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The Hippo pathway controls organ size and homeostasis and is linked to numerous diseases, including cancer. The transcriptional enhanced associate domain (TEAD) family of transcription factors acts as a receptor for downstream effectors, namely yes-associated protein (YAP) and transcriptional co-activator with PDZ-binding motif (TAZ), which binds to various transcription factors and is essential for stimulated gene transcription. YAP/TAZ-TEAD facilitates the upregulation of multiple genes involved in evolutionary cell proliferation and survival. TEAD1–4 overexpression has been observed in different cancers in various tissues, making TEAD an attractive target for drug development. The central drug-accessible pocket of TEAD is crucial because it undergoes a post-translational modification called auto-palmitoylation. Crystal structures of the C-terminal TEAD complex with small molecules are available in the Protein Data Bank, aiding structure-based drug design. In this study, we utilized the fragment molecular orbital (FMO) method, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, shape-based screening, and molecular mechanics–generalized Born surface area (MM-GBSA) calculations for virtual screening, and we identified a novel non-covalent inhibitor—BC-001—with IC50 = 3.7 μM in a reporter assay. Subsequently, we optimized several analogs of BC-001 and found that the optimized compound BC-011 exhibited an IC50 of 72.43 nM. These findings can be used to design effective TEAD modulators with anticancer therapeutic implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polo-like kinase 1 (PLK1) plays a pivotal role in cell division regulation and emerges as a promising therapeutic target for cancer treatment. Consequently, the development of small-molecule inhibitors targeting PLK1 has become a focal point in contemporary research. The adenosine triphosphate (ATP)-binding site and the polo-box domain in PLK1 present crucial interaction sites for these inhibitors, aiming to disrupt the protein's function. However, designing potent and selective small-molecule inhibitors can be challenging, requiring a deep understanding of protein–ligand interaction mechanisms at these binding sites. In this context, our study leverages the fragment molecular orbital (FMO) method to explore these site-specific interactions in depth. Using the FMO approach, we used the FMO method to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of small-molecule drugs binding to these sites to design PLK1 inhibitors that are both potent and selective. Our investigation further entailed a comparative analysis of various PLK1 inhibitors, each characterized by distinct structural attributes, helping us gain a better understanding of the relationship between molecular structure and biological activity. The FMO method was particularly effective in identifying key binding features and predicting binding modes for small-molecule ligands. Our research also highlighted specific "hot spot" residues that played a critical role in the selective and robust binding of PLK1. These findings provide valuable insights that can be used to design new and effective PLK1 inhibitors, which can have significant implications for developing anticancer therapeutics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remote Sensing Image processing is a traditional research field, where RSI object detection is one of the most important directions. This paper focuses on an inherent problem of multi-stage object detection frameworks: the coupling error transmitting problem. In brief, because of the coupling method between the classifier and the regressor, the traditional multi-stage Detection frameworks tend to be fallible when encountering coarse object proposals. To deal with this problem, this article proposes a novel deep learning-based multi-stage object detection framework. Specifically, a novel network head architecture with a multi-to-one coupling method is proposed to avoid the coupling error of the traditional network head architecture. Moreover, it is found that the traditional network head architecture is more efficient than the novel network architecture when encountering fine object proposals. Considering this phenomenon, a proposal-consistent cooperation mechanism between the network heads is proposed. This mechanism makes the traditional network head and the novel network head develop each other's advantages and avoid the disadvantages. Experiments with different backbone networks on three publicly available data sets have shown the effectiveness of the proposed method since mAP is proposed as 0.7% to 12.3% on most models and data sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metal single‐atom (SA) catalysts have attracted immense attention due to the high catalytic efficiency given by the desired coordination environment of each metal atom. Yet, engineering the local electronic structure of SAs and multi‐atoms (MAs) still remains a challenge. Herein, an atomically dispersed catalyst comprised of Pt SAs, Pt‐Pt/V dual‐atoms, and small clusters supported on a vanadium and nitrogen co‐doped carbon (VNC) (denoted as Pt@VNC) surface is synthesized. In the Pt@VNC, both V and Pt atoms are evenly distributed on the surface of N‐doped carbon, while a few Pt atoms are linked to other Pt atoms via V, forming Pt clusters. The coordination structures of Pt atoms are modulated upon introducing atomically dispersed V sites (which generate small‐sized Pt clusters) and V2O5 clusters, showing extraordinary activity for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Benefiting from the low charge transfer resistance, i.e., fast reaction kinetics, due to the synergistic effect of SAs and clusters, the Pt@VNC demonstrates superior catalytic efficiency and robust durability for the HER. It requires an overpotential of only 5 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm−2 and shows 15 times larger mass activity than the commercial 20 wt.% Pt/C catalyst. This novel catalyst‐design strategy paves a new way for maximizing catalytic efficiency by optimizing the coordination structure of metal atoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to explore whether essential amino acids (EAAs) in the particulate and sedimentary organic matter (OM) can potentially limit the nutritional needs for benthic macrofauna of different phyla, and which factors regulate the nutritional value with respect to EAAs in a large river‐dominated shelf sea, the East China Sea. The EAA excess percentage of threonine, leucine, phenylalanine, histidine and arginine in suspended particles was significantly higher than those in surface sediments (p < 0.01), suggesting that these EAAs for the macrofauna were from fresher suspended particles' source, while methionine was from more degraded organic matter in surface sediments. The EAA excess percentage of valine, isoleucine and lysine showed no significant difference between suspended particles and sediments, indicating that macrofauna may uptake these EAAs from both suspended particle and sediment sources. Deeper offshore region had a lower nutritional potential for valine, leucine, isoleucine and phenylalanine. Bottom dissolved oxygen was not a regulator of the nutritional potential, due to dynamic oxygen conditions and much lower oxygen thresholds for the survival of most macrofauna. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-resolution (HR) multispectral (MS) images contain sharper detail and structure compared to the ground truth high-resolution hyperspectral (HS) images. In this paper, we propose a novel supervised learning method, which considers pansharpening as the spectral super-resolution of high-resolution multispectral images and generates high-resolution hyperspectral images. The proposed method learns the spectral mapping between high-resolution multispectral images and the ground truth high-resolution hyperspectral images. To consider the spectral correlation between bands, we build a three-dimensional (3D) convolution neural network (CNN). The network consists of three parts using an encoder–decoder framework: spatial/spectral feature extraction from high-resolution multispectral images/low-resolution (LR) hyperspectral images, feature transform, and image reconstruction to generate the results. In the image reconstruction network, we design the spatial–spectral fusion (SSF) blocks to reuse the extracted spatial and spectral features in the reconstructed feature layer. Then, we develop the discrepancy-based deep hybrid gradient (DDHG) losses with the spatial–spectral gradient (SSG) loss and deep gradient transfer (DGT) loss. The spatial–spectral gradient loss and deep gradient transfer loss are developed to preserve the spatial and spectral gradients from the ground truth high-resolution hyperspectral images and high-resolution multispectral images. To overcome the spectral and spatial discrepancy between two images, we design a spectral downsampling (SD) network and a gradient consistency estimation (GCE) network for hybrid gradient losses. In the experiments, it is seen that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in the subjective and objective experiments in terms of the structure and spectral preservation of high-resolution hyperspectral images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many computer vision applications rely on feature detection and description, hence the need for computationally efficient and robust 4D light field (LF) feature detectors and descriptors. In this paper, we propose a novel light field feature descriptor based on the Fourier disparity layer representation, for light field imaging applications. After the Harris feature detection in a scale-disparity space, the proposed feature descriptor is then extracted using a circular neighborhood rather than a square neighborhood. It is shown to yield more accurate feature matching, compared with the LiFF LF feature, with a lower computational complexity. In order to evaluate the feature matching performance with the proposed descriptor, we generated a synthetic stereo LF dataset with ground truth matching points. Experimental results with synthetic and real-world dataset show that our solution outperforms existing methods in terms of both feature detection robustness and feature matching accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The immune system acts as a vital defense barrier against pathogenic invasions, and its stable operation is crucial for maintaining body health. Nevertheless, various natural or artificial factors can compromise the body's immune function, leading to immunosuppression, which may interfere with the efficacy of vaccination and increase the susceptibility of the body to disease-causing pathogens. In an effort to ensure successful vaccinations and improve overall physical well-being, the search for appropriate immune regulators to enhance immunity is of paramount importance. Lentinan (LNT) has a significant role in immune regulation and vaccine adjuvants. In the present study, we constructed an immunosuppressive model using dexamethasone (DEX) and demonstrated that LNT could significantly improved antibody levels in immunosuppressive mice and stimulated T-lymphocyte proliferation and differentiation in intestinal Peyer's patches. LNT also increased the production of secretory immunoglobulin A (sIgA) in the duodenal fluid, the number of goblet cells, and the proportion of mucin area. Moreover, LNT modulated the intestinal microbiota and increased the production of short-chain fatty acids. Additionally, LNT promoted the proliferation, differentiation, and pro-inflammatory cytokines production of DEX-treated splenic T lymphocytes in vitro. Thus, the present study highlights the potential of LNT in reversing immunosuppression and avoiding the failure of vaccination. • LNT increased IgG level in dexamethasone-induced immunosuppressed mice. • LNT elevated the level of sIgA in the intestinal fluid. • LNT modulated the intestinal microbiota and promote the production of SCFAs. • LNT increased the proliferation and differentiation activities in vitro. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In low-light image enhancement, single-exposure images contain a limited dynamic range, which hinders the restoration of contrast and texture. To address these problems, we propose a multi-exposure generation and fusion method (MEGF), which simulates multi exposure images and performs feature fusion for low light image enhancement. First, we propose a Multi-Exposure Generation (MEG) block, which generates images with different exposure levels based on the input low-light images. The MEG block employs information entropy as an evaluation measure to prevent the underexposed or overexposed image generation. Then, the Perceptual Importance based Multi-Exposure Feature Enhancement (PIMEFE) module has been developed to fuse the multi-exposure features using the Perceptual Importance-based Feature Fusion (PIFF) module. The PIFF module selects the well-exposed features from the multi-exposure features processed by the Multi Scale Recursive Feature Enhancement (MSRFE) block. Finally, the fused features are input to the Curve Adjustment (CA) block for fine-tuning and provide color enhancement to the fused features. Moreover, we propose the Multiple Exposure Recursive Fusion (MERF) module which estimates the adjustment factors for the CA block with the guidance of multi-exposure features. Experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms other techniques in terms of image signal-to-noise ratio, structural similarity, and color accuracy on both real and synthetic datasets. • Considering the limitations of enhancing low-light images in low dynamic range, we introduce a Multi-Exposure Generation and Fusion (MEGF) method, which achieves promising enhancement results. • We designed a Multi-Exposure Generation (MEG) block to predict images at different exposures based on estimated exposure probability distributions. • We propose a weight evaluation module based on a perceptual importance network and a recursive fusion module, which can effectively extract dominant information from different exposure images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Adult-onset Still's disease (AOSD) is an autoinflammatory disorder leading to multiorgan involvements. We sought to investigate mood status and the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in these patients. Methods: In this study, 82 AOSD patients and 82 age- and sex-matched healthy controls were included. Demographic and clinical data of recruited patients were collected. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and Medical Outcomes Survey Short Form-36 (SF-36) were used to evaluate the mood status and quality of life, respectively. Spearman correlation and multivariable linear regression analyses were used to assess the disease-related risk factors associated with anxiety and depression. Results: Forty-four active and thirty-eight relieved patients were enrolled. We found that scores of both HADS anxiety (HADS-A) and depression (HADS-D) subscales in active AOSD were significantly higher than inactive patients, which were significantly higher than controls. Moreover, the HADS-A was positively correlated to the patient's global assessment (PGA), pain, and dosage of prednisone, and the HADS-D was positively correlated to systemic score, PGA, and pain. Female, high dosage of corticosteroids, and PGA more than 50 had a significant association with HADS-A score, while the sore throat and PGA more than 50 had a significant association with HADS-D score. Furthermore, AOSD patients' anxiety and depression had a negative impact on HRQoL. Conclusion: Active AOSD patients tended to be anxious and depressed, suffering from poorer HRQoL compared to patients in remission. Therefore, the evaluation of mental health and HRQoL should be included in AOSD patients' long-term management. Key Points • Adult-onset Still's disease (AOSD) is a systemic inflammatory disorder leading to multiorgan involvement. This study was so far the first published research focuses on AOSD patients' mental involvement and health-related quality of life (HRQoL). • Active AOSD patients were more tended to be anxious and depressive and suffered from poorer HRQoL compared to inactive patients. • Patients' anxiety and depression were associated with impaired HRQoL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Biased fear-related perception is one main characteristic in patients with panic disorder (PD) and their prominent cardiovascular symptoms associated with enhanced heartbeat perception. Patients and Methods: We investigated interoceptive perception in 18 first-onset drug-naïve PD patients and 21 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (HC). Moreover, we compared blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) responses between the two groups during a heartbeat perception (interoception) task to assess task-evoked activity and its relationship with heartbeat perception scores (HPSs). Results: We found that patients with PD compared to HCs revealed a trend higher but insignificant HPSs. Higher activity in the bilateral superior parietal lobule (SPL) was observed in PD patients compared to HCs during the perception of both heartbeats and pure tones compared to rest. Furthermore, patients with PD exhibited a significant positive correlation between BOLD activity in the left SPL during heartbeat > resting-state and HPS. Conclusion: Using a sample of first-episode drug-naïve patients, our study reports that patients with PD show altered activation in the bilateral SPL during both interoceptive and exteroceptive perception. The increased activation during interoceptive stimuli might render PD patients more engaged in processing information associated with their internal states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing a facile strategy to access active and atomically dispersed metallic catalysts are highly challenging for single atom catalysts (SACs). Herein, a simple and fast approach is demonstrated to construct Pt catalysts with single atoms in large quantity via ball milling Pt precursor and N‐doped carbon support (K2PtCl4@NC‐M; M denotes ball‐milling). The as‐prepared K2PtCl4@NC‐M only requires a low overpotential of 11 mV and exhibits 17‐fold enhanced mass activity for the electrochemical hydrogen evolution compared to commercial 20 wt% Pt/C. The superior hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalytic activity of K2PtCl4@NC‐M can be attributed to the generation of Pt single atoms, which improves the utilization efficiency of Pt atoms and the introduction of Pt‐N2C2 active sites with near‐zero hydrogen adsorption energy. This viable ball milling method is found to be universally applicable to the fabrication of other single metal atoms, for example, rhodium and ruthenium (such as Mt‐N2C2, where Mt denotes single metal atom). This strategy also provides a promising and practical avenue toward large‐scale energy storage and conversion application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing is closely related to population. The world's demographics have been changing greatly, like ageing, urbanization, and shrinking household. This paper takes China as the research object to study the effects of demographics on housing consumption. Demographics were considered from three aspects: natural structure, regional structure, and social structure. Based on Life Cycle Theory and Permanent Income Hypothesis, the models on housing consumption were constructed. Results show that demographic structures are important factors affecting housing consumption: (i) child-age dependency ratio (CDR), education level, and family size negatively affect housing consumption, while urbanization rate and old-age dependency ratio (ODR) have positive effects; (ii) CDR positively affects housing consumption through deposit and the indirect effect of ODR on housing consumption through deposit is negative; (iii) the influence of demographics on housing consumption is heterogeneous in different regions. It is relatively close between the central and the west to some extent but quite different in the east. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we propose an effective mixed extracting method for anisotropic constitutive parameters of periodically loaded substrate integrated waveguide (SIW). This method takes the advantage of both scattering parameters retrieval theory and the equivalent homogeneous medium dispersion analysis, which could accurately and effectively extract the equivalent constitutive parameters of the periodically loaded SIW. With this method, the corresponding constitutive parameters of the six typical patterns of periodically loaded SIW schemes are accurately extracted, verified, explained, and compared for their performance. It can be used to quantitatively predict the miniaturization potential of each unit cell and sequentially evaluate the performance as an integrated component. In addition, in terms of application, with the aid of equivalent parameters extracted by the proposed method, a slow-wave SIW evanescent mode filter centered at 12.64 GHz with a frequency bandwidth of 300 MHz is synthesized, fabricated, and measured. In the meanwhile, the theory of slow-wave evanescent mode filter is further consummated, by introducing the dual factors of enhanced permittivity and permeability, as well as analyzing respective advantages in filter synthesis. Measurements and simulation results show good agreement, which embodies the role of the method in guiding the design of actual microwave devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wu, B.; Jin, H.; Gao, S.; Xu, J., and Chen, J., 2020. Nutrient budgets and recent decadal variations in a highly eutrophic estuary: Hangzhou Bay, China. Journal of Coastal Research, 36(1), 63–71. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Hangzhou Bay is one of China's most eutrophic waterbodies, yet water quality observations within the bay are few, and the estuary's nutrient dynamics are poorly understood. Five cruises (summer, autumn, winter, spring) were conducted in Hangzhou Bay and adjacent waters between July 2006 and November 2007 and in August 2018. A steady-state box model was also constructed to estimate summer and winter nutrient fluxes. The results show that the spatial distributions and temporal variations of nutrients within the bay are significantly influenced by not only direct inputs from rivers around the bay but also the Changjiang River plume to the north. Bay concentrations of nitrate (), dissolved inorganic phosphorus (DIP), and dissolved silicate (DSi) were quite high throughout the year, especially in the head of the bay. Relative to concentrations measured in 1981–1982, estuarine concentrations of and DIP had increased, whereas DSi had been stable. The model results indicate that riverine discharge is the major source of nutrients to Hangzhou Bay. In both summer and winter, nutrients were exported from the bay to the East China Sea. The fluxes of , dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN), DIP, and DSi were higher in summer than winter, but the flux of ammonium was higher in winter. Nutrient fluxes to Hangzhou Bay observed here during 2006–2007 are much higher than those observed in the 1980s. Additionally, nutrient abundances in Hangzhou Bay are significantly higher than those reported for other coastal embayments in China. The difference in algal blooms inside and outside the bay is possibly due to the difference in turbidity or the hydrological conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Volatile anesthetic such as isoflurane causes widespread neurodegeneration in the developing animal brains and also induces cognitive impairments. Paeonol is a plant-derived phenolic compound possessing numerous bioactive properties. The study investigates the neuroprotective effects of paeonol against isoflurane-induced neurodegeneration and cognitive disturbances in neonatal rats.Methods: Paeonol (50, 100, and 150 mg/kg body weight/day) was given orally to separate groups of neonatal rats from postnatal day 3 (P3) to P21 and were exposed to isoflurane (0.75%; 6 h) on P7.Results: Neuroapoptosis following isoflurane exposure was remarkably reduced by paeonol. Isoflurane-induced elevated cleaved caspase-3, Bad, and Bax expression, were down-regulated on paeonol administration. Paeonol significantly enhanced expression of antiapoptotic proteins (Bcl-2, Bcl-xL, xIAP, c-IAP-1, c-IAP-2, and survivin) and improved acetylation of HK39 and HK412. The expression of histone deacetylases (HDACs)-HDAC2 and HDAC-3 were down-regulated. Isoflurane-induced activation of JNK/p38MAPK signaling and suppressed ERK signaling and were effectively regulated by paeonol. General behavior and freezing responses of the rats were improved. Results of the Morris Water Maze tests revealed improved learning and memory retention on paeonol treatment.Conclusions: Paeonol effectively inhibited neuroapoptosis and improved isoflurane-induced cognitive dysfunctions via regulating histone acetylation and JNK/ERK1/2/p38MAPK signaling pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the low light conditions, images are corrupted by low contrast and severe noise, but event cameras capture event streams with clear edge structures. Therefore, we propose an Event-Guided Low Light Image Enhancement method using a dual branch generative adversarial networks and recover clear structure with the guide of events. To overcome the lack of paired training datasets, we first synthesize three datasets containing low-light event streams, low-light images, and the ground truth normal-light images. Then, in the generator network, we develop an end-to-end dual branch network consisting of a image enhancement branch and a gradient reconstruction branch. The image enhancement branch is employed to enhance the low light images, and the gradient reconstruction branch is utilized to learn the gradient from events. Moreover, we develops the attention based event-image feature fusion module which selectively fuses the event and low-light image features, and the fused features are concatenated into the image enhancement branch and gradient reconstruction branch, which respectively generate the enhanced images with clear structure and more accurate gradient images. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real datasets demonstrate that the proposed event guided low light image enhancement method produces visually more appealing enhancement images, and achieves a good performance in structure preservation and denoising over state-of-the-arts. • A dataset includes low-light images and corresponding events, and normal light images. • A network consists of a Gradient Reconstruction Branch and a Low-Light Enhancement Branch. • The Gradient Reconstruction Branch is used to reconstruct the image gradient. • The network achieves a good performance in structure preservation and denoising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The South China Sea (SCS), being the largest marginal sea with high productivity in the western Pacific, was recently found to be a weak CO 2 source based on the modern observation, probably caused by the vertical mixing of deep water within this basin. In order to reveal the distribution of apparent ventilation age of intermediate (water depth of 500–1500 m) and deep (water depth > 1500 m) waters and hence to explore deep water circulation in the SCS, the accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon ages of co-existing benthic and planktic foraminifers from 13 surface and 4 core-top samples were measured. The results show that the recent deep water ventilation ages (Δ14C B-P ages) are between ~1790 and 2440 years in the northern SCS, comparable with the modern values of the deep western Pacific, implying the external impact of the penetration of Pacific Deep Water (PDW) across the Luzon Strait. Along the flow direction, the average ventilation ages decrease from ~1850 years to ~1330 years southward in the deep layer and from ~1600 years to ~1390 years northward in the intermediate layer. This phenomena may be attributed to the intra-basin well-ventilated process involving strong vertical deep mixing and advection. Our results not only validate the “sandwich” structure of deep water exchange between the SCS and Pacific: the deep water inflows from the western Pacific while the intermediate water flows out of the SCS, but also find the existence of the intermediate water with old carbon and low dissolved oxygen content in the southern SCS for the first time. Overall, the consistence of deep water ventilation ages with the physical-biogeochemical processes in the SCS is supported by the modern δ13C distribution of benthic foraminifers, further confirming that the deep circulation influences the CO 2 release from the SCS to the atmosphere. Highlights • The ventilation ages of the intermediate and deep waters are getting younger along the flow path in the SCS. • The sandwich like flow pattern and strong vertical deep mixing in the SCS has been kept stably in the past 3000 years. • The first discovery of the intermediate water with old carbon and low dissolved oxygen content in the southern SCS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nitrate ion (NO3−) is a typical pollutant in environmental samples, posing a threat to the aquatic ecosystem and human health. Therefore, rapid and accurate detection of NO3− is crucial for both the aquatic sciences and government regulations. Here we report the fabrication of an amino-functionalized, vertically ordered mesoporous silica film (NH2-VMSF) confining localized copper nanoparticles (CuNPs) for the electrochemical detection of NO3−. NH2-VMSF-carrying amino groups possess an ordered perpendicular nanochannel structure and ultrasmall nanopores, enabling the confined growth of CuNPs through the electrodeposition method. The resulting CuNPs/NH2-VMSF-modified indium tin oxide (ITO) electrode (CuNPs/NH2-VMSF/ITO) combines the electrocatalytic reduction ability of CuNPs and the electrostatic attraction capacity of NH2-VMSF towards NO3−. Thus, it is a rapid and sensitive electrochemical method for the determination of NO3− with a wide linear detection range of 5.0–1000 μM and a low detection limit of 2.3 μM. Direct electrochemical detection of NO3− in water samples (tap water, lake water, seawater, and rainwater) with acceptable recoveries ranging from 97.8% to 109% was performed, demonstrating that the proposed CuNPs/NH2-VMSF/ITO sensor has excellent reproducibility, regeneration, and anti-interference abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nutrient and phytoplankton pigment data were collected during summer cruises in 2008–2014 to examine how the Beaufort Gyre (BG) affected regional differences in nutrient stocks and the phytoplankton community. The results showed a gradual decrease in nutrient concentrations and increasing depth of the chlorophyll maxima toward the center of the gyre. A horizontal map of nitrate at a depth of 50 m indicated nitrogen deficiency in the gyre compared with that in the surroundings. Biogeochemical model simulations suggested that an increased freshwater convergence, driven by the strengthened BG and sea ice retreat, was primarily responsible for the decrease in nutrient stocks. In the BG zone, the contribution of diatoms to the phytoplankton community decreased, accompanied by the increased contribution of small flagellates. The current state of the BG under anticyclonic winds negatively affected the diatom biomass and biological carbon pump. The possible rotation of wind regimes from anticyclonic to cyclonic might relieve the nitrogen deficiency for phytoplankton growth in the western Arctic Ocean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an E-band substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) dual-polarized antenna system, which consists of an orthomode transducer (OMT) and a dual-polarized horn antenna. On the basis of a two-layer substrate design, the function of OMT is realized by utilizing an SIW section to excite TE10 mode for the vertical polarization, a quasi-coaxial stripline to excite quasi-TEM mode for the horizontal polarization. And also, a slot line transition is placed at the common port of the two structures for impedance matching with the ridge SIW dual-polarized horn antenna. In this way, the dual-polarized horn antenna is designed with an exponential ridge structure simultaneously for better impedance matching and higher efficiency of the antenna. To verify the functionality of the proposed integrated OMT-antenna structure, an experimental prototype is fabricated and measured, and a good agreement is found between its simulation and measured results. Over the frequency range of 83–87 GHz, return loss better than 10 dB at all ports and cross-polarization less than −25 dB are obtained. The maximum antenna gain is about 14 dBi for the horizontal polarization and 15.2 dBi for the vertical polarization. It is believed that the proposed OMT-antenna design is suitable for ultrahigh capacity millimeter-wave backhaul applications in future wireless communication systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, an inductor-loaded slow-wave substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) is presented and studied. The proposed structure features a number of unique propagation properties. First of all, the inductance value imposed along the transverse direction will affect the phase velocity and cutoff frequency of the waveguide simultaneously. Second, the inductance value in the longitudinal propagating direction will only affect the phase velocity but make no difference on the cutoff frequency. Based on the aforementioned characteristics, the size of structure could be controlled by separately tuning the loaded inductor along the transverse direction and longitudinal propagating direction. More importantly, it is released on the interrelationship between the phase velocity and cutoff frequency in the proposed guiding-wave structure. The feature will be beneficial to the design of leaky-wave antenna and matching circuits for SIW circuits. Finally, experimental results demonstrate that with the increasing of loaded inductance, a reduction of 35% in cutoff frequency is achieved compared with the conventional SIW counterpart. The phase velocity is also reduced by 35% with the increasing of the loaded inductor, which contributes to a miniaturized longitudinal dimension for a given electrical length. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, a neural surface reconstruction framework is presented. In order to perform neural surface reconstruction using 2D supervision, a weighted random sampling based on saliency is introduced for training the deep neural network. In the proposed method, self‐attention is used to detect the saliency of input 2D images. The saliency map, that is, the weight matrix of the weighted random sampling, is used to sample the training samples. As a result, more samples in the reconstructed object area are collected. Moreover, an update strategy for weight based on sampling frequency is adopted to avoid the points that cannot be sampled all the time. The experiments are implemented in real‐world 2D images of objects with different material properties and lighting conditions based on the DTU dataset. The results show that the proposed method produces more detailed 3D surfaces, and the rendered results are closer to the raw images visually. In addition, the mean of peak signal‐to‐noise ratio (PNSR) is also improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, lignin-derived phenols were used to determine the sources and distribution of sedimentary organic matter along the northern Bering Sea and Chukchi Sea of the Arctic Ocean. The lignin parameter syringyl/vanillyl (S/V) and cinnamyl/vanillyl (C/V) ratios are used to indicate vegetation sources; and the ratios of vanillic acid/vanillin, (Ad/Al)v and syringic acid/syringaldehyde, (Ad/Al)s are used as indicators of lignin diagenesis. Results showed the predominance of woody gymnosperm signal at the easternmost location in the northern Bering Sea, a mixture of refractory non-woody angiosperm and fresher gymnosperm tissues in the Chukchi Sea, and signal of fresher woody gymnosperm tissues in the northernmost locations in the Chukchi Sea. The lignin materials showed gradual increase in decomposition stage during transport along the northern Bering Sea. Hydrodynamic sorting process, which is the retention of coarser materials nearshore and transportation of finer particles farther offshore, most probably occurred along the east coast of the northern Bering Sea. In Chukchi Sea, the non-woody angiosperm tissues could have originated from the Canadian Arctic and gymnosperm tissues could be from the Russian Arctic side. The fresher materials in the northernmost Chukchi Sea could have been transported here via the ice-rafting process. Detection of fresh lignin materials and the occurrence of lignin decomposition mean that this region could be sensitive to the impact of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange between the atmosphere and grassland ecosystems is very important for the global carbon balance. To assess the CO2 flux and its relationship to environmental factors, the eddy covariance method was used to evaluate the diurnal cycle and seasonal pattern of the net ecosystem CO2 exchange (NEE) of a cultivated pasture in the Three-River Source Region (TRSR) on the Qinghai−Tibetan Plateau from January 1 to December 31, 2008. The diurnal variations in the NEE and ecosystem respiration (Re) during the growing season exhibited single-peak patterns, the maximum and minimum CO2 uptake observed during the noon hours and night; and the maximum and minimum Re took place in the afternoon and early morning, respectively. The minimum hourly NEE rate and the maximum hourly Re rate were −7.89 and 5.03 μmol CO2 m−2 s−1, respectively. The NEE and Re showed clear seasonal variations, with lower values in winter and higher values in the peak growth period. The highest daily values for C uptake and Re were observed on August 12 (−2.91 g C m−2 d−1) and July 28 (5.04 g C m−2 day−1), respectively. The annual total NEE and Re were −140.01 and 403.57 g C m−2 year−1, respectively. The apparent quantum yield (α) was −0.0275 μmol μmol−1 for the entire growing period, and the α values for the pasture’s light response curve varied with the leaf area index (LAI), air temperature (Ta), soil water content (SWC) and vapor pressure deficit (VPD). Piecewise regression results indicated that the optimum Ta and VPD for the daytime NEE were 14.1°C and 0.65 kPa, respectively. The daytime NEE decreased with increasing SWC, and the temperature sensitivity of respiration (Q10) was 3.0 during the growing season, which was controlled by the SWC conditions. Path analysis suggested that the soil temperature at a depth of 5 cm (Tsoil) was the most important environmental factor affecting daily variations in NEE during the growing season, and the photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) was the major limiting factor for this cultivated pasture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State-of-Health (SOH) estimation is crucial for the safety and reliability of battery-based applications. Data-driven methods have shown their promising potential in battery SOH estimation, yet creating a high-performance model with a compact structure is still a grand challenge. This paper focuses on constructing the elastic feature to formulate auto-configurable Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) to address this issue. To eliminate the impacts of the kernels on GPR, an evolutionary framework is designed to organize the kernel configuration. Meanwhile, a hierarchical feature construction strategy reduces the complexity of the extracted feature according to the geometry of the charging curve. Experiments on three battery datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, demonstrating the practical value of the proposed method for the battery management system (BMS) to construct feature more feasible, and to provide the optimal kernel configuration automatically. • A new hierarchical feature with controllable complexity is proposed. • Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) is utilized as the estimator. • The optimal combination of kernels for GPR is automatically configured. • Validation using three battery datasets under different operational conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photosynthesis pigments and size-fractionated chlorophyll a were determined during the Chinese CHINARE Arctic cruise in summer 2010, to study the phytoplankton community in response to different Pacific water masses in the Eastern Chukchi Shelf (ECS). In the summer, the phytoplankton biomass was high with large diatoms dominated in the shelf, which might in favor to well-stratified water conditions and adequate nutrient supply of Pacific waters. However, nitrate-poor Alaska Coastal Water (ACW) altered the phytoplankton community structure in the east part of Chukchi shelf, as dinoflagellate and chrysophyte biomass significantly increased. It was shown that in ACW-influenced area, the Chl a concentration was an order of magnitude lower (0.41 µg/dm 3 in averaged) compared to that in the entire ECS, with the community mainly consisting of nano- and pico-phytoplankton. The result indicated that the diatom-dominated shelf was greatly impact by the spreading pathway of ACW. Thus, the future enhancement of ACW and subsequent ecological impact need further concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A class of slow-wave substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) structures patterned with microstrip polyline is presented, theoretically studied, and experimentally validated, which demonstrates some interesting slow-wave propagation effects. The slow-wave SIW (SW-SIW) enables the size reduction of a physically large circuit without sacrificing its performance. A size reduction of 40% of the lateral dimension is achieved with reference to that of the conventional SIW counterpart at the same cutoff frequency. Meanwhile, the phase velocity of the waveguide is also reduced by 40%, resulting in a smaller longitudinal dimension for a given electrical length. Both lateral and longitudinal effects give rise to a total size reduction, largely extending the operation range of SIW structures in the low-frequency region, which has often been restrained by a physical dimension-related cutoff frequency. Also, a transmission line-based two-dimensional (2-D) equivalent-circuit model is proposed and deployed for the modeling and analysis of the slow-wave mechanism. The results from the equivalent-circuit model agrees very well with that from the full-wave simulations. Furthermore, a broadband microstrip to SW-SIW taper with good return loss is designed for measurement verification. Using the proposed SW-SIW structure, the size of conventional SIW-based microwave circuits such as power splitters, couplers, and filters can be further reduced in addition to the existing size-reduction techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A wide variety of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the surface marine sediments and seafood from four geographic areas of the East China Sea were investigated. The POP concentrations were analyzed and their possible ecotoxicological risks assessed. The total concentrations of hexachlorocyclohexanes (HCHs), dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethanes (DDTs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the sediments were found to be ND–22.40, ND–5.10, 32.10–171.70, and 0.60–63.00 ng/g dry weight (dw), respectively. Low-chlorinated biphenyl congeners and HCHs were predominantly found at the Hangzhou Bay and Yangtze River areas. The sediment ecotoxicological risk was assessed, indicating the toxic effect of PCBs and DDTs on benthic organisms. In marine organisms of economic importance, the concentration of total PAHs, PCBs, and organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) ranged from 43.20 to 291.20, 2.60 to 96.20, and 12.70 to 235.20 μg/kg dw, respectively. The bioaccumulation in marine organisms did not pose a significant health risk to consumers. As indicated by the POP residues in both marine sediments and organisms, POPs were persistent over time, posing a long-term risk to the local ecosystem and human health via the food chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we put forward a novel fusion method for remote sensing images based on the contrast pyramid (CP) using the Baldwinian Clonal Selection Algorithm (BCSA), referred to as CPBCSA. Compared with classical methods based on the transform domain, the method proposed in this paper adopts an improved heuristic evolutionary algorithm, wherein the clonal selection algorithm includes Baldwinian learning. In the process of image fusion, BCSA automatically adjusts the fusion coefficients of different sub-bands decomposed by CP according to the value of the fitness function. BCSA also adaptively controls the optimal search direction of the coefficients and accelerates the convergence rate of the algorithm. Finally, the fusion images are obtained via weighted integration of the optimal fusion coefficients and CP reconstruction. Our experiments show that the proposed method outperforms existing methods in terms of both visual effect and objective evaluation criteria, and the fused images are more suitable for human visual or machine perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integration of images from different sensing modalities can produce information that cannot be obtained by viewing the sensor outputs separately and consecutively. In order to enhance the contrast of the fused image and reduce the loss of fine details in the process of image fusion, an innovative fusion method of visible and infrared images is presented in this paper, which uses a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm based decomposition (MOEA/D). First of all, we employ contrast pyramid (CP) decomposition into every level of each original image. Second, MOEA/D is introduced to optimize fusion coefficients, thus the weighted coefficients can be adjusted automatically according to fitness function. Finally, obtain the fused images by the weight integration of the optimal fusion coefficients and CP reconstruction. Experimental results show that the fusion algorithm proposed in this paper achieves better effect than the other fusion algorithms both in visual effect and quantitative metrics, and the fused images are more suitable for human visual or machine perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] This paper presents an optimized method for visible and infrared images fusion employing TLBO method. [•] Fusion coefficients are non-linear adjusted adaptively by fitness function. [•] Proposed method outperforms other methods in both visual effect and objective evaluation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Highlights: [•] The pneumatic nebulization gas–solid extraction was used to extract herbicides in semisolid sample. [•] The analytes in high content of methanol are kept on sorbent. [•] The operation is simpler compared with conventional SPE. [•] The clean efficiency of the work is better than that of QuEChERS method. [•] The cost and LOD are low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Angiotensin (Ang) II plays a vital role in vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) growth and proliferation. Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is a specific Ang II-degrading enzyme but its role in VSMC proliferation remains largely unknown. We hypothesized that ACE2 might suppress Ang II-mediated oxidative stress and VSMC proliferation. Human umbilical artery smooth muscle cells (HUASMCs) were pretreated with Ang II (100nM) for 6h and 24h, respectively. Exposure to Ang II resulted in significant increases in suppressor of cytokine signaling 3 (SOCS3) expression and phosphorylation levels of JAK2, STAT3 and ERK1/2 linked with elevated superoxide production and cell proliferation in HUASMCs. These changes were strikingly prevented by administration of ERK1/2 inhibitor PD98059 (10μM) and JAK/STAT inhibitor WP1066 (5μM) but were largely aggravated by ACE2 inhibitor DX600 (0.5μM). More importantly, treatment with human recombinant ACE2 (hrACE2; 1mg/ml) dramatically prevented Ang II-mediated SOCS3 expression and the JAK2–STAT3 and ERK1/2 signaling, and resulted in attenuation of superoxide production and cell proliferation in HUASMCs. Intriguingly, downregulation of profilin-1 with profilin-1 siRNA (50nM) was able to abolish Ang II-induced upregulations of profilin-1 expression, ERK1/2 phosphorylation and superoxide production with attenuation of VSMC proliferation. In conclusion, treatment with hrACE2 prevents Ang II-mediated activation of the JAK2/STAT3/SOCS3 and profilin-1/MAPK signaling pathways, contributing to attenuation of superoxide generation and cell proliferation in HUASMCs, suggesting a protective mechanism of ACE2 against Ang II-mediated oxidative stress and VSMC proliferation. ACE2 may represent a potential candidate to prevent and treat vascular disorders. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Stable isotopes of foraminiferal multispecies (surface dwelling Globigerinoides ruber, thermocline dwelling Pulleniatina obliquiloculata, and benthic Uvigerina peregrina) and Mg/Ca ratios of G. ruber shells were analyzed with an average time resolution of ∼370 yr for reconstructing the orbital- and millennial-scale changes in the East Asian monsoon and associated upper water structure during the mid-Pleistocene period of 800–1060 ka at ODP Site 1144 in the northern South China Sea (SCS). It has been found that generally the sea surface temperature (SST) were lower and the depth of thermocline (DOT) was deeper during glacial stages and vice versa during interglacial stages, indicating a strengthened winter monsoon and weakened summer monsoon during glacial stages. The sea surface salinity (SSS) was relatively lower during glacials, induced by the greatly reduced distance of this site to the shore during times of low sea level. Further, spectral analyses have revealed significant semi-precessional and/or precessional cycles in the planktic δ18O, SST and the proxies of SSS and DOT, showing the typical characteristics of tropical climate change. This means that during the mid-Pleistocene climate transition (MPT) period the East Asian monsoon evolution and associated changes of upper water column structure in the northern SCS were probably driven partly by tropical forcing, like in the southern SCS, and should not be related only to the high latitude ice sheet changes. Particularly, millennial-scale climate fluctuations (mainly ∼1.4 kyr cycle) were found to exist throughout the glacial and interglacial stages during the MPT period in the northern SCS, but slightly different from the sawtooth-like D/O events recorded in late Quaternary Greenland ice cores. During the mid-Pleistocene terminations, the SST warming was synchronous with the northern ice sheet retreat, indicated by benthic δ18O, in the northern SCS, which is consistent to the previous findings in the late Quaternary SCS and apparently different from that in the western equatorial Pacific Ocean, providing new insights into the studies of East Asian monsoon evolution and rapid climate change. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Ionic liquid-based homogeneous liquid–liquid microextraction (IL-based HLLME) high-performance liquid chromatography was developed and applied to the extraction, separation and determination of some antibiotics in milk. The proteins and lipids were removed by adding salt and adjusting the pH value. The homogeneous extraction was applied to the improvement of recoveries for IL phase and analytes. The experimental parameters of the IL-based HLLME, including salt concentration in sample solution, pH value of sample solution, volume of [C6MIM][BF4], amount of ion-pairing agent (NH4PF6), and extraction time, were evaluated. The limits of detection for enoxacin, pefloxacin, norfloxacin, enrofloxacin, sulfamethoxazole and sulfadimethoxine were 15.8, 7.07, 5.13, 4.00, 7.79 and 8.33μgL−1, respectively. When the proposed method was applied to the analysis of milk samples the recoveries of the analytes ranged from 92.5 to 118.6% and relative standard deviations were lower than 7.00%. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Surface- and subsurface-dwelling planktonic foraminifera from the upper 43 m of Hole A at the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Site 807, which was recovered from the western Pacific warm pool during ODP Leg 130, were analyzed for stable oxygen and carbon isotopes. By comparing these results with data from ODP Site 851 in the eastern equatorial Pacific, this study has reconstructed the paleoceanographic changes in upper ocean waters in the equatorial Pacific since 2.5 Ma. During the period from 1.6-1.4 Ma, the oxygen isotopes of surface and subsurface waters were found to markedly change in the western and eastern equatorial Pacific, further confirming the final formation of the well-defined asymmetric east-west (E-W) pattern at that time. This feature was similar to the zonal temperature gradient (sea surface temperature is higher in the west and lower in the east) and the asymmetric upper water structure (thermocline depth is deeper in the west and shallower in the east) in the modern equatorial Pacific. The zonal gradient change of subsurface water δO was greater than that of surface water δO, indicating that the formation of the asymmetric E-W pattern in the equatorial Pacific should be much more related to the shoaled thermocline and markedly decreased subsurface water temperature in the eastern equatorial Pacific. Moreover, since ∼1.6 Ma, the carbon isotopic differences between surface and subsurface waters clearly decreased in the equatorial Pacific, and their long-term eccentricity periods changed from 400 ka to ∼500 ka, reflecting the reorganization of the ocean carbon reservoir. This probably resulted from the deep water reorganization in the Southern Ocean at that time and its enhanced influence on the tropical Pacific (especially subsurface water). Our study demonstrates that the tropical ocean plays an important role in global climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Copper-based titanate intercalation electrode materials (referred as Cu–TO) were achieved by electrochemical reduction of the intercalated cupric ions that were ion exchanged on the layer structured titanate films by using n-propylamine as an exfoliating agent. The copper-based titanate intercalation electrode materials were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), electrochemical techniques and inductive coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES). These copper-based titanate materials were exploited to fabricate the enzymeless glucose sensors, and their assay performances to glucose were evaluated by conventional electrochemical techniques. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) and chronoamperometry (I–t) revealed a high sensitivity, fast response, excellent stability, and good reproducibility in the glucose determination at +0.55V. Under optimal conditions, the electrocatalytic response of the sensor was proportional to the glucose concentration in the range of 2.5×10−7 M to 8.0×10−3 M with a detection limit of 5.0×10−8 M (signal-to-noise=3). Moreover, the intercalated copper electrode materials exhibited high stability and improved selectivity for glucose compared with the more apparently accessible copper. This work also provides a simply controlled test-bed for electrochemical functionalization of layered titanate for sensor applications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The inflow of Alaska Coastal Water (ACW) acts as a source of heat and freshwater for the Arctic Ocean, and contributes to ecosystem succession as well as phytoplankton change. To explore the mechanisms and patterns of the phytoplankton composition in response to the ACW, diagnostic pigments and environmental parameters were analyzed along three similar transects from shelf to basin in the Arctic Ocean during summer in 2008–2016. The results showed that the incursion of the ACW reduced the chlorophyll a (Chl a) concentration in the shelf areas, but favored phytoplankton growth in basin areas, especially that of small prasinophytes and chrysophytes. A possible explanation is the change in nutrient status, because during its northward flow, the ACW dissipates heat and receives nutrients from the surrounding cold water. The concentrations of Prasino and Chl b (the diagnostic pigments of prasinophytes) increase from barely detected in 2008 to higher than 15 ng/dm3 (Prasino) and 65 ng/dm3 (Chl b) respectively in 2014 and 2016, which occurred synchronously with presence of ACW and an increase in subsurface nitrate reservoirs. These findings indicate that the incursion of the ACW brings nutrients into subsurface basin layers, which could favor the growth of small phytoplankton in the western Arctic Ocean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: An on-line method was developed for the extraction, derivatization and determination of formaldehyde in textile samples. Formaldehyde was first extracted with water by ultrasound assisted, and directly introduced into a derivatization column which was packed with a moderately sulfonated cation-exchange resin. The resin used as solid support for the derivatization was charged with 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine (DNPH) previously. The formaldehyde DNPH derivative was eluted with the chromatographic mobile phase into an analytical column for the separation, and then monitored by UV detector. The maximum extraction yield was achieved when the extraction vessel was located at 10mm from the ultrasonic source and 10mg textile sample was extracted with 5mL pure water at a flow rate of 1.0mLmin−1 at 50°C. The detection limit of the proposed method was 0.06mgkg−1. This method was applied to the determination of formaldehyde in different textile samples, and compared with the state standard method (off-line spectrophotometry) used in China. The similar contents of formaldehyde were obtained for most samples by the two methods, but little higher for some samples obtained by the proposed method. The average relative standard deviation (RSD) obtained by the on-line method was 3.2% which is lower than 29.5% obtained by the standard method. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The HPLC coupled with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) was applied for the determination of tributyltin chloride (TBT), triphenyltin chloride (TPhT), triethyltin chloride (TET) in textile and plastic samples. The separation was performed in the isocratic mode on ion exchange SCX column with a mobile phase containing methanol–ammonium acetate (50mmoll−1)–acetic acid (90/9.98/0.02, v/v/v). Sensitive detection of three organotin compounds by ESI-MS was performed on the basis of multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode. Limits of detection were 0.4, 20, 4ngml−1 for TBT, TPhT, and TET, respectively. Microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) of organotin compounds was finished in 60% (v/v) methanol aqueous solution. Under the experimental conditions used, recoveries of three organotin compounds obtained for spiked textile and plastic samples are in the range of 55–95% and the R.S.D.s are 3–9%. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: An apparatus for extraction of flavonoids from Herba Epimedii has been constructed which utilizes a microwave technique for heating in a dynamic mode. A TM010 microwave resonance cavity was applied to concentrate the microwave energy; the power needed to achieve efficient extraction was significantly reduced. The method has been compared with other extraction methods, such as pressurized microwave-assisted extraction (PMAE), ultrasonic extraction (UE), heat reflux extraction (RE) and Soxhlet extraction (SOX). The four flavonoids in extract were identified by HPLC–MS. The influence of extraction parameters on the extraction yield of flavonoids has been evaluated by comparison with the peak areas of HPLC-DAD spectra in the different extraction methods. The results showed that the extraction yield of flavonoids in Herba Epimedii obtained by dynamic microwave-assisted extraction (DMAE) was higher than that obtained by UE, RE and SOX, and the extraction time is dramatically reduced. The extraction yield obtained by DMAE is similar to that obtained by PMAE. But the flavonoids in Herba Epimedii would not decompose easily when increasing the extraction time in DMAE. This is the benefit of dynamic extraction system which can transfer the analytes extracted from the sample matrix with flowed fresh solvent to the out of extraction vessel. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Rennin-angiotensin system is involved in liver fibrogenesis through activating hepatic stellate cells (HSCs). Telmisartan (Tel) is an angiotensin II type 1 receptor antagonist, could function as a selective peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ activator. Here we studied the effect of Tel on liver fibrosis, pre-neoplastic lesions in vivo and primary HSCs in vitro. In vivo study, we used the choline-deficient l-amino acid-defined (CDAA)-diet induced rat NASH model. The rats were fed the CDAA diet for 8 weeks to induce liver fibrosis and pre-neoplastic lesions, and then co-administrated with Tel for another 10 weeks. Tel prevented liver fibrogenesis and pre-neoplastic lesions by down-regulating TGFβ1 and TIMP-1, 2 and increasing MMP-13 expression. Tel inhibited HSCs activation and proliferation. These results suggested that Tel could be a promising drug for NASH related liver fibrosis. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) play a pivotal role in liver fibrogenesis. Here, we studied whether the iron chelator deferoxamine (DFO) affected cultured HSC activation and apoptosis. The effect of DFO on HSCs was investigated using quiescent and activated stellate cells. Treatment with DFO inhibited HSC activation, resulting in the reduced expression of α-smooth muscle actin protein and type I procollagen, matrix metalloproteinase-2 and -9, and tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinase-1 and -2 mRNAs. DFO induced apoptosis of activated HSCs, which was associated with decreasing Bcl-2 expression and the release of cytochrome c from the mitochondria to the cytosol with enhanced caspase-3 activity. DFO also induced activated HSCs to express peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ with the reaccumulation of intracellular lipids. The iron chelation of stellate cells inhibits their activation, causing them to become deactivated as well as to undergo apoptosis. These data suggest a potential role for an iron chelation treatment of liver fibrosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A novel technique based on dynamic microwave-assisted extraction (DMAE) coupled on-line with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) through a flow injection interface has been developed for determination of andrographolide and dehydroandrographolide in Andrographis paniculata Nees. A TM010 microwave resonance cavity built in the laboratory was applied to concentrating the microwave energy. An extraction vessel was placed in microwave irradiation zone. The extraction was performed in a recirculating system. When a number of extraction cycles were completed, the fractional extract (20μL) was driven to the analytical column by 65% aqueous methanol and was measured by diode array detector (DAD) at 225nm. The optimized extraction conditions are follows: extraction solvent 60% aqueous methanol; microwave forward power 80W; extraction time 6min; extraction solvent flow-rate 1.0mLmin−1. The detection and quantification limits obtained are 0.5 and 1.7μgmL−1 for andrographolide and 0.6 and 1.9μgmL−1 for dehydroandrographolide, respectively. The within-day and between-day precision (RSD) are 2.1% and 3.7% for andrographolide and 1.7% and 4.1% for dehydroandrographolide, respectively. Mean recoveries for andrographolide and dehydroandrographolide are 97.7% and 98.7%, respectively. Compared with ultrasonic extraction used in the Chinese pharmacopoeia, the proposed method was demonstrated to obtain higher extraction yield in a shorter time. In addition, only small quantities of solvent (5mL) and sample (10mg) were required. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The aim of this study was to investigate whether herbal medicine Rhei rhizome, extract powder from herbs, has influences on the development of liver fibrosis. In in vivo studies the effects of Rhei rhizome were examined using the choline-deficient L-amino acid-defined (CDAA) diet-induced liver fibrosis model. In In vitro studies the effects of Rhei rhizome on type I procollagen mRNA expression, α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA), metalloproteinases (MMPs) and tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases (TIMPs) of isolated hepatic stellate cell were examined. In vivo Rhei rhizome prevented fibrosis in a dose-dependent manner up to 1.0% (w/w) with a reduced number of activated stellate cells. In vitro the Rhei rhizome prevented stellate cell activation resulting in reduced type I procollagen mRNA, α-SMA and TIMP-1, 2 expression. These results indicate that Rhei rhizome significantly reduces liver fibrosis by the direct inhibition of stellate cell activation without reducing hepatocyte cell death. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In order to generate a denser focal stack, a cooperative generative adversarial network is proposed to learn the refocusing ability from light field imaging. To keep the axial continuity, the proposed framework is designed to learn features of a focal stack in both axial directions. Different from the classic generative adversarial network, our generative module consists of a forward prediction sub‐network and a backward prediction sub‐network, taking the forward‐and‐backward focal stacks as their inputs, respectively. The bi‐directional predictions are then fused by a weighting process, which is guided by an adversarial module. The proposed network is trained on light field focal stacks conducted via digital refocusing. Without loss of the refocus continuity, one can axial super‐resolve a focal stack by using the trained model. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm on different types of focal stacks produced by both light fields and traditional camera shootings is validated. The experimental results indicate that the refocus variation of a focal stack can be well learned and predicted without a complete light field. Therefore, the proposed algorithm outperforms the traditional digital refocusing in terms of run‐time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]