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Luteinizing hormone receptor (LHR), prolactin receptor (PRLR), growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) have been shown to be key regulators of germ cell development. However, the role of LHR, PRLR, GH and IGF1 in the development of yak testis remains unclear. In this study, we aimed to describe and compare gene expression and protein localization of LHR, PRLR, GH and IGF1 in the development of yak testes. Testes were collected from 6, 24, 36 and 72 months yak, and the kidney, liver, testicular, lung, skeletal muscle, heart and spleen tissues were collected from 36 months yak. The quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) results showed that the expression of these four genes was widely expressed in kidney, liver, testicular, lung, skeletal muscle, heart and spleen, while the LHR and PRLR were highly expressed in the kidney, skeletal muscle and testis, and higher levels of GH and IGF were expressed in spleen and testis. Moreover, the mRNA expression of these genes in adults was higher than in pre-pubertal yak. In the testis, the LHR-, PRLR-, GH- and IGF1-positive signals were detected in the Leydig cells of the 6 months, while the intense positive signals were discovered in Leydig cells, spermatogonia and spermatocytes of the 36 and 72 months. Thus, LHR, PRLR, GH and IGF1 may be involved in the development of spermatids and spermatocytes, and in the regulation of spermatogonia proliferation and Leydig cell function.

Quasi-2D perovskites have long been considered to have favorable "energy funnel/cascade" structures and excellent optical properties compared with their 3D counterparts. However, most quasi-2D perovskite light-emitting diodes (PeLEDs) exhibit high external quantum efficiency (EQE) but unsatisfactory operating stability due to Auger recombination induced by high current density. Herein, a synergetic dual-additive strategy is adopted to prepare perovskite films with low defect density and high environmental stability by using 18-crown-6 and poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether acrylate (MPEG-MAA) as the additives. The dual additives containing COC bonds can not only effectively reduce the perovskite defects but also destroy the self-aggregation of organic ligands, inducing the formation of perovskite nanocrystals with quasi-core/shell structure. After thermal annealing, the MPEG-MAA with its CC bond can be polymerized to obtain a comb-like polymer, further protecting the passivated perovskite nanocrystals against water and oxygen. Finally, state-of-the-art green PeLEDs with a normal EQE of 25.2% and a maximum EQE of 28.1% are achieved, and the operating lifetime (T50 ) of the device in air environment is over ten times increased, providing a novel and effective strategy to make high efficiency and long operating lifetime PeLEDs.

Endowing thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) characteristics and a fine film-forming ability is significant for realizing efficient solution-processed non-doped organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Herein, a class of AIE-active TADF emitters adopting phenyl ketone as an acceptor and 9,9-diphenyl-9,10-dihydroacridine (or 9,9-dimethyl-9,10-dihydroacridine and phenoxazine) as a donor are exploited. The suppressed intermolecular packing derived from the highly twisted molecular configuration and multiple transition channels induce improved luminescence efficiency and more efficient reverse intersystem crossing (RISC) simultaneously in the solid state. Solution-processed non-doped and doped devices with the maximum external quantum efficiencies (EQEs) of 12.1% and 17.6%, respectively, are obtained when employing the dendritic luminogens of 3PXZ-BPCTPA as the emitter, which are better than the reference non-dendritic luminogens of PXZ-BPCTPA. This work thus provides an approach for designing dendritic luminogens with TADF and AIE features as promising candidates for high-performance solution-processed OLEDs.

Three novel thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters, named MCZ-B-DTM, MCZ-P2-DTM and MCZ-P3-DTM are designed and synthesized for fabricating blue emission devices. The position of nitrogen atom in pyridine ring is varied relative to the donor unit and the presence of CH⋯N hydrogen bonding in MCZ-P3-DTM is confirmed by theoretic simulation and 1H NMR analysis. Due to the introduction of CH⋯N hydrogen bonding between donor and acceptor, the dihedral angles, photophysical properties, together with thermal stabilities, of the targeted compounds are regulated ingeniously. As a consequence, MCZ-P3-DTM displays an increase of the molar extinction coefficient obviously and offers a higher PLQY of 60.1%. The TADF device adopting MCZ-P3-DTM as emitter shows a maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 12.1%, which is superior to those of MCZ-B-DTM and MCZ-P2-DTM, demonstrating the introducing of intramolecular hydrogen bonding interactions between donor and acceptor is an efficient strategy for future structural design of TADF emitters.

A novel near-infrared fluorescent probe RHCC was devised and synthesized. It exhibits high specificity to Fe3+ compared to other metals in aqueous solutions. The detection limit of RHCC was 1.2 × 10−7 M and the complexation stability constant was 5.807 × 104 M−1. The binding ratio of RHCC and Fe3+ was 1:1 which was measured through MS, FTIR and Job's plot. The energy gap between HOMO and LUMO of RHCC was 3.22 eV, while RHCC-Fe3+ complex was 0.95 eV. This result means the binding of probe RHCC and Fe3+ lowers the RHCC-Fe3+ complex's energy gap and makes it more stable. What's more, in living cells and zebrafishes studies, probe RHCC was no significant cytotoxic effect, indicating it could monitor Fe3+ in biological system.

A novel 3-dimensional (3-D) alignment method for point-cloud registration is proposed where the time-differential information of the measured points is employed. The new problem turns out to be a novel multi-dimensional optimization. Analytical solution to this optimization is then obtained, which sets the ground of further correspondence matching using k-D trees. Finally, via many examples, we show that the new method owns better registration accuracy in real-world experiments.

The development of luminescent materials simultaneously possessing thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF), aggregation-induced emission (AIE), and high luminescence efficiency in the solid state is urgent for fabricating efficient non-doped organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Herein, two novel emitters bearing triphenylamine as the donor moiety and phenyl ketone as the acceptor unit, named as DTPA-DTM and DTPA-DDTM, were designed and synthesized. Combined charge transfer pathways in a single molecule could be achieved via linking the donor and acceptor units in the ortho-position, which was favorable for reducing singlet–triplet energy splitting (ΔEst) and increased the luminescence efficiency. The TADF characteristics, AIE properties, solvatochromism, theoretical calculations, and crystallography of the designed emitters were systematically investigated to determine the structure–property relationship. By virtue of the inhibited concentration quenching in the solid state, the non-doped OLEDs employing DTPA-DDTM as the emitter realized high current efficiency (LE) and external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 25.6 cd A−1 and 8.2%, respectively. The obtained results clearly demonstrate that combining the charge transfer pathways in a single molecule is a promising strategy to construct highly efficient TADF emitters that can be used for fabricating non-doped organic light-emitting diodes.

Hydrogen sulfide and cysteine are momentous endogenous regulators of many physiological processes and maintain a dynamic balance of redox in living organisms. To investigate the inter-relationship of them in vivo, there is a pressing need to develop analytical molecular tools to identify related biomolecules. We construct a mitochondria-targeted single fluorescence probe (Mit-CM) for separately and continuously visualizing H

Since early 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread rapidly across the world. As at the date of writing this article, the disease has been globally reported in 223 countries and regions, infected over 108 million people and caused over 2.4 million deaths (https://covid19.who.int/, accessed on Feb. 17, 2021). Avoiding person-to-person transmission is an effective approach to control and prevent the pandemic. However, many daily activities, such as transporting goods in our daily life, inevitably involve person-to-person contact. Using an autonomous logistic vehicle to achieve contact-less goods transportation could alleviate this issue. For example, it can reduce the risk of virus transmission between the driver and customers. Moreover, many countries have imposed tough lockdown measures to reduce the virus transmission (e.g., retail, catering) during the pandemic, which causes inconveniences for human daily life. Autonomous vehicle can deliver the goods bought by humans, so that humans can get the goods without going out. These demands motivate us to develop an autonomous vehicle, named as Hercules, for contact-less goods transportation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The vehicle is evaluated through real-world delivering tasks under various traffic conditions.

Purely organic luminescent materials concurrently exhibiting thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) and aggregation-induced emission (AIE) features are in great demand due to their high efficiency in aggregation-state toward efficient nondoped OLEDs. Herein, a class of TADF emitters adopting phenyl(pyridyl)methanone as electron-accepting segments and di(tert-butyl)carbazole and 9,9-dimethyl-9,10-dihydroacridine (or phenoxazine) as electron-donating groups are designed and synthesized. The existence of intramolecular hydrogen bonding is conducive to minish the energy difference between a singlet and a triplet (ΔEst), suppress nonradiative decay, and increase the luminescence efficiency. By using 3CPyM-DMAC as the emitter, the nondoped device via a solution process realize a high current efficiency (CE) and external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 35.4 cd A-1 and 11.4%, respectively, which is superior to that of CBM-DMAC with a CE and EQE of 14.3 cd A-1 and 6.7%. This work demonstrates a promising tactic to the establishment of TADF emitters with AIE features via introducing intramolecular hydrogen bonding.

Testis-specific genes play an essential part in the centromere union during meiosis in male germ cells, spermatogenesis, and in fertility. Previously, there was no research report available on the expression pattern of SYCP3 and TSEG2 genes in different ages of yaks. Therefore, the current research compared the expression profiling of SYCP3 and TSEG2 genes in testes of yaks. The expression pattern of SYCP3 and TSEG2 mRNA was investigated using qPCR, semi-quantitative PCR, western blot, immunohistochemistry, and molecular bioinformatics. Our findings displayed that SYCP3 and TSEG2 genes were prominently expressed in the testicles of yaks as compared to other organs. On the other hand, the protein encoded by yak SYCP3 contains Cor1/Xlr/Xmr conserved regions, while the protein encoded by yak TSEG2 contains synaptonemal complex central element protein 3. Additionally, multiple alignments sequences indicated that proteins encoded by Datong yak SYCP3 and TSEG2 were highly conserved among mammals. Moreover, western blot analysis specified that the molecular mass of SYCP3 protein was 34-kDa and TSEG2 protein 90-kDa in the yak. Furthermore, the results of immunohistochemistry also revealed the prominent expression of these proteins in the testis of mature yaks, which indicated that SYCP3 and TSEG2 might be essential for spermatogenesis, induction of central element assembly, and homologous recombination.

The severe hypoxia in solid tumor and the accurate discrimination between cancer and normal cells gravely restrict the application of fluorescence imaging-guided photodynamic therapy (PDT), although this cancer-therapy modality has significant superiorities in terms of precise visualization of the location of photosensitizers (PSs) in tumor tissue as well as noninvasive and reliable treatment. A convenient and universal fluorescence system featuring Type I reactive oxygen species (ROS) based on free radicals, wide-spectrum cancer cell discrimination and distinctive aggregation-induced emission (AIE) characteristics could offer a feasible approach to resolve the problems above, which is yet extremely challenging. Herein, we propose a series of electron-rich anion-π+ AIE-active luminogens (AIEgens) fabricating increasingly stronger intermolecular charge transfer (ICT) state to promote highly efficient intersystem crossing for boosting Type I ROS generation. Moreover, MeOTPPM has priority to enter cancer cells with better plasma membrane permeability due to the strongest binding force with water molecules. This work serves as a pioneering reference for rationally constructing Type I-based purely organic PSs to overcome tumor hypoxia defects in PDT and selectively targeting and ablating cancer cells over normal cells without the aid of any extra cancer cell-specific targeting ligands.

Intramolecular through-space charge transfer (TSCT) excited state has been exploited for developing thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters, while the adjustment of excited state dynamics by conformational engineering is still rare. Herein, we designed a series of AIE-active TADF emitters, bearing triphenylamine as donor and phenyl ketone as acceptor unit, and the evolution of charge transfer from through-bond to through-space is realized by controlling the relative position of the donor and acceptor units. Upon transforming the charge transfer categories from through-bond to through-space, the reverse intersystem crossing (RISC) rate is progressively improved by virtue of the narrower energy split between singlet and triplet states (ΔEST), meanwhile, the restricted intramolecular motion suppresses the non-radiative decay effectively, resulting in obviously improved luminescence efficiency. Appointing a bipolar blue TADF material as host to sensitize these emitters, solution-processed organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) based on TSCT emitter 1TCPM-Cz achieve maximum current efficiency (CE) of 35.5 cd A−1 and external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 13.3%, respectively, which is higher than that of through-bond charge transfer (TBCT) analogues. The work demonstrates a convenient design strategy to achieve high-performance TSCT emitters by regulating the conformation of the donor and acceptor.

Cytochrome P450 (CYP) 3A5 as the most important CYPs in the CYP3A isoform, is polymorphic and plays a significant role in drug metabolism. Herein, two novel enzyme-activatable near-infrared (NIR) ratiometric fluorescent probes (Hcy-Br and Hcy-Cl) are designed and synthesized to measure the activity of CYP3A5 in complex biological systems. Hcy-Br possesses excellent sensitivity in response to CYP3A5 enzyme with the LOD = 0.04903 nM and could quickly reach equilibrium within 30 min. The ability of targeting mitochondria, along with preferable Pearson’s correlation coefficients (Rr) of 0.8746, is realized in Hcy-Br. The application of Hcy-Br in living cells and tumor-bearing mice is also achieved successfully for monitoring endogenous CYP3A5 activity. Detecting CYP3A5 activity in living system via fluorescent probe, to the best of our knowledge, is reported for the first time. These findings suggest that Hcy-Br could be served as a useful tool for selectively detecting the activity of endogenous CYP3A5 in vivo, providing assistance for investigating the function of CYP3A5 in drug metabolism and pathologic process.

A simple salicylaldehyde-based fluorescent probe 1 for Zn2+ was prepared. The probe 1 has been proven to be highly selective and very sensitive to Zn2+, and also shows remarkable fluorescence emission improvement upon combining with Zn2+ in a Tris–HCl buffer system at pH 7.2. The great fluorescence changes of probe 1 after incorporation with Zn2+ are mainly ascribed to the photo-induced electron transfer (PET) mechanism. The experimental results reveal that probe 1 could effectively complex Zn2+ at a molar ratio of about 1 : 1 and the binding constant (K) between probe 1 and Zn2+ was determined to be 3.78 × 106 M−1. The detection limit (DL) of probe 1 was also calculated to be 5.9 × 10−9 M. In addition, the probe has been successfully applied to fluorescence imaging in living MCF-7 cells.

Crack is one of the most common road distresses which may pose road safety hazards. Generally, crack detection is performed by either certified inspectors or structural engineers. This task is, however, time-consuming, subjective and labor-intensive. In this paper, we propose a novel road crack detection algorithm based on deep learning and adaptive image segmentation. Firstly, a deep convolutional neural network is trained to determine whether an image contains cracks or not. The images containing cracks are then smoothed using bilateral filtering, which greatly minimizes the number of noisy pixels. Finally, we utilize an adaptive thresholding method to extract the cracks from road surface. The experimental results illustrate that our network can classify images with an accuracy of 99.92%, and the cracks can be successfully extracted from the images using our proposed thresholding algorithm., Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, 2019 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium

Fast, highly selective and sensitive thiophenol probes are highly desirable in the field of bioimaging and environmental monitoring. For that, based on the mechanism that thiophenol can effectively cleave the sulfonamide bond selectively, we herein report a dicyanoisophorone-based Red-emitting/NIR probe for thiophenol detection. This probe had some desirable properties such as rapid response, high selectivity and sensitivity, remarkable large Stokes shift (181 nm), Red-emitting/NIR fluorescence region and low LOD value (80 nM, according to 3σ/s). Moreover, this novel Red-emitting/NIR probe can potentially be applied to the detection of thiophenols in real water samples quantitatively and fluorescent imaging in living cells and zebrafishes.

To tackle the issue in deep crowd sensing, a Time and Location Correlation Incentive (TLCI) scheme is proposed for deep data gathering in crowdsourcing networks. In TLCI scheme, a metric named “Quality of Information Satisfaction Degree” (QoISD) is to quantify how much collected sensing data can satisfy the application’s QoI requirements mainly in terms of data quantity and data coverage. Two incentive algorithms are proposed to satisfy QoISD with different view. The first algorithm is to ensure that the application gets the specified sensing data to maximize the QoISD. Thus, in the first incentive algorithm, the reward for data sensing is to maximize the QoISD. The second algorithm is to minimize the cost of the system while meeting the sensing data requirement and maximizing the QoISD. Thus, in the second incentive algorithm, the reward for data sensing is to maximize the QoISD per unit of reward. Finally, we compare our proposed scheme with existing schemes via extensive simulations. Extensive simulation results well justify the effectiveness of our scheme. The QoISD can be optimized by 81.92%, and the total cost can be reduced by 31.38%.

Cytochrome P450s have brought considerable attention to researchers for their significant correlations with metabolic behaviors of procarcinogenic chemicals. To better understand the roles of CYP1A in biological and physiological systems, we developed a novel ratiometric fluorescence probe N-((2-hydroxyl ethoxy) ethyl)− 4-methoxy-1, 8-naphthalimide (NEMN) allowing for selectively and sensitively monitoring the target enzymes under physiological conditions and living cells. The probe was designed based on substrate predilection of CYP1A and its outstanding O-dealkylation capacity, and 1, 8-naphthalimide was chosen as fluorophore on account of its desirable photophysical properties. Absorption and emission spectra of the probe solution and reacted metabolism showed obvious red-shift with remarkable colour changes, which indicated that NEMN could be a promising ratiometric detector of CYP1A. Additionally, the selectivity assays displayed that NEMN only sensitive to CYP1A1 and CYP1A2 enzymes with scarce interference of other CYPs. Furthermore, the excellent linear relationships between the ratio of fluorescent intensities and incubation time and enzymes concentration signified time- and concentration- dependence of the probe, which were of desire benefit to quantify and monitor the CYP1A-involved biological behaviors in physiological conditions. The assay in real living samples (Human liver microsomes) further proved the analytical utility of the probe. Finally, the cytotoxicity assay and confocal fluorescence imaging demonstrated that this probe was of great promise for detecting the activity of endogenous CYP1A in human living cells.

Reactive sulfur species (RSS), primarily containing glutathione (GSH), cysteine (Cys), hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and hydrogen polysulfides (H2Sn, n > 1), were crucial endogenous biological signal molecules. Among them, H2S and H2Sn played extremely momentous roles in many physiological and pathological processes. Limited by the vivo environmental diversity and complexity, it was highly desirable to rely on the single fluorescence probe platform to visualize H2Sn and H2S according different fluorescence signals. Herein, we reported a two-photon excited fluorescent probe MC-Sn that had the following merits: (Ⅰ) ratiometric and colorimetric: reducing detection errors and conducting visual analysis; (Ⅱ) two-photon microscope: better performance in vivo and vitro imaging; (Ⅲ) two specific sulfide reaction sites: studying on the mutual transformation of H2Sn and H2S in biological systems. Furthermore, take advantages of low cytotoxicity (cell viability ≥ 85.99%), low limit of detection (21 nM), significant photostability, excellent pH stability, quick response behavior (175 s) and high penetration depth (110 μm), MC-Sn can be employed to visualize endogenous and exogenous H2Sn and H2S in cells, liver tissues and zebrafish.