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SnO2@C/graphene ternary composite material has been prepared via a double-layer modified strategy of carbon layer and graphene sheets. The size, dispersity, and coating layer of SnO2@C are uniform. The SnO2@C/graphene has a typical porous structure. The discharge and charge capacities of the initial cycle for SnO2@C/graphene are 2,210 mAh g−1 and 1,285 mAh g−1, respectively, at a current density of 1,000 mA g−1. The Coulombic efficiency is 58.60%. The reversible specific capacity of the SnO2@C/graphene anode is 955 mAh g−1 after 300 cycles. The average reversible specific capacity still maintains 572 mAh g−1 even at the high current density of 5 A g−1. In addition, cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) are performed to further investigate the prepared SnO2@C/graphene composite material by a microwave hydrothermal method. As a result, SnO2@C/graphene has demonstrated a better electrochemical performance.

Many Chinese are living in the traditional buildings, especially in rural regions. Cave dwelling settlement is a significant living residential form in China. Because of the special thermal adaptive behavior, residents in such regions will have a different thermal sensation in winter. In order to assess the local’s thermal behavior, we conduct the field measurement, numerical simulation and questionnaire survey in a caving dwelling settlement in winter, and the index-PET (physiological equivalent temperature) is evaluated for assessing the outdoor thermal conditions in the research site. The final results show that the neutral temperature of local traditional dweller is 16.5 °C PET, lower than existing standard, also proves that local residents are more tolerant than the residents in urban regions. At last, we strongly make an appeal to put forward the different assessing standard of thermal comfort in rural and urban zone, even the two different sites are in the same climate zone, thus help to improve energy efficiency in rural regions of China.

Wear and scuffing failures often occur in marine transmission gears due to high friction and flash temperature at the interface between the meshing-teeth. In this paper, a numerical solution procedure was developed for the predictions of transient friction and flash temperature in the marine timing gears during one meshing circle based on the 3D line contact mixed lubrication simulation, which had been verified by comparing the flash temperature with those from Blok’s theory. The effect of machined surface roughness on the mixed lubrication characteristics is studied. The obtained results for several typical gear pairs indicate that gear pair 4–6 exhibits the largest friction and the highest interfacial temperature increase due to severe rough surface asperity contacts, while the polished gear surfaces yield the smallest friction and the lowest interfacial temperature. In addition, the influences of the operating conditions and the gear design parameters on the friction-temperature behaviors are discussed. It is observed that the conditions of heavy load and low rotational velocity usually lead to significantly increased friction and temperature. In the meantime, by optimizing the gear design parameters, such as the modulus and the pressure angle, the performance of interfacial friction and temperature can be significantly improved.

Increasing urban heat island and global warming have aroused serious thermal environmental problems and even harm people's thermal health. Because of the importance in people's daily life, a commercial pedestrianized block represents a symbol of a city or metropolis; therefore, focusing the attention on the thermal environment in such regions is very necessary. Most of the researches on the urban thermal environment are calculated by remote sensing data; limited by the low spatial resolution of remote sensing image, it may not obviously reflect the true thermal environment of the research site, especially in some microscale regions. Based on this, the new software ENVI-met is developed to research the thermal environment and forecast people's thermal sensation in a microscale region. Therefore, the objective of this study aims at conducting field measurement and numerical simulation to assess the thermal environment of a typical commercial pedestrianized space in southern China and assess the different urban design parameters in ameliorating the urban heat island effect. Our final results demonstrate a quantitative evidence for establishing a comprehensive standard for improving the thermal environment in a microscale region, and this study also can be a supplementary in the research field about improving thermal health.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has majorly impacted public health and economies worldwide. Although several effective vaccines and drugs are now used to prevent and treat COVID-19, natural products, especially flavonoids, showed great therapeutic potential early in the pandemic and thus attracted particular attention. Quercetin, baicalein, baicalin, EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate), and luteolin are among the most studied flavonoids in this field. Flavonoids can directly or indirectly exert antiviral activities, such as the inhibition of virus invasion and the replication and inhibition of viral proteases. In addition, flavonoids can modulate the levels of interferon and proinflammatory factors. We have reviewed the previously reported relevant literature researching the pharmacological anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity of flavonoids where structures, classifications, synthetic pathways, and pharmacological effects are summarized. There is no doubt that flavonoids have great potential in the treatment of COVID-19. However, most of the current research is still in the theoretical stage. More studies are recommended to evaluate the efficacy and safety of flavonoids against SARS-CoV-2.

With the development of high-strength marine diesel engines, piston skirt lubrication plays an increasingly important role. In this study, to ensure that the mixed lubrication can be applied, the contact of the PS corner and CL is simplified to a spring–damper system. A coupled dynamical–tribological numerical model of a piston skirt is proposed by combining mixed lubrication and the secondary motion of the piston. The model is then used to study how the thermal effect of the piston skirt-cylinder liner friction pair affects (i) the secondary motion of the piston, (ii) the contact force of the piston-skirt corner points, and (iii) the lubrication characteristics, while considering ring friction, friction moment of piston pin and three-dimensional thermal deformation of the piston and cylinder liner. The results show that the secondary motion under the thermal condition is less than that under the cold condition, and the reverse rotation of the piston under the thermal condition occurs earlier. Asperity contact and corner points contact appear under the thermal condition, and the friction mean effective pressure under the cold condition is 47.7% greater than that under the thermal condition. Overall, it is necessary to consider the thermal effect of the piston skirt-cylinder liner friction pair.

Experimental and theoretical studies have reported that the precise firing of neurons is crucial for sensory representation. Autapse serves as a special synapse connecting neuron and itself, which has also been found to improve the accuracy of neuronal response. In current work, the effect of autaptic delay signal on the spike-timing precision is investigated on a single autaptic Hodgkin–Huxley neuron in the present of noise. The simulation results show that both excitatory and inhibitory autaptic signals can effectively adjust the precise spike time of neurons with noise by choosing the appropriate coupling strength g and time delay of autaptic signal τ. The g–τ parameter space is divided into two regions: one is the region where the spike-timing precision is effectively regulated; the other is the region where the neuronal firing is almost not regulated. For the excitatory and inhibitory autapse, the range of parameters causing the accuracy of neuronal firing is different. Moreover, it is also found that the mechanisms of the spike-timing precision regulation are different for the two kinds of autaptic signals.

A novel sensitive method for simultaneous determination of 19 antibiotics and 19 anthelmintics in edible fungi using QuEChERS-UHPLC-MS/MS method was established. For every 10.0 g sample, 20 mL of acetonitrile with 2% acetic acid and 1.2 g sodium acetate were used for extraction, followed by 6.0 g anhydrous MgSO4 for dehydration, and 50 mg anhydrous MgSO4+10 mg PSA for purification. The optimized QuEChERS method presented excellent recoveries ranging from 85.31% to 103.94%, with relative standard deviations of 3.65–18.31%. Limit of detection and limit of quantification of the analysis method were 0.24–19 ng/L and 0.8–65 ng/L, respectively. The method was applied to analyze the 38 target compounds in 8 kinds of edible fungi samples from markets in Chengdu, China. The results indicated that the antibiotics and anthelmintics were widely existed with concentrations ranging from below LOD to 296 μg·L−1. The concentrations of sulfamethoxazole, sulfadiazine, thiabendazole and fenbendazole were relatively high. Based on the current study, exposure to antibiotics and anthelmintics through edible fungi consumption is harmless to human. However, long term exposure to low doses of antibiotics and anthelmintics still needs attention and merits further study.

A new photocatalytic three-component annulation of 2-alkynylaryldiazonium tetrafluoroborates with γ-hydroxyl terminal alkynes and sodium metabisulfite is reported using fac-Ir(ppy)3 as the photocatalyst for the first time and used to produce a series of (Z)-thiochromene 1,1-dioxides bearing an exocyclic double bond with moderate to good yields in a highly stereoselective manner. A wide variety of easily available substrates with substituent diversity could successfully participate in this photocatalysis with good functional group tolerance.

Ultrasound assisted freezing (UAF) is a common and remarkable technology of food preservation to conserve the sensory characteristics and nutritional value. The propagation of ultrasound in a medium generates various physical and chemical effects and these effects have been harnessed to improve the efficiency of food freezing. This review provides an overview of recent developments related to the mechanism, influencing factors, equipment of UAF. The applications of high intensity ultrasound to improve the efficiency of freezing process, to control the size and size distribution of ice crystals and to improve the quality of frozen foods are discussed in considerable detail. Then the future development trends and challenges of UAF have also been highlighted.

Multivariate time series (MTS) is a kind of matrix data, typically consisting of multiple variables measured at multiple time points. Due to the high dimensionality of MTS data, many methods for MTS classification have been proposed within the literature to reduce the redundancy in time or variable mode, but there is relatively little work on exploring the redundancy in both modes concurrently. In this paper we propose a new method for MTS classification based on bidirectional linear discriminant analysis (BLDA). The advantage is that BLDA can utilize label information in reducing the redundancy in time and variable modes simultaneously. Moreover, the existing procedures for BLDA suffer from two problems: (i) BLDA cannot be performed when one of the within-class matrices is singular; (ii) the computational burden could be very heavy when one of the data dimensionality is high. A new procedure for BLDA based on pseudo-inverse (PBLDA) and an efficient algorithm for PBLDA are proposed in this paper to overcome the two problems. The performance of our proposed method is illustrated through the experiments on a number of real MTS datasets.

The bilinear probabilistic principal component analysis (BPPCA) was introduced recently as a model-based dimension reduction technique on matrix data. However, BPPCA is based on the Gaussian assumption and hence is vulnerable to potential outlying matrix-valued observations. In this article, we present a new robust extension of BPPCA, called BPPCA using a matrix variate t distribution (tBPPCA), that is built upon a matrix variate t distribution. Like the multivariate t, this distribution offers an additional robustness tuning parameter, which can downweight outliers. By introducing a Gamma distributed latent weight variable, this distribution can be represented hierarchically. With this representation, two efficient accelerated expectation-maximization (EM)-like algorithms for parameter estimation are developed. Experiments on a number of synthetic and real datasets are conducted to understand tBPPCA and compare with several closely related competitors, including its vector-based counterpart. The results reveal that tBPPCA is generally more robust and accurate in the presence of outliers. Moreover, the expected latent weights under tBPPCA can be effectively used for outliers' detection, which is much more reliable than its vector-based counterpart due to its better robustness.

Patulin (PAT) is a common food-borne mycotoxin with diverse toxic effects including nephrotoxicity. The induction of oxidative stress is suggested to be a key mechanism contributed to toxicities of PAT. Reduced glutathione (GSH), a sulfhydryl-containing tripeptide, is a key reason for PAT-mediated oxidative stress. Cystine/glutamate antiporter (system x

Intracortical brain-computer interfaces (iBCIs) restore motor function to people with paralysis by translating brain activity into control signals for external devices. In current iBCIs, instabilities at the neural interface result in a degradation of decoding performance, which necessitates frequent supervised recalibration using new labeled data. One potential solution is to use the latent manifold structure that underlies neural population activity to facilitate a stable mapping between brain activity and behavior. Recent efforts using unsupervised approaches have improved iBCI stability using this principle; however, existing methods treat each time step as an independent sample and do not account for latent dynamics. Dynamics have been used to enable high performance prediction of movement intention, and may also help improve stabilization. Here, we present a platform for Nonlinear Manifold Alignment with Dynamics (NoMAD), which stabilizes iBCI decoding using recurrent neural network models of dynamics. NoMAD uses unsupervised distribution alignment to update the mapping of nonstationary neural data to a consistent set of neural dynamics, thereby providing stable input to the iBCI decoder. In applications to data from monkey motor cortex collected during motor tasks, NoMAD enables accurate behavioral decoding with unparalleled stability over weeks-to months-long timescales without any supervised recalibration.

To review the application progress, mechanism, application points, limitations, and oncological safety of external volume expansion (EVE) assisted autologous fat grafting for breast reconstruction and provide a reference for optimizing the design of EVE.Based on the latest relevant articles, the basic experiments and clinical applications of EVE were summarized.EVE can reduce interstitial fluid pressure, increase blood supply, and promote adipogenic differentiation, thereby benefiting the survival of transplanted fat. EVE assisted autologous fat grafting in clinical practice can improve the retention rate of breast volume and the outcome of breast reconstruction, meanwhile it doesn't increase the risk of local recurrence. But there is no standard parameters for application, and there are many complications and limitations.EVE improves the survival of transplanted fat, but its complications and poor compliance are obvious, so it is urgent to further investigate customized products for breast reconstruction after breast cancer and establish relevant application guidelines.总结体外扩张器（external volume expansion，EVE）辅助自体脂肪移植乳房再造的应用进展、作用机制、应用要点、局限性及肿瘤安全性，为优化EVE设计提供参考。.结合近年相关文献，就EVE相关基础实验、临床应用做一综述。.EVE可降低组织间隙压、增加血供、促进脂肪细胞新生，从而有利于移植脂肪存活。临床应用EVE辅助自体脂肪移植可增加脂肪体积留存率，提升乳房重建效果，且不会增加乳腺癌患者局部复发率。但应用参数暂无标准，且应用并发症、局限性多。.EVE可促进移植脂肪存活，但存在并发症多、依从性差等缺点，亟需进一步研究开发乳腺癌术后乳房再造的专用产品并建立相关应用指南。.

Background To investigate the roles of miR-17-5p/RRM2 in A549/G+. Methods Cell survival was analyzed by CCK8 kit and clone formation experiment; The mRNA expression level was detected by qRT-PCR, and the protein level was compared by Western blotting; And flow cytometry for cell cycle detection; The target gene of miR-17-5p was verified by double luciferase activity experiment. Results CCK8 assay displayed that miR-17-5p’s overexpression can let A549/G + cells turn into sensitive ones; in turn, in the case of inhibition of expression, miR-17-5p can make A549/G- cells turn into resistance ones. And similar results were obtained in cell clone formation experiment. Cell cycle analysis showed that miR-17-5p’s overexpression increased the number of G1 phase cells and reduced the number of S phase cells in A549/G + cells; Conversely, lowing expression level of miR-17-5p yielded the opposite results in A549/G- cells. Western blot results showed that when miR-17-5p was expressed highly, the expression levels of cell cycle related proteins, CCNE1, CCNA2 and P21 decreased in A549/G + cells; Conversely, inhibition of miR-17-5p expression yielded the opposite results too in A549/G- cells. Western blot analysis of signal pathway proteins and the results showed that PTEN and PI3K expressed higher, but p-PTEN expressed lower in A549/G + cells. After miR-17-5p overexpressed in A549/G + cells, the level of p-PTEN increased, and the level of p-AKT decreased; when miR-17-5p expressed low in A549/G-cells, the expression of p-PTEN and p-AKT were opposite. The dual-luciferase experiment demonstrated that RRM2 was the target gene of miR-17-5p. The restorative experiments of RRM2 verified it. Conclusion This article suggested that the miR-17- 5p/RRM2 axis could adjust gemcitabine-resistance in A549 cells and might associate with p-PTEN/PI3K/AKT signal pathway.

Aims This study aims to validate and compare the feasibility of T1ρ and native longitudinal relaxation time (T1) mapping in detection of myocardial fibrosis in patients with non-ischaemic cardiomyopathy, focusing on the performance of both methods in identifying late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) grey zone. Methods and results Twenty-seven hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) patients, 16 idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) patients, and 18 healthy controls were prospectively enrolled for native T1 and T1ρ mapping imaging and then all the patients underwent enhancement scan for LGE extent and extracellular volume (ECV) values. In LGE positive patients, the LGE areas were divided into LGE core (6 SDs above remote myocardium) and grey zone (2–6 SDs above remote myocardium) according to the signal intensity of LGE. Both HCM and DCM patients showed significantly higher native T1 values and T1ρ values than controls no matter the presence of LGE (all P < 0.01). There were significant differences in native T1 and T1ρ values among four different types of myocardia (LGE core, grey zone, remote area and control, P < 0.0001). However, the T1ρ values of grey zone were significantly higher than control (P < 0.01), while the native T1 values were not (P = 0.089). T1ρ values were significantly associated with both native T1 values (r = 0.54, P < 0.001) and ECV values (r = 0.54, P < 0.001). Conclusion T1ρ mapping is a feasible method to detect myocardial fibrosis in patients with non-ischaemic cardiomyopathy no matter the presence of LGE. Compared with native T1, T1ρ may serve as a better discriminator in the identification of LGE grey zone.

The rice genome contains 13 Flowering Locus T-Like (FT-Like) genes, among which, OsFTL2/Hd3a and OsFTL3/RFT1 are characterized as florigen-encoding genes, promoting rice flowering under short-day and long-day conditions, respectively. However, the functions of the other FT-Like members are still unknown in rice. In this study, we characterized and identified a member of FT-Like family, OsFTL8 gene. The investigation of photoperiodic expression pattern showed that OsFTL8 transcription was mainly induced under short-day conditions. The qRT-PCR and GUS staining assays indicated that OsFTL8 was broadly expressed in various organs, including stems, leaves and panicles. OsFTL8 overexpression transgenic lines and its knockout mutants displayed no obvious change in their heading date, compared with the wild type. However, the pollen viability and seed setting rate were decreased in the overexpression transgenic lines. OsFTL8 localizes in both nucleus and cytoplasm. And we found that OsFTL8 does not interact with OsFD1 in vivo, suggesting that OsFTL8 may not be the component of florigen activation complex (FAC). In summary, our results indicate that OsFTL8 is associated with pollen viability and not involved in regulating rice flowering time, implying functional divergence of FT-Like members.

Under the plane wave setting, the existence of small Cauchy data global solution (or local solution) of Landau–Lifshitz–Gilbert equation is proved. Some variable separation type solutions (include some small data global solution) and self-similar type solutions are constructed for the Harmonic map heat flow on S 2 . As far as we know, there is not any literature that presents the exact blowup solution of this equation. Some explicit solutions which include some finite time gradient-blowup solutions are provided. These blowup examples indicate a finite time blowup will happen in any spacial dimension.

The latest Ordovician to earliest Silurian graptolite Avitograptus avitus is important in the biostratigraphy of the Ordovician–Silurian boundary interval. Two additional species of Avitograptus are described from the sponge-dominated Anji Biota of the Upper Ordovician Wenchang Formation (Metabolograptus persculptus Biozone) of Zhejiang Province, South China. One species, Avitograptus akidomorphus new species, is new; the other, Avitograptus acanthocystus new combination, which was previously placed in Climacograptus, is herein assigned to Avitograptus. The former species may represent the ancestral akidograptid because it is identical in thecal form to Akidograptus, but differs in the development of the proximal end. The evolutionary changes from Avitograptus avitus to Akidograptus and Parakidograptus involved distal movement of the origins of th11 and th12, thecal elongation, and greater outward inclination of the thecal walls.UUID: http://zoobank.org/81c433a0-9069-48d2-ae72-1267400cbf77.

In this study, a coupling model is developed to include the aero ball bearing dynamic performance in the mixed thermal elastohydrodynamic lubrication analysis, and the low-speed and heavy-load conditions during start-up and shut-down are involved. Based on the bearing quasi-dynamics, the inside motion state of the main loading surface is obtained, and the mixed thermal elastohydrodynamic lubrication is conducted to get bearing lubrication state and properties. The numerical lubrication model under low-speed and heavy-load conditions is validated against published tested data, which reveal well consistency in central film thickness. The lubrication properties between a single ball and inner race during start-up have been studied, which indicate the lubrication film transforms from boundary lubrication to unsafe mixed thermal elastohydrodynamic lubrication, and then goes into safe lubrication. The lubrication properties of the balls at different azimuths have been investigated during shut-down and compared with those in start-up, which have a similar opposite changing trend, but not a simple invertible process. The time in boundary lubrication region during shut-down is shorter, and the ball number in boundary lubrication region gets less, which means the lubrication properties are relatively better. At last, the parametric study on mixed thermal elastohydrodynamic lubrication properties during shut-down has been carried out. It is found that the small bearing curve coefficient and increasing ball number can reduce the boundary lubrication time and improve the bearing lubrication.

Changes in water quality from source water to finished water and tap water at two conventional drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs) were monitored. Beside the routine water quality testing, Caenorhabditis elegans-based toxicity assays and the fluorescence excitation-emission matrices technique were also applied. Both DWTPs supplied drinking water that met government standards. Under current test conditions, both the investigated finished water and tap water samples exhibited stronger lethal, genotoxic and reprotoxic potential than the relative source water sample, and the tap water sample was more lethal but tended to be less genotoxic than the corresponding finished water sample. Meanwhile, the nearly complete removal of tryptophan-like substances and newly generated tyrosine-like substances were observed after the treatment of drinking water, and humic-like substances were identified in the tap water. Based on these findings, toxic pollutants, including genotoxic/reproductive toxicants, are produced in the drinking water treatment and/or distribution processes. Moreover, further studies are needed to clarify the potentially important roles of tyrosine-like and humic-like substances in mediating drinking water toxicity and to identify the potential sources of these contaminants. Additionally, tryptophan-like fluorescence may be adopted as a useful parameter to monitor the treatment performance of DWTPs. Our observations provided insights into the importance of utilizing biotoxicity assays and fluorescence spectroscopy as tools to complement the routine evaluation of drinking water.

In Convolutional Neural Network (ConvNet) based age estimation algorithms, softmax loss is usually chosen as the loss function directly, and the problems of Cost Sensitivity (CS), such as class imbalance and misclassification cost difference between different classes, are not considered. Focus on these problems, this paper constructs a rectified softmax loss function with all-sided CS, and proposes a novel cost-sensitive ConvNet based age estimation algorithm. Firstly, a loss function is established for each age category to solve the imbalance of the number of training samples. Then, a cost matrix is defined to reflect the cost difference caused by misclassification between different classes, thus constructing a new cost-sensitive error function. Finally, the above methods are merged to construct a rectified softmax loss function for ConvNet model, and a corresponding Back Propagation (BP) training scheme is designed to enable ConvNet network to learn robust face representation for age estimation during the training phase. Simultaneously, the rectified softmax loss is theoretically proved that it satisfies the general conditions of the loss function used for classification. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by experiments on face image datasets of different races.

A linear regression model is constructed to predict the April–May precipitation in central China (PCC) with a lead time of 1–2 months. This model not only reproduces the historical April–May PCC from 1985 to 2006 but also demonstrates strong robustness and reliability during the independent test period of 2007–16. Two preceding factors are selected to build the model, the February–March Arctic stratospheric ozone (ASO) and Indian Ocean sea surface temperature (IOSST), indicating a synergistic impact of Arctic and tropical signals on the midlatitude climate. A possible mechanism of ASO changes affecting Chinese precipitation is that the stratospheric circulation anomalies related to ASO changes may downward influence circulation over North Pacific, and then extend westward to influence East Asia, leading to changes in Chinese precipitation. Anomalies of the other predictor, IOSST, are associated with a baroclinic structure over central China. For example, warm IOSST causes anomalous convection over central China and affects the warm and humid airstream flowing from the Pacific to China. These processes related to the two predictors result in the April–May PCC anomalies. Sensitivity experiments and a transient experiment covering a longer period than the observations/reanalysis support the results from our statistical analysis based on observations. It implies that this statistical model could be applied to the output of seasonal forecasts from observations and improve the forecasting ability of April–May PCC in the future.

The purpose of this study aimed to figure out the role of GNA13 in lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC) and the underlying mechanism. Male BALB/c mice were used to construct LUSC mouse model. Cell growth was examined using MTT and colony formation assay. Cell migration and invasion was determined using wound healing and transwell assay. The expression and phosphorylation of protein was detected by Western blotting assay. Immunohistochemistry staining was used to observe the tumor growth and metastasis. GNA13 was overexpressed in both LUSC tissues and LUSC cell lines. Knockdown of GNA13 in LUSC cells reduced cell viability and inhibited the formation of colonies in the SK-MES-1 and NCI-H520 cells. Cell migration and invasion was also prevented by inhibition of GNA13 in the LUSC cells. Phosphorylation of PI3K and AKT was downregulated by silencing GNA13 and upregulated by overexpression of GNA13 in the LUSC cells. In LUSC mouse model, tumor size and tumor weight were significantly decreased in si-GNA13 mice compared to control group. The expression of GNA13, Ki67, MMP2 and phosphorylation of AKT were significantly inhibited in si-GNA13 mice compared to control group. This study has demonstrated that knockdown of GNA13 could inhibit cell survival, migration and metastasis in LUSC.

Simple Summary Selenite, a representative inorganic form of selenium, is preferentially accumulated in tumors. The therapeutic potential of sodium selenite in tumors has received significant attention. However, the effect of sodium selenite in the treatment of established tumors is hampered by its systemic toxicities. In this study, we found selenite exerted a stronger lethality to the cancer cells under the condition of glucose limitation in vitro and an enhanced inhibitory effect on tumor growth when combined with intermittent fasting in vivo. In addition, this treatment showed no obvious toxicity to normal cells and mice. The findings of the present study provide an effective and practical approach for increasing the therapeutic window of selenite and imply that combination of selenite and fasting holds promising potential to be developed a clinically useful regimen for treating certain types of cancer. Abstract Combination of intermittent fasting and chemotherapy has been drawn an increasing attention because of the encouraging efficacy. In this study, we evaluated the anti-cancer effect of combination of glucose limitation and selenite (Se), a representative inorganic form of selenium, that is preferentially accumulated in tumors. Results showed that cytotoxic effect of selenite on cancer cells, but not on normal cells, was significantly enhanced in response to the combination of selenite and glucose limitation. Furthermore, in vivo therapeutic efficacy of combining selenite with fasting was dramatically improved in xenograft models of lung and colon cancer. Mechanistically, we found that SLC7A11 expression in cancer cells was up-regulated by selenite both in vitro and in vivo. The elevated SLC7A11 led to cystine accumulation, NADPH depletion and the conversion of cystine to cysteine inhibition, which in turn boosted selenite-mediated reactive oxygen species (ROS), followed by enhancement of selenite-mediated cytotoxic effect. The findings of the present study provide an effective and practical approach for increasing the therapeutic window of selenite and imply that combination of selenite and fasting holds promising potential to be developed a clinically useful regimen for treating certain types of cancer.

Inadequate R wave amplitude (RWA) after implantable cardiac defibrillator (ICD) implantation in patients with arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM) was suspected to relate to right ventricle impairment. However, little data-based evidence was provided to quantify the association. We retrospectively enrolled ACM patients receiving CMR examinations before transvenous ICD implantation from Fuwai Hospital. The RWA was obtained within 24 h and at 2–6-month follow-up after the operation. Structural, functional, as well as tissue characterization of the left ventricle (LV) and right ventricle (RV), were analyzed in relation to RWA. Among the 87 ACM patients (median RWA: 8.0 mV), 19 (21.8%) patients were found with low initial RWA (

Exogenous microparticles including microplastics are novel pollutants that could persist in the environment with potential health effects, while crucial data on their exposure in humans are still lacking. To understand the panorama of microparticles including microplastics exposure and distribution characteristics in different kinds of body fluids. A non-targeted microparticle internal exposure landscape analysis was done in thirteen kinds of human enclosed body fluids covering eight body systems. Totally 104 patients aged 24-96 years with an average age of 56 years were included in this study. After sample digestion, non-soluble microparticles were detected and identified with one Raman Microspectroscope under a strict quality control-particle detection system. Totally 702 microparticles with size ranging from 2.15 to 103.27 µm were detected in samples. Microparticles were identified into 84 substances or 66 molecules, most of which were firstly reported inside human body. Nine kinds of microplastics were originally reported in human body fluids with their size ranging from 19.66 to 103.27 µm. Microparticles exposure was unexpectedly high inside the human body despite the protection of biological barriers and membranes, raising awareness of the impact of particle pollution on sustainable development.

Seven undescribed polyhydroxylated mycoecdysteroids, punicesterones A-G, along with two known analogues, were isolated from the deep-sea-derived fungal strain Aspergillus puniceus SCSIO z021 (Trichocomaceae). Their structures with absolute configurations were elucidated by a combination of extensive NMR spectroscopic analysis, HRESIMS data, and single-crystal X-ray diffraction experiments. Punicesterone An unexpectedly possessed a nicotinoyl unit substituted at C-22 of a typical ecdysteroid skeleton. All of the isolated compounds were evaluated for their anti-inflammatory, lipid-lowering, and antibacterial activities. Punicesterones B and C showed the activity of reducing triglyceride in 3T3-L1 adipocytes in a dosage-dependent manner, and also exhibited antibacterial activity against five pathogens.

The pedestrian block, famous for its entertainment and commercial vitality, plays an important role in our daily life. The use of this space is determined by the outdoor thermal comfort which can directly affect human's thermal sensation and commercial value. A field questionnaire survey is carried out simultaneously with collecting the microclimatic data in this area. The thermal acceptability and the thermal comfort sensation votes are assessed based on the PET, in addition, a three-dimensional microclimatic modelling tool Envi-met 4.0 is used to evaluate the outdoor thermal comfort and validate the accuracy of the software through comparing the measured data with the simulated data. After putting forward some suggestion for redesigning this area, the result shows that there is as strong improvement in broadening the cooling time, early morning (8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.) and after 18:00 p.m. are the most comfortable time for visiting.