illumina Hiseq 2000 sequencing system.Methods: The PECs were treated with ZEA at 0 (ZEA0), 5 (ZEA5), 20 (ZEA20), and 80 (ZEA80) μmol/L for 24 h. The collected cells were subjected to cell cycle, RNA-seq, real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction, immunofluorescence, and western blot analysis.Results: The proportion of cells in the S and G2 phases decreased (p

The physiological response of symbiotic Symbiodiniaceae to high temperature is believed to result in coral bleaching. However, the potential effect of nitrogen availability on heat acclimatization of symbiotic Symbiodiniaceae is still unclear. In this study, physiological responses of Symbiodiniaceae Cladocopium goreaui to temperature and nitrogen nutrient stress conditions were investigated. Nitrogen deficiency caused significant declines in cell concentration and chlorophyll content per cell, but significant increases in nitric oxide synthase activity, caspase3 activation level, and cellular carbon content of C. goreaui at normal temperature. Algal cells under high temperature and nitrogen deficiency showed significant rises in Fv/Fm, catalase activity, and caspase3 activation level, but no significant changes in cell yield, cell size, chlorophyll content, superoxide dismutase, nitric oxide synthase activity, and cellular contents of nitrogen and carbon, in comparison with those under normal temperature and nitrogen deficiency. Growth, chlorophyll, and nitrogen contents of algal cells under the high temperature and nitrogen-replete conditions were significantly higher than those under high temperature or nitrogen deficiency alone, whereas nitric oxide synthase activity, superoxide dismutase activity, catalase activity, carbon content, and caspase3 activation level exhibited opposite trends of variation. Transcriptomic and network analyses revealed ion transport and metabolic processes mainly involved in regulating these physiological activities under different temperature and nitrogen nutrient. The totality of results shows that high temperature activates stress responses, induces antioxidant capacity of apoptosis, and limits the growth rate of C. goreaui. Adequate nitrogen nutrient can improve the resilience of this Symbiodiniaceae against heat stress through repressed apoptosis, promoted ion transport, and optimized metabolism.

Anthocyanins are plant pigments with diverse biological functions that contribute to fruit quality and are beneficial to human health. Anthocyanin accumulation can be influenced by environmental signals, such as light, and plants have developed sophisticated systems to receive and transduce these signals. However, the associated molecular mechanisms are not well understood. In this study, we investigated the potential function of mitogen-activated protein kinases, which are members of the light signaling pathway, during light-induced anthocyanin accumulation in apple (Malus domestica) fruit peels. An antibody array and yeast two-hybrid screen indicated that proteins encoded by two MdMPK4 genes are light-activated and interact with the transcription factor and anthocyanin biosynthesis regulator MdMYB1. A phosphorylation assay showed that the MdMPK4 proteins phosphorylate MdMYB1, thereby increasing its stability under light conditions. Transient MdMPK4 and MdMYB1 overexpression assays further revealed that light-induced anthocyanin accumulation relies on MdMPK4 kinase activity, which is required for maximum MdMYB1 activity. Based on the expression of the chromosome 6 allele MdMPK4-06G under light conditions and the presence of light response elements in the MdMPK4-06G promoter, we concluded that it is more responsive to light than the chromosome 14 allele MdMPK4-14G. These results suggest a potential biotechnological strategy for increasing fruit anthocyanin content via light induction.

Objective: The primary aim is to investigate the correlation between 640-slice dynamic volume computer tomography (DVCT) and echocardiography (ECHO) in the function of left ventricular (LV), and the value of DVCT in the evaluation of left coronary artery disease (LCA) and geometry and function of left ventricular, by measuring the difference of left ventricular function of coronary atherosclerotic heart disease with DVCT in comparison to ECHO. Materials and Methods: Sixty-three patients of coronary heart disease (CHD) with left coronary artery disease were selected, all of them were examined by DVCT coronary imaging and ECHO. On the basis of the American Society of Cardiovascular Computed Temography, the study applied the Coronary Artery Disease Report and Data System (CAD-RADS) to assess the left cornary artery. The end-diastolic volume (EDV), end-systolic volume (ESV), stroke volume (SV), ejection fraction (EF) and myocardial mass (MM) of function parameters of the left ventricle were counted. The function parameters of DVCT and ECHO were comparatively analyzed. Results: The results showed that there was a positive correlativity between the value of EDV, ESV, SV and EF which measured through DVCT and the ECHO (r = 0.69, 0.90, 0.60, 0.71 respectively, P < 0.05 all). The differences of ESV, SV, EF between CAD-RADS 2 and 4, CAD-RADS 3 and 4 were significant (P < 0.05). The differences of data of EDV and MM between CAD-RADS 2, 3 and 4 were statistically significant (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Both DVCT coronary artery imaging and ECHO can accurately assess left ventricular function and have a high correlation. DVCT coronary artery imaging can assess CAD and analyze the function of left ventricular. EDV and MM change significantly in CAD-RADS 3, which providing important quantitative data for clinical diagnosis and treatment plan of coronary heart disease.

Tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) is selectively lethal to cancer cells and harmless to normal cells, making it a potential agent for cancer therapy. However, some breast cancer cells are resistant to TRAIL. This study revealed that andrographolide (Andro), an extract from Andrographis paniculate, a natural compound, sensitized breast cancer cells to TRAIL-induced tumor suppression; it identified apoptosis-associated protein regulation, reactive oxygen species accumulation, mitochondria membrane potential disruption, caspase cascade activation, and gasdermin-E cleavage to be involved in the tumor lethality mediated by Andro combined with TRAIL treatment. The flow cytometry results showed the combination of Andro and TRAIL repressed breast cancer cells by cell death induction, and the assessment of combined index indicated that the combined treatment with Andro and TRAIL repressed breast cancer cells synergistically. Blotting results displayed Andro and TRAIL combination elevated TRAIL-associated receptors, death receptors 4 and 5, at protein levels. These results provided critical insight into breast cancer patients' therapy and exploration direction for TRAIL clinical application.

Alkaline stress severely limits plant growth and yield worldwide. NF-YC transcription factors (TFs) respond to abiotic stress by activating gene expression. However, the biological function of NF-YC TFs in alfalfa (

Slow light devices with buffering capability play a critical role in all-optical signal processing. In this paper, multiple slow light phenomena are implemented based on plasmon-induced transparency (PIT) in our device. The device mainly consists of dual tooth cavities coupled with stub resonators, respectively. Temporal coupled-mode theory model illustrates that the triple PIT phenomena can be achieved based on different formation mechanisms. The simulation results calculated by the finite-difference time-domain method reveal that significant slow light response occurs at two wavelength regions. In addition, the parameters of structure have an important influence on PIT response and slow light characteristics. Moreover, the separate manipulation of wavelength, transmission and group index at transparency peak can be achieved in different slow light channels by adjusting the structural parameters. This plasmonic device is of great significance for the design of optical networks on chips.

Hyperuricemia (HUA), a chronic disease caused by metabolic disorders of purine, is often accompanied by other diseases such as gout, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), and hyperlipidemia. However, little is known about the relationship between HUA and these diseases on the protein level. We performed label-free liquid chromatography MS/MS spectrometry analysis of urine samples from 26 HUA patients and 25 healthy controls, attempting to establish the possible protein links between HUA and these diseases by profiling urine proteome. A total of 2119 proteins were characterized in sample proteomes. Among them, 11 were found decreased and 2 were found increased in HUA samples. Plausible pathways found by enrichment analysis of these differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) include the processes for insulin receptor recycling and lipid metabolism, suggesting potential links between HUA and T2DM and hyperlipidemia. The abundance changes of three key proteins (VATB1, CFAD, and APOC3) involved in these processes were validated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). In conclusion, our result provides proteomic evidence, for the first time, that the aberrant pathways enriched by described key DEPs are closely related to the incidence of HUA and its concomitant diseases.

Background Pulse-taking is widely used for diagnosis and treatment in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), and protein complexes in serum perform various biological functions. The Balanced constitution is one of the major constitutions in TCM, people with Balanced constitution can also share some common characteristics with unbalanced constitution types. Methods Blue native polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (BN-PAGE) was applied to the serum of 25 people with balanced constitutions. The patterns of the protein complexes could be recognized according to the number, molecular weight, and intensity of the gel bands. All of the individual bands from these patterns were cut and in-gel-digested with trypsin, followed by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry/mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) analysis for protein identification and biological function analysis. Results The protein complex patterns were roughly categorized as type A and B with high stability and reproducibility, and there were 15 and 16 gel bands in type A and type B, respectively. Among the 25 serum samples, 14 belonged to type A, and 11 belonged to type B. High-abundance proteins significantly decreased from 99% to 44% after BN-PAGE separation. The unique proteins in type A were mainly related to lipid metabolism, while the unique proteins in type B were involved in biological processes related to immune response and inflammatory regulation. The Qi-deficiency constitution converted score of type A was higher than that of type B, while the Damp-heat constitution converted score of type A was lower than that of type B. Conclusions Our study provided an objective reference for diagnosis and prognosis, which might lay a foundation for establishing the characteristic protein complex spectra of all of the TCM constitutions.

Background: MORAb-202 (farletuzumab ecteribulin) is an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) comprised of the humanized antifolate receptor-alpha (FRα) monoclonal antibody, farletuzumab, and the cytotoxic microtubule inhibitor, eribulin, conjugated by a cathepsin B-cleavable linker. MORAb-202 targets the eribulin payload to tumor cells expressing FRα, where internalization leads to lysosomal cleavage of the ADC and intracellular release of eribulin, causing apoptosis, cell-cycle arrest, and bystander effects in adjacent cells. A previous phase 1 study in Japan of MORAb-202 (NCT03386942) demonstrated antitumor activity across multiple tumor types and identified interstitial lung disease (ILD) as an adverse event of interest (Shimizu CCR 2021). An expansion cohort (doses: 0.9, 1.2 mg/kg) in patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer (OC) found meaningful efficacy across FRα-expression levels and ILD/pneumonitis (mainly low grade) was the most common adverse event (Nishio ASCO 2022). Methods: This multicenter phase 1/2 study (NCT04300556) consists of Dose-Escalation and Dose-Confirmation cohorts. In the Dose-Escalation phase, the primary objectives were to evaluate safety/tolerability and determine the recommended phase 2 dose of MORAb-202 in patients with OC, endometrial cancer (EC), non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), or triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). In the ongoing Dose-Confirmation phase, the primary objectives are (1) to further evaluate safety/tolerability and (2) to evaluate preliminary efficacy (Objective Response Rate) in patients with OC or EC. Based on a population pharmacokinetics model (Hayato ASCO 2022), body-surface-area-based dosing is utilized. The initial cohort has enrolled 7 patients at a MORAb-202 25 mg/m2 IV Q3W dose and is ongoing; further enrollment of patients at 25 mg/m2 and 33 mg/m2 will occur following ILD safety evaluation. Tumor assessments will be conducted by investigators using RECIST v1.1 at screening, every 6 weeks for 24 weeks, then every 12 weeks or as needed. Assessments of computed tomography scans for ILD will be conducted by a central expert review board. Citation Format: Robert Wenham, Sharad Ghamande, Vicky Makker, June Hou, Linda Duska, Daniela Matei, Manali Bhave, Rachael Scott, Natalyn Hawk, Tingting Song, Deborah K. Armstrong. A multicenter, open-label phase 1/2 trial evaluating the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of MORAb-202, a folate-receptor-alpha-targeting antibody-drug conjugate in patients with selected tumor types [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 2 (Clinical Trials and Late-Breaking Research); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(8_Suppl):Abstract nr CT056.

In allusion to the privacy and security problems in 3D point cloud classification, a novel privacy protection method for 3D point cloud classification based on optical chaotic encryption scheme is proposed and implemented in this paper for the first time. The mutually coupled spin-polarized vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (MC-SPVCSELs) subject to double optical feedback (DOF) are studied to generate optical chaos for permutation and diffusion encryption process of 3D point cloud. The nonlinear dynamics and complexity results demonstrate that the MC-SPVCSELs with DOF have high chaotic complexity and can provide tremendously large key space. All the test-sets of ModelNet40 dataset containing 40 object categories are encrypted and decrypted by the proposed scheme, and then the classification results of 40 object categories for original, encrypted, and decrypted 3D point cloud are entirely enumerated through the PointNet++. Intriguingly, the class accuracies of the encrypted point cloud are nearly all equal to 0.0000% except for the plant class with 100.0000%, indicating the encrypted point cloud cannot be classified and identified. The decryption class accuracies are very close to the original class accuracies. Therefore, the classification results verify that the proposed privacy protection scheme is practically feasible and remarkably effective. Additionally, the encryption and decryption results show that the encrypted point cloud images are ambiguous and unrecognizable, while the decrypted point cloud images are identical to original images. Moreover, this paper improves the security analysis via analyzing 3D point cloud geometric features. Eventually, various security analysis results validate that the proposed privacy protection scheme has high security level and good privacy protection effect for 3D point cloud classification.

Background The present study aimed to assess the correlation of fibroblast growth factor (FGF)-23 expression with clinical characteristics, then further explore its value in predicting 2-year in-stent restenosis (ISR) risk in coronary heart disease (CHD) patients underwent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with drug-eluting stent (DES). Methods In this prospective, single-center, observational study, totally 214 CHD patients treated by PCI with DES were consecutively recruited, and peripheral blood samples were collected prior to PCI with DES for serum samples isolation. Following, FGF-23 level in the serum samples was detected via enzyme linked-immuno-sorbent Assay. The follow-up coronary angiography was performed at 1 year and 2 years after PCI or if suspected ISR symptoms occurred. Results FGF-23 was positively correlated with fasting blood-glucose, insulin resistance, serum creatinine, serum uric acid, LDL-C, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, cardiac troponin I and N-terminal-proB-type natriuretic peptide, while was negatively associated with HDL-C and left ventricular ejection fraction (all P P P > 0.05). Moreover, FGF-23 level was higher in 2-year ISR patients (n = 38) compared to 2-year non-ISR patients (n = 176) (P Conclusion FGF-23 correlates with endocrine and metabolism dysregulation, worse cardiac and renal function, inflammation level, stenosis degree of target lesion, and serves as an independent risk factor for 2-year ISR risk in CHD patients underwent PCI with DES.

Optical networks-on-chips (ONoCs) are the key technology for the sustainable development of multiprocessors system-on-chip (MPSoC) in the future. Micro-ring resonators (MRs) are widely used in ONoCs as key device to select and redirect optical signals. However, MRs have the inherent property of being sensitive to environmental temperature. With the fluctuation of environmental temperature, its resonance wavelength drifts, which can introduce more loss and crosstalk noise to ONoCs and make the network performance decline sharply. Therefore, it is very important to analyze the influence of thermal effect in ONoCs to solve this problem. In this paper, the theoretical models of loss and crosstalk noise changing with temperature are established from device level to network level, respectively. And a series of network performances of mesh-based ONoCs caused by thermal effect are systematically modeled and analyzed employing formal methods. Finally, we conduct case studies for mesh-based ONoCs using optimized crossbar optical router and crux optical router to evaluate the proposed method. The simulation results show that the performance of mesh-based ONoCs declines with the increase of temperature, such as the decrease of optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) and the increase of bit error rate (BER), which severely limits the network scalability. The formal analytical models provide a criterion for the performance analysis of thermal effect in ONoCs. In addition, the formal methods have high portability and scalability, and can provide technical support for future research work.

Copolymerization of urea and small molecules is an effective strategy to modify g-C3N4. To study in depth the important effects of the introduction of a small molecule moiety on the structure–property relationship of g-C3N4, in this paper, the copolymers MxCN (x = 5, 15, 25, 50, 100 mg) were synthesized from urea melt and different amounts of small molecule murexide by a one-pot method. The experimental results confirm that the addition of small molecule murexide can evoke the synergistic effect of reduced band gaps, enhanced visible light absorption and improved separation efficiency of photogenerated carriers. Benefiting from these merits, the optimized M25CN exhibits superior photocatalytic hydrogen production performance (6.1 mmol g−1 h−1) with an apparent quantum efficiency of about 7.5% at 420 nm, which is about five times higher than that of pristine CN. The degradation rate of tetracycline is about 97.6% in 2 h, and a possible degradation mechanism is proposed. This work provides a reference for the study of the effect of small molecule modified g-C3N4 on the photocatalytic performance.

Sanghuangporus sanghuang (SS) is a rare medicinal polypore fungus that grows solely on Morus trees. In this study, seven grains (oats, barley, millet, rice, buckwheat, corn, and coix seed) were used as solid substrates for SS fermentation and characterized in their nutrition, functional composition, and antioxidant activities. After fermentation, the nutrient compositions of crude protein (F1,41 = 111.1, P F1,41 = 595.7, P F1,41 = 51.4, P F1,41 = 227.3, P ΔT-AOC/ABTS+/DPPH/DNAp, that was correlated to part of changes in polyphenol, carotenoid, triterpenoids, and flavonoid contents. In summary, oats have the greatest potential for use as a fermentation substrate for health food development.

A series of new zirconium complexes bearing bulkier amine bis(phenolate) tetradentate ligands, Me

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) could achieve the removal of antibiotics and generate power in the meantime, a process in which the bacterial community structure played a key role. Previous work has mainly focused on microbes in the anode, while their role in the cathode was seldomly mentioned. Thus, this study explored the bacterial community of both electrodes in MFCs under sulfadiazine (SDZ) pressure. The results showed that the addition of SDZ had a limited effect on the electrochemical performance, and the maximum output voltage was kept at 0.55 V. As the most abundant phylum, Proteobacteria played an important role in both the anode and cathode. Among them, Geobacter (40.30%) worked for power generation, while Xanthobacter (11.11%), Bradyrhizobium (9.04%), and Achromobacter (7.30%) functioned in SDZ removal. Actinobacteria mainly clustered in the cathode, in which Microbacterium (9.85%) was responsible for SDZ removal. Bacteroidetes, associated with the degradation of SDZ, showed no significant difference between the anode and cathode. Cathodic and part of anodic bacteria could remove SDZ efficiently in MFCs through synergistic interactions and produce metabolites for exoelectrogenic bacteria. The potential hosts of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) presented mainly at the anode, while cathodic bacteria might be responsible for ARGs reduction. This work elucidated the role of microorganisms and their synergistic interaction in MFCs and provided a reference to generate power and remove antibiotics using MFCs.

The inflammatory dysfunction of microglia from excess amyloid-β peptide (Aβ) disposal is an overlooked but pathogenic event in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Here, we exploit a native high-density lipoprotein (HDL)-inspired nanoscavenger (pHDL/Cur-siBACE1) that combines the trinity of phosphatidic acid-functionalized HDL (pHDL), curcumin (Cur), and β-site APP cleavage enzyme 1 targeted siRNA (siBACE1) to modulate microglial dysfunction. By mimicking the natural lipoprotein transport route, pHDL can penetrate the blood-brain barrier and sequentially target Aβ plaque, where Aβ catabolism is accelerated without microglial dysfunction. The benefit results are from a three-pronged modulation strategy, including promoted Aβ clearance with an antibody-like Aβ binding affinity, normalized microglial dysfunction by blocking the NF-κB pathway, and reduced Aβ production by gene silence (44%). After treatment, the memory deficit and neuroinflammation of APPswe/PSEN 1dE9 mice are reversed. Collectively, this study highlights the double-edged sword role of microglia and provides a promising tactic for modulating microglial dysfunction in AD treatment.

Copper (Cu) surfaces with bimodal nanoporosity can be used for a variety of applications. This research shows that bimodal nanoporous Cu surfaces can be fabricated by dealloying of an as-cast hypereutectic alloy Al75Cu25 (at.%) alloy, which solidifies as pre-eutectic Al2Cu (micrometre-scaled) and eutectic lamella of α-Al/Al2Cu (nanoscaled). The bimodal nanoporous Cu surface is a result of a microstructural length scale controlled dealloying process: In the beginning, the micrometre-scaled Al2Cu acts as a cathode enabling the preferential dissolution of α-Al (anode) for larger pores to form. Afterwards, the nanosize effect of α-Al overrides the intrinsic difference in electrochemical potential allowing for subsequent simultaneous dealloying leading to finer pores. The assessment of the in situ Synchrotron XRD data of the formation of bimodal nanoporous Cu surfaces revealed a two-stage kinetic process, closely related to the formation of bimodal pores during the microstructural length scale controlled dealloying process. The underlying rationales and implications are discussed.

Cloud servers are very suitable for sharing, and storing image data, and meanwhile it is confronted with many security, and privacy problems. Optical chaos, and hardware implementation of image encryption possess distinct superiorities in secret image sharing. Hence, combining the advantages of advanced reduced instruction set computer machine (ARM)-embedded platform Exynos4412 model, together with vertical-cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) subject to positive optoelectronic feedback (POEF), a novel color image encryption, and transmission system is experimentally realized, and appraised. We investigate the dynamic behaviors of the VCSEL, and obtain the chaotic output. An analog to digital conversion (ADC) module is utilized for optical chaos data acquisition. The improved gravity model, and the double sine map are exploited to encrypt the image, and the encrypted image is securely shared by cloud services. The user can download the encrypted image, and decrypt it by the hardware board. The experiment results reveal that the system has an excellent resistance to common attacks. Compared to the numerical simulation, our hardware implementation for such a color image encryption, and transmission system is formidable to actualize, but we successfully implemented, and tested in a real-world environment. By comparing experimental, and simulation results, the consistent results are found. Therefore, in the case of similar encryption effect, the user's information privacy protection in the actual industrial or commercial systems can be securely guaranteed on our hardware platform.

The sulfite reductase gene in Medicago sativa L. (MsSiR) encodes sulfite reductase (SiR) and catalyses the conversion of sulfite to sulfate in the sulfite assimilation pathway. In this study, we investigated the role of MsSiR in alfalfa by generating transgenic alfalfa that ectopically expressed MsSiR under the control of the CaMV35S promoter. The differences in alkali tolerance between the MsSiR-overexpressing and wild-type (WT) plants were analyzed, and the MsSiR-overexpressing plants exhibited an improved phenotype under alkali stress. Compared to WT plants, these plants demonstrated improved antioxidant activity as well as decreased H2O2 and O2- contents and increased glutathione reduced (GSH), Cysteine (Cys) and glutathione oxidized (GSSG) contents. MsSiR-overexpressing plants also exhibited high levels of adenosyl phosphosulfate reductases (APR), sulfite oxidase (SO) and MsSiR expression under alkali stress. It was speculated that MsSiR is involved in sulfur metabolism pathways, including the stabilization of sulfate and sulfite levels and the synthesis of GSH. These two processes achieve alkali tolerance by positively regulating the detoxification and antioxidant activities of alfalfa.

The optical wireless communication (OWC) system has been widely studied as a promising candidate for indoor high-speed wireless communications. In particular, the spatial diversity scheme has shown to be effective to improve the performance of OWC systems. However, the delay amongst multiple channels in this scheme may result in severe inter-symbol-interference (ISI) and degradations of the system performance. Recent studies have shown that the symbol decision schemes based on recurrent neural networks (RNNs) can mitigate the impact of delays. However, their performances are limited when the channel delays are long. In this paper, we propose a delay-tolerant indoor OWC system, which utilizes an attention-augmented long-short term memory (ALSTM) RNN decision scheme to handle long channel delays. A 10 Gb/s repetition-coded indoor OWC system with the proposed ALSTM RNN decision scheme is experimentally demonstrated. Compared with traditional OWC systems which add cyclic prefix (CP) /zero-postfix (ZP) to combat the impact of channel delays, the proposed system does not reduce the effective data rate or throughput. Compared with the previous study which adopts the vanilla RNN decision scheme, the proposed ALSTM RNN decision scheme can better learn dependencies amongst received symbols with the help of attention mechanism, especially amongst non-neighboring symbols. Hence, it is more robust against the ISI induced by long channel delays. Experimental results show that compared with the previously studied vanilla RNN, over one-order-of-magnitude bit-error-rate improvement is achieved when the channel delay is more than 4.7-symbol-period.

Transmitter diversity schemes, such as repetition coding (RC), can tackle the optical channel blockage issue in high-speed line-of-sight link based optical wireless communication (OWC) systems, and channel synchronization is required to realize the benefit. In this article, an orthogonal-filters-based repetition coding (OF-RC) transmitter diversity scheme with on-demand equalization is proposed to address time delays amongst multiple optical wireless channels in the indoor OWC systems. The OF is used for the separation and recovery of the overlapped multipath signals from the single received data stream, and hence, the proposed novel OF-RC scheme can relax the channel synchronization requirement without frequent channel state feedback. The proposed OF-RC principle is firstly investigated via both numerical analysis and experimental demonstration in the two-transmitters scenario, where the OF is constructed using the square root RC filter with orthogonal sine/cosine function sets. Results show that a bit-error-rate (BER) performance within the 7% forward-error-correction (FEC) limit is achieved using the proposed OF-RC scheme together with on-demand fast recursive-least-squares (RLS) equalization. Furthermore, both fractional and integer OF length delays can be handled by the proposed OF-RC scheme. In addition to the two-transmitters scenario, the generalized OF-RC scheme supporting more transmitters is also theoretically investigated, and multidimensional OFs are constructed via the multiband approach. The performance and feasibility of OWC system with the generalized OF-RC scheme is numerically simulated in the three-transmitters scenario, and results demonstrate the capability of the generalized OF-RC scheme. The proposed OF-RC scheme with on-demand equalization provides a promising solution to tackle the fundamental time delay limitation in high-speed indoor OWC systems.

Two phenothiazine drugs, perphenazine (PPZ) and chlorpromazine hydrochloride (CPZ), which contain N, S multiple active sites could be co-adsorbed on the copper surface, so they can play a certain preservative effect for copper in sulfuric acid solution. Therefore, their inhibition performance was studied by means of electrochemical tests, surface analysis and theoretical calculations. The results show that both drugs are cathodic corrosion inhibitors, and the corrosion inhibition efficiency can reach 94.9% and 97.2%, respectively. And the inhibition effect of CPZ is greater than PPZ. Besides, corrosion inhibition efficiency increases with increasing inhibitor concentration. In addition, both inhibitors can form a protective film on the copper surface and follow the Langmuir adsorption model. The theoretical calculation also explains the corrosion inhibition mechanism, and the results obtained are consistent with the experiment.

Photochromic phenylhydrazones are one of the most promising candidates for a photoswitchable fluorescent probe with potential applications in various fields, but mechanistic understanding of the origin of this unique behavior is limited. In this work, we explored the emission nature and switching mechanism of a model phenylhydrazone-based fluorescent photoswitch, DMA-PHA, by means of TD-DFT and CASPT2 calculations. The fluorescence-emitting Z configuration of DMA-PHA does not involve an excited-state intramolecular proton transfer process since the resonance effect between the DMA group and the rest part of the molecule in the excited state strengthens the hydrogen bond and thus stabilizes the emissive state. The light-induced fluorescence toggling results from E↔Z interconversion driven by an out-of-plane C═N bond torsion and assisted by a N-N single bond rotation, which in total lead to a charge separation process losing the fluorescence activity. The N-N bond rotation in phenylhydrazone further enhances the competitive nonradiative decay and reduces the photoisomerization yields. The theoretical results will provide the guidance for the rational design of novel and improved photoswitchable fluorescent probes with desired performances.

Optical Networks-on-Chip (ONoCs) have been proposed as the most promising solution for on-chip multi-core processors interconnection infrastructure due to its low latency, low power dissipation, and high bandwidth density. In ONoCs, the mesh topology is a typical structure that is regarded as the one of the most primary choice in ONoCs design due to its regular structure, simplicity, and divinable scalability in terms of network performance and budget. However, mesh structure has low connectivity and high insertion loss and crosstalk noise, which severely reduce the energy efficiency and signal reliability. In this paper, we first propose a novel double-layer ONoCs structure based on a partition of Virtual-Cluster in mesh, named VCmesh, which contains two candidate communication modes: inter-cluster communication and non-cluster communication. Furthermore, we design the length-optimized-routing-protocol (LORP) to select the preferred with smaller number of hops. The analyses and simulation results indicate that the performance of the VCmesh network is better than that of the typical mesh structure, especially in terms of end-to-end (ETE) latency and throughput. In physical layer performance, the VCmesh has a higher signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR), which improves the transmission quality of the optical signal. In addition, compared with the typical mesh-based ONoCs, the VCmesh-based ONoCs reduce the minimum required laser output power for 16 nodes, 25 nodes, and 36 nodes by 52.4%, 85.6%, and 94.6%, respectively.

A kinetically controlled radical addition/elimination reaction generating fluorinated allenes was developed. This strategy offers a route to a facile synthesis of diverse trifluoromethyl, difluoromethylene, and perfluoroalkyl functionalized allenes from readily available fluoroalkyl halides and alkynyl aziridines under visible-light irradiation. Density functional theory calculation of this radical clock type of reaction revealed a kinetically controlled C-N bond cleavage overcoming the alternative thermodynamically controlled C-C bond cleavage process.

Breast cancer is the most common malignancy for women worldwide, while Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) accounts for 20% in all patients. Compared with estrogen receptor positive breast cancer, which could be effectively controlled via endocrine therapy, TNBC is more aggressive and worse in prognosis. It is therefore urgent and necessary to develop a novel therapeutic strategy for TNBC treatment. Recent studies identified Hippo signaling is highly activated in TNBC, which could be a driving pathway for TNBC progression. In our study, we determine RNF187 as a negative regulator for Hippo signaling activation. RNF187 depletion significantly decreases cell migration and invasion capacity in TNBC. These effects could be rescued by further YAP depletion. Depletion of RNF187 increases the YAP protein level and Hippo signaling target genes, such as CTGF and CYR61 in TNBC. Immuno-precipitation assay shows that RNF187 associates with YAP, promoting its degradation possibly via inducing YAP K48-dependent poly-ubiquitination. Interestingly, Our clinical data reveals that RNF187 reversely correlates with YAP protein level and Hippo target genes. RNF187 tends to correlate with good prognosis in TNBC patients. Our study provides evidence to establish a proteolytic mechanism in regulation Hippo signaling activation in TNBC.

Background Retinoblastoma (RB) is the most common intraocular malignancy in children. Long non-coding RNA X-inactive specific transcript (lncRNA XIST) has been reported to be associated with RB, but research on the mechanism of XIST is not well studied. Methods Expressions of XIST, microRNA-140-5p (miR-140-5p), and sex-determining region Y-related high-mobility group box 4 (SOX4) were analyzed by qRT-PCR or Western blot. Relationships of XIST, SOX4, and miR-140-5p were evaluated by dual-luciferase reporter assay and Spearman’s analysis. Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) and Transwell assay were performed to assess the function of XIST on RB cell proliferation and invasion. Results In RB tissues, XIST and SOX4 expressions were obviously increased, but the miR-140-5p expression was markedly reduced. XIST expression was positively related to SOX4 expression while negatively correlated with miR-140-5p expression, and negative correlation was exhibited between miR-140-5p and SOX4 expression in RB tissues. XIST was confirmed to directly bind to miR-140-5p, and SOX4 was one target of miR-140-5p. XIST knockdown could impede RB cell proliferation and invasion, while miR-140-5p inhibition reversed the effects. In addition, XIST overexpression or miR-140-5p inhibition could abrogate the inhibition of SOX4 silencing on cell proliferation and invasion of RB cells. Conclusions XIST was obviously increased in RB tissues and cells, and XIST inhibition repressed the proliferation and invasion of RB cells by miR-140-5p/SOX4 axis, which may provide new understandings of the XIST molecular mechanism in RB.

Different from the existing quantum key distribution (QKD)-based quantum private query (QPQ) protocols, we propose a secure multi-party quantum private information query protocol utilizing universal blind quantum computation in quantum cloud computing. Due to the blindness and correctness of blind quantum computation, our protocol guarantees the privacy and security for all the clients and the servers. The clients obtain values corresponding to their queries only, and nothing else from the servers, while the servers can not get any information about the queries. In our protocols, the only thing that the clients do is to need the ability to perform single-qubit measurement or to prepare single-qubit states.

The Al-based metal matrix composites (AMMCs) reinforced by micron- and submicron-scale TiC ceramic particles were manufactured by selective laser melting (SLM) additive manufacturing. The influences of SLM processing parameters such as volumetric energy density (ɛ) and laser absorptivity of powders on the densification, microstructural evolution, mechanical behavior and corrosion behavior of the AMMCs were systematically studied, based on which the strengthening mechanisms of the SLM-processed AMMC components were clarified. Finite element simulation was run to assist in revealing the underlying mechanism. Fundamental processes such as the Marangoni flow were discussed. Through these efforts, the as-printed AlSi10Mg/1 μm TiC was SLMed into crack-free, high-density parts (= 99.2%) when ɛ was > 65 J/mm3. For the as-printed AlSi10Mg/1 μm TiC samples prepared by the best SLM parameters, high tensile strength (470 ± 14 MPa) was achieved. Average hardness of ~ 169 HV0.1 and a considerably low friction coefficient with a mean value of ~ 0.3 were also obtained. The homogeneously distributed submicron TiC particles reduced the wear rate to 1.68 × 10−11 mm3/N/m. The as-printed AlSi10Mg/1 μm TiC parts showed better performance on corrosion resistance as well due to the high relative density achieved along with continuous and compatible bonding interfaces with the Al alloy matrix. Use of large-sized TiC (e.g., 30 μm) particles should be avoided, however, since they led to reduced mechanical properties and a poorer corrosion resistance.

Named Data Networking (NDN) is a new clean-slate architecture for the future Internet. Efficient content retrieval is the original intention of NDN design. The content retrieval process driven by content consumers in NDN includes the following challenges, consumers do not know whether the content exists and whether the content producer is reliable. Invalid interest packets could cause the occupation of limited network resources and DoS attack problem. To ensure the authenticity and integrity of the data packets, consumers need to pre-configure the trust schema, which is centralized and prone to the single point of failure problem. Blockchain has widespread attention to build trust in a distributed way, and Ethereum is a programmable blockchain, a decentralized smart contract platform. To lighten the burden of consumers, we proposed a Smart Contract-based Trusted Content Retrieval Mechanism (SCTCRM) for NDN in this paper. The mechanism contains a trustworthy information base for content and producers based on smart contracts, and provides content retrieval and name resolution services for content consumers. The purpose of this mechanism is to improve the efficiency and security of content retrieval process. We described the framework and the workflow of SCTCRM, and used Colored Petri Nets to create a formal mathematical model and analyze the security of the mechanism. Finally, the cost of storage and Gas in smart contracts are evaluated through the prototype deployment. From the results, we can see that the proposed mechanism is security and practicality.

Increased nitrogen doping in TiO2(B) with obviously enhanced visible light absorption ability was achieved via a facile pretreatment of HF followed by an annealing process in NH3. The optimized samples showed a 2.8 times photocatalytic hydrogen evolution rate and 4.2 times RhB degradation rate compared with the original TiO2(B).

Optical logic devices are indispensable for optical computing and data processing. In order to acquire high performance optical logic device, a novel plasmonic structure based on plasmon-induced transparency (PIT) effect is proposed. It can implement multiple logic functions simultaneously with high output contrast ratios between “0” and “1” states through a new manipulation method of angle rotation. The optical logic device consists of dual identical hexagonal resonators with rotatable ellipses embedded in resonators and two parallel metal-insulator-metal (MIM) waveguides. The specific rotation angles of ellipses are defined as the input logic states. In addition, according to the transmissions at output ports, the thresholds are set to distinguish the output logic states. Ultimately, four kinds of logic functions: AND, NAND, NOR and NOT can be implemented with fairly high output contrast ratios in this compact device. Most importantly, among these logic functions, AND, NAND, and NOR can be operated simultaneously with wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technique. Therefore, this work supplies a potential application for optical logic integrated circuits.