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In order to find the programs that can be generated at low frequency, a scheme of using (polyvinylidene fluoride) piezoelectric film to collect the energy of human foot movement is proposed, and related theoretical analysis and experimental studies are conducted. The solution is capable of energy harvesting during low-frequency walking to provide power for wearable microelectronic devices. First, a system dynamics model was built to analyze the kinematics of the foot, and then COMSOL Multiphysics simulation software was used to simulate the vibration mode, stress–strain, and output voltage of the piezoelectric film. Finally, the experimental platform was built for experimental testing. The experimental results show that when the PVDF piezoelectric film on the back of the human foot is deformed, the output power will vary in a certain range. When the thickness of the piezoelectric film is 122 μm and the bending amplitude is 60°, the maximum output voltage in the experiment is 25.2 V, the output current is 0.0783 mA and the output power is 1.981 mW. The experimental results verify the feasibility of the scheme design and provide a new solution for powering electronic components.

To realize the harvesting of energy generated by human movement, in this study, a piezoelectric–electromagnetic composite was designed for harvesting the energy generated by low-frequency human motion is designed by combining the principle of power generation and electromagnetic energy conversion of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) piezoelectric materials. First, the structure and working principle of the piezoelectric–electromagnetic composite energy trap were designed and analyzed. Next, the system dynamics model of piezoelectric–electromagnetic coupling power generation was established, and the main influencing factors of the composite energy trap were derived. Moreover, the influence of PVDF piezoelectric materials with different size parameters on the output voltage and the influence of the frequency of the moving permanent magnet on electromagnetic power generation were analyzed. Finally, the prototype was constructed and tested. The results revealed that the output voltage of the piezoelectric–electromagnetic composite energy trap placed horizontally is higher than that of the composite energy trap placed vertically at step frequencies of over 90 steps/min, and the maximum output voltage is 25.6 V at the step frequency of 140 steps/min. The electric energy generated by the composite energy trap can supply power to low-power electronic devices, thus demonstrating the feasibility of collecting human-motion energy for power generation.

Myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury is recognized as the leading cause of death worldwide. However, the molecular mechanisms involved in this process are still not fully understood. We previously reported that the combined action of Notch1 and Keap1-NRF2 signaling pathway can significantly increase the activity of cardiomyocytes, inhibit the apoptosis of cardiomyocytes, reduce the formation of reactive oxygen species, and improve the antioxidant activity in neonate rat myocardial cells. However, the regulatory mechanism of Notch1 signaling pathway on the NRF2 signaling pathway and its actual role on I/R injury are still unclear. Herein, we found that Keap-NRF2 signaling is activated by Notch1 in RBP-Jκ dependent manner, thus protects the heart against I/R injury via inhibiting the mitochondrial ROS generation and improves the mitochondrial bioenergetics in vitro and in vivo. These results suggest that Keap-NRF2 signaling might become a promising therapeutic strategy for treating myocardial I/R injury.

Aims This follow‐up study aimed to examine the 8‐year efficacy and safety of subthalamic nucleus (STN) deep brain stimulation (DBS) for patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) in southern China. Methods The follow‐up data of 10 patients with PD undergoing STN‐DBS were analyzed. Motor symptoms were assessed before and 1, 3, 5, and 8 years after the surgery with stimulation‐on in both off‐medication (off‐med) and on‐medication (on‐med) status using the Unified Parkinson's disease Rating Scale Part III. The quality of life was assessed using the 39‐item Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire. The sleep, cognition, and emotion were evaluated using a series of nonmotor scales. Levodopa equivalent daily dose (LEDD) and stimulation parameters were recorded at each follow‐up. Results The motor symptoms were improved by 50.9%, 37.7%, 36.7%, and 37.3% in 1, 3, 5, and 8 years, respectively, in the off‐med / stimulation‐on status compared with the baseline. The quality of life improved by 39.7% and 56.1% in 1 and 3 years, respectively, but declined to the preoperative level thereafter. The sleep, cognition, and emotion were mostly unchanged. LEDD reduced from 708.1 ± 172.5 mg to 330 ± 207.8 mg in 8 years. The stimulation parameters, including amplitude, pulse width, and frequency, were 2.77 ± 0.49 V, 71.3 ± 12.8 μs, and 121.5 ± 21 Hz, respectively, in 8 years. Conclusion Long‐term therapeutic efficacy of STN‐DBS could be achieved even with relatively low stimulation intensity and medication dosage for PD patients in southern China. Motor improvement and medication reduction were maintained through the 8‐year follow‐up, but improvement in quality of life lasted for only 3 years. No definite changes was found in nonmotor symptoms after STN‐DBS., Long‐term therapeutic efficacy of STN DBS could be achieved even with relatively low stimulation intensity and medication dosage for PD patients in southern China.

Uridine diphosphate rhamnose(UDP-Rha), a glycoside donor synthesized with the catalysis of rhamnose synthase(RHM), is one of the important elements in the synthesis of rhamnosides. In this study, we cloned a RHM gene from Citrus sinensis(CsRHM) and analyzed its bioinformatic information and functions in vitro. The results showed the gene consisted of an open reading frame of 2 007 bp encoding 668 amino acid residues. The deduced protein had a presumed molecular weight of 75.27 kDa, a theoretical isoelectric point of 6.97, and the characteristic signal sequences(GxxxGxxG/A and YxxxK) of the RHM family. Multiple sequence alignments and the phylogenetic tree demonstrated that CsRHM shared homology with other RHMs. The results of enzymatic reactions in vitro showed that the recombinant protein CsRHM catalyzed the conversion of UDP-Glu to UDP-Rha, with the kinetic parameters V_(max), K_m, K_(cat), and K_(cat)/K_m of 0.373 7 μmol·L~(-1)·min~(-1), 21.29 μmol·L~(-1), 0.24 s~(-1), and 1.13×10~4 s~(-1)·L·mol~(-1), respectively. This study is the first report about CsRHM with validated catalytic function in vitro, which provides a foundation for further research on the biosynthesis of UDP-Rha.

Two pairs of cycloneolignane enantiomers, piperhancins A and B (1 and 2, respectively), along with two enantiomeric pairs of biosynthetic related neolignanes, hancinone C (3) and piperhancin C (4), were isolated from the stems of Piper hancei. Compound 1 is an unprecedented 1',2:1,2'-dicyclo-8,3'-neolignane. Their structures and absolute configurations were elucidated by spectroscopic analyses, X-ray diffraction, and electronic circular dichroism calculations. Among all of the isolates, compounds (+)-1, (-)-1, (+)-2, (-)-2, and (+)-3 could significantly inhibit the production of nitric oxide secreted by lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced neuroinflammation in BV-2 microglial cells, with IC50 values of 1.1-26.3 μM. In addition, compound (-)-1 could decrease the mRNA levels of iNOS, IL-6, and TNF-α induced by LPS in BV-2 microglial cells.

BACKGROUND: Vortex formation time (VFT) had been considered a useful marker for assessing diastolic performance. the VFT assessment of diastolic function using four-dimensional (4D) flow cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) has not been used in repair of tetralogy of Fallot (rTOF) patient. The aims of this study were as follows: (I) establish reference ranges for VFT measurements in healthy children and adolescents using 4D flow CMR imaging; and (II) analyze VFT parameters to assess diastole dysfunction in rTOF patients group. METHODS: We acquired the CMR data was of 62 healthy participants (aged 6–18 years; male: 40, female: 22) and 20 patients with rTOF (aged 10–13 years; male: 15, female: 5) using 4D flow and cine sequence in routine chamber view. The VFT was calculated based on comparison of different algorithms from cine measurements (VFT(volume)) and 4D flow measurements (VFT(blood)). Then, VFT measurements were compared to subject peak filling rate (PFR), age, and cardiac mass using simple linear regression and multiple regression analyses. Data were also categorized according to age for VFT and cardiac functional assessment comparisons between 3 age groups (Group 1: 6–9 years; Group 2: 10–13 years; Group 3: 14–18 years). The correlation of VFT and cardiac function parameters were analyzed in the rTOF group. RESULTS: Normal mean value of VFT(volume) and VFT(blood) were 4.25±0.92 and 3.77±1.11 in healthy children participants. The VFT(volume) was correlated with VFT(blood) (r=0.61, P

Background Most Parkinson's patients suffered from sleep problems. There is increasing evidence that Subthalamic Nucleus Deep Brain Stimulation (STN-DBS) has a positive effect on several sleep parameters, improving overall sleep quality in patients with PD. However, the results are controversial. Methods We performed a retrospective study and meta-analysis to assess the Parkinson's disease sleep scale (PDSS) in Parkinson's patients. Results We reviewed our data of patients who underwent STN-DBS, and then extracted five other trials to perform a meta-analysis. The pooled results showed an advantage on post-operative PDSS in both our medical center and pooled results (MD = 20.41, 95% CI = [13.03, 27.79], I2 = 61%, P Conclusion In the retrospective study and meta-analysis of 6 trials, we found that DBS can significantly increase sleep quality. Furthermore, motor function improved and Parkinsonian medication was significantly decreased postoperatively. The sample size was enough and no further investigations would change the conclusion.

Accurate values of masked detector signal (MDS) is the key to the correction capability of wavefront sensorless (WFSless) model-based adaptive optics (AO) system. However, imaging detectors always carry different kinds of noises in real applications, which make MDS deviate from theoretical results. Calculation errors of MDS suffered from the noise were analyzed through theory and simulation. Additionally, considering the method of threshold is usually used to mitigate the noise, we also discussed the influence of threshold on MDS. Results showed that the simulation is consistent with the theory and there exists an optimal threshold to make the error minimum for different noise. A fitting formula, which can accurately calculate optimal thresholds, was proposed based on the simulated data. Above results can provide a plausible method and theoretical basis to mitigate imaging noise of detectors in real applications.

Azadirachtin, as a botanical insecticide, is a highly oxidized limonoid triterpenoid existing in the seeds of Azadirachta indica. However, due to the low content in the seeds, the production of azadirachtin by seed extraction has low yield. Chemical synthesis of azadirachtin is characterized by complex process and low yield. Synthetic biology provides an alternative for the supply of azadirach-tin. In this study, two oxidosqualene cyclases AiOSC1 and MaOSC1 respectively derived from A. indica and Melia azedarach were identified in yeast. A yeast strain producing tirucalla-7,24-dien-3β-ol was constructed by integration of AiOSC1, Arabidopsis thaliana-derived squalene synthase gene(AtAQS2), and Saccharomyces cerevisiae-derived truncated 3-hydroxy-3-methyl-glutaryl coenzyme A reductase gene(PgtHMGR) into the delta site of yeast. Then, the function of MaCYP71BQ5 was successfully verified in yeast after this gene was introduced into the constructed yeast strain. This study not only laid a foundation for the biosynthesis of tirucalla-7,24-dien-3β-ol, but also provided a chassis cell for the functional identification of cytochrome oxidases(CYP450 s) in azadirachtin biosynthesis pathway.

In this paper, we study the synchronizability of three kinds of dynamical weighted fractal networks (WFNs). These WFNs are weighted Cantor-dust networks, weighted Sierpinski networks and weighted Koch networks. We calculated some features of these WFNs, including average distance ([Formula: see text]), fractal dimension ([Formula: see text]), information dimension ([Formula: see text]), correlation dimension ([Formula: see text]). We analyze two representative types of synchronizable dynamical networks (the type-I and the type-II). There are two indexes ([Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]) that can be used to characterize the synchronizability of the two types of dynamical network. Here, [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] are the minimum nonzero eigenvalue and the maximum eigenvalue of the Laplacian matrix of the network, respectively. We find that the larger scaling factor [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] or [Formula: see text] implies stronger synchronizability for the type-I dynamical WFNs.

Previously, convolutional neural networks mostly used deep semantic feature information obtained from several convolutions for image classification. Such deep semantic features have a larger receptive field, and the features extracted are more effective as the number of convolutions increases, which helps in the classification of targets. However, this method tends to lose the shallow local features, such as the spatial connectivity and correlation of tumor region texture and edge contours in breast histopathology images, which leads to its recognition accuracy not being high enough. To address this problem, we propose a multi-level feature fusion method for breast histopathology image classification. First, we fuse shallow features and deep semantic features by attention mechanism and convolutions. Then, a new weighted cross entropy loss function is used to deal with the misjudgment of false negative and false positive. And finally, the correlation of spatial information is used to correct the misjudgment of some patches. We have conducted experiments on our own datasets and compared with the base network Inception-ResNet-v2, which has a high accuracy. The proposed method achieves an accuracy of 99.0% and an AUC of 99.9%.

Introduction Propofol is a general anesthetic option for deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). However, its effects on STN activity and neuropsychological outcomes are controversial. The optimal propofol anesthesia for asleep DBS is unknown. This study investigated the safety and effectiveness of an optimized propofol anesthesia regimen in asleep DBS. Methods This retrospective study enrolled 68 PD patients undergoing bilateral STN-DBS surgery. All patients received local scalp anesthesia, with (asleep group, n = 35) or without (awake group, n = 33) propofol-remifentanil general anesthesia by target-controlled infusion under electroencephalogram monitoring. The primary outcome was subthalamic neuronal spiking characterization during microelectrode recording. The secondary outcomes were clinical outcomes including motor, cognition, mind, sleep, and quality of life at 6 months. Results Significantly increased delta and theta power were obtained under propofol anesthesia (awake vs. asleep group, mean ± standard deviation; delta: 31.97 ± 9.87 vs. 39.77 ± 10.56, p

To investigate relationship between cold pain of knee joint and subchondral bone marrow edema (BME).From May 2018 to August 2019, 92 patients with knee osteoarthritis (KOA) associated with cold pain of knee were admitted, all patients were underwent MRI examination. The patients were divided into observation group (47 patients with BME) and control group(45 patients without BME). In observation group, there were 6 males and 41 females aged from 36 to 87 years old with an average of (63.2±12.3) years old. In control group, there were 10 males and 35 females, aged from 48 to 84 years old with an average of (62.7±8.3) years old. All patientswere treated with drugs. The degree of joint degeneration was evaluated by Kellgren-Lawrence (K-L) grading. Degree of cold pain of knee was evaluated by knee cold pain score, and degree of BME was evaluated according to WORMS. The correlation between cold pain of knee and K-L grading and BME was analyzed.Score of cold pain in observation group (15.55±7.68) was higher than that of control group (9.42± 5.50), which had significant difference (The cold pain of KOA patients is not related to K-L grading, but corelate with BME grading. The Cold pain of knee was more pronounced in KOA patients with BME, and the severity of BME is often related to degree of cold pain. It seemed to be a tendency:the more serious BME, the heavier coldpain.

Background The application of radiotherapy (RT) in pancreatic cancer remains controversial. Aim The aim of the study was to evaluate the efficacy of radiotherapy (neoadjuvant and adjuvant radiotherapy) for resectable I/II pancreatic cancer. Methods Fourteen thousand nine hundred seventy-seven patients with pancreatic cancer were identified from SEER database from 2004 to 2015. Multivariate analyses were performed to determine factors including RT on overall survival. Overall survival and overall mortality among the different groups were evaluated using the Kaplan-Meier method and Gray’s test. Results Patients were divided into groups according to whether they received radiotherapy or not. The median survival time of all 14,977 patients without RT was 20 months, neoadjuvant RT was 24 months and adjuvant RT was 23 months (p P = 0.0039). Median survival time of 12,888 stage II patients with neoadjuvant RT was 24 months, adjuvant RT 22 months, significantly prolonged than those without radiotherapy (neoadjuvant RT: 24 months vs adjuvant RT: 22 months vs no RT: 17 months, PP = 0.023, 95% CI: 1.051–1.957) was independent risk factors for prognosis of stage I patients, and adjuvant RT (HR = 0.904, P Conclusions The study identified a significant survival advantage for the use of adjuvant RT over surgery alone or neoadjuvant RT in treating stage II pancreatic cancer. RT was not associated with survival benifit in stage I patients.

The genus Thialkalivibrio plays an essential role in the biological desulfurization system. However, to date, the sulfur oxidation pathways of Thialkalivibrio are not clearly understood. Here, we performed transcriptomic analysis on Thialkalivibrio versutus D301 with either thiosulfate or chemical sulfur as the sulfur source to understand it. The results show that T. versutus D301 has a higher growth rate and sulfur oxidation activity when thiosulfate is utilized. The use of chemical sulfur as sulfur source leads to decreased expression of genes involved in carbon metabolism, ribosome synthesis and oxidative phosphorylation in T. versutus D301. Potentially due to the adsorption to sulfur particles, the genes related to flagellum assembly and motivation are significantly induced in T. versutus D301 in the presence of chemical sulfur. In the periplasm, both thiosulfate and polysulfide from the chemical sulfur are oxidized to sulfate via the similar truncated Sox system (SoxAXYZB). Then, part of polysulfide reached to cytoplasm through an unidentified route is oxidized to sulfite by the Dsr-like system. The sulfite in the cytoplasm is further catalyzed to sulfate by SoxB or SoeABC. Overall, the difference in the oxidation rates of D301 can be mainly attributed to the bioavailability of the two sulfur sources, not the sulfur oxidation pathways.

Rationale: Impaired autophagic flux contributes to ischemia/reperfusion (I/R)-induced cardiomyocyte death, but the underlying molecular mechanisms remain largely unexplored. Objective: To determine the role of LAPTM4B (lysosomal-associated transmembrane protein 4B) in the regulation of autophagic flux and myocardial I/R injury. Methods and Results: LAPTM4B was expressed in murine hearts but downregulated in hearts with I/R (30 minutes/2 hours) injury and neonatal rat cardiomyocytes with hypoxia/reoxygenation (6 hours/2 hours) injury. During myocardial reperfusion, LAPTM4B-knockout (LAPTM4B −/− ) mice had a significantly increased infarct size and lactate dehydrogenase release, whereas adenovirus-mediated LAPTM4B-overexpression was cardioprotective. Concomitantly, LAPTM4B −/− mice showed higher accumulation of the autophagy markers LC3-II (microtubule-associated protein 1A/1B-light chain 3), but not P62, in the I/R heart, whereas they did not alter chloroquine-induced further increases of LC3-II and P62 in both sham and I/R hearts. Conversely, LAPTM4B-overexpression had opposite effects. The hypoxia/reoxygenation–reduced viability of neonatal rat cardiomyocytes, ratio of autolysosomes/autophagosomes, and function of lysosomes were further decreased by LAPTM4B-knockdown but reversed by LAPTM4B-overexpression. Moreover, the LAPTM4B-overexpression–mediated benefits were abolished by knockdown of lysosome-associated membrane protein-2 (an autophagosome-lysosome fusion protein) in vivo and by the autophagy inhibitor bafilomycin A1 in vivo. In contrast, rapamycin (Rapa) successfully restored the impaired autophagic flux in LAPTM4B −/− mice and the subsequent myocardial I/R injury. Mechanistically, LAPTM4B regulated the activity of mTORC1 (mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1) via interacting with mTOR through its EC3 (extracelluar) domain. Thus, mTORC1 was overactivated in LAPTM4B −/− mice, leading to the repression of TFEB (transcription factor EB), a master regulator of lysosomal and autophagic genes, during myocardial I/R. The mTORC1 inhibition or TFEB-overexpression rescued the LAPTM4B −/− -induced impairment in autophagic flux and I/R injury, whereas TFEB-knockdown abolished the LAPTM4B-overexpression–mediated recovery of autophagic flux and cardioprotection. Conclusions: The downregulation of LAPTM4B contributes to myocardial I/R–induced impairment of autophagic flux via modulation of the mTORC1/TFEB pathway. Graphic Abstract: A graphic abstract is available for this article.

Two pairs of new sesquineolignan enantiomers (1a/1b and 1c/1d), two pair of new 4′,7-epoxy-8,3′-neolignan enantiomers (2a/2b and 3a/3b), and a pair of new 3′,7-epoxy-8,4′-oxyneolignan enantiomers (4a/4b), along with two pairs of known 4′,7-epoxy-8,3′-neolignan enantiomers (5a/5b and 6a/6b), were obtained from the stems and leaves of Triadica sebifera. The structures of the enantiomers were elucidated by spectroscopic analyses, and their absolute configurations were assigned by the experimental ECD spectra. Among them, compounds 5b, 6a and 6b showed inhibitory activities against NO production in activated microglial BV-2 cells, with IC50 values of 14.3, 23.2 and 33.3 μM, respectively.

As a systemic disease, osteoporosis (OP) results in bone density loss and fracture risk, particularly in the hip and vertebrae. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms of OP development have not been fully illustrated. N6-Methyladenosine (m6A) is the most abundant modification of mRNAs, which is involved in many of pathological processes in aging disease. However, its role and regulatory mechanism in OP remains unknown. Here, we aimed to investigate the roles of m6A and its demethylase FTO in OP development. The results showed that m6A methylated RNA level was up-regulated in the bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) from patients with OP. The level of N6-methyladenosine demethylase FTO was consistently decreased in the BMSCs from patients with OP. Functionally, lentivirus-mediated FTO overexpression in normal BMSCs to compromised osteogenic potential. Mechanism analysis further suggested that FTO overexpression decreased the m6A methylated and total level of runt related transcription factor 2 (Runx2) mRNA, subsequently inhibited osteogenic differentiation. We found that FTO inhibition could effectively improve the bone formation in ovariectomized osteoporotic mice in vivo. Together, these results reveal that RNA N6-methyladenosine demethylase FTO promotes osteoporosis through demethylating runx2 mRNA and inhibiting osteogenic differentiation.

Multifractal analysis (MFA) is a useful tool to systematically describe the spatial heterogeneity of both theoretical and experimental fractal patterns. One of the widely used methods for fractal analysis is box-covering. It is known to be NP-hard. More severely, in comparison with fractal analysis algorithms, MFA algorithms have much higher computational complexity. Among various MFA algorithms for complex networks, the sandbox MFA algorithm behaves with the best computational efficiency. However, the existing sandbox algorithm is still computationally expensive. It becomes challenging to implement the MFA for large-scale networks with tens of millions of nodes. It is also not clear whether or not MFA results can be improved by a largely increased size of a theoretical network. To tackle these challenges, a computationally-efficient sandbox algorithm (CESA) is presented in this paper for MFA of large-scale networks. Our CESA employs the breadth-first search (BFS) technique to directly search the neighbor nodes of each layer of center nodes, and then to retrieve the required information. Our CESA's input is a sparse data structure derived from the compressed sparse row (CSR) format designed for compressed storage of the adjacency matrix of large-scale network. A theoretical analysis reveals that the CESA reduces the time complexity of the existing sandbox algorithm from cubic to quadratic, and also improves the space complexity from quadratic to linear. MFA experiments are performed for typical complex networks to verify our CESA. Finally, our CESA is applied to a few typical real-world networks of large scale., Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures

The effects of various carboxymethyl chitosan (CMCS)-gelatin (GL) based edible coating combinations with calcium chloride (CaCl2) and/or ascorbic acid (AA) on the quality and antioxidant properties of sweet cherry (Prunus avium L. cv. “Red Agate”) were investigated. Sweet cherries were treated with tap water (control), 2 % CaCl2, CMCS-GL, CaCl2 + CMCS-GL, CaCl2-CMCS-GL, or AA-CaCl2-CMCS-GL for 2 min and dried at ambient temperature. All fruit were stored at 0 ± 0.5 °C under Relative Humidity (RH) of 85–90 % for 30 d, and 23 ± 1 °C, RH 40-50 %, for a further 3 d. Weight loss, fruit firmness, soluble solids content (SSC), titratable acidity (TA), SSC/TA, AA, skin color characteristics (L⁎, chroma, and hue angle), total phenolics compounds (TPC), total anthocyanins concentration (TAC), and antioxidant activity (DPPH and ABTS+ radical scavenging capacity) were measured, in addition to fruit decay ratio, pedicel browning incidence, and pedicel moisture content. AA-CaCl2-CMCS-GL treatment decreased fruit decay ratio, weight loss, respiration rate, and pedicel browning incidence; slowed the increase of SSC and SSC/TA; maintained high fruit firmness, pedicel moisture content, TA, AA, TPC, TAC, and antioxidant activity. Fruit coated with AA-CaCl2-CMCS-GL exhibited better skin color with higher L⁎, chroma, and hue angle values throughout the storage period. AA-CaCl2-CMCS-GL treatment is a promising management strategy to control the quality of sweet cherries during postharvest storage.

Background White matter hyperintensities (WMHs) in the cholinergic pathways are associated with cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease (PD). This study aimed to investigate the role of WMHs within the cholinergic pathways in cognitive performance following bilateral subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN DBS) in patients with PD. Methods 38 patients with PD who underwent bilateral STN DBS were assessed using the Cholinergic Pathways Hyperintensities Scale (CHIPS) with magnetic resonance imaging before surgery. Their cognitive statuses were evaluated pre-surgically and 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years post operation. The correlations between the CHIPS score and cognitive performance were analyzed. The differences in cognitive performance before and after the surgery between the high-CHIPS and low-CHIPS groups were also compared. Results The CHIPS score in patients with PD negatively correlated with the general cognition assessed using Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) both at baseline and after DBS. No correlation was found between the CHIPS score and the change of MMSE and MoCA scores after DBS. No significant difference was observed in the change in cognitive performance after the surgery between the high and low-CHIPS groups. Conclusion The severity of cholinergic WMHs was correlated with the cognition in patients with PD both before and after the STN DBS. However, it does not correlate with the cognitive change in patients with PD after bilateral STN-DBS.

Purpose To discuss the value of caudate lobectomy in hilar cholangiocarcinoma (HCCA) treatment. Methods A systematic review was performed in PubMed, MEDLINE database, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library for trials comparing combined caudate lobectomy with controls from January 1, 1990 to December 2, 2020. The outcomes were postoperative radical cure information, survival condition, morbidity, and mortality. Result Ten studies were included. No difference was observed in the morbidity (odd ratio (OR) 0.93, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.65-1.33) and mortality (OR 1.16, 95% CI 0.55-2.42) between the combined caudate lobectomy and control groups. Hepatectomy combined with caudate lobectomy was associated with higher incidence of radical resection (OR 3.88, 95% CI 2.18-6.90) and longer survival (hazard ratio 0.45, 95% CI 0.38-0.55). Conclusion Combining caudate lobectomy can significantly increase the incidence of radical resection of HCCA and the postoperative survival time. The morbidity and mortality were not increased after the operation. Thus, caudate lobectomy should be included when performing partial hepatectomy for HCCA.

Erbium (Er) doped Bi24O31Br10 samples were successfully prepared by using a solvothermal method. The samples were characterized by XRD, XPS, SEM, TEM, BET, DRS, PL and EIS. The photocatalytic activity was evaluated by the degradation of rhodamine B (RhB) and methyl orange (MO) under visible light irradiation. The result shows that Er dopant induces a significant improvement in the photocatalytic activity. 1.0% Er–Bi24O31Br10 sample exhibits the best photocatalytic performance. The enhanced photocatalytic activity is attributed to the effective trapping of photogenerated electron by Er3+ ion and the up-conversion process resulting from Er dopant. In addition, it is found that holes and super-oxide radicals play main role in the photocatalytic degradation of RhB and MO.

Adiabatic compressed air energy storage (A-CAES) is regarded as a promising emission-free technology to facilitate the renewable energy integration, when a large amount of renewable energy is abandoned due to the difficulty of integrating fluctuating renewable energy into electricity grid systems all over the world. However, the temperature of discharged air from low pressure turbine is still high in the conventional A-CAES system and a considerable amount of energy is lost. So a modified A-CAES system is proposed to solve this problem in this paper. The proposed modified A-CAES system can simultaneously provide mechanical energy, heating energy and cooling power. This paper aims to make a comparative research of the two A-CAES systems from the technological point of view. The thermodynamic analyses including energy analysis and exergy analysis are evaluated by using steady-state mathematical models and thermodynamic laws. The results show that total exergy efficiency of the modified A-CAES system can be improved nearly 3% compared to the conventional A-CAES system in spite of lower round trip efficiency. Meanwhile, a parametric analysis is also carried out to evaluate the effects of several key parameters on the system performance of the two A-CAES systems.

In this study, we focus on the fractal property of recurrence networks constructed from the two-dimensional fractional Brownian motion (2D fBm), i.e., the inter-system recurrence network, the joint recurrence network, the cross-joint recurrence network, and the multidimensional recurrence network, which are the variants of classic recurrence networks extended for multiple time series. Generally, the fractal dimension of these recurrence networks can only be estimated numerically. The numerical analysis identifies the existence of fractality in these constructed recurrence networks. Furthermore, it is found that the numerically estimated fractal dimension of these networks can be connected to the theoretical fractal dimension of the 2D fBm graphs, because both fractal dimensions are piecewisely associated with the Hurst exponent H in a highly similar pattern, i.e., a linear decrease (if H varies from 0 to 0.5) followed by an inversely proportional-like decay (if H changes from 0.5 to 1). Although their fractal dimensions are not exactly identical, their difference can actually be deciphered by one single parameter with the value around 1. Therefore, it can be concluded that these recurrence networks constructed from the 2D fBms must inherit some fractal properties of its associated 2D fBms with respect to the fBm graphs.

Immunotherapy with chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cells has proved remarkably effective in recently published clinical trials. In this meta-analysis, we performed a systematic review in terms of the clinical response treated with CAR-T cells in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and lymphomas patients. Thirty-eight published clinical studies including 665 patients were eligible for response rate (RR) evaluation. The overall pooled RR of CD19-CAR-T cells was 72% (95% confidence interval: 62–77%). The various clinical parameters were analyzed. RR was 81% in ALL, 68% in lymphoma and 70% in CLL. RR in patients who received interleukin (IL)-2 was 70%, whereas in those who did not receive IL-2, it was 74%. RR was 75% with lymphodepletion and 56% without lymphodepletion. RR with autologous cells was 76% and 57% with allogeneic cells. In conclusion, this meta-analysis showed a high clinical RR of CD19-CAR-T cell–based immunotherapy in patients with refractory B-cell malignancies.

Highway network not only is an important component of the lifeline systems, but also plays a crucial role in earthquake relief after a disastrous earthquake. Quick and accurate estimation of highway engineering seismic damage can provide scientific basis for earthquake disaster prevention planning. Based on Yi-ping CHEN’s empirical methodology, this paper uses the national standard earthquake damage index. And highway classification, fortification intensity and other parameters are also added to make the model integrated and accurate. Compared with the real seismic damages in Wenchuan earthquake, the results of using original and the improved methodologies show that the improved model is more accurate.

We present a theoretical study of the electric transport properties of graphene-substrate systems. The drift velocity, mobility, and temperature of the electrons are self-consistently determined using the Boltzmann equilibrium equations. It is revealed that the electronic transport exhibits a distinctly nonlinear behavior. A very high mobility is achieved with the increase of the electric fields increase. The electron velocity is not completely saturated with the increase of the electric field. The temperature of the hot electrons depends quasi-linearly on the electric field. In addition, we show that the electron velocity, mobility, and electron temperature are sensitive to the electron density. These findings could be employed for the application of graphene for high-field nano-electronic devices.

Plant germplasm resources with natural resistance against globally important toxigenic Fusarium are inadequate. CWP2, a Fusarium genus-specific antibody, confers durable resistance to different Fusarium pathogens that infect cereals and other crops, producing mycotoxins. However, the nature of the CWP2 target is not known. Thus, investigation of the gene coding for the CWP2 antibody target will likely provide critical insights into the mechanism underlying the resistance mediated by this disease-resistance antibody. Immunoblots and mass spectrometry analysis of two-dimensional electrophoresis gels containing cell wall proteins from Fusarium graminearum (Fg) revealed that a glyoxal oxidase (GLX) is the CWP2 antigen. Cellular localization studies showed that GLX is localized to the plasma membrane. This GLX efficiently catalyzes hydrogen peroxide production; this enzymatic activity was specifically inhibited by the CWP2 antibody. GLX-deletion strains of Fg, F. verticillioides (Fv) and F. oxysporum had significantly reduced virulence on plants. The GLX-deletion Fg and Fv strains had markedly reduced mycotoxin accumulation, and the expression of key genes in mycotoxin metabolism was downregulated. This study reveals a single gene-encoded and highly conserved cellular surface antigen that is specifically recognized by the disease-resistance antibody CWP2 and regulates both virulence and mycotoxin biosynthesis in Fusarium species.

Based on CAES (compressed air energy storage) and PM (pneumatic motor), a novel tri-generation system (heat energy, mechanical energy and cooling power) is proposed in this paper. Both the cheap electricity generated at night and the excess power from undelivered renewable energy due to instability, can be stored as compressed air and hot water by the proposed system. When energy is in great demand, the compressed air stored in this system is released to drive PM to generate mechanical power. The discharged air from PM can be further utilized as valuable cooling power. Compared to conventional CAES systems, the biggest characteristic of the proposed system is that the discharged air usually abandoned is used as cooling power. In order to study the performances of this system, a thermodynamic analysis and an experimental investigation are carried out. The thermodynamic model is validated by the experimental data. Using the validated thermodynamic model, the mechanical energy output, cooling capacity and temperature of discharged air, as well as the efficiency of the system are analyzed. The theoretical analysis indicates that the additional application of discharged air can improve total energy efficiency by 20–30%. Therefore, this system is very worthy of consideration and being popularized.

Experimental measurements and numerical simulations have been performed to investigate the sensitivity of film cooling of laidback fanshape hole to the variations in hole exit configuration and mainstream turbulence intensity. The measurements are conducted on a flat plate model with low-speed, incompressible mainstream. Film cooling performances of two laidback fanshape hole configurations are measured under four blowing ratios using transient liquid crystal measurement technique which can process the nonuniform initial wall temperature. Hole exit corner shape is changed from sharp corner to round corner to simulate the effect of real manufacturing and/or deposition on the exit configuration of ideal laidback fanshape hole. The lateral film coverage as well as the film cooling effectiveness of laidback fanshape hole with round corner exit are reduced due to the smaller lateral expansion caused by round corner shape, especially under low turbulence condition. Large mainstream turbulence intensity can enhance the lateral diffusion of film jets which is beneficial to film cooing of laidback fanshape hole with round corner under larger blowing ratios. For the heat transfer coefficient distributions of the two film hole configurations, variation in film hole exit configuration has very small influence on both the spatial features and the averaged values under the same mainstream turbulence conditions. However, the variation in mainstream turbulence intensity has notable influences on the heat transfer coefficient distributions for both film hole configurations, because the enhancement effect of film jets on heat transfer and the strength of counter-rotating vortex pair are different between high and low mainstream turbulence conditions. The discharge coefficients of laidback fanshape hole configurations are not sensitive to the variations in hole exit configuration and mainstream turbulence intensity under the same blowing ratio.