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Objective To investigate the Carabelli's traits on permanent maxillary molars in Han Chinese college students. Methods Intraoral photos and plaster models from 803 Han Chinese college students were observed and the Carabelli's traits on permanent maxillary molars were categorized by the Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System. Chi-square tests were performed for the comparison of the differences between male and female, permanent maxillary first and second molars. Kendall's tau-b correlation analyses were performed for the correlation between bilateral antimeric molars. Results The frequencies of Carabelli's traits on permanent maxillary first and second molars were 37.61% and 3.99% respectively, 46.73% and 6.30% in males, 27.95% and 1.54% in females, which were statistically significant between permanent maxillary first and second molars (P

BackgroundNeural stem cells (NSCs) are considered as candidates for cell replacement therapy in many neurological disorders. However, the propensity for their differentiation to proceed more glial rather than neuronal phenotypes in pathological conditions limits positive outcomes of reparative transplantation. Exogenous physical stimulation to favor the neuronal differentiation of NSCs without extra chemical side effect could alleviate the problem, providing a safe and highly efficient cell therapy to accelerate neurological recovery following neuronal injuries.ResultsWith 7-day physiological electric field (EF) stimulation at 100 mV/mm, we recorded the boosted neuronal differentiation of NSCs, comparing to the non-EF treated cells with 2.3-fold higher MAP2 positive cell ratio, 1.6-fold longer neuronal process and 2.4-fold higher cells ratio with neuronal spontaneous action potential. While with the classical medium induction, the neuronal spontaneous potential may only achieve after 21-day induction. Deficiency of either PI3Kγ or β-catenin abolished the above improvement, demonstrating the requirement of the PI3K/Akt/GSK-3β/β-catenin cascade activation in the physiological EF stimulation boosted neuronal differentiation of NSCs. When transplanted into the spinal cord injury (SCI) modelled mice, these EF pre-stimulated NSCs were recorded to develop twofold higher proportion of neurons, comparing to the non-EF treated NSCs. Along with the boosted neuronal differentiation following transplantation, we also recorded the improved neurogenesis in the impacted spinal cord and the significantly benefitted hind limp motor function repair of the SCI mice.ConclusionsIn conclusion, we demonstrated physiological EF stimulation as an efficient method to boost the neuronal differentiation of NSCs via the PI3K/Akt/GSK-3β/β-catenin activation. Pre-treatment with the EF stimulation induction before NSCs transplantation would notably improve the therapeutic outcome for neurogenesis and neurofunction recovery of SCI.

BackgroundCells show directed migration response to electric signals, namely electrotaxis or galvanotaxis. PI3K and PTEN jointly play counterbalancing roles in this event via a bilateral regulation of PIP3 signaling. PI3K has been proved essential in anterior signaling of electrotaxing cells, whilst the role of PTEN remains elusive.MethodsDictyostelium cells with different genetic backgrounds were treated with direct current electric signals to investigate the genetic regulation of electrotaxis.ResultsWe demonstrated that electric signals promoted PTEN phosphatase activity and asymmetrical translocation to the posterior plasma membrane of the electrotaxing cells. Electric stimulation produced a similar but delayed rear redistribution of myosin II, immediately before electrotaxis started. Actin polymerization is required for the asymmetric membrane translocation of PTEN and myosin. PTEN signaling is also responsible for the asymmetric anterior redistribution of PIP3/F-actin, and a biased redistribution of pseudopod protrusion in the forwarding direction of electrotaxing cells.ConclusionsPTEN controls electrotaxis by coordinately regulating asymmetric redistribution of myosin to the posterior, and PIP3/F-actin to the anterior region of the directed migration cells.

The increasing discovery of underwater methane leakage underscores the importance of monitoring methane emissions for environmental protection. Underwater remote sensing of methane leakage is critical and meaningful to protect the environment. The construction of sensor arrays is recognized as the most effective technique to increase the accuracy and sensitivity of underwater remote sensing of methane leakage. With the aim of improving the reliability of underwater methane remote-sensing sensor arrays, in this work, a deep learning method, specifically an explainable sparse spatio-temporal transformer, is proposed for detecting the failures of the underwater methane remote-sensing sensor arrays. The data input into the explainable sparse block could decrease the time complexity and the computational complexity (O (n)). Spatio-temporal features are extracted on various time scales by a spatio-temporal block automatically. In order to implement the data-driven early warning system, the data-driven warning return mechanism contains a warning threshold that is associated with physically disturbing information. Results show that the explainable sparse spatio-temporal transformer improves the performance of the underwater methane remote-sensing sensor array. A balanced F score (F1 score) of the model is put forward, and the anomaly accuracy is 0.92, which is superior to other reconstructed models such as convolutional_autoencoder (CAE) (0.81) and long-short term memory_autoencoder (LSTM-AE) (0.66). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an activation reaction sintering method, porous (Mo2/3Y1/3)2AlC ceramics were prepared by Mo, Y, Al, and graphite powders as raw materials. The phase composition, microstructure, element distribution, and pore structure characteristics were comprehensively studied using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), Archimedes method, and bubble point method. A detailed investigation was conducted on the influence of sintering temperature on the phase composition. Possible routes of phase transition and pore formation mechanisms during the sintering process were provided. The experimental results reveal that at 650–850 °C, transition metals react with aluminum, forming aluminum-containing intermetallics and a small amount of carbides. At 850–1250 °C, transition metals collaborate with graphite, producing transition metal carbides. Then, at 1250–1450 °C, these aluminum intermetallics interact with transition metal carbides and remaining unreacted Y, Al, and C, yielding the final product (Mo2/3Y1/3) 2AlC. Simultaneously, the pore structure alters correspondingly with the solid-phase reaction at different reaction temperatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methane is considered as a clean energy that is widely used in places with high environmental requirements. The increasing demand for methane exploration in polar and deep sea extreme environments has a positive role in carbon neutrality policies. As a result, there will be a gradual increase in exploration activities for deep sea methane resources. Methane sensors require high reliability but are prone to faults, so fault diagnosis and forecasting of gas sensors are of vital practical significance. In this work, a Gaussian-linearized transformer model with a tranquilized time-series decomposition method is proposed for fault diagnosis and forecasting tasks. Since the traditional transformer model requires more computational expense with time complexity of O (N2) and is not applicable to continuous-sequence prediction tasks, two blocks of the transformer are improved. First, a Gaussian-linearized attention block is modified for fault-diagnosis tasks so that its time complexity can be changed to O (N), which can reduce computational resources. Second, a model with proposed attention for fault forecasting replaces the traditional embedding block with a decomposed block, which can input the continuous sequence data to the model completely and preserve the continuity of the methane data. Results show that the Gaussian-linearized transformer improves the accuracy of fault diagnosis to 99% and forecasting with low computational cost, which is superior to that of traditional methods. Moreover, the least mean-square-error loss of fault forecasting is 0.04, which is lower compared with the traditional time series prediction models and other deep learning models, highlighting the great potential of the proposed transformer for fault diagnosis and fault forecasting of gas sensor arrays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mastering the variations in the stability of a polarization vortex is fundamental for the development of ferroelectric devices based on polarization vortex domain structures. Some phase field simulations were conducted on PbTiO3 nanofilms with an initial polarization vortex under uniaxial tension or compression to investigate the conditions of vortex instability and the effects of aspect ratio of nanofilms and temperature on them. The instability of a polarization vortex is strongly dependent on aspect ratio and temperature. The critical compressive stress increases with decreasing aspect ratio under the action of compressive stress. However, the critical tensile stress first decreases and then increases with decreasing aspect ratio, then continues to decrease. There are two inflection points in the curve. In addition, an elevated temperature makes both the critical tensile and compressive stresses decline, and will also cause the aspect ratio corresponding to the inflection point to decrease. These are very important for the design of promising nano-ferroelectric devices based on polarization vortices to improve their performance while maintaining storage density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Molecular dynamics simulations based on the anisotropic shell model with the first-principles parameters are performed to investigate the void-mediated polarization vortex domain switching in compressed BaTi O 3 nanofilms. When a unit-cell-size void is located at the nanofilm center, the polarization configuration is in a single-vortex state instead of a multi-vortex state. For different void length fractions along the [100] lattice orientation, a cylindrical vortex is formed around the void while a few small vortexes nucleate closely above and/or below the void. With increasing void area fraction in the [100] plane, the vortex around the void gradually switches from clockwise to counterclockwise. Both the void shape and orientation have important effects on the vortex domain switching. A void near the model center tends to induce a clockwise vortex around it, a void in the lower left region of model to motivate a counterclockwise vortex, but a void in other locations to induce a closure domain with different switching degrees. In addition, it is found that the degree of closure domain switching could be kept if a void changes its location only in a small area. These observations should be instructive for the design and application of ferroelectric devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]