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Pulsed electric field (PEF) is a new type of physical field processing technology, which has the advantages of short treatment time, low-energy consumption and eco-friendly. In recent years, pulsed electric field (PEF) has shown potential in the application of recycling active substances in agricultural product processing wastes. In this paper, the mechanism and advantages of pulsed electric field enhanced extraction are reviewed. In addition, the application progress of pulsed electric field technology in the recovery of bioactive substances in different types of processing wastes is classified and summarized in detail to provide reference and guidance for the high-value utilization of by-products in the processing of agricultural products.

The scale of white foreign fibers in bobbin yarn is small, resulting in multiple types of data imbalance in the dataset. These imbalances include a severe imbalance of foreign fiber pixels compared to background pixels and an imbalance in the size target scale. Consequently, conventional semantic segmentation networks struggle to segment these fibers effectively. First, in tackling the scarcity of white foreign fiber instances within bobbin yarn samples, this research utilizes original foreign fiber images to train the DCGAN and generate adequate training samples. Secondly, a multiscale residual U-Net is constructed to extract foreign fiber features from different scales. The network is encouraged to learn semantic features at each scale and each layer of the decoding stage. This overcomes the problem of scale imbalance in the foreign fiber dataset and enhances the model's capability to extract weak semantic information from small targets. Thirdly, a weighted binary cross-entropy loss function is integrated into the network's training phase to rectify the class imbalance and refine segmentation performance. This function adjusts the weighting of foreign fiber pixel data, thereby addressing the disproportionate distribution between foreign fibers and background pixels within the dataset. Finally, the proposed method is experimentally validated using a dataset of white foreign fibers. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieves better results in the critical evaluation metrics, as evidenced by the accuracy of 97.52 %, the MIoU of 95.26 %, the DICE coefficient of 81.29 %, and the F1 Score of 84.92 %. These statistics demonstrate the method's efficacy in achieving high-precision segmentation of white foreign fibers.

Abstract Gasdermin D (GSDMD) is emerging as an important player in autoimmune diseases, but its exact role in lupus nephritis (LN) remains controversial. Here, we identified markedly elevated GSDMD in human and mouse LN kidneys, predominantly in CD11b+ myeloid cells. Global or myeloid-conditional deletion of GSDMD was shown to exacerbate systemic autoimmunity and renal injury in lupus mice with both chronic graft-versus-host (cGVH) disease and nephrotoxic serum (NTS) nephritis. Interestingly, RNA sequencing and flow cytometry revealed that myeloid GSDMD deficiency enhanced granulopoiesis at the hematopoietic sites in LN mice, exhibiting remarkable enrichment of neutrophil-related genes, significant increases in total and immature neutrophils as well as granulocyte/macrophage progenitors (GMPs). GSDMD-deficient GMPs and all-trans-retinoic acid (ATRA)-stimulated human promyelocytes NB4 were further demonstrated to possess enhanced clonogenic and differentiation abilities compared with controls. Mechanistically, GSDMD knockdown promoted self-renewal and granulocyte differentiation by restricting calcium influx, contributing to granulopoiesis. Functionally, GSDMD deficiency led to increased pathogenic neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) in lupus peripheral blood and bone marrow-derived neutrophils. Taken together, our data establish that GSDMD deletion accelerates LN development by promoting granulopoiesis in a calcium influx-regulated manner, unraveling its unrecognized critical role in LN pathogenesis.

Increased mutational burden and EBV load have been revealed from normal tissues to Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-associated gastric carcinomas (EBVaGCs). BPLF1, encoded by EBV, is a lytic cycle protein with deubiquitinating activity has been found to participate in disrupting repair of DNA damage. We first confirmed that BPLF1 gene in gastric cancer (GC) significantly increased the DNA double strand breaks (DSBs). Ubiquitination mass spectrometry identified histones as BPLF1 interactors and potential substrates, and co-immunoprecipitation and in vitro experiments verified that BPLF1 regulates H2Bub by targeting Rad6. Over-expressing Rad6 restored H2Bub but partially reduced γ-H2AX, suggesting that other downstream DNA repair processes were affected. mRNA expression of BRCA2 were significantly down-regulated by next-generation sequencing after over-expression of BPLF1, and over-expression of p65 facilitated the repair of DSBs. We demonstrated BPLF1 may lead to the accumulation of DSBs by two pathways, reducing H2B ubiquitination (H2Bub) and blocking homologous recombination which may provide new ideas for the treatment of gastric cancer.

BackgroundLimited data are available regarding the association between serum transferrin saturation (TSAT) levels and heart failure (HF).MethodsWe utilized data from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2017- 2020.03 for analysis. Data on TAST, HF and covariates were extracted and analyzed. Weighted logistic regression and subgroup analysis were used to explore the independent association between TSAT and HF. Furthermore, interaction tests were also carried out to evaluate the strata differences. We subsequently assessed whether there was a non-linear relationship between the 2 using Restricted cubic spline (RCS) and threshold effect models.ResultA total of 282 (3.87%) participants were identified to have HF. Among the total population, participants with HF had significantly lower TSAT levels compared to those without HF (24.63 vs. 27.95, P = 0.001). After fully adjusting for potential confounders, weighted multiple logistic regression models revealed a 2.6% reduced in the risk of HF when each unit of TSAT increased. There was also a negative association between elevated TSAT and developed risk of HF in the quartile groups (Q1 OR:1.00; Q2 OR: 0.924 [95%CI:0.593,1.440]; Q3 OR: 0.515 [95%CI:0.298,0.891]; Q4 OR:0.411 [95%CI:0.201,0.839]). The subgroup analysis results remained consistent across strata, with a strong negative correlation between TSAT and HF. Interaction tests showed no dependence on gender, age, Body Mass Index, race, diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, ratio of family income to poverty and education for this negative association between TSAT and HF (all p for interaction >0.05). The RCS and threshold effect models indicated a linear negative correlation between TSAT and HF, which was more pronounced when TSAT under 40%.ConclusionOverall, these findings suggest a consistent and negative association between TSAT levels and the presence of HF among middle-aged and older adults in the United States.

Background: Diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) is a chronic and challenging condition, addressed through various treatments including photodynamic therapy (PDT) and standard of care (SOC), yet lacking consensus on the optimal approach. This study presents a comprehensive meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials to evaluate the efficacy and safety of PDT versus SOC in managing DFU. Methods: An extensive literature search was conducted across PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane Library databases to identify RCTs that compared the effectiveness of PDT with SOC in treating DFU. The primary metrics evaluated included changes in ulcer area, wound healing indices, and pain levels experienced by the patients. Results: This meta-analysis incorporated data from 6 RCTs, encompassing 458 patients with 467 DFUs. The analysis indicated that while PDT led to a faster reduction in ulcer size compared to SOC, the difference was not statistically significant [mean difference (MD): 2.73cm², 95 % Confidence Interval (CI) -2.98 to 8.44; p > 0.05]. However, a notable improvement was observed in the wound healing rate in the PDT group [MD: 29.26 %, 95 % CI 7.24 to 51.28; p = 0.01]. Based on the Visual Analog Scale (VAS), pain assessment revealed no significant difference between the two treatment groups [MD: 2.35, 95 % CI -2.36 to 7.06; p = 0.33]. Conclusion: The study suggests that PDT might offer an enhanced healing rate for DFUs compared to SOC alone, potentially leading to improved patient outcomes. Importantly, our findings highlight the superiority of photodynamic therapy in accelerating ulcer healing without an associated increase in complications. PROSPERO: 2023 CRD42023493930

Abstract Organ‐on‐a‐chip (OOC) models based on microfluidic technology are increasingly used to obtain mechanistic insight into (patho)physiological processes in humans, and they hold great promise for application in drug development and regenerative medicine. Despite significant progress in OOC development, several limitations of conventional microfluidic devices pose challenges. First, most microfluidic systems have rectangular cross sections and flat walls, and therefore tubular/ curved structures, like blood vessels and nephrons, are not well represented. Second, polymers used as base materials for microfluidic devices are much stiffer than in vivo extracellular matrix (ECM). Finally, in current cell seeding methods, challenges exist regarding precise control over cell seeding location, unreachable spaces due to flow resistances, and restricted dimensions/geometries. To address these limitations, an alternative cell seeding technique and a corresponding workflow is introduced to create circular cross‐sectioned tubular OOC models by pre‐wrapping cells around sacrificial fiber templates. As a proof of concept, a perfusable renal proximal tubule‐on‐a‐chip is demonstrated with a diameter as small as 50 µm, cellular tubular structures with branches and curvature, and a preliminary vascular‐renal tubule interaction model. The cell pre‐wrapping seeding technique promises to enable the construction of diverse physiological/pathological models, providing tubular OOC systems for mechanistic investigations and drug development.

Abstract Background Sedentary behavior has been demonstrated to be a modifiable factor for several chronic diseases, while coffee consumption is believed to be beneficial for health. However, the joint associations of daily sitting time and coffee consumption with mortality remains poorly understood. This study aimed to evaluate the independent and joint associations of daily sitting time and coffee intakes with mortality from all-cause and cardiovascular disease (CVD) among US adults. Methods An analysis of a prospective cohort from the 2007–2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of US adults (n = 10,639). Data on mortality were compiled from interview and physical examination data until December 31, 2019. Daily sitting time was self-reported. Coffee beverages were from the 24-hour diet recall interview. The main outcomes of the study were all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality. The adjusted hazard ratios [HRs] and 95% confidence intervals [CI] were imputed by Cox proportional hazards regression. Results Among 10,639 participants in the study cohort, there were 945 deaths, 284 of whom died of CVD during the follow-up period of up to 13 years. Multivariable models showed that sitting more than 8 h/d was associated with higher risks of all-cause (HR, 1.46; 95% CI, 1.17–1.81) and CVD (HR, 1.79; 95% CI, 1.21–2.66) mortality, compared with those sitting for less than 4 h/d. People with the highest quartile of coffee consumption were observed for the reduced risks of both all-cause (HR, 0.67; 95% CI, 0.54–0.84) and CVD (HR, 0.46; 95% CI, 0.30–0.69) mortality compared with non-coffee consumers. Notably, joint analyses firstly showed that non-coffee drinkers who sat six hours or more per day were 1.58 (95% CI, 1.25–1.99) times more likely to die of all causes than coffee drinkers sitting for less than six hours per day, indicating that the association of sedentary with increased mortality was only observed among adults with no coffee consumption but not among those who had coffee intake. Conclusions This study identified that sedentary behavior for more than 6 h/d accompanied with non-coffee consumption, were strongly associated with the increased risk of mortality from all-cause and CVD.

Due to the high cost of data acquisition in many specific fields, such as intelligent agriculture, the available data is insufficient for the typical deep learning paradigm to show its superior performance. As an important complement to deep learning, few-shot learning focuses on pattern recognition tasks under the constraint of limited data, which can be used to solve practical problems in many application fields with data scarcity. This survey summarizes the research status, main models and representative achievements of few-shot learning from four aspects: model fine-tuning, meta-learning, metric learning and data enhancement, and especially introduces the few-shot learning-driven typical applications in intelligent agriculture. Finally, the current challenges of few-shot learning and its development trends in intelligent agriculture are prospected.

Chickpea protein isolate (CPI) is a promising dietary protein with the advantages of low allergenicity, easy digestion and balanced composition of essential amino acids. However, due to the thick skin of chickpeas, the extraction of CPI is challenging, resulting in lower efficiency of the alkaline extraction-isoelectric precipitation (AE-IEP) method. Therefore, the present study investigated the effect of pulsed electric field combined with ultrasound (PEF-US) treatment on the extraction efficiency of CPI and the functional properties was characterized. Parameter optimization was carried out using response surface methodology (RSM), with the following optimized conditions: pulse duration of 87 s, electric field intensity of 0.9 kV/cm, ultrasonic time of 15 min, and ultrasonic power of 325 W. Under the optimized conditions, the yield of CPI after combined (PEF-US) treatment was 13.52 ± 0.13 %, which was a 47.28 % improvement over the AE-IEP method. This yield was better than that obtained with either individual PEF or US treatment. Additionally, the functional properties (solubility, emulsification, and foaming) of CPI were significantly enhanced compared to AE-IEP. However, the stability of emulsification and foaming did not show significant differences among the four methods. The PEF-US method efficiently extracts CPI with excellent functional properties, enabling the production of proteins as desired functional additives in the food industry.

Objective: Understanding the differences of suprasellar papillary and adamantinomatous craniopharyngiomas (PCPs/ACPs) is pivotal for target therapy, surgical strategy or postoperative management. Here, the clinical features, surgical nuances and postoperative hypothalamic outcomes of PCPs were systematically recapitulated. Methods: 24 PCPs and 52 ACPs underwent initial surgery were retrospectively reviewed. Clinical data, quantified third ventricle (3rd V) occupation and optic chiasm distortion were compared, as well as intra-operative findings, operating notes and prognosis. Moreover, analysis of tumor/3rd V relationship and hypothalamic outcomes were also performed. Results: Tumors were more likely to occupies the 3rd V cavity in PCPs. Chiasm distortion of “compressed forward” was the most common pattern (45.8 %) in PCPs, whereas “stretched forward” pattern accounted the highest (42.5 %) in ACPs. Besides, round-shaped with less calcification, duct-like recess, solid consistency, rare subdiaphragmatic invasion, visible lower stalk and improved postoperative visual outcome were more frequently observed in PCPs. The basal membranes of the tumor epithelium and the reactive gliosis were separated by a layer of collagen fibers in most PCPs, which differs from ACPs in the morphological examination of tumor/3rd V floor interface. In daytime sleepiness and memory difficulty, the PCPs showed significantly better outcomes than the ACPs groups, and PCPs suffered less postoperative weight gain (p < 0.05) than ACPs among adult-onset cases. Conclusion: PCPs are different from ACPs regards the clinical features, operative techniques and outcomes. If necessary, PCPs are suggested more amenable to total removal since its less invasiveness to the 3rd V floor and better hypothalamic outcomes.

As a crucial economic crop, the health status of cotton directly impacts farmers' income and the national economy. Therefore, timely and accurate detection and identification of cotton diseases and pests are of significant importance, aiding in reducing the adverse effects of diseases and pests on cotton yield and quality. The existing research struggles to address the balance between resource consumption and detection accuracy in cotton disease and pest detection. Moreover, diseases and pests often occur beneath the canopy, and the orthorectification of drone imagery may result in insufficient feature information and prolonged processing time, among other issues. To address the aforementioned issues, this article proposes a precise detection method for cotton Verticillium wilt based on unmanned aerial vehicle multiangle remote sensing guided by a satellite time-series monitoring model. Specifically, first, combining Sentinel-1 microwave and Sentinel-2 optical time-series images, we constructed a cotton Verticillium wilt monitoring model based on extreme gradient boosting algorithm to identify areas affected by the disease invasion. Subsequently, after identifying the blocks affected by the disease, we collected multispectral remote sensing data captured from multiple angles by unmanned aerial vehicles and compared different combinations of vegetation indices and bands. Finally, we constructed a precise classification model for cotton Verticillium wilt based on support vector machine radial basis function classification method. The experimental results indicate that the joint microwave and optical time-series monitoring model achieved overall accuracy (OA) of 81.73% and Kappa coefficient of 0.63, meeting the monitoring requirements of the first stage. Based on the SVM with RBF and the optimal band combination, the OA value of the comprehensive image captured at −58° angle reached 96.74%, with Kappa coefficient of 0.93, meeting the requirements of precise classification detection in the second stage.

In this article, a novel deep learning framework, fuzzy EfficientDet, is proposed to address the challenge of accurately detecting larch infested by Coleophora laricella pests in UAV imagery, where the key innovation is the incorporation of the fuzzy spatial attention mechanism (FSAM), which can effectively deal with the problem of model uncertainty due to the complexity of environmental transformations and image features. First, this study designs and implements a global–local squeeze-and-excitation module, which profoundly integrates global and local feature information, realizes the dynamic adaptation of the importance of feature channels in the EfficientNet, and thus improves the overall feature expression efficiency of the network. Second, this study constructed a dense Bi-FPN architecture, which adds a dense connection structure to the original Bi-FPN to enhance the modeling accuracy for small targets and long-range spatial dependencies. Finally, this study develops the FSAM, which can effectively mitigate the unstable performance of the EfficientDet in the face of image feature fluctuations triggered by changes in lighting conditions and seasonal effects. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed fuzzy EfficientDet model shows superior performance compared to the traditional SSD, Faster R-CNN, YOLO V5, and the unimproved EfficientDet target detection method on the Swedish Forest Agency (2021) dataset, with its mAP as high as 94.29%. This result demonstrates that fuzzy EfficientDet provides an efficient and reliable solution when dealing with the task of target detection in UAV images, especially in dealing with environmental uncertainty and complex feature extraction.

Abstract Background Programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) monoclonal antibody, pembrolizumab, is a promising drug for platinum-pretreated, recurrent or metastatic nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC). We aimed to assess the cost-effectiveness of pembrolizumab compared with chemotherapy for Chinese patients in this NPC. Methods The cost-effectiveness of pembrolizumab versus chemotherapy was evaluated using a partitioned survival model with a 5-year boundary. Efficacy and toxicity data were derived from the KEYNOTE-122 trials. Economic indicators including life-years (LYs), quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER), and lifetime cost were used. One-way analysis and probabilistic sensitivity analysis (PSA) were performed to explore the uncertainties. Additionally, various scenario analyses, including different pembrolizumab price calculations and discount rates were performed. Results Pembrolizumab or chemotherapy alone respectively yielded 2.82 QALYs (3.96 LYs) and 2.73 QALYs (3.93 LYs) with an ICER of $422,535 per QALYs ($1,232,547 per LYs). This model was primarily influenced by the price of pembrolizumab. Furthermore, PSA indicated that pembrolizumab had none probability of being cost-effective compared with chemotherapy at a willingness-to- pay (WTP) of $38223. Scenario analyses revealed that irrespective of any potential price reduction or adjustments in the discount rate, no discernible impact on the ultimate outcome was observed. Conclusion Pembrolizumab was less cost-effective for patients with platinum-pretreated, recurrent or metastatic NPC compared with chemotherapy in China.

Bosworth fracture and dislocation is relatively rare, accounting for about 1% of ankle fractures. It is characterized by the proximal fibula fracture embedded in the posterolateral distal tibia. Due to an insufficient understanding of this fracture, it is easy to cause missed diagnosis and misdiagnosis in clinical practice. Due to the insertion of the fracture, it is challenging to perform closed reduction, and improper treatment is easy to cause complications. Surgical treatment is recommended for this type of fracture. In order to improve the understanding of orthopedic surgeons about Bosworth fracture and dislocation, this paper reports the diagnosis and treatment of 2 cases of Bosworth fracture and dislocation, and reviews the literature on Bosworth fracture's mechanism, diagnosis, classification, complications, and treatment options in recent years.

With the rapid growth of the economy, enterprises have encountered a series of problems while pursuing economic benefits, such as food safety and environmental pollution issues, resource shortages and energy consumption issues, which affect the sustainable development of enterprises. Establishing a corporate performance evaluation system from the perspective of social responsibility, based on stakeholder theory and the importance of overall goals reflected in the weight of social responsibility indicators, is a very effective measure to achieve corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals through CSR motivation and stakeholders. The performance evaluation of CSR from the perspective of environmental accounting is a MAGDM. Recently, the CoCoSo technique and cosine similarity measure (CSM) technique was utilized to conduct the MAGDM. The intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFSs) are utilized as a technique for conducting uncertain information during the performance evaluation of CSR from the perspective of environmental accounting. In this study, the intuitionistic fuzzy CoCoSo based on the CSM (IFN-CSM-CoCoSo) technique is built for MAGDM with IFSs. Finally, a numerical example for performance evaluation of CSR from the perspective of environmental accounting is conducted to verify the IFN-CSM-CoCoSo technique.

In order to build a composite application scenario for the synergistic development of clean energy generation and agricultural production, this research designs a solar chimney equipped with a rectangular collection system according to the structural characteristics of agricultural greenhouses. With collector efficiency as the primary objective and theoretical power as the secondary objective, the infusion angle is designed for the connecting section between the collection system and the chimney from the perspective of reducing the local resistance loss, and the transition factor ζ is introduced to define it accurately. Response surface methodology was then used to analyze the effect of the level of key system characteristics on collector efficiency and static pressure, and a regression model was developed to determine the best combination within the target optimization range. Results show that the infusion angle prevents too much solar energy from being lost in the vortex by reducing the local resistance loss, which increases the collector efficiency of the system. And when the transition factor is 0, the divergence angle is 2.86°, and the inlet height is 0.05 m, the collector efficiency and static pressure reach 48.75 % and −6.1 pa, respectively, which are 213 % and 563 % higher than the original model.

Abstract Background Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common type of liver cancer. Recently, developments in radiotherapy technology have led to radiotherapy becoming one of the main therapeutics of HCC. Therefore, a suitable animal model for radiotherapy of the orthotopic HCC mouse model is urgently needed. Methods In the present study, Hepa1‐6 cells were injected into the liver of C57BL/6 mice in situ to mimic the pathological characteristics of the original HCC. Tumor formation was monitored by applying magnetic resonance imaging techniques and verified by H&E histopathological staining, AFP staining, and Ki67 staining. A single dose of 10 Gy X‐ray was applied to simulate clinical radiotherapy plans using image‐guided radiotherapy (IGRT) equipment. The efficiency of radiotherapy was then assessed by examining tumor size and weight one week after radiation. Cleaved‐caspase3 staining and TUNEL were used to assess apoptosis in tumor tissues. Results Intrahepatic tumor development was detected in the liver according using MRI. A high‐density shadow could be seen 10 days after cell injection, which indicated the formation of HCC in vivo. The tumors grew steadily bigger, and underwent precision radiotherapy 20 days after injection. The typical pathological characteristics of HCC, such as large, deeply stained nuclei and irregular cell size, were visible with H&E staining. After radiotherapy, significantly higher expression of the immunohistochemical markers Ki67 and AFP were detected in tumor tissue than in the nearby normal tissue. Compared with the control group, the tumor volume (p = 0.05) and weight (p

Abstract Transformers have been widely used in many computer vision challenges and have shown the capability of producing better results than convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Taking advantage of capturing long-range contextual information and learning more complex relations in the image data, Transformers have been used and applied to histopathological image processing tasks. In this survey, we make an effort to present a thorough analysis of the uses of Transformers in histopathological image analysis, covering several topics, from the newly built Transformer models to unresolved challenges. To be more precise, we first begin by outlining the fundamental principles of the attention mechanism included in Transformer models and other key frameworks. Second, we analyze Transformer-based applications in the histopathological imaging domain and provide a thorough evaluation of more than 100 research publications across different downstream tasks to cover the most recent innovations, including survival analysis and prediction, segmentation, classification, detection, and representation. Within this survey work, we also compare the performance of CNN-based techniques to Transformers based on recently published papers, highlight major challenges, and provide interesting future research directions. Despite the outstanding performance of the Transformer-based architectures in a number of papers reviewed in this survey, we anticipate that further improvements and exploration of Transformers in the histopathological imaging domain are still required in the future. We hope that this survey paper will give readers in this field of study a thorough understanding of Transformer-based techniques in histopathological image analysis, and an up-to-date paper list summary will be provided at https://github.com/S-domain/Survey-Paper .

Abstract Here, we propose a green and sustainable 3D porous aerogel based on citrus peel (CP), chitosan (CS), and bentonite (BT). This aerogel is prepared through a simple sol–gel and freeze-drying process and is designed for efficient capture of Cu(II) ions from water matrices. CCBA-2, with its abundance of active binding sites, exhibits an impressive Cu(II) adsorption yield of 861.58 mg/g. The adsorption isotherm and kinetics follow the Freundlich and pseudo-second-order models, respectively. In the presence of coexisting mixed-metal ions, CCBA-2 demonstrates a significantly higher selectivity coefficient (Kd Cu = 1138.5) for removing Cu(II) ions compared to other toxic metal ions. Furthermore, the adsorption of Cu(II) ions by CCBA-2 is not significantly affected by coexisting cations/anions, ionic strength, organic matter, or different water matrices. Dynamic fixed-bed column experiments show that the adsorption capacity of Cu(II) ions reaches 377.4 mg/g, and the Yoon-Nelson model accurately describes the adsorption process and breakthrough curve. Through experiments, FTIR, and XPS analyses, we propose a reasonable binding mechanism between CCBA-2 and metal cations, involving electrostatic attraction and chemical chelation between Cu(II) and the functional groups of the aerogel. CCBA-2 saturated with Cu(II) ions can be successfully regenerated by elution with 1 M HNO3, with only a slight decrease in adsorption efficiency (5.3%) after 5 adsorption–desorption cycles. Therefore, CCBA-2 offers a cost-effective and environmentally friendly material that can be considered as a viable alternative for the green and efficient removal of toxic Cu(II) ions from wastewater.

Background: Persistent hyperuricemia can lead to the generation and deposition of monosodium urate (MSU) crystals. This can trigger gouty arthritis (GA), which in turn induces inflammation. Activation of the Nod-like receptor pyrin domain containing 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome plays a critical role in the onset and progression of GA. Autophagy may have a dual effect on GA with regard to the NLRP3 inflammasome. Therefore, the present study aimed to gain a deeper comprehension of the interaction between autophagy and NLRP3 inflammasome activation is imperative for developing more efficacious treatments for GA. Methods: Peripheral blood monocytes (PBMCs) were first isolated from GA patients and healthy controls and underwent bulk RNA sequencing analysis. Overexpression and knockdown of dual specificity phosphatase 1 (DUSP1) was performed in THP-1 monocytes to investigate its role in the immune response and mitochondrial damage. The luciferase assay and Western blot analysis were used to study the interaction between autophagy and NLRP3 inflammasome activation. Results: Bulk RNA sequencing analysis showed significant upregulation of DUSP1 expression in PBMCs from GA patients compared to healthy controls. This result was subsequently verified by reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). DUSP1 expression in human THP-1 monocytes was also shown to increase after MSU treatment. Downregulation of DUSP1 expression increased the secretion of inflammatory cytokines after MSU treatment, whereas the overexpression of DUSP1 decreased the secretion levels. Lipopolysaccharides (LPS) combined with adenosine-triphosphate (ATP) led to mitochondrial damage, which was rescued by overexpressing DUSP1. DUSP1 overexpression further increased the level of autophagy following MSU treatment, whereas downregulation of DUSP1 decreased autophagy. Treatment with the autophagy inhibitor 3-Methyladenine (3-MA) restored inflammatory cytokine secretion levels in the DUSP1 overexpression group. MSU caused pronounced pathological ankle swelling in vivo. However, DUSP1 overexpression significantly mitigated this phenotype, accompanied by significant downregulation of inflammatory cytokine secretion levels in the joint tissues. Conclusions: This study revealed a novel function and mechanism for DUSP1 in promoting autophagy to mitigate the MSU-induced immune response in GA. This finding suggests potential diagnostic biomarkers and anti-inflammatory targets for more effective GA therapy.

Abstract Hyperhomocysteinemia (HHcy) is closely associated with thrombotic diseases such as myocardial infarction and stroke. Enhanced platelet activation was observed in animals and humans with HHcy. However, the influence of HHcy on thrombopoiesis remains largely unknown. Here, we reported increased platelet count (PLT) in mice and zebrafish with HHcy. In hypertensive patients (n = 11,189), higher serum level of total Hcy was observed in participants with PLT ≥ 291 × 109/L (full adjusted β, 0.59; 95% CI 0.14, 1.04). We used single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to characterize the impact of Hcy on transcriptome, cellular heterogeneity, and developmental trajectories of megakaryopoiesis from human umbilical cord blood (hUCB) CD34+ cells. Together with in vitro and in vivo analysis, we demonstrated that Hcy promoted megakaryocytes (MKs) differentiation via growth hormone (GH)-PI3K-Akt axis. Moreover, the effect of Hcy on thrombopoiesis is independent of thrombopoietin (TPO) because administration of Hcy also led to a significant increase of PLT in homozygous TPO receptor (Mpl) mutant mice and zebrafish. Administration of melatonin effectively reversed Hcy-induced thrombopoiesis in mice. ScRNA-seq showed that melatonin abolished Hcy-facilitated MK differentiation and maturation, inhibited the activation of GH-PI3K-Akt signaling. Our work reveals a previously unrecognized role of HHcy in thrombopoiesis and provides new insight into the mechanisms by which HHcy confers an increased thrombotic risk. Trial Registration clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00794885.

Background: The formation of biomolecular condensates via phase separation has emerged as a fundamental principle underlying the spatiotemporal coordination of biological activities in cells. Aberrant biomolecular condensates often directly regulate key cellular process involved in the pathogenesis of human diseases, including kidney diseases. Summary: In this review, we summarize the physiological roles of phase separation and methodologies for phase separation studies. Taking autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease as an example, we discuss recent advances toward elucidating the multiple mechanisms involved in kidney pathology arising from aberrant phase separation. We suggest that dysregulation of phase separation contributes to the pathogenesis of other important kidney diseases, including kidney injury and fibrosis. Key Messages: Phase separation provides a useful new concept to understand the mechanisms underlying kidney disease development. Targeting aberrant phase-separated condensates offers new therapeutic avenues for combating kidney diseases.

Background: Rezvilutamide, a novel androgen-receptor inhibitor with limited blood-brain barrier penetration, exhibits significant antitumour activity against highvolume, metastatic, hormone-sensitive prostate cancer (mHSPC). In this study, we aimed to compare the cost-effectiveness of rezvilutamide and bicalutamide as first-line treatments for untreated prostate cancer among Chinese patients, in order to evaluate the efficacy of rezvilutamide.Methods: In this study, we utilized partition survival model to assess the cost-effectiveness of rezvilutamide and bicalutamide treatments for highvolume mHSPC. The model was developed using TreeAge Pro 2022 software and relied on clinical data obtained from the CHART trial. Transition probabilities were estimated from the reported survival probabilities in trials using parametric survival modeling. From the perspective of the Chinese healthcare system, we calculated quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER), and lifetime cost. A lifetime horizon and an annual discount rate of 5% were employed. To address modeling uncertainties, we conducted one-way sensitivity analysis and probabilistic sensitivity analysis.Results: The cost of rezvilutamide versus bicalutamide were $62700 and $13200. Rezvilutamide had an ICER of $41900 per additional QALYs gained compared with bicalutamide. Research indicated that rezvilutamide achieved at least an 28.20% probability of cost-effectiveness at the threshold of $38223.34/QALY. One-way sensitivity analysis revealed that the results were sensitive to utility of PD. Scenario analysis showed that rezvilutamide was cost-effectiveness if its price was reduced by more than 10%.Conclusion: Based on the analysis at the current price, rezvilutamide was found to be less cost-effective for patients with highvolume mHSPC compared to bicalutamide in China.

Acoustic waves offer a non-destructive, safe, and cost-effective means of monitoring the environment, with a potential application in soil water content monitoring. However, extracting soil water information from acoustic signals is still challenging. To tackle this issue, we have developed a low-frequency swept acoustic signal detection device and system. We conducted soil penetration testing using low-frequency swept acoustic signals. The swept-frequency acoustic signals passing through the soil were transformed into time–frequency spectrogram. Using the Swin-Transformer model, we established a regression model between the time–frequency spectrogram of the swept frequencies and the soil water content. Predictions were made both on a laboratory test dataset and through field trials using the calibrated model. The results indicate that the RMSE, MAE, and R2 values between the observed and the model's outputs of water content (%) for the test laboratory dataset are 0.191, 0.081, and 0.999, respectively, using the Swin-Transformer model. In the case of the field trials, the RMSE, MAE, and R2 values between the predicted and observed values are 6.715 %, 1.829 %, and 0.711, respectively. These studies demonstrate that this method is highly effective in predicting soil water content, with the best results achieved at a resolution of 20 PPI (Pixels Per Inch) and within the frequency range of 260–360 Hz. It provides an efficient approach for acoustic soil water content detection, effectively resolves the difficulty in building models caused by the single-parameter limitation in traditional acoustic model.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as the ACA, was legislation passed in the United States in 2010 to expand access to health insurance coverage for millions of Americans with a key emphasis on preventive care. Nutrition plays a critical role in overall wellness, disease prevention and resilience to chronic illness but prior to the ACA many Americans did not have adequate health insurance coverage to ensure proper nutrition. With passage of the ACA, more individuals received access to nutritional counseling through their primary care physicians as well as prescription vitamins and supplements free of charge. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of a national health insurance reform on nutrient intake among general population, including more vulnerable low-income individuals and patients with chronic conditions. Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), we identified 8,443 adults aged 21 years and older who participated in the survey before (2011–2012) and after the ACA (2015–2016) implementation and conducted a subgroup analysis of 952 respondents who identified as Medicaid beneficiaries and 719 patients with a history of cancer. Using pre-post study design and bivariate and multivariable logistic analyses, we compared nutrient intake from food and supplementation before and after the ACA and identified risk factors for inadequate intake. Our results suggest that intake of micronutrients found in nutrient-dense foods, mainly fruit and vegetables, has not changed significantly after the ACA. However, overall use of nutritional supplements increased after the ACA (p = 0.05), particularly magnesium (OR = 1.02), potassium (OR = 0.76), vitamin D (both D2, and D3, OR = 1.34), vitamin K (OR = 1.15) and zinc (OR = 0.83), for the general population as well as those in our subgroup analysis Cancer Survivors and Medicaid Recipients. Given the association of increased use of nutritional supplements and expansion of insurance access, particularly in our subgroup analysis, more research is necessary to understand the effect of increasing access to nutritional supplements on the overall intake of micro- and macronutrients to meet daily nutritional recommended allowances.

Abstract Patients with relapsed/refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) achieve complete response (CR) after decitabine‐plus‐camrelizumab therapy, while long‐term outcome especially after treatment discontinuation remains unclear. We present a retrospective analysis of 87 relapsed/refractory cHL patients who acquired CR after decitabine‐plus‐camrelizumab. Patients were divided into two groups and received consolidation treatment every 3–4 or 6–12 weeks, and 1‐year of continuous CR was guaranteed for treatment cessation. At a median follow‐up of 5.3 years, the median relapse‐free survival (RFS) after achieving CR with decitabine‐plus‐camrelizumab therapy was 4.5 years, and patients underwent consolidation per 3–4 weeks might have longer RFS. The baseline percentage of peripheral central memory T cells was not associated with RFS, while patients with higher pretreatment serum levels of interleukin‐6 (IL‐6) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) had significantly shorter RFS and increased risk for disease recurrence. Fifty‐seven patients completed and discontinued decitabine‐plus‐camrelizumab, and their median RFS had not been reached. The 2‐year RFS rate after treatment cessation was 78% (95% CI, 67–90%). Patients in the high‐risk subgroup with higher pretreatment IL‐6 and LDH levels showed poor treatment‐free remission. Moreover, decitabine‐plus‐camrelizumab therapy was safe and cost‐effective. In conclusion, patients who obtained CR with decitabine‐plus‐camrelizumab and received consolidation per 3–4 weeks can achieve long‐term remission after treatment discontinuation.

LYB001 is an innovative recombinant SARS-CoV-2 vaccine that displays a repetitive array of the spike glycoprotein’s receptor-binding domain (RBD) on a virus-like particle (VLP) vector to boost the immune system, produced using Covalink plug-and-display protein binding technology. LYB001’s safety and immunogenicity were assessed in 119 participants receiving a booster with (1) 30 μg LYB001 (I-I-30 L) or CoronaVac (I-I-C), (2) 60 μg LYB001 (I-I-60 L) or CoronaVac in a ratio of 2:1 after two-dose primary series of inactivated COVID-19 vaccine, and (3) 30 μg LYB001 (I-I-I-30 L) after three-dose inactivated COVID-19 vaccine. A well-tolerated reactogenicity profile was observed for LYB001 as a heterologous booster, with adverse reactions being predominantly mild in severity and transient. LYB001 elicited a substantial increase in terms of the neutralizing antibody response against prototype SARS-CoV-2 28 days after booster, with GMT (95%CI) of 1237.8 (747.2, 2050.6), 554.3 (374.6, 820.2), 181.9 (107.6, 307.6), and 1200.2 (831.5, 1732.3) in the I-I-30 L, I-I-60 L, I-I-C, and I-I-I-30 L groups, respectively. LYB001 also elicited a cross-neutralizing antibody response against the BA.4/5 strain, dominant during the study period, with GMT of 201.1 (102.7, 393.7), 63.0 (35.1, 113.1), 29.2 (16.9, 50.3), and 115.3 (63.9, 208.1) in the I-I-30 L, I-I-60 L, I-I-C, and I-I-I-30 L groups, respectively, at 28 days after booster. Additionally, RBD-specific IFN-γ, IL-2, IL-4 secreting T cells dramatically increased at 14 days after a single LYB001 booster. Our data confirmed the favorable safety and immunogenicity profile of LYB001 and supported the continued clinical development of this promising candidate that utilizes the VLP platform to provide protection against COVID-19.

Abstract Objective Unilateral posterior scissors-bite (uPSB) malocclusion is common clinically. This study aimed to investigate the condylar morphological alterations and condyle-fossa relationship in patients with uPSB, through cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) and three-dimensional reconstructive imaging technique. Methods A retrospective study was designed to comparatively analyze 95 patients with uPSB between July 2016 and December 2021. They were divided into three subgroups: 12 to 20, 21 to 30, and ≥ 31 years, according the age distribution. The morphological parameters regarding condyle, fossa, and joint space after three-dimensional reconstruction were measured and analyzed by a series of digital software. SPSS 26.0 software package was performed for statistical analysis on data sets, using paired t–test, one–way analysis of variance, Wilcoxon signed–rank sun test, Kruskal–Wallis H test, and Bonferroni correction. Results The condylar volume (CV) of scissors-bite side was greater than that of the non-scissors-bite side (CV A = 1740.68 ± 559.80 mm3 > CV N = 1662.25 ± 524.88 mm3, P = 0.027). So was the condylar superficial area (CSA) (CSA A = 818.71 ± 186.82 mm2 > CSA N = 792.63 ± 173.44 mm2, P = 0.030), and the superior joint space (SJS) [SJS A = 2.46 (1.61, 3.68) mm) > SJS N = 2.01 (1.55, 2.87) mm), P = 0.018], and the anterior joint space (AJS) (AJS A = 3.94 ± 1.46 mm > AJS N = 3.57 ± 1.30 mm, P = 0.017). The constituent ratios of the different parts of the bilateral condyles were 23% on the posterior slope, 21% on the top, 20% on the anterior slope, 19% on the lateral slope and 17% on the medial slope, respectively. Conclusion Due to long-term abnormal occlusion of uPSB, the pathological bite force in temporomandibular joint would cause changes in the shape of the condyle. Among them, CV, CSA, SJS and AJS had significant changes in the scissors-bite status, which has the greatest damage to the posterior slope of the condyloid process.

Background: The association between changes in estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) over time and the risk of stroke remains inconclusive. We aimed to evaluate the relation of eGFR change during the China Stroke Primary Prevention Trial (CSPPT) with the risk of first stroke during the subsequent post-trial follow-up. Methods: A total of 11,742 hypertensive participants with two eGFR measurements (median measure interval, 4.4; interquartile range, 4.2–4.6 years) and without a history of stroke from the CSPPT were included in this analysis. Results: Over a median post-trial follow-up of 4.4 years, 729 first strokes were identified, of which 635 were ischemic, 88 were hemorrhagic, and 6 were uncertain types of strokes. Compared with those with 1 to

Abstract Background The relations of the variety and quantity of different sources of dietary insoluble fibers and hypertension remain uncertain. We aimed to investigate the associations between the variety and quantity of insoluble fibers intake from six major food sources and new-onset hypertension, using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). Methods Twelve thousand one hundred thirty-one participants without hypertension at baseline from CHNS were included. Dietary intake was measured by three consecutive 24-h dietary recalls combined with a household food inventory. The variety score of insoluble fiber sources was defined as the number of insoluble fiber sources consumed at the appropriate level, accounting for both types and quantities of insoluble fibers. The study outcome was new-onset hypertension, defined as blood pressure ≥ 140/90 mmHg, or physician-diagnosed hypertension or receiving antihypertensive treatments during the follow-up. Results During a median follow-up of 6.1 years, 4252 participants developed hypertension. There were L-shaped associations of dietary insoluble fibers derived from vegetables, beans, tubers, and fruits with new-onset hypertension; a reversed J-shaped association of whole grain-derived insoluble fiber with new-onset hypertension; and no obvious association of refined grain-derived insoluble fiber with new-onset hypertension. Therefore, refined grain was not included in the insoluble fiber variety score calculation. More importantly, a higher insoluble fiber variety score was significantly associated with lower risks of new-onset hypertension (per score increment, hazard ratio, 0.50; 95% CI, 0.45–0.55). Conclusions There was an inverse association between the variety of insoluble fibers with appropriate quantity from different food sources and new-onset hypertension.

Remote sensing image dehazing is a well-known remote sensing image processing task focused on restoring clean images from hazy images. The Transformer network, based on the self-attention mechanism, has demonstrated remarkable advantages in various image restoration tasks, due to its capacity to capture long-range dependencies within images. However, it is weak at modeling local context. Conversely, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are adept at capturing local contextual information. Local contextual information could provide more details, while long-range dependencies capture global structure information. The combination of long-range dependencies and local context modeling is beneficial for remote sensing image dehazing. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a CNN-based adaptive local context enrichment module (ALCEM) to extract contextual information within local regions. Subsequently, we integrate our proposed ALCEM into the multi-head self-attention and feed-forward network of the Transformer, constructing a novel locally enhanced attention (LEA) and a local continuous-enhancement feed-forward network (LCFN). The LEA utilizes the ALCEM to inject local context information that is complementary to the long-range relationship modeled by multi-head self-attention, which is beneficial to removing haze and restoring details. The LCFN extracts multi-scale spatial information and selectively fuses them by the the ALCEM, which supplements more informative information compared with existing regular feed-forward networks with only position-specific information flow. Powered by the LEA and LCFN, a novel Transformer-based dehazing network termed LCEFormer is proposed to restore clear images from hazy remote sensing images, which combines the advantages of CNN and Transformer. Experiments conducted on three distinct datasets, namely DHID, ERICE, and RSID, demonstrate that our proposed LCEFormer achieves the state-of-the-art performance in hazy scenes. Specifically, our LCEFormer outperforms DCIL by 0.78 dB and 0.018 for PSNR and SSIM on the DHID dataset.

RGB–infrared object detection in remote-sensing images is crucial for achieving around-clock surveillance of unmanned aerial vehicles. RGB–infrared remote-sensing object detection methods based on deep learning usually mine the complementary information from RGB and infrared modalities by utilizing feature aggregation to achieve robust object detection for around-the-clock applications. Most of the existing methods aggregate features from RGB and infrared images by utilizing elementwise operations (e.g., elementwise addition or concatenation). The detection accuracy of these methods is limited. The main reasons can be concluded as follows: local location misalignment across modalities and insufficient nonlocal contextual information extraction. To address the above issues, we propose a cross-modal local calibration and global context modeling network (CLGNet), consisting of two novel modules: a cross-modal local calibration (CLC) module and a cross-modal global context (CGC) modeling module. The CLC module first aligns features from different modalities and then aggregates them selectively. The CGC module is embedded into the backbone network to capture cross-modal nonlocal long-range dependencies. The experimental results on popular RGB–infrared remote-sensing object detection datasets, namely DRoneVehicle and VEDAI, demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our CLGNet.

Renal tubular epithelial cells (TECs) can initiate an adaptive or maladaptive response after injuries of different severity. Here, the authors elucidate a chromatin-mediated mechanism underlying the responses of TECs to varying kidney injuries.

Mutations in the chromatin remodeler CHD7 cause CHARGE syndrome, affecting development of several organs including the inner ear. Here, the authors recapitulated pathogenesis of this disease with human inner ear organoids and found that CHD7 is indispensable for proper otic lineage specification and hair cell differentiation.

Driven by edge computing, how to efficiently deploy the meta-learner LSTM in the resource constrained FPGA terminal equipment has become a big problem. This paper proposes a compression strategy based on LSTM meta-learning model, which combined the structured pruning of the weight matrix and the mixed precision quantization. The weight matrix was pruned into a sparse matrix, then the weight was quantified to reduce resource consumption. Finally, a LSTM meta-learning accelerator was designed based on the idea of hardware–software cooperation. Experiments show that compared with mainstream hardware platforms, the proposed accelerator achieves at least 50.14 times increase in energy efficiency.

BackgroundOlder adults, particularly those with dementia, are at the greatest risk for being affected by SARS-CoV-2. Despite the Chinese government’s efforts to encourage older adults to receive SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, the vaccination rate, especially among older adults with dementia, remains low.ObjectiveThis study aimed to examine the willingness and attitudes towards vaccination among guardians of older adults with dementia and to uncover the factors that may have influenced attitudes towards vaccination during the 2022 Omicron Variant of SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Shanghai, China.MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional study using self-administered anonymous questionnaires to guardians of dementia patients in three settings: psychogeriatric inpatient wards, long-term care facilities, and home settings from April to May 2022. The primary outcome was participants’ willingness to allow dementia patients to receive SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. Logistic regression analyses were used to identify factors associated with vaccination willingness.ResultsA total of 327 valid questionnaires were collected. The vaccination rate among participants from long-term care facilities (12.9%) was lower than those in the psychiatric ward (19.3%) or community-dwelling settings (27.1%) (p

Tobacco is a widely cultivated cash crop, but it is often smuggled and sold illegally. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to verify the origin of tobacco in China. In an effort to address this issue, we conducted a study using stable isotopes and elements from 176 tobacco samples at both provincial and municipal scales. Our findings revealed significant differences in δ13C, K, Cs, and 208/206Pb at the provincial-level, and Sr, Se, and Pb at the municipal level. We created a heat map at the municipal level, which showed a similar cluster classification to geographic grouping and provided an initial assessment of tobacco origins. Using OPLS-DA modeling, we achieved a 98.3% accuracy rate for the provincial scale and 97.6% for the municipal scale. It is worth noting that the importance of rankings of variables varied depending on the spatial scale of the evaluation. This study offers the first traceability fingerprint dataset of tobacco and has the potential to combat mislabeling and fraudulent conduct by identifying the geographical origin of tobacco.

Abstract Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in eukaryotic transcripts have long been believed to regulate various aspects of cellular processes, including carcinogenesis. Herein, it is found that lncRNA AFAP1‐AS1 encodes a conserved 90‐amino acid peptide located on mitochondria, named lncRNA AFAP1‐AS1 translated mitochondrial‐localized peptide (ATMLP), and it is not the lncRNA but the peptide that promotes the malignancy of nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC). As the tumor progresses, the serum level of ATMLP increases. NSCLC patients with high levels of ATMLP display poorer prognosis. Translation of ATMLP is controlled by m6A methylation at the 1313 adenine locus of AFAP1‐AS1. Mechanistically, ATMLP binds to the 4‐nitrophenylphosphatase domain and non‐neuronal SNAP25‐like protein homolog 1 (NIPSNAP1) and inhibits its transport from the inner to the outer mitochondrial membrane, which antagonizes the NIPSNAP1‐mediated regulation of cell autolysosome formation. The findings uncover a complex regulatory mechanism of NSCLC malignancy orchestrated by a peptide encoded by a lncRNA. A comprehensive judgment of the application prospects of ATMLP as an early diagnostic biomarker for NSCLC is also made.

In the past, due to improper sludge treatment technology and the absence of treatment standards, some municipal sludge was simply dewatered and then sent to landfills, occupying a significant amount of land and posing a serious threat of secondary pollution. To free up land in the landfill area for the expansion of a large-scale wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in Shanghai, in this study, we conducted comprehensive pilot research on the entire chain of landfill sludge reprocessing and resource utilization. Both the combination of polyferric silicate sulfate (PFSS) and polyetheramine (PEA) and the combination of polyaluminum silicate (PAS) and polyetheramine (PEA) were used for sludge conditioning before dewatering, resulting in dewatered sludge with approximately 60% moisture content. The combined process involved coagulation and sedimentation, flocculation, and oxidation to treat the leachate generated during dewatering. The treatment process successfully met the specified water pollutant discharge concentration limits for the leachate, with the concentration of ammonia nitrogen in the effluent as low as 15.6 mg/L. Co-incineration in a power plant and modification were applied to stabilize and harmlessly dispose of the dewatered sludge. The coal-generating system ran stably, and no obvious problems were observed in the blending process. In the modification experiment, adding 5% to 7% of the solidifying agent increased the sludge bearing ratio by 53% and 57%, respectively. This process effectively reduced levels of fecal coliforms and heavy metals in the sludge but had a less noticeable effect on organic matter content. The modified sludge proved suitable for use as backfill material in construction areas without requirements for organic matter. The results of this study provide valuable insights for a completed full-scale landfill sludge reclamation and land resource release project.

Sheep aggression detection is crucial for maintaining the welfare of a large-scale sheep breeding environment. Currently, animal aggression is predominantly detected using image and video detection methods. However, there is a lack of lightweight network models available for detecting aggressive behavior among groups of sheep. Therefore, this paper proposes a model for image detection of aggression behavior in group sheep. The proposed model utilizes the GhostNet network as its feature extraction network, incorporating the PWConv and Channel Shuffle operations into the GhostConv module. These additional modules improve the exchange of information between different feature maps. An ablation experiment was conducted to compare the detection effectiveness of the two modules in different positions. For increasing the amount of information in feature maps of the GhostBottleneck module, we applied the Inverted-GhostBottleneck module, which introduces inverted residual structure based on GhostBottleneck. The improved GhostNet lightweight feature extraction network achieves 94.7% Precision and 90.7% Recall, and its model size is only 62.7% of YOLOv5. Our improved model surpasses the original model in performance. Furthermore, it addresses the limitation of the video detection model, which was unable to accurately locate aggressive sheep. In real-time, our improved model successfully detects aggressive behavior among group sheep.

CD8+ exhausted T cells (Tex) are heterogeneous. PD-1 inhibitors reinvigorate progenitor Tex, which subsequently differentiate into irresponsive terminal Tex. The ability to maintain a capacity for durable proliferation of progenitor Tex is important, but the mechanism remains unclear. Here, we showed CD8+ progenitor Tex pretreated with decitabine, a low-dose DNA demethylating agent, had enhanced proliferation and effector function against tumors after anti–PD-1 treatment in vitro. Treatment with decitabine plus anti–PD-1 promoted the activation and expansion of tumor-infiltrated CD8+ progenitor Tex and efficiently suppressed tumor growth in multiple tumor models. Transcriptional and epigenetic profiling of tumor-infiltrated T cells demonstrated that the combination of decitabine plus anti–PD-1 markedly elevated the clonal expansion and cytolytic activity of progenitor Tex compared with anti–PD-1 monotherapy and restrained CD8+ T cell terminal differentiation. Strikingly, decitabine plus anti–PD-1 sustained the expression and activity of the AP-1 transcription factor JunD, which was reduced following PD-1 blockade therapy. Downregulation of JunD repressed T cell proliferation, and activation of JNK/AP-1 signaling in CD8+ T cells enhanced the antitumor capacity of PD-1 inhibitors. Together, epigenetic agents remodel CD8+ progenitor Tex populations and improve responsiveness to anti–PD-1 therapy.

Background Early screening of cognitive function is critical to dementia treatment and care. However, traditional tests require face-to-face administration and are often limited by implementation costs and biases.Aims This study aimed to assess whether the Thoven Cognitive Self-Assessment (TCSA), a novel, innovative two-step touchscreen-based cognition assessment tool, could identify early cognitive impairment due to dementia in older adults.Methods The TCSA was administered to 61 healthy controls (HCs), 46 participants with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and 44 participants diagnosed with dementia recruited from Shanghai. Two outcome measures were generated from the TCSA test: the TCSAprimary task score and the TCSAsecondary task score.Results The total average scores in the control group for the TCSAprimary task and TCSAsecondary task were significantly higher than those in the MCI and dementia groups (TCSAprimary task: HCs vs MCI group vs dementia group, 8.58±1.76 vs 5.40±2.67 vs 2.74±2.11, F=75.40, p

Abstract Background A diagnosis of chronic kidney disease has been strongly associated with cardiovascular disease and mortality in a number of studies, but the association with specific causes of death has not been assessed in detail. We analysed the association between chronic kidney disease and all-cause mortality and 54 causes of death in the National Health Interview Survey, a prospective study of 210,748 US adults. Methods We used multivariable Cox regression models to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for all-cause and cause-specific mortality associated with self-reported chronic kidney disease. Men and women aged 18–84 years were recruited between 1997 and 2004 and followed up for mortality through December 31, 2006. Results During an average of 6 years follow-up, 9564 deaths occurred. A history of chronic kidney disease vs. no chronic kidney disease was associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality (HR = 2.69, 95% CI: 2.38–3.04), and mortality from septicemia (5.65, 2.84–11.25), viral hepatitis (10.67, 2.43–46.95), other infectious parasitic diseases (10.58, 3.59–31.21), total cancer (1.48, 1.05–2.09), lung cancer (1.94, 1.10–3.44), kidney cancer (4.74, 1.81–12.41), diabetes mellitus (8.57, 5.60–13.11), circulatory disease overall (3.36, 2.70–4.18) and 11 specific circulatory diseases with the strongest associations observed for primary hypertension/renal disease (13.60, 6.42–28.84), hypertensive heart/renal disease (10.72, 2.47–46.49), and other diseases of circulatory system (7.36, 3.22–16.81). Elevated risk was also observed for alcoholic liver disease (5.63, 1.90–16.66), other chronic liver disease (4.41, 1.74–11.17), kidney failure (13.07, 8.23–20.77), and five other causes of death. Conclusions A history of chronic kidney disease was associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality and 27 out of 54 causes of death. Further studies are needed to clarify associations with less common causes of death.

In order to solve the problems of low efficiency and subjectivity of manual observation in the process of group-sheep-aggression detection, we propose a video streaming-based model for detecting aggressive behavior in group sheep. In the experiment, we collected videos of the sheep’s daily routine and videos of the aggressive behavior of sheep in the sheep pen. Using the open-source software LabelImg, we labeled the data with bounding boxes. Firstly, the YOLOv5 detects all sheep in each frame of the video and outputs the coordinates information. Secondly, we sort the sheep’s coordinates using a sheep tracking heuristic proposed in this paper. Finally, the sorted data are fed into an LSTM framework to predict the occurrence of aggression. To optimize the model’s parameters, we analyze the confidence, batch size and skipping frame. The best-performing model from our experiments has 93.38% Precision and 91.86% Recall. Additionally, we compare our video streaming-based model with image-based models for detecting aggression in group sheep. In sheep aggression, the video stream detection model can solve the false detection phenomenon caused by head impact feature occlusion of aggressive sheep in the image detection model.

Background: Maintenance therapy with the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitors (PARPis) for platinum-sensitive recurrent ovarian carcinoma (OC) have proven to be effective compared with placebo. We aimed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness (CE) of maintenance fuzuloparib compared to routine surveillance (RS), niraparib and olaparib for platinum-sensitive recurrent OC from the Chinese healthcare systems.Method: A partitioned survival model with three-state (progression-free, progressed, death) was constructed utilizing TreeAge Pro 2011 software to evaluate the economic value of fuzuloparib, niraparib and olaparib maintenance treatment for platinum-sensitive recurrent OC based on the clinical data derived from FZOCUS-2, ENGOT-OV16/NOVA and ENGOT-Ov21/SOLO2. Transition probabilities were estimated from the reported survival probabilities in those trials. Cost and health preference data were derived from the literature. The quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) and lifetime costs were measured for this analysis. A 5 years horizon and 5%/year discount rates were used. One-way analysis, and probabilistic sensitivity analysis (PSA) were performed to explore the model uncertainties.Results: Total cost of fuzuloparib, niraparib and olaparib were $31628.10, $48183.48 and $54605.54, whereas they had an incremental cost-utility ratio of $31992.69, $32216.08 and $23359.26 per additional progression-free survival (PFS) QALYs gained compared with RS, relatively. Model showed that maintenance fuzuloparib achieved at least an 85.5% probability of CE at the threshold of $37654.50/QALY. One-way sensitivity analysis revealed that the results were sensitive to the PFS and the price of medicines.Conclusion: Fuzuloparib was less cost-effective for patients with germline BRCA1/2 mutation and platinum-sensitive recurrent OC compared to olaparib, but was superior to niraparib from the Chinese healthcare systems perspective.

Abstract Myosin heavy chain 9 (MYH9) plays an essential role in human diseases, including multiple cancers; however, little is known about its role in gliomas. In the present study, we revealed that HMGA1 and MYH9 were upregulated in gliomas and their expression correlated with WHO grade, and HMGA1 promoted the acquisition of malignant phenotypes and chemoresistance of glioma cells by regulating the expression of MYH9 through c-Jun-mediated transcription. Moreover, MYH9 interacted with GSK-3β to inhibit the expression of GSK-3β protein by promoting its ubiquitination; the downregulation of GSK-3β subsequently promoted the nuclear translocation of β-catenin, enhancing growth, invasion, migration, and temozolomide resistance in glioma cells. Expression levels of HMGA1 and MYH9 were significantly correlated with patient survival and should be considered as independent prognostic factors. Our findings provide new insights into the role of HMGA1 and MYH9 in gliomagenesis and suggest the potential application of HMGA1 and MYH9 in cancer therapy in the future.

Abstract Background At present, the residual film pollution in cotton fields is crucial. The commonly used recycling method is the manual-driven recycling machine, which is heavy and time-consuming. The development of a visual navigation system for the recovery of residual film is conducive, in order to improve the work efficiency. The key technology in the visual navigation system is the cotton stubble detection. A successful cotton stubble detection can ensure the stability and reliability of the visual navigation system. Methods Firstly, it extracts the three types of texture features of GLCM, GLRLM and LBP, from the three types of images of stubbles, residual films and broken leaves between rows. It then builds three classifiers: Random Forest, Back Propagation Neural Network and Support Vector Machine in order to classify the sample images. Finally, the possibility of improving the classification accuracy using the texture features extracted from the wavelet decomposition coefficients, is discussed. Results The experiment proves that the GLCM texture feature of the original image has the best performance under the Back Propagation Neural Network classifier. As for the different wavelet bases, the vertical coefficient texture feature of coif3 wavelet decomposition, combined with the texture feature of the original image, is the feature having the best classification effect. Compared with the original image texture features, the classification accuracy is increased by 3.8%, the sensitivity is increased by 4.8%, and the specificity is increased by 1.2%. Conclusions The algorithm can complete the task of stubble detection in different locations, different periods and abnormal driving conditions, which shows that the wavelet coefficient texture feature combined with the original image texture feature is a useful fusion feature for detecting stubble and can provide a reference for different crop stubble detection.

Abstract Background Due to the high cost of data collection for magnetization detection of media, the sample size is limited, it is not suitable to use deep learning method to predict its change trend. The prediction of physical and chemical properties of magnetized water and fertilizer (PCPMWF) by meta-learning can help to explore the effects of magnetized water and fertilizer irrigation on crops. Method In this article, we propose a meta-learning optimization model based on the meta-learner LSTM in the field of regression prediction of PCPMWF. In meta-learning, LSTM is used to replace MAML’s gradient descent optimizer for regression tasks, enables the meta-learner to learn the update rules of the LSTM, and apply it to update the parameters of the model. The proposed method is compared with the experimental results of MAML and LSTM to verify the feasibility and correctness. Results The average absolute percentage error of the meta-learning optimization model of meta-learner LSTM is reduced by 0.37% compared with the MAML model, and by 4.16% compared with the LSTM model. The loss value of the meta-learning optimization model in the iterative process drops the fastest and steadily compared to the MAML model and the LSTM model. In cross-domain experiments, the average accuracy of the meta-learning optimized model can still reach 0.833. Conclusions In the case of few sample, the proposed model is superior to the traditional LSTM model and the basic MAML model. And in the training of cross-domain datasets, this model performs best.

Background: Trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO) is an intestinal metabolic toxin, which is produced by gut flora via metabolizing high-choline foods. TMAO is known to increase the risk of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular events in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients. Objectives: The objective of this study was to explore the role and mechanism of TMAO aggravating kidney injury. Method: We used the five-sixths nephrectomy (5/6 Nx)-induced CKD rats to investigate whether TMAO could aggravate kidney damage and its possible mechanisms. Six weeks after the operation, the two groups of 5/6 Nx rats were subjected to intraperitoneal injection with 2.5% glucose peritoneal dialysis fluid (2.5% PDF) and 2.5% PDF plus TMAO 20 mg/kg/day. Results: In this study, we provided evidence showing TMAO significantly aggravated renal failure as well as inflammatory cell infiltration and in five-sixths nephrectomy-induced CKD rats. We found that TMAO could upregulate inflammatory factors including MCP-1, TNF-α, IL-6, IL-1β, and IL-18 by activating p38 phosphorylation and upregulation of human antigen R. TMAO could aggravate oxidative stress by upregulating NOX4 and downregulating SOD. The result also confirmed that TMAO promoted NLRP3 inflammasome formation as well as cleaved caspase-1 and IL-1β activation in the kidney tissue. Conclusions: Taken together, the present study validates TMAO as a pro-inflammatory factor that causes renal inflammatory injury and renal function impairment. Inhibition of TMAO synthesis or promoting its clearance may be a potential therapeutic approach of CKD in the future.